TALLY HO!!! 

Death is one of those experiences…

 I just want to go on record to say that I hate Death!!! Whew!!! I said it!!! That took a lot of emotional energy to actually say. Let me say it again. I HATE Death! There I said it twice and now I am waiting for some large object to fall down upon my head.. the expectation that some punishment ought to befall me for being so sacrilegious. In my younger days, I used to downsize my ‘hatred’ by taking personal responsibility and saying that I just don’t DO death well!! Well, who in the world does Death well? What was I thinking? 

 But, guess what, I found that there are those folks who to me seem to do Death well… they stay with the dying person while dying. They dying person just easily slips away while sleeping. They have a viewing followed by a lunch, drinks and celebration before going back home…which is truly so comforting. 

 Yet, death for me even though surrounded by comfort and connection is not where I want to be. Phenomenologically speaking…as my buddy Marty used to say: “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.” Martin Heidegger.

Maybe that’s why I hate death, because I was not born as many men who then will die as a single one. I am woman born… which is a whole different experience! Clarissa Pinkola Estes, one of my lovelies…(I have lovelies in my life.. do you?) in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves talks about the ‘Life-Death-Life’ cycle a knowing that dwells deeply within, held as sacred by our inner goddess “La Que Saba”… the one who knows! I knew I knew. 

The ‘Life…Death…Life’ cycle…The earth blooms in spring heads towards renewal through the throes of autumn splendor continuing on into the starkness of winter’s ice and snow blanketing the buds of life waiting to show their bloom. 

 My father just died. He lived 93 long years. He was a gymnast doing straight T layouts on the rings, whipping his legs to and fro over the parallel bars, then spending his middle and later adult years jogging. He went jogging every day listening to Frank Sinatra on his portable CD player hidden in his jacket pocket, singing along, jogging forward and backward along the streets and hills near his home. Just to let you know he broke his hip in his 80’s while jogging backwards!  Yes that’s right….jogging backwards! 

He was a wonderfully nurturing father and loved my mother to the moon and back! He is now reunited with his beloved forever. And, he lives on through me and his grandsons as we tell stories about Pap’s antics. By the way, he taught all his caregivers, nurses and doctors the meaning of his favorite phrase…“Tally Ho!”… onward and upward!!! 

 Here’s to you Pap… “Tally HO”!!!

THOUGHTS?!? 
My thoughts don't always go in a row like other people's thoughts. And maybe other people's thoughts don't really go in a row. Yet, I do know some people who have very organized...in a row...straight upstanding...soldier thoughts.   I am always amazed at how they can get their thoughts to be so straight and so tall and all in a row sentence after sentence after sentence.

My thoughts form more of a tapestry with a line of color going this way and that...circling around sometimes... taking a deep dive to meet another color or a variety of colors. My thoughts are more like fibers. Some fibers are nice and thin,..very tight...and other fibers are loose and fluffy and yet most all fibers are well-constructed and very, very solid. Did you ever try to break a piece of yarn with your hands? Thought it was going to be easy, did you?

And, of course, each one of my thoughts are never just stand - alones. There are always feelings, memories, smells, other people mingled with those thoughts of mine. My feelings run the gamut of colors....purple ones...green ones...blue ones...orange ones...and magenta ones. Wow! How many times have you had magenta thoughts? You know those magenta feeling/thoughts that take you to inner places that are rarely travelled yet longed for...and often feel sooo good when you get there. 

I can feel my son Joe in my magenta place. He lives there in me, since he left this earth. I can hear his laughter and feel him rubbing my neck asking if we are having linguini with clam sauce just as if he were standing behind me. It's been 6 years now and I can still smell him...beautiful magenta thought!

Many people think as they grow older and begin to forget, that they are losing their mind or stepping into some sort of dementia when in fact, they are just beginning to learn how fluid and organic their thoughts really are. 

I time travel with my thoughts. Do you? I can wander way back to my childhood and remember lying in the snow... moving both my arms to make a snow angel...looking up into a bright snow-flaked sky...while waiting for one to land right there on my outstretched tongue. Such a silly, wonderful picture! 

Sometimes, though, on those not so very light and cold days, my thoughts take me down an abyss which usually happens when my life hits hard with over-whelming blows. For the most part, I work diligently to pay attention, set my intentions, being awake and aware. Yet sometimes, Yes sometimes, those angels swish me about into scary places for me to learn even more. Just when I begin to think I've learned enough...more comes. I don't know whether to feel blessed or cursed. Well, in any event, away I go feeling scared, confused, helpless and even paralyzed...down the abyss...just wanting to disappear. 

I remember watching an old TV show called SOAP and one character I forget who... used to just snap their fingers and "Voila" snap...they disappeared! 

I like to think that I am not the only person who has an abyss. I think lots of people have one of their own unique design. I know that my abyss spirals down into the depths of my being. My abyss thoughts go something like this... It's all my fault... if only I had...I must be a terrible person...mother...I should have never gotten married...divorced...had children...been born...then maybe, just maybe...???

