Tara Cousineau, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Kindness Warrior

Meditation

Rx when Parenting a Child with a Chronic Condition

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Heavy Doses of Compassion

A dear friend from ages past texted me that his son, who just graduated from high school, has cancer. My heart broke open in a millisecond. I was standing in a Sunday morning line for coffee. The news about his son stopped me cold. Life is so unfair. I couldn’t stop shaking my head in disbelief. The poor barista thought I was complaining about the service.

I met Tom when we were 17 on a school program to the United Nations. I like to joke that he was on the bus of smart Canadians and I somehow sneaked into the program. To apply to the program I wrote an essay about the former UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, with a quote I found in a library book. I’m fairly certain that I was the only one in my town who applied. Now I find it interesting that the chosen quote conjures up the timeless suffering of mothers (of which I still have written out in my neat teenage handwriting). For a whole week we visited New York City, the UN, and went to the top of the World Trade Center for a view of Lady Liberty. The towers no longer exist, of course, and yet they will always be tied in some small measure to that adolescent flirtation, the ideals of humanitarian efforts, and the fragility of life.


It is said that the tears of one mother are the tears of all and the glory of one man is the glory of all men…

Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953

We now are parents and professionals living full lives in different countries marked by the trials and triumphs of being mere humans—we share the main headlines that might fit in a text message or over an occasional phone call. He’s a school principal. I’m a psychologist. He has boys. I have girls. And I wholeheartedly share in his current optimism: his son has a highly curable form of cancer.

I don’t want to offer up a cliché but I will: Perhaps there are few comparable experiences that collect the kind of battle wounds like the scars you get from child rearing. At the same time, there is nothing like the joy and pride that arise in the smallest of moments in watching your children thrive. You never think your heart can crack open wider and then it just does. It’s that very vulnerability that exposes us to the abyss that is human suffering. Deep love. Deep pain. 

A child’s cancer diagnosis is a shot to the heart.

I sat with my cup of my tea thinking about Tom and his son when I saw a family stroll in. They pushed a daughter, now a young adult, in a wheelchair. I wondered about her. A spinal injury? A congenital condition? Hard to say. Her hair was neatly brushed. She wore a shimmering cherry lipstick. It was carefully and lovingly applied. I was overcome with emotion.

I began to count. 

In my mind I lined up a dozen random parents I know in my community. How many had a child with a chronic or serious illness or condition? I summoned up a list of their children’s conditions: anxiety, addiction, ADD, autism spectrum, clinical depression, cerebral palsy, a congenital heart condition, kidney disease, and post concussion syndrome, including two deaths due to chronic childhood illnesses. That our community has been spared a youth suicide or fatal car accident or death by gun violence seems—statistically—a stroke of luck. I included myself in the line up of parents. We have a daughter with potentially lethal food allergies. Sophie is now 21 and has not outgrown them. I’m only mildly relieved that her boyfriend is an EMT.

How many of these parents suffer quietly with the plight of their child’s condition, or keep to themselves for the sake of privacy, or simply are heads down with caregiving that others don’t even know to reach out? I also imagine parents in other communities who don’t have the privilege of a well-resourced school system or medical access or aren’t able to rally funds for research or costs of care. The bottom line is that more needs to be done for families to foster the kind of resilience that may be needed for a long haul. Two colleagues (Lorraine Hobbs and Kimberly Arthur) and I recently published a journal article about the need to support parents with children with chronic conditions: The Role of Compassion and Mindfulness in Building Parental Resilience When Caring for Children With Chronic Conditions: A Conceptual Model. (Please read and share it.)


…both mindfulness and compassion have significant potential to support this process of working through adversity and finding ways to develop inner resources to cultivate acceptance, find meaning in the context of complex parenting challenges, and respond to the child and oneself with kindness in the face of persistent stressors associated with children’s chronic conditions.

Cousineau, Hobbs & Arthur, 2019

A Silent Suffering

We couldn’t write about our personal experiences in this kind of academic platform yet our hearts were totally in it. We have children with various conditions requiring different levels of care and attention. So we try to walk the talk and wrote the article. Here’s why: 

Parenting a child with an illness or disability is very common yet remains a silent plight for many. 

Close to 20% of parents have a child with a chronic condition or disability, which is defined as any condition that has lasted or is expected to last for at least 12 months. Personally, I think this is an underestimate due to under reporting and stigma. But let’s just say that 1 in 5 parents/families has a child with some sort of chronic affliction. (There are 83M families in the US and 15M single mothers.) Assume for the sake of my argument that you are in a room full of parents. The next time you are in a meeting at work or a school PTA meeting, or at a place of worship, or on a commuter train imagine that for every 4 seats the 5th seat has a parent facing a difficult illness challenge with a child—no matter the age of a child. Imagine yourself in his or her shoes. 

