Hindsight: What You Need to Know Before You Drop Your Drawers!
By Maryanne Comaroto
Published March 24, 2009 (Paperback) Bridge the Gap Publishing
More Info: Maryanne Comaroto
Enjoy the sassy subtitle on her book, Hindsight: What You Need to Know Before You Drop Your Drawers. But it goes a lot deeper than that.
Maryanne Comaroto — like all great girlfriends — sets you in the right direction. And, sometimes you don’t know how true her aim is until much later. Maryanne was on my show today — Open Book with Diana Page Jordan. Btw, it’s airing now at pdx.fm. And, every time I read Maryanne or listen to her, I get her wisdom at a deeper level. And, it cooks there for awhile, until I notice this amazing change in behavior, and can trace it back.
Top of mind lately has been Maryanne’s work to truly love your own self, to the point where you want to marry yourself. She even has a chapter in her book that gives her vows which she spoke to a group of her friends. That’s serious.
I began thinking, “How could I get to that place inside myself where I feel so balanced that I could perform a ceremony in front of my friends, and not feel like a total goofball?” I’ve just recently gotten to the place where I can actually throw a party at my home — and not a little kid’s birthday party.
I asked myself, “When did I last feel truly like myself?”
I was three-and-a-half. Which was more than half-a-century ago.
When you’re three-and-a-half, memories are put away as visuals with feelings. I didn’t think myself back. I felt myself back. This was maybe a year before my real dad was shut out of my life except for a cameo when I was age six — forever. No photos. No stories. His name was Jimmy Jordan, but my brother thinks his middle name was Frances, and I think it was Frederick. We don’t know if he had siblings, never met our paternal grandparents. Our last names were changed from Jordan, and my brother tells me when I reclaimed my last name — that’s what made my mother and stepfather disown me. Not that I told them one day — long-distance — that what they had done had hurt me. No, it’s not that I brought it out in the open that my stepfather raped me from the time I was four-and-a-half and that he was, in general, very violent, nor was it that my mother was alcoholic, schizophrenic, and suicidal, oh, yeah, and she didn’t protect me from him. Nope, it wasn’t that. It was that I was disloyal by changing my last name back to Jordan. The name I last had around age four-and-a-half.
So you get the picture. For me to want to marry myself, I must first find my purest self. A lot of people get derailed during these tender years, and they lose the real Who of them.
I fell into that friendly old space. Three-and-a-half. I was spirited. Maybe rebellious. The kind of rebellion that’s challenging in a cute way. Not the way I turned — which was secretly rebellious against authority. I’ve healed that, btw. And I found Joyful! Playful. Chasing Smudgie, the Siamese cat, down the dark-wooded halls of my mother’s parent’s apartment. Laughing. I felt — then– completely adored by at least four adults. Daily. There was music, always. A piano playing. A violin playing. The sound of New York City traffic outside the windows. I expected nothing. I had everything. There was no cruelty. Yet. I was in love with everyone and everything in my life.
Can you find who you truly are, by going back to that last precious age when you felt completely loved? What do you then take away? Who are you? That reminds me of the hookah-smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland asked, smoke pouring out of its mouth, “Whooooo are youuuuu?” And she doesn’t know anymore.
The point is not to know who you are by how your friends, colleagues, and family treat you. They are actually just a reflection of how you feel about yourself. But if you gently fall back to that last time you unconditionally loved yourself — which did happen at some point — you will know who you truly are. And then, you can read Maryanne’s chapter about that, and marry yourself. Okay, I’m being a bit naughty there. Good! It’s coming back!
My being — before it was traumatized — was spirited, rebellious, kindhearted, joyful, playful, loved engaging everyone in the room, curious, and yes, a little bit naughty. I loved to laugh and dance and sing. To throw myself into peoples’ arms and hug the stuffing out of them. Fearless.
After reading thousands of books, interviewing thousands of authors, spending thousands of dollars on EMDR and other therapy, now I’m seeing that girl in me. The hugging part, I’m just recently getting again. Fearless is close.
I’ll let you know when I buy that wedding gown. First I’m toning up my triceps. The gown will be strapless. And, Maryanne — you’re invited!
