GRIEF AND RELIEF

RELIEF - Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow, too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief? ~ William Blake

My mother called me, incensed. She’d just found the receipt from her doctor’s visit a week before. Uh oh. How did I let that fall into her hands?
“Do you know what that doctor wrote down?” she demanded.


Yes, I did know. I had taken her in for an opinion on her increasing forgetfulness.


“Dementia!” she sputtered. “How could he say that?”


I summoned my reassuring reasonable self. “Mom, remember we went in to talk to him about your memory?”


“We did?”


“Yes. We discussed it,” I said. “That’s just medical language for that conversation.”


“Well, what did he say?” she wanted to know.


“That your memory isn’t what it used to be,” I said, “But we knew that.”


She chuckled, “I guess.”


She didn’t ask the next question and I didn’t answer it. Where would this lead us, and when?


Like many others, just you reach the point when your kids are launching their own lives, and you think that your life is about to become your own again, your parent begins to need you in a whole new way. As she teetered on the precipice of neediness and debilitation, you realize that it threatens to take you down too. Your narrative changes. The one about the largely joyful journey toward your kids’ independence is replaced by the one about the descent into your parent’s encroaching and eventually total dependence.


The best thing to say about this experience is that it gives you the smallest peek into what she must be going through. The worst thing is that it won’t go away until she dies. The dance between grief and relief has begun.


At first, I deny. I explain away the crumpled fenders, forgotten appointments, inability to work the remote control. I tease her, “Good thing your head is attached or you’d lose it, huh Mom,” when I really want to scream, “We talked about this two hours ago – how on earth could you forget?”


After the totaled car, the terrified call that a hallucination of a boy is in the corner, the forgotten pan on the stove that led to the condo building being evacuated, I couldn’t deny anymore.


That’s when the first unexpected wave of relief arrived. Once I used my energy to face reality instead of run from it, I gave up my dreams of someday getting to say, “Yep, she’s 94 and sharp as a tack.” Instead it became, “Well, she’s 79 and her memory is a problem, but she still knows me, so that’s something.”


I developed a plan. I scheduled appointments for us to visit assisted living facilities which she forgot to get dressed for and then declined to attend. I went alone and chose the one that had daily current events discussions over the one that had residents paste construction paper into mosaics.


Then I tried to scale the mountain of her resistance, “I’m perfectly fine. I don’t see why I can’t just stay in my condo.” I got nowhere. Then she fell again and the doctor forbid her to return home without 24 hour supervision. Reality trumps desire.


I picked the nicest corner room overlooking a pond, and moved her in, staying over the first night to ease any confusion. When I walked out the next morning into a gorgeous fall day, I realized that from now on there would be people looking over her all day and all night. This day that I had dreaded for so long brought another surprising wave of relief.


Weeks later, after I had cleared out her condo and put it on the market, I drove her over there, wondering if the sting of her forced departure had been soothed by her new safe surroundings. She looked at the building without recognition. She wasn’t pining for her old independent life because she couldn’t remember it. More relief.


As her awareness of her plight faded, other ties with her past and expectations for the future fell away, and she lived more and more in the moment. We regularly perused the scrapbook my daughter made for her. One day, she no longer recognized the picture of Bob, the love of her life who died when they were 34.


“Who’s this?” she asked.


“That’s Bob, your husband, my father,” I said.


“Really,” she said. She took a closer look, bewildered. How could you forget your own husband?


Rather than continue my campaign to get her to remember, I could let each visit focus on right now – how the sunlight looked on the trees in the courtyard, how the breeze stirred them. By now, she was in the memory unit of a nursing home, which became a godsend. A multi-cultural team of caregivers somehow managed to see through the fog of her dementia and find the bright, funny, kind person she had always been. Thanks to them, there was lots of laughter still to come. Who knew to expect that?


As she lost language, we no longer struggled to get ideas across to each other but settled for sharing the moment. Every couple of weeks the hospice social worker left me a message like this: “We had a wonderful visit today. I held her hand and we listened to music. She watched me with those beautiful green eyes and I felt that she was really with me.”


I learned to do that myself and be satisfied. This new way saw us through to the end. My daughter and I were present, my son on the phone. We had music, and the hospice nurse whispered a message into her ear. “Go Jessie, and dance with Bob.”


Surprised, I found myself smiling. What a thought. We held her hands and soon she did, peacefully.


Almost right away, I began to regain memories of happier times and had an easy time recalling her backbone, her independent streak, how we’d collapse in laughter at the same oddball occurrences. It was as if I could finally detach from her ten-year decline and reclaim the whole of her. Again, the dreaded worst happened and comfort appeared. If only I’d known that from the start.


