Category: Trauma, Self-awareness, Inner peace

Have you ever been stung by a bald-faced hornet, alias yellowjacket wasp? These wasps are capable of stinging repeatedly. The stings pack a punch that you will not forget easily. I bawled after an encounter with a bald-faced hornet in my garden. When threatened, vengeance can erupt. And guess what…there is commotion and conflict within this aggressive wasp colony. One common worker-wasp version of a “strike” is to kill their queen. Competitive struggles for control obstruct the social organization of the colony. Does this sound like any human conflicts you know about?

Mister Rogers comes to mind: “When I was a boy and would see scary times in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” 

A researcher studying birds in Africa found helpers! Nichola Raihani, evolutionary biologist at University College London, studied pied babbler birds living in the Kalahari Desert where every bird cooperates in the flock as a helper to raise the offspring of a dominant breeding pair of birds. Raihani also studied mutualism in the meticulous “cleaner fish” who live on tropical coral reefs and found that cooperation extended beyond same species. Dubbed the hairdressers of coral reefs, cleaner fish remove parasites and surface gunk on other sea creatures. Now turning her attention to the study of human behavior, Raihani finds that cooperation is not always on the plus side. For example, corruption can be a form of cooperation!

Raihani wrote in The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World how we humans have the possibility of cooperating with strangers. Other species are most likely to cooperate within their family groups (leadings to their familial genes having the best survival chances). People have the capability to cooperate with both family members and strangers.

Cooperative progress is a challenging topic. And yet, over a fairly short period of time many workers were able to transition to work-from-home routines and many parents/grandparents carried out incredibly challenging home schooling for children. Expanding our cooperation to “outsiders” is important, especially in pandemic times.

Can we learn something from cleaner fish who move beyond helping their own kind? We need cooperation to confront the collective sting of the COVID-19 virus. Raihani writes, “Evolution under adversity helped to forge our cooperative nature, and this willingness to work together ultimately defined the human success story.”

How can we become better Planet Earth team players?

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

24. How important is cooperation in your daily life?

25. When is a time when you were a “helper” to a stranger?

It’s a small, small world. In a recent 50^th anniversary show about Disney World, a young Julie Andrews sang this song while holding hands with people representing different countries. Hearing the cheerful tune launched my mind into reverse; I enjoyed Disney’s Small World ride (a few times) when my children were small. I think I liked it more than my kids as I imagined those international dolls representing the possibility of a problem-solving and peaceful world.

Fast forward to last week: “You’re looking up into the future and down into the past. What we’re looking down upon is Mother Earth and it needs protection.” I listened with tears to the moving tribute to our small, small world from 90-year-old William Shatner (“Captain Kirk”), now knighted as an astronaut aboard the “New Shepard” rocket. Shatner and three others traveled 62 miles above Earth to the “edge” of space. With an extraordinary view of our precious planet, Shatner was visibly moved by his fleeting glimpse of our planet’s fragility and blueness surrounded by an endless unknown.  

Back on the Earth, many of us are “on edge,” a different edge. We sail in collective water where trauma is like surround sound in this pandemic era. Uncertainty permeates everyday life. Some forgo an ability to have a sense of awe in science. Where is a lighthouse to shepherd us through choppy water?

If you ever took a Psychology 101 class, you heard of the Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov, and his operant conditioning experiments. Pavlov studied dogs who were kept in cages in his basement laboratory in St. Petersburg. A winter thaw created a flood in the nearby River Neva. The basement dogs were trapped in icy water with no escape route. While water receded and the dogs survived, they continued to be terrified even though they were physically intact. We might understand the trauma signs of dogs – lying listless, unable to show curiosity in their surroundings – as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) if we were discussing humans.

Like people, the dogs displayed different reactions. Their stress responses showed a continuum of strong excitability to depression. For some animals, even a minor sound produced an extreme response; others barely flinched.

Trauma comes from the Greek work for “wound.” Originally, trauma meant physical wounding, but today we also acknowledge psychological wounds. We often look outside of ourselves for some lighthouse to guide us to safety post-trauma, while we overlook the compassion of a core self. Psychiatrist Gabor Mate shines a light on the possibility of inner resiliency: many people say that their traumatic experience has been “the best thing that has ever happened to them.”  Acknowledging and working through trauma opened them to connect with their essential selves.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

22. When do you connect with essential or core self?

23. How do you shepherd yourself when you experience physical or psychological trauma?    

Seed pods fly unfettered       creation cruising aloft        seeking common ground

Change is the definition of nature. Poets offer creative change themes and often use nature metaphors. Few words were needed in my Japanese-inspired haiku to capture “change.” Give it a try — you may surprise yourself with your simple change-of-pace experience.

