Hit a snag, but things are better now (Part 1: living with an abuser)

I'm still around! I've been meaning to sort through some things and post for several years now, but it's hard because I accumulated a lot to say and much of it is hard. Things went great at work after my former post, and I had out 10-ish papers from here by the time I went up for tenure (-ish because which ones count and exactly what time "going up for tenure" is are both a bit of a grey area).

At home things totally fell apart, more than I would have thought was possible, and had to be put back together. I think it was not a coincidence that things started to get hard soon after my last post, because I finally felt really secure (both in terms of my work and in terms of personal self-worth) with two grants under my belt, and that gave me the courage and the time to deal with my (now ex-) husband's behavior. Before then, I just kept my head up, being optimistic about him (as I tend to be about everything, though I've lost some of that now) and focusing on how I could change to make things better. But things kept getting worse and I finally realized it was unsustainable and unhealthy.

To explain part of what was going on at the time, here are some excerpts from a letter I wrote to him in 2015 (keep in mind that below, while trying to be realistic and clear and specific, I am putting some of these examples in the best possible light because I was trying to help him change his behavior rather than make him feel bad, and because I loved him):

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"I have been asking you to seek counseling for several years and first asked you to not yell at me anymore at least 15 years ago. The first few years we were married, I used to cry relatively frequently, occasionally for hours at a time, when you were inconsiderate or disrespectful to me and failed to apologize or acknowledge the problem. I tried to tell you and show you how much it hurt me ... I’ve explained how your words or actions were disrespectful and you’ve repeatedly turned the conversation back to the original issue that the discussion or minor disagreement was about, asking me why that issue is so important to me and why I won’t just drop it and move on. I’ve explained that the original issue was not the real issue and I have dropped it and moved on, but that your treatment of me was the problem that needed to be addressed. You seemed to hear and listen to that argument sometimes, but then a few minutes later you sometimes would bring up the original issue again; it is not clear to me if you had forgotten the idea I’d brought up about your behavior/words or if you simply didn’t believe me that that was the issue.

It has been very hard for me to keep having this same series of events occur, and I have been unsure about what to do to get you to listen and understand. I began to feel exhausted and frustrated each time this conversation occurred, and after the kids came, I felt I didn’t have the energy for it much anymore and tried to not let your behavior affect me so much emotionally. In other words, I have tried to “not be so sensitive”, both because I was exhausted and because you keep trying to convince me that I am “oversensitive” and I had begun to believe you. Mostly, though, the reason that I reduced my efforts to talk to you about your problematic behavior was to protect my mental health. Your repeated disrespectful, critical, and disparaging comments had gotten to me and I began to think that it was partly my fault. I felt that there were two sides to every argument and that I must be doing something wrong that was contributing to our problems, and I was always looking for ways to improve myself and thinking of ways in which your behavior wasn’t really your fault. I worked hard to feel sorry for you instead of angry at your actions, since I thought that your behavior against us was really a sign that you weren’t comfortable with yourself and that must be very hard for you.

I worked hard to try to work around your problems, such as making sure you were always well fed, since you being hungry seems to make it more likely that you will yell at us. These last few years, I didn’t cry much anymore and didn’t bring up most instances of your poor behavior since that often seemed to lead to you repeating your disrespectful comments or explaining why you thought it was my fault. Even worse, sometimes when I confronted you, you would admit that your behavior was inappropriate, and then you would say that you were a bad person; this would prompt me to tell you how good you are and how much I love you but still leave you in a worse mood than before and more likely to yell at us or otherwise disrespect us again in the near future. I developed many strategies, like trying to get you to eat a snack and taking over with the kids without hesitation whenever I felt you might be starting to become frustrated and at risk of snapping and yelling at us. I realized recently that these efforts were taking up a lot of my time and energy and you weren’t even noticing anymore. I still want to improve myself and I am sure there are many aspects of this situation that I could and should have handled in a different and better way. I am sorry that I didn’t know how to do that or I wasn’t strong enough to do that. I now realize that accommodating your needs at the expense of everyone else’s, making excuses for you, blaming myself or the kids for your actions, and generally enabling you to emotionally abuse us may help us all on a very temporary basis and may help mostly prevent physical abuse in the moment, but that this strategy is not a long term solution and in fact makes it worse in the long term. I am sorry for my enabling behavior and I promise to work as hard as I can to not to do it anymore. 

