Secret Santas and Forgiveness

Last Christmas was a rather depressing financial low point for us. We just couldn't do much in the way of presents or festivities. I was so depressed I put up the tree and left it bare. The kids scrounged together some decorations. It got to the point where the financial stress was giving me chest pains. 

By March we decided it was time to turn over a new leaf, get our finances in order, and pay off our credit cards. We made a strict budget for the rest of the year and every time I paid a bill on time, paid off a credit card, or said no to something not in the budget, my stress level diminished. In less than a week the chest pains were gone and haven't come back. 

In order to do this we had to use the phrase "we can't afford that right now" a lot with our kids. We didn't have big birthday parties, didn't go for long drives, and ate at home more. It wasn't completely awful. We didn't eat Top Ramen every night. We just thought, "do I want this thing more than I want to get out of debt and not be stressed all the time about money." The answer to that question was usually a big, "no."

The year has actually been a good one financially. We significantly reduced our debt, still managed to send the kids to camp in the summer, and I worked from home this fall to bring in some extra income in part because I wanted to be able to give at Christmas. I didn't want a repeat of last year's depression. 

Apparently, neither did my responsible and sensitive E. She remembered the rough time last year and the tight budget we've been keeping this year and was worried about Christmas. So, she signed her sisters and herself up for the Secret Santa program through a sort of teen community center where she goes for rock climbing. It was months ago, and she didn't ask or tell me because she wanted it to be a surprise. 

I was surprised all right! Because of last year, I had decided I needed to stop trying to stretch so far and take care of my kids first. I did feel their concern and it was painful to me. In addition, it's the thinking of each person in the family, and putting together a gift just for them, that lifts my spirits and gets me going this season. Giving is definitely my primary love language.  But my budget is still quite limited, and I'm paying closer attention to it, so this is the first year that I didn't go pull Secret Santa tags off one of the many trees about town to buy gifts for local families in need. We've given to the community in other ways, because I think that's an important part of Christmas, but not in this particular way. 

Tonight, E came back from rock climbing with an enormous bag over her shoulder.  I want to laugh at the irony, cry at the generosity of our community, and blush with embarrassment as she added those gifts to the heap already under our tree. 

My pride reacted with an immediate desire to send these gifts back or pass them on to other families who may need them more. I managed to restrain that reaction. What's more important to me, is to honor her concern and her effort to make sure her sisters got good presents this year. She was very proud of herself and told me that they (at the center) encouraged her to sign up because they needed a few more kids to sign up in order to have enough to be a participating agency. So other kids might not have been able to if she hadn't too. 

This isn't the first time we've benefitted from a community program. There were some lean years getting started as a family, and some more when we were taking care of my father-in-law while he was dying of cancer. There's no way to ever repay those who give. Nor a polite way to refuse now. Only gratitude, and the knowledge that we weren't the first young people to need a little extra help, things won't always be so tight, and we will have many opportunities to pay it forward. 

As 'crazy situations your Tweens get you into' go, this isn't so bad. Her heart for her family is precious. It's a good reminder that our kids are paying attention, and they worry about us too. None of us will get our kids through to adulthood without making a few mistakes. Usually without even realizing it. 

We think a lot about giving at Christmas. The wise men gave gifts to the baby Jesus. Jesus himself was a gift from God. Not just to be a good teacher and educate us about how to live. He came to die as the means to a more important gift, the gift of forgiveness. That whatever sin separated a person from God could be forgiven, as though it had never happened. 

A physical gift is not just a physical gift. It embodies the thoughts we have toward one another. It's difficult to give a thoughtful gift to someone you haven't forgiven. An impersonal gift without any effort or thought can actually feel offensive if the recipient speaks in the love language of gifts. A gift need not be expensive. But the giver should be aware that they're communicating something. 

This year, as I prepare to give good gifts to my family, I'd like to think of each one as renewal of forgiveness. A laying aside of anything and everything that may have happened over the past year, a sweeping aside of any offense that may separate us. A promise that between family we forgive even before an offense occurs, because we know that they are inevitable. That the love we have for each other is greater than any possible offense. That this love will cover our failures as parents. On a larger scale, that the love of our community extends, even to a worried 12 year old, without conditions. 

Proverbs 10:12 (NKJV) says, "Love covers all sins." The first gift of Christmas was forgiveness. Let's attach it to every gift like a bow, and pass it on. 

Note: My comments about love languages on this blog refer to the book "The Five Love Languages," by Gary Chapman. An excellent resource, that articulates how we all communicate love differently, and how to understand each other better. 

Have you laughed today?

Did you take a multi vitamin today? Exercise? Drink eight glasses of water? Those things are all okay, but laughter is the best medicine. 

When your life is nothing to laugh about, that's when you need to more than ever.

When you can't change a thing, laugh at it. Because you can change yourself.

The worst that can happen is death, and that's not so bad if you think about it.

With more Americans than ever suffering from depression, we should find a way to laugh every day, just to make sure we're okay.

If you manage to live long, laugh lines look better in old age than worry lines.

Laugh until you cry if you can. It's good for your eyes.

Laugh with your children. It sets a good precedent.

Laugh at yourself. You'll never get in trouble for it, and it might get you out of trouble.

Laugh from your belly. Deep deep laughter changes your biochemistry.

Don't hide your laughter. It's contagious. If you're lucky, a good outbreak will come back to reinfect you again and again.

Without laughter, the tedium of an opulent life can become unbearable. With it, even the homeless can embrace a new day.

I don't envy the lifestyles of others, nor curse my own. There are happy people at every economic level. And miserable ones.

I envy those I see laughing in hospitals, at funerals, alongside the disabled, in their moments of personal failure, when others would call it inappropriate. They know the secret of life.

The brain shuts down under stress and blocks out bad memories. But good ones take up permanent residence in our minds, no matter how scarce.

I think lives are accounted in laughter. In the hours that we smile. In the joy we give to others.

I wonder how mine adds up.

Existential depression is a real and common problem for intellectually gifted people. I've wondered why humans bother to keep living. I've thoughtfully considered the reasons that keep me from driving to a bridge and jumping off. I've driven down the road enumerating the reasons that I should go home and not just keep driving until I run out of gas somewhere. When I go too long without humor, when I get hung up on painful repetitive thoughts about my life, when I get tired to the core of my being. I know it's time to start laughing again...by force if necessary.

To be clear, my life isn't that bad, so I know those thoughts are unreasonable and probably generated by hormonal imbalances. Hormones can affect our behavior, but changing our behavior can also affect our hormones.

I might be crazy. I can't afford the psychologist bills to find out for sure, much less their pharmacological solutions. I pay for Netflix and high speed internet, so I can turn on a standup comic until I start laughing again. I force myself to be a hugger. I surf comedy web sites. I force myself out of my hole and back into the realm of the living. It's worked so far. I laughed again today.

Parenting isn't easy. Marriage isn't easy. Life isn't easy. But if you can laugh every day, it's not as hard.

I suspect my experience is not as uncommon as it feels from the inside. If you're having trouble finding a reason to go home, if you go for days without laughing, if you're worried that you're suffering from depression but not sure it's serious or can't afford to find out for sure, you can start to help yourself by taking your laughter seriously. I can't give medical advice, and doctors will tell you to seek professional help right away. I don't disagree, but I know very well that it's not always possible. But laughter is not the exclusive provenance of doctors. You can always take more. There's no risk of overdose.

Ask your spouse or close friend to keep track if you've laughed every day. Don't keep your struggles to yourself. Then, go out and deliberately look for what's funny. Try to get it in as early as you can in your day. Notice how it affects you overall. Put funny pictures on your desktop, and in your screensaver, and by your mirrors. Let your kids draw funny pictures on your windows with dry erase markers. (Those always make me smile and are easy to wipe clean and change.) Set an hourly timer on your phone with an outrageous ringtone that will catch everyone's attention and make them laugh so you can catch their laughter. (I set my text tone to a Wilhelm scream because I get a lot of texts.) Before long that tone will make you laugh even when no one is around.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's a cheap one, and simple to implement. It may not be easy at first, but nothing worthwhile ever is. If you still find yourself thinking of ways to end your life, if you think them out all the way through, tell someone immediately. If they don't take it seriously, tell another someone. If you have no one to tell you can call the suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255. Depression is not your fault. It happens to people in every area of society. It can't hurt your plans to put it off for one more day and try reaching out to someone.