Why do we rebel so much when changes occur? Transitioning is constant throughout the lifespan. Children cascade into transitioning from one developmental stage to the next. Each child transition ripples into parents’ own transitioning in how to relate to these budding change-makers. Many parents (and some kids) resist making transitions. People cling to their present status because of fears. Parents want to protect children from unknown dangers. Let’s face it – our parental fearful parts of our personalities want protection for us too! Loss of “the way things were” can trap us and prevent inner peace. But our survival demands change. Consider how our breath changes from inhale to a brief pause, and onward to exhale with brief pausing before the change-cycle repeats.

Many change lessons are available in the garden. I’m savoring autumn days when plants are winding down productivity while planning their legacies. Wafting seeds make sure new sprouts will flourish into more Rose-of-Sharon trees next year. I gave away multiple little Rose-of-Sharon start-ups. Yet, I find more fledgling entrepreneurs under lush raspberry bush foliage. Some plants and people are more prolific than others in their transitioning growth.

Consultant William Bridges described transition as a psychological time that involves both inner redirection and self-redefinition. Bridges’ three stages of transition include: an ending, a neutral zone or in-between state, and new beginnings. My version of transitioning is a recycling process. I find that transitioning cycles are ongoing. I favor using the verb, transitioning, as well-lived years require ongoing mental/physical movement…well, changes.

• Initial transitioning involves saying good-bye to what you are losing. What ends in leaving a school/job/career/relationship? Belonging and ability needs may go unmet initially. Befriending what is ending in your life includes finding what you might keep.
• The muddling-middle of transitioning is where confusion and angst may pile up. Your body may feel tense. You may experience vulnerability when you are “lost-in-a-maze” of feelings and unmet needs. Your energy may plummet. This is a clue for you to tend to yourself with great care.
• Personality rewiring carries possibilities. Bridges advised: “Things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to happen—until suddenly…the branch blossoms…when the endings and the time of fallow neutrality are finished…we can launch ourselves anew, changed and renewed by the deconstruction…[of] outlooks of the old life phase.”

With COVID numbers beginning to recede, we are transitioning (AGAIN).

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

20. What changes are needed in your life post-COVID?

21. What will help you make transitioning moves?  

I never meant to teach my children gambling. I thought I was teaching my children about the ills of gambling.

Years ago on a family vacation, we swung by Las Vegas to catch some shows. We saw the famous Siegfried and Roy magic show with their amazing white tigers. The second evening we saw Cirque du Soleil acrobats perform aerial magic. My children were enchanted with the over-the-top entertainment. I thought the whole city was over-the-top and not always in a good way.

My husband wanted to try his luck at blackjack. Children were not allowed in the casino, so I made use of the sidewalk slot machines to teach my children a lesson on gambling. At a random sidewalk slot machine, I planned to show my kids that you only lose your money in these machines. I got a bunch of quarters to illustrate my show-and-tell lesson. I put in a few quarters. As no cherry/cherry/cherry ever lined up, I espoused how you just “fed” the gambling owners in Vegas but never received any “fruit” for yourself. I left out the part about the mob influence and focused on how money should be spent wisely…then the unbelievable happened.

After feeding one quarter, the machine went crazy! Quarters were flying out of that machine and falling onto the sidewalk! My son was smiling from ear to ear. He said, “It doesn’t look so bad to me, Mom!” Undaunted, I later took them to the kid gambling place, Circus-Circus Arcade. We bought a few tickets to roll the spinner at a booth where you could “win” a large stuffed toy. When it was my turn, I rolled the spinner and it landed on the largest plush bunny rabbit in the booth! Foiled, AGAIN.

This ended my lessons on gambling in Vegas. I needed a Zen master’s advice. Two hundred years ago a Japanese Zen master named Sono was respected for her wisdom in guiding people to peace and enlightenment. Regardless of a person’s frustrating situation, she taught this simple affirmation: say to yourself every morning, “Thank you for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever.”