.... I think we can get past this, but we need you to understand. Thus, I want to share stories/examples of your behavior and how it affected us. ...

--> I want to first note that sometimes you do seem to listen, care, and do wonderful things for me, and I do appreciate that. ... However, you need to examine your attitude ... You seem to think of me as not being a regular, reasonable person with my own independent and valid thoughts. Instead, you seem to think that I’m trying to “maneuver” and “blame you” and that we are “playing chicken” (since you didn’t answer me when I asked, I’m still not sure what you meant by the latter comment but it fits in with my understanding that you don’t see us as equal partners working together). You have said you are doing things (like chores or helping with a child) so that I won’t be mad at you or so that I won’t “hold it against you” that you didn’t do it. ... You have told me that you are “done with the kids… generally” now, asked “why did we have kids?”, and said that you don’t understand other parents who said they cherish these difficult years with the kids ...
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-- When [LP] was either 2 or recently 3, he did something that caused some minor problem, maybe he flushed something down the toilet, I am not sure but I remember thinking that even at that age he should have known better based on what we had been trying to teach him (though I was not really angry with him). You got very upset and started yelling at [LP]. I remember he was sitting on the mattress and you were also crouched down on your knees on the mattress berating him in a loud, very scary voice. You were very close to his face and you seemed very physically intimidating to me (I imagine even more so to him). I tried to talk to you but you weren’t listening and I feared that it was harmful to [LP]’s mental state to have memories like that. I tried to pull you away physically but you pushed me hard. Even though I started the physical interaction, that was scary to me. I thought that you would snap out of it if I just made you turn away but you didn’t. That was when I started to wonder what I would do if I had to live apart from you to keep us all safe. [Ed. note: I learned this in Catholic school, that you don't have to get divorced, you can just live apart if it's unsafe. While technically true and somewhat comforting at the time, I wish I had learned something more specific about how to deal with domestic violence rather than focusing on whether or not to get divorced.] I remember thinking of safe houses and I thought that was ridiculous, but I figured if I had to I would go to a hotel. However, an incident of that caliber never happened again (or at least not for a very long time) so I convinced myself it was an isolated incident. ...

Before this year, even though you had pushed me and restrained me and driven recklessly (you would characterize it as simply fast, but I indicated I viewed it as reckless and scary) with me and the kids in the car, which are all essentially acts of violence, I believed you would never actually hurt any one of us physically. I had felt there was a clear line that you had never crossed. (I didn’t see that the pushing and restraining and reckless driving were already across the relevant line.) That all changed several months ago, when you got very frustrated and angry at [ELP] for misbehaving. You yelled at her in front of me and [LP] in a very scary, threatening voice, making your face red and appearing to be out of control, and threw a couch cushion at [ELP] while she was sitting quietly on the couch waiting in fear for you to stop yelling. I watched that couch cushion squarely hit [ELP] and I felt helpless and scared and confused about what to do. I think I hugged her afterwards and tried to make sure she was okay but I was just hoping that the situation would go away and she would forget because she is young. ... That also made me notice or be more aware of other violent acts of yours both previously and recently, and I want you to be aware of the following examples.

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-- Sometime last year, the kids were arguing upstairs and I thought it was well past the point where an adult was needed to intervene, but you did not. To prevent me from going upstairs, you wrapped your arms around me and held me in place. I said [Ed. note: shouted] “let me go, let me go” but you didn’t. After I struggled for awhile [Ed. note: trying to decide how I could kick him to make him let go, I thought I was really trapped and I began to panic] you began to take me slightly more seriously and let me go.

--> -- Sometimes you “hug” me when I do not want you to. The pattern typically starts when I first either say that I am upset about something you did, or I ask you in an exasperated voice to help with the kids or other tasks; therefore, you feel I am upset and in need of a hug. You keep hugging me even though I tense up and make it clear through both words and body language that I don’t want you to hug me and it is not helping me feel better."

