Okay. I've now discussed what bothered me about the book and what I found painful. And that is that her experience of people saying I don't see you as different than anyone else was something that hurt her. Because she wanted to be seen as different. Not as just another American I guess. Or certainly not as just a white person. She wants to be seen for her mother's heritage. I'm not of a dual race/biracial. I am fully Dutch. My mother is from Holland and my father's family are from Holland further back. I come from West Michigan where there's lots of Dutch people. She actually seems to know about this subculture I would have to look at her book again, but I think her father's family may have some of this heritage in them.
So what do you do with the fact that her experience makes her feel unseen if you don't see her the way that makes her feel seen? Which is to affirm and see her difference?
But if you have a brain like mine, it's something I've learned which I said in the post I took down. I'm not going to put that post back up just because I want to write it differently.
So as I mentioned in the post I took down when I was in some of my deepest pain I ordered a book called Autistic Thinking. Now I ordered another copy a year or so later and it was slightly different. The author self-published and she updated her own book. But my copy of her book changed my life. It revolutionized it. Because I had no idea I was on the neurodivergent spectrum. I knew many who were but I never thought I was. But I totally am. This book explained my childhood. And in ways my childhood was very much like this authors. But for different reasons.
I was the one in my small class who was often bullied and teased and called names. I don't know for how many years, when I would get overtired, I would finally open up and cry about the fact that I was teased again. My parents didn't really know what to do about this, but my mom rightly said the following. It's much better to be bullied than to be the bully. Now, this may not seem fair to tell a child, but actually it's deeply true.
When I've realized that because of my own woundedness I've been a bully. I feel very sad. But I also have to accept that I too can do this.
Now the reason this author and I had the same experience which is especially as children. We were on the outside. We were on the outside looking in. But she experienced this as pain. And she did have some very painful experiences that wounded her both in her mother's country of origin and in the States. For the same reason but differently. It was because she's biracial in both counts.
But I was looking in from the outside for a different reason. It's because it's how my brain works. I actually really like it now that I understand that not everyone is like that. I am an observer. But I don't usually know that about myself because I'm just being myself. Of course, the danger of knowing yourself better is that you can think you're cooler than another person. That's the whole problem of the human race! I share the problem.
My life very much is like that now. I don't have anyone in my immediate living situation I.E that I don't have to take a train for an hour who understands me and is my age. My normal lived life has a lot of deep built-in solitude. Some would really like my life because they're surrounded by people and want to be alone. Sometimes I wish for a different life because I want a friend. However, I also really like my life. I actually need a lot of time alone to be able to do the huge writing project I'm doing. I would never get it done otherwise.
And my writing project is going to take years because the research for it is really extensive. I really love it. But it's a lot of work but it's the right work for me.
So part of my brain makeup is that I don't see difference. I see the person not their ethnicity, background or anything else, first. This is actually, by some, a very enviable state to be in. But everything has a strength and weakness. I can totally miss cues (where is the word I want to say here miscue?) that others wouldn't about a person I'm talking to.
And I don't always see systems or hierarchy correctly. Or what is considered normal anyway!
But see that's how my brain is made. I can collapse bubbles or boxes really easily because I don't see them. But I can make social blunders maybe more easily than some. But when I realize I've done them I feel really bad. But I have no idea how to fix them.
But this is also a human problem. It's normal.
So part of what I'm in the process of doing is to basically get used to being myself again and just accept the parts I understand more and not focus on them. Ironic for how I'm focusing on them now perhaps.
The main thing is I'm more than just how my brain is made. I'm Elizabeth. I'm exactly how God wanted me to be in terms of my personality and my brain. And lots of people have my type of brain and don't know it.
And I too want to be accepted just like this writer. To be accepted in my own quirkiness and also brokenness.
Now there's many things I liked about this book. I really loved her stories. I loved learning about the history of another country and the stories of her family. I felt she wrote those well and that it was a real strength in her book.
But some of her rhetoric I found fell short. And by rhetoric. I don't just mean that in a negative sense, but that she was trying to communicate a belief. And part of her belief is in the rhetoric of inclusion and cultural difference. I'm not using another word on purpose because it's too overused and triggering.
Here's a place where I felt her rhetoric fell short. She began the book with talking about herself and how she never allowed herself to be okay with her cultural background of her mother. Even as a young mother, she threw it away. She talks a lot about the soup that her culture has made for centuries, and she had no idea that this soup was normally given to nourish a young mother. She threw that soup down the sink when her mother wasn't looking. Later she was healed from this rejection of her mother and herself. And she became much more like her mother and embraced her cultural cuisine that her mother's culture is from.
