Suggestion: Read this story aloud or tell it to someone. Put yourself into the story. Personalize it to fit you, instead of me. Play with it.  I give you permission.

 Gram’s Cookie Recipe

      It’s the holiday season again. Many of our kitchens are warm and filled with the incredible scents of baking.  Cinnamon and nutmeg perfume the air.  Family members bustle about smiling and singing Chanukah or Christmas songs.  (In our family we have both, in recognition of our melting pot household and extended family. When the kids were small we sometimes had a Kwanzaa celebration too! ) Packages are rushed into the house and sequestered in special places, waiting to be lovingly wrapped in store-bought or hand-decorated paper.  Though secrets often don’t generate smiles and happiness, at this season of the year there are good secrets waiting to be revealed, plentiful smiles and wonderful expectations.  Tables are covered with baskets of holiday cards, some newly arrived and some waiting to be mailed. Special treasures are unwrapped and put on display.  Each one has a memory attached to it and inspires the telling of tales that are old and familiar. but that perhaps get embellished with the passage of time.   Holidays are memories in the making for young and old alike.  

     I unwrap my menorah collection and admire my departed mother’s silver one, as well as the ones I have acquired over the years.  Then I look at the Christmas items, some of which were originally from my late first husband’s family and ornaments our children collected or created as they grew up.  Most of these have been distributed among my adult children. We no longer have Christmas at our house.  It isn’t really my holiday, so I don’t need it any longer,  now that the kids are grown.   They have formed and are forming their own traditions.  We often have a Chanukah get-together here and we have Christmas Eve together at my younger son’s home.

      As the holiday mood begins to spread and to warm us, I am reminded of a story. I ask your indulgence today, though I know you must also be busy with your holiday preparations.  With your permission I will proceed. Please keep mixing and chopping or writing out cards while you listen, or take a short break if you are reading.

      Some time ago, an elderly relative told me the story of her mother’s cookies.  Her mother was a talented cook, but her true fame was claimed through her baked goods. She made cakes that were heavenly, moist with fruits and spices and strudels that melted on your tongue and made you yearn for a second piece before you had finished the first.  Her cookies, which I never had the pleasure of tasting, were unmatched by those of any other mother or grandmother, according to her daughters and grandchildren. When her daughters grew up, they begged their aging mother for her cookie recipes and set about trying to replicate her little bit of kitchen heaven for their spouses, friends and kids.

      They tried many times, conferring with each other, and following their  mother’s hand-written recipes with the exactitude of a chemist. Though the end results were reasonably tasty, their cookies simply did not compare with their mother’s masterpieces.  They grew increasingly more frustrated with each attempt. Their husbands and children remarked that they did not hold a candle to Gram in the baking department and they could not figure out why.  Finally, a couple of them gave up, deciding they just were not talented at baking.  The other daughters puzzled over their mother’s secrets, fearing that she would take them to her grave and they would be forever deprived.  They decided to swallow their pride and sense of defeat.  They asked her why their cookies never compared to hers and what they were forgetting to do, or perhaps were doing incorrectly. 

      The eldest grandson had stood at his grandmother’s elbow many times, eagerly watching and waiting for his chance to lick the mixing bowl.  He piped up with his observation that Gram never simply followed a recipe, but changed it based on both her mood of the moment, and on whatever she had on hand. Thus, she might chop up a piece of a large chocolate bar that had almost been forgotten in the cupboard,  a few maraschino cherries, some dates, pieces of apple, prunes, a handful of raisins, nuts, or a little leftover orange juice.  She would throw in a little of this and a little of that, as the inspiration washed over her.  In fact she often said she was unable to duplicate a cookie or another type of culinary delight that someone requested because she could not recall what ingredients had contributed to the previous success. She didn’t seem to care.

       The wise grandmother, somewhat hard of hearing, strained to hear what her grandson was saying, but her eyes twinkled as she caught the drift of his explanation.   Upon hearing her secrets revealed, she said, “You don’t live a delicious life by following a recipe to the letter and refusing to try something new and different.  If you do, you will probably get similar results each time, but there won’t be anything  surprising or exiting about them.  If you take whatever you have and use it to the fullest, not only won’t you waste precious resources, but I promise that you won’t be bored. You will delight yourself and others with often unexpected results. Sure you might make a mistake here and there. But have you ever tasted a really bad cookie?  As long as you don’t burn them, even bad cookies are yummy.”

      So my esteemed listeners or readers, I wish you whatever you need and want to experience during this season.  Is it the comfort of perpetuating  well-established and familiar traditions, including the cookies you expect and crave during the holidays?  Is it the satisfaction and learning that come with change, risk-taking and allowing yourself to deviate from a predictable course once in a while?

                                                                                           

 

     The following is a story that was created as a class assignment for the training provided by Lisa Bloom, in her wonderful Cinderella and the Coach course. The lesson was about using humor in coaching stories. 

www.story-coach.com

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My Process: I was feeling extremely stressed about a new dental episode in my ongoing saga. I realized I needed to reduce my tension and stress quickly. I also needed to finish my assignment for my story coaching class. I had begun a story, but hadn’t had time to complete it, or to tell it to anyone for feedback and reactions.   I was working at the computer and kept being distracted by my thoughts about my dental problem. I needed to stop taking it all so seriously, yet acknowledge the feelings that were coming up and bothering me.  I needed to find a way to lighten up.    As I wrote I was feeling discouraged, drained and my jaw was tightly clenched, but as I wrote the story I got into it and felt myself loosen up and changed the energy, though I was recounting the very thing that was disturbing me. I was able to laugh at myself and at how I had let myself become consumed (and not for the first time) by a problem that was far less significant than so many things I had already endured in my lifetime.

      In the retelling, I no longer felt tense. ( I wasn’t sure my story would be humorous to anyone but me, but I was looking forward to recounting it to someone.) I didn’t have any particular expectations about the response but felt open to the learning that would come from the assignment.

My Name Is _____________& I Am A Walking

Dental Disaster

     This is a tale about a woman I know well, who believes she must have some sort of bad tooth-related karma.  This seems to have increased as she has aged, or as the saying goes, as she has gotten somewhat “long in the tooth”. The woman  wonders if she may have been a sadistic dentist in a previous life.  She imagines a character like Orin Scrivello, DDS, the dental demon played by Steve Martin in the 1996 film version of Little Shop of Horrors.  She is practically obsessed with the subject of teeth. People’s smiles are the first thing she notices and after admiring especially attractive sets of dentition, she very briefly gets caught up in self-pity and in asking, “Why me?” or more accurately, “Why not me?”  For a long time she kept a journal of her Dreadful Dental Dalliances, which spanned back to her youth.  Then she grew bored with it and since not one person she knew was interested in hearing about her teeth saga, she abandoned it for more productive pastimes.