Reader, keep in mind that I had loved this man since we were 16, and I was raised Catholic, and I am not a quitter. I thought that if he would only get some help, we would be able to turn it around. I started talking to my friends about all of this, and it took a lot of talking. One of my gradeschool friend's mother died, and her and I and another grade school friend started going out together more (though they live more than an hour away). They, and later my sister, helped me realize how serious it was. Meanwhile, my postdoc was in a long-distance relationship and never made many friends in the area, so he was free a lot, and I talked with him a lot. He became my best friend in town. For a long time he tried to only be supportive of the marriage, and not say much negative, though he did mention he didn't like it when he saw me being restrained one day. One day I told him that about a particular incident and how I had to make myself quiet and small to reduce the chance of getting yelled at or worse, and I asked him to help me. He spoke up more after that, though still supported me staying married, until I decided otherwise. They'll be more about that in the next post.

I am writing this post using mostly my old words because I want to remember how it was. It was so hard and confusing. When I would ask people for advice I would often get advised to do exactly what I was doing (thinking of what his feelings were, helping him more, not "overreacting"), which was what was making the problem worse. Before I wrote the above letter, I felt like an idiot, looking up what counts as domestic violence, emotional abuse, and physical abuse on the internet. I think that if he had suddenly done some of these things out of nowhere, it would have been clear that it was abuse. But it got worse so slowly, and there was so much context of what had happened before and so much baggage about what it meant if he was an abuser. I always thought that I should be strong because he was the one hurting the most (who would want to be an abuser on purpose, after all, that's worse than being abused). But eventually I realized how much he was hurting the kids (LP referred to the version of daddy that tended to go to the zoo with us as the "yelling daddy"--I had no idea LP knew the pattern that well, because I thought I was protecting him). That's when I realized I wasn't even helping him by trying to make things easier for him, because he needed to learn to do better, I was able to write the above letter. More on the results next time.

Gluten-free baklava

It looks like I finally got two grants (one by myself, one shared with a collaborator)! I think I'll get a third by April, but it's less certain. The main one was pretty important, and on the main thing I want to do, so it's already enough grants for tenure (especially as I already have a student funded by industry, even if the money doesn't pass through my group that looks good too). I just need to get another ~8 papers out. I made a list yesterday with my awesome postdoc and it looks good to get 10 more submitted in another 1.5 years. He's doing 4 of them and in the middle of 4 others, I hope that doesn't look bad.

So, I took the time to do something I've wanted to do for awhile: make baklava! We used to make baklava every thanksgiving for maybe 5 years or so, before I had to go gluten-free, but it seems really difficult to do gluten-free phyllo dough because I think the gluten itself is helping hold the dough together as it gets to be so thin. But I figured, I'm a soft matter physicist; I may be a theorist, but I'm good with my hands, and I should be able to figure something out. I tried making really thin dough once but it didn't work out well (maybe it could have, but I didn't pursue it further; it could be a post for another day, but isn't really worth it). The key to success was that awhile back I realized, I don't actually need phyllo, I just need really thin layers of dough with butter in between them. This is what puff pastry is. So, I found a friend to help and we set about our plan. I only tried it once (well, I made one batch of puff pastry but played with it in a few different ways) so I'm sure there's more perfecting to be done, but if I don't write it up now I'll probably lose interest, so here we go:

Gluten Free Baklava:

First make puff pastry. For various reasons (though not really complete scientific testing by myself) I believe that at this level, how the flour is ground up is important. So I used a mix designed specifically for pastry from Bob's Red Mill, and I used their recipe for puff pastry. It is found here http://blog.bobsredmill.com/gluten-free/step-by-step-gluten-free-puff-pastry/ . It's involved but it worked really well for me, and I'm not a master chef or anything. (A few years ago, I used cup4cup flour and a different puff pastry recipe I found online, and it did not work quite as well, but it could have been my fault.)