One memory that comes to mind is when my daughter Sophie was three years old and at preschool. She took a cracker out of a snack jar. Apparently another child with sticky peanut butter fingers had also done so. Her face blew up like a balloon immediately. The EMTs were called. She chugged some liquid Benadryl. She recovered. The school eventually became “peanut/nut free” to the chagrin of other parents. It was a common battle cry across American schools: “Why should my child give up his PB&J?” “That’s the only thing he eats and he has the right to have peanut butter.”  “Why should my kid starve?” Parents of the afflicted child would counter, “This could be a life or death situation. Surely you can see that?” “You’d rather see a child risk her life than to find something else for your kid to eat?” “Try carrots instead.”

Later the solution in the elementary school was to separate the food allergy kids from the others at lunch time, leaving Sophie at a table all by herself. She became a pariah, a social outcast. The social stigma was an unintended consequence, of course. And it was unacceptable.

BFFs on a Hot Summer Day

Then guess what happened? God bless the children to find solutions that parents or administrators can’t see. Her friends began to sit with her. Over time they became little vigilantes monitoring who had what in their lunch boxes. The girls made sure their parents knew about Sophie’s food allergies for birthday parties and sports events. They educated themselves. They watched the Epi-pen injection video and practiced puncturing an orange with a plastic model pen. Although we were all in a state of anticipatory anxiety, organically we cultivated a “community watch.”  Eventually, we all relaxed. When a local 15-year old girl died from anaphylaxis after a severe allergic reaction just days before her 16th birthday, despite the family’s careful precautions, the threat became all too real once again. (See Project Abbie at Harvard.)

Compassionate Action

My daughter’s situation may not compare to the plight of others. A food allergy is an episodic condition that is largely reliant on prevention and avoidance, yet can have a fatal outcome. Yet that’s not my point. Millions of parents are managing some sort of childhood condition every single day. Of course, the medical conditions and potential outcomes vary among children: Children may be hospitalized for depression or suicidal ideation, or suffer a physical illness or condition; or a child may be contending with developmental delays, mobility issues, aggressive outbursts, or chronic pain. There are IEPs and accommodations, specialists, and regular medical monitoring, and concerns about independent living in adulthood. It can be all consuming at times.

What is common is the persistent fear and distress felt by a mom, dad or caregiver. Whenever a child needs specialized care or attention, there is a slow wear-and-tear in the fabric of parenting. An unraveling may occur in parallel with a kind of constant mending, in attempts to emotionally or pragmatically hold it together. There is also the mental “code switching” between taking care of a child’s current needs and the anticipation or planning for the future “what ifs.”  It’s hard to be present when the mind is in a ricochet of tending tasks. Let’s not forget that many parents inevitably put their personal needs and goals on hold and may also be economically impacted. Even the most optimistic or well-resourced parents will find themselves in moments of despair or panic. That’s the only natural response. 

What I love about compassion-focused approaches to parenting is the recognition that biologically we are wired to protect and ward off threat. That basic understanding can begin to shift how we communicate and respond. I can’t blame the pro-PB&J parents. They want their children to have what they need to survive. They aren’t thinking about the other tribe of parents who also want their children to survive by avoiding PB&J at all costs. Our perspective narrows when we are threatened. The single focus is on survival. The emotions that drive defensive behavior include anger, anxiety, fear, or disgust. As I wrote in my last post, Lead with Love, when we notice which emotion regulation systems are activated (threat, thrive, care/connect), we can begin to respond to life’s experiences in more beneficial and grounded ways. We can respond in a more balanced way.  This is where mindfulness and compassion comes in. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01602/full

The approach we proposed in the article emphasizes relational compassion and self-compassion. All too often the sole or primary focus is on child medical outcomes rather than parental resilience. This is understandable but to use another cliché—the one about the oxygen mask on a flight—we have to help the caregivers put on the oxygen mask first. The point in our article is we believe that cultivation of safety, connection, and caring is essential in any communication, intervention, or resource created to support parents when caring for a child with a chronic condition. This helps to get parents out of the constant threat/survival mode and offer relief from the exhaustion that can come from empathy fatigue, persistent uncertainty, constant caregiving, or social isolation. This means growing both inner strengths and outer strengths.

We consider the mindfulness and compassion skills as a way to “bounce forward” rather than “bounce back”—because life will never revert to a previous way of parenting. Resilience is inherently about caring, connection and community. It also requires a kind of deep knowing that we all belong to one another. In this way we are responsible for the welfare of the collective “we.”  Parenting is hard under optimal circumstances. No family is immune from threat, loss, or disappointment. It can take some emotional courage to turn toward what is difficult and reach out to a family in helpful ways—especially when vulnerable children face challenges. The default is to respect privacy, or not impose, or keep a safe distance, or drop off casseroles. I get it. But we also have to stretch ourselves and connect with parents. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Take the risk: Ask them.