My 93 year-old father still sees and talks to my mother who died 2 years ago.  He wonders why, while visiting him the other day, I was not talking to her. He thought maybe we had a fight. I told him that I could not see her like he sees her. He said " Well, she's sitting right there beside you."  I said, "Thanks Pap, for letting me know."  How silly of me not to notice.

Whether time traveling, or visiting my loves who live on a different plane or spiraling down my abyss to reclaim myself from the bondage of decades old judgements and self-reproach, I weave my tapestry of life through my feeling thoughts and feel very grateful that I am able to eventually return home to my own-most self!

How about you?

 I have been living through a life changing experience with all of you. We are all learning how to cope and manage daily life with the over shadow of Covid 19. Some people are equipped with great coping and stress management skills and some are not... and even those who manage well...well there is much to be said about not being able to have human contact, meeting through a virtual reality, and covering faces with masks...wouldn't you agree?

My parents are elderly, and suffer more or less with memory loss. So every time I visit them, to take them on a ride, just to get them some fresh air, I explain all about this virus, over and over again....working memory as it is.  Anyway, we went to a doctor's appointment for my mom, and this being the first time they had to wear masks, they looked at me a bit perplexed when I said we needed to put them on. So I told them... "Put on your masks, we are going to play 'bank robbers'." They laughed and put on their masks. Now when we go anywhere, they ask if they need to be 'bank robbers'. It's hard, for older folks. It's hard for younger folks. It's hard for folks in between. We live trying to balance a seesaw, sometimes we go up and way Whee!... and sometimes we bounce off the ground.

Of course we are all in this together...that is quite obvious!  

Of course, many  people are concerned for their health and well being.

 Of course, we feel over worked. 

Of course, we never expected to home school our kids. 

Of course, we never planned to be laid off.

Of course, we never thought the car would  breakdown. 

Of course, we never thought our friends would die of this wretched virus.  

Of course, Of course, Of course!

And

Our Dragon Voice

Forgiveness seems to be one of those ‘hot issues’ that seems easier to say than to do. So often others…OK…family member and friends have hurt us.  And they have hurt us so frequently and deeply that we would rather be angry towards them, fight back, push them away, hurt them back,  close off, keep away, and/or never have to speak to or interact with them ever again!  Anyway, who in their right mind wants to open up to more hurt? Right?

‘Hurt and pain’ creates one of those ‘Internal Emotional Burning Balls’ that no matter what anti-acid tablets we take, or how much Aloe Vera juice we drink, a ferocious fire grows inside of us. So, often times, like when we are feeling abandoned and lonely we just come up to another human being and ROAR!!!  Out comes our fire upon them like the mighty dragons that we have been taught to be…and we, yet again, have harmed another just as we have been harmed. You’d think with all this burning and fire someone would bring marshmallows!

Now this “fire burning inside” business has been around for a long time. Humans have been burning hot with love, passion, desire, fullness, quest for adventure, creative ideas or just having a menopause moment for a long time. Fanning our “soul-fire” is the creative act for many a life adventurer.    

In fact, sitting around a bonfire seems to be something we love to do on these Samhain eves. Allowing ourselves to feel the heat of the flames permeate our body; listening to logs crackling; being lured by the mesmerizing flames; and most especially watching the red, blue, orange and gold embers gently warming our hearts along with our bodies.

This is the moment of forgiveness…when we are warm both inside and out… our creative fire burns bright with passion and our body feels warmed by the flame of the fire. All we need to do in this moment is to summon our Dragon Voice…and say, “I’m sorry.  Can you ever forgive me?”  

Stardate 2014

I believe so many people live in distraction and on the surface of life, but are truly searching for something that does not exist there. So much to do...so many distractions... our daily lives become a series of events to pass through without much thought.

Who these days takes the time to consider "meaning" and "truth" and "the beautiful".  How many people really know how to establish intimate relationships? Oh we all talk like we know intimacy...but really we just know how to find out what we share in common and call that intimacy.

What happened to vulnerability?  What happened to listening to another human being speak for more than 10 minutes without being distracted by the cell phone. If you told us 10 years ago that we would all be walking around bound to a small device that we could not set down, nor move away from, that would control our thoughts, our desires, our time...we would not have believed it.  We live in America...the home of the Free and the Brave....really!!! 

Free!!!How can anyone claim to be free when tethered to a cell phone.

And the young ones...they are truly caught in the cell phone web and think they are free.

What poses for intimacy these days is people sitting at a table supposedly sharing  meal while all looking at their cell phones because the cell phone gods get mad if not attended to every minute. 
Talk about mind control....I wonder how many of us are able to go one day without having a cell phone on our person.

We are living addictions. Cell phones are replacing cigarettes and are far more compelling. The effort to escape the here and now; to escape feeling vulnerable; to escape true connection has been satisfied.
Captain's Log, Stardate 2014 ....we bravely go to strange new worlds for $100plus/month, unlimited voice, text and data plans.

