Patriots Day Storm

Some days my faith, like the flag on a cloudy, muggy day is suspended like a deflated balloon. The still air should calm my innermost fears but without the wind my ears hear everything. The screams of my own childhood, The gunfire and bombs crumbling homes in Syria The panicked cries of babies unable to breath and the swooshing of the fire hoses as they try to remove the poisonous gas from the children’s lungs. The waves lapping at the overcrowded boats packed with children, women and men and their eerie silence as they make their way to the Greek Isle of Lesbos. The whimpering of children in cages, crying out for their mothers. When I was six I had strep throat. A fever kept me home all day to watch the Cuban missile crisis unfold on television. In the night I called out, afraid we were all going to die. My father came in and said it was OK, that I should go back to sleep. His words, like my affirmations of faith some days Didn’t soothe the fear I heard murmuring loudly around me. For three days we have gone to bed wondering if a nuclear war will have started while we sleep. In my America, we elected a trigger happy bully who is dismantling civility and giving permission for the demons in us to rise like a ghoulish nightmare talking death: billows of smoke, rape, walls of hate and discrimination. The safe places are disturbed by sobbing. Where does a lesbian feminist, mother of two black daughters go in a country that is no longer speaking Goodness? On my desk a post-it note in my own hand scribbles: "Who are my people and how can I serve them?" Some days the answer comes back quietly: “today, just you.” (The airline attendant reminds us “put the lifejacket on yourself first, then on your little traveling companions.”) I cannot cover my ears or shut my eyes to the despair around me. The 3-year-old body washed upon the Greek coast, his little pants and shirt looking like something I could buy in Target or Walmart. He is silent. But his clothes scream to me: “He is one of you!” Yet the collective “we” doesn’t hear, doesn’t see. I go to post Women’s March huddles where we talk about what we (first world women) need, while I hear other people’s children gasp their last breath. I have listened to the wind pick up in the trees at night, blowing away the storm clouds. The heavy air yields to a bright morning sun. In the day-after the flag flaps proudly in the breeze and fills my ears. Just for now, just today.

Old Kinda Dads Don't Belong On SCOTUS

“You may be told that the legal decisions lead the changes, that judges and lawmakers lead the culture in those theaters called courtrooms, but they only ratify change. They are almost never where change begins, only where it ends up, for most changes travel from the edges to the center.” Rebecca Solnit It was my misfortune this morning to be behind a school bus, stopping every few blocks to pick up grade school students. At the first stop was a man in an electric company truck. As the bus rolled up he jumped out of the driver’s side in his coveralls and walked around to the passenger door. A little wisp of a girl came bouncing out. His hand hanging by his side rested on the back of her head and walked her towards the bus. With a quick squeeze she was gone, her little backpack trailing behind her. The doors closed and we traveled to the next stop. This time a tall balding man with a young boy by his side, standing in the road. The boy ran onto the bus as the doors open and the father stood for a moment to watch the bus drive on. The third and fourth stops were similar, also with men accompanying children onto the bus in varying degrees of intention. A few more stops were a woman with children and then a woman and a man with children. These dads stood in sharp contrast to the angry dad I saw yesterday afternoon defending his nomination for the Supreme Court. That morning, a woman told a powerful story of violation. It was moving, it was powerful, it was excruciatingly painful to watch. The angry dad said he liked beer. He said he worked his tail off to go to Yale. He drank beer with his friends in high school and college. I have heard that the woman’s dad couldn’t support her decision to come forward and testify in the Senate. He lived, worked and was a member of the same country club as the angry dad and he didn’t want to lose his place there. But more than 1700 men took out an ad in the NY Times supporting her testimony. Those dads, let the world know they believe this woman’s story of violation. Maybe many of them are dads like those that I saw at the bus stops. I had an angry dad. He liked vodka. He wasn’t a country club dad. He wasn’t a bus stop dad either. Five out of the 7 bus stops this morning had dads there. Something is changing from the edges. The angry dad probably doesn’t need to be a judge in the courtroom as the changes ripple from the edges….at least, not for a lifetime.

Capturing Water

Once again my daughter calls angry. This time it is about a tax refund she couldn’t get a couple of years ago because she was told someone else had claimed her. She believes I did this. A time before that, she was angry because I had said, in response to her saying she was going to buy a car from someone she just met that “she needed to make this decision.” A couple of other times it was something else I either did or did not do. Trying to love someone with mental illness is like trying to hold water in your hand. Even so, sometimes that love is a like wave that washes over you, and you are so stunned by the intensity, you forget to try and capture it. Sometimes that love is like the foamy sea after it breaks, its bubbles providing an illusion that you can hold it longer. Very rarely is it a faucet in which you can hold it if you cup your hands just right, for at least a few seconds before it drips away. Rarer still are the times when you feel as though you share a cup. As her mother, I still try. I can’t help but see the brilliant artist, remember the witty observations or just the quiet times when she fell asleep in my arms. I can only sit with my sadness. Just recently I read a quote that said that grief lives in the space between expectations and reality. True to pattern, after an angry text, I am cut off from her social media, my back door to seeing in on her life in another city. As my partner reminds me, she’ll reach out again at some point. We just don’t know when. So I inhabit this space between expectation and reality. Hoping the gap isn’t too big or lasts too long.

