Letting
Go
How a
Family Crisis Brought Clarity and Authenticity
by Lisa
Hoelzer
Genre:
Memoir
What would you do if your religion forced you to
choose between the church and your children?
That's the dilemma Lisa Hoelzer faced after raising her
four children within the confines of a strict, high-demand religion that
dictated almost every aspect of their lives, from how they dressed to what they
ate to how they used their time. Her vision of their ideal future started to
change, however, when one child announced they were bisexual. Then another made
a similar declaration. Additionally, her children struggled with anxiety and
depression-conditions the church didn't prepare Hoelzer to deal with. If
she followed the church's restrictive teachings, Hoelzer would have to turn her
back on her beloved offspring. For this and other reasons, Hoelzer's small
misgivings about the church grew into large objections.
Letting Go recounts
the story of how, when faced with a transformational crisis that could have
destroyed her family, Hoelzer chose a difficult and forbidden path that would
change her world and theirs for the better.
This is a book for anyone struggling to push ahead when
there doesn't seem to be an easy or obvious path. Whether you're deconstructing
religion or parenting a teen struggling with mental health, this insightful
book will engage you with its thought-provoking ideas. With warmth,
vulnerability, and insight, Hoelzer empowers readers to accept their children
as they are and step into their more authentic selves.
Getting Used to
They/Them Pronouns
In the fall of 2020, our third child (Brooke) told us
they were nonbinary and preferred they/them pronouns. This was in the midst of
their mental health crisis, and my husband and I were willing to do whatever it
took to help them feel better and be able to function in the world. We had
heard more and more people coming out as trans or gender fluid, but we didn’t
know much about it. We wanted to be supportive but had some hesitations because
of our lifelong participation in a conservative religion. We were more open
than some of our church friends and neighbors, though, because we were in the
process of deconstructing our religion and eventually left that church
altogether.
In an effort to support Brooke, I learned more about
the history of gender roles and expectations and how that history is entangled
with patriarchy and misogyny. But I also tackled the day-to-day challenge to
altering my habits and using Brooke’s correct pronouns. It took effort to get
comfortable with the new pronouns, but I was committed to making the change.
You don’t use someone’s pronouns when you speak to the
person, you use them more when talking to someone else about the person. This
came up most often when my husband, Bryan, and I would talk together about
Brooke. At first, we would say “she” and then a few seconds later realize the
mistake and repeat the sentence with “they.” This is how new habits are
formed—correcting yourself afterwards at first until the new word becomes
second nature. I started off at about 30 percent accuracy for the correct
pronouns and worked up from there. When we were together as a family, all of us
made an effort to use Brooke’s pronouns. I felt thankful that our other kids
were supportive and willing to make this adjustment. I would feel a special
pride when I used the preferred pronouns in family conversations in front of
Brooke, hoping they noticed and felt validated.
The pronouns also came up when
talking to non-family members about Brooke—for example, when I called for their
doctor appointments, when I picked up their prescriptions, or when someone
asked how Brooke was doing. I often hesitated, pausing to ask myself, should I
explain their gender and use they/them to refer to Brooke? Should I not explain
but still use the pronouns? Or should I make it easier on myself and others and
use she/her? At different times I chose differently. I started referring to
Brooke as my child instead of my daughter and used their name more often to
avoid the use of pronouns altogether.
In the beginning, I felt nervous bringing it up with
others, especially in our conservative, religious community. I didn’t know if
people would understand or be sympathetic. A lot of my apprehension came from
not wanting to make other people uncomfortable. Eventually I decided that their
comfort was not that important, certainly not more important than Brooke’s
comfort. Even if Brooke wasn’t present when I spoke, using they/them raised
awareness of non-binary people in general. When people found out that our
family had a non-binary child, and that we supported the use of the new
pronouns, it would stick with them and let them know that LGBTQ people are
common and should be accepted.
When I did use Brooke’s preferred
pronouns, people would often get confused. They would ask, “Do you have twins?”
Or they thought I was talking about Brooke and our younger daughter, Sydney. It
took patience and repeated clarification, but it was worth it. To keep the new
pronouns in the forefront of my mind, I changed Brooke’s contact name in my
phone to “Brooke (they/them) Hoelzer.” When I texted with friends or family
about Brooke, I sometimes began the conversation with those pronouns in
parentheses, as a reminder. It meant a lot to me when a friend used the
pronouns in text replies. I knew it was different and hard, and I appreciated
their efforts.
