Blog

Loving Wastefully

I recently had the honor of listening to a lecture by John Shelby Spong, a well-known retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church, who spoke clearly and forcefully about the role religion plays in spreading prejudice.  Having been raised Catholic in the ‘50s, and then frustrating my parents by adopting feminism at age 17, thereby rejecting any religion that is not built upon the equality of all humans, I listened carefully with great curiosity, for I’d heard that Bishop Spong was ‘special’.  You could hear the proverbial pin drop among the hundreds in that auditorium as the Bishop, a deeply revered and thoroughly modern man despite his position in his church’s hierarchy, spoke to us about the oneness of all human beings.  Even I gave him a standing O at the end.  It was magic.

He told us that science has proven that we are all one, for humans share 99.9% of the same DNA.  And then there is quantum physics and the oneness principle.  Yeah, yeah, yeah….I’ve heard that before and didn’t need to be convinced.   So I enjoyed his story telling and overall relaxed presentation style.  I especially liked how he spoke in full paragraphs.   Very impressive.

But the concept that grabbed my attention and literally put me on the edge of my seat was at the end, when he suggested that we “choose to love wastefully”.  Huh?  Wastefully?  Isn’t waste a sin?  (hmm…is that in the ‘mortal’ or ‘venial’ category, I wonder?)

He recommended that in these times of turbulence and fear we generate love for all living things, greeting the details of our worlds with love and compassion, regardless of where the love lands and whether or not it is returned.   He used the word ‘wastefully’, I think, to suggest another meaning for the term ‘unconditionally’, because so few of us really understand that idea, having been raised in a world of duality – right/wrong, up/down, yin/yang, etc.   This is not a planet of unconditional love.  We must create it.

How, exactly, do we love without the promise of it being returned and why does that matter?

Even more importantly, why am I writing about this now?

When our children apply to college, our parental claws come out to protect them from the process of judgment and possible rejection.  We don’t want them to be rejected.  We don’t want them to be hurt.  So sometimes in our zeal to protect, we contract and move into a less loving stance toward everyone in our world.   We may envy other people whose children are admitted to dream schools or resent the ones who seem to breeze through the college process without so much as a hair out of place.

This contraction is exactly the opposite of what our children need at this moment.

They need as much extravagant, wasteful love as they can get while they are being exposed to the judgment of strangers who do not know how precious they are.

So this holiday season, join me in my plan to ‘love wastefully’.  Give it away.  Love anyone in sight.  Give them your respect and your care, a smile or kind gesture.

For we also know from life that what we give out comes back to us.  Love begets love.

Amen.

Rejection is God’s Protection: How to Support Your Child Through Early Action or Early Decision Disappointment or Rejection Part 2

While it is not an outright rejection, a deferral is still a big let down.

What if your child’s early application decision is a deferral?

A deferral is the most common decision from an Early program since there are many applications and few spots available. Depending on the college, anywhere from 5%- 20% of the defers might get a final admission in the spring.  So while there is some face saving here, the odds are still against eventual admission and further applications must be completed within the next few weeks.

College Admissions Deferrals: Where the Parenting Gets Tricky

Deferrals offer hope. There is nothing more powerful than hope for a human being…and therein lies the rub.  Your child might not grasp the odds on being admitted now and might want to do everything possible to turn that deferral into a yes.  While I love that tenacity and grit, I’d strongly encourage focusing them on other schools.  This might take some finesse, depending on your child…or on you and your own ego needs.  🙁

Please do not keep stoking up their desire for that school because you are probably setting them up for more pain.

Yes, your child might be one of those 5-20%ers who is offered admission in the spring because we know that your child is a star.  (there’s that flicker of hope again.)  The problem is that you haven’t seen the others in the applicant pool.  I guarantee you that if you did, you’d be completely shocked.  As good as you think your child is, there are others just as talented and accomplished.  Plus admissions officers know that the student’s application is getting admitted, not the student.  There is a difference.   What others say about your child is just as important as your child’s record, and you’ll never know what has been said.  And then there is the fit factor…so it’s too complicated for you to strategize around.  Just take a deep breath and surrender…you have no control on this one.