     She can still easily visualize the small room in her childhood orthodontist’s office. She can see the name on the light over his chair.  “Burton Tri-Luminar”…The light would shine in her eyes while her dentist would rest his elbow in her carefully arranged hair which she, a typical teenager, had earlier spent an hour arranging to perfection.  She had to wear her braces for five years because her case was ultra complicated. In fact, her orthodontist submitted an article to a dental journal about her, complete with close ups of her jaw and mouth,  taken from many unattractive angles. At that time of her life, she had a part-time job as a Jr. Petite coat model in the garment district in New York City, and often had to fend off the advances of lecherous old men with onion breath. Even so, the experience of her photo shoots with the dentist remains far worse in memory, as this marked the beginnings of her endless journey into the dark world of dental demons that would haunt her forever.

     It wasn’t that she didn’t take care of her teeth. She brushed and flossed faithfully and spent a small fortune on the latest in brush technology, large and mini, manual and electric. As a young woman living in San Francisco, she had gone to a hip holistic dentist.  He offered headphones with relaxing music, nature slides projected onto the ceiling above his plush, multi-position chair and recipes for healthy organic snacks.  She spent her hard-earned money on retainers that kept breaking or that were stepped on after being discreetly and hastily deposited on the floor  during a romantic interlude.   She had countless crowns and root canals installed and followed all of the recommendations. Her teeth even looked good for some years, though they never matched her fantasies and she never felt they suited her.  She bought books about dentistry and owned one called “The Tooth Trip” that she wove into a short, informal comedy routine she liked to use at parties.  Her then-husband would listen to the laughter of her audience with amazement and sometimes even with disgust, since he was tired of hearing about teeth.

     Years passed, and with them came more restorations, plus baby sitting and extra jobs to pay the dental bills that mounted with inflation and with the complexity of the work. She was told that this new method or that new technique would permanently correct her issues,  and would be the miracle she had been waiting for, but that never happened.     Through the years she met dentists who were comedians and dentists who preached about Armageddon while she was a captive audience. One liked to sing his patients’  names backwards. This was in the days before Hipaa and other privacy laws.  Another sang operatic arias. Another regaled her with tales of his cooking expertise. He liked to eat fresh road kill and often stopped his new Mercedes to pick up a crushed possum that had met an early demise on a local country road.  She had dentists who were arrogant and dentists who were kind and attentive. 

     In spite of all the promises, when each procedure was done, there was always a new problem. They blamed her poor deceased family members, her bite (which was long ago supposed to have been corrected), what she ate, what she didn’t eat, the gods, the labs they worked with, and everything they could think of.  She tried not to dwell on it and to accept that it was her lot in life. After all, others had far more serious afflictions and she, herself had managed to survive many tragedies and losses.  Surely, her teeth tribulations paled by comparison. No use crying over faulty fangs and cracked choppers. She was reasonably attractive and most people even thought her teeth were ok. (She knew they must have vision problems equal to her dental afflictions.)

     One day, she found herself feeling particularly upset and stressed when the third piece of porcelain in a week’s time had chipped off. She called to schedule yet another appointment, which would make the fourth emergency appointment in four weeks. She found herself replaying her history in her head and she thought about all of the missed pleasures and experiences due to her outrageous dental bills. She realized that over her lifetime, more had been spent on caring for and fixing her teeth than on her higher education. Her dental work in the last ten years had cost more than the purchase of her first house. She remembered the vacations she had to cancel in order to pay the dental bills, the darkroom she had saved money for in order to surprise her first husband, but could not complete. She thought of the whirlpool tub she pinched pennies and dollars for, and finally had enough to buy, that never made it home. She would joke at times, saying that she had a luxurious spa installed in her mouth. She thought about her latest dental bills and the fact that her current dentist had an enormous archive of models of her teeth and probably would soon need to rent more storage space, for which he would bill her, no doubt.

     While she was mulling this over, she did not, at first, realize how much stress had settled in her body.  She suddenly discovered that she was about to be a few minutes late for a business appointment. Without thinking, she got up from her chair and reached for the remote to turn off the TV. She aimed it and pressed the off button, but nothing happened at all. She repeated this with no small amount of anger and annoyance.  She noticed that her jaw was clenched and her muscles ached, probably due to replaying the above history in her head.  She grew extremely impatient and short-tempered and pounded the off button again, only to find that she was pointing it at the computer, rather than the TV. She turned to complete the task correctly, wondering if dementia were already setting in, and she went flying through the air, tripping over her elderly Scottish Terrier who was still sleeping soundly, oblivious to the disaster.  She then crashed head first into the dog’s water dish and food bowl, sending a shower of water and dry food onto her face and hair.  Her dog groaned a bit, stretched and looked up her from across the room as though to say, “Can’t you see I’m trying to have a snooze here?” Her first reaction when she sat up, was to bring her hand to her mouth to determine if any damage had been done there. For once, all seemed in tact, if only for the moment (but she needed to be more effective at living in the moment, didn’t she?).  Then the laughter erupted in gales and fits and sputters.  It was the sort of laughter that made it hard to catch your breath, and that made hot tears pour down your face. It was the side-splitting, uproarious, cleansing laughter that she needed to lift the weight of worry and to put a stop to her endless perseverating over her unpleasant dental history.  After all, unlike too many people she knew, she was still here to use her not-always efficient teeth to enjoy a meal, or to figuratively sink them into a new day and a new adventure.

 This story from other (imagined) perspectives:

 From her spouse : “Oh no, if I have to listen to one more tale of dental woes, I will rip out my own teeth with a pair of kitchen tongs. She has had a lot of negative experiences with her teeth but many decades after this story began she is still boring people with it!”

 From her dentist:  “Phew, at least she is laughing and not calling a lawyer and thinking about suing.  I am mighty tired of all of the extra unpaid hours I have invested in her case, trying to make things right with work previously done that keeps breaking”.

 From her dog:  “Sheeesh…First she interrupts my nap and almost kills me in the process, then she spills my food and water so I have to waste calories walking around the room searching for my cookies in every nook and cranny and even under the couch.  She has no respect. I’m a lot older than she is and my teeth…well…you could sink ships with my breath, but she is always broke from paying her dental bills and never has any left over to pay the vet to give my teeth a proper cleaning.  Well, that tirade made me tired. Think I will go back to my nap and dreaming about my ancestral home of Scotland.”

