The Importance of a Life: Remembering and Grief at the Holidays

When I worked in home hospice I spent most of my visits with family sitting or standing beside a hospital bed.  In the bed, lay a beloved person who, not infrequently, would die within the next couple of days or even couple of hours.  Sometimes this was my first visit.  Many times the patient was so weakened and near death that they were barely responsive.  Sometimes their breathing was ragged and we all knew that any breath could be their last.  Anxiety often ran high.  We are not accustomed to people dying at home, and we are not much accustomed to death.

I felt daunted.  The role of 'social worker' tugged at my insecurities - What could I do to help when there was so little time left?  What resources did I have to offer?  Wasn't I really a nuisance, distracting from the moments they all had left together?  What did I have of my self to offer?

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A client recently said to me that the majority of Christmas is about nostalgia.

Long, dark and starry nights, the smell of a wood fire, Christmas carols and lights, cookies baking, if we are lucky - snow...family events that seem to change imperceptibly from one year to the next, even the stories and movies we know - like A Christmas Story - the story itself is as nostalgic as our memory of watching it and cackling when Ralphie's dad says "Frag-ee-lay."

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Many of my clients and many people I know grieve more deeply at this time of year.  The nostalgia of the season makes the absence of the person or people you love different - maybe you feel lonelier.  Maybe you even feel destitute.  In this grief, much of what you feel is separate from the rest of the world, who seems to be connected to one another and also clueless to the pain and grief that haunt the shadowland of the season.

Yet I also know that many people who aren't grieving are not clueless.  This doesn't give the rest of us the credit we deserve.  We feel inadequate or uncertain (like I did by the bedside of hospice patients in the first year or so of my work).  So we 'non-grievers' might not say anything to our neighbor who lost a son, or our friend who lost her mother.  We might think things like, "Maybe it will upset him if I bring it up."  Or, "She lost her mom a few years ago, she's probably moved on."  Or, "I just don't know what to say."

A client recently share this with me:

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Working in hospice was a great gift to me for so many reasons.  One of them was that it forced me to do things that were really difficult and which I felt totally scared to do.  One of those things was stand by the bedside of a dying human being.  Maybe it was a dying dad, with his college-age daughter and a collection of neighbors and friends around him because he had no other family.  What I learned, was to ask about a life.  Tell me stories about your dad, I would say.  Tell me how you all became friends, I would ask the friends.  I would learn a little about the person who was dying and I would ask for even more stories - "It sounds like he never met a stranger," I would observe.  "It sounds like you all had some amazing vacations together."

I came to believe this did two things...one, was provide comfort and meaning to the family.  It's called Life Review in hospice terms and telling stories from our lives means that what we did and who we are matters.  This person made an impact.  The world is different and better (hopefully) because this person lived.  When we face the death of someone we love, there is no end to the comfort we get in knowing this.  It doesn't take the pain away, but it fortifies us a little.  Two, I believe that the dying person could hear these stories too.  I believe it would do something good for me, if I was dying, to hear good stories from my life and know that the people I loved were sharing in these stories.  I believe that knowing our lives have meaning might help us die peacefully.

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Dying of a disease and dying suddenly elicit a different texture of grief from family and friends, but it is all still grief.  If you know someone who is grieving and you have a special story about the person who died, I encourage you to share that story with the grieving person, maybe, especially, at this time of year.

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I found out unexpectedly this year that my third grade teacher, Ann Birmingham, died in 2015.  I'd been looking to connect with her on facebook - just thinking about what an influence she'd been on me and thinking I'd let her know.  What I found out is that I was three years too late - and she was a young woman in her 60s, so this was particularly surprising and sad news.

If I would have been able to talk to her, I would have said this:  "Mrs. Birmingham!  Hello!  Do you remember me?  I was in your third grade class in 1980-1981.  I thought you were so glamorous!  You always had manicured, dark red nails and you wore Jordache jeans and sometimes you wore black and I didn't know any ladies who wore black when I was a kid.  You quoted Saturday Night Live - Roseanne Roseanna Danna, and said "Nevermind" in a singsong, goofy voice like Gilda Radner.  And when you got mad at the class, sometimes you would turn to me and wink, as if I were included on a joke with you and you weren't mad at me at all.  I also remember when I wrote my friend, Jenny Nielson a note that said, "Mrs. Birmingham is in a bad mood today!  I wonder if she is on her p."  (That was our code word for period - how scandalous.)  And you confiscated that note and you never said a word about it and I thought I was going to get in a lot of trouble because it felt so disrespectful to you.  I remember you treated me like a 'grown up.'  You encouraged me to read books that were challenging - even a Wrinkle in Time and The Hobbit, which were for much older kids.  You were one of the first women I knew who didn't seem to fit a mold.  I looked up to you and I know you were a big part of my ongoing love of school.  Thank you."

I will try to find a way to share those anecdotes with her family.  Even three years later, I know that people still dearly miss their loved ones who've died. 

Sharing stories from a life, remembering the lives of people we've cared about and telling those stories is an act of connection.  I am connected to you, you are connected to me, we are connected to the past, the present and we are also connected to the future in ways that bring comfort and uncertainty.  We give a gift when we share a memory with a grieving person - the gift of a loving connection, sometimes arriving at the time that person needs it most. 

 

Taking (Guilt Free) Stock of My Goals - How I'm Doing Fighting Racism and Writing a Book

In the past year or so, there are two tangible, specific goals I've shared in my blog:  1) That I am working on a book about grief and 2) That I made a pledge through my church involvement to help end racism.

On these two goals, I give myself a C.  My inner school marm gets a lot of satisfaction out of giving grades.

So, I'll just get it out there - I have not finished the book, nor made much progress on it this year.  And while I feel I have taken some tangible steps in racial justice and equity work, I know I have more to do.  From a purely measurable outcomes assessment, this is where the C comes from.

However, because I talk with people all day most days about their hopes and longings and failures and goals (and other things too), I think that sharing both the outer process and the inner/emotional process (what I've learned) might be useful for some readers -  who in some of the long hours of darkness at this time of year, might also be taking stock of 2018.

First, the book:  In late 2017, I started writing a book about grief - anecdotes of my work in hospice and as a grief therapist, connecting it to my own life experiences. I've tried to illuminate what I've learned about bodies, inadequacy, selflessness, illness, despair, hope, and courage.  It's really difficult for a person like me who is more naturally drawn to writing poetry to write prose in such a long format.  I'm impatient.  I like to see a finished product, which is why both poetry and the blog can be so satisfying.  So, I attempted to do that with the book - creating small chapters in an A-Z format, i.e., A is for Afterlife, etc.

Yet, writing a book is big and cumbersome; it's easy to get bogged down even with short chapters.  And when I shared the 75 pages or so that I'd written with other writers or people who I admire for their brains and point of view, I think they liked it but they didn't have that 'click' we feel when we read something we can't put down and just want more of (of course this is the kind of book I want to write).  The general encouragement was - 'this is good - keep writing, but you might want to change the format as you go along - the A to Z might just be the hook to get you in to the meat of the book.'  (I thought 75 pages was pretty meaty).

And when I take the most objective look at the writing that I can...I agree!  In fact, in writing workshops, one typical saying is 'Kill Your Babies.'  Most writers and artists get ego- attached to some phrases, scenes, introductions, or whole pieces of writing; but sometimes you have to edit that stuff.  Get ride of it, change it, 'kill it.'  That A-Z format probably needs to go.

And as I wrote more and more, I set weekly goals for myself - pages to write.  And I began to find that  I resented the writing time.  That's a red flag for sure.  I find that if I am not doing something with some degree of joy, I probably should not be doing it.  But I wanted to understand myself honestly, if I were going to take a hiatus from the book project.

One of the inner lessons I've continued to learn this year is about limitations, boundaries, and bringing the right amount of reverence to the meaning of Time.  And here is the truth that I began to feel and accept more fully:

I am a single mom and I own and run my own business, which I try to do with care, integrity, and competence.  I am responsible for my home and to some degree, three human beings (including me) and a dog.  I like to have friends and spend time with them.  I like to exercise.  I like to try to do a little bit of volunteer work.  I like to pretend to try to date or at least 'put it out there' in the universe that I might like to date 'some day' (whatever that means, but you know...)

It would be realistic to see that I am already working toward goals that are important to me - raising good human beings, being a responsible, productive adult human myself.  And, I need to be humble in a good way and prioritize my time appropriately and in a way that fits my values.  Like all of us, I am at my best when balanced - responsible, ambitious, and also having fun and relaxing.

So, I gave my self permission to GO SLOW with the book.  I don't have to chuck it, but I changed my process and mindset.  I became respectful of my own time and energy.  It is not that I am saying 'I can't do it,' but I am allowing myself limits and boundaries.  As I heard in an Al-Anon meeting one time - 'it's not that I can't do it.  But if I can't do it without hurting myself, then it's not the right thing right now.'  I will trust that when the time is right for me, I will have the words, make the time, and experience the pleasure of that writing and I believe it will shine through in what I write.  And I can pick it up and write a few pages here or there whenever I want.

