Phenomenology and other big words I learned

Phenomenology is literally defined as “the philosophy of lived experience”.

For a woman born in the 80’s married to a selfish narcissist for 25 plus years-and didn’t know it until the end - this word was the beginning of the end.

After 20 plus years, putting him through school, raising the kids, homeschooling and doing the hard work of life, I finally returned to school myself.

This time, I was majoring in Environmental Science and Religious Studies. They don’t seem to go together, but they do…and in a big way. That will have to come in a different set of blogs.

The past few years, people have begun to ask me this weird question: “How do you know so much?”

I always laugh, because I was never the one who knew anything in my marriage. He did. He not only knew everything, but he could go on and on about the theoretical frameworks that suppport his idea…the authors that wrote about these and how valid they might be in the real world.

I knew the real world. That was it.

In fact, my mind struggles with theory so much so that when I went to college at 17 and got into music school-after 13 years of serious practice and study-I failed the theory entrance exam. Luckily, they let me in anyway, but still…

The real world it was and still is, for me.

When I started college this time, I planned to go into field research, analyzing water, land, numbers of animals in bioregions, invasives…you know, be a low-level environmental scientist. This was a really cool idea for me.

But, something happened and I ended up taking a Feminist and Womanist Theology class. And it changed everything.

I would come home and begin a conversation with the now-ex. I have a very excitable personality and would become animated as I talked. It didn’t go down well.

These “discoveries” I was making in class were validating my lived experience as a woman, a wife, a mother, a lover, a thinker, and spiritual person.

The words I read told me that all of it counted. It mattered if I had learned from real life, somehow. And not in some “stay at home in the kitchen and keep the talk simple” sort of way. It mattered in the outside world too, and talking about it was the LIBERATION I had always needed.

Liberation theology was another validation for real lived experience. No, I am not a person of color, but to feel oppressed…yeah I know a lot about that. I had willingly allowed it. And I was learning about the consequences of that, in school and in my home, all at the same time. Brutal!

Back to class. I learned that feminist theology honors this lived experience; that is is totally valid in our process of understanding the world around us as well as our understanding of what the Divine is.

There are at least three different kinds of feminist theologians, and I tend to be more of a reconstructionist. I want to find the Divine alive and well, but need new names and places to see her. I first had to throw out my idea of God, however. I wrote that blog already. You can find it here : The Two Week Atheist.

Back to the question people often as me, “How do you know so much?”

To get to the point where people could even see that I knew anything interesting took some work. I had to get to a place in my life that I #1 talked to adults more, #2 had a different background than many of them, and #3 was surrounded by inquisitive people…people who wanted to understand their own lives better.

I worked for several years as a retreat facilitator, looking at nature connection as a healing tool for emotional and psychological pain. This is where theology and environment come together for me.

But, the answer I gave to anyone who would say those words to me was simply this, “I have been alive for 40 some years and I’ve been paying attention the whole time.”

I never saw this as being smug or demeaning and they never took it that way. We all have different lives and have therefore, different things we get to learn each day. And what a joy it was to teach each other!

What I have also learned since that time is that the hypervigilance that comes hand in hand with anxiety disorder and PTSD put me firmly in a place where I was always looking, searching, and trying to make sense of life.

I needed to know I was safe, that my children were safe, and that we would be cared for - even if I had to do it myself, which I did.

So, yes, I was paying attention. But I was paying attention like most people don’t have to. It was exhausting and draining. It made me sick eventually and I am still recovering.

But, sitting in that class, I learned that my phenomenology mattered. That I was allowed to make sense of my life through my own experience; how it bumped up against others ideas of life; how I felt about that and was able to make sense of it.

I didn’t need someone else’s theories or frameworks, the names of important people and their ideas. I could dive right in and allow myself to be valid, today.

No, this is not easy. It is really tricky. Especially when your lived experience directly counters someone else’s. There is a lot of work to do when this happens and my tendency toward self-doubt was pretty much a given.

But that changed over time. Traveling for work, teaching, and listening to other women’s stories helped a lot. Their stories were close enough to mine that I could give incrementally more meaning and validation to my own.

It’s a dangerous thing to allow a middle aged woman to go to school and think for herself. She might learn big words, and how to use them.

This class was exactly what I needed as I began to step out of a marriage filled with manipulation and control. It was over when I realized I was never going to be able to believe anything without proof, unless I wanted to keep it to myself. And that is not who I am.

And that’s why I write.