Tag Archives: death and dying

You gotta be flexible

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My mother-in-law Jinny Combs taught me many things.

As one of my most formative bosses, I probably model my leadership style off of hers more than I recognize. I know that I rely on two pieces of constant Jinny advice, “Look for people with good attitudes, you can teach them everything else,” and “You gotta be flexible!”

After running a guest ranch in southwestern Montana for fifty years, Jinny could have easily written a long book on leadership, but instead she penned three cookbooks and a collection of funny stories about life at the Diamond J.

Jinny taught that you could use writing to foster flexibility. When we would lose a pet or a person, my mother-in-law would write a poem. Sometimes a haiku composed at 4 am fit the bill and in other cases, a prose poem was right. Really anytime life surprised her, Jinny took pen to paper and reframed the situation into one that had value and, most often, a whole lot of humor.

These poems were never just for her. Once the story was captured in verse, it was typed, copied and sent out to a large distribution list of friends and family.  An envelope with Jinny’s distinctive writing was a harbinger of news that although it may contains some sadness would always have us giggling.

Each piece would also end with an “ole!” Since my in laws spent their winters in Mexico that felt fitting, but this now feels like a constant call to get back on your feet and cheer that you are still here. Jinny was never one for focusing on loss or grieving, at least around us. There were guests to meet in the summer, or to correspond with off season, and more fun to be found.

Jinny read whatever I wrote loyally, including this blog. The videos were her favorite and, before she got sick last spring, they always engendered calls and emails.  It should be no surprise to me that I have been putting off composing a post after losing her last August.  I would like to chalk it up to too much work, but if I am honest, I have been avoiding the pain of writing without her reading.

But, you gotta be flexible — is not following our mentors’ advice is one of the ways that we can honor them? Jinny often said that her mother-in-law created the most brilliant sunsets. Following her tradition, maybe it’s time to believe that Jinny is out there watching in the vast worldwide web. She’s sending along her favorite emails full of animal photos and waiting for me to get back on my feet. And so, I send this far and wide, just as she would have, and end this post with a rousing, but I must admit teary “OLE!”

Humus Perfume

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At 21, I was given a gift. Calling to make plane reservation for my then-fiancé and me, I gave the ticket agent our names.

She began laughing and replied, “That’s so funny. Do you two travel together often?”

Punch line – my maiden name is Barber.

So, twenty-five years later, thanks to Northwest Airlines, I am Deidre B. Combs. The agent taught me that I clearly couldn’t hyphenate my name…that would not only be silly, but distracting. But, she also helped me realize that keeping my maiden name in my married mix would be a great symbolic gesture.

Not only, as one of four girls, was there no one to carry on my primary family name, but also, how can you take yourself too seriously when you have a last name like “Barber Combs”? The “B.” reminds me that our children could easily garner nicknames like “Scissors” and “Perm” and that I am a victim of the same game of Life that everyone else is playing. Honestly, just think about the likelihood of falling in love with someone whose name does that to yours? Like the Northwest agent, my name makes me giggle.

I adore the intricate connection between humor and humility. They come from the same root word of humus, or “earth.” Both humor and humility ground us; connect us to the planet and to each other. I find humor and sincere humility magnetizing. I like myself most when I am employing these two well; thus I wanted to keep that “B.” close at hand.

Watch in the attached TED video how really funny and humble connect.

Our son Cameron is a master in the sport of  humble humor — he’ll appropriately deny it. To prove my point, Exhibit A is a recent blog post from his travels in Brazil entitled “Bonbon Disaster.” Click here to read!

Observing my leadership students employing humility this week, I noticed that humor is usually always close by. For example, one young man on the MSU track team remarked how he is trying to make sense of why he gets scholarships for throwing hammers and weights in the air. “I can’t believe they give me money for that,” he explained with a wry smile. He had us all giggling as he thoughtfully considered the relevance of this pursuit and his future athletic goals. His humble assessment and humorous descriptions of his daily practices had us all captivated. By the end we were trying to convince him that his focus on excellence and discipline was leadership in action. He had us all cheering him on, although that didn’t appear to remotely be his intent.

Humility exposes our vulnerability, mostly to ourselves. We might think that we somehow need to have it all together, but our community usually sees through that façade. They know that we are flawed. We all were born, we are all clumsily trying to figure out how this world works, and we are all going to die. That you can’t overcome. Our community seems more interested in when we realize this truth.