If you've never had a problem with depression, laugh more anyway. It's good for your heart, and you never know who might be sitting near you that needs it.

Too Smart for Santa

What do you do when your kids figure out the Santa scam?

Yup, that's what they'll call it, a scam. They've been lied to, and they want to know why, and what you're gonna do about it! Some little smarty pants figure it out terribly, unfairly early. We don't get to play pretend with them nearly long enough. Then, they're the kid at school telling all the other kids, and you get emails from the teacher and calls from angry parents.

"How could you ruin their delusion? This is Kindergarten! Could you please stop your child from telling the other kids that there is no Santa Claus?" Yes, I got those calls.

The problem is, I don't care to lie to my kids. When they asked about Santa, they got a history lesson. When they asked about Frosty, they got a pop culture lesson. When they asked about baby Jesus they got a Bible lesson. They know Dec. 25th isn't his real birthday and why the church decided to celebrate at that particular time anyway. And they know Santa Claus was a real saint, with a real purpose, then a story, then an advertising campaign, and now...

Now I remind them that they're always trying to get adults to play pretend with them, and that this is the one time of year that most every adult is willing to play pretend with all the kids. Why? Because Santa represents an ideal of generosity, a spirit of joy in giving.

The real Saint Nicholas was originally depicted as a man of sorrow. He grieved for children living in poverty. That we can see him today as a man of joy is indicative of how the world has changed. Today's poverty is not what St. Nicholas faced. We don't send our poor to slave away in work houses and die early. We don't, on the whole, blame poverty on the poor and heap additional punishments on them. Poverty is still a real problem, but most of us are looking for opportunities to change that.

While there is no magical Santa delivering presents around the world in his sleigh, there are still presents under even the poorest trees. Because all of us are inspired by his example, we carry on his work wherever we see the need. Whether it's Project Angel Tree sending gifts to the children of incarcerated prisoners, Samaritan's Purse sending shoe box gifts to poor children in nations around the world, or your local Salvation Army meeting needs in your own neighborhood, there are many widely supported organizations doing the work this saint inspired. Even when money is scarce, we get resourceful to make sure our kids have a Merry Christmas.

We make sure they learn to participate in the giving side as well, from dropping change in Salvation Army buckets as toddlers (I never spend my change in December so they have something to give whenever we see a bucket), to putting together gifts for an orphanage in India, to serving the homeless as they get older. Giving is one of the languages of love. We experience love by receiving, and express it by giving. There's always room in the world for more love.

The Santa scam persists, not because we want to deceive to our children, but because we want them to feel there is love in the world without condition. (We tell them they have to be good, but really, our standards aren't that high.) We want to give them this experience early so they can eventually express love in equal measure.

This time of year, a lot of people complain about American materialistic excess, and capitalistic greed. I would argue that we are the most generous nation on earth. That our poverty is still wealth, compared to most of the world. Even at our poorest, we found ways to give. And that ability to give when we have little, that is wealth. Christmas, and Santa, bring that out in us. They pull us out of the dreary darkness of winter, the mundane middle of the school year, and make us rich in ways that our paychecks can't.

Now that all of my children know the truth about Santa, I've recruited them to the other side.  They're pretenders. They start calling me Mommy Claus this time of year, and ask to be my little elves. I like this better. We can all be Santa, Saints, taking care of widows and orphans, because that is the purest religion. That's what the grown up Jesus told people. He inspired Saint Nicholas, so why should there be any conflict between them? But that's another post, and one of those religious arguments I try to avoid.

I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season, and enjoying the preparations for Christmas as much as I am!

Mashing the Baby Food Myth

I went to a baby shower once and was mortified to hear the other mothers talking about how hard it was to feed their babies balanced meals of baby food and eight bottles of water a day, in addition to bottles of breastmilk they pumped at work, like they were miniature adults. These were tiny babies of 3-4 months. Where did their moms get the idea that babies should have the same diet as adults, just mashed up? Babies don't need baby food. I can't tell you the specific sources that contributed to this revelation because I read so many things, but at some point I realized that there is no biological reason for the baby food aisle to exist.

Breastmilk is complete nutrition for babies. No buts. In fact, if you supplement with other foods, you will be giving your baby less nutrition and their feeling of fullness will reduce their inclination to nurse, subsequently reducing your supply. It has all the nutrients, proteins, and all the water they need for six months.

What it doesn't have is much iron. Babies are born with enough in their systems to last about six months.  Then they need a little extra. This is the point when doctors offer supplements. I tend to think that supplements should be saved for when things are really wrong. If the drop in iron is normal, there must be a natural solution. Fortunately, this is also the point when their little pincher grasp develops, showing that they are ready to eat Cheerios and raisins cut in half. You cut the raisins in half because you don't want to see them come out the other end rehydrated. Mix them together in a Tupperware snack cup and keep it in the diaper bag for snacking. They won't need that much to bring their iron levels up. They have tiny little bodies.

Aside from that, eating in the first year is more about the sensory and social experiences. That scene with the baby being fed baby food in the high chair in the kitchen, before everyone else comes to dinner, should never happen. Sitting down with the family is essential to their social development. Bits of soft food from the table, or food cut small enough to prevent choking, provide new sensory experiences that help their oral sensitivity to taste and texture develop. Baby food, even home made baby food, doesn't really do this. They use their fingers to eat at first, then experiment with spoons. Babies can even be trained directly to regular cups at this point if someone helps them take sips of water. Since they should still be primarily breast feeding, there should be no nutritional concerns about whether they're getting enough of anything. And no pressure to finish what you prepare for them.

Gradually, what they eat at the table will increase, and the amount of breastmilk they take will decrease until a smooth transition off of the breast can be made. When I had to stop nursing my first at 18 months, before she was ready, the pain of engorgement was excruciating. When I transitioned my second at 18 months, she was already mostly done with me and I had no engorgement at all. The surgeon general recommends at least one year of breast feeding, but if you think of the cessation of breast feeding as a transition to regular food, it could be much later than that. You'll know when your baby is ready because their interest in breast feeding wanes and they can be easily distracted from it by the offer of other foods.

So, why does that baby food aisle exist? Because women with newborns are vulnerable to marketing. Especially any marketing that implies baby needs something. Because we don't understand our bodies well enough to be confident in our ability to nourish our own babies, they can wedge their marketing messages into the tiny cracks in our self confidence and pry them wide open. Remember that Nestlé convinced women in Africa that formula was superior to breastmilk, and their babies started dying from contaminates in the available water supply they used to mix it with. These companies don't care about infant nutrition. They care about sales. Balanced meals of organic non-gmo gluten free baby food, are still inferior nutrition to continued breastfeeding. Even though you know that, their commercials will make you cry. They've perfected their tactics. You might have to enlist your partner's support in helping you resist. They're not as hormonally involved.

Just because breastfeeding is natural, that doesn't mean it's always easy. Most women need some help getting started. That's not some freak change that has only occurred recently. Women five hundred years ago needed help too. They just got it from their mothers and grandmothers rather than from lactation specialists and nurses. It will absorb your life in the beginning, but what's a year given over to the maternal process?

Apparently, that is asking too much of most women. I would estimate that about ninety percent of the issues I've seen women have with breast feeding come down to stress over trying to be and do other things during that critical time in their child's development. American women are under way to much pressure to get back to "normal" after having a baby. Statistically, seventy percent of those who begin breast feeding will give up after six weeks, and ninety percent by three months. If it gets too hard there's always formula. The problem is that breastmilk is not just about nutrition.

Studies in the last decade suggest that emotional development begins in utero where the baby is exposed to the same hormones that the mother's emotional reactions to life flood her body with. That emotions, to some chemical extent, travel through the blood stream and cross the placenta. That a rich emotional environment in utero helps brain development. This continues through breast feeding, where those same hormones are present in the milk supply.