CBH 06/10

DANGEROUS ROMANCE

NARROW ESCAPES - Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable. They go together. ~ Earl Nightingale

Have you ever been seduced by a house, or in the case of this tale, a townhouse? When I fell in love with it, it didn’t even exist. It’s the way a lot of romances begin, with a vision of something that isn’t really there.

It was shingle-style, with stone foundation and two porches, one screened in. It was roomy for a townhouse, meaning I wouldn’t have had to get rid of any of my lifetime accumulation of furniture I’m apparently not done with yet. The English basement even had room for the pool table and the juke box.

The sales team had it conjured on a full-wall video mural depicting the full sweep of the new neighborhood, to be constructed on the site of a recently leveled downtrodden apartment development. The sales office stood on an adjacent property, accessible via a circuitous route involving three left turns.

As sales teams should be, this group was bursting with predictions - the units would be snapped up in a flash, several people had already put down deposits, the building would commence in accordance with the speed of the closings. It would start with the first row of townhouses and the first condo building, close to the elegant entrance, so new residents would not have to drive through a construction zone while the rest were completed. The landscaping would be done right away, not to worry.

I went home clutching gorgeous brochures and memories of the quality cabinet and hardware options. I could just imagine the sunlight streaming in through the bay window in the breakfast area. It reminded me of the house in the movie with Diane Keaton I can never remember the name of where Jack Nicholson recovers from a heart attack or something at her fantastic seaside house. (Remember? He is dating her nubile young daughter which pretty much turns your stomach so imagine how the Diane Keaton character must have felt, but came around to falling in love with her [Diane] instead.) Something’s Gotta Give, that’s it.

See? That’s where the fantasy took over. I floated through the next few days, researching the developer, visiting their other properties, imagining the cleansing process of a move for the first time in 15 years, and dreaming of my new life with no landscaping bills.

My husband sobered up first - why would we want to live in a construction site? The floor plan was awkward and the entryway a disaster - come in the front door and three feet later you have to climb up or down to get to the living space. How would his dad in his wheelchair ever visit?

Oh, good point. Is there room for an elevator, we asked the bright sales lady. Well yes, she stammered, if you give up a chunk of the kitchen, and a bedroom, and the bar in the basement.

Hmm. The dream started to fade. Also influential, the consideration of whether to commit before selling our current house, which wasn’t hard to decide since we’d once owned two houses for a spell and swore to learn from our mistake. The brakes engaged. We told them no the next time they called, crushing their dreams, and mine.

I used to drive by sometimes, watching the project begin. True to their word, they started with the two buildings they’d promised, and the gate looked great. The recession was starting to show itself though and I noticed that the newspaper ads that used to feature snob appeal of living in the village, now took on a budget tinge - townhouses for only $700,000, condos in the $300,000s. Wait, weren’t they vastly more expensive than that when we looked; where were those brochures?

The recession won, the salesladies are long gone, their sales office still perched above a vast empty parking lot. There is a leaning chain link fence around the whole property with No Trespassing signs every six feet. Giant puddles collect in the unpaved streets. Piles of building materials dot the property, stacks of concrete curbs, concrete blocks, and stones. Lengths of giant sewer pipe rest against rolling hills of dirt with new grass poking through straw. A mountain of landscaping boulders sits near the entrance. A lone trash container sits imprisoned behind the fence.

It reminds me of Pompeii, life frozen in the moment of disaster. But now life is taking over again - the grass, dozens of birds chirp crazily because it’s finally spring. A neighbor walks her dog through the one paved street that leads from the sales office to the gate. The two buildings sit, stickers on each window, paused just before happy people were to move into their new lives.

Except for the first townhouse of the four. It’s the unit we picked out - for best sunlight both morning and evening, best view of the treed neighborhood behind, in view of the community gazebo. In that unit, the stickers are off the windows, Venetian blinds and shutters are up, and the porch light is on. Two cars sit out back alongside a basketball hoop. An urn holds flowers. Someone is living in our unit, carrying on life in the middle, well really at the edge of, the stalled construction site. They have a very short ride until they are out on the street driving past the construction sign no one ever took down that promises access to the office and exciting deals 11-6 every day.

Narrow escape? Yes, except for one family who may feel foolish, or unlucky, or philosophical, depending on who and how they are. Give them credit for pulling the trigger on their new life, even if it didn’t turn out quite as they expected. A little part of me still longs for the new start, the sun in the morning and all that. It looks cozy in there in the rain, a good place to read a book. Looking too closely feels a little dangerous, like looking back at an old boyfriend and wondering, even when you know better. Thank goodness you snapped out of it, but the dream lingers, of how things might have been.