How may I be of help? Is there something specific I can do? What is important for us to know? Is it Ok if I check in every once in a while? We are here for you.

My colleague and friend Susan Pollak, EdD, just published a beautiful book called Self Compassion for Parents: Nurture Your Child By Caring for Yourself (The Guilford Press, 2019).  What’s on the cover? Two slices of PB&J!  That got me hooked. She wrote it for every parent, of course, who deals with the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of parenting. I particularly love the “Fierce Compassion” meditation and “Soothing Touch in the Heat of the Moment.”  I highly recommend it.  

Photo by Thais Morais on Unsplash


Self-Kindness: Finding Refuge for Ourselves

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When I grew up I learned a lot about being compassionate and giving to other people. My mother is German and came over after World War II at age 19 as a nanny. Eventually, she married an American guy (for worse rather than for better) and had two daughters. We really struggled when my parents split up. She began to sell Avon door-to-door to make ends meet. We were even on food stamps for a time. She either made our clothes or whipped up outfits from the local thrift shop. Few would ever have a clue about much we struggled. This led to a quiet kind of shame, an imposter syndrome. Still, we were always giving. If there was something that we didn’t need and somebody else could use it, we’d just gave it away. My mom’s cosmetic customers ended up with our hand-me-downs and toys for their children. It was quite the network of generosity.

Of course, kindness, self-sacrifice, and a reduce-reuse-recycle philosophy were very important values. But in our family it almost went to the extreme. When it came to giving for oneself, or even wanting or desiring anything, it was fraught with guilt and anxiety. Sometimes I became angry about it, too. It seemed somehow unfair and I threw fits of frustration.

I realized only later when I started learning about the science of compassion that I had found ways as a child to be caring towards myself. Often it was in the form of running away from home. This meant bee-lining through the backyard into the woods with my stuffed animal, named Rango, and my Raggedy Ann sleeping bag. I had many forts under pine trees and also up in the thick branches of a weeping beech situated on a rich neighbor’s estate. Mostly I’d find a favorite spot in a hidden thicket and lay down on the soft pine needles, looking up through the long arms of the trees, and just rest. I’d take in the sights and sounds and the smells; and it was really only when it got too dark that I would sneak back into the house and up into my room. (Of course, my mother knew I’d do that.)

Without knowing it, I was recruiting my own physiology for self-soothing. I engaged the “calm and connect” pathways in my body, also known as the parasympathetic nervous system. I also had some courage.

This past winter I “ran away” to my first meditation retreat. It was a 7-day silent retreat for women. There was snow everywhere and it was bleak. We were not supposed to write in journals or read books, and of course there was no speaking other than in the conduct of some shared chores. The rebel that I am, I cheated a little bit. At the last minute before I left home, I brought with me a very thin book of poetry by Mary Oliver, Swan, that someone had gifted my daughter for her 18th birthday. I thought, “I can sneak this in with me.”

One night just like a child, I took out a flashlight and began reading. One poem cut me to the core. It spoke to me as if from a long hibernation. I recalled that earlier time in my life when I found refuge in the woods and wept. The poem is called “Trees,”

Heaven knows how many
trees I climbed when my body
was still in the climbing way, how

many afternoons, especially
windy ones, I sat
perched on a limb that

rose and fell with every invisible
blow. Each tree was
a green ship in the wind-waves, every

branch a mast, every leafy height
a happiness that came without
even trying. I was that alive

and limber. Now I walk under them —
cool, beloved: the household
of such tall, kind sisters.
〜Mary Oliver

Such tall, kind sisters. We need to find our places of refuge. A safe place. A sense of feeling bolstered up. As a young girl I had to learn how to bring compassion to my own suffering. I did it without even knowing it and because of that I didn’t appreciate the essentiality of this kind of self-love. Instead, I felt guilty about being such an ornery, temperamental child, of which I was often reminded.

Self-compassion is a psychological resource that we need to repeat over and over again. It’s about being on your own side, like a true friend. Self-kindness is a source of inner strength. As the psychologist Rick Hanson teaches, we need to absorb these nurturing and beneficial experiences so they get turned into lasting changes in the neural structures of the brain. He refers to this resourcing as filling the “neural backpack” with the supplies needed for wellbeing and true happiness. Self-compassion is one of those survival skills to carry along the journey of life.

Speaking kind words

One way that we can cultivate self-compassion and add it to the neural backpack is to come up with kind words for yourself.