Actual Response:  I told my story to one person: I won’t share the response here because my story and subsequent questions I asked of the listener led her to discuss a personal problem and to share information and feelings that must remain confidential.

Questions of the Reader:

     Can you think of an experience from your own life that was difficult, stressful or anger-producing.  Can you tell the story and make it funny in some way? Tell the story to someone and see how you feel.  Many things we experience are not as significant after the passage of some time as we initially perceived them to be.

     Can you find the benefit and value of seeing things through another person’s perspective and/or of finding humor even in a difficult situation?

Lisa Bloom’s Great Questions: (With Permission)

 Cinderella and the Coach Training- The Power of Storytelling for Coaching Success – Course Material Story Coach Inc.

Copyright © 2008-2009 Lisa Bloom. All Rights Reserved.

www.story-coach.com

 10 Powerful Questions to Help Introduce Energy, Lightness and Humor into your Coaching and your Life!

1. What makes you laugh?

2. When was the last time you really laughed? What was the situation and who made it happen?

3. What are the ways that you can ‘play out’ your tension and stress?

4. Who can you emulate or learn humor from?

5. Who are the people in your life that make you laugh most?

6. Think of a funny story you heard recently, did you laugh out loud, how can you incorporate this humor into your own stories?

7. Do you look for ways to laugh on a regular basis?

8. How do you feel when you laugh out loud? How does it affect your day?  How does it affect the people around you?

9. Is there someone in your life who always makes you laugh? Do they know it? Do you make an effort to be with them on a regular basis?

10. Who do you make laugh? Why do they find you funny? How do you feel when you make someone else laugh? 

 

 

 

SECRETS AND THE GIRL WITH THE AMAZING NAME:  A Story Coaching Exercise

     “Give Cecily your chocolate Easter bunny”, my mother said. “You know I have to get the house ready for Passover and it’s too big for you to eat all at once tonight.  I don’t know why your father got it for you in the first place.” 

     Cecily and I sat in the breakfast nook of our kitchen, my favorite spot in our house. The sun warmed us, along with the cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows we were sipping.   In-between sips we played with each other’s hair, each one wishing she could have hair like the other girl. Cecily traced with her fingers the blonde pigtails of the Little Dutch Girl on the red and blue tablecloth.

     “If my hair was straight, I would fix it just like that, Iris, or like yours, with bangs”.  

       I could not quite believe my ears, since my hair was fine and stringy, and barrettes and bows never stayed in it for more than a minute or two.  Cecily’s hair fascinated me. It was black and coarse and done up in a lot of little pigtails and each pigtail had a different color bow.  It reminded me of my father’s garden or of a wedding bouquet and it made me smile when I looked at it.  Everything about Cecily fascinated me. She was my best friend and my next-door neighbor. She had luminous, happy eyes, thick, curly lashes and silky dark brown skin. She  smelled like cocoa butter, which she told me her mother lathered on her skin twice a day.   

     Even Cecily’s family was interesting.  She had at least 15 relatives living with her at different times. There were grandparents and a great-grandfather, and cousins of all hues and ages. Cecily’s house was like a bag of penny candy from the store, with one incredible goody after another waiting to be plucked out and delighted in.  She always had somebody to play with, whereas I was the baby, with siblings much, much older and there was usually some family drama going on among the adults so nobody had much time for me.   I mostly retreated into a world of fears, books and fantasy.

     The two most amazing things about Cecily to me were her mother, and her name.  Cecily and I, being 8 yr olds, complained to each other about how unreasonable our mothers were and how many rules there were for us.  We also complained about our names. We wanted what we perceived of as pretty, “normal” names.  My favorite at the time was Barbara Ann and hers was Susan but we had been cursed, in our opinions, with names that made no sense to us and names that made us targets for our classmates.  I was regularly reassured by my parents that I had been named after my two great grandfathers and that Iris was a beautiful name to them.  It didn’t change the fact that I had never encountered another person with my name. People always commented and asked me if I liked the flower, which I didn’t, and kids called me Iris Jack O Lantern, ridiculing my middle name, Jacqueline. 

     Cecily’s name, though, was wondrous to me.  If I could not have been blessed with what I thought was a simple, pleasing, regular American name like Barbara Ann, I might have liked to have her name. Her mother or her aunt would stand on the front steps of her house in the evening, while she and I were down the street busily engaged in catching fireflies in jars, and they would call out her name, or I should say her names.  I can still recall and hear her mother’s melodious voice.  She was tall and dark-skinned and looked like a painting from one of my older brother’s art books. Her hair was wrapped in a scarf, usually brightly colored, like orange or purple, with the tail of the scarf flowing down her back.  She would cup her hands over her mouth and sweet syrup would begin to pour out, thickly and slowly,  picking up volume and momentum.

     “Cecily….Come home now.  Cecily…Cecily Judith Peachy-Peach-A-Neeny Woo Woo Lady Flower Vandillia (I added) Pickle Sawyer.  Time for bath. Where are you? Get your sweet behind here now!”

     At the sound of this call, to me an untold story with many hidden and magnificent adventures and secrets I wanted to unlock and discover, I would run to Cecily’s mother, hypnotized by her voice and by the name.  Cecily would hang back, hoping none of the other children playing outside in the steamy, sticky evening air would have heard the cursed roll call of her family pet names.  Then she would skulk home, head down, covering the half-block distance, as slowly as possible, with a despondent look on her face.

     I was dying to know the story or stories behind those names, but Cecily refused to discuss this topic. We talked about our friends, the little songs and poems we liked to create, our dolls, foods we loved and hated, about TV shows, books, comic books, our siblings and our cousins.  We talked about how we would be famous one day, who would fall in love with us, how many babies we would have (I always imagined a multi-racial family, even back then). We talked about Jesus, because this was a topic forbidden in my Jewish household, and even about sex, or what we thought was sex at age 8.  When I asked how she got all of those amazing names, Cecily would stick out her lower lip and tell me it was none of my business and I should just hush up.  I gathered that different people in her family had given her nicknames but I didn’t know why, or why her family would string them all together in a near song when they called her name. She said it had something to do with her father, but her father did not live with her and she said she never wanted to see him again. Sometimes she said this with a good deal of anger, shouting it in my face and almost making me cry. It was hard for me to understand because I loved my Daddy. Cecily liked my father too and said he made her laugh with his silly rhymes and games and the way he liked to stick out his false teeth to surprise children.

