A Yoda for Our Children

When our son was thirteen years old, Claud gathered men who were important to him for our boy's initiation ceremony into manhood--a sort of Native American Bar Mitzvah for a child without any cultural heritage on which he could lean. It was an avant garde evening for sure. The men met in the woods, sitting in a teepee together, talking, until our thirteen year old was challenged by them with a predetermined conflict. Our son resolved a racial slur, one man toward another, with surprising acumen--and slept that night alone, on the side of a mountain, explicit instructions in mind. If he arose before sunrise, the snakes would still be sleeping. I'm sure he didn't sleep that night.

Housed within this initiation are elements of the Hero's Journey--
--The call to adventure--A road of trials --Achieving the goal --Returning to the ordinary world --And application of the learning--Rent Star Wars, and you'll see the same: The hero who answers the call to adventure, meets trials--(even that of a father who has chosen the dark path)--achieves his goal and returns to the ordinary world, equipped with an internal knowing.

We love that movie, watch it over and over, consider it a classic. It sold millions of toy Luke Skywalkers, and for years now, Chewbacca has been a part of our mythology. We see ourselves in each character--cheering for that part in us that is both foolish, young and heroic--repelled by the notion of ourselves as the evil Darth Vader who would consume his own. All of this twentieth century tale brought to vivid form in movie theatres is the ancient myth of the journey, and it is loved because it is a story about us.

Our daughter expresses a need for a village in which to raise her boy. There are older women and men who have collected her, expressed their care, initiated her into motherhood with showers and gifts and excitment for what is next. I hope that in the midst of this village, our grandson will find a wise one, not yet known, who will mentor him--some Yoda to offer guidance on his journey, until he knows the same within. And, I wish the same for us all--even believe it possible.

Love

A friend's husband died two days ago. He was in his nineties, certainly old enough to die, but our pregnant daughter cried and cried. She'll have her baby in the next weeks, and she was close to him, having rented his upstairs apartment until recently, seeing him through the course of their lives.



I remember when I was a girl in high school, and my friend introduced me to the concept that with every death, there is a birth. I'm reminded of that now, as we await the coming and going of those we love, this natural flow.



In preparation for their baby, our daughter and her husband have remodeled the house my husband and I lived in when we were their age. We've kept it these twenty-three years as a rental, and it had fallen in disrepair. They've brought it back with color and their care for place. This is where their baby, our grandson will play and rest and teach our own daughter and son-in-law something of love.



Our bereaved friend loved, as she ushered her husband of forty-six years to the other side, washing his body and laying flowers, gently, to say her goodbye. Love is, as I alternately find joy and forgiveness for my own life, lived with some growing wisdom as I acknowledge our human frailty and nobility. I witness love as I sit on my daughter's porch, once my own, watching her burgeoning form, tears falling from her eyes in awe of this coming child and the taking of her place as 'mother'.



I can see through this dim glass that this is our only need--task--requirement, commission--it is only love.

Being Different Doesn't Mean Being Wrong

I am consulting with an up and coming business in Bozeman, providing the latest in Organizational Engineering with the I Opt tool, an assessment that measures how individuals process information. This particular assessment has excellent validity and reliability and was created in 1991 by Dr. Gary Salton. I recommend taking a look.

As I study I Opt, it occurs to me that this particular assessment would be excellent for families. I'm impressed that it reveals the way individuals process information, certainly a major motivator of behavior. What's going on that they do what they do anyway??

Besides describing each individual's processing style (there are four basic ways), I Opt's program can also describe how a team of people will function--the ups, downs, ins, outs. In fact, they can show clients how to build a team that produce specific results. It's a matter of getting the right combination.

So how about it? Along with deciding what color of eyes our children have, couldn't we, once we had them, use the I Opt to 'better understand, measure, predict and guide the behavior' of our families?

For instance, Claud and I are are both the youngest in our original families, and perhaps that's not why, but our parenting styles have sometimes been less organized (yet with the value of creativity) than I wished. What if someone had entered our home and identified how Claud and I processed information, which would have shed light on what was motivating our sometimes scatteredness. Perhaps the I Opt computer would have spit out recommendations about how we might adjust to create a more functional family--or maybe added students from a cultural exchange program to balance us out.

According to I Opt, when an individual processes differently than another, if they don't understand why, they think the other person is wrong! (Sound familiar?) Another comment, that gave me hope, is that this particular tool, not only helps people understand each other, but once they understand, they continue to treat each other differently. What a relief--some acceptance followed by change and walla--better results.

