Young @ Heart

It's a new year. I celebrated it watching the documentary Young@Heart which is heartwrenchingly beautiful and moving. Tissues are a requirement. I cried my way through it. How utterly gorgeous to see these people in there 70s and 80s singing and living and loving there way through every song. Bob Cilman, you inspire me! Thanks for taking such a simple thing of getting 25 old men and women together and getting them to sing -- and then getting them to sing for people all over the world. What joy you all bring. Thank you for bursting my heart wide open.

Snow Goddess

And as life has it, I just posted the video Stand by Me sent to me by Jane Axelrod, and lo and behold, another email of connection and sacred spirit arrives. This one comes from Bindu/MJ Delekta who teaches her special brand of yoga at The Sacred Circle of Yoga on Martha's Vineyard. Bindu just built the Snow Goddess at her yoga studio. Her retreats are worth the trip at any time of the year.

Standing By Each Other

The world is wonderful in how small it has become and how easy it is to reach out and be with others. An email communicating the very spirit of connection arrived in my mailbox from Jane Axelrod, a therapist in the Boston area who is the epitome of joy in connection.

Jane sent me this video of musicians around the world playing Stand by Me. I had to do my part and pass on the spirit of joy.

Thanks to all you who have stood by me through so many years. May we all stand together in creating a world of love, joy, and good health.

The Guiding Arrow

Perhaps this life is about remembering who you really are. Walking like Hansel and Gretel into the dark forest, dropping bread crumbs to find your way home. What trauma does is send in the wolves to eat the bread crumbs so we can’t find them when we look for them. Yet, the path out of the darkness remains. The path has always been there, it has been obscured, hidden, gotten completely covered over. But it’s there.

My father had always wanted to walk the Camino de Compostela in Spain. He had learned about it in the 1950’s when he was living in France. The Camino is one of the oldest Christina pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Having wanted to make the journey, my father put aside this dream when he met my mother, had five kids, and lived a full life. Many years later, almost fifty years later, my mother had died, my father was 84 and he remembered his dream. My sister and I offered to go with him.

Ah, I digress from the main part of the story.

Over the centuries, the Camino had fallen into disrepair. People who walked the Camino had a difficult time finding their way. The path, even today, can be pretty treacherous. Someone decided to help and walked the Camino a box of spray paint and marked the way with arrows: this is the way. Now this way. Take this right.

Those arrows guided our journey. We walked the last 100 k’s which still took 10 days. Those arrows marked the path, and brought us to the cathedral in Santiago de Compestolo.

This story comes to mind as I reflect on my what I'm up to in this life. As I listen inside I'm aware that part of my path is to illuminate that path for others who suffer. Part of what I am called to do is be a signpost on the journey – go this way – this way, try this…. We get lost in this dark period of our life, We feel stuck and unfortunately feel terribly alone. Yet, we aren’t. You aren’t.

What I want is to create a resilient community of people who understand the dark and forboading world of trauma, who have lived the chaos but are willing to serve as helping hands, as guides along the way.

You are not alone. There is help on the road. The path is there. You can, and will, find your way to safety, sanctity, care, kindness, possibility.

Change is coming

Truth is, I wasn't able to blog right after I wrote about the Inc article. Why, you ask? Well, the week after I blogged about the Treadless article, I got an email from Jeffrey Kalmikoff who is the CCO of Treadless. Frankly, reading the email I felt my eyes fall out of my head.

Jeffrey wrote, "It's a great feeling when you read something from someone who not only lives outside of the tech "bubble" but also seems to understand our motivation better than people within it. You're right, it is about connectivity between ourselves and the people in our community, forming and nurturing those relationships."

Now I know there are spiders and robots and all kinds of techie things that monitor postings and web info behind the scenes. I know that and it makes sense that some spider/robot/secret agent thing trolled through the net and pinged the info to Jeffrey.

That's not the big news. The big news is that Jeffry takes the time to respond to these things, to drop a little note of appreciation for the post. (And yes, one of his parents responded too. I'm still reeling from that.)

Imagine if someone in General Motors or General Electric were to take the time to respond to positive press out there in the ether. Imagine the good will that would be generated. Someone told me yesterday that he's been a customer of Verizon since they first started a wireless business. (Frank disclosure here: I've been totally, thoroughly impressed with Verizon's behind the scenes support for our office DSL. Truly magnificient.) But this person, let's call him Keith, has never heard a word of appreciation for his business with Verizon. Not a thank you, not a discount, not a title of "preferred customer" after over 10 years.