     Cecily told me she hated being different.  At the time they were one of the first few minority families in our neighborhood. Our school in Queens, which was on the border of two different neighborhoods, seemed to be filled with spoiled little divas in the making, who already passed their time boasting about their fancy clothes, their leads in the ballet recital and the great vacations their families took.  They were kids who had white bread sandwiches with bologna and twinkies in their lunchboxes

     Cecily and I shared an embarrassment that made us both stand out.  Her grandmother walked the ten blocks each day to bring her a home-cooked lunch and sat with Cecily in the auditorium while she ate it.  Her grandmother didn’t want her playing with all of the white kids being that she was the only black girl in her class.  I, too, suffered a similar indignity. A year before, I had been in a serious car accident with my parents , had been hospitalized for more than a month and had nearly died, suffering a skull fracture, respiratory arrest, brain swelling and temporary blindness. While I had recovered, I still had some emotional scars and developed some ticks and twitches, which ran in our family but which were probably aggravated by the helicoptering and over-protection of my parents. The strong message I got was that I was “fragile”, “special” and “not like other kids” and needed to be careful or something would happen to me.   My mother, too, walked the ten blocks and sat with me in the auditorium while I ate lunch. She brought little containers of matzoh ball soup, or pieces of chicken, chopped liver sandwiches, and home made cookies or pastries.  When I finished eating, my mother and I went on to her volunteer job for the rest of the lunch hour. She helped out in a class for children with special needs, who mostly had various types of cerebral palsy. While I am sure she felt it was a good lesson for me to see other children who had needs more complicated than my own and to help them, it compounded my feelings that there was something wrong with me and that I would always be different.   I lived for several years, unable to verbalize my fears but haunted by them, thinking that I would “catch” the cerebral palsy, that my car accident had rendered me defective in some way and that I was probably going to die young. 

     Cecily and I never discussed this, or other topics that seemed to be taboo for her, such as her name, where her father was.  One day when I was about nine, my parents told me we were moving back to Brooklyn to be near my grandparents.  Cecily and I said teary goodbyes and promised to write. These were the days long before the Internet and e-mail. I had an allowance of 25 cents a week and stamps seemed expensive.  We had a measured rate phone service of (as my mother was constantly lecturing me about) 2.5 phone calls per day within the 5 Boroughs of New York City, and she did not believe her precious call allotment should be squandered on little kids. So Cecily and I wrote one or two letters and then simply lost touch.  I never forgot her though, or her remarkable name and once wrote a children’s story about it,  just as I am now remembering her and her amazing name  with this very tale.

     As the years passed, and as I grew comfortable in my own skin and with the person I had become, I realized that being unique was something I liked.   I learned that my secrets and fears had created conflict and pain for me, but had gradually been transformed into a vehicle and tool for me to focus on what made me different in a positive way. 

      As you listen to this story, can you identify with it in any way?  Can you remember a time when you felt different and didn’t enjoy the feelings engendered in you?  How did that shape who you were then and who you became today?  How was the early “ you” a prototype for the character you are now?  Did you create your story or did your story create you? Or was it a little bit of both? Can you explain this?  Did you ever consciously set an intention to rewrite your life story or a particular chapter of it?  How?  What part of your story would you like to reshape or shift now? How will you begin to do this?

 

  

 

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love. --Hilary Stanton Zunin

     If you have recently lost a spouse and have kids at home, you may wonder how you will ever get through the upcoming holiday season.  At times you can barely manage to go through the motions of handling the ongoing daily business of raising your family.  You want to be there for your children, but you often don’t know what to do to help them. You worry that they hear you crying at night and are uncertain if that is ok for them to hear. You want them to know you are there to protect them and to comfort them. You don’t want them to feel they have to be careful of expressing their own grief out of fear of upsetting you. Yet you don’t want to push them to talk if they aren’t ready.  You may have found your teenager hard enough to understand and often uncommunicative even before the loss of your spouse. Now he or she seems to have clammed up even more.   You fear that you will overlook important signs that the kids need help but are equally fearful of blowing out of proportion what you feel are probably normal grief reactions.  After all, they loved and miss their parent also.

     If your children are old enough to understand, talk with them about whether they feel they want to include all of the old family rituals that used to be part of the holiday season.  Is there a way to take pieces of those old customs and incorporate them into something new?   It may be very difficult for you to be a part of the familiar things that you used to take delight in planning and executing with your husband or wife, but right now you are the center of your children’s world.  They need you to maintain order and to perpetuate some of the things they find comforting and familiar, if you can manage to do it at least a bit.    At times, duplicating some of your old rituals but in a new setting, takes some of the edge off the activities.   Can you spend the holidays with a friend or relative or invite some people to come and share their own traditions with you?   If your kids are receptive, you can think about planning and implementing a new tradition.  Can you create a contest where each child gets a small prize for coming up with a simple new idea?  Sometimes a silly activity is just what everyone needs. Let them know that change is fine and things don’t have to be the same as they always were, unless they truly want them to be.  Perhaps each family member can pick one custom he or she absolutely wants to carry on, and then you can invent new things around your top choices.

     Sometimes a family photo night can be a way to prime the pump and open up feelings. As hard as it is, it is also wonderful and necessary to remember together.  Gather together a bunch of photos of your family at different special times and ask each child to write down one or two things he or she remembers about that day. If the child is too young to remember, have the child describe what he or she imagines was happening in the photo and what each person was feeling. Young kids can draw pictures or can dictate to you what they want to say.  If you save the little memory slips of paper and drawings in a specially designated and decorated jar or box, you can use this activity over and over. Young children may want to decorate the jar or box themselves.  Each person can choose a slip from the jar to read and talk about. You might create a special meal, snack or activity around the memory night. Perhaps each person can act out a memory or scene.

     Be proactive and know that the upcoming holiday season will be a challenge and that you may need to think ahead a bit.  Was there a cause or special interest your late spouse had a real passion about? Can you plan a project with your children to honor him or her and to make the holidays more meaningful?  Do your kids want to involve friends or other relatives, or is this a family project they prefer to keep private? 

     Find a way to reach out to someone else in need if you feel up to it. The first Thanksgiving after I was widowed in my 30’s and had three young kids, we volunteered to serve a meal at a local shelter.  Not everyone initially wanted to do this, so we worked out a compromise. It was a very positive experience.

     In our family, since we were/are a religiously and culturally mixed family, we had multiple traditions we had developed into our own brand.  It was very painful for me to read the Chanukah Gelt story by Sholom Aleichem that we had always shared with our kids. Although my late husband wasn’t Jewish, he delighted in reading this and acting it out with enthusiasm.  Yet, doing this with the family also brought back  great memories and opened up some lively discussion for us.  