Your role as parent in this moment is to be your child’s grounding cord.  Offer your love and support, give lots of TLC, remind them who they are because they just took a big hit. Tell them why you love them.  In that teachable moment, offer up a story or two from your past to prove that you went through hard moments before and actually prospered because of them.  Give them their privacy if they need it.

As a Parent, You Are Modeling How Healthy Adults Behave in A Moment of Crisis

Most of all, do not match your child’s energy.  Don’t allow yourself to go into grief over this.  Don’t complain about their guidance counselor or teachers or any other student from their school who got admitted just now.  You are modeling how healthy adults behave in a moment of crisis.  Disappointment and rejection are necessary to build inner resilience to face life.  You can’t protect your child from these feelings.  The best you can do is to encourage them to keep going, for they are surely having their initiation into adulthood through a baptism of fire.

Give them some down time as needed and then get them moving again on those regular action applications that are due shortly.   And no matter what, hold the confidence for you and your child that everything will work out fine in the end.

Are College Admissions Directors Out Of Touch With The Rest of Us?

A new survey of 576 college admissions directors about the state of student indebtedness gives us a sneak peek into the beliefs of those who create financial aid policies at both public and private colleges and universities in America.   And spoiler alert – the news isn’t good.

This survey, developed jointly by Inside Higher Ed editors and Gallup researchers and consultants, takes the pulse of key university administrators about issues regarding average student indebtedness.  According to the Project on Student Debt, the average loan debt accrued after four years of a college education is now $25,250., an all-time high.  These loans come from all sources: government, university and private sources.

Not surprisingly, when asked to identify the most “reasonable” debt range for a four year program, 42% of surveyed admissions directors chose the current $20K-$30K range.  More importantly, though, a full 28% of private college admissions directors and 12% of public college admissions directors chose the $30K-$50K range as a reasonable debt range.  This leaves the average person wondering what these people are thinking because their opinions are very much at odds with public opinion.

The reality is that a full 53% of college graduates under the age of 25 are either unemployed or under-employed, way up from 41% in 2000.  According to the Oraganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), these figures suggest that new college graduates actually fare worse than other sectors in the job market.

So what are these college admissions directors thinking?

Having been a college admissions dean for many years, I understand the ‘silo effect’ created by working within an organization, and the pressure to enroll a class while meeting all of that institution’s needs.  You can only do what you can do within the culture of your university.  There is a financial aid budget allotted annually that must be spread around to cover as much student need as possible, but often it just is not enough.  Most private colleges use the policy known as “gapping” – offering aid but not enough to meet the need of the admitted student who must then make up the difference with loans or sources of income outside of the family income/asset stream.  Private loans usually carry a higher interest rate, making the cost of college more than originally estimated.  Most applicants are unaware of this when they apply.

While I can understand the opinions represented in this survey, I fundamentally disagree with the entire way we support education in this culture.  We seem to have no national consensus about what education should be now, how it should serve the citizenry.  There is currently little connection between the degrees students earn in college and available job opportunities.  No one is driving this bus.

When I went to college back in the Baby Boomer days, education was a mind expander designed to open the world and help us think critically about the great issues of the day.  In that very different world, is no surprise that this happened coincident with the Civil Rights, anti-war and Feminist movements.  Today, however, with the world moving on at astonishing speed, admissions directors are reporting that 96% of parents and 84% of students are focused on that gold ring of employment at the end of a 4 year degree.

And herein lies the disconnect.

Once again, we are looking for the leadership within the college/university community to help structure a Deep Rethink of the whole process.  What are we actually doing when we charge $50K+ annually for a rite of passage with just the vaguest of promises of employment, when so many graduates often have no way to repay those borrowed dollars at the end?

How much do we really value education in the US anyway?