Now...on to the goal/my progress in helping to end racism.

Here are some things I have done:  I've had more conversations about race with more people across a variety of formats.  One on one conversations with white people and people of color.  People I've known for years and people I've just met.  I've introduced myself to people for the sole purpose of making these connections.  Some of these conversations - maybe half - have been with white people who seem to disagree with me about the state of race relations in our country and the need for equity.  I've communicated in social media and also in private emails.  My intent for my words and my listening are to be a part of a process of truth, justice, and hopefully peace.

I've made conscious choices to buy goods and services from businesses owned by people of color.

I've written publicly about my involvement in this issue.

I've written a letter to my local city council about hiring concerns.

My kids and I communicate about these issues on an almost daily basis - analyzing how we get our news, who tells us our information, and what biases we have that inform how and what we believe.

I have learned a few things about myself as I try to be part of something that feels dear. What I've learned is that I am not much of a warrior.  My primary drive is not rage or outrage. I have appreciation for some people's passion and rage.  To create change, I think anger is often needed.  To overcome injustice, anger is a necessary human emotion.  It's not that I don't get angry about injustice, I do.

What I've learned is that we all have innate gifts and skills that we use to navigate the world and one of mine is translation/communication.  I've also learned that my energy is best spent places where I feel effective and I feel effective in matters of racial equity when I use my words and whatever ability I have to translate so that people hear one another in different ways.  I hope, in ways that open minds and hearts.   Maybe this has to do with being a writer (most writers are observers as much or more than participants).   Maybe this has to do with being raised by parents who were civically minded but always worked within systems, rather than from the outside?  I am sure there are other influences.  I check myself...am I just staying in my comfort zone?  Am I afraid?   I'm sure that's some of it too.

Maybe it isn't particularly universal to write about my individual goals/ resolutions.  But I know that it is universal to assess where we are in different ways and in different facets of life.  (It strikes me that my time of life is particularly an assessing one - I see this in my clients from about 40 years old to 60).  Am I where I want to be in general?  Am I where I wanted or hoped to be a year ago.  So not only is it the time of year that is reflective, it is my time of life.

One thing that makes me feel sad is when clients say to me, "But I'm already at THIS (take your pick) stage of life and this is all I have to show for it!"  I wish I could take that away from them.  Whatever that self-flagellation and guilt is, it doesn't help because it discounts all the life experience that got you HERE.  Here might not be what you imagined, but it's YOUR LIFE.  Each day takes a different amount of courage to live, but sometimes it takes a lot of courage.  And what we do, even if it is folding laundry, uses both time and energy.

A client asked me recently what kind of therapy I do and it made me step back and think about it from a fresh mind.  I hadn't thought about that question in a while in quite that specific way.  Logotherapy is what Viktor Frankl named therapy that helps people create and understand the meaning of their particular life. I guess that's what I do.  I do that with myself too.  The meaning of my life (or yours) - to my way of thinking - isn't bestowed on me by God or forced on me by life circumstances.

We have life circumstances and we choose what the meaning is.  It's very powerful.  Making goals and pursuing them and seeing where they take you is part of making the meaning of your life.

In this weird time we live in where we have other people's achievements, vacations, jobs and lives marketing to us on social media, I think we do too much comparing 'where we are' to others. I always hope that my sharing my experiences - both hiccups and joys, will help normalize being human. 

A friend and mentor (I call her that not because we work in the same field but because she is just an AWESOME lady and that's another goal I aspire to) used to write me emails of encouragement as I worked on a rather fundraising project for church a number of years ago.  She'd always close with one final word, a word that strengthened my heart to take the next step forward.

Onward!

Are We Supposed to Forgive and What Even IS Forgiveness? Some Thoughts As We Head Into the Holiday Season

A few years ago, when I was not yet, but almost divorced, I went to coffee with a minister friend and asked him about forgiveness.  I wanted to know if some things are unforgivable and what does Christianity say about forgiveness that I might not know.  I knew I was far from forgiveness and I wanted to know what his thoughts were about how I might get there or if I even should strive for that.  I said, "I think God is big enough to forgive, but I don't think I am.  I will leave it to God."

I think he had higher hopes for me than that.  My minister friend confirmed one part of the Christian perspective I knew already, but he also helped me with a nuance I hadn't put together.   The thing that I knew was that it would be, from his Christian theology, part of my spiritual work to try to forgive.  But here's the part I hadn't considered exactly -  he assured me that there was a huge difference between forgiveness and reconciliation and that God did not ask for me to make a reconciliation of any kind, including friendship.  That distinction between reconciliation and forgiveness was significant to me.

As we all have begun the holiday season and will be spending time with family, and as I work with clients at this time of year, I realize forgiveness may not be the first word that we think of, but it might be tapping at us from the corners of our minds and hearts more than usual.  The holidays bring us to our younger selves, old patterns, in the middle of long-term family dynamics, grief, and changes from the past year or many years before.  They can bring us face to face with our unfinished business and unresolved anger and hurts revisit us.

So...forgiveness.

I've read books about forgiveness, I've looked up articles about forgiveness in individual lives, community lives, and even in the history of nations.  I read about people who have endured much - Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Malala.

A lot of people I know are working on forgiveness in one form or another.  I've heard the saying, and I'm sure you have too (I think this is attributed to the Dalai Llama) - that to hold anger and to NOT forgive is like drinking poison and hoping the other guy will die.  At some level we know that when we hold our grudges, our bitterness, our deep hurts, we are not only living in the past, but we punish ourselves from fully enjoying our present.

But I also suspect that our words for what we are trying to do are inadequate - I believe there are different sorts of transgressions and different sorts of forgiveness.  A friend who doesn't invite you to a holiday party would require a much different sort of action to forgive than the forgiveness that someone might work toward if they'd been sexually abused by their uncle.  I worked with a woman who'd been robbed at gunpoint and beaten - she found that she was able to forgive in her own way.  She said the biggest thing she learned as she worked on the trauma of that assault was that it wasn't personal.

This is an important and confusing point, but here's an illustration:

One morning in college I was out 'speed walking' the Loop around campus.  It was just before a big football game and our opposing team was waking up to tailgate.  I was zooming around, probably sporting a sorority t-shirt with my walkman on, when a car brandishing the flag from the opposing team drove by and some male voices screamed at me, "You walk like you're retarded!"  I remember this was stinging and embarrasing.  But those guys did not personally dislike me.  It wasn't personal.  I was around and got in the way of their shit.  Whatever their shit was - gender, alcohol, competition.  Who knows.  It's a paradox - it happened to me, but it wasn't about me.

This is the way that many of our experiences are that might call us to forgive.  We are the recipient of mistreatment, but it isn't because we deserve it or asked for it.  We are not personally responsible for it, even though many of us somehow want to think we are.

If you are considering where forgiveness fits in your life, here are some things I've found are important to think about:

1.  What sort of wrong was done?
2.  Is it part of a pattern?
3.  Do you believe the person you might want to forgive has your best interest at heart?
4.  Do you believe the person you might want to forgive is trustworthy - which is to say, do their words and actions match AND do they demonstrate that integrity in a consistent way over a period of time?
5.  Do you feel stuck in anger, resentment, or in the past in general?
6.  What would it mean to forgive that person, but not have a relationship with them going forward?

Forgiveness is a tough mother - I see it as an action and not a stagnant state that we reach and stay there.  I am pretty sure we have to work for it, rather than wake up one day, Buddha-like, in a peaceful and forgiving state.  I understand a lot of the human experience and human nature, but I understand anger much more than I understand forgiveness.

And, you might be surprised to know that I don't think forgiveness is always the right thing to do right now (and I hope my minister friend will bear with me while I talk this through).  There is a gem near the end of the book Codependent No More by Melodie Beattie and she does a beautiful job of reflecting the trouble with forgiveness for some people,

"Compulsive disorders such as alcoholism twist and distort many good things, including the great principle of forgiveness.  We repeatedly forgive the same people.  We hear promises, we believe lies, and we try to forgive some more...Then we feel guilty because someone asks, 'Why can't you just forgive and forget?' ...For many of us, the problem is not forgetting.  Forgiving and forgetting feed our denial system.  We need to think about, remember, understand, and make good decisions about what we are forgiving, what can be forgotten, and what is still a problem....I believe we need to be gentle, loving, and forgiving with ourselves before we can expect to forgive others."

So maybe we need to look at what brings us into balance.  I know people who, on a daily basis, tend to feed the anger in their hearts and tend to have more rigid boundaries - maybe for those people, working steadily on forgiveness and openness helps to bring them into balance.  For others of us who have tended to forgive and forget quickly, we would be more wise to keep Melodie Beattie's advice top of mind and slow down our forgiveness process.

But if we think we need to forgive, if we are stuck in past bitterness or just the past.  If we are closed to people we would like to be open to, then the question changes-  how do I forgive?  What do I do to make that happen, what would that look like and feel like inside me?  How will I know if I've forgiven?