Personally, I’m not as interested in following a leader who is perfect, but one who despite imperfections wants to give. Isn’t it strange, when our “ugly” bumps and bruises are exposed that others often find us at our most beautiful?

Steve Jobs — Three Tenets of Playing Well

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The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge. — Bertrand Russell

225px-Steve_JobsWhen I recently found a YouTube version of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech, I was not surprised to see the 1.5 million “hits” to date. This became one of my personal favorites when its transcript appeared in my inbox soon after its presentation. Just in case, it hasn’t landed in your email — I include it below:

I was reminded watching this speech of a quote by Bertrand Russell, a 20th century British philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. At the beginning of his autobiography, written in his 80′s, he states:

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy…With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine…Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Job and Russell remind us that love, curiosity and recognition of our mortality are great allies in playing well. When these are ignited within me, I find that I usually play at my best. First, loving what I am doing and who I am serving opens my heart. Curiosity gets my head into the game. Then remembering death and suffering are part of the human being program, centers me into my body and circumstances.

How can we engage these three passions, as Russell calls them, each day? We can pose Steve Job’s question of “If this was your last day on earth would you spend your day as it is planned?” I like to check if what I am doing both brings me joy and has substance. What daily practices assure that you are playing well as Jobs and Russell describe?

Shifting focus to overcome challenges

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With the Thriving Through Tough Times tip,  “Give to your community so you can fully recover,” I have been trying to justify it a bit backwards. With the other techniques, I noticed their appearance in many different traditions and thought, “Ah ha, a theme!” For example, surrounding yourself with a caring community is a widespread practice when tough times appear. However, with “give back to recover,” I noticed this by watching clients, effective leaders and how I was able to bounce back after difficult circumstances. As I wrote in my last post, to make my case I have been looking for standard multi-cultural practices to back up what I believe to be true…and had come up short!

 But, I’m now wondering if I had been approaching the research wrong.  Perhaps I am not finding “giving back” as a required cultural practice because helping others has to be a very personal choice. Showing back up in your community after a major loss is an individual test of courage and optimism. Jerry White of Survivors Corps and I were talking a few years ago about how perplexing it is that some people against all odds are able to recover and survive terrible circumstances while others who have all sorts of resources get knocked down and never get back up. Neither of us could point to one factor, other than a firm personal decision that the person wants to get up and involve herself in her community. It seems like a foundational spot where we all have free will.  I can’t make you get back on your feet again; you have to choose to do so.

 Tibetan Buddhism has an interesting take on how we can choose to return and how this relates to giving.  Buddhism believes that our soul comes into being and then is reincarnated potentially multiple times. During each lifetime, we are born, we learn stuff and then we physically die. Yet, after death and before rebirth, we always have a choice. If we need to learn more, we can choose when and to which family we want to be born into the next time. Also, we have reached a level of wisdom, we can elect to instead head off into nirvana or we can choose to return to earth to help others reach enlightenment.

If we don’t understand how the reincarnation process works, according to Buddhism, we aren’t aware that we have choices. Depending on our development, we may instead fearfully jump into the first body available and can land myself in a worse situation than before. However, if I understand the death/rebirth process, I can select a better existence. If I have taken the Bodhisattva vow to help others, I can then decide to be reborn in a place where I will be of most help.

 When things fall apart –we lose a great job, marriage, loved one or our health for example — we experience what Buddhists call “little deaths.” While processing the loss there is a time where I am grieving and not in the world. Tibetan Buddhist call the place between death and rebirth the bardo state (bar –“in between” and “do” – island or mark). Like in the bardo state, during tough times we often land on an “ in between island” after loss and before recovery.

 “In Between Island” living isn’t easy. Bardo states are described as potentially terrifying since there we face what most scare us. Our inner demons appear as visions or nightmares. Similarly, on our between islands we come face to face with our greatest fears. Phrases like,  “I’ll never find another job and will be out on the street,” “My husband will leave me” or “I will never heal and will die,” creep into our heads.  We feel pain while mourning and our worries create additional suffering.

 As with the Buddhist death/rebirth process, if I don’t understand that every difficult circumstance is also an opportunity to reincarnate into a better me, I might jump at the first solution I can find to try to avoid the pain.   I might choose a life where I drink heavily to run away from my suffering. Or I quickly marry so I am not alone yet land myself with an abusive spouse. 