First Aid for College Applicants: Esteeming

Another cycle of college admissions has begun and I’m so struck by the deep fear of students and their parents in the runup to the application deadlines.  I offer the usual excellent advice (take it slow, one step at a time, get lots of sleep) but see how often it goes in one ear and straight out the other.  Yeah, no kidding.  I get it.  I’ve been plenty scared in life myself.

So I’ve hit on an important concept I want to encourage you to use as your child is in the throes of applying to college.  I call it ‘first aid’ to stop the hemorrhaging of confidence that is inevitable this time of year.

I encourage you to amp up your esteeming of your child.

Esteeming?

You might feel resistance at first.  One parent rolled her eyes when I gave her this advice and said, “Oh brother. Aren’t they esteemed enough?”  Made me smile.  But here’s the thing…actually, no.  They aren’t esteemed enough right now.

You can’t possibly understand the scary nature of your child’s world during this moment in time.

They are expected to master the most rigorous curriculum ever offered in the US (thanks to confluence of the knowledge explosion afforded by the internet and the accountability movement of No Child Left Behind).  They are expected to provide evidence of leadership sustained over time for college admissions officers who are partial to that kind of person.  These same admissions officers expect to see full-blown, highly-perfected humans among their applicant pool of teenagers who, for the most part, are far from it.  Students hear snippits of information about admissions that scare them and then, like all people, they connect the dots and make stuff up about how college admissions works.  Except that it doesn’t work that way and they are working off of bad information.  They are connected to each other 24/7 through technology in ways we aren’t.  Social media sucks them into mob mentality.  As teenagers, they want to fit in and be accepted for who they are all the while they have yet to grow into social confidence, like puppies who are growing into their paws.  They have pimples and body issues as they transform into adults.  Their hormones are fluctuating, causing moodiness and angst and a general sense of careening out of control.  They are trying to please everyone and to be seen as special when they really don’t feel special at all.

In short, teenagers aren’t finished yet.

So I am urging parents to offer your children ballast.  Be extra gentle with them now. Praise them for what they do right and bite your tongue when they screw up.  Ease up a bit.  Love them, even if you have to take out their baby pictures to remind yourself how perfect they were then because as teenagers they are sometimes a pain in the butt.  😉

This is their initiation into adulthood.  It is hard to put years of your life on the line to be judged by strangers using rules you will never understand in such a public way.  We adults have never been where they are because our world was so much safer.

Amp up the esteeming and you will see how they relax back into you.  It will change everything.

Homage to My Daughter On Her Birthday

Today is my daughter’s 25th birthday, another #12 (I’m June 12, an auspicious number).   She is my only child, a true soul mate joining me in whatever the heck this thing called life really is.  I suppose that all mothers feel this way about their children, but I swear there is a more special bond than most between us.

I named her after me.  Her name is Nora, the sixth generation of mothers in my family line with this name.  My original name is Mary Lenora, shortened to Marilee.  I was named for Mary, the Mother of Jesus (my mother dedicated me to her) and for both of my grandmothers who were named Nora and Lenora respectively.   As an older mother, I had amniocentesis to check her out in utero for chromosomal irregularities and as soon as I heard she was a girl, I knew she was another Nora.  Could just feel it.  It made sense.

She is a beauty, both physically and in spirit. She has her father’s natural engineering talent and is more intelligent than I am.  She has talents in so many things and a whole lifetime to develop them.  I completely adore her.

The breakup of our family was very hard on Nora, as was my departure form MIT and all of the press that resulted.  She was in college in California at the time and had to deal with it all alone until her amazing advisor, Dean Jeff Huang at Claremont McKenna, stepped in and became a true loving parent in situ.  (How can I ever thank him?)  The past few years have been rough for her and for us, but we always loop back to each other in love, deeply connected.

She has been my greatest teacher and it hasn’t always been easy.  There is no training for parenthood, after all, and she was my one and only.  I was so unprepared for motherhood that I sang her to sleep with show tunes every night because I didn’t know any lullabies.  (There were no lullabies in my home growing up.)  I’ve come a long way since then, believe me, though I’m still figuring out how to parent a 20-something through lots of trial and error, still singing those show tunes, just doing the best I can as a mother.

