Tag: family

Transition Pearls

Are you in transition? Every day is a mini-transition, but I’m asking about bigger changes, the kind rated on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. The “top” 10 events on the stress scale are death of spouse, divorce, marital separation, jail term, death of close family member, personal injury/illness, marriage, fired at work, marital reconciliation, retirement…moving is #32.  

Transitions are everywhere. Consider your breath moving constantly, from inhale to exhale. As singer/songwriter George Strait, reminds, “…life’s not the breath you take, the breathing in and out / That gets you through the day ain’t what it’s all about / You might just miss the point if you don’t slow down the pace / Life’s not the breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.”

I have experienced moments recently that take my breath away. The reaching out of many friends cools down my stress thermometer. I am moving cross-country for a fourth time. I finished college in the Midwest and moved to Boston for graduate school and career-building. The second move was a shorter hop to Philadelphia where my husband had a new job waiting. Parents by then, we each found employment that was mind-stretching. A third move back to the Midwest was both job-related for my beloved husband and closer to extended families. We found mind-bending jobs and grew a whole lot. Death-of-spouse solo, I plan a west coast move where I will be closer to where my children have settled. They need mountains and hiking; it feels healthy for me too.

We cannot know in advance the outcome of our many transitions, but we can take notice when something “moves” us and takes our breath “away.” A cook for all seasons, Ina Garten, lived in Washington DC and was a regular hostess of dinner parties. She left her government job with the White House Office of Management and Budget decades ago to buy a cheese and gourmet shop, the Barefoot Contessa on the Hamptons. She cheerfully quipped, “You figure it out along the way!” Without knowing how her maiden entrepreneurial venture would turn out, she had a bird’s-eye view. She stepped into uncharted territory one breath at a time. On a small stage, isn’t this what we all do when we wake up each morning?

After two decades of operating her specialty shop, Garten sold her business and took a year to figure out her next stage. When she slowed down her pace, Garten next became a cookbook author in the very crowded field of cookbook authors. With cookbook success, she was offered her own TV cooking show on the Food Network, receiving inclusion in the inaugural 2021 Forbes “50 Over 50” list of leaders and entrepreneurs. Her 2024 memoir has a catchy second title, Be Ready When Luck Happens.

Garten inspires me to make big changes. Who inspires you?

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

399. When is the last time that some action took your breath away?

400. What transition calls out to you?

Mend Differences through Dialogue

Egyptian Stela, Middle Kingdom, about 1870-1770 BCE

Interpretations of ancient Egyptian art are fascinating. According to the hieroglyphs on the above stela (a commemorative monument), scholars find that a son and his mother (Amenemhat and Yatu) are depicted with objects they might use in the afterlife. Along with clothing and food supplies (bread and beer), there is a cosmetic container under Yatu’s chair (a red and white container of “ointment”). One scholar refers to a blue jar under Amenemhat’s chair as eye paint (kohl); a second opinion labels this a “beer jar with a drinking straw.” Take your pick.   

Four horizontal lines of hieroglyph text offer a prayer: “A royal offering of Osiris, Lord of ‘Life of the Two Lands.’ May he give a mortuary offering of bread and beer, oxen and geese, linen, clothing, every good and pure thing whereon [the god] lives, for the ka [soul] of the guardsman Amenemhat, deceased, born of Yatu, deceased, and for the ka [soul] of his mother, his beloved, Yatu, deceased, born of Tita, deceased.”

Ever curious, I offer questions: Why is guardsman Amenemhat depicted with his mother, Yatu? What did he guard? Why is no father named in the stela story? Did the mother/son duo die at the same time? Was there a plague or war? Or was this gravestone initiated when a mother was dying and the two family members shared a final dialogue?

The definition of “dialogue” is a conversation between two or more individuals where discussion leads to resolving an issue or problem.

Too many families do not dialogue about important stuff. As psychiatrist Murray Bowen points out, “The person who runs away from his family of origin is as emotionally dependent as the one who never leaves home. They both need emotional closeness, but they are allergic to it.”

Too many countries do not dialogue about their differences and subsequently devolve into war. Are people allergic to problem-solving dialogues? Or do they lack the training to have dialogues?

It takes compassion to have a dialogue. I wrote about this in Transforming Retirement: Rewire and Grow Your Legacy: “Relating well with compassion for others takes the consciousness of the fittest. The most useful compassion description I have found is from Austrian Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He differentiated I-Thou relating, or accepting the other person as sacred, from I-It relating where people treat others more as objects useful for one’s benefit. In I-Thou relationships there is a genuine dialogue where you discuss issues with another with your whole being. Such conscious relating can remove arbitrary boundaries between individuals. If both partners in a relationship believe in I-Thou dialoguing, they stop themselves from projecting their own painful stories onto the other.”

We might use Buber’s dialogue messaging to mend differences and negotiate an end to stuff — like barbaric wars.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz 

317. When have you dialogued successfully to resolve some tricky issue?

318. When in your life has dialogue broken down so that it seemed impossible to have individuals listen to one another?                      

The Other Eclipse

Eclipse chasers traveled to find quality view spots for today’s solar eclipse. Our Sun, compared to average stars, is “young!” While this total eclipse lasts 4 minutes (plus seconds) on one day, what about young children who are eclipsed daily in their families and education?

April 6th -12th is Week of the Young Child, a National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) event, first celebrated in 1971. It is critical to acknowledge early childhood (birth-age 8) as foundational for each child’s sunny opportunities going forward. Young children lacking positive role models during their earliest years may encounter impeded progress in schooling and overall wellbeing. NAEYC shines a spotlight on quality classrooms, strong child advocacy and positive family dynamics.

With an educational focus on kids’ early years, what about all of us getting jazzed about activities for tots and tomorrow’s teens?

  • Make a dancing playlist for Music Monday. Create a new dance. Dance with joy!
  • Consider a new family dinner on Tasty Tuesday. Try new recipes with kids. Cooking is more fun with kitchen company.  
  • Work Together Wednesday has a collaborative goal for adults to contact elected leaders to express the need to invest in quality early childhood education.
  • Use creativity in art/craft activities on Artsy Thursday.
  • Plan to use #WOYC24 resources for Family Friday.(https://www.naeyc.org/events/woyc/overview)

My 30+ year book club meets today to discuss family and peer dynamics of two inner city youth who grew up in Baltimore with the same name – Wes Moore (The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates). One Wes became Governor of Maryland. Enroute to political leadership, Moore was a Rhodes Scholar, a successful entrepreneur in delivering education technology supporting college students, and an executive director of Robin Hood Foundation, a nonprofit fighting poverty in New York City. Much loved by his mother, his father died of an acute illness when Wes was only 3 years old.

The other Wes Moore also missed his father (due to alcoholism). Again, there was a loving mother, but she struggled when Pell Grant funding for her college education was not extended. This Wes was eclipsed by an older brother who became a drug dealer. Wes struggled to find an identity of his own. He made a fatal mistake of following his brother to a jewelry store robbery. Wes became incarcerated with a life sentence as his brother killed the police officer (a father of 5) who worked as a security guard at the jewelry store.

Navajo (Dine’) tradition casts the Sun as a father figure. When fathers are missing or overshadowed by their own issues, children require not just a village but a whole country traveling with them. Quality education and caretaking of our precious youth must become a nation-wide priority. How many more individuals might shine brightly if provided with a positive environment and quality education possibilities?

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

279. What family dynamics made a significant difference in your early years?

280. How might excellent educational systems become possibilities for all?