 However, if I am aware that with difficult circumstance, I can back up for a bit and consciously choose my next step, I’m ahead of the game. In transition lays possibility and opportunity to become more authentic and expand. All major religious traditions advise in these junctures if we base our decision on how we can help others as well as ourselves, we will learn to be unafraid of death/rebirth and better play the game of life. Sounds flowery and sweet, but it actually practical when you see it applied.

 Buckminster Fuller, after losing his business and daughter to illness, found himself on the brink of suicide. In that moment, he made a choice to stay and to serve humankind. As a result, in his biography he wrote of deep joy throughout the rest of his life as he developed inventions like the geodesic dome, agricultural strategies and  the dymaxion car. In looking for solutions to serve the greater good, he was undaunted by failure and tragedy.

 I was lucky enough to interview Nadwa Sarandah and Robi Damelin when writing Worst Enemy, Best Teacher. Each had faced horrid opponents. As an Israeli Robi’s son was killed by a Palestinian sniper while in required military service and Nadwa’s Palestinian sister was stabbed to death on the West Bank while walking down a street. Both had been knocked down, but through the Parent’s Circle, an organization committed to create peace in their region by refusing to seek revenge for the loss of loved ones, they returned to life. Through their focus on helping their community, they both had found purpose and a degree of peace. Robi explained, “I can speak in front of 60,000 people without fear.”

 If we can shift our focus from our personal pain to how we can be of use, we paradoxically we will relieve our suffering.  Pick a tradition and I find this concept hidden. Hmmm, perhaps this is the daily practice for which I have been searching. 

Give back to Come Back

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For it is in giving we receive – Saint Francis of Assisi

St Francis of Assisi

St Francis of Assisi

 I know something to be true. My friend Jerry White, has built his organization, Survivor Corps, around this same fact — if you want to fully return to your life after tough times, it is critical that you give back what you have learned to a greater community.  To make it home from the journey through loss, we must find a way to help others. It moves us outside ourselves and as a lovely Moroccan colleague described, it reminds us that we are not alone in our pain.

Strangely, I have yet to find this truth explicitly stated in the world’s death and mourning rituals.  It may there and I’m missing it, or it is such a basic practice that it goes without saying. Are those who have grieved expected to be the first to support those in mourning for example? I invite you to send examples from other cultures of those after surviving loss or initiation, who are then required to support others through a similar journey.  

This truth resounds throughout leaders of the twentieth century. Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl used his experience as a prisoner in three concentration camps to help others when they were suffering throughout the rest of his life. As he described in his seminal book, He believed that it is critical that we help others to recover; that “Man’s search for meaning is a primary motivation in his life.”  

Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, once wrote, “While I lay in the hospital the thought came that there were thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might be glad to have what had been so freely given me. Perhaps I could help some of them. They in turn might work with others.

“My friend [who had helped him] had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic! For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die.” And thus, we have the final step of the AA doctrine – “12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” 

Jerry, when writing I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis, added as his fifth step, “Give Back.” After losing his leg to a landmine during a hike in Israel, Jerry worked to find a way back to stability. He described a comfortable life that includes four healthy children and a beautiful wife. But, he adds, it wasn’t until a young girl in Cambodia with one leg and crutches said, “You are one of us,” did he fully return. By accepting that he was part of the global community of those injured by landmines, Jerry looked for ways to give back what he had learned to that group. Co-founding Landmine Survivors Network, now Survivor Corps, Jerry has worked tirelessly to ban landmines worldwide and help victims to become survivors. A core principle of Survivor Corps is that once you are able to stand again, you must give back to others. Participants become volunteers and guide the way for the newly injured.  What appears selfless is actually a foundational gift for recovery. 

Once we have gone through the difficult circumstances, we are admitted to special clubs. Some belong to “children of divorce,” others “survivor of cancer,” “once bankrupt” or “recovering addicts.” Inducted, this becomes one of our communities whether it was welcomed or not. When we accept our membership, we then have the opportunity to return back to the land of the living. On our journey alone through tough times, we pick up wisdom and insight in its dark corners. By giving what we find, we must communicate and connect with the living; thus surviving and proving we were able to overcome and rise above. 