Nora just called to hear me sing to her a happy birthday song and she told me this story.  This morning she was doing laundry in her Brooklyn laundromat, sitting on the curb, when a small girl, a toddler, broke from her Dad and ran to sit next to her on that street curb.  Then the child gave my daughter the little flower she held in her hand and off she went.  A happy birthday kiss from Spirit.

If you know me, you know that I am not religious but I am a Spirit person.  And I have seen how Spirit often works through children in moments like this, small random gems.   It must’ve been a beautiful moment for my own beautiful girl.

Happy birthday, Honey.  I’m so glad you picked me as your Mom. I love you with all my heart. May you have a long and happy life.

How To Create Peace At Home During the College Application Process

Well, we’re now full-blown in the holiday season again (didn’t we just do this a few months ago?) and if you are the parent of a high schooler applying to college, you probably aren’t singing songs of joy and peace right about now.  Chances are, your child is having the usual teenage mood swings and rebellion compounded by all the additional stress of applying to college and the ultimate fear/Nirvana:  leaving you for college come fall.  If your home is peaceful, please write and tell the rest of us how you’ve managed that.  If you are typical, though, you probably need a breather from the increasing tension.

I know a lot about such things because I’ve been through that minefield.  And if you think it’s hard to parent a 17 year old, wait until you have to parent a 20-something, which is where I am now.  24 is the new 17.  Yikes!   So here’s my holiday gift to you…

My surefire recipe for creating peace at home in stressful times

Step 1.  Lock yourself in the bathroom and breathe.  Breathing is very under-rated.  It calms the nervous system and slows the heart.  The goal is to get centered in what is happening around you and how you feel about it.  In other words, locking yourself in the bathroom gives you some distance, and distance is good when your nerves are frayed and you are about to say or do something stupid that you’ll later regret.

Step 2.  Accept the fact that you are not applying to college.  Your child is.  This is not your firewalk.  You don’t have to stay up all night making applications to school. Your academic performance is not about to be judged.  You are not about to be accepted or rejected by strangers. It isn’t happening to you, though it sure feels like it.  Breathe some more and feel a tiny bit of relief as you meditate on this thought: aren’t you glad you’re not your child?

Step 3.  Remember that your role in this college application business is to be your family’s grounding cord.  You’ve lived through harrowing times before and have came through them OK.  You know that life ebbs and flows, that it brings great times and tough times.  That’s what we signed up for when we decided to be human beings.  So breathe again and ask yourself how you can ground the rest of your family and create a peaceful home.  Breathe in some of that peaceful feeling that you’d like to inject.

Do What Only You Can Do

Step 4.   Commit to yourself that you will be unflappable in the coming weeks.  You will listen and empathize and go on with your life without trying to fix anything, because you are doing what only you can do – modeling healthy adult behavior during a tough time.  You are literally showing your child how it’s done.  Matching their own anxiety doesn’t help them.  It just makes everything worse.

Step 5.  If you want to clear your anxiety and frayed nerves, there is nothing like tapping (EFT).  Here is a great script for that. If not, there are many other ways to stay calm in the center of a Category 5 storm:  breathing; meditation; reading; going for a walk; talking to a friend or a “paid friend”.  Remember what flight attendants tell us upon boarding a plane: place your own oxygen mask on before helping others.   Your child needs you to stay strong and relaxed now.  Your family needs you to create peace.  And you need to enjoy the holidays.

A Tapping Script To Lower Anxiety

Tapping is the perfect first aid for both the parents of students applying to college and for the applicants themselves when the anxiety of the college application process gets overwhelming.

Check out this basic tapping video by the wonderful Jessica Ortner to learn this simple technique. And yes, it is this simple.  😉

It’s best to tap when you feel the strongest emotions.  When you get stressed, step away from everyone, find a private place and start tapping.  Here is a good script to follow- speak these words as you tap.  Feel free to add your own words, since it should fit your experience. Or you can just feel the emotion and say nothing at all.  Just feel and tap.  You can’t do it wrong and you can’t screw it up.  Your body wants to clear the excess charge on your nervous system that’s causing the pain and will respond eagerly.  You might experience yawning, which is an excellent signal that your energy is moving and the tapping is working.  You may feel very tired by the end, also a good sign, so let yourself rest for awhile.  Listen to your body.  It always knows best what it needs.

