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Creative Living Courier from the Academy of Creative Living
October 17, 2006
Greetings! Welcome to the Creative Living Courier! And an extra warm welcome to all our new subscribers. We are glad you have joined us. The Creative Living Courier email newsletter brings you
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THIS Has More Impact on Kids Than Anything Else!
It was 4:30 a.m., Memorial Day, 2006. I was wide
awake, and so was everyone else in the
house. My son Chris, just graduated from college,
and my brother were running in a 10K race that day.
I wasn't ready to start my day that early, so I went
back to bed after they left.
I thought I'd go right back to sleep, but
no; I found myself listening to the loud clamor of the
birds outside my bedroom window.
After twenty minutes or so, all was quiet again, but I couldn't get my mind to shut off. As I listened to those baby birds, I thought about them and about my own fledglings, too. Whenever I find dead birds in my yard, it's invariably the young ones. Parenting is risky, whatever the species. Being a parent is constant, continual, exhausting, expensive, grueling, and never-ending, according to my 86 year old mother.
Why do so many of us eagerly volunteer for this misery?
We volunteer because it's a novel we get to live--our
very own exhilarating, suspense thriller. We get to
write it ourselves, day by night, hour by
minute, or so we think. It's a good thing that we
don't know when
we begin that (1) we are only the co-authors, and
(2), we write just the first
few chapters. Later, we discover that most of it is in
the hands of our kids, and the universe. We have
some influence, but there
comes a time, much sooner than we ever would have
imagined, that we no longer get to write the script.
We are mostly the producers and stage hands. We
set the
stage, and they take it from there. We find
ourselves standing on the sidelines watching the
action with wonder, awe, sometimes applause, and
sometimes anguish. And suspense.
Will they make a wise choice or a
foolish one? Will they opt for short term thrills or long
term satisfaction--or could they be lucky enough to
get both? Will they get up when they fall down, or
give up in despair? Will they win over doubt and
discouragement or settle for a life half lived--the dual
desperation of denial and dread? Will they find and
follow their own guiding star, or get swallowed up in
the daily grind?
"How Can I Assure the Best Outcome for My Kids?"
I find myself wondering. Then I think of a quotation from Carl Jung: "Nothing has more impact on children than the unlived life of the parent." Ouch! What? The stuff we try to ignore, deny, avoid, repress, or are simply too busy to notice, has more impact than all those sleepless nights, 4 am feedings, homework sessions, car pools, wrestling matches, parent-teacher conferences, music recitals, athletic games (and their practices and coaching sessions), all the late-night talks, the time-out sessions, chore lists, and agonizing split-second decisions we have to make? Yes. Sigh. BIG sigh.
How Can This BE?
How can it be that the stuff that gets lost in
the shuffle of our own lives ends up permeating the
air space around us and our kids? How can it be
that they, who are still impressionable (even
though they try to pretend they're not when they're
teens) feel it, pick it up, and try to carry it for us--
the vibes of our emotion, ambition,
ignored dreams, missions, visions, and yes, unhealed
wounds, too. Especially the unhealed wounds.
I see this all the time in my counseling practice. The invisible energy of all that stuff hangs around and is in constant contact with their searching psychic antennas. It tugs at their souls and hangs on the sleeves of their spirits. It bumps into them, slithers inside their scars, scares them in the night, whacks them on the head, butts their behinds, blind-sides and sideswipes them every time they make a move. And even when they don't. No wonder they can't get away from it.
"What can We Do About This?"
I asked myself in the darkness of the early morning.
Immediately my mind's eye saw
a picture of cleaning out closets and
the basement. Ugh. Yes, that's a good way to
describe it: We can clean out the closets and
basements of our lives and our souls. Why, this even
helps me understand how it works.
How does one go about opening up the closet of the cranium to clean it out? How do we rake or vacuum up the leaves of our lives? Or clean out the basements of our beings? Why we do it just like we do at home, of course. If we think about it, we DO already know how to do this. We just don't want to, because it's as unpleasant to think of doing as it is to clean out our closets and basements, but even more rewarding afterwards, to have completed it.
What We Do in the Physical, Tangible World Can Set Up a Parallel Process in the Intangible, Inner World.
This is the best kind of multi-tasking--we can do
both at once. We can start anywhere, with the most
accessible, most doable task, and go from there. We
clean out one closet, rake or vacuum up leaves, pull
weeds, pick up fallen pine needles, you name it; the
specific task doesn't matter. I've found that whichever one seems to want to be done first is usually the best one to start with. And while we do the physical task, we reflect on our inner lives We allow the dried up residue of the past to float to the surface of our consciousness. We pull out the gunk closeted deep in the recesses of our inner lives. We ask ourselves the same questions in both realms: What do I want to do with this? Do I want this? Will I use it? Will anybody in the house ever use it? If I don't want it, what do I do with it-- shred it, trash it, recycle it, or give it away to someone who would use it? As we clean out our closets, we can ponder things like: What does this stuff that we have been hiding or ignoring (without knowing it, most likely) say to us? If we listen with the inner ear, we may find that skeletons lurk there, but not always the ones we think of. If we listen and look with an open heart, we may find the skeletons of our own deserted dreams, unfinished projects, disregarded wishes, exiled memories--pleasant or unpleasant--neglected aspirations, and banished longings. And yes, we may encounter things we fear. We may open up old wounds or irritate scar tissue around healed ones.
We may also find priceless treasure hiding
camouflaged among the debris. When we find it,
we
are often surprised to discover that THIS is what had
been missing from our lives; THIS is what we were
searching for, sometimes without even knowing we
were searching. We may also find that we feel
complete or fulfilled once we resurrect those
deserted dreams or
resume the creative projects we had set aside.
Whew! What hard work so early in the morning!
After all that mental raking,
cleaning, sorting and
lifting, I was tired. I was finally feeling sleepy
again. While I
slept, I dreamed of babies, of raking leaves, and
cleaning out closets
and basements.
Here's to discovering our own unlived lives so our kids will be set free. Here's to dragging out our dusty dreams and LIVING them. May we write our books, paint our pictures, climb our mountains, walk, bike, swim or run our races, quilt our quilts, carve our niches, feed the hungry, save the souls, heal the sick, write or sing or play our songs, and dance our dances waiting in the wings in our lives. Here's to crafting our lives so that we love living them, and our children are free from the shadows of our live to dream their own dreams and live their own lives.
Now You Know Why I Have Started LunchCraft!
You may recall that LunchCraft is a FREE weekly
telephone class aimed at helping you Craft a Life
You'll Love to Live. We "gather" by phone to lunch,
learn share and create--Wednesdays at lunchtime,
12:00 to 1:00 PM Mountain Time.
And this week's topic is Life's a Bicycle: Dynamic,
Creative Life Balance--If You Can Balance a Bike, You
Can Balance Your Life!
As always, we'll be recording the class, so if you can't attend it live, you can still get it! If you order it before midnight tomorrow, Wednesday, October 17, it will be $9.97@; after that, it will be $14.97@ To order it now, just click here. Sharon M. Barnes, MSSW, LCSW -- The Scrap Lady!
The Academy of Creative Living
phone:
303-987-0346
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