Update, 5/17/18 (Chr)

by Charity and Allegra

Update contains some CHR content toward the end.

We're doing better today.  We were really upset yesterday by something at work and ended up sitting in a conference room with our manager's boss's boss, crying our eyes out.  The bottom line was that we were long overdue to have a conversation with our manager about how to work together better.  MBB, normally a very empathetic, nurturing woman, challenged us validly on a couple of points, stating that if we have a concern or some other input, we need to speak up rather than hold things in and let problems develop as a result.  Given her usual record of empathy, we took her point seriously.

Today we had that conversation with our manager, even though we didn't plan to do so, and it was much less difficult than we had expected.  Calm, neither of us stressed or frustrated.  It happened during the course of our weekly team meeting, which includes our teammates Guy 1 and Guy 2, and the fact that they were present didn't bother us.  In fact, it even felt safer to us that they were there.

Later in the day we ran into MBB and told her that we'd had this conversation, that it went well, and that we felt a lot better afterward.
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Charity:  If you've read our story, you know that in our late 20s we converted from non-religious Judaism to Roman Catholicism, and that we dropped out entirely after we realized that we were multiple.  It's been more than 15 years since we were active at all.

Anyway, it finally occurred to me during the last couple of days that the true root of my desire to be a Catholic was not so much faith as it was to fill my need for the perfect mother.  I was sincere about the Jesus part and the rest of the beliefs, but I didn't really have faith.  I wanted the ritual, I wanted the mystique, and most of all, I wanted the selfless, perfect mother.

I'm not going to say that my motives or decisions were wrong, because it helped me/us learn.  I know that there's been a lot of negative feelings inside about my decision-making abilities, and this part of our history is the least of it.  But it's a relief, a weight off my shoulders, to connect the dots about this.