I’ve given you three rounds, but you can do as many as you want.  EFT Master Dr. Pat Carrington, creator of the “choice” method I use here, says you’ll help yourself no matter what if you tap at least 5 rounds.  I tap every day to keep myself calm and clear.

The abbreviations refer to the point on your body where you’ll tap about 5-7 times as you speak the associated sentence.  Tapping does look strange, so you might feel more comfortable doing this in a private space.  Make sure to drink some water before and after.  The body is more electric than chemical, afterall.

Round 1: 

Karate Chop (KC):      Even though I’m so upset and for good reason, I accept myself and all of these feelings.   (say this 3 times)

Eyebrow (EB):              I’m so upset.

Side of Eye (SE):          I’m so worried/anxious/afraid.

Under Eye (UE):          What if the worst happens?

Under Nose (UN):      What will I do?  How will I handle that?

Chin (CP):                     It’s all up to me and I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Collarbone (CB):          I wish I could calm down.

Under Arm (UA):         I’m so worried, upset and anxious.

Top of Head (TH):       I just want everything to be over because I can’t stand the stress.

Round 2: 

KC:            Even though I’m so stressed out and I have good reason to be – anybody would be -, maybe there is a way to see this differently.    (3x)

EB:            This upset/stress/worry is so uncomfortable.

SE:             I’ve been through trying times before.

UE:            I know this situation won’t last forever.

UN:            Maybe I just need to take a break and vent.

CP:             Maybe I can get more sleep and eat nutritious food.

CB:             This too shall pass.

UA:            I know I can calm down eventually and I’d like to feel calm now.

TH:            I accept myself and my situation completely.  That’s the way life is.

Round 3:

KC:            Even though I’m still upset/worried/stressed out, I choose to be calm, confident and relaxed.  (3x)

EB:            Calm, confident and relaxed.

SE:             I choose to know that everything is going to be OK.

UE:            I choose to see that in this moment I’m safe and all is well.

UN:           I choose to be calm, confident and relaxed.

CP:            Calming down now, relaxing my body.

CB:            It feels good to take a break and feel calm, confident and relaxed.

UA:           Calm, confident and relaxed.

TH:           I accept myself and my situation completely and choose to feel calm, confident and relaxed.  Everything is going to be OK.

Repeat as many times as you’d like.

Why I Want Everyone To Learn Tapping

Since I’ve been pitching tapping (EFT) in a few of my blogs, I figured I’d take the opportunity to tell you what I’m talking about and why I want everyone to learn the technique.

Tapping is a quick and effective way to relieve any kind of pain, whether it is physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. Also known as EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique (which I think is a misnomer because it works so broadly), tapping is like acupuncture without needles.  The underlying concept is that pain comes from a blockage somewhere in your energy system.  Because you don’t know where the blockage actually is, you tap on certain points on your body where some of those 80, 000 meridians that make up your vast energy system come together.  And voila…in a few short minutes, you usually get relief.

I use it everyday for something.  Last night, for example, I bumped the top of my head hard on a cabinet corner, the kind of accident I knew would swell.  I tapped for about 1 minute. The pain went away completely and I have no lump or even bruise today.  No need for ice. 😉  Frankly, there isn’t room enough in this blog to describe the many times I’ve used it and received miraculous results.  Stopped bleeding with it.  Made burns and headaches go away in minutes.  Cured flying, elevator and water phobias.  Stopped PTSD in its tracks. Tapping is especially excellent for taking anxiety down quickly, which is why I teach it to so many of my clients.  And anyone – even kids – can do it.  I want everyone to learn this because it’s the fastest and most effective way to get out of pain I’ve ever experienced.