CBH 05/10

WHAT TO LEAVE BEHIND

TURNING POINTS:  The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt. ~Max Lerner

There I was, two years old, crazy about my father (I’m told, because of course I can’t remember), and he dies. Over the years in waves that come years and sometimes decades apart, I launch into projects in an effort to get to know him and figure out which parts of me are linked to him. As a child who can’t remember her parent, I am a walking advertisement for ethical wills.


Here’s what I’ve learned about him: he was a great guy, more a poet than a salesman (he worked for a book publisher), talented musician who had his own band in high school, who fell hard for my mother when they met at a Christmas party and found a way to send her roses while she visited her family in the North Carolina mountains the next week. His boss told me 50 years after his death that he might well have become president of the company and I believed him since he still had my dad’s picture on his office wall. I read the stack of condolence letters from colleagues and clients that poured in after his death, describing his intelligence and good will. I read narratives his sisters wrote about their growing up in Chicago. I memorized the photos of my early life. Since he took most of them, he rarely appears, which allows me to see through his eyes, in a way.


I can glean a good deal about him from all this, but it’s a poor substutute. If only I could hear directly from him, I’ve always thought, had something in his own hand, to me.


If only he had heard about ethical wills, an awkward name for the very thing I longed for. Instead of a regular will that hands down property and financial assets, an ethical will hands down beliefs, values, stories, and hopes, whatever is important to leave behind.


I thought I invented them myself when I was a young mother and had to leave my two children to take a three week trip to Europe with my husband. I say “had to” because even though I knew intellectually that this trip was a great opportunity – my husband was president of his service club and was being sent to the international convention – I could not bear the idea of leaving the kids. To be honest, I could not bear the idea of something happening to me and never coming back to the kids. I knew they could handle three weeks without me, but a lifetime?


To soothe my anguish, I sat down to write them a letter about all the things I needed them to know if I wasn’t around to tell them myself – about me, my hopes for their futures, about how to meet challenges, what they meant to me. I left the letter at home just in case.


Of course I came back in one piece, having had stimulating and moving experiences on the trip. I can still see the faces of the varied group that traveled to Dachau one day to take in the worst of humankind. I can hear the music in a Hungarian restaurant in Munich where we partied with another international group, and the earnest and overly optimistic declarations that our organization would eradicate polio worldwide in ten years. But the only way I could get myself to leave home and have these experiences was to leave myself behind on those pages.


It turns out I wasn’t alone in my impulse. When I eventually tripped over the work of Barry Baines, a Minneapolis-area doctor involved in end-of-life care, I learned that ethical wills had a name and a 3,000 year history. The first phrase in Barry’s book Ethical Wills is, “At turning points in our lives….” When we know we are up against a life-changing experience – when we walk down the aisle, or the baby is born – we take stock. When we learn of our coming demise as Barry’s patients do, we know that our time to share is limited. For me, faced with the imagined re-creation of my own childhood loss in the lives of my children, it became the right time to put down my thoughts and feelings on paper.


What to include? The things you believe in, experiences you have learned from, advice you can give, apologies and forgiveness, things you wish you’d known, family stories, memories you cherish, hopes for your loved ones, requests about how you hope to be remembered, and thanks you want to offer can all come up. Once you start, it writes itself.


All you need to know is who you are writing to, and why. This is not a place to settle scores or issue blame or instill guilt. This is a place to share your spirit so it can live on in your loved ones. You can write one document to everyone, or personalize a letter to each loved one.


In the old days, the ethical will would be attached to the standard will to be read after death. Now we can choose when and whether to share it while we are still here, in writing, orally, on video, your choice. It is recommended that even if you use new media, you produce a paper copy too that will live on after the technology goes obsolete.


As the walking advertisement for ethical wills and also briefly the imagined inventor, let me offer some final selling points and invite you to consider writing one yourself. In the end, values are of greater importance than valuables. Writing one takes the accidental legacy you would leave if anyone bothered to remember, say, your greatest moment, which they might not know because you never told them, and turns it into a lasting legacy.


The benefits include:

• The process may leave you knowing more about yourself and what you hold dear.
• Since we don’t sit around the fire and share stories much anymore, being too busy watching reality TV shows, it gives you a chance to direct your loved ones’ attention to more important matters.
• In case your messages to your children are often delivered as corrections or criticism, sometimes at the top of your lungs, it offers a way to share the love and concern that underlie all of that in a calm and loving voice.
• You get to say how you would like to be remembered, you control freak you.
• It serves as a refresher course in what is most important to you, so you can double-check to see if you are living your 168 hours each week in accordance.