My goal was to make the puff pastry puff as much as possible to seem like real layers, so I decided to cook it as thin layers (so the nut layer wouldn't weigh it down during puffing) and then assemble it later. This required a paste-like nut layer to hold it together (as though it was baked together) because once baked, the puff pastry was brittle and wouldn't conform well to loose nuts. Another advantage of cooking the layers separately was that I could cook them to a toasty brown color (almost seemed like over-cooking them) to give that toasty flavor that is typical of baklava (toasty-ness is inherently easier to get for phyllo than for puff pastry, I think, because it is easier for the water to escape from the layers of phyllo).

My baklava recipe (in terms of the syrup and proportion of nuts/spices) is loosely based on the recipe on the back of the box of a brand of phyllo we used to get but that they don't make anymore. My tests were based on using 2 loaf pans to cook the puff pastry so that I could have a few different tries at this with one recipe of puff pastry. I'm not sure exactly what fraction of the puff pastry recipe I used for the following amount of syrup, but I think it was about a quarter to a third (so multiply by 4 or so to use all the recipe of puff pastry).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the puff pastry to somewhat less than 1/4 inch (maybe 3/16ths) and cut to the size of the loaf pan. Place in the loaf pan and score into triangles; I scored each loaf pan piece crosswise into three rectangles each scored diagonally into two triangles. I did not score as deeply as I would for phyllo, just made marks so it would be easier to cut along those lines later. Cook for 25-30 minutes, but start checking at 20 minutes; the time depends a lot on exactly how thin your dough is and probably somewhat on what type of pan you use. You want it to be as golden brown as possible without being burnt.

Meanwhile for the syrup boil 3 T honey, 1/4 c water, 1 t lemon juice, and 1/2 c sugar in a medium sized pot. (If using 4 recipes of syrup you will need a big pot, it's easy to accidentally boil over.) Toast 1 c pecans in a dry pan (for regular baklava I didn't do this, but they were cooked with the phyllo; since we won't be doing that, this is a good alternative). Take half of the pecans, add 1/2 t cinnamon and a pinch of cloves and crush into small pieces (I use a plastic bag and hit them with the back of a cup measure). Add the other half of the pecans and half of the syrup to a blender (I used a Vitamix, so in general a food processor may be more appropriate than a blender) and blend to make the paste. Add the rest of the nuts (reserving a bit for pretty topping at the end, if desired) to the paste to make a chunky paste.

Once the puff pastry is mostly cooled, break or cut into rectangles. Dip a rectangle into the honey syrup (getting both sides), place it on a plate and spread a layer of chunky nut paste on top; add another dipped rectangle and nut paste, and complete with another dipped rectangle, being sure to stack so the score marks line up. Cut into two triangles along the score marks, and finally dip the cut edges in honey syrup or pour extra honey syrup on top. You can probably cut again into small triangles, these are big, tall baklava!

-TT

Grants!

15 page grant number 2 submitted today!!

Short grant number 1 rejected yesterday. But it's not what I really wanted to do right now anyway.

The first 15 page grant I wrote is still out; that's the one I really want.

I also am waiting to hear on a small internal grant I wrote (short grant number 2) that I haven't heard back about. I was co-PI on a preproposal that didn't go through related to that also. And I need to submit something in the fall related to this.

Also soon I'll be in for a small percent on another 15 page proposal, (I suppose that already went through internal competition, but that doesn't really count). In the fall, I need to write one for myself to go with that also.

Someone wrote my name on a little internal thing also (at their location, not mine), but without talking to me first, so I don't think that really counts in terms of grant writing. That was slightly related to something else I need to write; the call is not out but I think it will be due only a couple of months after the call comes (which will be soon).

Over the year I met with industry people three different times about different things; one is part of a larger project that I don't know about yet, the other two didn't go anywhere (though one of those might go somewhere eventually). I also have another industry thing I need to discuss with people next week.

Also coming up in the fall, I may write something that's related to some of the possible industry things.