As another beautiful friend explained, “I lost two babies consecutively, the first was a still birth in the 38 week of pregnancy and the second died on the second day after giving birth. It was so hard for me to go back to life. Two of my friends gave birth at the same time, and I still see their kids growing in front of them. For a time I hated seeing babies around. I wanted to live in a place where there was no baby. I had to pretend I was okay and people believed it. Then, my aunt, who is 3 years younger than me, gave birth to her third child. The baby had a number of abnormalities and died after three weeks. I was the only person whose support was meaningful to my aunt. 

“She many times told me that she drew strength from me and that she had no reason to feel down when she had me in mind. That was a great source of healing to me as well. I felt this [tragedy] did not happen only to ME. I know it is cruel to think like this, but this is how I really got over it. I had been through a lot of strange feelings that I felt ashamed to share, but when I heard my aunt saying the same thing I stopped blaming myself and knew they were so natural. Her loss was a mirror I could see my negative feelings in. Through her experience I tolerated my annoyance at seeing babies. She had the same feelings, and she communicated them to me because she knew I would understand better than anybody else. Without she knowing it she was as great to me as she thought I was to her.”

What have you learned that might help others in similar circumstances? How have you given back to return “home”? I welcome your thoughts. 

It Takes a Year

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Six months ago turbulent financial markets gained national attention. From a journal entry I wrote last September…

 ”Every friend I have seen in town over the past days brings up the falling Dow and failing banks as a conversation topic. This was not supposed to happen. They are struck by how very smart Harvard MBAs constructed this mess and the government let it all occur. What can they trust? As I type, I wonder what the effects of this mass loss of faith in our government and the financial system will yield in the days and weeks ahead. What would this paragraph say six months from now?

Carrie explains, ‘I lived outside of San Francisco during the large earthquake of 1994. I remember friends struggling for months afterward since the ground had moved underneath their feet. Somehow it didn’t bother me since I believed it could and had prepared for an earthquake such as the one we experienced. But, now with the economy falling apart around us, I feel like the ground is unstable and I understand for the first time their panic.’

Fantasies of hording money between the mattresses filtered in as I drifted off to sleep last night. Before bed after the Dow lost nearly 1,000 points over two days, my husband Bruce sat on the couch, face lit by his black Mac Book and scanned online newspapers. He read off to me the Wall Street Journal headline ‘Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight.’  A CPA and tax lawyer, his radar is tuned to the financial markets, and I rely on the blips and beeps that appear on his screen to send off my own alarms. Although a man of understatement most of the time, I could tell even he was concerned.  While visualizing hording soup in my basement, I can hear my alarm system is screaming, ‘warning, warning…’”

Six months later, I still have periodic soup stocking fantasies depending on the week…and WSJ headlines. I wish I did not.  I’d rather consistently possess optimism and poise with a dash of clarity, but that seems beyond my reach.

Six months has a special connotation for me as a mother.  I usually got disheartened about a ½ a year into each child’s arrival. After our first son,  I remember thinking, “I should have lost all this baby fat by now,” “We should be settled into this new family configuration,” and “Why is this still so ridiculously hard?” Six months is a long time to endure chaos and confusion; by then I have used up most of my just-muscle-it-through reserves.

To survive, my logic became if our culture’s standard mourning, or better said, “adjustment” period historically was a year, then shouldn’t I give myself the same? We knocked off an old life when each new baby arrived. The metaphoric gravestones could have read:

  • Young Couple – RIP June 1989.
  • Family of Three –  B: June 1989, D: March, 1991.
  • Moving from one-on-one play (two adults to two kids) to zone defense — June 1994 (I was raised in hockey country)

For my children – if any of you have read this far –  what we got in exchange was worth more than any loss we experienced.  There was never a need to wear black, although, I do like how I look in that color. Understand that by recognizing that we were in an adjustment period culturally prescribed as a year, I relaxed and let go the need to have it all together.  As an older, wiser mother once told me, “You are not supposed to be graceful during this phase.”

Signs of six-month financial chaos exhaustion are appearing in my circles. It seems we are asking similar questions including, “Shouldn’t have this mess figured out by now?” and  “Why is this still so ridiculously hard?” Yet, we could have a memorial service for a past leader in our community, Mr. Stable Banking Industry – From 1935 To 2008.  As we adjust to our new family configuration without our dear “big brother,” I realize I need to allocate a full year. Someone wonderful may appear to fill our past protector’s position, but in the meantime, I’ve still got a six-month excuse to be less than graceful as we traverse this uncharted territory. Know that I accord you the same.