Gosh, perhaps Verizon could use a little coaching from Jeffrey. (Okay, I apologize for the sarcasm....) Maybe these "old school" businesses might want to learn to take the time to say thanks, we appreciate your business.

Interesting, isn't it?

The gift for me in this reflection is about learning to be appreciative, learning to give thanks more often, relaxing into the moment and seeing the moments of generosity that live quietly in the corners of our worlds. What Jeffrey did was write a note, probably no big stretch for him. For me, though, it had me realize how amazing the world can be if we're willing to include and appreciate and give thanks.

The weekend after I got the note from Jeffrey I was giving a presentation to the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Yes, it's a mouthful. Usually people just say, NESTTD. Anyway, I told the story of writing this blog and getting the response... and the standing room only crowd of therapists listened intently. For them, my writing a blog is somewhat mind boggling -- but more than that is knowing and hearing and validating how much the world is changing. The gentle moments of appreciation have quiet, steady ripples throughout our world.

May we open even more to the goodness in the world.

Bringing Up Hope

Inc Magazine is undoubtably one of my favorite magazines. It highlights innovations that are happening in entrepreneural businesses. I find it uplifting, exciting, interesting. There's generally something that makes me think differently or shifts my perspective.

I'd gotten behind in my reading recently. Buried under a pile was the June, 2008 issue of Inc. The front cover (shown above) were these two (young) guys in t-shirts and the headline "The Most Innovative Small Company In America." It made for great late night reading.

It makes me feel old to say, or think, this, but boy, these young kids are really interesting. It's a whole new world. Instantly I was reflecting on attachment and how these kids were brought up differently from those of us brought up with depression era parents. It's fascinating.

So, let me slow down. The guys on the cover are Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, executives of Threadless, which is a t-shirt company, well, not just a t-shirt company, they run design competitions on social networking sites whose members vote on the designs they like best. Threadless then prints up the t-shirts and sells them.

Well, if you're like me, one of the old folks, you'd wonder how t-shirts could be such a hot item. Hot they are. Inc writes, "Revenue was growing 500 percent a year, despite the fact that the company had never advertised, employed no professional designers, used no modeling agency, ... had no sales force, and no retail distribution."

But more interestingly, from a psychological perspective, these guys are wired differently. They are connected in ways we (those of us over 35) never were growing up. Yes, it's obvious, we were never wired to the internet. But I mean wired for connection to other people.

Those of us with depression era parents grew up thinking we were on our own, it was up to us, we had to do it. This article illustrated what my younger clients have been describing. The Threadless guys are listening to people. There's a distance that's been eliminated. The roles have changed. It's not "I'm the company and I'll make what I think you need" but as Nickell is quoted in the article, "Why wouldn't you want to make the products that people want you to make?"

It really alters the power relationship, a movement away from passive consumerism. It makes me wonder -- who are you inside to hold power so differently? What kind of modeling did you have in order to have you think so differently? What environment supported you in being so related to others instead of having to do it alone, tough it out?

Reflecting on those younger than me coming of age, formed by relationships, connected to others, interested in what others have to say gives me great hope. It's intriguing to me to sit here in midlife seeing the hope and connection that those younger are bringing forward.

The Couple

How long has it been? I wondered to myself as I sat with this couple across from me. Probably a year and a half.

I knew something had changed when the wife sat on the couch with her husband - instead of on either chair across from him where she'd sat for most of our sessions. Today the wife glowed with her unique combination of light, grace, joy, innocence, and playfulness.

Flirting with her husband, reaching out, touching him the room was filled with this radiant warmth and sexuality. It fluttered around and settled on us all. There were no words. There really was nothing to say but to savor.

I told thim when I first me with them the same thing I say to every couple. I don't know if it's right for you to stay together. But whatever you decide, let's find a way to do it with love, respect, kindness.

Well, they certainly did. There were times when I thought, gosh, I don't know. They may not make it together. The strife, the unspoken and spoken upsets, the small but chronic rejections were there. Yet, they moved through the struggle, the anger, the despair, the ruptures, and somewhere in the middle of all that they each found their own self - and each other.

As the husband readied to leave into the cold November evening he said he wished I would write more in this blog.

This is for him, for his wife, for all of us who sink into the unknown hiding the secret hope that life can get better while doubting it at the same time.

How lucky am I to see through the layers of pain and suffering into the shining truth that love prevails. What a gift to journey with people through such muck and anger and come through to warmth, connection and radiant love.

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