One guy I know whose ex-wife cheated on him years ago says, "I don't forgive her.  But I don't think about her either.  She is not part of my day to day life and thinking.  But I also don't forgive her." He's gone on to remarry and has a very happy life.  I wonder if it's just semantics, then.  If he's moved on and enjoys his life fully and doesn't chew to cud of the past, perhaps this is at least some form of forgiveness even if he doesn't call it that?

Yet, I suspect that many of us have a feeling that forgiveness is a spiritual process and a mysterious one.  If there are different types of forgiveness, that's the one that I'd like to know more about.  I wish I could tell you that I have a formula or that my conversation with my minister friend led to a revelation for me, but I continue to take little bites out of understanding and experiencing forgiveness as my life goes along too.

Here are some more bits I know about this deeper sort of forgiveness:

As time goes on, it's important to honestly check in with yourself.  I believe that anger and bitterness can become a knee jerk reaction.  Maybe somebody brings up your old best friend from college and you automatically think, "that bitch."  Well, that's a habit and maybe you don't even feel that way anymore.  Check in with yourself about how you really feel, NOW.  Not how you felt in 2001.

First, forgive yourself if you need to.  Like Melodie Beattie says, before you can extend a loving heart to someone else, especially someone who causes you pain, extend that to yourself.  There will be time to forgive, whatever that means to you, but be good to yourself.

Know your intention and purposefully choose it.  I know a woman whose child was murdered.  She said that she knew she had to work hard and make choices to not be a bitter, unhappy person for the rest of her life.  I admire her very much, and believe that she is wise.  If we set a goal of not letting bitterness overtake us, we will naturally make choices toward some form of forgiveness, whether that is forgiving ourselves or the universe or, if we choose, the person who hurt us.

Pay attention to how you feel when you think about the person who hurt you - do you feel loose and relaxed or does your heart tighten and stomach clench.  Sometimes forgiveness is the feeling in your body that the person or memory of the person no longer has a hold over you.  If that's the case, let it go.  Maybe say a prayer, if that's your thing, that the person will not go on to hurt others and that you will continue to feel strong and free.

And that's it - that's all I've got for now on forgiveness.  What I know, what I am working on. 

Freedom from Fear: The Myth of Safety and How to Talk with Our Kids about It

We woke up yesterday morning to the news of another mass shooting.  I know many friends and fellow parents who feel at a loss and also outraged as to how to explain this world of violence, hate, and death to their kids (not to mention to understand it themselves).   Anyone who knows me, including my clients, knows that I would never presume to tell you how to respond or feel, but I am going to give you my perspective on how I think we become helpers and not hurters and how we can empower our kids, and hopefully reduce their fears.

I think we need to consider that we are the ones that are mistaken about the world.  What I mean is this - throughout history - every ancient religion, including Judeo-Christianity, explains our human experience through myth.  And every culture has a myth about the entrance of bad stuff into the world.  Whether it's Adam and Eve or Pandora or Australian Aboriginese, the people who came before us were given stories about the plague of death, evil, violence, hate and greed on humanity.  There may be caveats of hope, but mostly the stories affirm that bad things are abundant.  

Yet, we live in a relatively luxurious time now.   Many of us grew up in a place where death and disease seemed far away and murder and violence seemed like someone else's problem.   We have forgotten the stories that informed the many generations of people who came before us.  

Working in hospice I grew to have a different perspective.  I've known many, many people who have died.  When I began writing about my work in hospice, I tried to estimate how many patients I had from January 2004 through May 2010  and I figured it was around 1000.  And of course, like all of us, people I love have also died.  Loss and suffering did not seem far away.  So in terms of both physical and emotional safety, I've probably have to un-myth myself more than many people.  I even have a psychologist friend who says, "I don't even like to think about your job."  

We know loss and all it's causes are frightening for us, but other layers of fear and anxiety are added when we consider (or are forced to) talk with our kids about them.  And there's a lot to talk about:  School shootings and intruder drills and climate change and natural disaster.  Divorce and cancer and addiction.  Bullies and racism and rape. 

We long to protect our children from fear, to create their little world and maintain it for as long as possible - where everything is safe and kind and fair.  So when it comes to talking with our kids about the scary things in life, many times we don't know what to say. 

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When my daughter was three years old, a dear family friend was dying in the hospital after a long illness and I wanted to say goodbye.  I knew that he did not have long and it was important to see him.  My son was at preschool, but I did not have anyone available to take care of her.  I took her to the hospital with me.

I remember taking the elevator to his room.  I held her in my arms and I said, "We are going to see my friend, who is very sick and doesn't have long to live.  He will look strange.  There are special machines helping him breathe and the machines are noisy.  He is very skinny.  He will not be able to talk.  We will have to be very quiet and we won't stay very long, but I want to  say 'goodbye' to him."

Almost 10 years later, my daughter doesn't remember anything of this.  I know many parents may not have made this choice, and I myself felt a bit uncertain.

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Both the desire to live in a world with a freedom from fear and create that space for not only our kids, but future generations is a beautiful and generous human urge, but I suspect we accidentally create more fear when we protect our kids too much or for too long.  Like my daughter going with me to see my dying friend, we seem to cope better, be less afraid, and have a greater sense of our own autonomy, when we have information, or we make sure our myths have a healthy dose of truth.

I included a painting by Norman Rockwell from the 1940s, called Freedom from Fear at the beginning of this post.  He paints an alluring picture of what Freedom from Fear might look like - he was part of creating an American myth.  And as I mentionted earlier, myths are influential and living stories that shape much - from our countries to our families.  Think about the family you came from or the family you have created - there is a story or a myth you've been a part of forming or buying into.  You might have the big, chaotic family where everyone is welcome and it's always a mess.  You might be in the party family.  You might be shy to admit it, but when forced, you have the perfect family where everyone is attractive and high achieving.  You might be from the do-gooder family or the farm family or the camping family.

Myths are an important part of identity, but my first thought about cultivating resilience is to combine myth with a little Midwester Matter of Fact-ness .  It's quite unpoetic, but part of the family myth I perpetuate in my home is "Shit happens."  Really, what I want my kids to know is the Truth as I see it...Things don't always go our way.  Sometimes we have good luck and sometimes we have bad luck.  Sometimes things aren't fair, but we keep trying anyway. 

The problem with certain kinds of myths is that they are very dramatic and they don't allow room for change and variation (which, as the Buddhists will tell us is the one things we can count on in life).  So, the way I tell stories, including discuss the news, in my family is pretty mundane and matter of fact.  The words I use are calm.  Here are some underlying messages in the way I give information to my kids:

While bad things can happen, mostly good things happen.  When bad things happen, you can choose how to respond to that.  You can choose what kind of person you want to be.  Adults have struggles and are imperfect.  We ask for help when problems seem too big.  We help other people when we have extra to give. How things look on the outside is not always how they are on the inside. I have found that God strengthens me in hard times.

I don't rage about Donald Trump, even though I believe the tone and tenor he sets for our country are extremely damaging and perhaps dangerous.  I don't 'go off' about gun control, even though I believe strongly that we need more common sense gun laws.

Please don't get the impression that I am the picture of calm. Weirdly, the little things can throw me in a tizzy.   A kid falling off his bike on the way to school or the dog getting diarrhea can elicit tears from me at times.  And when people in my life die,  I've really cried about that in places where my kids have seen and heard.  As parents, we don't need to show NO emotion, but the story that might empower our kids is to hear us articulate  the difference between anxiety and truth or grief and self-pity.

Part of our job as parents is to keep figuring out who we really are (rather than perpetuate a myth) and reflecting to our kids who they are and who they are growing into. 

As life happens and we respond, our stories and myths about ourselves may grow and change, and if we are open to it, that will strengthen our foundation.

I think about a man I know whose wife cheated on him.  He said, "I always thought I was the kind of person that if my wife cheated on me, that would be IT.  I wouldn't try to reconcile.  But I did try to reconcile until it became clear that the marriage was really over for her."  He went on to say, "I always thought I was the kind of person who would be strong in a very bad situation.  And I was very strong.  I didn't let this throw me into depression or self-doubt.  It's good to know that I am strong in the ways I always thought I was."

For this man, as for so many of us, having awful experiences in life, gives us new insights that strengthen our foundation as a person, because we find out A)  I can endure and thrive after a really hard thing and B) I have evidence of how I respond under duress.   One part of our deep fears is the unconscious thought, "I don't think I could handle x, y, or z."  A silver lining at times, of surviving hard times is an increased confidence, a deep knowing -  "I can handle things." 

In a way, we really don't want NO bad luck or misfortune ever to come into our kids' lives.  Well, in some kind of ideal utopia, then yes, we want no misfortune for our children - but in the real world we live in - the one where Pandora's Box is open, some misfortune can help them test and know WHO THEY ARE.  This sense of inner strength and fortitude will not keep them from fear, but will be a foundation to respond to and thrive after frightening times, because it is based on experience, not myth.