#MeToo and the Men Who Don’t Understand It

When I was teaching undergraduate architecture and planning students, I facilitated a classroom discussion one afternoon about the built environment and it’s enabling of places on campus that put women, primarily, at risk. Blue-lit boxes with phones in them had been placed strategically several years before, on this and other college campuses with the idea that if a woman was being pursued, she could use the phone. (prior to cell phones!) There were three women and myself in the classroom that day, offering our perspective on the issue of campus safety and architecture and 20 young men. We had just read an article on landscape architecture that made the case that trees and bushes and other accouterments that enrich a property were also “rape enhancers.” It was clear from our discussion that the young male students were primarily perplexed by this idea, but the young women were right there with the author. A discussion ensued about walls, shrubs and dark spaces in a landscape that were intentionally placed. The conversation shifted when a young woman said, “When I am walking at night, no matter where I am, if there are men behind me, I always cross the street, to be on the side that they are not.” This started a cacophony of responses. Most of the men were incredulous. “You cross the street no matter what they look like?” “You would cross the street, if you didn’t know me and I was behind you?” “I could be someone for whom you would cross the street?” “You would cross the street even if it is only one man?” It went on. The male students, to their credit, were not defensive, just hurt. They found it impossible to believe that women, any woman, would see them as a threat. They began to brainstorm what they could do to alleviate a woman’s fear. For some, the answer was to cross the street, so she wouldn’t have to. For others, they wondered aloud if they could call out to the woman in front of them, telling them that they are a safe person. To this the three female students giggled. “Do you think that you calling out that you are safe, would make me believe you?” This was a hard lesson to grasp for these young twenty somethings. Flash forward so many years later and the #MeToo movement has men wondering aloud about their own behavior again. “How do you share an interest in a woman without her thinking you are harassing her?” “What if I was interested in a woman, how do I communicate that to her in a safe way?” An older male pundit on cable news even lamented the age-old Freudian statement: “What do women want?” It was more than twenty-five years ago that I was a part of that classroom discussion and we have yet to really listen to the answers that women have given. But it seems like it continues to be an important discussion to have every 25 years or so. Who knows, maybe one day, we won’t have to ask the question; we will all already know the answer.

If God Had a Name, What Would It Be?

A Joan Osborne tune “One of Us” sung at church today had me thinking about all the ways that Wonder shows up in my life. Lately I have been feeling so challenged by my daughters’ adolescence and yesterday I rose before the sun to have some peace and quiet. Of course, that only led to tears and as I looked out my bathroom window, there was a beautiful red cardinal. It made me smile and took away the angst I had been feeling. These wonderful birds have shown up so many times in my life, just when I need them. The cardinal has been like an old friend calling out of the blue on a day when I have particularly needed someone outside of myself to make me smile.

If I were to name God, I would name her/him “synchronicity.” In those magical moments that come with friends or something in nature, or even a book or poem I open to or hear, I see and feel God’s presence in my life. My mother was an identical twin and as children we were constantly aware of the special communication she seemed to have with her sister. Picking up the phone to call her, her twin would be on the other line. Showing up at an extended family event, they would sometimes be wearing the same dress, or at least the same color. Even as a child these magical events seemed to bring the sense of Spirit to me more than most of what I felt at Mass. Although, I believe I felt the transubstantiation of the elements much more because I had experienced these moments of Spirit in my life.

In synchronicities, even those that come from the stories in sacred texts, that suspension of the ordinary is just enough to give me a moment’s pause from the mundane. It is in those moments that I find myself reveling in Spirit. As a child in Catholic school I had heard the story of Jesus walking on water many, many times. The emphasis in the story by the priest or pastor who was recounting it was always on Peter and his lack of faith that makes him fall as he is attempting to get to Jesus further away.

The first time I heard someone tell the story from the perspective of the disciples in the boat being the people who were unsure of their faith and not Peter, I began to smile. Peter got out of the boat. His faith was strong enough that he tried --- sure he faltered, but he got out of the boat!

This morning, again thinking about raising two girls by myself, I read a passage from Raphael Cushnir in a little book called “Surfing Your Inner Sea: Essential Lessons on Lasting Serenity.” The writing I opened to was titled, “you can’t do it wrong.” I laughed quietly to myself upon opening the reading and remembered the story about Jesus walking on water. A decade ago I wondered if I was doing the right thing, having fostered my daughters for a year, I was adopting them. I was getting out of the boat and my faith has wavered many times since then.

That lack of faith seems particularly acute just now, but here was this essay reminding me that I can’t do it wrong. With each “failure” I am learning, with each day, I am becoming more grounded in ways to take care of myself and them. So I say it inside to myself: “I can’t do it wrong.”