     At Christmastime, after my husband’s death,  it was especially awkward and uncomfortable for me. My husband had truly enjoyed the rituals we built over time and some of them were those he had experienced or wished he had experienced as a child in his own family.  Although my kids were raised “multi-cultural with strong Jewish overtones” they knew that their father loved some of the  Christmastime routines.  Before going to bed, the kids gathered many of their favorite stuffed animals and arranged them around the tree. Once they were asleep, my husband and I repositioned the animals and put them in crazy places, such as hanging from the beams of our cathedral ceiling, or under a couch cushion, sitting on top of the toilet paper holder in the bathroom, or in a shoe under someone’s bed. Santa also left long, funny notes  for the kids and s gave clues about where gifts were hidden. Sometimes the notes explained how contents of stockings had spilled over and stockings had given birth to little stockingettes and could be found on the third step of the cellar hatchway.  Due to some unpleasant family dynamics, there was little contact with my late husband’s family and I suddenly felt very torn, confused and pressured about which customs to preserve. It felt fake and obligatory for me to continue the customs of a family that wanted little or nothing to do with me or with my kids.  They were not my own customs, though I had previusly adopted some of them. Yet they were comforting to my children. Little by little, with all kinds of help, I had to forge a new way of being, honoring the past and the old, but embracing our new beginnings.  While I wanted my children to have the gift of memory, security and continuity, I learned that it did our family little good as a whole if I were stressed, resentful and overwhelmed.  I had to be honest with my children, explaining but not over-explaining my feelings, on a level each of them could understand developmentally.  I gave them some choices, but big decisions were mine, as the adult in charge.

     The greatest lesson for me that I have shared with others over the years has been that one can’t fill anyone else’s buckets if his or her own bucket is full of holes and everything is leaking out.     Line up your support system in advance. Know that you may be hit hard at holiday time  and that you can use some extra support.   Can you ask a friend to spend time with the children while you have an adult evening out with someone else? What would you like to do? Give yourself a gift for the holidays too, whether something concrete or just some time to yourself, if that is what you crave.  Self care is twice as important when you are newly bereaved and when you are the main strength for your children.

Crux Of The Matter  

 Oct 31, 2009

October air tastes familiar and honey crisp
when forced to the lungs the way my
father’s camera forced the orange-reds
to weary eyes as we waited for winter to invade.
We tried but never saw the beauty he found
illuminated in a leaf gone brown and cracking,
framed by two enticing tree limbs leading to
a secret place always the crux of the matter.

Autumn air brings pleasure that is gone fast
like apple pie on a square white plate
and then the airway narrows and shudders,
a small bird gasps for air as life watches, smirking.
Wings that were strong just days ago and soared
where we can only imagine, are weak and gelatinous.
New golden breezes crunch in our teeth and want to
carry us on journeys we have already paid for, but fear.
When we feel winter’s breath on the back of our necks,
it’s hard to think of pre-need plans.

Sitting in a cup, this need is like pomegranate juice.
If we don’t empty the cup the waitress throws it down
the drain and if we do, maybe no more juice or only
weak old memories of liquid scarlet trickling over bare skin.
We ask what treats nature has written on the menu
and if there is a senior special today but she waves
questions away with a sour blue dishrag.
Why take her silence when life still seduces?
So no tip on the table for her, but for us
at last we find the crux of the matter.

Paternal Grandparents & Cousin When G'Ma Could Still Walk

THE FIRST STORY TELLERS IN MY LIFE

     They are all long gone now, my parents, my sister, brother and of course, my grandparents. I am the survivor.  I have become the keeper of memories and the story weaver for new generations, friends and clients.  I have reshaped and shifted my own stories multiple times.  I know that life is delicate and fragile, but simultaneously strong, with potential for ravaging our emotional terrain with a terrible swiftness.  With that same ferocity, the storms of life can wash new seeds to our barren soil and new possibilities will spring up in the least expected places. 

       They are long gone, but I still see their faces and hear their voices every day. It doesn’t take much for me to conjure up their images.  Once I was afraid that the passage of time would make that impossible, but I know now that they will always be with me, incorporated into who I am and making the fabric of my being stronger as I age with the wisdom, truths and tales they all taught me as a child.  They were my very first story weavers.  They were the masons who built the foundation on which I rest my life and which supports many of my choices and actions even today. 

       The yarns my grandparents unraveled stretched all the way from the villages of their childhoods in Eastern Europe, to days of struggle in New York tenements, to picket lines of early union organizing days and heated debates of park bench politics in New York’s Union Square. My paternal grandparents lived with us for a time and weekend mornings would find me happily snuggling in the bed between them, safely resting in the hollow made by my grandmother’s substantial body. I would listen to story after story, begging for more, until my mother would intervene with disapproval and remind us all, in her ever practical way, of chores and obligations that awaited us. My grandfather recounted family events, told me gossip about relatives I had never met, about his studies in Europe and his revolutionary passions and political philosophies.  He had  many quirky ideas, such as believing that people should be born old and get younger and he had this idea long before F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the story on which the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was based. My grandmother, Jenny, told me stories from the Old Testament and dramatized them with enthusiastic sound effects and exaggerated facial expressions. She had been crippled in an accident on the BMT West End Subway line  years before when she broke her hip, but gave up on life after the accident because her eldest son had just died at 42 of a massive coronary. She never walked unaided again. She mostly sat in a chair all day, but seemed to compensate for her lack of physical mobility with her animated dramatic (or melodramatic) style.

       Saturdays were spent with my maternal grandparents, who had emigrated from Romania.  My grandfather was a quiet, kind and gentle man, whose religion was not just in theory but guided his life in every way.  My grandmother was about 4 foot 8 inches tall but had a strong personality in spite of her very sweet face that never seemed to age, and looked to me almost the same as in the pictures of her on the walls when she was a beautiful young girl with flowers in her hair. She was born in Romania and came here as a girl, with her father and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth. One of my favorite stories of hers was a true tale of how she was kidnapped for a brief time by a band of roving gypsies, while she, a very pretty child, played with a ball on the front lawn of her wealthy uncle’s home in Bucharest. When they discovered her missing, her uncle, father and several others set out in a horse and buggy and combed the countryside till they found her, unharmed, around a campfire with the gypsies, who had treated her well, but who demanded a ransom. Her uncle gladly paid it but my grandmother, unlike the rest of her family, always had a fond feeling for the Romany people.  She also learned to heal with herbal preparations and incantations when she was a child and though she, like my mother, was for the most part a pragmatic woman, she would frequently suggest her remedies and impart her fascinating theories about causes for illnesses or psychological disturbances.