 

You Gotta Laugh

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I know of no other manner of dealing with great tasks than as play; this…is an essential pre-requisite. – Friedrich Nietzsche

 On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial stock index was the lowest in fifteen years. The banking industry continues to falter and AIG needs another $30 billion. Dare I mention that a US-backed war continues six years and counting in Iraq? Well, you gotta laugh.

No, really, you have to laugh.  From the practices of Zen Buddhism, Hopi and Zuni ritual clowning, and on to the modern philosophical writings, around the world we are taught to regard laughter and comedy as critical disciplines. When the going gets tough, find a way to crack yourself up.

In the American Southwest, the clown historically played a pivotal role in addressing tragedy. At Pueblo funerals, scantily dressed clowns in rags from the Kachina Zuni tradition would pretend to seduce the widow, make fun of the corpse and to copulate with one another with constructed and exaggerated genitalia.  This practice disgusted early anthropologists, yet when interviewed, Zuni clowns explained the highly structured and sacred nature of their work.  By bringing farce to such seriousness, they restored balance and health to their community. Through their antics, life is merged with death, the mundane with the sacred and levity with misery. The clowns held what appeared to be irreconcilable opposites and in the chaos they created, they awarded the group deeper order and peace. As Kierkegaard once said, “It is certainly unjust to the comical to regard it as the enemy of the religious.”

We need to laugh, especially when we are miserable. Laughter allows us to see our situation with greater objectivity. It cracks open fixed beliefs as comedy is based on displaying the ludicrous in what we might believe to be beyond reproach. Example, yesterday David Letterman’s Top Ten Things Overhead in New York During Today’s Snowstorm included, “#4, Al Gore can suck it!” and “”#2 No, officer, I offered her $50 to blow on my hands.” If we laugh, we must then confront the inner conflict of also regarding global warming or prostitution as deathly serious topics. By allowing ourselves to see the humor, we have to detach a bit and notice where we may be too fixated in our beliefs. Silliness breeds flexibility and creativity.

Zen Buddhists believe that enlightenment is accompanied with laughter Conrad Hyers explains in The Laughing Buddha: Zen and the Comic Spirit. Their koans, or paradoxical statements, like “hold tightly with an open hand,” are meant to frustrate, confuse, to get us to back up. I’m suspicious that the whacky phrases given to initiates to meditate upon might all be jokes in disguise. Take this koan from the 12th century Zen koan Book of Equaminity,  

Venerable Gon’yo asked Joshu, ”How is it when a person does not have a single thing?”

Joshu said, “Throw it away.”

Gon’yo said, “I say I don’t have a single thing. What could I ever throw away?” 

Joshu said, “If so, carry it around with you.”

Feels like there’s a punch line in here somewhere…

I had to research ritual clowning before my husband’s daily routine got any respect. As an estate planning and business lawyer, my spouse spends his day talking about death and taxes. Yet, somehow he is a really happy, and funny, guy. As one friend shared, “Only your husband could get me laughing about dying and picking guardians for our kids.” I think I’m figuring out one of his secrets of sanity. Each morning from my bed, I hear coffee maker gurgles and giggles in the kitchen as Bruce eats breakfast while reviewing the previous late night TV monologues from his laptop. He suggests the New York Times website, http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com if you are interested. I find something innately right about this treasure trove living on the same website that covers the news that’s been making us cry this week.

Another morning humor ritual is emigrating from India. I have included a short video clip below on Dr. Madan Kataria who in the past ten years has formed over 3000 laughter clubs across his country. Kataria and his fellow members practice “laughter yoga” each day to improve their health and well-being. 

 So, we’ve got to laugh. I leave you with a favorite mental image from a wise and funny friend David who was a clown in the Ringling Brothers circus to pay his way through college. After emergency open-heart surgery in his early forties, he found himself too quickly pulled out of bed to walk the halls by a bossy nurse. Chest aching, shaky and miserable, I will paraphrase how he explained his predicament, “There I was, exposing my backside in a flimsy hospital gown, pushing an IV stand and looking like hell. Fancy education and consulting practice were distant memories as I felt and probably looked like a 90 year old instead of 42. Life sucked at that moment. Yet, to get myself down that hall I began to hum the theme song to Bonanza, you know the one where they come riding into town…really, what else could I do?”   