You can write down simple statements such as:

I am okay.
I’m taking a stand for myself.
I trust in myself.
I am enough.
Even though this feels hard, I will be kind to myself.

Or, refer to yourself in the third person or imagine a wise being, an angel or spiritual guide, speaking to you:

You rock.
You can do this.
Your true nature is love.

The only caveats are:

Be clear. Be authentic and true to your experience. Use a kind tone.

You can ask yourself what do I need to feel calm in my body? How can I bring kindfulness to this moment? The answers are typically universal human needs. For example:

Belonging
Connection
Encouragement
Love
Respect

You can also bring to mind times when your were really on your own side. Maybe it was through a hardship, failure, or loss; or you found yourself speaking up to someone who disappointed or hurt you. If this it too hard you can recall a time when you were encouraging or protective toward a loved one or friend. Direct that gentle attitude toward yourself.

Write down your phrases. Once you have one or two, try them on. Find a few minutes each day to quietly reflect on the statements. Repeat them aloud or in your mind and let them sink in. Call upon them when you find yourself in a challenging moment. You may use more traditional loving kindness phrases, too. These are phrases of wishing yourself well and including your being in the circle of humanity:

May I be safe and protected
May I be peaceful
May I live a ease and kindness
May I experience joy and purpose

Feel what it’s like to be committed to your own well-being, to being your own BFF. Let the feelings, thoughts and intentions of being a true friend to yourself sink in and becoming a part of you. And repeat.

Credits:

Photo by Savs on Unsplash

Photo by Raquel Smith on Unsplash

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

Handprints in the Heart: A Reflection on Love and Loss

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It’s been a raw, rainy and cold spring in New England.  An impatience for summer has taken hold as I feel vitamin D deprived. If anything, the slog of the last few months has been a time for quiet reflection.  

I went on my first 7-day retreat of “noble silence” at the Insight Meditation Society in March.  A week of nothing to do but meditate with 100 women, all strangers to me. No friends. No talking. No technology. No reading. No writing. No obligations.

My family and friends at home wondered:  Was it amazing? That must have been so relaxing! How nice to get away for a whole week.  As if I was napping and reading fashion magazines at a spa.

Not even close. It was a week of sitting in silence, walking in silence, sitting in silence, walking in silence, sitting in silence, walking in silence… in a snowbound building and in the most rural part of the state. It was so bleak that the warm glow of a sunset, like a cherry swirl popsicle, was a gift I didn’t know I desired until it appeared. A deep appreciation settled in.

But by the end of the week a sort of transformation took place—in part because of the contrast with what came after. The minute I left I was hit with a reality of life: the hustle and bustle, the noise, the demands for my attention, a work crisis. Perhaps most poignant were the looming changes ahead: My youngest was about to turn 18 and be off to a college far away. We had also decided to move out of our home after two decades. The proverbial emptying of the nest.

If anything, the week of silence helped me to be present with all the uncertainty, to be patient with discomfort, and to practice the deep work of befriending my own mind. This is not easy.

One evening at the retreat the master teacher, Christina Feldman, read one of my favorite poems, Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

Hearing the poem in the midst of such quietude was a comfort, like the tender hand of a grandmother resting on my shoulder. The young woman next to me began to weep and I wished I could have taken her hand in mine. We were alone, together. And yet the proximity, the felt sense of compassion, was enough for each of us to bear our own thoughts.

The opening lines of the poem linger with me as I clear out closets, discover remnants of child’s play, and make the donation rounds to Savers. Mostly achingly the words sear as I apply and reapply fresh coats of paint to the stair banisters, oily and stained by children’s hands. Covering up the proof of our lives.

The other day my college-bound child flounced on the couch in my home office. She looked up at the ceiling and noticed a dirty hand print. That’s yours, I told her.  “No way.” Yes. You tried on a new white dress for a banquet and twirled on the coffee table feeling so pretty and proud. She didn’t believe that she could have reached that high as a kid. She hopped up and realized that indeed her 11-year old agile self might very well have done just that. One of her nicknames was Jumping Josie after all.  We stared at the smudge for a long while.

…all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

We both knew. Same time next year all this would be but a memory. Childhood is like that. It has a shape, many shapes, and then it’s gone. Even the dirty hand print.

 

Still.  I’m not painting over it.

Not as long as I live here anyway.

 

 

P.S. Hop on over my book page to sign-up for Kindness Cure goodies.

Notes: 

You can listen to the poet Naomi Shihab Nye read her poem Kindness at On Being radio.