       One of my other favorite stories of hers, I think helped reinforce a belief in me that somehow things work out no matter how dark they may seem at the moment.  My grandfather had been out of work. It was some time in 1911 because my mother was an infant and her brother was about two years old. They were almost out of food and when my grandfather left one morning she told him he needed to go and pray that he would find a job immediately because they had exhausted all possibilities. My grandfather went to his synagogue to pray three times a day most days. That morning, my grandmother, feeling desperate, decided to resort to something she did not want to do.  In those days infants wore a quarter in a little pocket in a belly band to keep their belly buttons flat. My Bubby took the quarter and the children and went to the market. She returned with some guilt about what she had done, but with meat, bread, milk, eggs and even sweets. She knew that this could be their last decent food for some time.  That evening, my grandfather returned with a huge smile and informed her that he had a new job and that everything would turn out fine. 

       Finally, there was my sister, Carol, who died just four years ago. She was more than ten years older than me and was in many ways, like my second mother.  As a pre-schooler,  I was often transported from our tiny apartment on our shabby Brooklyn street, to the islands and countries of her imagination.  She lovingly beguiled me with stories of family adventures that happened long before my own birth.  Her interpretation of things was very different than that of my parents and I hung on every word. She told me convoluted stories of the secrets in our family, some of which were comedic and some tragic. She assumed voices of different characters, who would come into our pretend restaurant and she would fabricate amazing life stories for each one, just to amuse me and to entice me to eat the little bits of food she cooked on her working miniature stove. She would create elaborate Halloween costumes for me and for my neighborhood friends, and often there was a story created to go with the costumes. When my nephew, her first child, was born, and I was still a child myself, she continued her storytelling for us both. Ironically, in her own life, she was fearful of using her imagination in ways that would take her outside of the roles she felt were expected of her, but she encouraged imagination and yarn spinning in me and in my nephew, who was a talented young writer until his death at age 24.

        So, it seems fitting now, that I have an interest in how we create stories for our lives, how we can change those stories and can learn from stories created by others. I am most interested in how we can use stories in our coaching practices to help others gain insight and shift their perspectives.  I feel grateful and blessed for having had these first storytellers in my childhood.

Me With Brother Ray & Sister Carol

 

Mama & Her Parents

//

    

 

     UGH!  Just read what I consider an appalling description  about how this technique is a good one for marketing services and products in general and how it can be used in coaching practices.  While I understand what the person meant and how it would apply, it made me a little  sick to my stomach.  Basically, this line of thinking in the minds of many who teach marketing for coaching services is, “ Give them a taste of the good stuff and they will get hooked and come back for more.”

     I don’t want anyone hooked on working with me. I want clients who are serious about improving their lives and about realizing their biggest dreams.  My ideal client is someone who has struggled with loss, who is going through a life stage change, or who wants to discover how life can become not only tolerable, but joyful and of true value. I want to work with authentic, real, decent people who want the same in me.  I don’t want to work with those who crave a taste of something addictive that will feel good for a short time, so they can pretend their problems will be solved with little or no effort on their parts. My ideal client is one who needs help tapping into his or her own inner resources, but is not someone who keeps looking to the outside for solutions, or is somehow who may have looked outside of herself in the past, but is ready to change that.    

     I have no issue with giving trial or complimentary sessions so that the clients and I can determine if we are compatible.  That seems only fair, in an arena where the interactions and relationships can, at times, grow very intense.  Trust building is crucial and though this takes time, I encourage prospective clients to use their intuition to decide if it feels like this potential is there with me.  I guess I just object to gimmicky give-aways and cotton-candy fluff that in some respects, insult the intelligence and good judgment of would-be clients.      

     I also heard one marketing guru say that in the end it really doesn’t much matter what we have up our sleeves to help clients or how we propose to solve their problems, but it is all about how we can get to the level of earning six or seven figures, so marketing is really more crucial and important than what we actually do for our clients.  This one really made me shudder.

      It is not that I am closed off to marketing ideas or to making money, but I guess I still come from the camp of purists and a long history of altruisim.  That is why I founded and directed a non-profit  agency for 28 plus years that focused on building and supporting families and on creating long term relationships with clients.  A desire to help people live  more satisfying and successful lives is what motivated me to become a life-stage transitions coach dealing with loss, change and self-discovery.  I truly believe that I am here to serve a higher purpose.  It may sound naive or smarmy to those whose main focus is feathering their own financial nests.     I don’t want to sell products that are made of glitter and spun sugar. I don’t want to sell hype to people who wake up to find the high of the night before is gone, wallets  empty and that their problems are still weighing them down and dreams are still unrealized.

     I definitely don’t want to feel I am selling a product that I need to talk people into buying.  My product will probably never be wrapped in glamour, showcased with smoke and mirrors or equpped with the bells and whistles of the marketing glitterati set. That’s just not who I am.  I am “selling” myself as a coach. I am selling a person who has been through the wringer a few times in life, who has moved through many painful and joyous transitions of my own and who has, for the most part, emerged with a lot of learning and some wisdom, though maybe not unscathed.  I am selling my listening skills, my insights,  intuition,  sincerity,  honesty,  compassion and my creativity.  I am peddling my ability to be gentle and tough simultaneously. I sell my heartfelt commitment to the client’s agenda and success.

      I have head the analogy of a small plastic tasting spoon in an ice cream store, where clients/customers can sample flavors before they buy them.  I have heard that this free sampling and product giveaway is the basis of what is called the “generosity-based business model”, where customers or clients are given a taste of the wares on sale in order to earn their trust and so that we can “hook them in” and later sell them something of value.  I think it  is hard to offer samples of what I want to provide in a tiny spoon, or to package these qualities in a free goody bag.  I am not saying I will not periodically make worthwhile gifts or bonus offers when I am moved to do so, but my perspective clients will need to search beneath the designer gift wrap if they want to see the value I offer.  My qualities and services might better be described as wrapped in practical, no-nonsense brown craft paper.  If I am in the mood I might decorate the paper with colorful drawings or lines of poetry, but it is really the clients’ creativity I am seeking to draw out and nurture and not a way to showcase mine for the purpose of making a sale.

       I know I don’t like to be sold or talked into things and never have.  I dislike the assumption that I need to do that in order to fill up my coaching practice. I know I have the ability to help people recognize that holds them back and to help them transform fear or pain into something worthwhile and productive.

     So what about you? What is the way you determine who is real and ready to help you, or who is primarily a salesperson in  the carefully constructed clothing of a helping professional?