Any mother who has breastfed can tell you that if they're stressed, baby is stressed. If they're stimulated, baby is hyper. If mom can keep calm and happy, baby will be more calm and happy. Colic is self perpetuating in that it stresses mom out and begins a spiral of stressed milk, stressed baby, more stressed mom. Sometimes, she can break that cycle by stepping back and being intentional about calming herself for a prolonged period. But that takes time, and giving yourself over to that maternal process.

It can be hard. Really, really, really hard sometimes. And I would never want any woman to feel bad about giving up. I get it. I've spent a total of 5.5 years breast feeding my four daughters and I know the struggle. I know that I had a great deal more support to do so than many women have in our modern age. But I've heard women say, "why bother when they're going to be on baby food in six months?" I want women to understand that baby food is a modern marketing invention. They don't need to spend a fortune on it any more than they do formula. Their bodies are more than adequate. They were made to nourish their children for much longer than they probably think. And that the emotional symbiosis and physical connection are more important factors than they may realize.

Please don't feel bad about it if you were unable to breastfeed your children. We can only ever move forward. I think sometimes I only managed to continue out of sheer stubbornness. But I firmly believe that any woman can breastfeed if she gets the proper support. That providing that support should be important to all of us for public health reasons. That we need to give women in our society permission to just be moms for a full year if we want a physically and emotionally healthier population in the future.

We are rather unique among developed nations in the pressure we place on new moms to return to the normal life they had before giving birth. Having children changes us and we need time to define a new normal. More women, strong enough to resist the marketing that says products are as as good as parents, strong enough to speak out and say we need support and we need time and space to be mothers, will be the agents for this much needed change in our culture. I'm going to be one of them. Will you join me?

Honor vs. Insecurity

"There is one thing a man can always do, and that is his duty." - Mr. Knightly, Jane Austen's "Emma"

An honorable man will always choose his wife and children over his family of origin. But a confident woman would never make her husband cut off his first family.  She knows he draws strength from his roots.

An insecure woman wants a weak husband, so she uproots him and pots him in a place she can control. She uses manipulation to get what she wants because she doesn't trust his love for her. Often this stems from feelings of unworthiness. But her success doesn't satisfy her insecurity because she can't trust a man whom she can manipulate into cutting off his family, not to be manipulated by some future competitor into cutting her off.

Young men are drawn to insecure women because as long as she needs his affirmation she will make him feel important; feel strong. But he becomes insecure, worried about what she will do if he opposes her in any way. It's like the mythical call of the sirens that draws sailors from their ships only to be dashed against the rocks.

Like Odysseus' wife, a wise woman is not afraid to test her husband. She knows it is better to find out for certain in the beginning whether her heart can safely trust him. Then she can be the confident woman. Then she can have a genuinely strong husband.

She will not fear his connections to the past but nurture them. His whole family, and all who see, will honor her. Because she is an honorable woman.

From a broader cultural perspective, this is why men should support equality for women in every area. They should want a culture that raises strong confident women because strong confident partners will make them stronger too.

In the church, people excuse this exclusionary behavior towards family of origin with the verse that says "for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife." As if there is any acceptable Christian reason for completely rejecting anybody, much less your father and mother, whom you were first commanded to honor. The joining, or cleaving as it's called in other verses, is meant to be the central priority, not the only priority. The first responsibility, not the last. It is a very poor view of your partner's love to think that if anybody else gets some there won't be enough for you. If you have to hoard it, it's not going to be enough sustain you for the rest of your life.

From a biblical standpoint, a man becomes joined to his wife, they become one flesh, and therefore they have the same parents and the same siblings, inclusive of each family of origin. While they physically create space to build their own family, the requirement to honor is not suspended. Neither is the commandment to love your neighbor. If your siblings don't at least fall into that category, what are they? Enemies? You're commanded to love them too.

The problem is that it's easier to pick and choose our religious beliefs to excuse our neurosis rather than to overcome them. If we don't acknowledge our insecurities we can never be healed of them.

Whether or not you have religious motivation to seek restoration within your family relationships, consider doing it just because it will make you a better person. When we choose the hard thing, it strengthens us. We find out who we really are. When we acknowledge who we are, we can decide to become someone better, and actually figure out how to do it. When we become better people, we become better partners and better parents. We build genuine trust in our marriages. We don't pass on our dysfunctional attributes to our children.

When I made the choice to have children, my decision was heavily weighted by the idea of my future grandchildren, and all the fun I plan have with them. If I don't teach my kids how to reconcile, if I don't raise them to be secure confident women, I could lose that future happiness. If I don't model that behavior, how will they learn?

I had a personal anecdote to add, but it's still too painful. Suffice it to say, I understand exactly how difficult it is to do what I'm saying here. I know that many will read this and say, "but..." It's true that I don't know your family, and I don't know the experiences that have fed your insecurities. Our excuses don't change fundamental truths. The level of difficulty does not make the ideal of secure balanced partnerships, in which to raise children, any less important to strive toward. I know that we will try and fail repeatedly. It is my hope that we will never stop trying, no matter how much we fail.

Why Modern American Feminism has Failed Women

I believe that when you try to make women the economic equivalent of men, you actually devalue them. It's not that I don't think women should get equal pay for equal work. They should. But because we live in a free market economy, when women began entering the workplace in droves, the economy shifted. It then became necessary for women to go to work in order to raise a family at the same economic level that used to be achievable on a single income. Essentially, every worker took a pay cut because there was a surge of available workers.

Now, if a woman is working, who's looking after her family? The far more essential work of raising future generations has been farmed out to others who are paid less, and will never be the equivalent of a child's own mother. The fallout from the emotional disconnect that has resulted from the physical separation between children and their mothers is something we are only beginning to be able to comprehend.

Furthermore, the essential unpaid social work of women in our society is going undone. What once was a veritable army of stay at home wives, daughters, and mothers, has dwindled to a company of broke stragglers. We choose to stay home over financial security, and we accept the consequences, but what the army used to accomplish we no longer have the resources to do. Women doing what they were passionate about, rather than what they had to do to afford to live, accomplished incredible things. They brought about massive social change, they were the underpinnings of our educational institutions, they served the poor, and cared for the sick. They wove the fabric of civilization that is created through communication, compassion, and community.

Furthermore, they had the time resources to help the few single mothers that had to work to survive. All of the older women in my family have talked about how they helped care for the children of their single mom neighbors while they worked. Because the children were in their homes so much, the husbands of these generous women also became surrogate fathers to those children. No social institution can replace that kind of person to person caring for others. Half a dozen institutions working together can't replace that connection. Now we're outnumbered by single moms. How can we possibly support all of them? We can't.

When a woman is liberated from her socially applied identity as an economic unit, she becomes a force for good that has far more value to the world than the money she could make doing equal work for equal pay.

I keep a Hagar the Horrible comic strip on my desk in which Helga is raising her glass to a group of women with the toast, "One day men and women will be equal. Until then, let us celebrate our overwhelming superiority!" In order to embrace modern feminism I would have to think less of myself than I presently do, and less of women in general, and that's not okay with me.

In order to be equal to a man, in the economically based definition of modern feminists, I must be devalued. I would much rather achieve equality by raising men in our social responsibility based value system. By teaching our sons to do what is good and what is right for the world regardless of economic incentives. A man raised to that standard would never accept a pay differential based entirely on gender, race, or any other social divisor. He would never value profits over the welfare of his employees. He would never accept a government made of individuals whose loyalty he could buy.

We need to stop trying to lower ourselves to the standards of men, and begin to raise them to ours.

Halloween

Halloween comes around every year and I'm faced with the same dilemma.  How much of my energy do I want to put into celebrating a pagan holiday?

It is not worth my energy to protest it.  Nothing draws a kid's attention to something bad for them like a parent making a big deal out of avoiding it.  You may object to my characterizing Halloween as bad for children, but my dad was a police officer, and cops dread Halloween.  It brings out the crazies.  With more adults celebrating than ever, it's also becoming another nightmare of drunk driving incidents.