Letting go

When I grabbed the skillet of corn bread out of the oven, I realized that the oven mitt I was lifting the pan with was not insulated enough. I could feel my skin burn, but I had two choices, I could drop the pan, risking burning my legs and the floor, or continue to lift the pan and place it on the stove top. I chose the latter. Loving and raising children who came to me from foster care has been like that. I know my hand is burning, but I can't let go. As a foster parent of these two precious girls I went to all of the required family meetings in the hopes that their birth mother would be able to care for them. My hand burned as I comforted them when they came home from visits, their (doll) babies bruised and battered and in need of band-aids. My hand burned when in therapy they each shared information to the therapist that indicated that someone had sexually assaulted them. My hand burned when at the termination of parental rights hearing, their birth mother did not even testify as to her capability to care for the girls. My hand burned when it was clear that my youngest needed special schools and by 7th grade, a wise older teacher called, with worry in her voice, that there was something seriously wrong with my oldest daughter. There were neurologists and psychologists and psychiatrists who came in and out of our lives. I hung on while we searched for answers. More meetings, hospitalizations, residential care. As teens my hands blistered when they accused me of abuse and then took it back. It's been 15 years and some months and now, because the youngest turns 18 in a few days, I have to let go. The way that I have been advocating and speaking for and holding the system accountable for these two girls comes to an end, three days into January 2017. She has told me that she will make her own decisions, threatening to leave school before graduation even though she is just a few credits from a high school diploma in June from the special school I have written about before here. I can't blame her. Her older sister is 19. After a rocky four years, and a schizophrenia diagnosis, she signed herself out of her residential facility at 18 and began living with an Iraqi war vet with a drug problem. Then she found her birth mother and ran from that relationship, taking her pregnancy with her. She has now found her birth mother and is living in Kansas City with her mother, her mother's husband and her first baby since she lost one to murder and two to the foster care system. The troubled young woman who gave birth to these children is still challenged. According to my daughter, she sleeps a lot of the time and is heavily medicated. My heart aches for her as I see her in my mind's eye, clutching this new baby and welcoming the child she grieved for all these years. How can an 18 year old who will now have the power to choose her destiny, stay in school? My youngest is in touch with her sister and has talked with her birth mother and other family members on the phone. Only a few credits away but a lifetime of ache for her birth family is pulling her away. As a foster and adoptive parent, we get 9 or so weeks of training, and if we are lucky, a lifetime of opportunities to hold on no matter how bad it burns. My 19 year old calls me regularly and I hope that she finds some comfort from my presence in her life. But everything changes, even for those who are mentally ill, at 18. I can only let go, hoping we will have many opportunities in the future, to make bread together. When they first came to me, I was going to do two things: teach them little songs that would comfort them at times of trouble and let them know that God lived in nature -- and God's love is in every sunrise, every flower, every beautiful day. I am sad and relieved and fearful for them, as any parent is for their children. But I must let go. Their next step, is their own.

The Sounds of Graduation

When the four graduates came down the aisle of the gym in their caps and gowns (different colors representing the schools which represented their home district), to the traditional graduation march, a tiny knot caught in my throat and I felt the heat of tears well up in my eyes. They weren’t kids I knew, I was there for my daughter, who unbeknownst to her was getting an award for “Most Improved.” The room was full of the cacophony of special needs kids and their parents. care-givers, teachers and friends. I smiled to myself to hear all of the sounds, which my daughter would complain about later and call, “attention seeking behavior” or ASB. Her “ASB-ing” as she would call it, has been in check for awhile and so she has been less tolerant of it in others. While these particular graduates were unfamiliar to me, I knew something about the steps they may have taken prior to the short walk down the gymnasium floor. The nights of flying books and lamps, food splattered in rage on the walls and ceilings, late night tears and assurances that “even though you are different, you are still ok.” As the advocate for my special needs daughter, I recall the countless begging conversations to public school personal to let her go on the class trip, the museum outing, and the final school dance. I remember the countless meetings, the goal setting in her Individualized Education Plan and the trips to mental health personnel to seek answers. I regret the nights I lost my own temper with her frequent but inconsistent outbursts over something someone (often me) said or didn’t say. I remembered the nights I held her as she sobbed about being different. We are an army of un-unified advocates in this room. Adoptive parents, grandparents, birth parents, foster parents, reunited parents and relatives, sharing the room with teachers, behavioral support personnel, school administrators, youth support specialists and counselors. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye in how to help the children we love, but when it comes time to honor the little award winners in each class, we all clapped and many of us cried together. This special school is a hodgepodge of students with a variety of challenges; many have started out their lives, as their guest poet shared last night, “learning about life the hard way.” Neglect, abuse, and poor parenting are commonplace. Some of the youth in the gym with the graduates are still struggling with finding consistent care-givers. These are the kids still in the state’s foster care system. A girl in my daughter’s class won two awards, one for kindness and caring to others and another for leadership. Still in the foster system, no one and everyone clapped especially loud when she retrieved her awards. Some kids at this special school are not victims of poor parenting but were born with autistic spectrum disorders of some kind, challenges that public schools just can’t handle very well. Others developed some of those same challenges because of non-existent parenting or early child abuse and neglect. At the end of the night, the four graduates stood in front of the room and moved their tassels to the other side of their mortarboard and walked proudly out to the computer generated graduation march. Some of us cried, some of us cheered, and some of us let out our best Attention Seeking Behavior sounds.

Beyond Big Grief

What is the kind of grief that takes your breath away? Is it the suddenness and then the shock of it? It seems like that kind of grief is the most difficult to accept. I’ve known the kind of grief that seems to kick you in the chest and make it hard to breathe for a while. But I also have known the road back. Today, my life is filled with many people I might have lost track of if not for Facebook. Twin daughters of one of my best friends when I lived in Kansas City just lost their father. He wasn’t old, only 60, or sick. I don’t know the circumstances but he died suddenly. He was a gentle man. The first time I met him he was playing the guitar on the front porch of a battered women’s shelter. He had a big toothy smile. He sounded like a Kansan, not quite southern, but not quite northern either. My friend eventually married him and they had two really sweet twin girls. Since FB I have gotten to learn about their lives again after losing track of them first when they went to grade school and then again when they were in their later primary grades. The last time I had run into them was around their 10th or 11th year. They were decked out in their softball uniforms in a Panera with their grandfather, who I had met many times. They had those big smiles. They are out of college now, making lives for themselves. I was grateful I had the chance to know them when they were first born through those very early school years. Tonight I remember them as the busy little girls they were, playing on the couch, watching TV, and laughing. Tonight too, I am remembering my own experiences of that take your breath away kind of grief and the day-to-day effort it takes to breathe normally again. It does happen after awhile and there will always be that remembering of the big grief. But past that breathless place, is the joy and for them, the man with the big smile.