If we are really LIVING our lives, there is no safety.  The reason for this, is that when we really live, we LOVE.  We love people, we love animals, we love this beautiful planet.  When we are open to love and loving, the great danger and truth is that sometimes we will lose.  But we keep loving anyway.   That is not a myth.  Love is the truth that does not erase fear, but is the balm and the strength and the promise to our children.

Missing in Action, Ambiguous Loss, and Grieving When Someone Is Still Alive

When my marriage was coming to a painful end, I remember having many laborious, often traumatic conversations with my now ex.  During one phone call I remember well, I said, "I thought our marriage had chronic asthma, but you knew we had stage 4 cancer and you didn't tell me." 

Having worked in hospice and being a grief therapist, I look at many things through a lens of disease, grief and loss. 

And what I was grappling with at that point is the same thing many of us grapple with - our human need to not only grieve, but understand when to grieve, and also to know just what it is we are grieving.  When it comes to loving someone, we are wired to be hopeful.  And when we are wired to be hopeful, we are also wired to stay in denial as long as possible when it comes to grief.

What I struggled with in the waning years of my marriage, and what many people struggle with in a variety of circumstances, is the problem of  ambiguous loss - a very grief therapist term.  The term ambiguous loss was coined in the 1970s to talk about the challenges of grief for family members of service members MIA in Vietnam.  Should you grieve if someone might still be alive?  Can you grieve if you haven't seen your loved one's deceased body?  Are you a bad person if you 'give up hope?'  How do you go on with your life, when part of your life is on hold?

This is the challenge of acceptance, when you don't know if you have really lost someone.  My bias plays out this way:  there are many ways relationships are lost - not just through death.  And, the painful puzzling to understand that the relationship is gone or has shifted in some profound way and will never be what it once was - that is the ambiguous loss. 

I see ambiguous loss and a feeling of being stuck between hope and grief in a few typical scenarios:
when someone we love has dementia, when someone we love is an addict, and when someone we love has vastly different wants and needs for a relationship, but hasn't clued us in on that. 

Dementia is just one of several medical condition that robs someone's mental/emotional capacity.  Many times these illnesses have a slow onset, and years of decline - a sense of losing someone you love in a thousand pinpricks.  I remember a husband I supported in hospice...his wife was finally in the end stages of her decline with dementia and he'd been her caregiver for over ten years.  In the last couple of years, the family moved her into a residential dementia care facility and he visited her every day.  In the meantime,  he developed a romantic relationship with another woman.  This romance did not interfere with his care  of his debilitated wife, but his adult kids were terribly angry with him.  This whole situation was rife with ambiguous loss.  Dementia can be particularly hard to accept and grieve, because is varies day to day and moment to moment in the beginning stages.  Your mother might be confused when you sit down to lunch, but a few minutes later seem just like herself.  Family members often experience a lot of anger and frustration at this stage.  First, the anger may be at the person with dementia.  The anger itself is a part of grief, perhaps it's even a form of bargaining, as if subconsciously we think, 'If I get mad at you, it will be like a bucket of ice water thrown in your face, and you'll be shocked into being yourself again.'   As time goes on, the anger may be at other family members.  In this situation, the husband realized he did not have the partner he once had, the wife.  He grieved that relationship.  His kids weren't in the same spot and didn't want him to be where he was either.  It's tough for everyone.

Not totally unlike dementia,  is grieving someone who is in addiction.  Their body is still there, but as addiction progresses you lose that person in deeper and more profound ways.  Here's an amazing video that my kids were shown in elementary school as part of their drug and alcohol awareness education  Nuggets  If you've ever loved someone in addiction, you will recognize this terrible representation.  If you've loved someone with addiction, denial can be part of your own disease.  What does it mean to 'accept' the addiction or the addict?  Does it mean giving up hope?  Does it mean putting up with stealing, lying, cheating and other poor treatment?  (I'd say an emphatic 'no' to the last one.)

Much of 12-step literature uses the language of 'detaching', which to my way of thinking is similar to grieving, accepting, letting go.  If you are trying to accept that the addict you love is missing in action, you might hear this, "Detach with anger or detach with love, but just detach."

A lot of clients ask me 'yes, but what does that mean?'  It means practicing and practicing and practicing new ways of interacting and thinking.  It means not offering help or solutions, whether they are explicitly asked for or not.  It means giving up your own ego because the ego will tell you, 'I'm the one person who can probably help.'  Instead, it means saying, "I know you will figure this out," to the person who is in addiction.  One day, after practicing this for years, you might wake up and feel not responsible for the addicted person's actions, successes, failure, or death.  All the while, you will be straining in ambiguous loss, but you will be learning to ACCEPT that the person you love is both there and not there.  Not unlike a person with dementia.

And this leads me to the  most frequent ambiguous loss I see.  The type of loss where it is extremely helpful to bear in mind this pithy statement found in the journal of a dramatic 23 year old Special Events Coordinator circa 1995.  (Me)  No matter what people say, they do what they want to do.

You see, one of the greatest causes of suffering in ambiguous loss that I see with clients are people who are confused/in denial because they are dealing with someone they have loved who is MIA, but present in their day to day life in the role that they have always been in.  That person can be a spouse, a parent, an old friend.  That person is saying, "We're good. I love you."  But that person is not showing up in ways that feel like care or love.

I recently re-watched When Harry Met Sally, and Carrie Fisher's character has been having an affair with a married man for years, though she is single and longing to be married herself.  She says to Meg Ryan's character during several scenes, things like this, "I saw his credit card bill.  He just bought his wife a new coat.  He's never going to leave her.'  And Meg Ryan affirms, 'He's never going to leave her.'  Carrie Fisher's character is in denial.  She is suffering from ambiguous loss.  The guy is both there and not there for her.  Her problem is denial and his problem is being a jerk.  He's a jerk, because he's trying to have it both ways and isn't honest with her about his wants and needs.  I see this all the time in the work I do.  It's not just with married people - people can be motivated by all kinds of selfishness. 

There is also ambiguous loss in relationships where one person's wants and needs are simply vastly different from the another's, but this is a change from the way the relationship once was.  I see this with adult children and their parents, as one example.  Some adult children have the hope and desire for their parents to be present and involved with their lives and the grandkids' lives.  Yet, the parents have the expectation that this is 'their time' to do what they want.  It can also be vice versa - where parents have hopes for a certain kind of closeness with their adult kids but the adult kids have really created a life separate from the 'childhood' life.

I also see this with friendships, whether it be my middle school-aged child or in my own life (not to mention stories I hear from clients).  While it might make things clearer if we could all be so honest with ourselves and friends to be able to say things like, "I'm just needing a little space in our friendship right now."  Or, "My priorities have shifted since my kids are in college, and I want to spend my time in other ways,"  I am not always sure the types of hurt we would endure would be worth it.  Sometimes, we might withdraw from friendships or experience others' withdrawing from us.  Should we take it personally?  Should we grieve?  Maybe the other person doesn't even notice?  It's ambiguous and that makes it highly uncomfortable. 

Unlike with dementia or addictions, sometimes we will not have specific answers for why a relationship changes.  Why someone we love goes MIA.  That's another way that working in death, dying, and grief have influenced me - I accept and encourage you to accept, that sometimes there is no knowable reason WHY.  

Now, I am - Holy Crap! - twice the age I was when I wrote, "No matter what people say, they do what they want to do."  It's true that I have a more nuanced understanding of human relationships, so while overall, I think it's a good rule of thumb, let me now say it like this: 

Try to be straightforward in your communication with all people and ask for what you want and need from others.  Take people at their actions.  Listen to your intuition.  Deep down, do you believe this person has good intentions and loves you?  If so, be patient with the ebb and flow of life.  If not, your loss is no longer ambiguous.  It is time to grieve.  Let yourself do that and then re-focus on relationships that are fulfilling for you.

Maybe now you know that you are trying to grieve an ambiguous loss.  Maybe having the words helps.  There's really no answer for grief, no cure (though some people say time).  It's a natural process and individual to each person.  It makes me think of a  friend from high school whose mom has dementia.  He's beginning to use this experience in his act.  He's getting a good response.  How do we grieve?  We accept.  We share.  And we laugh.  We have to.

#BelieveWomen, Sauerkraut, and 7 Ideas to Help Men Listen to Women and Other Survivors of Sexual Violence

I have to confess how I went into the Kavanaugh hearings last week.  Since I'm a therapist and I often write about women's issues and relationships, sex, politics and religion, you might be surprised to hear that I felt uninterested.

My sister called me, enraged, prior to the start of the hearings and trying to commiserate. I was having none of it.  I didn't have the energy to bond -  I said, "I have to be honest, I'm so cynical...I'm probably corrupted or something. Even if Kavanaugh and I disagree on everything, who can prove assault from 30 years ago.  He'll be on the Supreme Court anyway."  I admitted to myself that with so many allegations of assault from years ago being aired at this time and with such a burden of proof - maybe women are undermining the cases that are current and can be proved.  Then, I think "Is this Stockholm Syndrome?"  I just don't know.  And like many people, sometimes, I just try not to think too much.