Occasionally, doubts about they/them pronouns crept
into my mind. Do we really need to do this? At times I thought it was weird,
different, and uncomfortable. My mind kept going back to the idea that it was
incorrect grammar. I wondered why the community hadn’t come up with a new
singular pronoun for non-binary people, like zhe. That would be easier. I came
to find out that new pronouns have in fact been suggested and temporarily used,
but they did not gain widespread consensus. I didn’t want to have reservations
about the pronouns; I wanted to embrace the idea without qualms.
One day, I came across an Instagram video that
alleviated my questioning. I had started following LGBTQ accounts to learn more
about this population. Because of that, Instagram suggested I might like to
follow Jeffery Marsh, a popular non-binary influencer who helps people
understand LGBTQ issues. In one of the first videos I saw, Marsh explained in
their unique and soothing voice,
“You know, the thing about the singular they is that
it’s already been decided. If you’re just finding out and you’re just
objecting, you’re objecting to years and years of tradition within our
movement. It’s in the Oxford English Dictionary; it’s in Merriam Webster; yes,
all of that. But in addition, we’ve been using it for ourselves for years. It’s
time to give up your objections and to use it.”
This video hit me with such power;
it was as if they spoke directly to me. I’m the one just finding out, just
objecting. It’s been decided. Let go of the objections. From that moment
on, I relinquished my reluctance. This is a thing; it’s here to stay.
Three Life
Coaching Principles That
Helped Me Through
a Family Crisis
My memoir, Letting Go: How a Family Crisis Brought Clarity and
Authenticity,
chronicles a year in our family’s life when three things happen: our kids
struggle with depression and anxiety, some of them come out as LGBTQ, and I
reconcile that with my religion. Our third child, Brooke, attempted suicide and
was in an inpatient behavioral health unit for five days and then an
outpatient, or “day treatment,” program for six weeks.
This was certainly not how I expected my life to go.
Everyone has ideas about how their children and their lives will look, but mine
were even more narrowly defined because I was part of a high-demand,
conservative Christian religion. My church’s prescribed lifestyle and personal
choices were billed as the only way to happiness. At the time of our family
crisis, I was already having doubts about and frustrations with the church, and
within a year of Brooke’s hospitalization, I had left the church altogether.
Thankfully, I had been somewhat prepared for these
challenges. Two years before I had joined a life coach program that taught a
whole new approach to dealing with problems. My coach, whom I’ll call Liz, had
been trained at The Life Coach
School,
where she learned the Model and many other mind management
tools to help clients see reality more clearly and let go of painful thoughts.
There are three concepts I learned in Liz’s program
that helped me through the difficult times our family was facing.
1.
It’s
all a story.
The mind management skills I had learned from Liz had
prepared me to let go of one story and embrace a different one. I knew that my
brain gets ideas about how the world should work or what my life should look
like, and that sometimes holding on to those ideas can cause me pain. I have
learned how to redirect my mind to a new thought, even before I have a lot of
reasons to accept the new idea. In fact, one of my favorites of Liz’s teachings
was “believing things I don’t have much evidence for makes me mentally
stronger.” That concept made sense to me, and I had worked to create a habit of
identifying my stories and letting them go.
When Brooke came out as non-binary, I realized I had
thoughts and stories about gender and how it should look. I was fortunate to be
able to quickly see that these were just made-up ideas. Gender norms are a
construct our society created. Somewhere along the way it was decided that girls
and boys must look and act a certain way, that there’s nothing in between the
two polarities, and that it’s wrong to look or act differently than society’s
(or my church’s) definitions. These views had been held for a long time, but
that did not mean they were true, real, or right. We could cling to them and
continue to marginalize large groups of people who exist outside those norms,
or we could see our notions for what they are: false paradigms that we had
bought into.
I asked myself, what’s wrong with changing? Why do we
hold on to these outmoded opinions? It seemed to me there is no danger in
letting these beliefs go, no harm to society. In fact, the opposite would
happen, more members of our community could live happy, productive lives, free
from discrimination and prejudice. Many of our constructs are based in fear,
and I could see that people were afraid of this change in thinking.