I relaxed as soon as I wrote mine. When it needs revising, I do so, but if I got hit by the cosmic bus tomorrow, I know I’ve had my say.


For further tips, see http://www.ethicalwill.com/.


CBH 04/10

ANNIVERSARY

LEGACY:  What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. ~Pericles

Every year it creeps up on me. In late February I start feeling uneasy, not myself. I wonder if I’m coming down with something. Why can’t I sleep? It’ll probably pass, I tell myself. But anniversaries are hidden things that can seep in and seize you unaware. The light bulb goes on when my son Ben calls from Boston or D.C. or Texas or wherever he’s gotten off to and says, “Tomorrow is the day that Lauren died.” Of course.

The first time I met Lauren was in front of the library. Accustomed to awkward middle-schoolers with little to say, I was captivated by this short confident exuberant 12 year old who looked me straight in the eye, stepped forward and stuck her hand out for a shake. Introducing us was my son, also 12, and, I think, also captivated by this new friend.

I wish I could remember the next time I saw her and the next, but I do know that she became a loyal pal of my son and a participant in many of the school and social gatherings that swept the kids along from middle school into high school. We got acquainted with her parents, and our family conversation included which part Lauren got in the upcoming play or her take on Student Council. Lauren was a big presence in a small package. She was also complete and fully-realized, so herself at an age when most of her peers were riddled with self-doubt and angst. Lauren didn’t have time for any of that.

It was a normal night at our house in late winter of Ben’s freshman year. Homework was done and he was in bed early because he was coming down with something. My friend Peg called late, too late for a regular call. I asked her to repeat what she said three times because I couldn’t take it in. I didn’t want to take it in. Lauren had been in the family car, her brother driving her to play practice. He made a teenage mistake and tried to make it around the crossing gates and they were hit. Lauren was dead and he was injured. Peg said her husband had passed by the tracks soon after the accident and came home shaken, hoping no one had been in that car when it was hit. When they later got a call from a friend and learned that it was Lauren, Peg called me. She knew what good friends my son and Lauren were and wanted to save him from walking into school the next morning to face this news.

The early loss of my father had marked my life and I had so hoped my children could escape grief’s reach. As I climbed the stairs that night to wake Ben and break his life in two, I cursed the gods all over again. Of all people, why Lauren, and by extension why Ben?

Every year, once Ben calls, I go to the florist and pick out the one most vivid bloom, this year a salmon-colored rose. While the clerk adds greens and wraps it in cellophane, I surprise myself by blinking back tears. It’s been years since I did that. Lauren should be thirty this year and full of the challenge of a whole new stage of life. Like memory, grief doesn’t go away. It just lies in wait for a moment like this.

All winter they pile snow in the parking lot at the town pool. By the time March 2 comes around there is a mountain of it. I park there and walk across the street to the tree, the one where Lauren’s car came to rest. There is a permanent bouquet secured there of pretty spring flowers. All year, when I drive by I check to be sure it is still there. In the early days there were piles of flowers, which would disappear, no doubt cleared out by some civil authority, to gradually build back up soon after. Now when I see the occasional addition I smile, reminded that others remember too and feel moved to act.

I bend down to place the flower at the base of the tree and whisper to Lauren that we miss her and that Ben is fine and happy. I figure she would like to know that about her old friend. I linger a moment before I climb back over the snow bank and return to the car. My mood starts to lighten even as I think of her family who has found a way to live on, and the others who love and remember her too today. The year turns soon after, spring comes, renewing energy and hope. But it doesn’t come until we’ve remembered Lauren.

First, I loved Lauren because she loved my son. Then, as I got to know her, for being so vividly herself. And for making everyone she met feel included and important. And for making her 14 years of life just as full and complete as much longer ones. And now I love her for her legacy – to be smart and provocative and unafraid – that makes me want to be more like her every day, and to tell her story to you.

CBH 03/10

THE BREAKUP

LOVE: Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. ~Zora Neale Hurston

Here is what you say to your heart:

Broken is overdramatic and unnecessarily hurtful. You are not broken; bruised is more like it – alright, perhaps it’s a severe contusion if that pleases you more. You will discolor and feel exceedingly tender for a while; in fact, you’ll hurt in places you didn’t know you had. But no one has to perform open heart surgery to fix you, and you don’t need the paddles to shock you back to life. You’re still beating. You know how to mend yourself, with time. Either you’ve done it before, or it’s time you learned. Over your lifetime, you’ll beat 2.5 billion times. That’s what you’re here for, not to moon over this insult. I can’t get along without you, you know.

