Sum of My Parts
I suppose now is as good a time as any to introduce you to Joan, archetypal inner critic extraordinaire.
She keeps the books. Joan is quality control in a sensible 1” heel, coffee colored ultra-sheer pantyhose, a below-the-knee A-line skirt and a cable knit sweater set. A real ‘string-of-pearls-and-eyeglass-chain’ type of woman. Exacting and stern, not a hair out of place. I could easily cast her as Head of Accounting at Lord & Taylor circa 1987. Joan is the ascendant Capricorn of my birth chart. Joan has the need to rub fabric between the tips of her manicured index, middle finger and thumb to weigh quality against cost before any purchase. Joan prefers the “measure twice, cut once” approach to reduce waste and frayed edges or nerves. Joan lives for a strongly worded email and goes to great lengths to check assignments against the rubric before submitting the work. Joan frets about the bills and the credit score and is the brains behind every enterprising idea and activity. Joan needs to be sure that “we got it” before “let’s get it.” Joan is embodied risk assessment, bag security and disbursement protocol. Joan has been holding the bag for me since I moved out of my parents house and into my own apartment at 17. This is the story of Joan’s unburdening.
When I was 19, my boyfriend gave me a check to deposit into my bank account and asked me to withdraw the money so that he could buy a watch from his homeboy. I tried really hard to make that sentence not sound like the scam it was. It is important for me to share that at the time, I was making that good telcom call center money, plus working part-time at a department store, had my own car and apartment. I had a nice little side-hustle set up for myself. I was living a very grown-ish life. Young, enterprising, completely inexperienced, and in love! - a dangerous combination. Of course the check bounced, my account was flagged, and I found myself sitting before the branch manager of my credit union - confused and sobbing.
The tears were part fear, part rage, and part heartbreak. First of all, I was afraid that I was going to jail - periodt! I grew up knowing many girls who did bids for their boyfriends over all manner of illicit activities. I never fancied myself one of those girls. I thought I had been so smart, so careful, in my line of questioning. I refused, protested, was gaslit, and eventually talked into doing this “one solid” - for him. I was enraged that I had fallen for the okey-doke which was jeopardizing my entire life and livelihood. Heartbroken because in my gut, I knew that my boyfriend had set me up. I ignored my intuition because I could not see or imagine the potential consequences on the other side of my yes. My boyfriend presented a significant list of consequences related to my no that made me think I had no agency. So, I talked myself into it. This isn’t illegal. These are friends. It’s just $100. I have the money in the bank. Why didn’t I just give him $100 you ask? Because this was a test of the narcissistic abuse system.
I give thanks for the fact that we were all young idiots and the owner of the checkbook (the homeboy’s auntie) did not press charges. I left the bank manager’s office with my ATM access revoked for an extended period of time and a mandatory hold on deposited checks for one year. My shame and my rage were battling for airtime. I needed to hide my shame by excoriating the boyfriend all while speeding in my stick-shift 1991 Honda CRX and scream-crying into a Nokia phone.
I ran a red light and t-boned a minivan.
Miracles happened. No one was physically harmed although both vehicles were totaled. This was the first time that I witnessed the pane glass of my life explode away from the frame, exposing me to the harsh winds of adulthood. It was at this moment that Joan stepped in to take on the indomitable role of Manager in my life’s story.
“Pull your shit together Miss Girl! Never again will we be crying in the middle of the street waiting for the fool who got you into this mess to come and console you because you have proven that you are clearly ill-equipped to do this adulting thing unsupervised.” Joan has a way of clearing me that reminds me of Claire Huxtable when she picked Vanessa up from having “Biiiig fun, with The Wretched in Baltimore!”
As I write this, I feel a deep sense of gratitude, compassion and admiration for my younger self and Joan. I was terrified of failure and making choices in an attempt to survive without asking for help from my parents and relatives. I felt like a burden. I assumed that no one would be able or willing to help me. I was untrusting of everyone and most of all, myself. I absolutely felt as though I had something to prove and would not admit failure or defeat to myself or anyone else. I have forgiven myself for not knowing another way to handle my angst. I am so fascinated by the innate wisdom of the mind to create a part that could manage the unknown and protect me from shame and being taken advantage of financially or otherwise. I took advantage of that gift, locked my money stuff away, and set Joan and Shame to keep watch while I kept choosing how to stay on the planet day by day.
I do not live with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). My particular flavor of trauma was not severe to the extent that my internal system parts were polarized into alter identities. Joan is one of many of sub-personalities or, parts in my Internal Family System (IFS) who manages some of my most vulnerable memories and traumatic experiences that shape my emotional landscape and directly influence how I understand myself and show up in the world. Joan is a part. “Parts are protectors who are simply trying to keep us safe and are reacting to and containing other parts that carry emotions and memories from past traumas that we have locked away inside” (Schwartz. 2021. p13)
“You are not one person, you are many people, you are a community of moods and selves under one name. Parts of you aren’t even human, they’re part mammal, part reptile, part rose, part moon, part wind. And life is a question of which parts are dominant—which, in effect, possess you.” - Michael Ventura
Not all of my parts have names, but I am a very visual creative spirit and many of my parts have pronounced characteristics or full blown avatars. Some of my parts are more spirited and energetic, represented by colors, sounds and textures. Some of my parts align with Orisha, ancestors, and guides. But right now, we are talking about Joan whose primary objective is to manage outcomes and expectations to disprove the limiting belief that my worth is a direct reflection of my wealth, financial management (or lack thereof) and other myriad ways late-stage capitalism challenges my enoughness.