Thankfully, most of secular society has accepted gay
people and the concept of gay marriage. Now we have a new hurdle: recognizing
and supporting transgender individuals and those with genders outside of the
binary. These new and different ways of being feel scary because we’re not used
to them. But the sooner we can put down our defenses and embrace them, the
happier we will be.
2.
How
can I be the hero of this story and not the victim?
Liz taught me to ask this question whenever I was
facing a challenging situation. I returned to this query again and again, and
the answers lifted and sustained me. It would be easy to think of myself as a
victim, to ask “why me?” when faced with the mental health struggles of our
family. But I liked to turn it around and ask, “why not me?” Who else could do
it as well as me? I was made for this. I’ve got this.
Thinking about how I’m the hero directs my brain
toward reasons I am capable of handling this instead of focusing on how hard it
is. I had knowledge and experience with mental health systems and treatments. I
had Bryan to help navigate the doctors and medications. We had a strong foundation
as a close, loving family. I remain calm in difficult situations and
contemplate what I do and say before acting. Seeing myself as the hero of the
story was comforting and motivating.
3.
Negative
thoughts and painful emotions are a normal part of being human.
I used to think that feeling any negative emotion
meant there was something wrong with me or my life. Before joining Liz’s
program, I constantly compared my life to other people’s and concluded that
mine came up short. On one hand, I felt cheated and bitter that I didn’t have
what others had, but on the other hand, I felt guilty for being unhappy because
I had so much.
It was such a relief to learn that these thoughts and
emotions are normal and expected. No matter what our circumstances, our default
mind finds something wrong with us and our lives. In an effort to keep us safe
and to make sure we have what we need, our brain insists on comparison to
others’, self-criticism, and worry about what others think of us.
Unfortunately, all this usually causes us pain.
As part of Liz’s program, I got to listen in when
others were being coached. Hearing other people talk about their problems
convinced me that we all create painful emotions for ourselves. There isn’t a
way of being or a way of living that prevents experiencing difficult feelings.
As we went through Brooke’s mental health crisis and
tried to help them, I experienced a lot of challenging emotions. Luckily, I
didn’t overreact to them. In the past, I might have berated myself for being negative
or thought that I would feel down forever. But now I knew that no one is immune
to life’s difficulties and that resisting the hardships just makes them worse.
One of my mantras during this time was “This is what it’s like to be human.”
Liz’s wise teachings were in line with concepts from
Buddhism: there will be pain in life that cannot be avoided, but when we resist
hard times, we add on a layer of unnecessary suffering. On the other hand, if
we put down our defenses and allow ourselves to feel the pain and experience
the difficulty, we actually feel more alive, and the discomfort passes through
us instead of getting stuck inside of us.
Getting through that challenging year wasn’t easy, but
because of my work with Liz, I had many tools to help me manage the situation.
If I hadn’t joined the life coaching program, I would have seen Brooke’s mental
health problems as an indication of something wrong with me or something wrong
with my life. Fortunately, I had done the work and learned how to manage my
mind, so I was able to respond with peace and acceptance. I had also improved
at identifying my stories more quickly and loosening my grip on them. I had
trained myself to identify how I was the hero of the story and not the victim.
And I knew that painful emotions were part of the human experience. I had the
skills to allow the discomfort and move through it instead of resisting it and
letting it fester inside.
Book Excerpts
Many parents in our faith community
would be distressed by this conversation, particularly the lack of interest in
church. They would worry about their child following the precepts of the gospel
and qualifying for heaven, and they would worry about the cohesiveness of their
eternal family. “What if everyone else in the family made it to heaven, but
this one child wasn’t there with us?” they might ask themselves. That would be
tragic. I’ve heard a saying from members of our church: “No empty chairs in
heaven.” Each person has a seat at the table, and if one of them doesn’t make
it to heaven, there will be an empty chair, and the rest of the family members
will be forlorn.
Bryan and I have both felt for years
that this was a manipulative and fear-based concept. It implies that everyone
must be the same and take the same path or something has gone horribly wrong.
It also implies a lack of long-term perspective. Life is long. Sometimes
children finding their own way come back to the church eventually, especially
if they are treated with kindness and acceptance during their time away. The
people who use this saying are well-meaning, but in essence it is a form of
coercion to get your children to act how you want them to.