Instead of beating up on myself for trying to teach “Thou shalt not,” I did learn a lesson for myself…discipline is much more powerful when you teach a child what TO DO, instead of what NOT TO DO.

I find many life lessons in the boomerang category – they reverberate between childhood and my Baby Boomer adulthood.  

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

18. Did any of your lessons to children or students ever boomerang into you learning the biggest lesson?

19. What stories cause you to beat up on yourself?

In his one-man show, Springsteen on Broadway, Bruce Springsteen offered this summary of our first leaders, our parents: “We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children’s lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them, and we haunt them, or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way, and some transcendence.”

Parents, teachers and employers are leaders alongside their families, classrooms, and businesses. Leaders have the opportunity to model how to handle conflicts peacefully or not. Every day brings new opportunities for restorative leadership, as well as learning possibilities for children, students and workers. Schools that offer restorative justice practices, such as “peace circles” to resolve student conflicts, often enable positive student behavior changes in academic tasks. Perhaps we need to implement “peace circles” in workplaces for adult learners. Employees as well as kids often do not listen to what is said – they watch what others do.

The environments in which you grew up made a huge difference in your life. Cell biologist Bruce Lipton discovered that the environment shapes our gene expressions. Twenty years after Lipton’s first stem cell research, science named a new field – epigenetics – to explain how your behaviors and environment may cause changes that affect the way your genes work. While Lipton asserts that 95% of one’s life is “programmed” in the first 7 years of development, it is possible that a person can rewire dysfunctional teachings through conscious efforts. We are co-regulators in the challenge to GROW alongside significant others, colleagues, and new people we meet.

G – Gather memories of your upbringing — what relationships worked well? R – Raise yourself to meet your potential. O – Offer your talents to the world alongside others’ talents. W – Widen your horizons to help ALL individuals meet their potential.

Conflict abounds these days. One current example is the rise of stress reports in couples during the COVID-19 pandemic. You may wonder how conflict in couples could make use of restorative justice. Who would serve as the neutral party to keep feedback for each other non-blaming and constructive? A 2021 research report offers a possibility. In a study of 700 U.S. individuals living with a partner, a writing activity had success in resolving conflicts. Each person was asked to write about conflicts with their partner from the perspective of a neutral third party. Once people widen their viewpoint, it is possible to gain more perspective.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

16. Where might you practice restorative justice in your life?

17. When you widen your perspective, what new behavior seems possible?      

Schools are back in business this autumn, but do they carry out their business with best practices?

I thought of an old tune that I learned as a child. Thankfully, only some of the words reflect my personal experience: “School days, school days / Dear old Golden Rule days / Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic / Taught to the tune of the hickory stick…” is an American song from 1907 by Will D. Cobb and Gus Edwards. Teaching the Golden Rule has an ancient past – going back to Chinese philosopher Confucius who lived in the 5^th century BC. Whipping also has a long past.

As a school psychologist and family therapist, I have heard too many stories of child abuse attached to “learning” lessons. This punish-‘em-to-make-‘em-learn-a-lesson approach has no research to suggest that it is a good idea. Hitting children to instill lessons is old-school teaching. Imagine this: one Massachusetts schoolhouse built in 1793 had a built-in whipping post in the floor for tying up wayward children for flogging. Corporal punishment in schools is still legal in 19 U.S. states today.

Negative developmental outcomes of corporal punishment is a present topic. In 1989 The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, but only 4 countries prohibited physical punishment in all settings then. Over 30 years later, only 63 countries have fully prohibited corporal punishment. Only 14% of children worldwide are fully protected by law from physical punishment.

Meanwhile, the silent pandemic swept through public and private school halls in 2020. This year a newer broom, the Delta variant of COVID-19, sweeps hallways and classrooms with even more punishing effects for children. Many students become home-schoolers overnight when parents (and often, grandparents) have no time to brush up their reading, ‘writing, and ‘rithmetic skills. I wonder how often these newbie teachers resort to hitting methods when their precious children are off-task. Many of these adults line up their laptop computers at the same kitchen table with their children to perform work tasks for their new work-at-home jobs.