That was my mindset going in.  For better or worse.  I had no intention of listening to the proceedings.

But, I got off work at literally the same time Judge Kavanaugh started testifying and I almost always listen to NPR on the way home.  And then I couldn't stop.

I was appalled and riveted and have since found myself trying to put words to much that I find difficult to explain.  The women I am connecting with seem to 'get it.' (An unhelpful and vague phrase, I know).  Yet some men I know seem to push back and question the anger or the process of the topic - and this pushback can hint at disbelief.  The therapist part of me believes most people are of good will, but we struggle because of communication.  Some men seem to be missing the mark in their response to women who are not just asking, "Believe her" but also asking, "Believe me."

So, here are some ways I think men could convey support and belief in women who report they have been sexually abused, harassed or assaulted:

1.  Listen to the whole story.   Say, "Tell me more."  "Is there anything else important for me to know."

2.  Don't assume that because you are discussing issues with a woman who is not crying or looking sad or victimized that she is not sad or has not been a victim.  Most women I know, including myself, have been the victim of some sort of sexual abuse ranging from harassment to violence.  When I talk about, write about, or discuss these issues with a man, even the most beloved men in my life, I feel vulnerable and sad, even when I look like a put-together, well-spoken wise woman.

3.  Ask yourself tough questions and answer honestly.  Realize your answers may color your non-verbal communication and come through in an attitude you convey:

• Do I believe that women are responsible for putting on the breaks if drinking/sex are at issue?
• Do I believe that men are wired (because of testosterone) so that they can't always restrain themselves?
• Do I objectify women?  If so, how? Do I routinely use the words, 'bitch' or 'slut?'  Do I routinely watch porn?  Do I put women on a pedestal?  Do I tend to distinguish between 'good' women and 'slutty' women?

4.  Don't assume that the way you personally treat women or feel about women is the place other men come from.

5.  Try to mute your natural defenses.  I know that it's our human condition to want to defend ourselves, to speak up for the 'other side,' to say, 'but I'm not like that.'  However, when you defend, or act as Devil's Advocate, the sharing of experience is inadvertently shifted to a conflict.  The person sharing their painful story, who perhaps entered that act of sharing with hope of being seen and heard, now feels unseen, undefended, and even afraid.

6.  Don't assume all victims of sexual abuse or violence are forever damaged and weak and in need of saving.  Many just want to be heard and to know that the men in their lives respect, care and will listen.  No different than anyone.

7.  Trust the process.  I think many men are afraid that innocent men will be wrongly accused and that any woman who has ever been looked at sideways will claim assault.  Women don't want this either.  In any shift in our society, we can't guarantee that all involved are mentally healthy and stable.  I imagine a few innocent men will be accused and that some women who actively flirted will claim harassment.  But, my experience tells me this is not a significant percentage.  I believe most women are sane, vigilant, and above all else, fair.  

Let me shift gears here:

I've always wanted a brother and when I lived in DC, I lived with 3 guys in a 'group house' in Georgetown and lots of guys were around, a lot.  And many of them are, to this day, like brothers to me.  I love them.  I couldn't have asked for men to care about me more or look out for me more.  And something about me...I don't know - I always wanted to see if I could be as cool or stupid or goofy as the guys I hung out with.

I remember one time they'd grilled a whole bunch of brats and burgers and we were playing board games and watching football.  There was a big bowl of sauerkraut on the table in the family room and I was going on and on about how much I loved sauerkraut (I was prone to hyperbole in those days).

"You love sauerkraut, huh?"  They laughed.  "How much do you love it?  Do you love it $80 worth?"  They each threw in a $20 and bet me that I wouldn't eat the whole big bowl of sauerkraut for $80.

"Oh, I'll definitely do that."  I bragged.  "No big deal."

As I started eating the bowl...I took my time.  There was no time constraint on the bet and  I didn't have to shovel it in...the guys started saying things like, "Your ass is going to burn tomorrow.  Oh my god, you're going to be in pain when that comes out."  They were teasing and torturing me just like I'd seen them do to one another about other things all the time.  But suddenly, I was the focus of it.  And suddenly, I didn't feel like I wanted to eat that bowl of sauerkraut anymore.  I wasn't really tough enough for the teasing and I wasn't really 'one of the guys.'  I felt stupid and embarrassed.

Those guys didn't make me feel that way that was how I had learned to feel from other experiences growing up female.  And when I bowed out and said, "Nah, forget it.  I don't want ya stinkin' 80 bucks," no one made fun of me or pressured me.  'Whatever', they thought.  'Its just a funny story.'

But I think it shows how hard it is to be female in both expected and unexpected ways, in the world.  You think you want to take part in things, but sometimes these things begin to feel too scary or that you're in over your head.  Lots goes on under the surface and informs us and men don't know or see it, because we've tried to be tough, or we've blamed ourselves for putting ourselves in certain situations, or we haven't spoken up because it didn't seem important.

I feel like this at times as a writer and a sharer of my feelings and experience.  What if I say what I think or feel and people are mean to me about it?  Am I up for it?  Am I strong enough?

In the end, we are at our human best when we are connected and we are most connected when we are both strong and vulnerable.  It is strong and vulnerable to tell your story.  It is strong and vulnerable to truly listen.

Light Topics for a Birthday' Hangover': Beauty, Aging, Love, And Being Your Self

My 46th birthday was last week and as my daughter likes to remind me, that means I'm in my 47th year.

I'm not one of those people who will tell you that I still feel 24.  In fact, when I was 24, I said, "I feel 40."  And now I don't know what age I feel - maybe every age, depending on the day.

I stumbled onto a poem the week of my birthday by Denise Duhamel, called, "Fornicating."  Here is a quote from the poem, which I like very much (found in the The Best American collection from 2015):

"Anne Sexton wrote
Once I was beautiful.  Now I am myself..."

Maybe a sign or something considering that I am undeniably middle-aged.  And I've thought in the week since quite a bit about what it means to be seen as beautiful.  And what if feels like to be seen as my Self.

For women, aging and beauty, visibility and invisibility, worthiness, desirability, and identity are often inextricably connected in ways that I think it's hard for men to understand.  Well, truthfully, we women don't understand it, but we know it. 

One way I count myself lucky is that I've been around 'old' people, through my work, but also through my writing life, for a long time.  So, even as I rub on my face serum and anti-aging cream at night, I have a competing message that I have undeniably received from these 'old people.'  It is realistic and foresighted.  It says, "Your gonna have to let that go."

From my perch in my office chair, listening to women of all ages sitting on my couch, I hear vicious attacks.  The attacks are on themselves and the script started when they were very young and the words and meaning came through in secret and sad ways.  The script says things like, "You are more loved if you are more beautiful.  You are more loved if you are thinner.  But don't get too beautiful or too thin, because then you will be uppity and threatening.  But if you have to err on some side, err on being thin and beautiful."

The biggest problem is that for many women (at least ones in the United States, as far as I can tell, but it's probably more global than that), somehow being 'pretty' gets conflated with being loveable or being loved.

When I hear women talking cruelly to themselves - about being invisible as they age, about no one ever loving them because they weren't found beautiful enough, about mothers who rejected them because they weren't thin enough or feminine enough, I feel deep down sad, but my sadness is in part for myself because I also have received and taken to heart some of those messages.

But, because of my job, I've also been grappling with these issues of aging and physical change, since I was 32 years old.  And here's the deal, fellow women.  We have to start paying attention in new ways to what love and power really mean.  And we need to teach our daughters and sons to use different guides than the ones we may have been given:

First - What is real love?  We have to learn to recognize it, value it, and not settle for less than it.  And, I don't just mean romantic love, I mean any love at all.  When I was married, I had a thought hidden at that time from my waking mind, but a thought that drove some things about me nonetheless:   that is was really important that I stay attractive.   I never felt like I could dye my hair in front of my ex, or go without makeup on Christmas morning.  I felt that he required some artifice on my part.  I know now that was a sign that I wasn't really loved.  I didn't feel that being plain old me was enough.  It was unconscious, but I hoped that in being a shiny version of me, that I would be more loved, more acceptable.  I wish I had paid attention to the wrongness of that.   I have yet to fall in love in this middle part of my life, but I know in the wisest part of me - and you know this too - when someone is really loved, appearance seems an afterthought.  How many times have you gotten to know someone as a human being and they become MORE attractive to you?  Or their attractiveness seems inconsequential.  When you love someone, you see them in a whole way without making a decision or effort to do so - you see the essence of them when you look at them and it's beautiful to you.

And, this is the most important part:  by those who love you, you are seen the same way.   Let yourself feel that.  If you are not around people who love you for who you are, that is what needs to change.  That's the place to put your energy - not into how to lose 25 pounds or can you afford to get a tummy tuck?  