I say all of this as an I Opt Relational Innovator (someone who can make connections out of what others might think are disconnected avenues of thought). And, if you aren't a Relational Innovator too, you might not be able to follow this blog. Just keep in mind that we're different--and that doesn't make either of us wrong.

Narrative Therapy: What's Your Story?

In preparation for the upcoming Parenting Class, I've been reading about Narrative Therapy and find the concepts stimulating. One interesting notion is that "an alternative to traditional therapeutic certainty is curiosity." To elucidate, in traditional therapy the client is diagnosed as having a certain problem (depressed, anxious, dependent, etc.), and the therapist is the expert who 'knows' rather than being curious about the client. The problem belongs to the client, rather the client having a problem outside their identity.

These concepts have some parallels to authoritarian versus authoritative parenting. For instance, an authoritarian parent would take the more shaming view of the child as the problem--"She is an angry child who must be controlled!" while the authoritative parent would externalize the problem by saying--"There is this anger that she's dealing with. Let's find out how she sees that impacting her."

I've done the authoritarian or certainty route as a parent, thinking I understood this or that behavior (and of course I would with a Masters in Mental Health Counseling). The notion of simply being curious about my child is outside the purview of the mind. Who is this person anyway? What is their life like at home, school, work, with their friends and in my case, with their significant other?

Narrative Therapy holds that our identity, who we see ourselves to be, is shaped by our stories, both personal and societal. When our stories are full of problems, this negatively impacts our identity. Sometimes, the answers to these problems are in the alternative, 'on the fringe of our lives' stories we don't think to tell. We don't tell these alternative stories because we put front and central in our view, stories that are bereft with problems. We rely on dualities such as healthy/unhealthy; normal/abnormal; and functional/dysfunctional. We rely on the stories given to us by our culture, rather than telling the complex, multifaceted narrative of our lives. In a sense, when we tell the 'fringe' stories, we are thinking outside the box.

The motto: “The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem” is central to Narrative Therapy. With this foundation, there is not only more curiosity for the therapist, but less shame for the client, and the therapist shifts the client's focus away from self-attack, looking at the problem as separate from the person and seeing how that problem influences the client.

Could we do the same with our children? When there is a problem, we could externalize it and shift our thinking away from any shame or recrimination and simply deal with the problem, with curiosity as our foundation.

I think that would require us, as parents, to not blame ourselves for what we think we are seeing, to not rely on traditional interpretation, to not project our upset onto the child. A lot of (k)NOTS! So what would be required, besides what to not do? Self-love, understanding the chatter between our ears and applying veracity--in essence our own growth is required. Add to that curiosity and the story unfolds!

What Are Your Thoughts On This Question?

Recently, a friend of mine posted an interesting question to a bevy of women who have been discussing and answering my friend's thought provoking question via email. Having just completed UNPAC: A Couple's Course, I found her question relevant--and I paraphrase--

"Why be in an intimate relationship--Is it
children? I can do
that alone....Is it intimacy? I have that with my
girlfriends....Is it sex?
Is that all?"

I do think that the couple relationship informs children. If there's something amiss with the parents, the children know and will express that in some form. The couple partnership--married, divorced, friends, enemies-- is foundational to a child's understanding of life and relevant to parenting.

It was helpful to me to ponder her question, and I've included, as part of this blog, her question and my answer. I'd enjoy hearing your responses!

her question...."What is different and sets a relationship with a
significant
other apart from the rest of your relationships, apart from
sex and children?

and my response....

"For me, companionship, children, and a support partner are
obvious benefits of being in an intimate relationship.

Besides
those, an
intimate partner relationship is perhaps the most significant
pathway to
spiritual and emotional growth. People are attracted to someone
with whom they
can work out
unfinished business from their childhood.
Otherwise, there's no
attraction. And through this difficulty, our deepest
wants and needs can be
fulfilled. The inevitable power struggle is the
spiritual journey on offer.

For instance, when I say yes to whatever
Life brings me with Claud, and
I'm willing to see Claud as a unique person,
and not as me--when I take back my
projections and am vulnerable with him,
when I own what I want and say it
solidly and I let my "yes" be "yes"
and my "no" be "no", when I choose love,
over and over, I am not only
growing the relationship but I am meeting my
destiny--
creating myself
as a woman who is closer to Source and more closely
the creation I'm meant to be.

The
rubbing against each other seems the problem, but it
is actually the answer
to how to become real."