So now she wants to be seen as herself and in some ways to be honest seems to be prioritizing her mother's culture over her fathers. From her substack. I would say this is very clear. She's all about her mother's culture and finding people like her is what the impression I got from her substack.
But see that automatically excludes me because I'm not at all from those cultures. So like does that mean she doesn't like me? No because her husband is of a different culture and her father is of a different culture. But she had such deep wounds regarding her mother's culture that now she wants to surround herself with it and affirm herself by it and find friends who are like her. Is this wrong? Not at all. She's found great comfort and freedom in doing this.
However, she is prioritizing people that understand her in this way in a way I can never do. Not on that specific level.
Can I understand her on the level of feeling that you're on the outside? Yes. But see that's what I think is my superpower that I am on the outside. That's why I think I'll be a good writer one day because I see things from the outside. And I live on the outside in a lot of ways. But see I like that. It's where I'm comfortable.
But sometimes it can be lonely because it's not as easy to find people who are on the inside like you are. But I do have them just not in my hometown.
I have some very good friends, Who are my age, and I'm very grateful.
Back to her rhetoric. So she traces her journey from rejecting her mother's culture and not being happy in her own skin to her progress in being happy and comfortable in her own skin. This is very great and very normal. I think most adults have to do this journey. It's very rare to find a balanced, comfortable in one's own skin, person in one's twenties.
But here's where I felt she fell short and she may not like this. She suddenly turned the tables and said YOU must accept me because I now accept me in this particular way. I'm a child of my mother and you must see my mother's culture in me and not be cruel to me.
Now I'm saying this very differently than she did. But she did have a line about you have to do X. And she was very specific that she had the line that you, the reader have to accept me this specific way.
I didn't like that. One. I hate being told what to do. But two I found it to be poorly done. I don't like that kind of rhetoric. That you have to accept me the way I see myself. What if I see differently? What if my brain doesn't see difference but it still sees you? How do we talk to each other? How do we get past the hurts of our past to be able to really have a bridge between two very different people?
What if those people aren't that different? I'm a writer too. Sure I'm not published yet but I'm working hard to one day do that. It scares me but it's for later. I have years to work on my project.
But I don't think it's right to tell a reader you have to do X. She would be much stronger to actually just say I'm now comfortable in myself. I'm so glad I'm a child of my mother. I'm so glad that I know that God loves me and my culture. I rejoice in the fact that there's so many examples in the Bible where people are exiled and are basically living in a different culture than they're from. All of that she does in the book. But the line about you have to accept me this specific way. I don't like that.
Let your reader make their own decisions. And it is actually a place of strength to just be comfortable and not to feel the need to say that you now have to treat me a certain way or I'm not happy. There's something emotionally wrong about that.
Now do I have a million emotionally wrong things? Yep. Am I broken? Yes. So I may be very upfront about what I think about this book, but it's because it matters so much to me.
That's what's so hard to explain when you're critiquing a book and saying what you don't like. It's because you actually like it if you're me. There are a lot of strengths in this little book. But the weaknesses made me feel like I don't know if she'd ever really want to dialogue with me.
Because I am of one race. I'm from Holland. But see that doesn't make me better. It's just who I am. I'm a human being whose origins are from one country and who lives in the States but lived in Canada for 15 years and I'm a dual citizen with Canada.
When I'm in Canada I feel way more Canadian and my culture as a Canadian comes back. But I'm a Canadian who was an American first. I'm always on the outside. But as I said, I like it that way.
The fact that she totally misunderstood Orthodox practice and dismissed it is almost laughable compared to her main point of inclusion. My friend Pat helped me realize that she probably went to a Coptic Orthodox Church as I said in my last post.
And I'm sorry that it made her feel excluded. A lot of very ethnic churches can still do this and have a hard time knowing what to do with people that aren't like themselves. Now within Orthodoxy in North America. There's a lot of openness and welcomingness but not always.
I'll deal with the question of communion in another post.
This one is very long already!
I really did like this book on so many levels. But it felt to me that seeing how her woundedness impacts her makes me feel like she's closed to people that she's afraid would reject her and not see her.
What if in trying to see another person you have to have difficult conversations and go through experiences of hurt to try to get to an understanding of each other? Is that not worth it in the end?
My kind of brain sees differently but it doesn't mean it doesn't see. And what I see in her is a writer who's trying to heal from her wounds and who's much more happier being herself than she ever has been.
There's nothing simple in life though. Christianity in its core is simple. Holiness is simple.
I just want to learn how to dialogue with people in a way that doesn't exclude. It's one of my big questions and it's one that I don't have an answer for. And it's one that I totally fail at. But because I'm aware of my feeling and because too like to learn to include people, I think it's a question that's well worth talking about....
May God have mercy on us.