Just This -- Living in Gratitude

Her big brown eyes shown with loving softness as she grabbed her seat belt and looked at me. She didn’t say “Thanks, mom, for picking me up in the rain.” (She would normally have to walk home from school the four blocks to home.) But her eyes said it all. I see a board member at a cocktail party this past week and she says, “You know, you are really great at boardsmanship, I was telling a friend how well you handle our meetings…” Someone interrupts us and we move on to talking about other things. This morning I step out into the crisp Fall air after a good overnight rain. The air is damp with the smoky smell from my neighbor’s chimney. All my Autumn plantings have gotten a good soak so I won’t have to drag out the hoses. It is Thanksgiving week and I am reminded of all of the ways I feel gratitude. In a book by life coach, Martha Beck she talks about the importance in those moments to acknowledge those feelings with “Just This.”

I realize my life and probably everyone’s lives are filled with those “Just This” moments – a smile, a kind word, a sunset, a flower, a cloudless sky, the touch of a hand, an “I love you mom” hug. We probably miss as many of those moments as we get – maybe more, worrying about the future, worrying about the past, living in the fear we are not enough or sometimes, too much.

I have been there, clouded by what’s on my to-do list. Sometimes it’s because I am too focused on what I want to happen instead of being in the moment, absorbing and being grateful for what does happen. Holidays are like that. In my head as I make up the menu and shop for groceries I think about what I want our Thanksgiving day and dinner to be. It probably won’t be anything like what I imagine, but it might be better. If I can stay present to the day, acknowledging and being totally in the moment, there will probably be so many more “Just This” opportunities. So this Thanksgiving week, I give thanks for all the little things and some bigger ones: a great place to work, a community of people who believe the world can be a better place and work toward that end, a dedicated and fun staff, beautiful daughters, loving family and friends. I remind myself today and this week to find all of those “Just This” moments that are born of total presence.

Many Faces of Terror

In 1886, novelist Joseph Conrad wrote: “Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, capabilities and audacities are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.”
Consider these numbers: 1 in 3 females will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year. Children who witness violence are more likely to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and were at greater risk than their peers of having allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and flu.
The commemoration of the attacks of 9/11 reverberated on the airwaves all weekend. Somber and solemn sitting in my living room watching television, I was grateful to be an American citizen proud of my country and the community we created post 9/11. It also reminded me of all the victims of family violence that I worked with for the first 15 years of my career, and survived myself. I couldn’t help but think of the women and children, day in and day out who live with terror.
I watched as firemen, police and emergency workers shared their stories on the front lines of the days and weeks following the attacks looking for survivors and then bodies. I listened while some of the first responders recounted their sleepless nights, restless days and struggles with finding inner peace long after they left Ground Zero. I went inside the Trade Center with the cameramen who were following the life of a probationary fireman at the time of the attacks and how incredibly hard it was for all of them to get back to a normal life after 9/11.
And I kept coming back to the child with the phone cord bruises around his neck and the countless faces of women with broken noses and teeth, arms, fingers and legs. I remembered the days and nights I would lie awake thinking about someone I had just met in the shelter, wondering if they would make it out for good from a relationship that was an everyday nightmare. I recalled the woman who couldn’t stand to hear the door bell ring and the child who couldn’t hear loud noises.
Terror is terror. A plane, a fist, a closet, a no way out. It is awful, horrible, catastrophic, sick and more. It makes us afraid, angry, sad, confused, and terrorized. It is violence; violence that makes our world shrink as we come face to face with the expression of our belief in the safety of our surroundings. If Conrad is right, no wonder women struggle to feel more than the world’s reflection of who they are would have them believe.
9/11 introduced terror to those of us who had not been intimately acquainted with it. In our new understanding perhaps can come compassion and commitment to help one another, to remember what being a neighbor means. The first flight I took after the tragedy the pilot spoke over the loudspeaker and asked us to introduce ourselves to each other. Maybe if we could do that everywhere, we might interrupt the terror that still hides in our homes.

Good Intentions: Eliminating Terror with Terror

“So they killed that guy?” My 13 yr. old said to me as we drove to school with National Public Radio playing in the background on the morning after learning of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Before I could answer she said, “Cause, like, he was in another country. Is it OK to just go into another country and kill someone?”
“Ah, well, yeah, I wondered that too, honey. That is a really great question because it doesn’t seem right does it? What I understand is that the US Military went there to capture him and he fired on them and they fired back and killed him.”
“Is it like normal to have world wars that last this long?” my youngest said with thoughtfulness. “Because don’t wars just like usually end in a couple of years? Is this normal?”
“Yes, this has been a long bunch of war-like conflicts. But there is a lot to it.” (I could feel them both slipping away from the conversation now and I found myself drifting, too.)
At 12 and 13 years the Iraq presence and really all of the Middle East presence, is all they have ever known. They were watching the Lion King video the morning of September 11th. The conflicts have been a part of their whole lives, much like the Viet Nam war was for me growing up; always in the backdrop of whatever was on the world stage until I was old enough to have an opinion about it. Of course, there were other domestic conflicts too: civil rights, women’s rights, the murder of JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobbie Kennedy among many others that lost their lives fighting for voting rights or protesting the war on college campuses. I remember how afraid I was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, asking my father from my six year old view of the conflict, if we were all going to die.
My daughters’ questions point to their way of seeing the world, not with bravado but with some sense of order or justice. I feel the fears in them that our actions bring up—the randomness that it implies. If we can go somewhere and shoot someone, can’t someone else do that to us? Sure this guy isn’t sanctioned by any vote of the people, he isn’t elected, but might another group of people see the actions of a President of the United States as invasive and come here to do the same?
My sister was working in the World Trade Center on September 11 and she made it out that day. Would I be unable to hear the angst and fears of my daughters if my baby sister had been killed? I have mixed feelings today. I believe in our system of justice that calls a person innocent until they have been proven guilty. In a world of terrorism, perhaps that is naïve to hold on to that standard. What is acceptable I wonder then and what just furthers the energy of terror so rampant now in our world? My daughters’ questions remind me how fear begets fear. When is it OK to break the law, even international law and what ultimately will it bring us?

