Birth order: fact or fiction?

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . July 23, 2009 . 12:26PM

There are people that dispute any kind of birth order connection to personality. To those people I say pffffffffffffffttttttttttt. And here’s why: Our personalities are part genetics and part experience and part of our life experience is the house we grow up in and the way our part in that house shapes who we are. Hence, your birth order, will help shape your personality.

My mom reads this blog (everyone say hi!) so she’s going to read this. I have to let her know that it makes me giggle when she is flummoxed at the differences between myself and my sister, Livvy.

I’m a total type A, perfectionist, overachiever who will lay awake at night worrying if I remembered to turn off the computer at work. Keep in mind, once I’m home, there is NOTHING I can do about the computer at work. I’m an introvert who loves to read and a homebody who likes nothing more than to stay at home and relax.

Livvy’s a total type B, cool as a cucumber, it’ll get done when it gets done kind of girl. She’s smart as can be and she’s incredibly sociable and likable. She makes friends easy and doesn’t really hold a grudge. She’s sweet-natured and people gravitate towards her in ways that they never will in my direction. I envy her ability to just “let it go.” She gets good grades without putting forth the hours it would take me and lives her life with a smile.

I’m a responsible first born.

She’s the baby that came 16 years later.

She’s my only sibling.

I adore her, madly. She’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met and I’ve met a lot of people. There isn’t sibling rivalry and I think she’s awesome.

So, when my mom calls and tells me about my sissy’s hijinks, it’s hard for me not to giggle, because my sister is a typical, effervescent baby of the family. This must be like a cool splash of water after her neurotic first-born. In many ways, it’s great. Livvy is really easy to love and does all of the outgoing, extroverted things that just weren’t me. In other ways, it’s pretty different. It means that mom has to be more sociable and do more parent driving and host more sleepovers, etc. In a lot of ways, mom got the best of both worlds, really.

And she has two kids who love each other a whole lot and who genuinely miss each other when they aren’t together. A firstborn and a baby that far apart makes for a great combination and they also help prove the birth order theory.

I have to go now. I miss my sister.

If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you. - A.A. Milne

The moon and me

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . July 17, 2009 . 12:28PM

When I was a little girl, I used to think, in the egocentric way of children, that the moon and I had a special relationship. I don’t remember having imaginary friends, though my family has reassured me that I did and that they had 80′s-riffic names like Tiffany and Brittany and Claire. The relationship I remember was mine with the night sky.

Before all those silly things called rules (and if you can’t tell, I’m being facetious here) and safety belt laws and booster seats, etc., people like my mom allowed their kids to lay in the back seat and sleep on short car rides from town to town. Sometimes, I slept. I do love a good nap beyond most anything in life.

However, there was something mystical about looking out the back window, while laying in the seat and watching the stars and the moon. I could make out the face in the moon and I imagined a whole world where the moon was my friend and we frolicked at night. There was so much wonder in this world and what I never could figure out was how the moon FOLLOWED me from town to town. It just further confirmed that what we had was special and that the moon was MINE.

As an adult, I can analyze this and see the ecogentricism of where I was and even how the moon “followed” me. But don’t you pretend for one second that you don’t understand the magic, because even as adults we crave that connection to the sky.

Why do you think cars have sunroofs and car makers have convertibles?

I’ll never be without a sunroof again.

When is the last time you took a minute to look up at the clear night sky? What’s stopping you from connecting with the child who looked at the moon and wondered if there was really a man up there?

Things that made us happy then can make us happy again.

Accepting my Amazonian womanhood

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . July 16, 2009 . 1:10PM

Leon wrote a great article about our time at Zanies watching Ralphie May the other night. Thanks for guest blogging, honey. Come back again, soon.

One thing that Leon’s article was missing was something that I realized he probably didn’t value the way I did. Rather than asking him to write about it, I decided to write about it myself, thus adding value back to it and giving myself more bang for my blogging buck. What? I’m honest.

Here’s the deal, though. Leon didn’t get this the way I didn’t understand why he almost peed his pants over the Chick-fil-a jokes: I didn’t connect to it on the same level he did. Leon has an unnatural love of Chick-fil-a sandwiches, so the jokes were tear producing for him. Ralphie took some time to talk about serious topics as well as comedy, and one of them was self-image.

His main comment on this was that our culture sucks in that we put all of this emphasis on looks. Women essentially wear makeup for other women and that as long as men are getting laid, they rarely care if you wear it. If they do care, there are bigger issues, etc. You can fill in the jokes there. He made fun of everyone, including himself. But, for 5 minutes of that show, he told every woman in that audience how beautiful they were and you know what? I think we needed to hear it. I know I did.

It doesn’t matter who is telling it, we need to hear it. Yes, I know “you should be able to feel beautiful on your own without someone telling you.” Well, I’m telling you that the idea of that is an idealistic one in this society. Shoulda woulda coulda.

The bottom line is that some people feel amazing about themselves and I think that’s awesome. They have managed to have an ideal sense of self that we all strive for and I truly think that they are amazing for getting there. That sense of self was helped to development by many people who made that person feel secure during development. Not everyone had that security and not everyone has been able to or chose to nurture that sense of self in that way. Most of still keep plugging along trying to hit the caboose of the self-esteem train just for a couple of minutes a year.

Where am I going with this? Hang on, I’m getting there.

So, after my Sunday night Ralphie boost, bless his little heart, I was feeling a little better and it was on to Tuesday night Gender Roles. We did an interesting exercise. It’s something that can be used to help people find their archetypes (symbolic images in folklore and those present in our current subconscious such as heroes, warriors, etc.). For me, while we did the exercise, I was able to embrace part of myself and find a warrior subtype that I connect with: I am an Amazon.

Yep. I’m a tall, big-boned, blobby-bodied, goddess who is stronger than she looks both physically and emotionally. I’m able to be rough and tumble and do what I have to do to protect what’s mine and, at the same time, be emotionally in touch with those around me and be sensitive to their needs. During our active imagination, I realized that I am more independent than I realized and that I’m more ok with what I look like and who I am than I thought I was.

Screw you, Jenny Craig. Screw you, Weight Watchers. I’m an Amazon.*

* And of course, due to cultural norms, I feel the need to defend my newfound Amazonian nature with an “I promise I’m not crazy or screwed up” comment. I’m just empowered. It’s a good feeling. And if you don’t like my Amazonian status, good. Find your own archetype and we can be archetypal enemies. It’ll be like Heroes Quest! Man, I used to love that game. Or Dungeons and Dragons (that one, not so much). Anyway, I’m an Amazon! But not the crazy kind.