Family Union

Families.... What are they? As the place where once we found insufficient support for, or outright barriers to, our childhood mining efforts, can they help us, now as adults, to dig up and polish to a gleam the 7 Childhood Treasures that enable a successful life full of purpose and joy?

Having just returned from my biannual family reunion, I believe I can answer my own question with a resounding yes! Putting on my cherished "side" hat of Anthropology (my 2nd major, paired with Child Development and a minor in Psychology), I begin with a definition. In fact, I begin with three of the many definitions of family. According to Dictionary.com, family is all of these:

1. A basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not
2. Any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins
3. All those persons considered as descendants of a common progenitor

Observation of the ethnology at our family reunion made visible the intricacies of all three.
 

Waking from Nightmares

I jerk out of sleep as if from a dream of falling. My heart is pounding faster than seems possible, an automatic machine gun inside my chest. I cross my palms over my heart and feel it pulsing against my ribcage.

Night after night, I have been waking this way, stuttering also the sleep of my cat companion, Caramel Sundae Bear. He speaks his annoyance, shifts and re-settles, grumbling, and then blesses me with the forgiveness of his steady, rhythmic purr. My heart slows….

Why? Why am I waking, in every night’s most wee hour, as if from a nightmare? The question becomes a prayer and is instantly answered. The still, small voice tells me that I know this midnight manifestation for what it is:  the physical echo of an emotional allegory that is currently stomping around my life. I am not waking from a literal nightmare each night but, metaphorically, in the light of day, I’m waking from a nightmare that I’ve been dreaming for decades.

Today I Met a Miracle

Today I met a miracle...and it was me.



When I present the 7 Childhood Treasures, I often speak about a freedom that is our birthright, the freedom that young children demonstrate in spontaneous, completely-in-the-moment expressions of who they are. Young children, in their natural state, are never inhibited by regret for the past or fear of the future. They live in the Now of their own greatness.
  
Not sure what that looks like? There's a video that circulates now and then on Facebook...maybe you've seen it? A girl of about 4 is standing on the bathroom vanity

counter, her long, blond, corkscrew curls bouncing as she half-talks, half-sings to herself in the mirror. Her little spur-of-the-moment ditty simply catalogues the many ways she likes her life. She begins:  "I can do anything good...." and continues, "I like my hair. I like my pajamas. I like my cousins. I like my brother. I like my mom. I LIKE MY WHOLE HOUSE!" She wraps it up by going back to her opener as she climbs down to the floor, "I can do anything! I can do anything good!"
 

Family Baggage...Unpacked

Wow! It's been a busy month and a half!! I've been offering a series of 7 Childhood Treasures workshops in St. Louis...and my family convened for a big celebration of Mom's 90th birthday.

Have you ever noticed that, when you're with your birth family, the adult costumes everyone walks around in most of the time seem to shift their seams and zippers in revealing ways? But it's not body parts that emerge; rather, it's our former child selves. The sibling alliances and rivalries, the pecking

orders, the secrets we keep.... All these immodest private parts begin to poke through openings we thought were sealed. Your past is no longer contained inside the carefully sewn exterior self you tend and mend, day by day, in the adult world in which you now move.

Yes, there's nothing like a family gathering to suddenly make you realize three things:

1. Your baggage is gaping wide open, with its tumbled contents on display.
2. Most of those contents have, in fact, already been pulled out and draped all over your frame by well-meaning family members who are more comfortable with this familiar version of you.
3. All that costuming conceals not one of the vulnerabilities you most want to hide.

Sigh. Ain't that just the pits?

A New Alternative to Fear

You’ve all heard, no doubt, what happens to us humans when our survival response is triggered. Yes? The most-often-repeated version is “fight or flight.” Psychologists like me, along with many others outside that field, know there is a third instinct in the face of fear:  freeze. Fight the perceived attacker, run away, or become immobile, incapable of response, shut down. (See the lizard named Beans in the movie Rango for a classic example.) Those are the three options available when, in the face of perceived threat, the most primitive, reactive part of the brain takes the steering wheel on this ride we call life. Some of us have a strong "preference" for one; others of us make use of any of the three, depending on the situation.