Second, we need to pay attention to our elders who are aging with wisdom, grace and energy and see what it is they have that we might want to cultivate in ourselves.  Older women, especially women who were known as beauties in their younger years, often tell me how hard it is to feel overlooked or invisible.  Losing part of your identity is, of course, demoralizing.  Losing perhaps your feeling of desirability, losing perhaps your sense of power.  But when we accept that our power and desirability can be so much more than perky boobs or a lack of crows feet, we allow in a fuller sense of what power might be.  My guess is that our power and desirability and energy and joie de vivre is rooted in what gives us creativity, ignites our passion, connects us with something essential in us, and lets us live truthfully and fearlessly.

Listen, I come from a long line of vain women, so I have a lot to overcome.  My grandmother, in the hospital at age 92 looked at me from her bed and said, "Kate...you look terrible."  What?!  "You need a little lipstick."  Even on her death bed, my Gran wore lipstick.

But mostly, in my 47th year, I am going to remember that the most beautiful thing to be is myself.

A second quote from the poem, Fornicating, sums up a bit of what I wrote above...

"it's easy to feel unbeautiful
when you have unmet desires."

Hey women - I know it may be easy to feel unbeautiful, but easy feelings are not always true.  Unmet desires are difficult (I have them too), but they are not as a result of lack of beauty.

Here is my wish for women, whether 6 or 46 or 96 - to know that you are loveable, worthy, and beautiful.  To know your own power, so that you experience the joy of being seen for your Self, but also so that you see your True Self.

In Memory of Reverend Bev Asbury: Death, Religion and Human Meaning Revisited

My college roommate, one of my dearest friends, sent me a text this weekend that read, "I don't know if you'd heard this, Katy, but I thought you would want to know.  Bev Asbury, Conscience of Vanderbilt, dies.

How one sentence can bring so much to you instantaneously, is a mystery.  It's like being enfolded in your own history, your feelings for a person, your wistfulness at the briefness of life and of having lost touch, and gratitude for another's existence - all of it happens at once and is outside of time.  That's how I felt when I received Krissie's text.

Reverend Bev Asbury, or Rev Bev, as we called him when I was in college, was both the university chaplain and a professor of religious studies and I met him, in a sense by accident (if you believe in accidents), when I signed up for a class he taught called, "Death, Religion, and Human Meaning."  I had no idea, not even a little inkling, that one day I would work as a hospice social worker.  Or that I would be a 'grief therapist.'  I just knew that the questions of human meaning, those examined in literature, drew me in.  I thought I might be a teacher or a lawyer -  I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

And I found myself in this class of about 15 students around an long rectangular table, where Rev Bev  sat at the front, teaching and listening.  I can still hear the sound of his soft, gravelly voice, like Winnie-the-Pooh, but deeper and more resonant.  This was not an ordinary class - we were flexible  - sometimes meeting in the evening to watch a movie like Harold and Maude (I'd never seen anything like it).  We talked about moral relativism - when do we know something is wrong or evil - is female genital mutilation evil?  Is abortion evil?  What is taking a life?  Is all life equal?  How could a loving God allow atrocity?  If there is an all knowing, all powerful God, where is God in history?  Where was God in the Holocaust?

One thing I learned from Rev Bev is that great faith and great doubt may be hand in hand.

We went to his house as a class experience - this beautiful retreat in the woods and we ate lunch with his wife and took a walk through the woods, evening drinking fresh water from the fresh spring on his property.  He was generous and open, treated us as equals and conveyed adult expectations.

And over the course of the semester, Rev Bev became my friend.  He was in charge of a program on campus called Project Dialogue that he asked me to join - it was a board of students and faculty who brought speakers to campus to instigate dialogue in the community - lawyers, celebrities, provocateurs, politicians.  People like Sarah Weddington, who argued Roe v. Wade, or Sandra Bernhard, who at that time, was seen as an outrageous voice for feminism.  Sometimes Rev Bev and I would just sit in his office and talk.  I distinctly remember one moment in his office - he'd situated his desk so that he looked out the window while he worked - I was getting ready to bounce off to do whatever sorority thing or studying thing I had to do and we were both looking out the window together at a wintry day, a rare Nashville snow flurry.  I realized, "If he were 40 years younger or I was 40 years older, we'd probably fall in love.'  And it was a good, weird, wise feeling.  There was never anything romantic in the friendship - not one untoward moment or even an inkling of a flirt.  But, our friendship gave me a deep sense of connection and time.   I thought about how we are little blips on this planet and we intersect with other little blips and how we are lucky to intersect with certain people at all.  Just the overlap gives me a sense that something mysterious and big is going on.

When I moved to DC after college graduation, Rev Bev and I saw one another a couple of times, as he sat on the board of the Holocaust Museum there.  He met one of the boys I dated at that age-  an Irishman from Belfast- so charming and witty.  But Rev Bev said, "Katy, he doesn't have kind eyes.  I would be careful."  And when we broke up, I felt quite good about it, as if Rev Bev knew some secret of the universe and kind eyes had something to do with it and I would look for that from now on.  (I will speak to Bev about this when I get to wherever he is - I'm not sure kind eyes is the key to lasting love, but I'm open to hearing more!)

We exchanged Christmas cards over the years, but he and his wife, Vicky moved a number of times.  I tracked him down out West in 2009 and we shared a few emails and I shared some poetry with him.  I lamented that I didn't have enough time for all the poetry and writing I wished for and he reassured me that life is long and there will be different times - a time for more poetry too.

Rev Bev really molded my interests and what I thought of myself, where I found my identity, at  a pivotal time.  While I was a cheerleading co-captain and president of my sorority and pursued outward accolades and leadership, Rev Bev saw in me an academic.  Or an artist.  Or a young woman who would thrive in the questions as much as the answers.  I don't know if I would have found that in myself, if not for him.  I think his influence rippled out into all the choices I've made and what I've gotten from the richness of a life of questions, rather than answers, is everything to me.  He called himself a post-Holocaust Christian.  Or an Agnostic Christian.  He didn't fit the mold and he gave me a vision of how to live my life in a way that doesn't fit the mold.

 I am sad that now I am living on an earth where I cannot track down Rev Bev and catch up.  But he lived a long, productive life and I am probably one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people he shaped, challenged, saw or lifted.   We used a book in his class, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, where Becker says that almost all human endeavor is a denial of death - if nothing else, we work toward some legacy that will be eternal - whether it is our vocation, our art, or our children.  Rev Bev, I think, would say, that this is a fool's errand and that nothing is eternal.  But I hope, wherever he is, that he knows I am part of his legacy.  His Causa Sui.

I am a grief therapist who knows that grief comes in many shapes and sizes and flavors.  This is one.  I mourn the death of someone who may have been greatest influence on my life aside from my family.

I hope that if you've read this far, you will read more about Reverend Beverly Asbury's life. I also hope you will take some time to think about the people who have shaped you outside of your family and the gifts they have given.  If you don't have someone like that, may these ideas guide you along your way - may you choose mentors, teachers, and even hero(ine)s who don't force or even ask you to fit a mold - who encourage you to expand and grow and choose.

I Enjoy Being A Girl - Getting Along with Women and Female Friendships

'Let kindness win,' a friend of mine wrote recently on facebook when posting pictures of the start of school for our middle school age daughters.  I hear, see and feel both the anxiety of moms who have 'been there' and know what it's like to navigate female friendships at this age, as well as witnessing the awkward identity exploration that my own kid is living.  I guess I've been thinking about female friendships lately.

But it's not just kid friendships I've been thinking about. Adults too.  Another woman I know - a leader in my community in the area of racial equity, who really puts herself out there in vulnerable ways, lamented in the past week about the way competition, conformity, and conditional connection impact women's (white progressive women in particular) relationships. 

A part of me recognizes that this dysfunction in women's friendships is founded in some reality.  Yet, I also find myself irritated that women have a reputation (even among ourselves) for being fickle, critical, backbiting or petty, because the larger part of me doesn't find this to be true, or that it is an oversimplification.  It's not that I haven't had negative or stereotypical experiences with women's friendships - for me, these were in the teen/early 20s years, and I am sure I was at the time, also trying to find my way to myself and my own sense of identity.

Since being an 'adult', I've found that my friendships and even acquaintance relationships with women have been full of generosity and kindness, moments of deep honesty, and also deeply hilarious moments.  But I hear from other women that this is not always the case.  If you are concerned about your female friendships or the way women relate to one another in the workplace, as volunteers, friends, etc., I share a few pieces of my personal experience as food for thought.

1.  I don't like being part of a group or clique.  I love my friends and some of them are part of a group or clique, but I prefer being on the periphery of that.   I think I am just that amount introverted.  I also really appreciate having friends in a variety of areas - friends from growing up, friends from the neighborhood, friends from work, friends who are writers.  I think this has added to my positive experiences of women friends and I've found that I have not been required to conform.

2.  As an adult, I have let go of whether I am liked, and I am much more interested in liking other people.  I've written about that before - as a human being, regardless of gender, I find it transformative to look for what is loveable and likeable in others and appreciate that.  Even people who, on the surface, seem to annoy me.  I know that people who annoy me might be entirely loveable to someone else and if I need to get along with that person on a team or in a friend group, I will be more at peace if I look for what is likeable/loveable in them.   I also recognize that on rare occasions, someone might be really toxic.  In that case, I don't try to change them or talk bad about them.  I simply minimize my contact with that person.