Here is what you say to the retreating back of your person of interest:

Goodbye. No pleading, no demands for explanations, no stalking of his/her future activities. From now on, that person is the person who used to be at the center of your life. Old news, out of date, no longer qualifying as the focus of your attention. You need that attention for yourself. He/she is best viewed from a distance, both geographically and emotionally.

Here is what you say to your mind:

Okay, snap to. What were you thinking, investing so much of my capital in this person? Healing up, that’s what you need to be thinking about.

To your guilt:

If you are implicated in the breakup, you need to deliver at least one clear and complete statement of regret to your ex. This must be done with compassion from the high road, and cannot be a backhanded passive-aggressive blame-filled slam at the other person designed to get you off the hook. You don’t get to transfer your guilt and anguish to them so you can walk away more comfortably. Guilt exists for a reason, to call you to be a better version of yourself. So take this opportunity. Say to your guilt: Teach me, let me have it, show me where I should have behaved differently.

If you are not the one initiating the breakup but suspect that you facilitated it by doing or failing to do things that mattered, fine, but don’t twist things around so that you place this whole thing on your shoulders. Also, do not expect and especially don’t demand an apology from your ex. That trivializes your experience, as if this pain could be eradicated by a few words from an outside person who no longer deserves any power over your feelings. This is a collaborative process between you and all your parts. No one else has a say except your steadfast and loyal friends and family. Do not attempt to short-circuit this process by going after a cheap apology. Whatever relationship your ex has with his/her guilt will play out outside of your view, and is now none of your business. You will never know the outcome, and don’t need to.

To your emotions:

Sure, you will be all over the place for a while. I know you can’t help it. But try for a little balance. At some point there will be a few glimpses of good feelings, like freedom and excitement for your new future that will begin to leak through. Usher them to the front and see what they have to say. In the meantime, lay off the sad music and don’t you dare watch An Affair to Remember more than once a week. There is some healing in all that wallowing, but you mustn’t to overdo it or you may end up in a trough. Instead, be the star of your own movie. Cultivate resilience; remember that you are strong, or if you are not, this is your big chance to become so. And cultivate hope. You have no idea what is around the corner for you.

To your body:

You ache, you don’t want to get out of bed, you can’t imagine getting off the couch, but do it anyway. About food, if you can’t eat, think of what used to be your most yummy treat, get some and jump in and then follow it up with a protein bar. If you are stuffing your face, put your fork down and go outside. Food can’t fill that gaping hole, but activity can.

Walk, run, go to the gym and work out. Let one of your exercise nut friends accompany you. Sign up for tennis lessons or go swimming. Either start some new activity or revert to something you loved before the person even came into your life. Reclaim your body from the relationship and strengthen it. Get a massage in order to get a human touch without any complications.

To your friends:

Take me surprising places, get me moving, tell me the truth about my worth and my prospects. Tell me what you wish you could give me. Tell me what I’ve forgotten about myself; tell me who I was before this relationship began. Don’t try to fix me up yet, but start a list of people you think I should meet when I’m ready. Don’t be surprised if I don’t want to use it. Right now, I don’t think I’ll want to risk going through this again very soon.

Don’t tell me to snap out of it – it doesn’t work that way. Just walk with me.

And to the special few: Can I call you in the middle of the night if I am having a really tough time? As soon as they say yes, vow never to do it. Unless you have to.

To your expectations:

Stomp out any thoughts that this will reverse itself and the relationship will come back to life. The chances are slimmer than slim and even if you gave it a try, you would soon remember why you needed to part ways. Everyone sooner or later suffers through this and now it is your turn. Stand up and take it.

Tear your ex off that pedestal you keep trying to construct. See him/her with brutally clear eyes, imperfections and all. Use this information to create a revised account of what would please you in the future. And erase any notions that exceptional good looks have anything to do with character and desirability. That comes from a primitive desire to show off your ability to snag a looker, which has nothing to do with your happiness. Remember the lesson of Charlotte in Sex and the City: a plain partner may be the one worth having. Make a list of the gorgeous people you know and compare them with your desired qualities. Bet they don’t match.

To your self-pity:

Scram. You will weaken me. I am a survivor, not a victim. If I am disillusioned, it means that I just learned that I was illusioned in the first place. If I was trusting when I should have been suspicious, if I was secure when I should have been wary, if I was naïve when I should have been cynical, well, that’s just me and I don’t plan to let this experience take away my nature. If I was true to myself, I will take credit for that and walk away with regret but without self-pity.

