Creating adult-adult relationships with your children

I received a very late b'day card ... Reasons I'm happy you were born, it read.  The sender is one of my children.  The 10 reasons written made me weep. I often receive other cards from my other child, post cards from travel destinations, thank you notes, etc. Both of these remarkable human beings treat me as a person separate and not simply their mother. They are 29 and 33 years old.I remember thinking when they were 17 and 21 that they might be two of the most interesting and fine humans I would ever meet (of course I am biased but it was also what I truly believed about them). I also thought I did not want to be stuck forever in the role of only "their mother" and never seen as a human who had passions beyond her children.  Full disclaimer:  that is exactly how I treated my parents, as if they existed only in the role of my mom and my dad. And I didn't want that relationship with my own children. I suspect my parents wanted more with me too.  I wish I had known or paid attention.  Where was my curiosity about the two remarkable humans who loved and raised me?  It was missing.But unlike my parents, I am more demanding. I knew I wanted adult-adult relationships with my children. So when they turned 21 and 17, I began a journey to make sure that was a possibility for us. That journey was treating them like they could teach me things. Of course, I still had things to teach or share with them, but I found I was profoundly interested in the world they inhabited (in spite of my fears about it) and more importantly I was interested in them and how they were navigating said world.Fast Forward: I have ended up creating a bit of a niche in coaching Millennials mid and high level executives.  I really do love them!  AND since they (millennials in general, my children in particular) were little I always had a hunch they knew things...were plugged into something different and I wanted in on that stuff.  Today, I would say this is probably always true. I used to think it was just true about that generation. I was wrong. I find it equally true about the one coming behind them. Those kiddos in Florida from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, I would love to talk to them. I am fascinated by a young woman, Emma Gonzales, still in high school, who held an entire audience on a large stage in Washington DC for 6+ minutes in silence while she simply witnessed her own suffering and that of her peers. Who are these people? I don't know but I want to...  and I hope you do too.  What if each generation that is born, along with it's particular challenges also comes with particular gifts, well suited to help society navigate a particular part of the evolutionary journey toward wholeness?But even if this is not true, what if the secret to experiencing a sense of belonging with anyone and everyone ...is recognizing that this person/generation in front of you has an experience you don't know or maybe you can't even understand BUT you might be able to  share. You could witness his or her story.  You can tell them you "see" them. They are real. Their experience is real.And that my friends is the difference.Those of you who know me, know that I don't miss a chance to "teach" to educate. BUT I also don't miss a chance to ask a "real question". My question, is born of my own genuine curiosity. All I have to remember is to not ask it aggressively so it reads as "justify yourself" but instead reads as real curiosity. So it reads as "wonder." My name is my reminder to Wonder … To Wonder what someone else knows, thinks, feels that I can't imagine.And therein lies the difference between a life of tedium and decline and a life filled with wonder and awe. 