Photo credits:

Stairs, Jumping Josie, Hand Print (c) Tara Cousineau, 2018

Sunset

Aaron Andary

Astonish Yourself: Find Common Ground

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I have been snowbound these past weeks with Nor’easter storm No.3 behind me and No. 4 predicted for next week. The ides of March. All around me is a wet, heavy blanket of snow. I yearn for some color. Not the color of mud, either, which surely is the next palette.

As I was rummaging around to clean my home office space from the vestiges of writing The Kindness Cure, a postcard tumbled out of a pile of papers. A plain white postcard. White!

But in black type was a well known quote from Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field, meet me there.

I paused and looked out the window.

A message from beyond, I thought. This random incident might be what SQuire Rushnell calls a god wink, “An event or personal experience, often identified as coincidence, so astonishing that it could only have come from divine origin.”  He suggests that unexpected or delightful experiences aren’t coincidental at all, but somehow are evidence that the universe is conspiring in your favor. As a glass-half-full kind of gal, the idea of god winks is sort of up my alley.  

I considered the Rumi quote a god wink — the kind to awaken me from a spell. It caused me to pause and be still for a little while.  What or who might I meet in the middle of a vast field? What is happening right now in the world that asks us to venture forth into uncertainty? Parkland, Florida. Syria. Primary elections. Community service. Oh, the fields we can find ourselves in if we are willing to wander there. If we can muster the courage.

There is a story in my book that comes to mind, in a chapter called “Radical Acceptance.”  It’s a story of a mom who learns, through a painful unfolding, that her child is transgender. The story is about a brief exchange she had with a longtime friend, another mother, who pitied her. She was stumbling in a field ripe for compassion yet without a language for it among her circle of friends. That was yet to come. She told me: “I’m not trying to convince anyone to accept my kid, but if you look at us as human beings, I don’t see why you wouldn’t. We all really want the same things at the end of the day. We want our kids to be happy and healthy and productive members of society. That’s not different for me. I know in my heart if I didn’t accept my child, my kid would be dead. I don’t know of any parent who would choose that over clinging to beliefs. Common ground is there if people want to see it.”

The field. Common ground. Possibility.

Of course, the fallen postcard may not have been “astonishing” really.  Curious, I looked up the definition:

 

astonishing

adjective  as·ton·ish·ing  \ ə-ˈstä-ni-shiŋ \

:causing a feeling of great surprise or wonder : surprising – an astonishing discovery

 

That we might be open to moments of wonder, however it falls before us  — is an opportunity to see something in a new way or accept things as they are. Sometimes we need reminders.

Your kindred spirit,

;D

Tara

Behold the poke of the tulip leaves! A sprig of spring.

Check out a few of my recent guest posts and please share with your friends! The world can always use more kindness. Let’s spread the word.

Please be sure to  follow me on social media and like/follow my Facebook author page. Sharing is caring!

Photo by Paul Green on Unsplash

Photo By Tara Cousineau 2018

No More Guns and Roses

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Embed from Getty Images

“Do you know that there have been 239 school shootings since Sandy Hook?”

“Mom.”  My younger daughter’s voice cracked, “One of the boys got his acceptance letter into a college the day before.”  

She stood in the shadow of a door in the one corner where she could charge her smartphone while scrolling the deluge of messages and postings from teens all over the country about Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. She will graduate in a few months.

We stared at each other. It’s hard to come up with words in such a moment. Sometimes there aren’t any. Her long hair was loose and wavy from a run in the rain. In the dim light she looked like one of those ephemeral paintings by J.W. Waterhouse. A mythological maiden. An image of worry and wonder. Fragile yet fierce.

She stomped off to study for a calc quiz in a flurry of anger—and I imagine also a wave of guilt and gratitude that she can even be angry about homework when 17 kids can’t. I’m with her. Those precious lives cut short. I think of the grieving father who couldn’t remember if he told his daughter “I love you” when he dropped her off at school that day.

No words.

I silently asked myself: What is the next best thing I can do right now? It seems that the grown ups are failing their children. Yet I sense a vibe. These kids won’t stand for it. This generation is going to do something about it. Two decades of a public health crisis in schools and they will use their common sense, pure and simple. They could care less about lobbyists and special interests. They care about each other.

But at 10 o’clock at night there is only so much a mom can do. There is an Eastern compassion practice called tonglen, which is a giving and receiving reflection to use in difficult times. As Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes in The Sacred Art of Loving Kindness, “It is a way to take upon oneself the pain of the world and transform it into love.” That’s what I choose to do in the moment.

Here is a simple version that I offer in my book.

Sit quietly and comfortably, perhaps with a hand on your heart. Breathe in and out in a comfortable way. As you breathe, bring to mind a sense of warmth, comfort, and ease, or whatever you need in the moment. Inhale this soothing feeling.