As you now know, Joan has been at the helm of maintaining my performance in the role of ‘Upstanding Black Woman’ for much of my life but really stepped into overdrive in 2018 when I started Honeysuckle Creatives, LLC. I started the business as a catch-all for organizing my income from the various ways I was being compensated for my intellectual property. That included poetry performances and commissions, speaking engagements, workshop design and facilitation, corporate entertainment gigs, consulting, and ultimately coaching. My Libra stellium was a tornado of creative manifestation and performances. My roles included Auntie-mom, undergrad, full-time employee, community organizer, event producer, poet, daughter, sister, home girl, fellow (and had the nerve to try and throw a whole long distance relationship in there!)
I was not functioning in Self energy. The best way I can describe what it felt like to be Parts-led adulting is this:
Imagine a busload of unsupervised children and distracted adults on a field trip to nowhere because they can’t decide on a destination and don’t have a map. The driver is a 19 year old who is in over her head and fighting with her asshole boyfriend on the phone. Everyone has an idea of what should be done about it and they are all sounding off about it at the same time.
I was being driven by my parts who were often in conflict with one another in an effort to have their needs met, their stories heard, their pain soothed. I was busy meeting the needs of everyone else, listening to clients’ stories, numbing my pain with alcohol and spending money like it came out of a spigot. I was not ready to do the internal work of getting curious about my emotions and what they were trying to communicate to me. I was afraid to connect and would not sit still long enough to allow calmness to settle my nervous system. I spent a lot of time in judgement of myself and did not yet understand the powerful healing of self-compassion. My creativity was up for sale to the lowest bidder and my energy for new projects had bottomed out at a time when I needed money the most. I didn’t have the courage to ask for what I needed in the face of my fear of rejection or abandonment. I was playing the fake-it-til-you-make-it game for so long that I could not make out a clear path toward authentic confidence. It was a wild time. And this was before the pandemic.
A complimentary resource tool I share with my coach partners to help assess your level of Self energy. I like to play connect the dots with mine to see what takes shape. I’m also nosey and like to see photos of these sorts of things so, feel free to share your results!
Grind mode had ground me to a fine dust and my money stuff was starting to set little fires everywhere to call attention to the fact that I’d locked it away at the scene of the accident all those years back. Every new money crisis got stuffed in the same compartment. I was constantly overwhelmed and avoided anything that connected my creativity to money and more paperwork (bills, taxes, applications, budgets). I told myself a story that confirmed the limiting belief that I was not worthy of being paid to be mySELF, by refusing to engage in the act of financial compensation for being mySELF. For a long time, it was rare for gigs or engagements to pay more than a few hundred dollars so I treated the money as if it were pocket change. I carried my creativity as though it were inconsequential and that was reflected in how I treated myself and handled my business. I doubted whether or not what I had to offer was worth my cost of living and as such, increased my output (not my rates) and worked harder to produce more. *cries in Nap Bishop* This capitalist spin cycle required me to adapt to new skill sets, systems, practices, rituals and behavioral unlearning that would ultimately prepare me for my journey into the cave but not before I got my shit rocked by life. I did NOT know how to stop.
With the start of my business, Joan got a promotion without compensation or consent and emerged to ensure that never again would I see a 3-Day notice on my door for late rent. Oh, the salary is dependent upon education and not my 15+ years of experience? Let’s go get this degree! The children want to go to private school? Let’s create the position and fundraise the tuition! Joan has handled my GPA, tax and business filings, marketing, publications, organizational strategies and assessments, copy editing, invoicing, expense reports, debt management, student loans, and market research to much success for the past 6 years. During that time I have added to Joan’s workload indiscriminately by being frivolous with my “yes” and stingy with my “no.” Lack of boundaries is detrimental to the overall wellness of a system.
Much of the pressure and expectation I put on myself was motivated from a place of comparison, driven by extractive labor, and undergirded by white supremacist concepts of achievement and competition. Ego is a linear description of parts that want to keep us safe. Not every burden is mine to carry. Some are ancestral, societal and relational. The parts who do the work of manager, firefighter and protector do so with the survival of the whole Self as the sole motivation. That Self does not survive outside of community. I was not in community with my parts while simultaneously expecting them to continue to support me without gratitude, acknowledgement, or compassionate love. I had to take a long hard look at where else in my life I was showing up the same way. Shocker - the call was coming from inside the house!
When I journey into the cave of introspection, I pass Joan’s desk. I realize that when I emerge covered in ancient issues and carrying recovered parts to triage, I often disrupt the order of things for Joan. Buying my first home, moving again, and re imagining my business model are on the horizon for 2024. Historically, I would have delayed and sabotaged myself into a series of panic attacks by now. Lately, I have been digging up old debts and loose ends from before her 2018 takeover and handling them according to plan, in a timely fashion, with little to no anxiety, and dare I say - ease. Instead of piling things onto a “never-gonna-do” list, I’ve lightened my whole system’s load by asking for help, outsourcing, delegating, and saying no as an act of radical Self love. I have more time to rest, read books, and live into my vision for this next chapter. I’m on my healing journey, six months into initiation, and covered in the goo of transformation, completely confident and full of gratitude. I emerge from therapy, parts work study, prayer and coaching sessions feeling more open, possible, and refreshed. Joan peers over her eyeglasses and sucks her teeth slyly.
Joan never looks like what we’ve been through. I want to hug her but Joan is still peering over the glasses in my direction as though she is suspicious of me. Maybe curious. I don’t blame her. It has been foot-on-gas season pretty much nonstop and I never check in before jumping into the next big project. I sit down on a rock next to her desk and pull water bottles, dried apricots, dark chocolate and almonds from my bag to share. We sit in silence for a while munching on fruit and nuts before I tell her, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”
Joan slips off her shoes and rubs her stocking feet together like a cricket in the grass, reaches up and frees a cloud of curls from the tight bun at the back of her head, shakes them loose from her scalp with her fingertips and leans her back against a tree.
“I know,” Joan sighs. “I know.”