When I was a kid we carved a pumpkin, had a little class party at school, and went trick or treating in our immediate neighborhood.  That was it.  A few odd people decorated their houses and threw parties.  Haunted houses were corny on purpose and, being a good Christian family, we avoided them.

Then we moved from our little island in Alaska to a region of California considered to be a center of real witchcraft.  Pumpkin patches with corn mazes and jumpy houses spring up all over the countryside October first.  Haunted houses use movie tech to make your fears a reality.  Approaching regular houses can be just as terrifying, as every block has a house or two decorated with as much care as only Christmas used to elicit.  If your neighborhood is a dud you go to another neighborhood.  Certain neighborhoods are slowly developing reputations for coolness, and get massive foot traffic.

In the deep woods and out on the beach, pagan rites are performed in all earnestness, complete with drums, chanting, and running in circles on broomsticks.  Animal shelters will not adopt out black cats.  Homeless teens are drawn into all kinds of perversion, including self mutilation and vampiric acts, by Wiccan priests who recruit them by offering shelter and a meal.  That's on the extreme end, but it's happening.

On a less horrible note, even elementary schools don't just have a little party with cupcakes in each classroom anymore.  There's a school wide carnival with its own haunted house, games, and tons of candy.  When the holiday falls conveniently for it, they schedule a teacher workday for November first so they don't have to deal with the fallout of sugar withdrawals and sleep deprived kids.

Winnie's kindergarten class went to a pumpkin patch on the thirty-first and each kid brought home a pumpkin, so we carved it that afternoon.  All my kids costumes came from their closet and imaginations.   None were scary.  We went to the mall early to begin trick or treating so the kids could get their fill of it by bedtime.  My thirteen year old bailed early and stayed home with Grandma to pass out little pots of play dough to trick or treaters at our house.  We finished up by going around our little immediate neighborhood.  Then we snuggled up at home with popcorn and a favorite show.

It was enough, and nothing's left but candy to consume and a pumpkin to throw on the mulch pile.  I'm neither a naysayer, nor an enthusiast.  I just don't care enough about a holiday that has no religious or emotional relevance to me.

I don't want to add to an environment conducive to the crazies by making more out of it than I need to.  And I'm definitely in bed early, kids tucked in and accounted for, and not out on the road as a target for a drunk driver, or at a dark party getting tipsy and making myself an easy target for a serial rapist or killer.  Perhaps I over think these things, but I have a strong aversion to things that intentionally generate fear for fun and do not enjoy deliberately exposing myself to things designed to frighten me or to known statistically dangerous environments.

Learning Differences

Every child is different, no matter how much DNA they have in common. Not only do they have different strengths and weaknesses, interests and opinions, but they think differently. I mean, the functional processing of their brains is drastically different. Consider how, as toddlers, they determined which is the girls bathroom:

Child one is very visual. She told me one had a picture of a girl and the other a boy.

Child two is an early reader and gifted with language. She told me one said "Men" and the other "Women" or some variation thereof.

Child three is mathematical. She told me that one had a triangle on the door and the other a circle.

Child four is a social ringleader and creative problem solver. She told me which was the door her sister went through.

What we can see so clearly at the age of three, we shouldn't lose track of when it becomes less transparent in later years. These four children will always see the world differently. They will always learn differently. And each of them found their way into the right bathroom.

#Homecoming2013

The sun sets in a rosy glow that, 
Almost, rivals your smile. 
Night wraps warm around us like the 
Velvet skimming your shoulders. 
The sparkles on your dress, 
And in your eyes, 
And on all the accoutrements of a 
Girl's first high school dance
Are blinding me. 
That's what's causing these tears. 
They call it Homecoming, 
But you're leaving me 
A little more 
Each day. 

Why TheMensaMom?

When I started blogging, I didn't know what my subject would be. There were too many ideas bouncing around in my head to focus into a narrow theme. Titles can change, but address is fixed, so I messed around with different titles in the beginning, but made the address more about my identity than my subject matter. Hence, themensamom.blogspot.com (The Mensa Mom).

It may sound a little self aggrandizing, but that's not my intention. For those who don't know, Mensa is a social organization for geniuses. Specifically, those of us who score in the top 2% (approx. 131+) on any of over 200 accepted IQ tests. We're often accused of being elitists, and every organization has a few immature people who can be pointed out as examples of the worst accusations levied against the group, but they don't represent the majority. Two percent of the population qualifies. That's millions of people worldwide. And they're not the people you think.

When people think of geniuses they usually imagine people with doctorates, and a lot of geniuses have them. But intelligence and education are not the same thing. About half of the Mensans I personally know, are high school drop outs. People can be educated beyond their intelligence. There's only so much an education can do for you. There's also only so much intelligence can do for you without education.

The difference is that intelligent people learn all the time whether we're in a formal educational setting or not. We can't help it. We're constantly absorbing and processing information is complex ways. That's why we drop out of school. We're miserable in a typical school setting where the introduction of new topics slogs along at the pace of the slowest learner.

Sometimes we think we're stupid because we get poor grades and always give answers that are different from the ones our teachers are looking for. We often have asymmetrical development in other areas, like social or emotional behavior, and others can't see our intellectual strengths through these weaknesses. We get diagnosed as hyperactive, hypersensitive, or just plain hyper, because of our constant quest for new information and stimulation. We have trouble fitting in because we constantly question "normal" and can't bring ourselves to do things a certain way just because that's the way they've always been done.

All this means that we often feel isolated and weird. Mensa is more of a support group than a brain trust. It's not really any different from football fans gathering in a sports bar, or book lovers joining a book club. We're just people who occasionally want to be around other people who are weird like us.

I qualified for Mensa in second grade, and thank God my school principal and mom agreed to tell me. My mom admitted that my playmates used to ask her why I was so weird. I was completely aware that I was not normal. It made all the difference in the world to know that my weirdness was a good thing. Especially since the following year I had a teacher that hated "gifted" kids, allowed me to be bullied, and convinced the new principal that I didn't qualify for the GATE program. GATE or Gifted and Talented Education programs consider the top 10% on IQ tests to be qualified. (I have all the paperwork from this incident.)

My mom, like so many other parents of gifted kids, didn't really know what that meant for me or what to do with me. When a kid is gifted in sports, as soon as they're identified, they receive all kinds of extra training and support from coaches to develop that gift. When a kid is gifted in music or art, they still have pretty good chance of receiving extra training or support from school to develop those gifts. At the very least, their talents draw praise and encouragement. When a kid is gifted intellectually, the extra training and support they may receive is often entirely dependent on the resources of their parents, since a large number of educators still carry a prejudice against these kids. And since intellectual giftedness is sprinkled across all racial and socioeconomic divides, what happens to our most intellectually gifted children is a crap shoot. Some become physicists. Some become drug lords. Intelligence alone is not enough. It needs cultivating and developing, because it will learn. The question is, what will it learn?

I was one of those who dropped out of high school. I used a crappy homeschool by mail program to get a diploma while working full time as office manager for two start-up business that shared a space. I had no idea how to go to college because no one in my family had done so, and I left public high school before anyone told me that they have guidance counselors to help you make that transition. I didn't have any career direction at the time either and didn't want to commit myself financially to an education without a purpose. Most significantly, I couldn't fathom suffering through any more formal education. I've since been assured that college is nothing like high school, but the aversion is still so strong I can only imagine myself going back to school as some distant future possibility.

Working was wonderful for me. I discovered how much I could learn out in the world. My boss challenged me again and again, and taught me everything about his business. I caught the entrepreneurial bug.

Being a highly logical person, I deduced that who I spent my life with was more important that what I spent it doing. Having found my perfect match, I married at 19 years of age, allowing us to finish growing up together and into each other. Having further determined that the thing I would regret most would be not having children, and that it was the most time sensitive of my goals, I set about building a family. I wanted to be done having children by the time I was thirty, and have an idea of what else I wanted to do with my life after that.