Bring to mind a person who is struggling and needs compassion. After you inhale a comforting breath for yourself, on the exhale offer the other person feelings of kindness, caring, comfort, and ease.

Then return to yourself, breathing in warm sensations. Switchback to the person you are visualizing. In an even flow of in- and out- breaths, receive and give warmth and kindness. Like a see-saw. Back and forth, back and forth. One breath in for me, one breath out for you.

It’s an uneven see-saw. All those kids. Parents. Friends.

Some say prayers are not enough. This feels true. But where would we be without them?

A sacred pause. A deep breath. One for me, for you. An infusion of air inviting a sliver of hope. Maybe even a dose of faith. When we start from a place of loving awareness a smidge of space opens up. It’s here where we can discern the next best thing to do. It can reveal a path to compassionate action.

Call a congressperson. Support sensible gun policy. Vote at the midterms. Volunteer. Donate. Speak up. Say I love you.

Make every moment count.

Are you concerned about Gun Violence in Schools and communities?

It is time for a kindness revolution. Kindness Cure Sightings:

 

 

Credits:

Getty Images, 2018

Tara Cousineau, 2018, Guns & Roses Multimedia

Finding Comfort in an Emotional Storm: The R.A.I.N. Technique

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As human beings living in the limitations in living in our physical bodies it is natural that we can find ourselves with strong reactions. After all, the body has a tendency to resonate with the energies in the environment, too. People, places, and things all hold energy. Your true self, your loving intentions, and soul purpose can get camouflaged by negative vibrations from worry, panic, exhaustion, anger and so on, or that of the people around you. This can cause disconnection. These triggers can also flare up an inner critical voice, who can wreak havoc on your sense of self. This is the voice who reprimands you, says you are not good enough, or admonishes you with, “Who do you think you are….”  for wanting, needing, desiring something new, fresh, alive and loving.

The acronym R.A.I.N. is a helpful kindfulness tool for just such moments. It can be a salve for those times when you are caught under a spell of negativity, which can happen naturally when feeling overwhelmed or overly critical, and consumed with anxiety, fear or uncertainty.

You can use RAIN in a difficult moment to cultivate a deeper connection and direct experience to the world.

Let’s go through each step.

R. The R in RAIN stands for recognize — recognize what’s going on in the body, and consciously noticing in any given moment the strong emotions, thoughts or sensations that are arising… and doing so in a way without judgment.

Recognizing can be as simple as a silent nod, or a mental whisper, noticing that a reaction is occurring. It can be helpful to name the experience such as: “This is anger” or “I’m feeling frustrated” or “I’m just so tired.” “Oh that’s my inner bully acting up.”

A. The A in RAIN stands for allow — allowing means letting the thoughts, emotions or sensations simply be there… applying loving attention to your body… it doesn’t mean we have to agree with the inner critic or like the situation at hand. It simply means that we can honestly acknowledge the arising of any judgment, as well as the uncomfortable or painful feelings that percolate underneath.

Instead of trying to suppress the experience, or resist, avoid or repel, we can soften into it with the quality of kindfulness, and not get caught up in the thoughts or the emotions.

Rather it is about saying “Yes, this is what’s happening right now.” “It’s OK.” “Take a moment here and just be.” We can tell our inner bully to go take a seat in the corner. This is a time out.

I. The I in RAIN stands for investigate — to investigate your experience with kindness and care. Once we recognize and allow what is arising we can become curious, and call on our natural ability to inquire. Tapping your inner detective and asking yourself, “What most wants my attention right now?” “How am I experiencing this reaction in my body?”  “What is my inner critic telling me, or trying to warn me about? Am I believing it? Is it true?”

You can reflect: “How can I bring kindness to this moment?”

It is essential to take a non-judgmental attitude and move away from trying to interpret or overthink. Instead, bring your awareness to the felt sense in the body and allow direct experience or connection in the moment.  The body is an exquisite emotional radar system with important information and clues. You may notice over time that there is an incredibly wise and quiet voice inside. An attitude of care helps to cultivate a sense of safety and understanding. You begin to befriend yourself as you would care for a dear friend in need.

N. The last letter in RAIN stands for nurture or nourish. We can intentionally care for the vulnerable and wounded places inside. You can ask: What does this place deep inside me need most? Reassurance? Respect? Forgiveness? Friendship? Love?

N can also stand for what some meditation teachers call non-attachment. This means cultivating an ability to take a step back and having some distance from the reactivity. This means not getting hijacked by difficult emotions (the brain’s flight or fight reaction) or being harassed by mind’s incessant commentary. Instead, you can be a benevolent caretaker just as you might care for a small child. In this way, you’re not fused with or defined by the reactivity; instead you adopt a sense of care, ease and compassion.