We need homes and schools to feature an entrance sign of a Norman Rockwell mosaic that hangs in the United Nations in New York. Entitled Golden Rule, the mosaic features 65 adults and children representing different religions, races and cultures with these words imprinted: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is not just the business of the UN, but also of homes, schools and workplaces everywhere.

We have not yet whipped the COVID-19 virus. The Golden Rule can help out.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

14. Did the adults in your childhood attempt to “teach” you by hitting you?

15. What are key lessons you hold onto from your childhood days?

Watching the coverage over the weekend of the U.S. 20-year anniversary of 9-11 brought up a tsunami of emotion for me. First there was sadness—sorrow—for all those innocent lives cut short on a single Tuesday morning when people were beginning their workday or in flight to an unfulfilled destination. Also, I experienced awe and admiration for the brave first responders who trudged through chaos in futile attempts to save others (or themselves). I flashed on a phrase which is attributed to a Taoist sage, Chuang Tzu, who lived 2000+ years ago: “When you open your heart, you get life’s 10,000 sorrows, and 10,000 joys.”

Collectively, we came together as a country of open-hearted people in the early days that followed 9-11 to surround the broken families from tragedy with love and sustenance. Powerful possibilities exist when people unite for a common cause, as in the many acts of compassion in the COVID-pandemic of sharing both collective sadness and resolve.

French sociologist Émile Durkheim coined the term collective effervescence to describe a community coming together to share energetic communication and engagement in the same action: “A shared misfortune has the same effect as…a happy event. It enlivens collective feelings, which lead individuals to seek one another out and come together…feelings intensify when they are collectively affirmed. Like joy, sadness is heightened and amplified…every person is pulled along by every other.”

While Durkheim saw such communal efforts as embodying religious experience, there are many secular examples–serving meals to first responders during the pandemic, cleaning up neighbors’ debris after hurricanes and floods, as well as soccer/football fans cheering on their favorite team. When you experience collective effervescence, you have an open heart. You feel connected and have a sense of belonging.

I suspect that loneliness, or lacking belongingness, may accompany an individual with a “closed-down” heart. The common expressions of “heartless” or “hard-hearted” are used to describe one who is unsympathetic or insensitive to others’ needs. But of course, everyone alive has a beating heart. I read an interesting detail: if beating heart cells in a Petrie dish do not touch each other, they have independent beats. However, after 2-3 days, “monolayers” (a cell culture of closely packed cells) form an interconnection that beat in unison. We need more healthy heartbeats that beat together.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

12. What does an “open” heart mean to you?

13.  When are times that you close your heart to others?  

As a follow-up to my retirement survey of individuals ages 55-98, I asked participants to answer questions about how the pandemic affected their personal identity, how they spent their time, what they missed, what lessons they learned, and what unexpected gifts came from the pandemic.

I was not surprised to find that the pandemic ordeal is a time of angst for many, as I had my own challenging days, especially when friends died. One friend died of COVID-19 the same day my daughter came “down” with COVID symptoms. She had traveled by car across the country to work from my home around the winter holidays. She did not pack COVID in her Prius along with her harp. Although wearing a cloth mask, she encountered the virus by standing in a 45-minute line at my local post office when she needed international stamps for holiday cards.

Fortunately, two weeks of delivering meals to my daughter’s bedroom door kept the virus under wraps. Meanwhile, the presents remained wrapped under the tree until after Christmas. My daughter remarked that this was the first time I had “grounded” her. (What parent would “ground” a child on Christmas?) Fortunately, my daughter never lost her taste or humor.

Survey participants offered these comments:

85-year-old female (retired 23 years; “sad to no longer volunteer due to health issues”): “I think this pandemic has made me more of an introvert. I try to stay connected to friends by phone or email, but it is not the same…sometimes I felt imprisoned!”

78-year-old female (retired11 years; currently volunteers 2 hours/week): “I was tutoring an ESL group every week which I had to give up because of technology difficulties. I also lost my husband and best friend. Everything I thought I knew about myself has been changed and needs a restart…there is nothing predictable in life.”

72-year-old male (semi-retired 10 years; engaged in pro bono professional activities and writing a second edition to a previous book; volunteers “in chunks”): “…providing e-learning support and childcare for my grandchildren full-time…an all-encompassing commitment. Life is short and can be compromised in a moment.”