I accomplished that goal and learned a lot about myself in the process. Kids do that to you. I learned how much my intellectual giftedness affected my parenting decisions. How different and weird it could make me in this situation too. And I questioned whether I could lose it. Sleep deprivation and hormones both worked a number on me.

About a year after my last child was born I really felt this new phase of life approaching where I  would no longer be constrained by the fuzzy haze I'd been in through the previous decade of childbearing. But I lacked confidence. I had never pursued joining Mensa even though I knew that I qualified. I could have dug up those old test scores and mailed them in. But I wanted to know if I could still qualify, to find out if I had really lost some part of my intellectual gift in the brain fog. I signed up online to take the Mensa administered qualifying exam. I took the test and felt good about it. A month or so later I received the invitation to join.

That moment, having been through so much, and questioned my identity so thoroughly, was like stepping into the light again. I already knew beyond a doubt that I could survive anything. Natural childbirth gives you that. Now, I knew that I still had that ability within myself to learn anything I want to learn, in order to do anything I want to do. That I'm not crazy.  Gifted people often worry about that. I'm fine with being weird, but I feel crazy creeping up on me sometimes and it's disturbing.

After that, I slowly began to pick up where I left off as a writer. I've given myself a decade to accomplish certain goals in this area and am on track to do so. Blogging is part of my process toward that goal.

The theme has become "Crafting a Family," because family is the most important thing to me. It bothers me that half the marriages in this country end in divorce, and half the kids are growing up in broken homes. If I can encourage people, if I can show them a different way to look at a situation, or offer an idea they haven't thought of, that's my purpose here. There are thousands of parenting blogs and hundreds of popular experts. I don't want to retread the familiar ground. I'm too impatient for that. But I do know that being a Mensa Mom means I think differently. That I challenge normal. That I pick up things in research articles that have implications for families that others may not see. That I have successfully done things that people consider crazy.

I've never used a crib or baby food. I'll never go to a hospital to give birth again. My older two daughters watched their younger sisters be born and cut their cords. I use marketing tactics to get my kids to try new foods, counter bad advice attacks with statistics, and am enjoying my teenagers so much more than I did my babies. I've figured out this isn't normal.

My very normal sister just rolls her eyes and loves me anyway. Normal works for most people, that's why it's normal. But when it's not working we need alternatives. For some of us, normal never works. That's why the way themensamom crafts a family has a place in the blogosphere. Its different, because some of us will always be different. And we can learn more from each others differences than we can from repeating the same things that have always been said.

*** This post was featured in the Redwood Empire Mensa Bulletin, Nov. 2013 edition. 

eBook Fundraising

I'm excited to announce the release of my first book, "eBook Fundraising." It's a comprehensive guide to planning a fundraiser using an eBook created by and for your school or organization. BookBaby.com picked it up and is offering it as a FREE guide on their website. That's right! I said it's FREE for you to download to your computer or eReader!

As parents we always seem to be fundraising for something, and always looking for new fundraising ideas. I know, with four kids, I'm involved in 10-20 fundraisers per year. Many of us have also wanted to produce student anthologies, just for the sake of encouraging our kids to write. With this guide you can do both at the same time. Raise funds for present needs, and foster creative expression for posterity. How great is that?!?

Download your FREE guide to "eBook Fundraising" now, and be sure to share the link with your community.

When you use it, come back here to share your eBook in the comments, and let me know how it worked for you. I'm waiting anxiously to see what you produce!

***This book was recently pulled for a revision. I'll keep you posted when it comes out again.

Confessions of an Over-Sharer

This post will inevitably contain TMI. That's just how it is with me. I try to be brief and not bore people with my enthusiastic recounting of the details of my life, and all the interesting things I've learned, but I know I fail. After a great deal of personal reflection, I've decided I don't care. There are reasons I over-share, and they're good reasons. Perhaps an explanation will help the rest of you have a little sympathy, and maybe a little grace, for the over-sharers of the world. 

1) My parents don't speak the same language. It sounds like English is coming out of both of their mouths, but I assure you that interpretation is always required. The simplest way to describe it is to say that my dad is a PC and my mom is a Mac. This digital difference is really just an extension of a deeper communication difference. As I grew up in their house, I'm "bilingual." I listened to them argue endlessly about things they agreed on, because they each expressed it differently.

Because I understand that two people can hear the same thing differently, I always feel obliged to offer lengthy detailed explanations that I'm hoping will cover every possible interpretation. This is especially the case with instructions. People who get things easily often make fun of lengthy detailed instructions, but people that write them have to explain it for the most confused and frustrated possible reader. Thorough instructions at the outset alleviate mistakes and calls for help in the end.

2) My family is also Pentecostal, and two ideas from the Bible made a strong impression on me as a child. They undoubtedly contribute to my problem with over-sharing. First, God is omnipresent, and omniscient. He sees and knows everything I do and think. Second, there is a verse in the Bible that says everything that is secret will be revealed and everything that is done in private will be shouted from the rooftops.

I'm neither surprised nor bothered by government surveillance. I've never lived with the idea of privacy. In my way of thinking, everything I do is already known and may someday be broadcast. In a way, these ideas have better prepared me for the inevitable and quickly coming end of all privacy. But, because I've already thought of whether I'd be okay with the world knowing what I'm doing and thinking, before I choose to do or think a certain thing, I probably censor myself less when later sharing my life experiences with others.

3) My hometown is on an isolated island in Alaska, and even among my small group of peers I was an oddity. So, my early childhood was spent in a very internal disconnected way. As I reached my teens and became more aware of the world, I made a conscious choice to push myself out into it.

I didn't understand all the social subtleties, and I thoroughly pissed off my older brother by recounting his life to his friends...and possibly a few random strangers. But I was so desperate to connect to real people (as opposed to fictional people) that I didn't think of his discomfort at the time. His life was so much more interesting to talk about than mine. He was cool.

Now that I'm a lot older, I see many people who feel depressed and disconnected. They're afraid, and hide their real selves in silence. They wish they had someone to talk to, but are embarrassed to speak. We can't connect if we don't communicate. That doesn't always mean talking, but talking is a good place to start. Not everyone will want to reciprocate my efforts at connecting, but I'll never find the ones that do if I don't open up my mouth. I like people. I think they're mostly interesting. And there are people in this world who like what I have to say and want to enter into a conversation with me. Finding them is worth annoying a few who don't.

4) When I was in my early 20s I did presentations in schools for an abstinence based sex education program. I was motivated by the complete uselessness of all the many hours of sex ed I received in school. It starts in fourth grade and in high school they spend an entire year on it, but when I got married I discovered how irrelevant most of it was, and how much important information had been overlooked. I got comfortable talking about this subject with teenagers. I also went on to become a certified doula and now feel completely comfortable talking about all aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.

There are a lot of things wrong with what Americans believe about all of these subjects, but these wrong ideas persist because we don't talk about them. What women have shared for thousands of years, what made them strong, has become a taboo subject in the modern age. I believe we will only experience true liberation and strength as women when we become willing to talk to each other about these important subjects again. We will experience more equality in our relationships with men when we don't feel ashamed about, or inferior in, our own bodies. We have the freedom to speak. This is a super power.

5) Parents are often the worst over-sharers and parenthood has given me so much more to tell you about than you could possibly want to hear. But among parents, sharing is often the only vent we have for our frustrations with a life that we could never have fully anticipated. We share the good and the bad because both are so overwhelming they push the boundaries of our comprehension. We want to know that others have shared our experiences and survived. And we can always use sympathy, and fresh ideas for dealing with old problems. I love to hear what others are doing.

We also want to celebrate our kids' achievements, not because we view them as our achievements, but because we've shared their struggles. It's the same reason everyone talks about an Olympic athlete who wins gold after sustaining an injury. We witnessed the pain, felt deep empathy with it, therefore, we can't help our excitement over the triumph. Only, the rest of you weren't watching our kids struggle, so it's hard to share our enthusiasm.