To your history:

If your hold over me from my upbringing and prior relationships figured into the destruction of this one, then I have to ask you to loosen your grip on me. I want to go on from here without hauling you around as baggage. I’ll unpack you and keep the best parts, but I’ll leave the junk behind. Don’t try to follow me.

To your mirror:

You look like hell. Look at those bags under your eyes and the vacant stare. But look beyond them. You’ll get through this and you’ll be wiser in the end. There are unexpected gifts waiting for you. You’ll see.

CBH 02/10

HEROES HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE

BEGINNINGS: Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep upon you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring. ~Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assasin


It is the season of change. The holidays have faded, we can see more clearly with the leaves off the trees, and the snow piles nudge us to stay home more than usual. So we end up staring in the mirror trying to reason out how to improve ourselves. Lose weight? Stand up to an oppressive relative? Finally quit smoking? Stop the affair?


With all my years as a therapist, I am a big fan of change. I’ve spent years trying to figure out why it happens when it does, and why it fails to happens when it doesn’t. But I want to push beyond the shallow New Years’ Resolutions construct that plugs the media hole between the end of the Christmas holiday and Valentine’s Day.


I once spent a year asking all the therapists I knew to tell me what they thought accounts for people’s ability to create a wanted change in their lives – in habits, attitude, behavior, lifestyle. After the usual stunned and trapped expression passed, they each gave me a completely different answer: People change when they have something to lose, or something to gain, or the pain of keeping things as is starts to exceed the pain of changing. It is readiness, or their pride is at stake. They get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Or the consequences of not changing foreshadow disaster. Perhaps they become inspired by another’s example, or have a spiritual moment that gives them hope. Or God does it. Or there’s no telling.


Aren’t these therapists, people who traffic in change and transformation, I thought, supposed to be up on this topic and ready with an answer? For that matter, shouldn’t I?


Lacking consensus and sensing the whiff of truth in each of these wide-ranging answers, I refined my question: In the change you have witnessed, what were the various ingredients that had to be present to allow it to take place? A recovering friend answered right away – honesty, openness, willingness, the backbone of the 12 step approach. A narrative therapist blurted out her answer without hesitation – an audience, she said. It was a simple as that, to her.


The rest, failing to come up with such a sure and tidy answer, turned to personal storytelling. One told me about deciding to live in the face of a delibilitating illness that had invited him to consider suicide. Another described the relationship of two professors from warring countries who initiated regular dialogues between people who previously had never even occupied the same room, which kick-started the growth of empathy and acceptance. It reminded me of what I already knew – our answers are always embedded in our stories.


There are plenty of experts who pontificate on the matter of personal change. My favorite is James O. Prochaska of the University of Rhode Island, who asked similar questions in a more scientific way and came up with some concrete answers. He started publishing his theory of change in 1977 and is still at it. Every year, I wait for the New Year’s Resolution media blitz to discover Prochaska, but so far, no soap.


Change, he says, is a process, not an event, that allows us to first recognize the need for change, get used to the idea, and finally carry it out. It is not a linear process, but a kind of spiral where we get started, backslide, catch up, and keep slogging. These are necessary loops in the process of creating longstanding change. Clinicians call them relapses, people in recovery call them research, in our mirrors we call them failures that constitute a reason to give up. Prochaska learned all of this studying people trying to stop smoking, a nut it took me years of attempts to finally crack.


Reducing his work to one paragraph isn’t adequate, but here’s a glimpse: You start with the precontemplation stage (Why should I go to that damn gym? I have better things to do), progress to contemplation (Okay okay, I am out of shape. When the weather turns I’ll probably start going.), to preparation (I’d better start that water aerobics class in three weeks), to action (I’m going twice a week. I kind of like it), finally to maintenance (I feel better than ever. I’m sticking with this). See? He’s an expert who really understands the struggle. Why doesn’t everyone know about him and his work?


This is the Get Noticed decade, after all. Whatever you hope to do – sell books, guest on Oprah!, make the celebrity news cycle, get a speaking gig at your local library – you first have to Get Noticed. This should be easier than ever before in the age of You Tube, Facebook, blogging, Tweeting and whatever is going to debut next week to make them passé. Cyberfame has made word of mouth a more powerful and accessible force than imaginable before. Any of us, in theory, now has a crack at worldwide attention. Look at Susan Boyle whose You Tube audition on Britain’s Got Talent led to her debut CD breaking U.S. sales records. I was happy to help. I must have watched the clip 20 times, and bought that CD as soon as it came out, doing my little part to help fulfill her dream.


I checked Prochaska on You Tube. There were three mentions, all of other people talking about his ideas in brief clips with a total of 252 hits, a little shy of her 100 million. He may want to recruit a media consultant to change that.