Learning to Love the Mess

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Wander where there is no path. Be all that heaven gave you, but act as though you have received nothing. Be empty, that is all. — Chuang Tzu

A dear friend recently shared a series of losses that he had suffered. As he explained how a terminally ill friend had become the “final straw” in breaking his foundational beliefs about death and his own mortality, I found myself strangely excited. In case you might find me a bit twisted, I hope you’ll understand that my enthusiasm rose from a deep belief in the power of confusion. 

I wouldn’t wish such tragedy on anyone, yet we don’t seem to become wiser when all is easy and understood. Really, why should we? If I have the world figured out, I don’t have much incentive to dig deeper. It’s as though crisis creates cracks that allows wisdom’s light to seep in. I trust that as my friend earnestly wrestles with how to deal with great loss and the inevitability of death, he is going to gather insight. Selfishly, I hope he’ll share his garnered prizes with us.

It feels like our core beliefs create a sort of scaffolding or something solid to stand on over the sea of uncertainty. “I am a mother,” “I am from Minnesota,” or “I live in a democracy,” might be some of the planks that support my identity or the lookout post I have built. But, with enough time, the wood gets worn. Tough times also have a habit of ripping up carefully lain floorboards, like the globally favorite, “The financial markets are secure.”     

When my core beliefs are battered and I can’t tie reality up with a nice bow, I can feel set adrift in that sea. Questions like, “Who am I? What do I believe? What should I do next?” become hard to answer. Life, or my interpretation of it, gets messy or confusing.

I’ve come to have an innate trust in this messiness. My perspective expands when life pushes me to move into a state of not knowing. The more I become comfortable hanging out in the confusion, the more clarity I bring back. Meanwhile, we all have a fundamental desire to get back to solid ground again; I like to know who I am, or pretend to anyway, and to believe that I know how this all works!

Hanging out in messiness as mediator has helped. Usually you will have two sides at the negotiation table that have completely different versions of what occurred in a dispute. A first impulse is to want to determine who is right and who is crazy. Yet, the mediator’s job isn’t to find the real truth, but instead to hold a confusing reality that is created by assuming that the opposing stories are equal. Allowing there to be irreconcilable differences opens the possibility of a third interpretation of the situation that the parties can create together.

Without firm footing on how the world works, or who I am, I notice that I slow down and better consider each step forward. It creates a rawness or necessary vulnerability, as I wonder what else I have been missing. It wakes up my compassion as I realize that we are all madly trying to piece together how to play well with very limited information. Also, if we take a cue from all the major religions, learning to love the mess is “right work” and one of our main life tasks.  So, I get hopeful when those I love dip into confusion, and look forward to the treasures my dear friend might uncover in that chaotic space.   

It Takes a Team

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I’m not sure who came up with the favorite saying, but among three dear friends we took it to heart. I think Julie invented it, but she likes to credit Annie or me since her children are the youngest of the lot.

 In the early 1990’s I was mothering two boys under three and trying to work full time. My husband Bruce was in law school, so finances and time together were limited. I would work during the day and he would attend classes in the evenings. Crossing paths at the front door, we’d often hand a hungry, dirty-diapered baby to the one now on duty. We were thankfully young enough to power through these crazy times since on every level we were just barely “pulling it off.” I’m still amazed that Bruce graduated and I was able to start a career.

 My friends Annie and Julie were in the same boat. With seven kids and three jobs between us, we’d meet monthly at our self-fashioned book club. Somehow we adopted the mantra,  “You need people.” We used this tag line to justify getting a cleaning service to muck out our homes. It made it sort of all right that we needed childcare to sneak away a few times a year to get a manicure. What I didn’t realize at the time, “I need a team” was the underlying truth of why I not only I should buy support services, but it was why I deeply needed these friends to survive early parenthood.

Recognizing we needed help was hard to admit since we also believed that as American women we were supposed to pull off mothering and working on our own. Not long out of college in the 1980′s we each considered being successful grownups meant figuring out how to be as independent as possible. 