Totals:
External proposals as PI: 3 total, 1 rejected, 2 still out.
Internal proposals as PI: 1, still out.
Preproposals: co-PI on 1, did not go forward.
Internal competitions to write proposals: co-PI on 1, went forward, due soon; sort of PI on 1, in that I got past this hurdle automatically and without submitting anything because it was past the deadline and nobody else did it.
Meetings to discuss industry funding or the potential writing of proposals: a whole lot.
Shaking hands with people whether or not they are directly related to potential funding: really a whole lot; some weeks, this takes most of my time (where shaking hands is defined broadly).

Drafts to be submitted: co-PI on 1.
Proposals I need to write by myself soon: 1.
Proposals that I am thinking about writing for the fall: 3 (all regarding specific collaborators, on 1 I would be PI on the others I might be).
Unfunded proposals that I could potentially resubmit in the future with some changes: 1.

I thought this (meaning, spending so much time grant writing) would be more frustrating, but actually writing the proposal does make me think through the plan and it does seem like I'm "doing science" while I write these. Actually, this feeling was only salient for the ones I wrote with my postdoc because of the good discussions, atmosphere of collaboration, and resulting thought about science; the others were soul-sucking to some extent as I expected. Even so, sometimes it feels like I'm not getting science done. At least my group is starting to do that for me.

I do have two non-proposal things I'm really itching to do. One is to think about some theoretical stuff I want to do that's related to my own postdoc advisor and my current postdoc and also to my prior work (slightly) and that will place me in a good spot to do what I really want to do next (the first 15 page proposal). The second is the hobby scale thing--that hasn't gotten enough of my time and I really want to do it!

Also I should probably spend some time with the kids or something, but they are getting really good at playing productively by themselves. Maybe I should just keep leaving them alone more (meaning the same amount as I have been while proposal writing) and that will be good for both sides.

Awesomeness

I finished my first year! Teaching was fun, and advising people is even better. I don't have as much time as I want to think through things in detail, but at least there's lots of help from others in my group. The kids are getting less needy at home, so there's a bit of downtime at home to think through things (though I usually don't have the time to really sit down and do hours of work while at home). I have 3 proposals in review right now, and because they are mostly for new people, the competition should not be as bad as for other proposals. Hopefully I'll get one of them. Now I'm writing one of the two I plan to submit in summer, and I'm planning to submit at least two in fall. I'm just starting to feel more comfortable about writing these so hopefully the next ones will be easier to write and be more compelling.

A tough problem for me recently (grant writing is the most important thing for me to do right now, and is something I need to do faster and better, but I think of this as my job, not a problem per se) is how good my postdoc is. I hired this person because of their technical skills that really nicely complement mine, and I already thought it was great that I could get someone so good to work for me (being new). I was pleasantly surprised that the postdoc is very independent and insightful even in learning new methods, and is a great resource for me to bounce ideas off of (if only I had more time to really discuss more ideas...). But it's also become apparent that there is no major deficiency in the postdoc's technical or communication skills that I need to help with. Sounds great, right? It definitely is, really, in every way. The problem is that I feel bad to have this person who should have been able to get a much nicer position with a more established person, and for my part as mentor I can't even help fill a major (technical/communication) gap in their skills. I mean, the postdoc is learning new methods and skills, and they are getting my general advising, but all of those things may have been better in a more established group. At least I can help with career planning and related advice. I feel I've been helpful in that area, maybe especially so because I have just been through the same career stage. 

My father had an interesting comment about this; he said maybe I'll do so well in the future that it'll be the case that actually it was a good career move for this postdoc to come work for me now. I suppose in any case it's the career move that was actually made, and now my job is to help us both profit from it. I think I can do this, maybe even make it worth the postdoc's while to come work with me versus someone famous. My current strategy is to be awesome myself, using the postdoc in whatever ways I can that are also helpful to the postdoc (such as for grant writing), and to give the postdoc lots of choices so that they can best move forward with their career.

In kid news, ELP learned to write her name (she wanted to be just like LP), and I think she now knows how to write every letter in the alphabet (in capital letters). LP is learning to communicate and plan better with her without getting too frustrated, so they can do interesting activities (usually made up by themselves) on their own for long times.