Look at other recent success stories. Elizabeth Gilbert took a trip to foreign lands to become whole again after a relationship debacle, at least purportedly. The truth: she had secured a juicy book deal before she stepped on the first plane, and the wildly successful Eat, Pray, Love resulted. Julie Powell, a young woman who was in a bit of a trough, somehow decided it would improve her life if she took a year to prepare every one of Julia Child’s classic recipes and blog about it. She was right. She sold the film rights and ended up being played by Amy Adams in the film version while Meryl Streep played Julia, assuring its success. Now, Chicago writer and yoga instructor Robyn Okrant blogged about her year-long effort to follow every bit of advice that Oprah doled out, received a book deal, and is poised to become the latest media darling.


What accounts for their success? In each case, there is unmistakable talent. Boyle belted out her song like she’d starred on Broadway. Gilbert was already a proven author, once a nominee for the National Book Award, and exceedingly skillful at crafting her narration and tone. Powell lacks Gilbert’s writing flair, relying often on bursts of profanity rather than carefully crafted prose, but came up with a concept that attached her star to a compelling and beloved character in Julia. We don’t know Robyn on Oprah very well yet, but at first glance, she seems earnest and personable, like her subject. But she also seems centered, as a yoga instructor should, and quiet, the antithesis of Oprah. That contrast should make for compelling dramatic tension as Robyn tries to live as Oprah advises. As I write this, someone is no doubt casting the movie. I think Maggie Gyllenhaal would make a great Robyn, and for Oprah, how about Sherrie Shepherd?


But there is more. In each case the woman embarked on a classic hero’s journey, or should I say heroine’s journey? Just like Odysseus trying to get back home from the Trojan War, they each pursued a quest, and suffered the trials of the resulting journey. They encountered numerous obstacles and temptations both practical and emotional, passed a series of tests, overcame their enemies, and ultimately brought home a treasure. We love Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz for their fulfillment of these requirements. Why not apply them to our own new challenges, our next beginnings?


In the hero’s journey, the protagonist is supposed to resist the call to adventure, but I’m ready, listening for the call myself, ready to set out on my next quest. I’ve already got Prochaska as a mentor and guide, even if he needs a little help in the fame department, and I have a list of possible choices. Will I finally conquer my disinterest in that gym? Go out and Get Noticed so I can send out my book proposal again and prove I have a platform to sell books? Or devote a month to writing 50,000 words on one of those five ideas I have for a novel?


I’ll soon choose one and set out, thereby conquering my enemy – distraction by all the other things fighting for my attention. What will your next challenge be? Think of it as you’re hero’s journey and I promise it will beat the heck out of any New Year’s Resolutions you came up with.


CBH 01/10

Ms. Crankypants Seizes the Season

Ms. Crankypants

For starters, let me introduce myself. I’m Ms. Crankypants, guest contributor for the month. Carolyn is busy with other things – well, to be honest, I sent her what looked like an official email that the blog was taking the month off so she didn’t have to write anything. I don’t even feel that bad about it. A girl has to make her own opportunities after all. So this is my chance to tell you what I think for once.

About the holidays for instance. I’ve had it – year after year with the shopping, the decorating, the wrapping, the baking. Well, I don’t personally actually bake, but searching the stores for the special cookies that come in the cellophane covered boxes that are like the ones my grandmother used to make takes a lot of my time.

I’m not the only one who needs a rest. Look into the eyes of your neighbor, your relatives, the shopper who just cut in line in front of you at TJ Maxx, and you’ll see not peace and good will but panic. How will she – or you- get everything done in time?

So, I’ve decided to start a movement – The Christmas Sabbatical. Here’s the concept: Every few years you get to take a pass on all the holiday preparations and simply float on top of the season without unwanted fuss and no stress. You become exempt from any expectations. You need to do nothing. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of it yourself. You have, you just haven’t had the, let us say, ova, to carry it out. Or if you have, you’ve kept it awfully quiet. But don’t worry. I’ll be happy to take the credit.

I’m starting small this year, just telling a few people like you, my target group – bright, engaged, creative people who have better things to do than fritter away their time on culturally-mandated busywork. I once saw a Martha Stewart magazine where she expected perfectly functional females to waste a day or two of their lives glue-gunning cranberries to a Styrofoam wreath. I know I’m a little bit excitable, but that one sent me around the bend. How will we ever achieve world peace – and it does look like it’s going to be up to us girls since the men have been making such a hash of it for centuries – wasting our time like that?