In spite of the pandemic, these same individuals discovered gifts: “Through our church website or YouTube, our Sunday morning services were broadcast. That was a real blessing.”  “(I was) connecting by zoom with friends across the U.S. on a regular basis–value every moment and every life!” “(Spending) intense time with one set of grandkids was a gift.”

A Chinese proverb can guide us: “Pearls don’t lie on the seashore, if you want one, you must dive for it.”   All of us might dive deep to pry open gifts or pandemic pearls when the going gets tough.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

10. How has the pandemic affected your personal identity?

11. What unexpected gifts came from the pandemic?  

Pearls have been worn by 24 of our First Ladies. Martha Washington started the tradition. Her uplifting dove-shaped pearl pin is a symbol of both peace and hope. Abigail Adams wore pink faux pearl beads. A Dolly Madison portrait shows a single strand of black pearls. More recently, Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama all kept the pearl tradition going, but it was Barbara Bush’s signature strands of faux pearls that seemed prominent every time she was photographed.

Pearl-wearing is alive and well with our first female Vice President, Kamala Harris. Pearls are a wisdom symbol for Harris’ college sorority, AKA, the first Black Greek-letter organization for women. Like Bush’s photos, the photos of Harris feature signature pearls, beginning with her college graduation picture.

Pearl-loving Barbara Bush wrote a book, Pearls of Wisdom: Little Pieces of Advice (That Go a Long Way). In opening words from her book are these precious-as-pearls words for daily life: “I can think of no better lesson to teach you than to try—and oh boy, how hard it is—to always find the good in people and not the bad.”

Her pearls-of-wisdom words are pearls of peace. When we think of others in positive ways, we experience inner peace. However, seeing the best traits or parts of another’s personality is often elusive in our culture-of-criticism today. We could use more pearls of wisdom–the phrase dates to the early 1800’s, although there are references to the preciousness of pearls in the Bible and the Quran. In Buddhism the pearl is a symbol of spiritual wealth.

Bush parleys many word gems in Pearls of Wisdom: “For heaven’s sake enjoy life. Don’t cry over things that were or things that aren’t. Enjoy what you have now to the fullest…people do not want to be around a whiner. We can always find people who are worse off, and we don’t have to look far! Help them….” 

The COVID pandemic provides us with both worse-off suffering and surprising opportunities. We have not yet grieved all of the lives lost to an invisible foe. However, this health crisis also is an opportunity for us to pull together, regardless of political party affiliation. Pearls are not worn only in red states or only in blue states. Can pearls unite us? 

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

8. Each person forms certain habits, often represented through symbolism, to live by. What symbols hold meaning for you?

9. What little pieces of advice do you give yourself on a daily basis? 

People are not only stingy with their money; they are stingy with their love. And as surprising as this may seem, people are stingy with love for themselves! While there is debate about how many days it takes for a person to make a change in behavior, physician Christiane Northrup recommends that you practice an affirmation for 21 straight days to jump-start a change. And she recommends sweet-talk: “…beloved, please change me into someone who loves myself fully.”

Your words will take a different tone but edit your words if you find you are swearing at yourself! It depends upon each person, but research on health-related changes found that it took an average of 66 days to set a new habit; some individuals needed more days! If your chosen behavior change is linked to some passion, you have a better chance for success. Also, when in the midst of a pandemic, you may find that you have new changes in how you view time.

Unfolding habitual thinking and behavior is challenging because it takes time. Remember, it takes a pearl time to fully form. You can change parts of your personality that you know you can no longer live with easily. Novelist James Baldwin observed: “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without but that we know we cannot live within.”

The pandemic has unmasked certain behaviors in us while also requiring that we physically mask up to be with other people, especially in any interior spaces. In my survey of retired and semi-retired folks about how they coped with the pandemic, there was a range of responses. Here is how one 71-year-old man (retired 7 years and currently volunteering 8 hours each week) responded to my question about how he spent time in 2020-2021: “I actually had more contact with out-of-town relatives since I started using Zoom…I learned that I can still adapt at age 71!”

Greek philosopher Aristotle is attributed with this action line-up: “All human actions have one or more of these 7 causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.” Do not leave your actions up to chance. And put a little love into your actions!

Pearls of Peace (PoP) quiz:

6. How has the pandemic affected any of your behavior changes in the past year and a half?

7. What behavior change would you like to make happen next?