In more detailed news, today was awesome. I got a shout-out at a talk by a senior professor (he told someone who had asked a general question that I would know about [my field], and advised them to talk to me). Also, my chair was happy with me, just for a minor thing I did, but it's always good to make the chair happy. Separately, I fixed a minor problem related to my group with just a few minutes of effort--delegating is fun, and I think the group likes helping me to fix problems! But even though it's fun, it's still strange to be in charge of all these really interesting people.

It's good to be home, and teaching!

I'm here!  We moved about a month ago, and the kids started daycare/school, and I started teaching.  It really feels like home here.  Since I'm from these parts, the small critters and plants that live here look normal, the crickets at night and the birds chirping in the morning sound normal, the weather is normal, the smells in the air are normal, the tap water tastes normal, and the people act normal most of the time.  Where we were, everything was different--sometimes for the better, but it just didn't feel like home.  It probably didn't help that I knew I wasn't likely to stay for too long.  Now I hope I'll be able to stay exactly here, in this house, in this department, until I retire or become emeritus.

The kids don't really remember where they were born, so from there perspective the weather is not normal here and they have noticed that.  But it doesn't seem to bother them, and they are making new friends in their classrooms and on our street.  We didn't know any kids near where we were living before, but now there are tons of them, and frequently they are out playing or biking on the sidewalks.

I have a large class of seniors in a class that's relatively unrelated to the other classes in our discipline.  That makes me feel better about my teaching because at least I don't have to prepare them for the next class in a sequence.  I'm a bit unsure of what I'm doing, but it seems to be going well so far.  Also, I hired someone already and have some collaborations getting started!  I am not sure how to decide what the people in my group will be doing, or how I'll get time to figure that out while I'm teaching, but anyway being a professor is amazing!  It's going to be even better in a few years when I have at least some vague idea of how to do all the things I'm supposed to be doing :)

Scientific advice from Grandpa

I had the occasion to ask several people for advice last week, and it made me think about how much insight and depth of understanding people gain over time (assuming they are thoughtful/intelligent people).

First I got some science advice from my Grandpa; I was up very late thinking about some equations that have been bothering me recently. (Long story short; I think some people in the literature have been calculating something in a less than optimal way and then explaining themselves incorrectly--but the heart of the issue is not really in my field so I've been reading a lot and wondering if I'm just crazy.) So I wrote an email to Grandpa in the middle of the night explaining my troubles (not the equations themselves, but the big picture and the fact that I'm not sure if I should be working on something outside of my field). He was a scientist in a related field to mine, but in industry. It was really helpful to read his reply. First he made an insightful comment about the system I am working on, then he talked a bit about how it's good for you to think about things outside of your field, but you also have a greater chance of making progress in your own field.

Later in the week, I got advice about an (unrelated) engineering issue that came up with a project that TE and I are working on recently. I asked two people, both scientists/engineers in the same field (not my field). One of them is at my career stage and the other is late-midcareer. The question was really too general for a research scientist, and the first one sort of punted (or perhaps didn't want to answer), saying that it would depend on the (unknown) specific parameters, etc. So I wasn't expecting a lot of helpful advice from the more distinguished scientist, but I thought it would be an interesting conversation so I went ahead. She took the lack of specific information as a challenge. She gave me an amazingly specific overview of what the parameters probably are for our situation, then she gave me her best guess on what to do next for the greatest chance of success. She also went into detail about the underlying science without going over my head. From my point of view, it sounded like she knew everything--and was able to extemporaneously go up or down a level of detail in discussion.

It must be nice to have a huge pool of background knowledge and experience all accessible off the top of your head. I mean, the younger scientist that I asked probably knew most of the specific things she said, but it wasn't connected together for him, or at least the coherent description of it all wasn't available in his head at a moment's notice. Of course, it's easy for me to understand that more experienced people know more things, especially further from the narrow field they're currently in. But it gets me every time how some of them can just pull on that knowledge so quickly to understand a problem and narrow in on what is important about it. I am looking forward to that time in my career (if I ever get there)!