I’ve become convinced that there is another alternative, one that blends the 7 Childhood Treasures of Trust and Independence. But before I tell you what it is, a word about the perceived threat or attacker. Before I can climb up from the depths of my reptile brain’s forced three-way choice, first I have to adjust to accept one hard fact. That is:  whatever drives me out of my huge and hugely logical neo-cortex, and into the gut-instinct to become invisible, flee, or defend…well, it may not be an actual threat or an actual attacker at all.

I’ve written of this uncomfortable truth before…that your reality is unique to you. Your belief that some person or situation is a threat to your safety is just that—a belief. It often derives, not from an actual circumstance of danger in front of you, but from a subconscious tour taken by your experience of that circumstance. Your incoming sensory perceptions—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures—register a little snapshot of events in front of you. That multi-sensory image then takes a little stroll through a few filters in your neural network, created by early childhood experiences

The Truth about Bullying

The truth about bullying is that every child who bullies has been taught to do so, by parents or other close adult caregivers, in lessons later reinforced by other children and other adults.

There. I said it.

I recognize that this point of view is <wry smile> potentially controversial.

If you are a parent, grandparent, early childhood teacher, or other adult with significant influence on the lives of one or more children, you may not like reading these words. Does it help to know that I don’t count myself out of that group of adult caregivers who has taught children to be bullies? Does it help if I say that I am in recovery from bullying children? 

You also may not like my explanation of how we teach children to bully,
 should you choose to read on. Consider yourself forewarned! I hope you do read on, and also decide to transform some of your interactions with the children in your life, through mining your own 7 Childhood Treasures. Since I saw how I was perpetuating this generational and culturally-supported teaching of “Bullying 101” lessons, I have strived for that transformation in my own interactions—not only with children, but with adults, too. I set about the work of mining my Treasures at the age of 30, though I didn't have this language for sharing my success with others until about 12 years ago. Every day, I recover by digging and digging, collecting clunky chunks of rough stone, cutting away the matrix and breaking them in just the right way to show their crystalline structure of facets, and polishing to a sparkling gleam my 7 Childhood Treasures.

 

I’m a work in progress. Waking up to my own behavior also birthed my understanding of my life mission to change how we treat children in America.

You should know that I start from this premise:  Children are born innocent and pure. No typical child—leaving aside those born with specific neuro-chemical malfunctions—comes into this world with hate in her heart, with racism in his mind, with her core motivation a desire to hurt others. Newborns do not open their eyes and take their first look at this bright, shiny world through a lens of judgment. And yet these children sometimes—more often than we’d like—grow up to be full of hatred, judgment, racism and other isms. Too many seem to act as if hurting others is a core motivation. Why? How are innocents so transformed, within just a handful of the years allotted for their lives?

The Greater Good

A central plank in my spiritual philosophy platform is that everything is always unfolding for my greater good. I recognize that this must be so, because the Divine Being of my understanding operates solely as a positive Creator. For me, God is an evolver of potential that always offers me—and everyone—the next step to achieve a life that is positive and creative. As the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient creative power in the universe, how could it be anything else?

This morning I realized that this core belief is strengthening my Childhood Treasure of Trust. As the very first of the 7 Childhood Treasures, Trust is designed to be unearthed from our internal mine of potential before we are one year of age. Before we can talk, or walk, or understand more than a few words of our native tongue, we begin to acquire the asset of Trust…or we don’t. If we didn’t, then it behooves us to give our adult-selves a second chance to dig for, extract, and polish this gem of human understanding so crucial to healthy relationships.

The connection between belief in a supportive, positive, Universal Power that is always moving me toward my greater good, and the Treasure of Trust…well, it is so obvious, I’m surprised for a moment that I haven’t seen it until now. The infant’s first Treasure is mined and polished in a world in which her basic needs are met. Period. It’s that simple. When he expresses his hunger and nourishment arrives, this little baby miner’s pickaxe strikes the seam of Trust. Physical discomfort is met with comfort—maybe the easing of distress from a dirty diaper or a pokey-sharp label inside the neck of a sleep sack—and Trust is chipped away from the base rock. Her eye contact and gurgling coo is followed by responsive, playful interaction from a caregiver and the raw ore of Trust begins to show its facets. When he is over-stimulated and tired, he is allowed to rest in quiet and peace, and the gem of Trust begins to sparkle.