6) That we celebrate the achievements of others is one of the most beautiful things about my family. No one is diminished by the success of someone else. We live in a competitive and critical world. We judge everything from movies to clothes, to melons in the grocery store. I think we feel all that criticism lingering in the air. We're all hungry for words of affirmation. Our mothers' admonishments, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all," aren't enough. We should admonish our children, "if you think something good about someone, say it!" In this area, I'm trying to share more. I want to tell people when I've been thinking of them, how I admire them, what I appreciate about them. This can make some people uncomfortable, because they've gotten used to a lesser view of themselves. They try to deflect praise. "Thank you," and, "I know," are both perfectly acceptable responses IMO.

7) The more of the world I've seen, the more I've come to realize that, there are more ways to live a happy life than anyone can count. I'm interested in hearing about how others live, the choices they've made in life, why they've made them, and how that has affected their view of the world. Because I'm interested in hearing about all the details of others lives, I suspect there are others who must be interested in hearing about my life. I don't want to gossip. I'm just fascinated by how different we all are, and how, in spite of vast differences, some things about us can be the same. I'm perpetually examining my own motivations and results, and assume others are too. Though I've discovered that assumption isn't true in general, there are exceptions to be found and I'm on the hunt for them.

That's why I'll probably continue to over-share, even though I'll keep trying to be brief. In the end, it won't matter much whether I've succeeded or failed. I'm living my own personal version of a happy life and don't have time to worry about what other people are thinking of me. Especially since they probably aren't.

An Optimist and a Pessimist decide to homeschool...

The pessimist doesn't want her child exposed to ideas that contradict her belief system. 
She doesn't want to have to confront or convince a teacher because her arguments don't seem to make any impact.
She's afraid her children will be indoctrinated by the government in some way if they go to public schools.
She doesn't want to hear that her child may have a learning disability that means they need special instruction or that could be treated with medication.
She thinks a school psychologist is just someone that messes with kids brains and blames any perceived problems on the parents.
She's afraid her children could be taken away if someone finds out she's made some extremely different life choices for her family, like refusing vaccinations, eating a severely restricted diet, or being nudists at home and on vacations.
She believes the public schools will not adequately prepare her child for college.
She's afraid, and all her motivation is about what she doesn't want for her child.

The optimist sees that her child is not doing well in school and thinks, if I homeschool I can meet the needs of my child that the school isn't able to.
She learns about how she can intervene in dietary and environmental ways to improve behavioral problems, but sometimes even tries medication as an intervention.
She values the evaluation of her child's learning abilities by professionals because it allows her to better target her instruction and interventions.
She goes out of her way to expose her children to a wide variety of ideas and beliefs, trusting that the same evidence that she built her belief system on will provide a firm foundation for her children when they reach the age to decide for themselves.
She appreciates the oversight of the government as it legitimizes her child's educational achievements and keeps her accountable for teaching the basics.
She sometimes makes what seems like extreme life choices because she follows current research and doesn't have to wait for societies approval to adapt to new revelations.
She sees the unique strengths, weaknesses, and interests of each child and plots a course of instruction to prepare them to excel in a life they love, whether or not that means going to college.
She knows that she can do more and better than a teacher with twenty kids in a classroom, and her motivations are all about what she can do for her child.

If you haven't figure it out yet, this isn't a joke. I shudder when I hear another pessimist has decided to homeschool, because they often think that even if they fail at teaching their child anything good, at least their child isn't being exposed to all that bad stuff in a public school. Those are the ones whose children fall behind and can't even pass the GED test when they realize their parents haven't kept up with the government paperwork needed to get them a real diploma. They end up ignorant and sheltered, a certain recipe for an unhappy life.

Homeschooling is far too important a choice to be made from a position of fear. That's not to say that there aren't legitimate concerns parents have about public, and private, schools. Especially when they have children who don't fit into the typical mold. Many children could benefit from the kind of educational freedom and customization that homeschooling allows. But, I would highly recommend changing your viewpoint before you change your school. If you can shift your attitude and motivational directives, you will be far more successful.

Homeschooling is a difficult endeavor. You will need a lot of motivation to keep going. Positive motivators always outlast negative ones. Whatever the concerns you first enumerated, whatever thing made you look into homeschooling in the first place, try flipping it around to a positive statement of what you can do if you make this change. Don't homeschool because you're afraid; do it because of all the possibilities!

To the mother of that screaming infant in Target,

Mea Culpa

The other day, I was browsing the clearance section of the toy department at Target, because it's August and they're moving out last year's toys at 70% off to make room for this years Christmas fare, when I heard the blood curdling scream of your baby. Not the communicative crying that can be solved with a bottle or a diaper change, but the scream of last resort precisely honed by nature to cause every woman in the vicinity to respond with an adrenaline surge. Forced into action by my DNA, I searched until I found your child and determined that he was with you, being taken care of, and not about to become lion chow.

Your red faced infant had not ceased his caterwauling, and you struggled to appease him while determinedly shopping on. I thought to my self, "Shut that child up woman! Why are you here with him?" Then immediately felt sorry for my reaction because...I have been you. That's right. I have been the bedraggled mother dragging a screaming infant through a store. How could I have forgotten so quickly?

During my 'decade of childbearing' as I call it, I was either pregnant or breast feeding, with a mere six months at a time between the cessation of the latter and the commencement of the next former. For that decade I lived in a haze of sleep deprivation and hormone induced short term memory loss. There were moments of unprecedented bliss. Moments, I knew, would never be surpassed. But it was mostly a lot of misplaced urine and fecal matter, and tests of physical and mental endurance that have inoculated me against the idea of "I can't" for the rest of my life. If you survive parenting four children through to age seven, you know there is nothing else out there in the world that you can't do.

At age seven it gets a lot better. If you're lucky, you're not washing wet bed sheets every day anymore. The children can get themselves ready for school each morning and bed each night, and they can at least pull their own weight as part of the family. They don't need someone especially taking care of them every second anymore. When they ask for a drink of water you can tell them to get it themselves, and they won't flood the kitchen.

My youngest is seven now. My brain is no longer fuzzy. As I chastised myself for my uncharitable thoughts toward you, I fully realized the purpose of that hormone induced short term memory loss. When people tell you to enjoy those younger years because they'll be over too soon, it's because of that memory loss. When a woman snuggles up to her husband and whispers, "don't you think we need one more baby?" it's because of that memory loss. When you look at some other parent with a misbehaving tyke, and think they ought to just take care of that situation so the rest of the world doesn't have to hear it, it's because of that memory loss. You'll appreciate that memory loss someday.

Yes, there are moments that will be the greatest natural highs of your entire life, but those moments are pitiful compensation for long crushing lows that seem to move in slow motion, when you're forced to take a screaming infant with you to Target because you're out of teething tablets, or diapers, or food for the rest of your family. I'm sorry young momma. It's my fault I forgot. I'm sure you've got a good reason to be out with that bawling monstrosity. No one would do it for any purpose shy of desperation. I'm not sad those years are behind me. You'll get through this too.


*** This post was featured in the Redwood Empire Mensa Bulletin, Nov. 2013 edition.

The "S" Word

What do you do about the "S" word?

I've shocked a few mothers over the years who happened to be sitting nearby when one of my children came to complain, "Mom, (other child) called me stupid!" Or ugly, or bossy, or fill in the meanie comment here.

The most common response I've seen from other parents is a full on intervention in the children's activity, complete with forced apologies and a banning of the "S" word. We don't have any banned words in my house. We have large vocabularies and when we have a problem with something they say, ask our children if they know what a given word means and if it's really the word they want to use.

So, how do I respond that shocks other mothers? I ask the child flatly, "Is it true?"

The child, after coming to a startled halt in their oncoming whine fest, almost always responds, "No."

If it's not true, then why are you listening to someone who clearly doesn't know what they're talking about? One of life's most important lessons is that you can't change other people, you can only change how you respond to them. I want my children to think critically about what they hear, about themselves and about the world in general. Rather than responding to criticism and rejection by acting out against the other person, I want them to be able to brush it off quickly with the truth. This is also an opportunity to practice empathy. Why do they think the person called them that?