Parenting: Your Child As Zen Master

I am studying Emotional Freedom Tapping (EFT), planning on using it for the Parent's Course Claud and I are teaching this summer in Bozeman, Montana. Yep, that's right, after Claud and I completed the fourth of our five session Couple's Course (that in the future we'll call UNPAC for UNconscious Partner Attractor Characteristics), I asked Claud if he'd like to teach and help design the upcoming Parenting Course. He said an enthusiastic 'yes'.

It was a rich and fulfilling experience teaching UNPAC: A Couple's Course, and the participants, after completing the course, acknowledged Claud for his contribution. They appreciated having the perspective of a man and a woman, and they appreciated being with another couple who have been through the common struggles of intimacy. I'll send you some of their comments when we get them.

So, back to the Parenting Course--I have been deeply influenced by Gordon Neufeld's work (I took his Power To Parent course this summer with our daughter and son-in-law). I walked away from it struck by how good parenting comes from over and over, strongly attaching to our children. In other words, don't be held hostage by the latest theory on how to gain control over children, but instead gain enough wisdom and authority to deeply attach. Then our influence over them is because they respect and love us, not because we know how to manage them.

This is an elegant request, but not always easy to do since it's not easy to keep our intelligence in the midst of raising them, or our maturity in the middle of our own immaturity (and this immaturity can happen at 27 or 37 or 59, as I recently turned).

The general design, the 'cut' on this upcoming, soon to be released Parenting Course will be how to grow ourselves up while we're growing our children up. This will include real time, today issues, and we'll lean into them and learn together, taking back our projections, reclaiming our role as Parent and calming ourselves down enough so we can actually do all this.

I plan on using EFT and do recommend the EFT Forum--a discussion amongst folks using this method for kids and issues about them. Like chi gong, it is a kind of energy psychology, which I've found personally empowering--and empowering to the people with whom I've facilitated .

Let me know what you think about the forum and any ideas, thoughts, reflections or questions you have about the Parenting Course. It already has a name--Parenting: Your Child As Zen Master. Sound familiar?

Parents: A Unified Front

As Claud and I complete the Couple's Course this Monday evening, I am struck again by how much a couple's relationship informs children. Last week during our fourth session, the conversation turned to the importance of presenting a "unified front" to our children. An interesting concept, and one I agree with, if the "unified front" is the couple in limbic resonance--in honest agreement. But the term, "unified front" sounds like the oft fought war between parents and children--a lose-lose dynamic.

As the parent of adult children, having gone through the experience of parenting for the past thirty years, it matters to me that I learn more and more about being authentically Jan. Otherwise I miss out on my life, and misguide others. I'm only offering a presentation or a suggested front with my husband.

And let's not fool ourselves--Children know what's going on. They are (as one psychologist told me when Claud and I were in therapy with one of our children) in the middle of our relationships.

Who Are Our Children?

A friend sent me this email, appropriately entitled, "Mother Of The Year". Enjoy!

In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth.The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only orphans" that could be found quickly, were a litter of weanling pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork chops? Take a look...you won't believe your eyes!!

Now, please tell me one more time..........
why can't the rest of the world get along?

What Is My Place In the Midst of the Fires?

As I watch the fires in the great Northwest and hear of floods in my home state of Texas, I am aware of our changing earth, and I can only imagine what these changes mean.

My husband, an engineer, says, philosophically--"Things will be different." And, in my mind that is the way it has always been--only now things are different, faster.

As a grandmother, a mother, a woman, concerned citizen of this earth, I know it matters that I keep myself steady in the midst of these changes--standing firm and awake, with my heart open to the message Mother Earth is sending.

There is action to be taken--our response to this climate change. And, as the Council of Grandmothers suggests, this is also a time to connect ourselves with our "ancestral ways of prayer". These indigenous women gather with their traditions. My much more recent ancestors are Southern Baptist, but as a friend of mine once said (and I paraphrase)... "The aiyee-ya-ya-ya sounds of our Native brothers and sisters are strangely similar to the old Baptist hymns we sang as children...."

The fires are here, encroaching upon beautiful Montana, and I join these Native Grandmothers in the prayer of our collective ancestors.

We, the International Council of Thirteen
Indigenous
Grandmothers, believe that our ancestral ways of prayer,
peacemaking
and healing are vitally needed today. We come together to
nurture,
educate and
train our children. We come together to uphold the
practice
of our ceremonies
and affirm the right to use our plant medicines
free
of legal restriction. We
come together to protect the lands where our
peoples live and upon which our
cultures depend, to safeguard the
collective
heritage of traditional medicines,
and to defend the earth
Herself. We
believe that the teachings of our ancestors
will light our way
through an uncertain future