Big butts
and revolving slates
Hanging out with my aging mom sometimes means running into these generational things that hit me hard. It’s like I can see our history in one flash, all the stuff that gets passed down, especially the unspoken notions that can really screw us up.
I like to think that I’m educating my mom a bit by challenging her observations. But maybe I’m too optimistic.
The ‘revolving slate’ is part of the contextual therapeutic theory as laid out by by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy - I learned about it when I studied pastoral care, a looong time ago, so I don’t know how current this approach is nowadays.
The idea of it has certainly helped me a lot in understanding myself and separating what’s mine and what isn’t, in terms of behaviors and opinions.
In the final panel I anagrammed “FAT = UGLY” to “FALSITY UG”, which I thought was pretty clever of myself! :D
Yup, I know that one. I can actually hear the voice of my mother in my head when I look at certain body types. I really took care to never say those things out loud with my kids present. (Or even without them). Hoping to break the cycle that way.
I’ve never heard of the revolving slate concept, but I definitely resonate with it! There’s a great passage in My Brilliant Friend where the narrator feels her mother’s body growing within her, which seems like a different metaphor for a similar thing we fear but can’t always control. Love that you recognized it and scrambled (literally!) the signal!