The Five Rules of Being A Grown Up
By Tom Weston
1. You must not have anything wrong with you, or anything different about you.
2. If you have something wrong or different about you, you really need to correct it. You need to be able to pass under all circumstances.
3. If you can’t correct it, or change it in any way, you should just pretend that you have. It’s not a problem anymore. Good news!
4. If you can’t even pretend to have corrected the situation, you should just not show up, because it’s very painful for the rest of us to see you in your current condition.
5. If you’re going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to be ashamed.
And that’s what every single one of us is against. Last night, I was able to attend Anne Lamott’s interview with Reverend Chip Edens. This is just one of the fantastic nuggets I brought back with me. A reminder of what we are all up against, those of us raised with untreated mental illness and addiction. My family of origin is clearly affected by these diminishing beliefs. My non-adherence will keep us divided. 
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I will devour this book as I dig deeper to find Mercy for myself-as directed by our hero Saint Annie! Breathing is easier today, after having seen this in writing, heard it spoken by a Trusted Other, and been in a room with 1500 nodding heads.
What are the secret rules and codes that have been used to keep you playing small? How will you avoid passing them on to your children?
Oh my. Where to start. There is one huge, irrefutable put-down I can never root out of the depths of my mind and heart. It doesn’t even bother me very much any more, but it has been the train-track upon which I was set while still young, when it meant a great deal to me.
I adored my father. He and I could sit and discuss anything, anything. He even told me I was more of an intellectual than he was, and he was, in his own estimation, the world’s consummate intellectual. At least the greatest one he had ever met personally.
Well, one day, during one of our discussions, of, I believe, poets, I must have proclaimed some woman a genius.
Imagine my chagrin when he said, “She couldn’t have been a genius. Women are not geniuses.”
I have never tried to prove him wrong.I never worked in a field where genius was a category. But to be told I COULD NEVER be a genius? I spent hours trying to find someone my father would admit was a genius, but all he had to say was, “No.” He needed no evidence except that she was a woman.
IS there a woman on a level with Stephen Hawking, Shakespeare, Beethoven?
Who JJ,
That is some old school thinking. The good news is we can break the cycle in our own lives and not hand those rules to our children, unless we choose to, as many will. Thinking this offers a sense of comfort and control to those who need. Acceptance is just not a widely accepted practice and then people what to get all crazy and pretend that acceptance means accept everything that people say and do. These messages are not for them. Anyone who even subconsciously supports and enforces this could never engage in the conversation-because the need to be right destroys the possibility of connection and authentic engagement of the matter. Thank you for taking the time to think and engage meaningfully.
Always,
Magda Gee