Parenting: SOCK THERAPY

My son came home late one day during his first year in high school, paced around the kitchen and started to rant. 

“The Principal really ticked me off! He is so unfair! “ When he sat down in a chair and toed off his shoes he saw his toe poking out of a hole in his sock. He first pulled the hole to cover his toe, but as his rant continued, he began picking and pulling at the hole. 

“I was trying to break up a fight (rip goes the sock) and got sent to the office (rip, riip) with the guys who were fighting (rip) and I got blamed (rip, rip, rip) and we weren’t allowed to explain (two-handed RIIIIP) and I had to apologize (rip, RIIIIIIP) and serve detention (rip, rip, rip, rip), and I’m so mad I want to break something! (RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPP)”

Gitalongs: ANGST REFINED

He came in the front door with a cheery “Hello!” looking spiffy in his business suit. His kids, wife, and I responded in kind. He set his brief case on a chair in the hall and came into the kitchen. In the space of one minute, he crossed the kitchen to his wife at the stove, gave her a noisy kiss, raised the cover on a simmering pot (“Ummm that smells wonderful!”), crossed the kitchen again to kiss me, said “Stay for supper. Be back soon,” and went upstairs.

When he came down 20 minutes later, he was dressed in casuals. We called the kids to dinner and had random conversation with them about the kids’ day at school and my friend's and my work in our gardens. After dinner, the kids were excused to do their homework. My friend said, “Abby and I were talking about all of us taking a trip to the Eastern Shore tomorrow.”

Oh, I'm sorry,” came his response, “but we have other commitments.”

“We do?” she asked, puzzled.

Bread Crumbs: GRIEVING THE LIVING

Christmas, a season that emphasizes family gatherings, may be especially difficult for those who are grieving the living.

My friend, a spiritually grounded apostate, got a letter from her born-again daughter disowning their relationship and forbidding my friend any contact with her or her family of two beloved teenaged grandchildren and her son-in-law.

Another friend lost her son to drugs and yet another grieves loss of contact with highly successful children who have moved far away, make no effort to stay in touch, and chat only briefly when she calls them.

A couple I’ve known since we started raising our kids together nurtures their two adult sons who are marginally making it because of mental health issues.

I myself grieved the end of a marriage – the triple loss of a parenting partner, a once friendly and intimate relationship, and a social role. As in my first friend’s case, divorcees too may lose beloved family members and friends - people who “don’t want to take sides” or don’t know how to handle a “third wheel” in their social scene.

Gitalongs: SELFISH ALTRUISM

When my father informed me that altruism was actually selfish, I was horrified!  He maintained that the only reason we do nice things for others is out of duty or to make ourselves feel good. It took me years to admit that, indeed, when I am intuitively and spontaneously pleasant and generous it’s because I like being that way. It makes me feel better to be that way. It makes me happy to see other people happy. My life is easier, more pleasant.

Is this realism or cynicism? I reluctantly concede that perhaps Dad had a point. Maybe the closest we can come to the total altruism of giving up our life for another -  as on a cross or the Titanic, or in military combat - is Enlightened Self-Interest? Are we only doing good to do well?

Da Kine Stories: HAWAIIAN METAMORPHOSIS

During the 16 years I lived and worked in Hawai’i during the 1990s, I observed many of my Hawaiian friends, acquaintances, and people I met in recurrent meetings and activist gatherings as they were going through what I came to see as a personal, social, cultural and political metamorphosis. This painful process is a response to the renaissance of Hawaiian culture that sprouted in the 1960s and has been growing and flowering ever since. Hawaiians I have known seemed to move from their culturally innate aloha through hurt and rage to a mature life-choice to live aloha. That choice is the most important step they make in reclaiming Hawaiian culture and the most difficult.

What is amazingly sad is that, to this day, most of the world is still ignorant of the history of the Hawaiian Islands, the suffering of generations of Hawaiians, and their exemplary response to injustice. This is true in spite of the fact that people from all over the world enjoy Hawaiian vacations and come to live permanently in the Aloha State. I submit that even the following very inadequate thumbnail sketch is preferable to perpetuating that ignorance.

Gitalongs: THE FIVE GIFTS OF THANK YOU

1. I notice that you did or said something that pleased me and that brings me joy.  
2  I say “thank you” to you and that gives your kindness our shared recognition.  
3. You receive a portion of my joy. 
4. You experience the personal pleasure of having your gesture recognized.  
5. We share together a happy interaction that adds to the balance of positive human energy available at that moment on the planet and in the universe.

Every expression of the “gratitude attitude” is a step toward world peace and mends a hole in the universal energy field. Saying "thank you"gives five gifts to the universe and, according to the ideals of all faiths, makes the gods of all peoples happy.

The Five Gifts of Thank You by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com

Crusty Sayings: PEANUT BRITTLE

With apologies to whomever may have said this before the source cited:
 
Families are like peanut brittle; it takes a whole lot of sugar to hold all those nuts together.      Virginia A.Tracy

Crusty Sayings collected by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use or to correct a source contact randmxcentric@gmail.com

Gitalongs: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR WAKE

If your words, silence, action, or inaction purposely or inadvertently interfere with or hurt another, it is up to you to restore equilibrium as sincerely and quickly as possible, immediately taking the time required to do so – a quick apology for a bump, a full scale pick-up-dust-off for a knock-down. Defense and denial are wastes of time and pervert human interaction and harmony.

You are Responsible for Your Wake by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For Permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com

Gitalongs: THE WANTS/NEEDS GAME

We become adults when we finally get it that, once we pubesce, there is no one on the planet whose job it is to meet our “emotional needs” except ourselves. In the first place, there are no such things as emotional “needs”--- “wants”  a-plenty, but no needs. A need is something we cannot remain alive without. The needs list is short: food, water, shelter from prolonged exposure to hostile elements, and sufficient warmth to maintain functional body temperature. We can live without any emotional interactions at all - as hermits and recluses demonstrate - and still enjoy emotions. The only emotion we actually need in order to survive is fear which, in appropriate doses, warns us of real or imagined danger.

It’s okay to have emotional wants. Emotional experience enriches our lives. And it’s okay to ask for help from a friend if we're feeling stymied, lonely, or vulnerable, and want to connect on some emotional level. But when we try to control (expect, demand, and/or manipulate) others to meet our wants by insisting that our wants are needs we are being dishonest and childish - refusing, or somehow unable, to grow up. That is a recipe for frustration because, aside from the protective/instructive aspects of raising kids safely,  the only person one is entitled to control is oneself.  And that effort is challenge enough!

The Wants/Needs Game by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com

Gitalongs: THE SIX PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS

Let's use use your hand, palm up, to explain the six survival emotions of our primitive brain.


Let your palm represent LOVE –- acceptance, attraction, protectiveness, nurture are a few manifestations of love:
Let your pinkie represent JOY –- confidence, peace, happiness, contentment are manifestations of joy; 
Let your ring finger represent GRIEF –- sadness, loss, emptiness, heartfelt angst, vulnerability;
Let your middle finger represent PAIN –- physical and/or emotional discomfort, feeling vulnerable;
Let your pointer represent FEAR –-  uncertainty, lack of control, vulnerability, fight or flight;
And let your thumb represent ANGER –- hot rage or cold fury, a protective/defensive response to Grief, Pain, or Fear.

Now make a hard fist.