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GaGa Sisterhood Blog
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2009 Calendar
We still need a host for our Sept 13 meeting and a presenter for Nov 1.
Host Presenter
March 1 Marilyn A Susana
May 3 Cheri Adair Lara
July 12 Virginia Bea
Sept 13 open Group Activity
Nov 1 Sandy open
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March 1, 2009 Meeting
Nurturing Volunteerism in Our Grandchildren
In 2007, GaGa Sisterhood member Susana Young took her two granddaughters and their parents to Ghana and Kenya to volunteer with Free the Children. She was so moved by their experience that she has continued to work with this organization. For our meeting, she will share some of her impressions and lead a discussion on how we can help our grandchildren discover their passion for helping others and making a difference in the world. We will also share some of our own volunteering experiences.
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Greetings!
Some of our members who attended Nancy Mellon's presentation described her as mystical, magical and inspiring. The energy in the room, as we sat listening to her and creating stories of our own, truly was electric. I hope you'll get a sense of her from my brief summary. I encourage you to check out her book. You can download the introduction and first chapter by going to her book's website.
In Sisterhood, 
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Nancy Mellon, our January speaker, is a therapist, teacher, and author of three books. She spoke about her newest book, Body Eloquence: The Power of Myth and Story to Awaken the Body's Energies.
Transformational Storytelling
Her journey with transformational storytelling began in an international Waldorf school, which emphasizes the arts as the foundation for learning. She has been teaching storytelling as a healing art for over two decades and believes that stories broaden our inner knowing, our compassion, and our sense of self. They can help us nurture our own natural intelligence by speaking directly to and from every organ in our body. She believes that as we collaborate more with our own creativity, our relationship with others and ourselves will evolve with it.
 Why make up stories instead of just reading them? Children are making up their whole life as they grow and mature. When a child is listening intently to a creative storyteller, she becomes completely engaged with that person and a bond is formed. Storytelling is like dreaming - the subconscious comes out. Spontaneous storytelling resembles dreaming, yet allows us to be awake and to participate in the healing process. Every one of us has the ability to make up wonderful healing stories.
The Role of Grandmothers
Nancy believes that grandmas have a mission to restore sanity to the earth. We can become parents again in a new way. We can take all our wisdom and see what inspiration comes to us in helping children grow up. We can re-invent the whole relationship. Grandparents often are the most profound influence because parents are so busy they often don't have the time or the attention that we grandmothers do. There's also a natural bond between skipped generations. She described the child as an amazing book waiting to be read.
Our Organs as Metaphors
Each chapter of her book is devoted to an organ and begins with a description of its physiological role in the body, presented from both Eastern and Western perspectives. Every organ produces plot lines and every cell of the body is a memory keeper of our life's experiences. Nancy took us on a fascinating journey. She explained that each organ in our body represents a unique theme that can be a teacher and a healer, not only for our grandchildren but for us as well.
The Heart
The first chapter of Body Eloquence talks about the heart. Nancy asked how many of us have rocking chairs. She explained that children need warmth, love and rhythm to thrive. The comfort of rhythmic rocking, along with our beating heart, engulfs our grandchild in a warm heart-to-heart bonding that literally nurtures the child's health. Singing nursery rhymes also nurtures the "heart bond."
The Liver
The liver, she explained, is the friend of the soul of the child. It purifies the blood and leads to a good mood. Stress in the liver can produce nightmares. Nancy asked us to pair up and take turns creating a story with a silly image that could cause a nightmare. Then make up a magic vessel that lifts the child above and allows the child to see and gather resources and helpers to solve her problem. By using the metaphor of rising above our troubles and seeing resources and helpers below, we can help clear nightmares by making up stories with magical flying horses or ships.
The Skin
Our sense of touch is the most spiritual of all the senses. Holding hands purely for the loving touch of its own sake helps develop a sense of safe warmth together. Right below the skin surface children are building their immune system. She gave us another exercise to illustrate how we can help the child develop softness and hardness when they need to shield themselves. She asked us to imagine a magical cloak of protection for our grandchild and to describe it in detail. She suggested establishing a storytelling ritual by putting on a special shawl before you begin, like Mr. Rogers used to do when he changed into his sweater and tennis shoes. This helps the child build reassurance and order.
Love and Respect
Ultimately, Nancy wants us to look inward to develop more love and respect for the way we are made as humans, and to receive the wisdom held in the organs of our bodies. She hopes that by understanding that we are all the same underneath our skin, we'll begin to remove some of the fears of our differences on the surface.
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