Bryan and I had decided long ago
that instead of having a family motto centered on no empty chairs in heaven, we
would focus on having no empty chairs at our earthly table. We wanted everyone in our family to feel comfortable
with us and accepted by us, not judged for their actions or for who they are.
We didn’t care what the church told us to do, we were going to keep our
children close.
Needless to say, I was not
distressed by Brooke’s answer. I understood that, in general, many people do
not have the same interest in the church that I have, and I could especially
understand why an LGBTQ person would not want to be involved. I was happy to
set Brooke free of the restrictions of the church. I felt calm and comfortable
with the idea that she would not participate in or be a part of the church
anymore. But of course, there was that nagging thought in the back of my mind
that I should care more, I should be more distressed. If I were a true
believer, I would strongly desire that my family, as well as everyone else in
the world, join and stay in the church.
I had learned from my coach Liz that
the “shoulds” of our lives create unnecessary guilt and disgrace. The more we
think we should be doing something,
the more shame we generate, the worse we feel about ourselves, and the less
motivation we have to do that thing. The brain thinks this judgment and
criticism are useful, but it’s the opposite. When we have compassion for
ourselves, acknowledge the reality, and say, “This is what I should be doing right now, because I am doing it,” then we can use that
self-love to activate a desire to do and be better. Although it’s
non-intuitive, the best way to change yourself is to love yourself however you
are.
When I
learned about this, I was stunned to recognize how the rules and standards of
the church result in an intense environment of shoulds. It is human nature to
find fault with yourself, of course; non-religious people still create shame
and guilt for themselves. But being part of a religion takes it up a notch.
There were so many ways to mess up, so many ways to be and do the wrong thing.
There was so little grace for and acceptance of weaknesses and shortcomings.
Even though the doctrine taught that Christ offered love and forgiveness and
grace, the demanding culture of the church fostered judgment of yourself and
others. There were some families who had it “all”: job success and affluence,
happy marriage, successful children who stayed in the church. The natural
conclusion was if your life doesn’t look like this, you’re doing something
wrong.
I was
ready to let go of the shoulds and move into self-approval. My depression
developed because of my powerful dislike of myself and my alleged weaknesses. I
was tired of berating myself and spiraling into crying spasms. I yearned to
release those stories. One of my favorite new concepts from Liz was formed as a
question: “Why does it not matter that I have weaknesses and shortcomings?” I
was trying to trust that this is what it’s like to be human; we identify faults
in ourselves and magnify them in our minds. This feels important, but that
focus is damaging. I wanted to adopt the thought “I am not expected to be
perfect” and practice radical self-acceptance.
In
addition, I had grown tired of the shoulds the church encouraged for my kids. I
was weary of the rules I felt compelled to enforce for them. I wondered if my
and Bryan’s diligence in teaching our children the tenets of our religion had
contributed to Brooke’s depression and suicide attempt. Had we unknowingly made
Brooke feel distressed and inadequate? The church guidelines seemed to engender
disapproval, judgment, and disconnection between me and my kids. I didn’t want
to participate in that anymore.
Amazon
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Book Links:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-Brought-Clarity-Authenticity/dp/B0CJ1W9RZH
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/letting-go-lisa-hoelzer/1144020499?ean=9798988822523
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/letting-go-233
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199723628-letting-go
About
the Author
Lisa Hoelzer took being a stay-at-home
mom to her four children very seriously. She studied parenting books and worked
hard to improve and grow as a parent. She eventually created her own paradigm
for parenting, which you can find at
www.betterwayparenting.net.
An avid learner, Lisa has a bachelors in
chemistry and a masters in social work. She is a lifelong student of the human
psyche, including motivations, biases, mind management, and mental health. She
writes about mind management on Medium.
Lisa loves to read, write, and discover more about the world. Her other
interests include anti-racism, LGTBQ-allyship, and spirituality after religion.
Her
memoir, Letting Go: How a Family Crisis
Brought Clarity and Authenticity will be out in October 2023. An essay
based on an excerpt from the book was published in the literary journal Academy of Heart and Mind in November,
2022. She and her family have lived in New Orleans, Minnesota, and Utah.
Website * Instagram * Bookbub * Amazon
* Goodreads
Author
Links
Website: https://lisahoelzer.mailerpage.io
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisahoelzer_author
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lisa-hoelzer
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lisa-Hoelzer/author/B0CL2R7XKT
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/43718543.Lisa_Hoelzer
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