Child’s Play

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Laughter is echoing up the stairwells in my home.  Four little cousins are banging around plastic pots and pans in the play kitchen that was a Christmas gift. Intermittently one child bounds up the stairs to ask me what I want to eat and when I try to order elaborate meals, perhaps eggplant parmesan or tiramisu, they bang their toys around until they create it with plastic food pieces or crayon drawings. One of them borrows my iPad to figure out what tiramisu looks like. Pretend food laced with laughter is often the best meal.

When these cousins, my grandchildren, are together they fill the air with their chatter and giggles. A decade ago, I heard a monk sing in a domed chapel in Pisa, Italy. As his notes filled the space, the dome captured and echoed them. It seemed like one voice had become many. The moment was powerful, but it was no more powerful than this moment. Now. As I hear these children’s voices, I tear up. One of my grandchildren rarely speaks.

After months of the pandemic’s social isolation, Annie returned to school, and we were surprised to learn she suffers from selective mutism. This is a form of social anxiety that affects talking. Annie has lost her voice at school with her classmates and in public with strangers.  It hurts to see her to see her struggle when a waitress tries to force her to answer, “What do you want to eat?”  She looks down. Humiliated. I have learned she is not unique.

Since the start of COVID-19, the World Health Organization reports we have seen a dramatic 25% increase in the number of people, especially women and children, who are suffering from anxiety and depression. One in every 140 children now struggle with my granddaughter’s condition. One high school teacher told me three support groups have been created at her school to allow kids who are struggling with anxiety to regain social skills that were lost.  In trying to save our children, we were blindsided by social isolation. The good news is that most of them will overcome it. Treatment and love make a huge difference. Annie has those, and she has the joy of younger cousins who idolize her and always seek her out to play.

Last week her cousin Hope had her birthday, and I asked her what she wanted. The answer was simple. “I want to go skating with my cousins!”  That is how I ended up at a skating rink for the first time in decades. About a dozen friends and relatives came together to celebrate Hope. Once there the kids donned skates that flashed and glowed in neon oranges and purples. Some skated swiftly and others wobbled their way around the rink to the sounds of Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson. They laughed, fell, got up and tried again. In the end we sang Happy Birthday. Then we were anxious to get back to the house to celebrate with Annie.

Of course, the best part of the party was the cousins chasing each other around the yard.

As Hope opened her presents, the cousins agreed that face-painting would be great fun. It was. Little Lilly painted my face with a blue Dali-styled moustache and beard.  But when Lilly turned her paint brush lose on Aunt Allie, she created a face mask of blues, oranges, and greens that could compete with any Picasso design.

But our real artist is Annie, and she was the star.  She painted Hope as a leopard and her brother as a tiger. And the two paraded around the party like high-style celebrities.

In recent weeks I have heard many hard stories in my classes and felt the weight of them. Annie’s story is only one.  As I watched her paint, and as I have observed her play with her cousins, I feel her goodness and her strength. I believe in her. And through the four cousins, I have learned to honor fun, laughter, and creativity. These are all part of a child’s play, and they have the power to lift us up and make this hard life a beautiful journey. So today I wish you the joy of child’s play.

I Am Becoming

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When characters have flaws, they intrigue us. Voldemort? Holden Caulfield? Amy Dunne? Jay Gatsby? They certainly had flaws! In the past few days, I have been caught up in the life of Jules Jessup, an eccentric artist and main character in Clare Pooley’s best-selling book, The Authenticity Project.  At 79-years-old Jules believes people are not honest with one another. He writes his truth in a plain green journal and leaves it in local café, where the owner Monica finds it and writes her truth. (She wants a baby, not a career.) Over time other characters encounter the journal and share their deeper truths.

Eventually these writers begin to connect at Monica’s Café.  As the story unfolds, readers discover that the aging Jules Jessup exaggerates, constantly claiming he has hung out with the rich and famous from Ralph Lauren to Princess Margaret. The reader forgives this eccentric and flawed character because he is lonely, entertaining, and seemingly good-at-heart. Slowly we realize how many untruths, the man who created “the authenticity project,” is telling.  Jules claims to be 79, but he is really 85. He has been grieving the cancer death of his wife for fifteen years—but her story is not at all what he claims!  Maybe because he is old, the reader can forgive him for such stretches of the truth.  He may suffer from dementia or perhaps, like all of us, he simply integrates these untruths, or what scientists call confabulations into his life. These untruths lock onto his brain and help him make sense of his world. And yes, neuroscience shows us how this works.