A Tribute to Those Who Nurture

Longing for the child she abandoned at 14, Annette Bening’s character in the movie “Mother and Child” lives a grouchy life. The scene opens to her reluctantly caring for her ailing mother and her own dour spirit. The grief of releasing her baby when she herself was still a child turns into the wall we all know a little bit about, any of us who have ever longed for something we lost or something that never was.

Checking on my sleeping daughters I flash back to the days as toddlers when they came to me and the long nights of pain and sadness they endured when they had been moved around from group home to my home. Safety brought with it the remembering of trauma endured and our first year was marked by both great joy and deep sorrow. Once, after a solid two weeks of interrupted sleep, I was stunningly awake as I had never been to this god of nurturing and loving two helpless human beings.

“As the world goes by, all I know is I want to be wide awake/Seekers of status quo, I say let them go, I want to be wide awake/fear for all of its fury can’t hold a flame to any soul that cries, I want to be wide awake, awake.” (Christine Kane, Wide Awake)

Awake. Like jumping into an icy pond. So at times I have fallen asleep. Nurturing while sleepwalking changes my creativity and my parenting, I see that now. My mind wanders to my mother’s obsession with feeding the seven of us. It was/is her creativity – her deep joy channeled into the thing she had to do. And anyone who nurtures others 24-7 knows the drain of energy that comes with outer focused nurturing. And yet, it is our creativity, our soul’s joy channeled into caring that feeds the life force. I bake bread weekly; make soups, have learned Indian, Chinese and Thai cooking. I make cookies and scones; tend a garden in the summer. How many artists: painters, potters, songwriters, writers and sculptors works are channeled into people who were fed well in childhood? Am I my mother’s novel?

Elizabeth Layton raised five kids, battled depression for 35 years and became a published painter in her 70’s. Her depression went away.

Watching the movie Secretariat the other night with my daughters who are now 12 and 13, one comments and the other agrees that it is “wrong for that mom to abandon her children for the sake of that horse.” I breathe in deeply that sentiment, knowing I might be my mother’s great works and they might be mine.

Re-Construction

I count myself in the middle to the tail end of the baby boomers. We are re-constructionists. I and many of my friends bought houses in which we replaced original windows and doors, heating units and installed central air conditioning units. Some of us eventually re-did the house altogether, opening up kitchens to living areas and replacing countertops and cabinets. Some of us replaced these items because there were more energy efficient iterations of them on the market. Some of us tore down walls to collaborate and communicate more effectively.
We look for houses with good bones, we value what is there, but we are eager to make it better to fit the needs of our families. I saw an article about house design not too long ago that tracked the opening up of the kitchen to other living spaces side by side with the burgeoning women’s movement of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. While there had been a small spurt of new construction with a more closed kitchen recently, most of us are not going back there.
Good bones. We’re not about throwing everything out. In a way, we are bridge builders, working to connect the dots between our parents’ generation and the offspring we have. My daughters roll their eyes, but occasionally they are humming to a Joni Mitchell tune. They asked to have a couple of Earth, Wind and Fire songs put on their iPods. My peeps are zumba-ing to Lady Gaga and Usher.
Good values. Community, connection, collaboration. These are probably the re-building blocks of my generation. Call it what you will: decentralized management styles, emotional intelligence, new value propositions, I call it “women in the workplace.” Women couldn’t help but bring their authentic selves to the table. This “let’s make sure everyone is connected” mentality permeates the new work environment. We couldn’t help it.
Technology has helped the employed mom and dad juggle work and family. As a tool, it has increased our ability to connect with one another. A snow day turns into a conference call/on-line meeting day. With Microsoft Communicator on my desk top, the geographic size of my responsibility shrinks to my desktop, less time traveling means more time on task.
My grandparents’ generation forged new territory, continued settling the west, built around the outer loops made possible by interstate highway legislation passed during the Eisenhower administration. My generation, and those who come after us, will re-build, holding on to values and physical spaces but seeing them just a little bit differently. Perhaps because of the increasing scarcity of land or the valuing of that land and the earth’s resources, we are not as willing to keep stretching and making a new outer ring. The future belongs to those who are bridge builders, who can challenge all of us to see the good in what was, and stand on the shoulders of those ideas and take them another collaborative step closer to a more perfect community.