RAIN allows you to find refuge from the emotional storm by a very deep inner sense of peace, comfort, and homecoming. When you are at home in your center you can intentionally choose who you want to be, how you want to act, and what kind of world you want to live in.  And that is rather refreshing!

 

To listen to these instructions you may download an Audio version.

The R.A.I.N. Technique – guided instruction (7 min)

 

 

The RAIN technique was originally offered by senior meditation teacher Michelle McDonald and is frequently taught by my mentor Tara Brach, PhD.  There are a number of variations of this technique. See what works for you.

 

Photo by Kostas Katsouris on Unsplash

What Would Ben Franklin Say?

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It was a warm Sunday afternoon in April. We were on our way home from New York City, which is a good four hours away. The youngest flower girl in our own wedding had just been married. She was just as beautiful the previous evening as she was 23 years ago. I felt like I was watching a blessed soul walking down yet another aisle leaving a trail of anticipation and hope. Of course, it made me think of my own daughters and how I hoped they would be graced with lasting love. Alas, I was getting ahead of myself.  The very thought of my girls getting married also made be depressed.

We had just picked up our dog Leo who spent his weekend with my in-laws. We were driving through the back roads of the Blackstone Valley in central Massachusetts pocketed with small towns. Hopedale. Mendon. Franklin. They were once home to French Canadians and other immigrants working in the textile mills or on farms. My husband’s earliest memories are of the old family farm, riding along in his father’s milk truck, or getting lost in corn rows.  Many of the farms no longer exist and the mills have all but disappeared. Suburbia and service roads now take up the space. It feels somehow uncomfortable as if I could be in Anywhere America, unmoored and without clear landmarks or a sense of community.

Yet, there is a very small sign we always pass along route 140. It honors the town of Franklin as the home of the first public library in the United States. It was established in 1778 when the town changed its name from Exeter to Franklin to honor the inventor Dr. Benjamin Franklin. In gratitude for the recognition, Franklin gifted some of his books to the town. As the story goes, this apparently caused a ruckus about who would house these treasures. Some sensible town folk decided to lend the books to the town residents at no cost and thus birthing the first lending library.

I’ve driven by this little road sign countless times and often think of Ben Franklin. For over two centuries we have absorbed Franklin’s wisdom in ways we may not even be aware. I will guess my girls have a faint idea about electricity and a kite rather than his timeless insights on life, liberty, and freedom. In one way or another many of us are familiar with his kitchen table quotes.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

In taking a quick tour of Franklin’s quotes I find some other words of wisdom to be rather fitting when I think about our treasured and endangered institution of the public library.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

I wonder what Franklin might think of Google or Wikipedia? Even so, I offer a nod of gratitude every time I notice that small sign in Franklin.

But this Sunday drive was quickly punctured by another roadside scene.  At one of the many dilapidated service lots was a group of white teenage boys sitting and standing atop of several cars. They were cheering with their fists in the air to the seemingly infrequent Sunday drivers like ourselves. Leaning against one of the cars was a large hand-painted sign with purple letters: TRUMP.

I asked my husband to turn on the news. Did something happen and we were blissfully unaware? We couldn’t tell. The day before was Earth Day. There were gatherings for the March for Science events across the globe, albeit with different sorts of placards, posters, and cheers. We had jauntily joined one such march for about five blocks down Central Park West on our way to the wedding.

What were these boys up to? Did they have nothing better to do on their Sunday? Like pick up trash on the roadside?

My mind slid into judgment. I went right to catastrophizing as I flashed to scenes of clean cut blond boys in uniforms. The Nazi’s paramilitary youth movement. Quite a leap, I confess. But I am of German heritage and the geographic legacy percolates up from time to time.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

The boys were exercising their free speech and I had to give them that. But the scene really bothered me. It seemed out of place. Maybe it was their fists in the air.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

I hoped my girls never dated one of those boys. (Oh, my mind again.)

That I’m writing about it two months later on the eve of Independence Day is testament to my irritation and my untethered stream of consciousness. I’ve been meditating on it, working with the difficult thoughts mired in fear, judgment, and implicit bias. I’ve been investigating my imagination with kindness, as recommended by my meditation teachers Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. I have been noticing the content of my mind as if I were standing on the outside looking in. “Oh, how interesting,” I tell myself. Then I wander and wonder. Would I feel the same way if the sign was for another politician or public figure? For a cause to better humanity or the planet? Or, that the gathering was instead made up of black boys? Muslim boys? Boy Scouts? Veterans? Or girls for that matter? Or, any combination of demographics and personal characteristics? My mind began to play a mix-and-match combo game. A hornet’s nest of uncomfortable feelings swept in.