Every now and then, a child will think about it and answer, "Yes."

Why does the child think it's true? What should they do about it? Do they need to change something about themselves, or accept it as part of their identity and be at peace with it. This is a great opportunity to learn how to process and grow through criticism.

Someone else's true accusation is not always something we should be ashamed of. I've been called "princess" in a derogatory way, but I don't have any problem with being a princess. My definition of princess is someone who is influential, responsible, and confident. Because I know who I am, accusations against my identity cannot stick to me.

This is a vital life skill. Even though my maternal instinct to intervene and protect my children is as great as any mother's, I force myself to be detached because I'm holding on to a long term view of life for them. Whenever possible, I avoid intervening in the arguments of children. Instead, I try to give kids the tools to handle conflict on their own, then send them back into the fray.

Residual Self-Image

I loved the part in "The Matrix" where Neo is being trained, and his residual self-image is explained. I especially love that term, "residual self-image." Having four daughters, I'm often caught by articles about body image and self-esteem. They're everywhere. And I just don't get it. There are so many ways to be beautiful. Why are so many woman carrying around such terrible residual self-images?

I'm always a little surprised when I see myself in a mirror because I'm not as stunning as I feel just walking around. My residual self-image is perhaps a bit out of touch with reality at this point. I'm still thirty flirty and fine in my mind. I guess I never registered any of the negative input out there. I still love my Barbies, but never thought I ought to look like them. I see skinny models and think they look like bony refugees. It's perhaps one of the few body types that aren't beautiful to me.

A woman is never more beautiful, in my opinion, than when she's growing with child. I love that modern maternity fashion is celebrating the shape instead of trying to hide it. Even the post-partum body is beautiful as it transitions into the softer curves of a fertility goddess. It's a shape that drives men crazy on a subconscious level, scientifically demonstrated to be more attractive to them than a bikini model figure. Don't women know this?

Why am I so out of touch with this apparently huge problem?!? In my ignorance, I seem to be raising daughters who are just as self-confident about their bodies as I am. Thank goodness for that. But how? And is there something useful I can contribute to women and girls who struggle with this issue?

Many feminists seem to think the problem begins with fairy tales, in which pretty girls are always good and ugly girls are always bad. This makes no sense to me either. When I read fairy tales, I saw that good girls grew beautiful, and bad girls made themselves ugly. This was affirmed by my life experiences, in which persons with a mean disposition quickly lost their beauty to foul facial expressions, and a kind heart could always be seen shining beautifully, even in unconventional faces.

There also seems to be some confusion between the terms beautiful and attractive. If you struggle to understand the difference, go to an art exhibit. A book won't do. You have to view art in person. Look deeply at each piece. Learn something about the artist. Observe how works that are not initially beautiful to you can still draw you in. They're still attractive. Then watch as a work that attracted you can become more beautiful as you learn about it and respond to it. Attraction is much more complex, much more open ended. Attraction does not require beauty. And it carries far more potential. Beauty is entirely subjective, an ever changing ideal that exists moment by moment in the eye of the beholder. The only way to feel beautiful all the time is to be your own beholder, to subject yourself to no opinion but your own. But you can be attractive without beauty.

Fortunately, we are wired to be attracted to the faces that surround us in infancy. Usually, these are faces that resemble our own. Thus, for every variant genetic group, there are others out there who are wired to find us beautiful, and vice versa. This is why people tend to end up marrying within their own racial group, unless they grew up in a more diverse extended family or community. We all know there are numerous exceptions, but the overall data still supports this. If you're judging your face and figure against someone outside of your group, you're denying the beauty that is in your variation. You're saying that something about your genetic/racial identity is inferior to someone else's. Your community should bitch-slap you for that. You're a beautiful representation of them, and you have every right to stand proudly next to the beauties of other groups. The genetic diversity of the human species is stunning in its scope. To say that one collection of DNA data points is the ideal of beauty for all is utterly ridiculous.

Facial symmetry has received a lot of attention recently as an arbitrary definer of beauty. But while the data suggests more symmetry is initially more attractive, other data suggests that after a certain point it becomes repulsive. Not that we don't want to look at it, but we don't trust it to lead to a stable loving relationship. Being a little off kilter adds interest to a face. It makes it easier to connect with. To be comfortable with. Magazines are filled with perfect faces, because we are attracted to them in an obvious way. Artists like to work with awkward ones, because they are attractive in a more complex way. Whichever you have can be attractive, but both are spoiled by expressions of discontent and judgement.

When it comes to our reproductive imperatives, youth will always be more attractive. We can never return to our youth, but we can sure accelerate aging with an obsession over beauty treatments. Beaty treatments and products are not tested or approved by any governing body. When I've observed a beautiful older woman, she's always had a simple skin care routine, minimal makeup, and a tendency to be content with her life. The latter being the key. Stress ages you prematurely, so the last thing you want to stress about is looking older. With age comes maturity, education, experience, and a host of other attractions that will keep you in good company if you acquire them.

The one aspect of beauty and attraction that we have the most control over is our health. I can carry thirty extra pounds fairly discreetly, but I know that I would feel and look better if I got rid of that extra weight. I have a skin condition that can easily be covered by makeup, but makeup irritates it and makes it worse. I choose to wear it only for important occasions and accept the skin I'm in the rest of the time. There are treatments that could clear it up for a time, but they're expensive, and not a priority over things like braces for the kids. We can eat better, exercise more, and treat our bodies better, and we should. Not to look like someone else's ideal of beauty, but to be the healthiest we can be, because healthy is always a beauty improvement. If you're not there, like me with my extra 30 lbs., don't ever just accept it. Do something. Even if you fail, making an effort is attractive. Wouldn't you rather be with someone who is trying? If you keep trying new activities, and new ways to track your calories, you'll eventually find something that works for you. There's not one system and one workout that works for everyone. We're too diverse.

That's why I insist that there are many ways to be beautiful. As many as there are women. If anyone has told you otherwise, they lied to you. If you believe them, you lose your most attractive quality, your confidence. You give up all your control and let yourself become what they said of you. Do you want to be what some liar said you are?

The truth is, people who can't see the beauty in others have a problem with their perceptions. The truth is, you can become more beautiful without changing anything external about yourself. The truth is, your residual self-image is more important than how you actually look on the outside. The truth is, when you see the beauty in yourself and others, you will naturally become more beautiful. Your confidence, and the value you place on your health and well-being will begin to change the way you appear to those around you. The truth is, when you broaden your idea of beauty and attractiveness you will begin to see value, in people and in the world, that you never knew existed before. The truth is, the more you see value in the diversity of the world, the more favorably you will see yourself, as you possess many valuable diverse characteristics too.

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but clearly there are many women who struggle with these truths. That's ok. You struggle because you know there's something wrong with what you've been believing about yourself. If something here affirms you, keep it close and remind yourself every day. If something in your mind or heart denies your innate potential for beauty, call it out as a lie and declare the opposite over yourself until it becomes the truth. You have to change the inside first, then the outside follows.

Bonus: How do you confront a lie?

My oldest daughter has always been a fashionista. Her crazy style got her ostracized by the three "popular" girls in elementary school. One day she came to me crying because her best friend had informed her that she wasn't popular because these girls didn't like her. She wisely insisted that this was a lie and I needed to intervene with her friend.

I asked her friend what it meant to be popular. She responded that "most everybody liked you." I asked her if everybody liked the three girls who were called "popular." She told me that nobody liked these girls. I asked her how many people liked my daughter. She answered that pretty much everybody did except those three girls, just a lot of them were afraid to deny the girls and be my daughter's friends. I asked how many people she thought liked her. She said, pretty much most people. So, I asked her who were the more popular girls at school. She figured out that my daughter and she was.

The issue was settled, and I like to think that moment had a strong impact on the self-confident young woman my daughter's friend has become. She has never cowed to a bully since. Sometimes we need help to see the truth, but once we do, it has the power to change our whole lives.

