Statement of Purpose
- To provide a forum for ideas relating to the acceptance of a Possessory Conservator's lot in life.
- To provide strategies to battle the notion that the ability to nurture is a gender specific trait.
- To encourage parents to be the best they can be for their children, how to use the time they have to exert the most influence, and ways to stay involved in their kid's lives.
- To promote an individual's efforts to become a more complete person, to regain a sense of wholeness if it was lost, and to promote growth in the individual in the emotional, spiritual, and mental (and sometimes physical, financial, and social) arenas.
We aim to be an informative and enlightening periodical for men and women who want to be involved parents. We encourage questions, comments, submission, subscriptions, donations and advertising.
Resources for divorcing families
The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers has recently published a pamphlet, "Stepping Back From Anger - Protecting Your Children During Divorce." It includes "Ten Tips for Divorcing Parents" and a "Children's Bill of Rights." For a free copy, contact them at 150 N. Michigan Ave, Suite 2040, Chicago, IL 60601, 312-263-6477.
The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts publishes a brochure on joint custody. Reach them at 329 W. Wilson St, Madison, WI 53703, 608-251-4001.
The Stepfamily Association of America, Inc. publishes a quarterly bulletin and a booklet of educational resources for stepfamilies. To receive this information, contact their staff at 650 J. Street, Suite 205, Lincoln, NE 65808, 800-735-0329.
Review
Under Saturn's Shadow - The Wounding and Healing of Men by James Hollis (Inner City Books, 1994).
Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture, helped create early civilization. Cronus, his earlier Greek incarnation, had a darker side. Saturn's father, Uranus, feared his children's potential. According to legend, Saturn-Cronus killed his father and became an even more feared oppressor. When Saturn and his wife bore children, he feared they may someday overthrow him. Saturn killed and devoured his own offspring. Zeus, alone, survived. In turn, he led a revolt against Saturn. After the battle, Zeus too, became tyrannical. Men have been living under Saturn's shadow ever since.
In this book, James Hollis casts light on the dark myths that has scarred men's souls. The author believes men labor under three shades of Saturn's shadow; "Work, war, and worry." And it's true; many men only identify their self according to the work they do. The competitive edge that many feel obligated to carry keep people constantly on guard. If we are not at war with our fellow man, we are sizing him up or putting him down. One of the eight secrets Hollis says men carry within: "Men's lives are essentially governed by fear."
Other secrets: "Men's lives are governed by restrictive role expectations." "The power of the feminine is immense in the psychic economy of men." "Men collude in a conspiracy of silence whose aim is to suppress their emotional truth." "Because men must leave Mother, and transcend the mother complex, wounding is necessary." "Men's lives are violent because their souls have been violated." "Every man carries a deep longing for his father and for his tribal Fathers." "If men are to heal, they must activate within what they did not receive from without."
Recent men's movements are important. But Hollis thinks they provide more of an emotional release, such as bra burning in the early days of the women's movement. "Such energies are more effectively spent in discussion, in court and in working toward cultural change." "Ultimately, changes come through the individual," he says. "Sharing (experiences) has its place, but personal change is primary."
The pain of being a man is immense, Hollis feels. "When men feel the wound they cannot heal, they either bury themselves in a woman's arms and ask her for healing, which she cannot provide, or they hide themselves in macho pride and enforced loneliness." "Under Saturn's Shadow" tells of this wound and describes the healing that can occur, that must occur if we are to live in the light. "For no society can prosper if its men are immature."
This book provokes thought and introspection. Without that, one is fated to exist in a state created by projection. And with projection, a person will find his fantasies and fears reflected back. "What we have not owned within will be projected without," Hollis writes.
The interactions between mother and child plays a major role in psychology. A man may suffer one or both of two kinds of wounds. The mother's unlived life will be imposed on the child; she will infringe in his boundaries to the point where he feels powerless. Or a man may experience the inability of his mother to meet his needs; he will suffer a sense of abandonment. "He will experience too much of her or not enough," Hollis states. "A man's sense of self is greatly affected by these wounds - overwhelment or abandonment or both."
If helplessness can be learned, it can be unlearned. The anguish and anger over abandonment can be resolved. First aid is not needed - these wounds call for major surgery.
But women are not all to blame for men's problems. Father hunger can generate its own faults. "When the experience of the father is negative, the fragile psyche is crushed," Hollis writes.
The absence of cultural fathers is delved into. The emergence of the industrial revolution is largely at fault. In an agrarian society, fathers and sons worked together in the fields. "When father left home and went to the factory and the office, the son was left behind." All men, Hollis writes, whether they know it or not, hunger for their father and grieve over his loss. "They long for his body, his strength, his wisdom."
Fathers are essential in their children's lives. Sons and daughters need their father's love and acceptance. Hollis writes of his experience as a therapist: "I have seldom witnessed more pain than that suffered by a man who never knew his father's love and approval. This wound is most keenly felt by gay men whose fathers, insecure in their own identity, rejected and abandoned their sons."
Boys need fathers in their lives. They need to be shown how to be in the world, how to work, how to bounce back from adversity. "Showing him how to be honest in his emotions, how to get up of the floor and back into the fray - the necessary wounding - is what each son needs. He needs to be shown that it is perfectly human to be afraid and, while afraid, that one is still obliged to live one's life and to undertake one's journey."
Carl Jung observed that the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents. When the son does not see his father honestly living his personal journey, then the son will have to find his paradigms elsewhere, or, worse, unconsciously live out the father's untaken journey.
A father may live under the same roof as his child but be hidden behind a newspaper or lost in cyber space. "His absence may be literal through death, divorce or dysfunction, but more often it is a symbolic absence through silence and the inability to transmit what he also may not have acquired," Hollis states. "Dad's defection means that the balance of the parent-child triangle is tipped and the mother-son dyad assumes a disproportionate weight. As well intentioned as most mothers are, they can hardly be expected to initiate their sons into something they are not. Without a father to pull him out of the mother complex, the son stays a boy, trapped either in dependency or compensatory macho suppression of the feminine."
Hollis offers seven steps toward self-healing.
- "Re-member the loss of the fathers." Admit and understand the faults of your ancestors. In this way, one can heal the wounds that have been passed down through generations.
- "Tell the secrets." What one resists will persist. "Telling the truth of our soul to ourselves is the first task. Living that truth is the second task. And telling it to other is the third. Such truth-telling will be the supreme test of our lives," Hollis believes.
- "Seek mentors and mentor others." A mentor may be found in a therapist,, a men's group, or, as is often the case, "they must do it as individuals."
- "Risk loving men." Men are often suspicious of each other. We are fearful of our own homophobia. "We have been conditioned to be competitive," Hollis states. The key is to learn to love ourselves. Then, as Jesus said, you can "Love your neighbor as yourself."
- "Heal thyself." "It would be helpful to have the model of the personal father at close hand to activate such empowerment," Hollis writes, "but most men will have to do it on their own."
- "Recover the soul's journey." The man on the street is hesitant to examine his own life. Such introspection often necessitates change, and change always occasions anxiety. "But when one realizes that the anxiety accompanying change is preferable to the depression and rage occasioned by constriction, change becomes more attractive," Hollis writes.
- "Join the revolution." When a man emerges from the shadow of Saturn, he is improving his personal life and providing a service to others. "When this man, and that man, and the other one over there, begin to take personal responsibility for their lives, the old tyrants will lose their grip," Hollis concludes. Justice is the force that all oppressors fear.
"Under Saturn's Shadow" is a liberating book. It does not to strengthen men by disparaging women. It will empower the man, the father, the child. The shadow is a force that has endangered a gender for millenniums. This book will break that bond.
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