Neuroscience and psychology teach us that we have an inner voice that speaks to us constantly. Psychologist Ethan Kross calls this buzz in our head “chatter.” In our lives, and in the stories we tell and write, our inner voice can lead us badly astray. It certainly caused Jules Jessup trouble.  Jules’ wife left him and for good reasons, but Jules could not live with that truth. It was too painful. To deal with it, his mind created the cancer story because it comforted him, and it allowed him to grieve his wife while garnering sympathy from others. Eventually he came to fully believe this story.

Indeed, our minds can be unreliable narrators. But neuroscientists show us there are good reasons for these untruths. We have so many stories and experiences tumbling around in our heads, we struggle to keep them straight and many of the experiences don’t seem to fit.  Think about it. Most of us have retold a childhood story and had it rebuffed by a sibling or parent who shared the same experience, but when they recount it, the tale sounds like it happened on another planet. As we tell and retell stories we change and misremember them.

Imagine all the stories bumping around in our heads. The interpreter in our left brains allows us to juggle these experiences and make sense of what could become chaos. This interpreter allows us to feel grounded and in control of the world as we know it—even when the going gets tough. Although that helps us iron out the confusion and survive amid all the conflict and inconsistencies of stories that bombard us daily, it also means we accept and believe untruths. We are not consciously lying; we are confabulating to make the best sense of what we know and what we can live with. According to neuroscientists, this is part of being human.

Back to Jules Jessup. I began to write about him in my journal because he reminded me that we often recreate our memories to help us cope. Sometimes we convince ourselves we are more heroic than we are—as Jules did. Or sometime we allow negative chatter to convince ourselves that we are “less” than we are, that we can’t achieve what we want. Maybe—we can’t write.  But then maybe we can!

I see this self-doubt all the time in my workshops. But, more importantly, I also see the resilience that can come of writing. I witness writers who consciously decide to reinterpret their own difficult stories. They begin to see themselves differently as they write. They choose to write themselves forward and write the way they see the world in more honest and more upbeat ways. Here are two examples from a recent class where my writers were asked to read a poem and to finish this sentence–“I am becoming . . . “ (see the writing prompt in this newsletter for more detail.)

I don’t believe it is untrue to say that writing can help us see through the pain and mistruths in our chatter and write our way home.

 

A special thank you to each of these lovely writers:

From Tanya Hanton

I am becoming the woman I longed for.

“knows she’s a survivor—

that whatever comes,

she can outlast it.

I am becoming a deep

weathered basket.”

 

I am a survivor and I have the scars to prove it. From belly button to pubis. Above my nose and on both arms and hands. I’ve had surgery after surgery and two cancer bouts. Twice my loved ones were told that it was my last day on earth. But, here I am! I have learned the hard way to be hopeful and ever grateful. I love life more fully since I no longer take it for granted. And I have learned to always say I love you often because you just don’t know.

 

From Pam Sheppard

BECOMING – THE CLAY POT

I am becoming more of the woman I once was

Becoming more of my heart, more of belonging, more of my ancestors – less of projections

more real, more alive – the clay on the potter’s wheel

Shaped and formed, flattened down, built up, wobbly but ready to be fired, – imperfections and all – becoming robust and strong.

The Tapestry of Love

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As a youngster in a small three-child household, the bathtub was the one space where you could be alone.  What did I do? I learned to sing loudly and freely when I took a bath.  And while my two brothers would snort and laugh at my singing, I developed strong vocal cords and abdominal muscles by singing louder than my brothers’ guffaws.

Romantic love songs topped my list of songs-to-sing in elementary school. My imitation of “Johnny Angel” by Shelly Fabre was so strong that I was gutsy enough to perform it one Friday (with the record) for my fifth-grade class. I was lauded as a future rock star. I am so glad there were no cell phones to capture that humiliating moment.