 //

 

     I saw a segment the other day on the Today Show about White House Press Corp journalist, Helen Thomas.  She said, “I think every President could have done better. I think it’s about missed opportunities.”

     This brought about some reflection for me and I am hoping it wil for you, as well.

      How complacent have you grown about your own life?   Do you ever contemplate how you could have improved on past actions, but without berating yourself?  What might you have done differently?  If  you reviewed your previous journeys, what would you learn from your experiences?

       Did you once have big dreams, hopes and goals?  Have you buried your dreams under piles of invoices or work orders on your desk,  or at the bottom of your children’s toy box?  Have you accepted your current level of performance, or ethical behavior, or low inspiration and outcomes as simply the cost of growing older?  Do you tell yourself that life just requires  settling  and giving in to the status quo for the sake of bringing home a paycheck and for survival?  Do you set standards you can take pride in and do you live according to your standards?  Are your days filled with decisions of integrity and confidence or are they cluttered with choices of insecurity and compromise?

     What about your passions? Do they come seething up, only to have you push them down quickly with a plunger of  worry and fear?  Do you even remember or recognize your passions?

     We can all do better.  Believing this doesn’t mean putting impossible pressure on ourselves. It doesn’t mean not acknowledging our own accomplishments and feeling  proud of them.  It’s a question of being open to new possibilities and  of finding them in unexpected places. Observe a baby or toddler and watch the glint in the child’s eye as he or she discovers a new opportunity for exploration, fun, or just plain getting into mischief.  We can view each day, each triumph, and even each mistake or action in which we perceive we have somehow fallen short, as a great opportunity to revise our internal scripts and to put in place some changes that will improve our performance and our relationships, and maybe even the world!

            Can you make a list of opportunities that came your way in the past year  that you   took  advantage of to make changes?

            What about these changes turned out really good?

             Did the changes create further opportunities?

             How did you recognize or discover the opportunities?

             Even if you did not then recognize them, can you recognize now what opportunities were created?

            Did these changes help to bring  your life into alignment with who you used to be, or who you really want to be?

              If not, is there something you would like to do about this?

             If you took a chance and allowed yourself to see new opportunities and they did not work, could you still find something positive that emerged from your having tried?

               Is there someone or something who/that would help you change your patterns and help you learn to see opportunity and possibility more easily?

             Now think about opportunities you might have missed, or know for sure you did miss.

              Why do you believe you missed them?

              Are there stories you have written in your head about how you need to live that kept you from seeing  the opportunities? 

      If you are so busy listening to the beat of the music that bounces all around you, that you can’t hear your internal beat and rhythm, you may not be able to find opportunities that are calling out softly, rather than shouting.  Sometimes these turn out to be the best and brightest ones with the most promise.   Is it time to turn inward enough to listen to the  words and rhythms that are uniquely you and that will open you up to a life  in which you truly achieve your potential?   I guarantee you will find many more fresh and  positive opportunities you never before thought existed.

 

    

       Unfortunately, I have been through this several times now with relatives. At this moment my husband and I feel somewhat like a slab of turkey in the generational sandwich, having just returned from a week plus long trip to help settle his mother into an assisted living facility and to empty out her independent living apartment. There is always learning, though, from everything we encounter.

      When we, the adult children have to cope with these changes, we should always bear in mind that as hard as it is on us, it is that much harder on the people in the center of this enormous transition. When they have confusion and/or memory issues, it is even more difficult for them.  Confusion or emotional lability will probably be exacerbated at first.

       If you have raised children, you have probably already learned some valuable skills that you can employ to help you help your elder family members.  That is not to imply that they are to be treated like children, or not afforded the respect they deserve.  I want to point out, however, that you may have tools in your arsenal that you have not thought about for a while, but you can pull them out, dust them off and use them now.

       Remember when you made a move to a new home with little ones? Experts suggested that you load their personal favorite toys, furniture and personal comfort items last when you packed up or when you had movers pack up the truck. This way they could be unloaded first.  This holds true for moving the elderly as well.  It is helpful to set up the room (or downsized residence) in as familiar a manner as you can. Hang up favorite photos, unpack knick-knacks and memorabilia that will be comforting. Don’t feel the need to run out and buy all new things. A worn but familiar blanket or quilt and a few pillows from the old bedroom or living room can work wonders.

        How about comfort foods? Can you stock up on a few favorite snacks to offer? Perhaps you can stop your unpacking to spend a few minutes enjoying a treat together using a couple of treasured cups and dishes, as a welcome to the new abode? Remember those impromptu tea parties or milk and cookie breaks with your kids even when you felt pressured and had a whole list of chores to accomplish? Think back to the smiles on their faces. You were making memories with them and in a sense, you are still making memories for yourself and for your parent, who may not be here with you for a lot of years.

       If possible, engage your elder who may have some cognitive impairment in decisions that don’t overwhelm, but give some simple choices. “You have two radios. This one used to be in your bedroom. We can fit one on your nightstand. Which one would you like?”  Sound familiar from days when you used to give your children a choice of which outfit to wear, or which lollipop?  The red or the green?

      Be prepared to repeat things. Changes in routine make remembering that much harder.  Write simple instructions to post in prominent places. Keep reorienting but don’t argue or correct. Be matter of fact. If the family member gets upset, let her know you will be there as much as you can and that things will work out. If there is a meltdown or a tantrum, don’t expect to reason, especially in the heat of the emotions. Reassure and ride it out when you can.

       Encourage rest when you see your loved one becoming overtired. Rome wasn’t built in a day and things can be accomplished later or tomorrow. Don’t provide too much stimulation all at once. There will be time to introduce more things and new activities once he or she acclimates.

       Let your elder person express fear and sadness. That’s ok. Listen and don’t judge. Their fears may arouse your own because this is a time of change and loss for you also, but remember how it was with your little ones. You needed to be the adult then and in this role reversal you may need to now. Don’t be patronizing though and remember that the role reversal will probably not be met with enthusiasm.  Be understanding and respectful as much as possible, and try to imagine yourself in a similar place, because everyone’s time comes.  It’s ok to express that you feel sad but don’t focus too much on your own feelings. It’s not just about you, which may not be easy to remember when you are stressed, tired and worried.  Express your affection in a way that is culturally and personally the style in your family. If hugging will make you or your family member nervous or uncomfortable, be low key, but express your affection anyway. For some, frequent hugs and kisses is the way to go, but if that is not how you have always done things, while it may never be too late to start, it may frighten your elder. A reassuring pat on the hand or back works too.