Music Is Not a Four Letter Word

A couple of days ago I sat down with the list that my daughters made for me to download music to their iPods. While I can’t stop what they listen to on the radio, I can have some control over what I pay for and what ends up on their iPods. I downloaded a few to listen to before I purchased the whole list. From Ludacris: (From My Chick Bad)“Now your girls might be sick, but my girl sicker/She rides that d**k and she handles her liquor/I knock a bitch out and fight/comin out swingin like Tiger Woods’ wife…a chick so bad the whole crew want to bone her.”
And from Ke$sha: (From We R What We R) “We’re dancing like we’re dumb/our bodies go numb/we’ll be forever young…I’m just taking truth/I’m tellin you bout the s**t we do/we’re sellin’ our clothes/sleepin in cars/dressing it down/hitting on dudes.”
These words took my breath away. As a parent, I feel a bit panicked and shocked. I know these songs exist, but in my mind they were the exception. Now, I realize, they are more of the rule. Leonard Sax, an M.D. who wrote Why Gender Matters, points out that girls and boys don’t date anymore, they “hook up” at the end of the night after being out in large groups. These “hook ups” are just for sex, most often girls servicing boys without intercourse.
The songs on the radio reflect that – there is no romance, no connection. Girls to themselves and to boys are objects to be used, bodies numb to sex and to violence. As a parent, I know I have to teach my daughters discernment in the face of this much bombardment. But how? Not even the Supreme Court can define whether or not this is an infringement on women’s rights. But clearly, girls need a conversation.
There are many important messages that need to be part of this conversation. Among them is the idea that in a free society, artists create work that reflects their environment, personality, lives, beliefs and imaginations. It is their story to tell in whatever form that takes – music, dance, theater, poetry, etc. Understanding that their story isn’t your story is a big epiphany. And just as artists have the freedom to express their thoughts, it is our responsibility to accept or reject it, to set the guidelines for each family on what is acceptable for our own daughters, and then following our own personal convictions. It’s not about burning books or smashing CDs in protest, it’s about looking at art with your own eyes and values.
Our conversations about music are reminiscent of my mother’s conversation with me as a teen. My daughters and I looked at our mothers’ as un-cool, not up with the times and just old fashioned. The music my mother objected to had more to do with tone (too much screaming) and not necessarily the message.
Sometimes, time and perspective makes a difference and as adults, we can see that perspective. Kids haven’t developed that yet and maybe discernment is what we need to encourage. If we ask ourselves what would our reaction be if these songs were about a particular race or religion as they were in the days leading up to the Holocaust in pre-war Germany? Would we at least talk about it and try to get our kids to understand the concept of bigotry? Really, this is the same conversation.
I know that I am setting a role model that is different from the music the girls hear. And as a parent, I have to take solace in that. But it still worries me that our children are listening to music that demeans and degrades women, that reduces relationships to violence and random sex. While this used to be the music on the edges, it is now the music in the center. Sometimes I wonder what the motivation would be to create a different standard. What would it take for the content to shift? And, what is our role in all that? We have seen the standard change over the years in regards to a lot of behaviors that have become acceptable and not acceptable in art. While women have made a lot of progress in regards to our status in society, it seems that the music of another generation continues to dictate a place that continues to seem undesirable for women and girls. How do we encourage the conversation?

Taking "Middle School Behavior" Out of the Workplace

At dinner the other night, I heard about how some of the girls at my daughter’s middle school were talking about another girl behind her back. The collective group didn’t like this girl and so instead of telling her to her face the behaviors they were upset with, they just talked about her. They don’t have a Facebook page, or I think they might end up with some of this naughtiness on their pages.
Seizing a teachable moment, I felt compelled to ask them to think about how the “other girl” must feel – being the subject of personal attacks by the group. They were unwilling to look at it too closely, but they did begin to see the importance of what we have talked about in Girl Scouting as being a “sister to every Girl Scout.”
When it gets to the workplace this same type of interpersonal “bullying” has been called by some management gurus as “middle school behavior.” Even though men do more of the overt bullying in the workplace, women target each other 70% of the time for the covert, behind the back kind of talking about someone which can be just as stressful and damaging in the workplace. The under the radar behavior by women to other women includes sabotage and the abuse of authority.
The secret weapon of all bullies is an enabling environment. This use of a relationship to hurt someone else is something women do without thought sometimes. If we are talking about someone with another co-worker, you can bet that the other co-worker will eventually talk about you. Thus we keep the enabling environment fertile.
To stop personal attacks, gossiping and name calling behind or (in the case of Facebook) in front of our co-workers and friends, we need to remember to practice three simple behaviors. 1) When someone talks about another in front of you – Disrupt It. Sometimes people are not being malicious and are drawn into conversations before they realize they are perpetuating a hostile environment; 2) Co-create new rules of engagement – by disrupting or challenging others to address specific issues and not personal attacks, we create new ways for all of us to interact with one another. It models a new way of behaving that is more in integrity. 3) Maintain consistent standards of behavior with everyone. Managers, directors, CEO’s, and other volunteers all are made from the same things. No one has a thicker skin or is made of unbreakable stuff. Everyone who is a target of personal attacks feels the pain of those attacks, no matter whether you feel you have power in the organization or not.
Creating a collaborative community, a place where everyone feels safe, is something I know that we all aspire to do. The world at large can sometimes be a somewhat hostile place; it would be nice to know that the places in which we volunteer, work and live would be safe places. Only you can make that so.

The Edge of Adolescence

The Edge of Adolescence
“For over a century, the edge of adolescence has been identified as a time of heightened psychological risk for girls. Girls at this time have been observed to lose their vitality, their resilience, their immunity to depression, their sense of themselves and their character.”
Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan: Meeting at the Crossroads
Last week my oldest daughter slid down hill. It started with finding out that she was occasionally cutting (“ditching”) her first class in the morning. This was discovered when someone caught her and a friend off campus during that school hour. I could make a case for middle schoolers not being in school with high school students – particularly in the sixth grade, when all of this newfound freedom is dizzying. But I will save that for another day.