Next year will be the big rollout – a New York Times OpEd piece, an interview on The View (Elizabeth the conservative one will sputter in indignation), a book deal – but I get ahead of myself. Just to head off Elizabeth and my other critics, I am not suggesting giving up Christmas and what it stands for (which was what? I’ve forgotten). I just advocate the chance to take a year off from the bustle periodically and see what else shows up to fill the space.

A moment about tone. You want this to be a joyful experience that allows you unprecedented freedom and ease, not a way to bitterly weasel out of your responsibilities. I know to mention this because a certain significant other, call him Mr. Grumpy, I mentioned it to shot back, “Well, don’t do it anymore if you don’t like it.” Which completely misses the point, as usual. Just to be clear: the point is that you may usually love to do all the preparing, gifting, polishing, etc. but after a marathon lifetime of the same, deserve a break once in a while.

And here’s the beauty of it - The Sabbatical is not an all or nothing proposition. Given your personality, your budget and your other circumstances, you design it to fit your particular needs.

I have constructed a matrix, elegant in its simplicity, to lay out your options. It is based on first, whether you want your sabbatical to be complete (for those you who have been overfunctioning for years) or partial (if you just want to dial things back to an achievable level). Second, do you want it to be visible (so you can champion the idea) or invisible (so you can use it as an internal guideline to keep your own expectations in check)? Allow me to explain.

Option 1: Complete and Visible. You just resign from everything you usually do. Boldly declare that you are not participating this year and then duck because there will be a backlash. You will be called an atheist Christmas-denier. Not recommended if you have children in the house. They take everything so personally, and you may scar them for life and I don’t want to be implicated for that. I may be cranky, but I’m not a monster.

Option 2: Complete and Invisible. This requires more finesse. You totally take the year off, but don’t admit it. Always answer a question with a question, like “So where is the Christmas tree?” with “Have you seen the axe?” You might want to come down with the fake flu on Christmas Eve and get over it on the 26th and watch old movies in between.

Option 3: Partial and Visible. Admit what you are doing with pride. Choose your five favorite holiday activities and do them with gusto, then wrap yourself in the flag of nonmaterialistic values if anything else rears its head demanding to be done. Set an example for your family and friends and recruit them to participate in the big rollout next year.

Option 4: Partial and Invisible. Cut back but keep it to yourself. It will be entertaining to see if anyone even notices what you’ve dropped, and if they do, if they have the nerve to mention it. Remember to wear your new relaxation on your sleeve, so as to attract positive energy that helps everyone you come in contact with feel like they can settle down too.

Before I let you go to put this into practice, here’s a consideration of how the sabbatical concept impacts the prevailing notions about what Christmas must be:

There is the annual scolding that we must “put the Christ back in Christmas,” as if it is some sort of religious holiday. This is accompanied by he increasingly confusing squabbles over where people can put menorahs, crèches, Christmas trees, or not. My response: I’ll decide exactly what needs to be put in my own holiday, thanks, and you do the same.

And the language thing – can you say “Merry Christmas” to your atheist friends (you do have atheist friends, you know), or your Jewish neighbor or Muslim co-worker, without being an insensitive jerk? This however, requires that you prescreen any possible greetees for their religious identity so you can place them in the proper category which is potentially rude and unwelcome. My outlook: Let’s just all get over ourselves and just be glad that someone wants to greet someone else rather than blow their head off. Jeez.

Every year the Christmas card list forces you to make an accounting of your friends and associates, sadly removing the ones who are gone and scouring your year to see if you’ve made any new friends at all to add, which is a good thing if you ask me. But the Christmas letter thing, oh brother. Talk about making work for yourself. Now Ms. Crankypants likes a good story as well as the next person, but shouldn’t have to sit through a recitation of each mole that everyone in the family had removed this year. Limit it to one page and you won’t try your patience or anyone else’s. Besides, by next year, we’ll probably all be down to just a Tweet and think of all the time that’ll save.

Finally there is the problem of the proliferation of traditions that demand to be repeated year after year. Just because you flew to Trenton the last ten years on Christmas Eve doesn’t mean you have to repeat that this year. Too much accumulation of have-to’s leads to the very problem we are trying to solve – drowning in unnecessary commitments. It would be like never getting rid of your gramophone when you went to stereo, and keeping your Beta video tapes once VHS came in. Or listening to your Walkman in one ear and your iPod in the other. We’ve got to let the past go to create a manageable present. Mindfulness now, that’s what I say.

Okay, I think that’s it. Don’t tell Carolyn I was here. She tries to keep me under wraps, but she’s pretty easy to outwit. I’ll be back.

Oh yeah, happy holidays.

MCP aka CBH 12/09