Living in Washington DC we were all far from family. So, to Julie and Annie I went if we needed help.  Julie and her husband appeared at 4 a.m. to watch over our eldest when the second was born. When we wanted to build a deck, Annie’s husband was found wildly digging behind our house for hours in a rainstorm. It clearly took a team to keep Bruce and I afloat even if I couldn’t fully admit it.

 Now almost twenty years later with my children about grown, our motherhood mantra keeps circling through my head.  As I research global approaches to overcoming difficult times, “It takes a team,” is the resounding wisdom. When the going gets rough, community is supposed to be at our sides.

For example, cross-culturally during times of major loss we would not be expected to grieve alone. People are expected to stop by and check on the mourners. African ritualist Malidoma Somé adds, “Dagara people don’t comprehend the idea of private grief.”  From the Jewish tradition we learn the practice of sitting shiva where friends provide constant company and support to the mourners for seven days. In the Iroquois culture, this same practice continues for eleven days. 

Even as a person dies, in many, many cultures, he or she is kept company through the last breath and is not left alone until days after. In Japan, loved ones will bathe and sleep near the corpse, speaking to their departed loved one until internment. We are to be sung to, guided and comforted through this greatest transition. 

This wisdom transcends into our everyday. In the years after writing When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner has asked thousands what got them through a life crisis. The answer to his question was a single word, “community.” 

We weren’t dealing with physical death thankfully as newly minted mothers. Yet, our old footloose and free lives were ending as we were initiated into motherhood. We needed a team, and thank goodness we adopted this truth — no matter who invented it.  

Repeat after me

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Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.  –Anthony J. D’Angelo

Eighteen women gathered last weekend for a  “Thriving through Tough Times” workshop I offered in Bozeman. Not the lightest topic, yet one that elicited lots of shared laughter from the group. Ranging in age from twenty-nine to timeless grandmas, everyone had valuable advice to contribute. When we spoke about first finding ourselves in difficult circumstances, one of group elders wryly added, “When times get tough I tell myself, ‘Things might get better (long pause)…or they might not.’”

The grounded optimism of these words summed up a workshop theme. Many of these women had overcome some very tough times. They explained how they had gathered fantastic opportunity and learning from their experiences, modeling how life can indeed improve through adversity. Yet they were realistic, when you lose a child, or your best friend at midlife, things might not get better.

The journey through personal challenges in the Buddhist tradition is sometimes referred to as a “little death.” Our current job/marriage/situation ends or “dies”, we enter into a dark time of transition, and if things get better…or not, a new career/relationship/life emerges. These little deaths are seen as valuable practice to prepare us for the big one at our physical end.

Around the world, we are counseled to be calm and focused on the path ahead whether meeting a little or big ending. Many cultures strive for a “good death,” or one that is conscious and peaceful, since they believe this will supports us getting to the best next destination possible.

Repeating phrases like Theresa of Avila’s, “All is well and all will be will,” is very common global technique to foster a good death and rebirth. We might chant prayers over and over to comfort the dying, reminding them of the life yet to come. For example, in the Catholic tradition, the prayer “Hail Mary…pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death” is repeated, while Hindus sing devotional prayers and chant Vedic mantras throughout the process.

When we face little deaths, repeating favorite sayings can both calm and ready us for the adventure ahead. Another workshop participant offered her father’s favorite motto, “Everything happens for a reason.” Explaining how these words provide her solace and courage she said,  “By repeating this phrase I accept my circumstances and I figure I better start looking for that reason.”

Mantras are like a verbal opening bow to the opponent, “Tough Times.”  When this adversary appears I like to say,

  •  “Good teacher” – Borrowing the martial arts belief that our opponents are our best instructors. This reminds me that I can learn something and become wiser (a big personal selling point!).
  • “Opportunity, lots of opportunity” – That’s my version of “Things might get better…”
  • “I get to be here” – Recalling that this might be my only opportunity — in this body anyway — to have this experience.

In the above phrases, notice I invoke attitudes of learning, hope and gratitude. Interestingly, all three of these responses are processed in our neo-cortex or the two hemispheres residing on the top of our heads. This is the portion of our brains best equipped for complex problem solving. When the neo-cortex is engaged we have access to our creativity and can consider future implications of our actions.  We play best when this brain region is in charge. I am thus suspicious that the most effective mantras engage this highest cerebral region.

So, what might be your calming phrases or sayings?