3.  I am genuinely happy for the achievements of my women friends.  I believe there is enough of everything to go around - there's enough love to go around.  There are enough achievements and accolades to go around.    I am PROUD - beyond proud - and energized by what the women I know are out in the world doing.  Being moms, running businesses, living overseas, going back to work, leading community organizations, changing faith organizations.  Go Friends!  Go Women!

4.  I try to practice being a good listener.  And I try to practice having hard, awkward conversation in a gentle way.  Being able to communicate about tough stuff  makes relationships better.  My sister told me, when she was about 19 and I was about 23, "You have to quit treating me like a child."  It was a pivotal moment and not easy, because it was true. She said it and I could hear it.

I also remember one of my hospice patients asked, "How will I die?  Will you sit down and tell me what will happen to my body and what it will feel like for me?"  I sat on the side of her bed, while she patted my leg in a grandmotherly gesture, and I said to her, "I don't know exactly, but if you want me to tell you the best I can guess, I will tell you."  "Yes," she said.  And I did.  And she said, "You are good at your job."

Practicing talking about hard things in a truthful, but kind way makes all our relationships better.

5.  I am not finished growing, and I hope I never will be, but I try to be clear about what I'm about and who I am.   I know that some people think I'm wishy washy or that my blog might be a place for me to take a more strident stand, but I guess that the spiritual part of me strongly believes that to combat hate, we need warriors and healers.  We need translators.  We need teachers.

What does this have to do with being female?  Or getting along with other women?  Maybe this addresses the conformity issue again  and maybe competition - I believe we need all kinds of women and men who are good at different things.  I don't need you to be like me.

6.  I see other people's husband's and boyfriend's as 100% off limits.  When I was in my 20s I cheated on a boyfriend.  I felt so crappy and awful about my actions.  And that was me cheating.  I also deeply know what it is like to be betrayed.   The whole thing is a mess.  I've found that the thrill of sexual attraction is an unpredictable power.  It is most often a short term thrill that can have long term consequences.  Maybe because of working in hospice, I have a strong long-term perspective.  I hope that makes sense.

7.  I try to be understanding of the ebbs and flows of friendship and closeness.  It's not that I haven't felt the sting of friendships that were once close and then seem not to be.  That is an awful sting.  But I try to remember that people have their own stuff going on that probably has nothing to do with me.  And if it has to do with me, a really good friend will find a way to tell me in a kind way.  And I will try to give that respect to my friends too.  One of my dearest friends found herself talking negatively about another friend more frequently than she was comfortable with.  She told me, "I believe I am a better friend to that woman by NOT being her friend."  I thought that was so wise.

So those are some aspects of my adult experience with women's friendships and relationships and what guides or influences me that I think have opened very enriching personal and professional relationships for me. 

When I graduated from college, I spent one week at home and then drove with my mother across the country  to Washington, D.C. for a job.  I was moving into a Georgetown townhouse with three guys.  Mom, I'm sure, had some concerns about moving me into a house with three guys, but if she did, she kept it to herself.  One was my friend from college who was a year older and the other two were friends of his.  I lived with those guys about 8 months before my best girl friend from St. Louis moved to DC and I moved in with her at that point.  But I loved living with those guys.  We ate Dominoes pizza every Sunday and watched football, they took me everywhere and knew about all things 'DC.'  I was the youngest and least responsible.  I don't think I did chores without cajoling.  You know the disco song, "It's ladies' night and the feelings right?"  They used to sing it to me once a week on trash night, "You know it's ladies' night and the feeling's right.  It's ladies' night - TAKE OUT THE TRASH!"  This was their nudge (which I found so funny), that I should do a little work.

I've always had guy friends who are very important to me.  But, I am not a guys' girl.  I am a girls' girl.  What I mean is, if I had to pick a team - I really think I'm lucky to be a woman. 

I hope this isn't oversimplifying, but I think that the things that go wrong with women's friendships, that seem stereotypical - things like competition, or psychological punishment are often part of a greater human struggle.  The struggle to be loved, to feel powerful or important, to be seen.  I think men grapple with these things too, but their tools may be different.  Perhaps less subtle (take out the trash!). 

As I was telling my son that I was writing a blog about female friendships in response to some of my recent observations, my Young Naysayer/ENTP said, "Are you going to blame toxic masculinity and the Patriarchy?" 

I said, "No, I'm going to blame Capitalism." 

"You're a gross person, Mom" he said. 

And you know what my daughter said? "I love it, Mom.  This will be the best one you've ever written." 

Not Exactly Oprah, But...My Favorite Things - Books I Want To Share With You

When I started my private therapy practice in 2010, I had to think a little bit about something that feels gross to a social worker:  marketing myself.  What would be my brand?  What did I have to offer?  I believe both love and business sense are needed to sustain a private therapy practice (not to mention, marriage).

I thought about my philosophy for therapy, what might make me different as a therapist.

One of these differences I articulated to myself was that I thought therapy could actually be fun.  Why not?  Not every moment of therapy, but  mixed in with the grief or breakthroughs or grappling with inner demons, could be humor, fun, and play.  And I created a little fantasy (which amused me, if no one else) that maybe I could be the Oprah of therapy and I could have a 'favorite things' day, where at the end of a session, I could get a mischievous gleam in my eye and say, "Look under your chair!   Just feel around down there - each and every one of my clients today will get my latest favorite thing  - A NEW LIP GLOSS!"  (My ambitions were modest, and possibly sexist.  Maybe men clients would get a lip balm...).  But, just the vision was fun for me.

So now it is eight years later, and I've been thinking more about the idea of sharing my favorite things.  Not lip gloss, but resources.  I hold the old exuberance of sharing for the sheer joy of it, but also for practical reasons now (the old balance between love and business). People call me frequently for resources and I thought it might be a good idea to have a place to refer them - my blog.  So, this will be the first of maybe a few 'favorite things' blogs during the next few months.  And because I get to write it, I get to start in the place that is most inspiring  for me:

Books.  In my own, real, everyday life, some of my favorite things are books.  Books make me feel peaceful and hopeful and reverent.  When I go into a book store, sometimes it can be like going into church.  I'm delighted and I feel magical and I love the smell.

I share the books below because they have impacted me, moving me toward something important in my mind, heart, or spirit.  This is not a comprehensive list, but some of the books I recommend most frequently to clients.  Ok!  Here we go!  Look under your chair!

BOOKS I LOVE THAT WILL HELP YOU THROUGH HARD TIMES - NON-FICTION

1.  Peace Is Every Step - by Thic Nhat Hanh.  He is a Buddhist monk and he will show you hos even washing dishes can bring you a feeling of peace.  And even better, he'll show you how your inner peace will make the world more peaceful.

2.  The Places that Scare You - by Pema Chodron.  She will teach you that you have to practice self-compassion, especially around your own fears.  Her words make it feel possible to be both gentle and a warrior at the same time.

3.  When Bad Things Happen to Good People - by Rabbi Harold Kushner.  He will help you when you feel the feeling - 'Why.  Why did this happen.  How could God let this happen. If there is a loving God, why is there so much suffering.'

4.  The Four Agreements - by Don Miguel Ruiz .  Even though there is a new-age-y element, this is a really practical book.  If you practice the four agreements (Spoiler:  the first two are to be totally honest in everything you say and the second is to take nothing personally), you will find your life changed.  Seriously.

5.  Man's Search for Meaning - by Viktor Frankl.  This book will help you understand that no matter what difficulty you face, you are part of a larger human experience and both suffering and survival.  You will be encouraged to find the meaning in your own life, no matter what.

6.  Healing After Loss - by Martha Hickman.  No other book is as good for grieving, in my opinion.  Each page is one day of the year.  If you are grieving, you only have to have the attention span for one page.  The author does have a spiritual perspective, primarily Christian, so if you're atheist, you might bump into that.  But I think there is beautiful writing and she touches on every part of grief and healing.

POETRY THAT INSPIRES AND CONSOLES

1.  The Bible.  The stories and Psalms and poetry are what I grew up with.  If you grew up with a positive experience in the Christian church, you will also find wisdom and comfort here.

2.  The Art of Losing - edited by Kevin Young.  Kevin Young brings together poetry that touches on almost every part of grief, loss and continuing to live - from the people we lose to the rituals around death.  Comprehensive and beautiful.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS THAT TELL STORIES OF THE HUMAN CONDITION WITH LOVE AND HUMOR.  GROWN UPS NEED MORE OF THIS

1.  Because of Winn-Dixie - by Kate DeCamillo.  This book has great lessons about loving and letting go.  It's funny and magical and poignant.  When someone wants to leave you, you have to let them.

2.  Owl At Home - by Arnold Lobel.  This is a short, illustrated little kids' book.  You will see your own anxiety and neuroses in Owl and you will laugh at yourself and maybe let go of your worry or self-pity.

3.  Love That Dog - by Sharon Creech.  Trying to push away your grief doesn't work in the end.  Sometimes poetry and a good teacher can help you tell your story.