It ended on Friday afternoon with a phone call from the Vice Principal telling me she had been suspended for calling another girl a bad name, the same girl she was cutting school with the weeks and months before. My daughter has been most of the last few years, quiet, introspective. Prior to the volume of homework she has had this year, she read voraciously – mostly long novels with big stories. Her friends were three sometimes four girls who formed this bond early in the school year. A few falling outs during the year were nothing like what happened on Friday morning. This small group of friends imploded, leaving all of them with suspensions and I am sure some hurt feelings.

Girls – we hear it from principals all the time – take up a lot of school discipline time. They fight over friendships; their breakups with their friends are painful and cruel and maybe last a day or two. They talk about each other, they cast aside friends they pledged their devotion to just the week before. One minute they are in love with life and the next they are painfully sullen. My younger daughter, when happy, can bring light and joy into a room, when she is angry, she can suck the life out of a place.

As a mother, I was stunned by the turn of events in just a week. I knew that she had been struggling with the class, but never in my wildest dreams thought she was skipping the class. For one, I thought the hallways at school were patrolled better than that. The suspension took my breath away for a brief moment after a week of bad news and head scratching. And yet, as I thought about it, my eldest has found herself more of a follower than a leader. Even though she says she knows everything she needs to know about leadership (in response to why she doesn’t need to be in Girl Scouts anymore), she has proven to me this week that I need to get her back involved – and find her some additional adults with whom she can connect.

After I righted myself, I asked her to write me an essay about friendships – what she looks for in a friend, what she feels like when she is friended and what it feels like inside when she is a friend to herself. Her answers weren’t that introspective; in fact, they were very behavioral, which caused me to ask some follow up questions. We talked about her inner compass. Did she feel it? Did she listen to that inner voice? When her friend wanted to leave class, did she hear that voice?

When we were talking I realized that she really didn’t have the ability to override the friends’ voices. She may have the moral and ethical reasoning, but that voice, that inner compass, was being drowned out by peers. I shared with her a couple of times I wished as a girl, that either my mom stepped in or I invited her in. I told her she may not always know what to do – but I wondered if she might want to think about asking me to help sometimes. At least, inviting me into those moments when she is hearing the voice, at least a nudge from the inner compass, but really feels pulled in another direction.
It seemed to shift something for her. Maybe some weight she has been carrying. I reminded her that 12 is not really that big, that even though she feels “old” she is not very. I got the sense that this was somewhat of a relief to her.

As a mom and a Girl Scout – I know that Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan are right. This edge of adolescence is a challenging time. It is a time when girls need Girl Scouts – a time when moms also need Girl Scouts – as we shepherd our daughters through this rocky road of adolescence.

Post Realignment Musings: Or the Tectonic Plates of Culture Change

An interesting thought: for an organization that’s constituency is always in a state of transformation, how “risk averse” some of the Girl Scouts’ volunteer constituency has been. Courageous girls wake up one day and their clothes don’t fit, their hair looks odd and now they have braces. Days later they feel funny, maybe a little bloated and, well, you know. Yet they still have to go out and face the world, go to school, take those changes in stride, and keep moving forward. We should all take a page from that book.

At our recent annual meeting, held at an historic hotel in Oklahoma City, we hosted almost 200 Girl Scout delegates from all over our 39 counties in central and western Oklahoma. For those of you not in Girl Scouts, we take the democratic process very seriously. Delegates are elected in Service Units across the Council’s territory to represent their area at the annual meeting.

Annual meetings are an opportunity for an organization to share with its stakeholders the financial health of the organization, to make any changes to the by-laws or other corporate documents of the organization, to give a report on how well the organization is fulfilling its mission, to honor retiring board members and other stakeholders who have helped the organization fulfill its mission, to elect the new board and to share a vision going forward into the new year. In the not for profit world, organizations are usually required by their by-laws to conduct this annual business meeting.

In the past, for many Girl Scout Councils, the annual meeting was an opportunity for volunteers who are troop leaders to come together to share stories, to elect the new board and to have an annual awards event. The “business” of the annual meeting may have taken a back seat to operational issues.

To reach more girls with the leadership message of Girl Scouts, we have to address the business of Girl Scouting. Some of our evaluations of the annual meeting; reflected this change: “This was the best meeting I have attended so far. I am pleased to see us in a “power” spot in the city.” As many as 3 delegates to one scored this annual meeting better than any they had ever attended. So we are changing this 100 year old organization into a more dynamic, vibrant, successful and nimble one, moving at the speed and the courage of girls.

Yet, it strikes me as odd that some of the volunteers who have been troop leaders for years seem particularly risk averse. They get upset when talking about changes and making shifts. They often say, “but it’s all about the girls.” I wonder, what girls are they talking about?

Some of the comments left on evaluations of our annual meeting were of this vein. In speaking about a long time supporter and donor to the Girl Scouts who received a well-deserved award, some of the comments were similar to this one submitted: “What service unit are they from? What troop number, how many girls are in their troop? What a joke! Thank God us regular folks love the Girls – because to us Girl Scouts is about them! The Girls!”

This comment referred to our discussion on the importance of reaching more girls with Girl Scouts: “Why are girls referred to as market shares? They are GIRLS!” Others were like this comment about the year-end financial report that lists where all of our money was spent: “I would like to see what areas the money is being spent – not necessarily a budget.”

All the girls I know are continually changing and re-inventing themselves. The speed of their transformational shifts astound me as a mother, friend, aunt, neighbor and acquaintance. I try not to be too shocked when I see a girl sporting a new way of being than she was a mere few weeks earlier. I support her changes; I revel in her marvelous ability to land on her feet, to adapt, to be nimble.