       Your elder may show same traits or habits he or she has not always had. Perhaps your parent was very modest as a younger person, but now undresses in front of you or others and asks to be helped with toileting without apparent shame.  The opposite may also occur and there may be reticence or fear around how he or she will manage with toileting, or showering. Explain simply, repeat (and be prepared to keep repeating in some cases) and let him or her know that there are others who also need that help and that it is ok to use the help that is arranged for or available.

       Acknowledge yourself and your own feelings.  You have a lot on your shoulders. If you still have kids at home or adult kids or grandkids to look after, you are probably feeling very burdened, even when you truly want to help your parent or parents.  You may have job responsibilities that are causing you worry. You want to help but you also want to get back to your own life. You may feel a combination of anxiety, grief, guilt, shame and anger. All of those are normal and natural to feel when you are experiencing a change of this magnitude and when you see your parent slipping or becoming someone else. The past is not any easier for you to let go of than it might be for your parent.   If you are the main helper and others do not step in to assist, you may have resentment too.

       Work a little harder at taking care of yourself, even when you have less energy to do so than ever before. You really need this now.  Try to get sleep when your body tells you enough is enough. Eat healthfully.  Plan some type of reward for yourself after the move for your parent is accomplished, even if the situation will be ongoing or the crisis has not been resolved by the move.   It is that much more important now to keep your support system of friends, spouse, partner, clergy person, counselor or coach in place. There are people who will listen and who can help you navigate this life transition.

        Mary Pipher says, in her excellent book written in 1991 (Another Country-Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders),  

        “….Caregivers can say, ‘You have nurtured us, why wouldn’t we want to nurture you?’   The old must learn to say, ‘I am grateful for your help and I am still a person worthy of respect’…”

      She speaks of our society “needing new words like interdependency and mutuality, which take the sting out of the old-old age stage of growth”.  She says that “good mental health for all of us is not a matter of being independent or dependent, but rather of accepting the stage we are in with grace and dignity”

      For us, the sandwich generation, we are going through our own life stage with our aging parents, that brings challenges, but which also provides small windows through which we can find rays of joy and bits of learning. We are continuing to make memories, for ourselves and for our children, for whom we are modeling behaviors we hope to see emulated when we grow into our next stage and become the “old-old”.

      A story that surfaced in August keeps on piquing my interest, and has spurred on this post.

       Around mid August, New York Mets player, David Wright was hit in the head by a 94 mpr fastball.  He sustained a concussion.  He was fitted with one of the special new batting helmets called an S100, due to its alleged ability to withstand the impact of a 100 mpr fastball.   Wright wore his helmet for two days and declared that it was too big and far too cumbersome.  Other players have indicated that the new helmets are simply too unattractive and they won’t wear them.  Right fielder Jeff Francoeur was quoted as refusing to wear the S100, developed by Rawlings.  He said, “We’re going to look like a bunch of clowns out there.”  David Waldstein of the New York Times said in an article,   “Although the new helmet has been shown to be safer than previous models, some major league players have expressed concerns over its bulkiness and fear it could be uncomfortable or look awkward.”

       I have been trying to analyze why this particular situation is of such interest to me.  I am definitely not a sports fan. What I know about sports you can fit in the palm of a baseball glove, or in a the helmet of the tiniest player in your local small town midget football league.  Brooklyn, New York was mostly my home territory till I was 18 years old,  so my loyalty is reserved for the Brooklyn Bums (Dodgers) despite the fact that they don’t exist, and I am often ridiculed for verbalizing this devotion.  Otherwise baseball bores me, which was a sacrilegious thing to say in the family in which I grew up, because my sister and father were baseball fanatics. I  don’t even remotely enjoy (or understand)  football,  though I kind of I root for the S.F. 49’ers no matter how awful a season they might be having, because I lived in San Francisco for years and was dragged to games at Kezar Stadium (in those days) by my first husband. The 49ers are tied up with incredible memories of living in S. F. in the sixties.  Most of those memories have nothing to do with football.  Nowadays, my daughters are sports enthusiasts and my husband loves football and especially the Buffalo Bills and the Eagles.  I, however,  rarely watch games for more than a few minutes, and it is mostly sheer torment to me.  Recently a little interest has been sparked only because my hometown is now Bloomfield, CT, and the Bloomfield High Warhawks, produced three players everyone tells me are worth keeping a close eye on. There is Dwight Freeney, who my husband says may now be one of the best in the NFL, (and went to school with one of my kids) Korey Sheets, who was a school mate of my youngest daughter, and Matt Lawrence, all former students distinguishing themselves in this sport. This connection gives me something to pay attention to for at least a few minutes before I abandon ship in favor of a good book or a catch-up phone call with a friend. Anyway, you get the point that sports is not my thing and never really has been.

      So what’s the deal with my focus on the S100 and on major league players’ refusal to wear the helmet?  Let’s face it.  Some people are just married to the past (Says the person who still likes the Brooklyn Bums). They don’t believe in divorcing themselves from old habits, no matter how much they are being harmed by them or held back from becoming better, safer, happier or more successful.  They hold on to stale, outmoded ways and choose to be unsafe in this case, because old ways are more familiar, or because they have always followed the path of the known.  They survive by the creed of “what has always been done”, what they learned by rote,  what they think is expected of them by others, or what looks good. They choose to live in a limited, but familiar fashion, instead of having to deal with possible unknowns, as exciting and interesting as these unknowns might prove to be, or when new advances are clearly in the best interests of their own well-being. They keep on doing the same things, stumbling over the same obstacle rocks, hitting the same brick walls.  They lock themselves up in the same dark rooms, afraid to emerge and navigate new terrain out of fear of failure, or of how they might appear to others.  They resist what they don’t understand, or what is new and what they can’t yet see, though their good sense and instincts might be sending them strong messages that change is the right thing.

      What do you imagine makes some people resist to this degree?  What makes some feel uncomfortable when faced with possible change, even when it seems rational and of potential benefit to them?  What causes some of us to hang on to the status quo so tightly that our fingers and souls are close to bleeding? Why do we hang on for dear life to things that no longer serve us in any positive way? Why do we see only risks and negative points, instead of exciting opportunities and potential benefits? Why do we oppose  transformation, or even just variation that will add value and safety to our world?

         I think it’s time for major league players and other sports figures who are so visible to the public and especially to young people, to start paying attention to what they model.  We know some of them have difficulty getting this and thus, there are often headlines declaring some sort of abuse, misuse or incident involving a sports personality.  Safety, self-respect, and self-care are certainly among the things sports stars ought to be modeling for young people.  Instead they resist change, worry about their appearances and refuse to move forward and embrace something new and beneficial. What’s up with this?