Movement

I just returned from a wonderful 5 days in Boston where I presented my research on  Creating Growth Fostering Communities at a conference on Relational Cultural Theory at Wellesley College. My interest in RCT began back in the 1980's when I was introduced to the work of Jean Baker Miller, MD through her new book at that time entitled Towards a New Psychology of Women.  She and other women researchers were looking into the established developmental theories of the time, Freud, Erikson, Object Relations and others that were only based on male development and claimed to be the norm.

Interesting how far we've come along these days. Now we know that only half the world is men and the other half women. And that not all people are the same race, ethnicity, religion, or have the same sexual orientation...I hope!

In any event, I learned about oppression and how being born into a culture that operates in oppressive structures leaves an imprint...a 'footprint' if you will on our lives. I learned about dominant and subordinate relational setups and how that is called 'power over'. I also learned how the antidote to power/over relational models is to create relationships based on 'power with' or 'power from within'. 

I learned how girls grow and develop differently than boys...not in a less than way...just differently. I learned how their way of thinking involves care and concern for the interconnectedness of relationships...How their thinking involves both head logic...and...heart logic and that  head logic is not better than heart logic..both are required for thinking and evaluating.

I learned about stratification and privilege...you know...the one's who have and the one's who don't...remember that's the way we learned 'who was who' and 'who got what'  based on some arbitrary system of privilege.

I thought all those years ago that I was just learning and having my consciousness raised about the plight of 'women and blacks' ( that's how we said it back then).  I'm a Boomer who lived through Civil rights, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, Kent State Protests, Women's liberation, Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin...and all that jazz (or should I say sex, drugs and rock n roll). Then in the 1980's I discovered what it was called...oppression...power/over.

I began teaching a Psychology of Women course and I used Jean Baker Miller's book Towards a New Psychology of Women...and...added another voice articulating the new discoveries in moral development ...Carol Gilligan... written about in her book  In a Different Voice.  I was on fire, alive and spreading the message to girls and women who came to college.  And they were responsive. They too loved being able to share their life stories and have their experience, their thinking and their feelings validated through the work of these women.  They too learned about power over structures and the imprint left in their lives.

I've been teaching Psychology of Women for over 25 years. I thought in the beginning that I would only be teaching this information for a few years and we, meaning, we as 'women and blacks'  would move on.  I, again being a Boomer, had some idealistic notions that the world would change and that marginalization, acceptance of difference, stratification and privilege would somehow be gone!....How naive of me to think that such an oppressive structure...such a prominent way of being that has been around for over 4000 years could be shaken in just the blink of my teaching career.

My passion of all these years has been to see if it would be possible to create a nurturing community of people that could develop their own sense of empowerment through growth fostering relationships transforming power-over to power-with and power from within.  To see if people who had been so imprinted by oppressive structures could heal and create the kind of nurturing community they so desired.

Exuberantly, I discovered that it is possible...for I have had a healing and empowerment group going now for some 15 years.  People have come,done their work and left. Others have stayed since the group's inception. Some come for awhile, leave for awhile, and come back for awhile.  An open door policy for nourishment and growth is the key. 

This is the work I presented at the conference. This is the kind of work that will change the world.
And "Yes"...I am a Boomer...And "Yes" I still am naive...And "Yes" I still believe that as much and as long as we human beings have lived in fear, suffering, strife and struggle of power over structures...we hope to and we are creating growth fostering relationships.  We are raising our children in nurturing families. We are celebrating and embracing our differences. We are doing the compelling work of dispelling our fear and reaching out to one another to create a global community that realizes how very much we are connected and need and depend on one another for our very existence.

We are all people of color, coming from diverse origins, travelling different paths, holding different preferences and persuasions, sharing experiences of joys and sadness, love and pain.

It is through our connection...not...rugged individualism...that we have survived this far...and those connections are creating our future.  ROCK ON!!! 

Workshop Series: The Family presented at the Aletheia Center

The Workshop Series    “The Family”       February- June 2012

Intense, powerful, and sublime…

John Bradshaw with Pat's interpretation,

Power point presentation…

Poisonous pedagogy, anachronisms, addictions, compulsions, 

Secrets, birth order and traits…

Soul filled journeys with lots of ideas to implement, reflect, and use through time.

Now Bradshaw is awesome make no mistake,

Yet, Pat interwove Covington and Beckett’s, “The Enchanted Forest”

With even more inspiring episodes, interactive learning,

For our conscious and unconscious to awake.

It is always phenomenal for me to see

How much we each develop, share, take in…

Reciprocate, grasp, comprehend…and come to believe.

It's an experience which is so hard to EXPLAIN

Listening and learning at Pat's workshops always touches

The heart, soul, spirit…life's wounds and pains,

Helping to understand, heal and make choices for life changing GAINS

Once again, 

Thank you Dr. Patricia Jameson,

For a wonderful workshop filled with learning, thought provoking, and healing time.   

With love, admiration, respect and awe,  M.G.