If only some of the folks who say, “It’s all about the girls” were really in touch with the girls and their ever-transforming needs, they might see the great changes being made in Girl Scouts today a whole lot differently!

No Judgment, Just Prayer

It was 4am when I drove up to the shelter to pick her up. Four in the morning, not unlike the countless numbers of times her husband would wake her in the night to abuse her and not unlike the last time when she awoke to the sound of the gun being cocked and felt the cold metal on her face. How she managed to talk him out of killing her that night, I can only guess because she never said, she just cried for the first week I saw her in the shelter.
She’d been there a month and sometimes she smiled now, especially with her two toddlers who also seemed to be feeling the cloud of abuse lifting, even in the close and crowded conditions of the battered women’s shelter. Then her demeanor seemed to change, she was so quiet all the time, my heart hurt for her through her shyness. Something was wrong and finally she told me, she was pregnant. The last year had been a blur of rape and abuse by her husband, who was stationed at the local military base. He had seen his father abuse his mother all his young life, culminating in his shooting her in front of him, his young son.
This morning we were heading to Wichita, a decision she agonized over for many days. She got in the car and we headed down the Kansas Turnpike. She sobbed quietly in the dark. In my early twenties, I could not comprehend all that she was going through. I could not even imagine the hell in which she had been living.
Dr. Tiller’s office was on Kellogg. We had to arrive early and the process would take most of the day. I knew this was a very, very sad day for her. I was only a witness to her pain, trying to keep her grounded in the world so that there might be a tomorrow for her and her young boys.
My religious upbringing included the idea that only God could judge us – no man could cast judgment on another (lest he be judged). At the kitchen table of my New York born and bred black Irish grandmother I learned a mixture of love, spirituality and common sense. She lit candles in church for the “poor souls in purgatory.” She loved the God she worshipped and I think believed that her praying for those who made mistakes was what we were meant to do. No judgment, just prayer.
Scott Roeder judged another and took his life. Now I struggle to not judge his actions as he had judged another. George Tiller was in church. His family, his God, his pastor, did not judge him.
At the end of a very long day we drove back to Manhattan while she sobbed sometime uncontrollably and I had to pull over and hold her, to the battered women’s shelter. When we got in the door she hugged her sons so tightly, their lives, just beginning again.

Why I Have Children...

Rushing home at lunch today to make chili for this evening’s dinner, the thought that came to me was my life would be far different if I didn’t have children. Most days, I can’t get home at the noon hour, but when I can it feels like a reward. Chili seemed like the perfect meal on a frigid day. As I stirred the chili, in between bites of a sandwich I thought: without children I would be at least $500 richer each month in child care alone. Without children I would probably be thinner, going to the gym when I rush out of work at night instead of going to the grocery store for milk and bread like I did yesterday. Without children I would live in a smaller house, have less bills, more free time.
My revelry was interrupted by the site of my 10 year olds Christmas list. Printed in the neatest of her handwriting (it has always been a struggle for her) on copy paper, it begins with “yellow leggings.” “Leg warmers, black boots, smell-good lotion and brownish red lip gloss” are on the list with a “flip video thing” (“pink if they have it”) a head band (“a summery one, not a winter one”) and “v-neck shirts, not white.” Rounding out the list on the bottom is “Buttons (the dog) List” and includes a “chew toy, a bone and a sock.”
I chuckled to myself. Without children I would never have that laugh that touched my heart when I read the list. I would never have the memory of my oldest who used to say when I was quiet with her “Are you mad to me?” And if I said no, would say, “Are you sad to me?” I wouldn’t have the quick goodbye hugs in front of friends, or the sitting on the lap while watching TV (or the fights they had over who got to sit next to me until I sat in the middle). I would never have the lullabyes I sang to them or them to me when they were little, or the Christmas mornings full of excited faces and toys. I would never have the little hands that gripped my finger or the moments when we all fell asleep on the couch together.
I sighed. Maybe the weight gain is not so bad, they are getting older now and maybe I will be able to get back into an exercise regime soon. I guess I can apply that commercial about things costing so much and then other things being priceless to our lives. As a mom I am tired a lot of the time, I am always trying to catch up on my sleep, my friends, my exercise, my bank account. But when it comes to Christmas lists and hugs and kisses, I am way ahead of myself. And it’s great.

Unsung (S)heros

Saw the movie “Blind Side” Thanksgiving weekend and thought about all of the women I have met and worked with in my life that are out there, changing the world, one day at a time. While it sometimes looks like they are just having fun, and their pictures end up more on the society pages than on the front page, they are the ones who make our world a better place.

These women, they really are the news of the day, making the world a little better, not just around the holidays or during an event, but all the time. They are the fabric upon which many a charitable organization does its good works. These women never earn a salary but they contribute far greater stuff.

Years ago, when I worked in a battered women’s shelter, I would drive up and see the BMW or a Jaguar parked at the curb. Those cars looked strangely out of place until they didn’t. Whether it was answering the phone or driving a child to school or planning the next fundraising event, these women were there, changing the world for the thousands who crossed the path of our Center.

Today, I work with an equally wonderful cadre of women who contribute their time, talent and treasure. The annual fundraising events that shares with the community the good works of this or that charity and raises money so that the next generation of children won’t live like this is always precisely run by these silent (s)heros. Our whole system of charitable organizations would cease operation if it weren’t for the women who step in like the woman who sheltered and nurtured Michael Oher. It isn’t always easy, to give of yourself freely, to work tirelessly for no pay and very little recognition. Today, thinking about all of these unsung heroes who have made me a better person, in addition to contributing to all of the organizations through which I worked, I am very grateful.