In junior high, my school bus driver with teeth like a wolf controlled us by playing our favorite rock station if we were quiet.  Sit down and shut up or the music will go off!! Thanks to hours spent on that school bus, I learned almost every word to love ballads of the Beach Boys and Beatles.
By college, I was humming Simon and Garfunkel and Carole King. I wore out my vinyl record of “Sounds of Silence” because I now knew that hearts could be cut open by love and that communication was tricky business.  No matter, you could depend on friends to pick you up by playing frisbee with you in the rain while singing “You’ve Got a Friend.”

It ended up that love for a friend could last. I married one. Fast forward a decade or two and we had formed a family with two boys. Often the days were a circus act with pop tarts spinning across the room, homework papers stuffed in backpacks, and essays stacked high to grade. But there was also music and magical moments that etched the love of family in my heart.  I remember alternately tickling and hugging my young sons while singing, “You are the sunshine of my life.” They still are.

By the time I was in my forties an occasional rock song would power through the fog of motherhood and work. I remember many late nights soaking in the kids tub (our only tub) with my small boom box playing yet another love song. This one was a post 9/11 treasure by Black Eyed Peas. It asked, “Where Is the Love?

What’s wrong with the world, mama?
People livin’ like they ain’t got no mamas . . .
Whatever happened to the values of humanity?
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality?
Instead of spreading love we’re spreading animosity

Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity . . .

Where is the love?
Where is the love?
Where is the love?
Where is the love?

I played this so many times, I remember my poor husband tapping on the bathroom door to ask if I was okay. Of course, I was more than okay. I was jubilant whenever my soul touched the power of agape. This song was a call to action for all of us to bring love back into the cracks and messes we have created on this planet. A genuine call to love humankind. To practice a universal love.

Love songs. Love poems. I am still a sucker for them. They teach us the many kinds of love that can weave us together in a beautiful tapestry. A tapestry of love. In this month I am going to celebrate all forms of love and work to bring them more fully into my life. I wish the same for you.

 

The Gift of a Poem

Let me begin my celebration by sharing a poem with you. Last year, you might remember, two young friends of mine were married in Cabo at the height of a COVID surge, and I could not go. Later we had a small celebration, and I discovered Drew’s wedding poem. His gift for his new bride, Kate.  Imagine Drew’s deep voice reciting this for his love. His words float through the room with a gentle-rap cadence. I still tear-up with the memory.

Kate and Drew on their wedding day last year.

What is love? 

By Drew Castle

 

Love is beyond one meaning.

Love is seeing and believing.

Love is the tapestry in which we experience being.

Love is the reason you are free to choose who you want to be even if others don’t agree

Love is a social apparatus. Beyond race, religion, political stance, class or status

Loving is not judging what others do, but finding compassion and understanding that they too are part of you

Love is the reason that you care. You fly to Cabo, pull up a chair and support two individuals become a pair

Love is the opportunity for another trip around the sun. Traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to witness that pair become one

Love is knowing you’re never alone even if your son or daughter is grown and no longer home. Love is staying up late for that call from a different time zone

Love is providing a safe space no matter how hard so that a young star is free to discover who they are.

Love is deciding to be with whom you chose to be unconditionally, without a judgmental society

Love is in the loss, it’s in a conflict with a boss. In the shadows and in the moss, staying true to yourself at all cost, it’s a sacrifice upon a cross.

Love is losing it all and feeling small until you again begin to crawl and eventually stand tall and realize it was within you all along.

Love is breaking down all the walls, feeling raw and listening to the calls, love is a universal law inviting you to make withdraws

Love is another round trip to see those that live is a different zip for the countless years of friendship

Love is far and love is near. It’s a hot summer day and tossing your bro an ice cold beer. Here here!

Love is in the waves on a cliff up in a cave, a fresh set of TaylorMade blades. 300+ yards down the middle of a narrow fairway.

Love is a choice, giving power to your voice breaking bread with thy neighbors raising a glass as we rejoice

Love is never late it’s always in its place waiting for you to take a break, it’s the icing on the cake, learning from our mistakes, replacing fear with humble fate. Holy Spirit activate

So you see, love for me, comes in many forms and many things. What this realization brings is the freedom to grow some wings. You are free you are free you are free

Love is now what we do, it is simply who and what we are, it is an art. A vibration, an expression from which we are a part, this is why we feel it in so deeply within our heart

I love you all with all my might and I ask you this tonight. What’s does love for you look like? Mine is stunningly dressed in white.