Thankful for Wonder and Wonders

As you know I am a Wonders.  Daughter of Robert John Wonders, Mary Skotze Wonders, niece of Helen Wonders Chandler, Marion Wonders Wollum, Louise Wonders McKinnon, Lucy Wonders Doney, Virginia Wonders Rahoi, Joseph Wonders, and Harry Wonders.  And Granddaughter of Claire Lemieux  Wonders to whom I owe my middle name and my beloved Harry Wonders.  He was only in my life for my first six years but I simply adored him and I am not sure I will ever know why.  Why does a six year old love one human to the moon and back and not others?  I do not know but I do know it isn't because her smart brain took a tally, or came to value assessment or built a spread sheet to point her in the right direction.She simply loved who she loved for reasons unknown to her.  And that is what I want to write about today:The reasons unknown.  Why do we love this one and not that one?  Why do we get triggered by this one and not that one?  But this isn't just about humans.  Look through out your day.  You have clear preferences for all kinds of things, from your favorite kind of pasta, to your preferred coffee house, (today mine is Champion on Nassau Ave in Greenpoint (Brooklyn), a block from my daughter's apartment),  your route to the grocery store, etc.  What is your favorite time of day?  Mine: sunrise or sunset.  My favorite day of the week is Saturday, and I am not even Jewish.  My favorite season Autumn edges out spring, summer and winter by which also delights.  But when fall arrives, I am done.   I am at home.  Leaves turning, the transition between the uber fullness of summer and the quiet barren landscape of winter, the transformation of green leaves into the bare branches of the season is the one I savor most.  And luckily, living in Dallas TX, our autumn cycle is a slow circuitous path to the shortest of days.Do you ever wonder why you prefer one thing and not another, one man over all others, one woman?  A season?  A book?  A movie? Anything?  What is the preference making vehicle we all come factory loaded with?I wonder this a lot.  And not just for myself,  but for all of us.  I think our preferences, desires, longing, affiliations and affections are glimpses of our individual souls, if you believe in such.  If you don't then they are a peek into our essential self.  It is the nest of our distinctness, like a cuckoo clock popping out on the hour, we too reveal ourselves to ourselves and to each other through our affections.Isn't that the loveliest of thoughts?  Don't know who you are?  Wonder who you came here to be?  Just look to your affections and in due time all will be revealed.Yes, our preferences could also arise from longstanding, unconscious habits but even so, they were born out of either random chance or our particular resonance (the cuckoo popping out) to that particular thing.  And if our habits began out of a random choice, a preference, an affinity for that choice set in early and thus it became a habit.Why is that?  I think because our soul wants to be revealed, first and foremost to us, so we can follow it's code.  But also it wants to be let out to dance in the world.  I believe we each come with an "inner chooser" with dislikes and likes.  Affections and repulsions.  Longings and aversions.And why does this matter?  Because the inner chooser, (I will name her, Joy) is also our inner compass who can help us find our way home.  And by home I mean, to becoming our essential self, the person we came here to be, or who God made us to be.And why does that matter?  Because that my dear friends, is the miracle of life.  It is the wonder of life.So as we enter the season of wonder and awe that is initiated in Thanksgiving and ends in the positive resolve of a fresh new year, my favorite essayist comes to mind:  Anne Lamott.   I wish for us all a moment where "We start to get a hint of the power and sweetness and absurdity of life and to see it not as all fragile and harsh but as real, the really real.  We get buoyancy and, God knows, sometimes even effervescence.  Perspective doesn't reduce the gravitas, it increases reverence."Let's all raise our glasses and toast to wonder, reverence and effervescence.      

Part 2: Moving from one year into the next

 “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.   Ask yourself what makes you come alive.  And then go and do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Howard ThurmanThis Part 2 of "Moving from one year into the next..." is an invocation or a "call".  You are invited to glimpse your unknown future, to look into your heart and the year ahead and petition God/the gods to release you to your destiny, to your bold angels.  To the part of  you that is courageous, even while fearful, and that is joyful and grateful even in the face of loss.  To the part of you that is ready to "come alive".In this part of this reflection exercise, you are invited to notice what may want to emerge in your life and in you at this time.   When I celebrate the beginning of a new year, I ask myself:  "What is the quality or energy that I want to bring into my life in this brand new year?"  Consider taking  the wisdom of Howard Thurman’s words to his black congregation in the middle of the civil rights movement.  His congregation, some would argue, needed everything, but listen to what he said to them:“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.   Ask yourself what makes you come alive.  And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”So at the dawn of 2013, why not consider answering the questions below and see if you can glimpse what your bold angels might want for you this year:

1.  What makes you come alive now? 
2. What would fill your life/your world with "lovely"?
3. If you knew you could not fail, what might you do or pursue?
4. Where in your life do you want to live or need to live fearlessly?
5. What could you get truly excited about bringing forward in yourself?  That feeling of “really, really I get to do this or be this?”

Now set this aside for a day or so and come back and reread your answers.  What is the new future you declare for yourself in 2013 and why does it matter to you?  See if you can write that in a short sentence, maybe in the form of a declaration:I am a commitment to ________________________________for the sake of _________________________.The secret in making a declaration an incarnated reality is to keep it top of mind every day.  Make a daily habit of creating 3 small steps you can take toward your declaration.  Do this every day.Happy New Year.  Happy New You.

Nothing stops her...

"Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures."  RilkeToday is Katharine Lillie Dearing's 27th birthday.  My daughter's courage amazes me.  How many things she has done for the sake of her career in acting.  She continually has faced down each of her fears for the sake of this career.   Fears like, rejection and whether or not she could make a living in a big city AND still create time and space to fill her life with things and people that bring her wonder and joy.   And as we speak she is now challenging some of her deepest fears.  So, I write this to remind her that her deepest treasure is barely a breath away.  AND to remind us all that it is worth the grand quest.  It is worth taking on that which we are most frightened by because (as is true in the realm of myth and magic) it is in those moments the great transformation occurs.  The frog becomes a prince.  In Phantom of the Opera, she kisses his ugly face and he frees her.  We must prove ourselves worthy or our deepest treasures, before they will reveal themselves to us and drop their costume of our deepest fears.  We must prove to our sweet souls that we won't let their deepest treasure be co-opted by the strategic mind, the ego.Yes, it is true, that which you resist most or fear most, you will one day discover this to be the source of the greatest healing and comfort.  You will say things like:  "O, if only I had known, that what I most wanted and longed for all my life, was actually in the thing I most despised."   Let's say your greatest fear is being unaccessible, not there for others, unavailable and/or self-consumed.  Yet one day for strange reasons you risk  being that one who is unaccessible and unavailable to others and find the greatest peace you have ever known, the peace that surpasses understanding.So, Kate as I sit on the sidelines of your life watching you take on, challenge after challenge, always rising to the occasion, and always overcoming your fears...I realize that you are my teacher.  Your dream is much harder to be faithful to, than many others.  The path less clear and so many examples of those who tried and failed.  Yet, nothing stops you, angel girl.  Who would have guessed that angelic little easy going, baby girl who entered the world 27 years ago would turn out to be an amazon warrior for her right to have a life that takes her breath away.  It will be so angel.  It will be so. 

Obama & Christie: Out of tragedy, new possibility emerges ... Part 2

Now let's look at the same phenomena on the other side,  President Obama.  Jungians might say that Obama's leadership shadow is exemplified in Governor Christie (and vice versa.)  Obama makes space for others to speak and be seen.  He tries deliberately not to take up space or call the spotlight to himself.  He possibly sees the Christie directive, passionate, emotionally expressive style of leadership as "old school" and not 21st century.  He prefers the servant leadership or the participative leadership model that has been catching on in the last two decades.There have been signs that some other kind of leadership was needed from Obama in addition to his preferred style.  Even his supporters have called him out for being too cerebral, for not wanting to truly fight for what matters.  For not saying directly what he wants, for not taking charge.  Take health care: Obama gave it to the Congress and Senate to work out without clearly saying what he wanted.  Christie would have told them what he wanted.  There are other examples of Obama refusing to find his inner Christie, but my point here is that most of us refuse the call to change ourselves in a new direction,when it is against our "winning formula" or the identity that has got us where we are today, or when we have held our way as better than or superior to other ways.  It is scary to give up what always worked.However, when we are called to change and refuse the call, something (Fate/Life/God) steps into to help us.  Sometimes through adversity or pressure and sometimes through offering us an example of our refused capacities in all their glory!  For Obama, enter Governor Christie dealing with Sandy and for Christi, enter President Obama supporting him and the people of his state.AND so  we get to glimpse another way to lead and to work together through their interaction.  We  saw that Obama had to ensure through his direct actions and calls to Christie that the government he believes in delivered for Christie.  He couldn't sit on the sidelines.  He had to get in the game and direct it when necessary.  He made sure the red tape that everyone hates in bureaucracies didn't get in the way of FEMA delivering the way he knew it could.  We witnessed what a working across the political divide could look like.  Now it is our turn to do the hard work of insisting we get it.To my eye, both men glimpsed their "golden shadow" in the other man in the aftermath of Sandy --the next level of greatness for each of them as a leader if they will take the journey of embracing their opposite style.  An Obama who takes charge and takes up space when necessary.  A Christie who recedes and makes space for others views and leadership or who leads via supporting others leadership.  Neither may know this happened consciously. But their unconscious is probably a little less frightened of being their opposite kind of leader.And so too, you and I.  Ask yourself:  "What it is I am most afraid of becoming?".  Now ask yourself "And where in my life could that way of being actually be useful to me?"   You will discover that "Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure." Ranier Maria Rilke