Here is a short video to show you how to tap:

I understand your skepticism.  Tapping makes no sense based on the science we all learned in school, science rooted in Newtonian physics where the universe is made of matter and substance and follows certain inalienable rules (Newton’s Laws).  But since we left school, scientific discovery has moved on and if we choose to, we can now see the world through the lens of quantum physics, where the universe is vibrational like humming rubber bands and DNA is directly affected by the vibration of emotion.  Quantum physics trumps Newtonian physics and offers us exciting possibilities for future discovery.  Read anything by Lisa Randall, Michio Kaku or Bruce Lipton and your world will change forever.

There are many tapping videos by the field’s experts on YouTube so you can tap along.  Anything by Carol Look is great.  She is my tapping supervisor for my training and is one of the small cadre of EFT Masters.  I’m also crazy about Margaret Lynch who specializes in tapping for money issues.  I relate to Margaret alot because she is an engineer, fun, funny, slightly outrageous and extraordinarily effective.  She also takes the tapping one step further by combining it with energy concepts taught by her partner Rhys Thomas, founder of The Rhys Thomas Institute of Energy Medicine in MA.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you understand it or believe in it.  Just like gravity, it works anyway. 😉   I urge you to open your mind and use it on yourself, your kids, your animals, your plants.  Try it on anything and see for yourself.

Your Family Trees

“Crying what I do is me; for that I came.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fires”

Your child is very much like an acorn, which is the seed of the mighty oak tree.  While sharing common characteristics, each is utterly unique, destined to be who they are, eager to move into why they came.

Acorns become oaks, never birches or maples.  Under the right circumstances, they grow into their most magnificent selves.  Under trying circumstances, they do not grow into their ideal selves, though no matter what they will still grow toward the light.

Parents play the crucial roles of grounding cord and stabilizer, of nurturer and guardian, and most importantly, as mirror to reflect their child in the child’s highest light.  But social convention and a superficial definition of success often paralyzes us parents into believing that our real job is to ‘civilize’ children and so enchain them, and we sometimes work to turn them into other things that may seem more desirable to the culture.  Birches, after all, contain aspirin in their bark and thereby relieve human pain (doctors).  Sugar maples produce a delicious kind of sugar that makes people happy (entertainers).   It’s tempting to want these kinds of individuals in the family.

But chances are, your child is an oak, with a million different offerings, and on some level they want to run and scream weeeeeeeeeeeeee, reveling in themselves.  Pay careful attention to who your young oak truly is and don’t mess with perfection.

How can you nurture your little acorn today?

Rejection As Sunscreen?

I heard a story on the radio yesterday about a grassroots group in San Francisco dedicated to community film-making.  Every week 10 films made by community members are publically viewed and voted upon by the audience.  Only five return for viewing the following week, so there is a lot of rejection built into this democratic parsing of people’s creative offerings.  I had the usual gut-level reaction of resistance to this notion, but one of the contestants interviewed for the piece patiently explained that all that rejection is actually good for him because the movie/TV business is all about rejection and it’s important to become immune to it.

He’s right and we all know it.  Anyone over the age of 40 knows that rejection is that hot flame that tempers the inner steel that enables robust participation in life’s scrum.   We all know people who are fragile and careful, who have been disoriented and frightened by being swirled around in the rejection eddies, and who have never recovered.  We also know so many who seem strong and centered, unruffled by life’s surprises, those who have learned how to handle rejection.

We parents are wired in a primal way to throw ourselves in front of the train in order to protect our children from danger.  We feel the inherent danger of rejection in the college admissions process and rush in to remove as much uncertainty as possible, thereby unconsciously defeating our child’s natural developmental need to thicken the skin, which is required for happiness on this scary planet.  Rejection as sun screen?

I urge you to reframe your view of rejection as annihilation and see it more as a necessary experience for every healthy human, as painful as birth itself, and the cutting of teeth through tender gums.   Our role is to witness our kids as they move through their rejections – large and small – and to remind them that life goes on regardless.  And that life is good.