Honesty is the best policy.

The roadside scene flared up for me recently when I attended a meet-up about encouraging more women public speakers and how we can better promote ourselves, lest we be mired in endless keynotes, panels, and conferences populated with men. “Male and pale,” noted one of the organizers. I thought of the group of boys in Franklin. I thought of the Founding Fathers.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

A part of me wishes we had pulled over and had a conversation with these boys. Who were they? What were their names? Why were they out there on the last day of spring break? Why do they like the current president? What does he represent for them? What do they stand for? What do they want to do with their lives? Or, maybe it would simply be about their cars or what they will do when school gets out for the summer.

A conversation would at the least make some sort of connection. A bridge toward understanding.

I will never know the answers to my questions. If the opportunity arose and  I were by myself, it’s unlikely I’d have a chat with a group of teenage boys on an empty roadside holding that particular sign. Yet, I do know a little more about my fears and biases. “Male and pale” stuck for me in part because a series of images and events conspired at the same moment: fears of the current political climate, patriarchy, adolescent idealism, group think, recollection of a holocaust, my heritage, my values, my daughters’ wellbeing, a beautiful wedding, and a march for science.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

I try to catch myself before getting trapped by judgment.  I slow down my breath. This seems to give enough space so I can begin to respond in a thoughtful way—to my own internal life and to what sort of actions I might take—like having courageous conversations, taking social action, or nurturing our daughters to be good citizens and make wise choices.

That little roadside plaque in Franklin now serves as a new reminder:  we are all rooted by place and time—if only we’d stop for a moment to be open and curious. And maybe even a little more kind.

Keep up to day about my book, The Kindness Cure: How the Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart and Your World.

Resources

Franklin, America’s First Public Library

Quotes from Ben Franklin

Photo Credit

Eugene Triguba

On Turner’s Pond: A Walking Meditation

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On the eve of the first day of summer I took a walk with my dog Leo. I’m not the dog walker in the family even though I should be (Leo was my idea), but I needed to get some head space and so I drove over to Turner’s Pond. Leo is getting on in years and twice around the pond seems too much for his short legs. We decided to give it the ole college try.

I edged around the first bend full of maples and oaks to a clearing. Cumulous clouds were bursting forth like cotton candy at a county fair. My mother used to tell me and my sister that when the sky turns bright pink the angels were busy baking cookies. This always made me happy as a child.

It still does.

This sky was pretty enough to take a picture. Alas, I had purposely left my phone in the car and was now feeling a twinge of regret. With a new mission in mind to get it I picked up my pace, while eyeing the ever changing hues. Please stay still.

I raced by a family. They were rather striking for their stature and number. Two parents and four boys of various ages. The older boy was close to being a teenager and the youngest, about 4, was on his red bike and mightily leading the pack. They could be from some Scandinavian country, I thought.

My four-legged companion was petering out. I decided to give Leo an out and let him sit in the car. I took the second lap around rather briskly with my cell phone in hand. Could I catch the sky’s dusty rose hue?

It was too late.

Why do we need to document such moments anyway, I chided myself.  I slowed down and welcomed the breeze. Breathe in. Breathe out. My mind was flitting back and forth from appreciating the pond life to being lost in memory.

I observed something else that warmed my heart as much as my mother’s words about cherubs and a craving for warm cookies. I came upon a young couple who had set up portable hammocks among the birch trees just over the water’s edge. They were facing each other and quite animated in conversation. They paid no mind to the nocturnal insects, to the bellows of bullfrogs, or to my presence.

Hammocks. That took some planning. I felt soothed by the waning sounds of their voices.

I finally came to the opening at the far end of the pond where the geese and duck circle each other and a random dog inevitably chases them off. It happens every visit. This time two lumbering white retrievers had their fun. The owner and I exchanged a laugh. Poor Leo. He missed it.

And I missed my chance for the photo op. They sky quickly paled in the twilight. I headed back and came across the Viking family again. This time the mother, father, and the two older boys were tightly nestled on a short bench. Shoulder to shoulder. They barely fit. The littlest one poked a stick in the pond and the other child was skipping a stone. Like the young couple, they were deep in conversation looking out over the water.

Cozy.

I could hear that they were American. I think this surprised me — to see a family all together at dinner time rather than dispersed at some sport field or immersed in technology. That this family was so intimate, and in nature no less, made me pause. I felt a bit voyeuristic.

They also gave me hope. I’m not sure for what. Maybe just that nature is always there to restore us. And if we can appreciate this gift, as the couple and this family seemed to, then maybe we can be good stewards of each other and our planet after all — no matter the color of the sky.

 

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Photo Credits:
(c) 2017 Tara Cousineau

Hammock:
Nicole Harrington