4.  Walk Two Moons - by Sharon Creech.  I like how this book helps kids (and adults) deal matter of factly with suffering and survival.  Hard things happen and good things happen and we have to deal with reality.

5.  The Graveyard Book - by Neil Gaiman.  This is the Hero's Journey.  It is about the patchwork of people (even if they are dead or undead) that it takes to raise a child and launch him (or her) into the world.  It gives you courage to face scary things, understanding that you are not alone.

6.  The Little Prince - by Antoin de Saint-Exupery.  This book is full of mystery and wisdom, about life, love, death, survival and letting go.

7.  The Thirteen Clocks - by James Thurber.  Humor and Romantic Love and Chivalry.  Poetry.  And a Golux, who says, "I make mistakes.  But I am on the side of Good."

8.  Anything by Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, who write not so much about grief, but about hope, faith, friendship, family and destiny.  The Hero's Journey.


ADULT FICTION THAT SHAPED MY WORLDVIEW

1.  To Kill A Mockingbird-  by Harper Lee.  Most people have read this.  I was required to do my freshman in high school composition about conscience about this book (Thank you, Mrs. Campbell, I still remember).  No other book, in my opinion, will help you remember the feeling of being a kid in summer or remind you what it feels like to understand that people are complicated and that each person's story is deeper than what it looks like at first glance.

2.  Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller.  This is a book when that will remind you of the absurdity of our human experience.  When you are caught in a no-win situation, it will help you endure it or figure out a way to get out.  It will give you that little bit of anger and energy you might need to call bullshit on bullshit.

3.  A Tree Grows In Brooklyn - by Betty Smith.  This book will give you empathy for what it is like to be poor, have a drunk father, and have aspirations (and hope) to live a better life.  Betty Smith's portrait of the human condition and the beauty and cruelty of people is just as true as it was when she wrote is 90 years ago.

4.  Slaughterhouse Five - by Kurt Vonnegut.  War is insanity.

I know it's not keys to a new car, but books, to me, are keys to other things.

And if you are wondering why I haven't written for a while..-it's because we got a new dog, which is like adopting a toddler.  For me, I fluctuate between affection, fear, and simply enduring the chaos.

Maybe this is also why books are on my mind.  When I am anxious, I need to rest my brain (why does a new dog make me anxious?  A topic for another blog).  My brain is resting with books and I'm I'm not sure if it's time to re-read Catch-22 or Peace is Every Step.  Maybe both.

Losing Our Dog...a Hospice Story

"All I'm saying is that there are an awful lot of things in the world we don't understand, honey, and hidden connections between things that don't seem related at all."
                                                                              Libby from Donna Tartt's novel The Secret Friend

When my kids were just babies, toddlers, early childhood - I worked as a home hospice social worker.  Every morning before leaving the house to take them to day care, I would say, "I need you to be quiet now, because Mom needs to call Death."  And every morning they would know that 'Death' told me about which of my patients died over night and what new patients I was assigned to help next.  I didn't keep the phone on intercom, they didn't hear the details.  I simply called a voicemail system where nurses who'd worked overnight (and sometimes social workers and chaplains) would relay this important information.  Telling my children I called Death, I think, was my way of whistling past the graveyard.  I always felt a deep, strange pull - something primordial and magnetic - about this twinning in my life of beginnings and endings.  Of life (young life!) and death. 

I wonder what seeped into my kids from hearing so much about death from a young age, how this influenced them.

***********

Our dog, Pearl, died  four days before we left for an 8 day family vacation.  Our energetic, loving girl, who'd started showing a tumor in her eye (the tumor started in her skull) last July and was given a year to live, lived almost exactly one year from her prognosis.

The day after she died, my daughter said to me, "Mom, all the stuff you've always said about hospice is true."

You see, she died on a Wednesday, but strange things were happening on Tuesday.  On Tuesday, I left my daughter home for a couple hours while I ran into work.  My son was at camp and due home on Thursday.  The weather that week had been terrible - stormy for several days.

When I got home from work, my daughter was curled up on the floor, using the dog as a pillow.   She hadn't done that in a long, long time - though as a young child, she let Pearl lick her on the mouth ad nauseam (literally ad nauseam) and liked nothing more than to lie beside her on the floor, because Pearl was a big dog and there is something very fun and comforting about snuggling with a dog who is bigger than you are.

I commented, "I haven't seen you do this in a long time." 

Later that day, she said, "Mom...how old is Pearl in dog years?"

"Just about 70, " I said.

"That is not old, but it is not young.  She still acts very young.  Much younger than 70,"  she said.

That night, as we were getting ready to go to sleep, we noticed a variation in the routine.  Usually I 'tuck in' my daughter even though she is big, too big for it.  We both know this special time is kind of coming to an end and we don't adhere to the routine with the strictness we used to - I sometimes read a little to her (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn...we decided this is our last book aloud together) and we say prayers and the dog lies beside her bed and follows me to my room when I leave.

But that Tuesday night, Pearl stayed in my daughter's room.  I fell asleep and woke at 2 am and she was still there.  I woke at 5 am and the dog had migrated to her usual spot in my room.  "Hmmm," I thought.  "That's strange."

About 6:30 am, I decided to go for a short two mile run, and Pearl and I did our own routine - she jumped around and pounced here and there when she saw me get the leash.  I pounced back until I "caught" her.  She ran two miles and I noted that she really was slowing down a bit.  I could tell she was tired.

I left for work.  My daughter was going to hang out with my mom that day at my mom's house and they were going to head back to my house at 3 to take care of Pearl and hang out till I got home.  I'd gotten notice that my son's camp was going to end early and he would be home that night, rather than the following afternoon, due to weather.

At about 3:15, while I was in session, my phone started blowing up, but I didn't know it.

At 4, I called home to my daughter crying.  "Pearl's eye is bleeding and she is shaking and nervous and I think you better come home."

After talking with my mom, I rescheduled my next couple of clients for later in the week, and tried to get in touch with my son at camp. Thankfully, I was able to, "Pearl's eye is bleeding," I told him.  I could hear that he was crying, but he is one of those kids who tries to be super stoic.  "Do you want me to wait to take her to the vet until you get home?  I will do it."

We were told that if her nose or eye started bleeding we would need to have her put to sleep then and both the kids knew this.

"Absolutely not, "he said.

 "Are you sure?" I asked.

"Don't do that.  She shouldn't be in pain for any more time," he answered.

"Do you want me to send you a picture of her or take some of her fur for you?"

"Send me a picture."

When I got home, Pearl was shaking and jittery, but so glad to see me.  She wagged her tail and looked at me like, "You will fix this.  I know you will fix this."  That was the part that made me most sad.  Because that is the trust animals and people have in you when you really love them and they really love you.   It is a big responsibility, but one you must carry.

I think she knew this was the end.  I just felt that.

When we took her to the vet, it all happened pretty quickly.  The vet put a blanket down on the floor and Pearl sat on my lap, because even though she was huge and long and awkward, she would have liked to be a lapdog.  A lapdog was her spirit animal.  She licked the vet's face and she licked my daughter's face and she died.  And we cried a lot together.

And when my son got home a few hours later he wanted to know everything, but he didn't let us see him cry.  I said I regretted that we couldn't wait until he got home and he said, "I would have been mad at you if you waited."

So the next day is when my daughter said, "What you've always said about hospice is true."  And what she meant was that I believe sometimes we have a deep knowing, a deep sensing.  There are connections we make that are beyond fact and rationality.  I saw that play out many, many times in hospice.

Pearl didn't die while we were gone away, with a housesitter or family friend.  She had a really good last couple days. I think she said goodbye in her own ways.

******************

Our trip was a big one.  To Ireland.  I hadn't been overseas in 20 years and my kids never had been.  One piece of the trip I enjoyed unexpectedly, was our travel guide, Scott.  He was college professor-ly, but in a more young, fun way.  He told us about the history of Ireland, the people, and the folklore.  He told us about Brownies, Leprechauns, and Fairies and showed us a tree that was fabled to be inhabited by fairies.  Fairies are powerful forces in Irish lore and disturbing them is bad luck.  They are blamed for changelings and various other misfortunes.  They are not to be trifled with.  When we saw this tree - an unassuming, but big shrub on the side of the highway, Scott told us that the Irish people were so opposed to cutting down the tree because of it's fairy connection, that they spent an extra $7 million to reroute the highway.  Folklore, Scott pointed out, tells us something about the human need to understand, the convey cultural ethics, and identity.   I admire the juxtaposition of the old and the new in the Irish culture.  Most sane people would say that fairies aren't real, but as a collective they spent quite a bit of money to honor the idea of them.

What can it all mean?  Scott also pointed out that there is a distinction between good sense and common sense.  But for the life of me, I can't remember.

********************

Several nights into our trip,  I dreamed of Pearl.  She was young and happy.  Her eye, whole and healed.  I petted her in the dream and I could smell her fur.  It was a dream, but I swear to you, I could smell her.