*** This post was featured in the Redwood Empire Mensa Bulletin, Sept. 2013 edition. 

Writing Naked

Sometimes I cringe as I write. Shhhh...don't tell. The thoughts are flowing freely from the creative part of my brain, when suddenly the analytical part kicks a boulder right into the middle of the stream. "You don't want people to know about that!" it screams.

Our brains can wear a lovely cloak of silence that hides every bare naked thought, or we can peel back the cloak, expressing things that connect us with friends, or strangers, in a deep vulnerable emotional and intellectual intimacy. Penetrating through the niceties that cover the surface, bypassing the distraction techniques of the face, written words lay bare our truest selves for inspection. A nakedness that can never be recovered. A word spoken may be forgot. A word written lives forever. Like the porno shots of a young struggling actress may haunt her long after she obtains an Oscar, so the blog prattle of a young author may haunt her even as she holds a Pulitzer.

If I don't post often, or promote extensively, it's because I'm still uncomfortable being intellectually naked in public. There's no photoshopping over ignorance and I'm at least smart enough to know that I don't know everything.

Life as Art

I've been ruminating about the arts lately. About the diversity of definitions people ascribe to the word art. How it's valued or devalued. How it affects business and how business affects it. About its worth in terms that have nothing to do with money. How it impacts us as observers, and as creators.

In more personal terms, how I express myself creatively. What I want to express. How I think my work is perceived. How off I may be in that analysis. What I consider art. What I am willing to offer in exchange for it. What I am willing to sacrifice in the creation of it.

My twenties were spent pregnant, breast feeding, or recovering. Five pregnancies and four children later, I'd lost sight of my identity. I'd matured in many ways. But I'd lost sight of my creativity. I felt like I'd literally lost my mind on occasion. Now, midway through my thirties, I've discovered I'm returning to my teenage self. My self confidence is much higher. My life is much different. But my mind is much the same. And I am still highly creative. I'm picking up parts of me I set aside to bear children. I'm becoming myself again.

In those days I dreamed dreams far greater than I had the ability to attain. Today, I have far more and better developed skills. In those days I was dependent on others for information and education. Today, I know how to educate myself. I know how to pursue information and understand it. In those days I felt helpless, trudging from day to day, wondering what would come of my life. Today, I am actively cultivating skills that will allow me to accomplish what I dream of doing.

I am writing. I am painting. I am parenting. There are many creative outlets for my agile mind to pursue. The possibilities excite me. But all the external work, all the things I may produce, are seasonal. They belong to a brief space of time. They will be completed and placed in the hands of others. I've become okay with that. I don't need to hold on to my creations anymore, like a kindergartner that must see her work on the fridge to feel validated.

One day, my kids will leave home. I'll probably pack up the essentials, give the kids everything else, rent the house out, and travel the world with my husband. And I'll create. I'll write. I'll paint. I'll parent. And I'll let go of each creation in turn. I'll continue to learn and be affected by the world, and I'll have an effect on it as well.

When I leave it, friends will gather to evaluate the impact of my life. They will speak of worth in terms that have nothing to do with money. How I impacted them as observers and as partners. They will determine if my life was a finished or unfinished work, abstract or representational. A lawyer will inform my family of its monetary value. What they will get in exchange for giving me up. It will not be adequate. It never is for an art lover.

I am passionate about the things I create, and my life is my greatest work of art. This ruminating has gone on long enough. I'm going to get back to living it now.

Juvenile Grief and "The Lone Ranger"

"The Lone Ranger" isn't just an old television show in my house. It's my oldest daughter's "THING". More specifically, her "thing" she shared with her Grandpa Andy while he was dying. While she was between the ages of 4 and 6 we lived with my husband's parents. We were there to help care for his dad while he slowly died of pancreatic cancer. Having grandchildren close certainly prolonged and improved his life, but as parents we worried about whether his gain would come at too high a cost for our children. We did the best we could to help her process the experience, but with a child so young, and right on the cusp of having conscious memories, how can you be certain? Ten years later, a rumor circulated through Hollywood that they were going to make a new Lone Ranger movie. We were about to find out how well we had dealt with our daughter's juvenile grief.

If you're not familiar with it, pancreatic cancer in its final stages is still incurable, and inoperable, and patients are usually given a six month maximum life expectancy. That six months is usually spent wracked with pain and heavily medicated. Living with a person who has this disease is not easy. Not only are you always aware that they will die soon, but you have to watch them endure the kind of pain that, at times they think no one is listening, leaves them begging God to let them go. Into this situation we brought three children. Thankfully, the younger two were too young to remember.

From the beginning, I stayed home with the kids days while my mother in law and husband went to work. This way she could keep their medical benefits and I could keep an eye on him. He probably thought he had a lazy daughter in law, but I deliberately stayed in bed most mornings, listening as he started the day with her and made her French toast. She was always up with the sun and he could never sleep for the pain. My interference wasn't wanted, but I paid close attention so I could conveniently wake up just as he was getting worn out and short tempered with her.

He watched all her shows with her and nearly killed himself more quickly by doing the "Barbie Dance Workout Video" with her. He showed her all thirty something of his five favorite westerns and then moved on to his five favorite samurai movies. At some point he found a complete box set of "The Lone Ranger" television series and they watched them together over and over again. Before the show would start, she brought out a fringed vest from her dress up clothes and dressed grandpa up as Tonto so he could play with her. They passed so many days this way that I lost track of them. She was the Lone Ranger and Grandpa was her Tonto. He played the guitar, so we picked up a child size guitar at a garage sale that she could learn to strum with him. It all played in to their imaginary world. A place they escaped to together.

For two years she was Grandpa's girl. She held his hand when he was hurting and sang to make him feel better. He taught her his confidential recipe for french toast. We didn't keep his sickness or pending death a secret. We just tried to do our loving while we still could. Some moments were harder than others. With so many heavy drugs in the house, we repeatedly taught our kids the importance of not taking medicine without parent approval. When the oldest found one of his dropped pills, she gave it up right away, but he fell apart, knowing it could have killed her by accident.

Hospice came in shortly after that and their services made a world of difference, as the physical demands of caring for him increased. He expressed the same concern we did about how she would handle his death. When that day came, we redirected her grief into loving on Grandma because they were both sad together. They talked about the good things they both remembered and what she could do at his memorial service. In the end she strummed her guitar and sang a song they both loved, with a hitch in her voice and not a dry eye in the building. We all spent a lot of time talking about how he wasn't in pain anymore and how he wanted us to celebrate his passing. The most awkward part of the process was explaining the box in which his ashes were placed. She couldn't believe her big Grandpa fit in that little box.

Children are amazingly resilient. She seemed to move on, choosing to remember the good things and be happy. Ten years passed when the Hollywood rumor mill spit out the new Lone Ranger gossip. My fourteen year old daughter got as excited about it as everyone else's fourteen year olds get about the latest boy band. She watched every episode of the original series again, twice, in preparation. Critical reviews meant nothing. She dressed up in her fringed costume vest...the same one grandpa used to wear, put her long hair in two braids with feather accents, and showed up at the theater with more enthusiasm than she had for the last "Twilight" movie.

To say I was nervous would be putting it mildly. She still tears up when she hears the song that was played during the video portion of Grandpa's Memorial Service. She asked me never to play it again, but it's popular so it turns up at random intervals out in the world. How would she react when this movie finally started?

Exactly like a teenage girl at a "Twilight" opening. It was the best most awesome movie ever!!! She truly had processed all her grief and only held on to the good memories she shared with Grandpa. Who cares what anybody else thought of it or how many "Rotten Tomatoes" it got? She felt only excitement and satisfaction to the core of her being. Sure, it's a little weird for a fourteen year old girl to be so crazy about "The Lone Ranger," but our eccentricities are sometimes the best things about us. They come out of our most intense and defining experiences and they add to our character and identity. That time was the most difficult two years of my life, but now I think I can say we did alright as parents.

A recent headline read "Disney to lose $200 million on Lone Ranger."  I prefer to think Disney just gave a $200 million gift to my daughter. Thank you Mr. Depp & Co.