Tara Cousineau, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Kindness Warrior

love

When Joy Arises Savor It

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It’s all too easy to feel overcome with suffering. It may be your own. It may be the headlines of the day’s news. It may be the weight of helplessness seeing homeless people, as I feel every time I ascend from the bowels of the Red Line to the cobblestones of Harvard Square. One recent brisk morning, I turned the corner when one woman’s grin had caught my eye. She is a regular street dweller and has staked her 2×4 foot patch of sidewalk by the CVS with a cardboard sign, Got Empathy. Her bundles of belongings are expertly wrapped as if they could fill Santa’s sleigh.

The cool light was misty and one could see the frothy trails of breath of the passersby. The woman held a bag of pretzels. A hundred pigeons flocked and flapped about her as she laughed and twirled about. “Be patient!” she scoffed. I caught her eye and laughed with her, my meager offering. Yet, I felt her delight. It stayed with me all day.

Don’t Hesitate

Mary Oliver’s poem, Don’t Hesitate, comes to mind. It’s a salve for the caring heart and a reminder to bask in appreciation and joy whenever it arises.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give into it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver

Sometimes we simply need to pay attention to the good in the world.

Sometimes we need tangible reminders. Check out The Little Deck of Kindfulness.

Photo by Tina Karina

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash


Lead with Love

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There’s a funny thing that happens when you start walking the kindness talk.  People seem to crave it. Recently, I’ve been asked to speak at various companies and organizations — from accounting companies to human services, from high net worth investment firms to public schools.  What’s the common denominator? I’d like to think this trend is about how we each can be more of the human we want to be: caring, wholehearted and generous. That’s part of it, of course. That’s the bright side of such a talk. But underneath is a deep need to understand what gets in the way. That’s the shadow side. 

We need to become friends with the shadow side. 

This is easier than you might think. The dark side of corporate culture reveals itself in the face of fear and threat — meeting deadlines, KPIs, profits, career advancement, and all the usual suspects that arise when real or imagined survival is at stake — at the expense of human connection and compassion. 

The paradox at the heart of this matter is that it’s okay to be competitive AND cooperative at the same time.  It’s more than okay. It’s necessary. It requires awareness in how humans respond to the world, through three emotion motivational systems espoused by the British compassion researcher and psychologist Paul Gilbert. I wrote about it in The Kindness Cure in chapter 10 (Emotional Paradox).

The paradoxes you can experience in your own mind are clashes between the “old brain/mind” and the “new brain/mind.” Your “old brain/mind” is the “base model” of human emotional regulation and hasn’t changed much over millennia. Its job is to serve your basic survival instincts as soon as possible and to seek out pleasure and comfort. It is speedy and reactive. The three main emotion regulation systems operating within it are:

• A threat and self-protection system that senses threats quickly and activates the fight- flight-freeze- faint response in your limbic system. This is like your home surveillance system.

• An incentive and resource-seeking system that propels you to seek pleasure, consume, play, strive/achieve, and mate. It’s like an Energizer Bunny scurrying about, looking for fun or success in life.

•  A soothing and contentment system that seeks balance, rest, and connection, and is strongly linked to affection, bonding, caregiving, kindness, and compassion. This is the calm and connect system, and it is a bit slower to come online, but when it does, it gives you a sense of overall wellbeing—like a baby’s snuggly or a rocking chair.

Your “new brain/mind” developed later in human evolution. It’s really smart. The newer model is more complex and allows you to work things through, compare, contemplate, mull things over, create, innovate, imagine, seek knowledge, strive for goals, and develop an identity. This allows for quick learning, exchanging information from among groups, and passing on these adaptive genes to future generations. Importantly, this sophisticated upgrade allows you to be aware that you exist and have a sense of self. Thanks to your “new brain/mind,” you can be aware of your awareness, unlike any other animal, and observe your own mind. This is, of course, both a blessing and a curse.

When your “new brain/mind” is pulled by the fears and passions of the “old brain/mind,” you can get stuck in unkind behaviors (toward yourself or others). This is the unfortunate bug in the system, so to speak.

Workplace Woes, Compassionate Action

This came up in a recent conversation. I was a guest on a podcast summit created by Mari-Lyn Harris, founder of Heart@Work, who I met via Linked In through what I call kindness spotters.  (We kindness warriors just find each other.)

Mari-Lyn has been figuring out ways to share the news about leading with kindness, to assist leaders in cultivating better productivity, profits and a happier workplace culture. She created a Virtual Kindness Conference and you can watch it (it’s free). The interviews include short and sweet conversations with experts about workplace culture. You can watch the interviews at Heart@Work or on YouTube.  I talk about befriending the inner critic at work and gathering positivity allies to counteract the negativity that even one nasty person can evoke. It takes commitment.  Of course, it helps when leadership/management adopts and embodies the values of caring and compassion as integral to company goals, even if you are selling widgets or crunching numbers. You might enjoy the series and have something you would like to offer to an ongoing conversation on kind leadership.

Here’s to growing a kind mind.

21 Days of Kindfulness: Get daily notes to your inbox for just three weeks — which is about the time it takes for a new habit to take root. I invite you to kickstart kindness in your life and share with a friend. It’s free. 

A Little Deck of Kindfulness: The card deck is here! (See the sample image above). Cultivate more kindness and compassion for oneself and for others. Order now! (in continental USA).


Say a little prayer

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When I was a little girl we prayed every night. My mom would tuck us in, me and my sister, and we would begin a litany of prayers in a sing-song rhythm, with a bit of pomp as my mother fluffed up our comforters and then padded us in like peas in a pod.


Our Father who art in heaven…
Hail Mary full of grace…
Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
… if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

This last one always scared me whenever I stopped to think about it later. Could I die in my sleep? Grandma Kee did and I supposed any of us might never wake up. That made me sad and I would cry some nights. Having lived many decades now, I find comfort in the idea of a quiet passing (someday). But back then we would finish the rounds with barely a pause, “God bless Mommy, Daddy, Tara, Tina” … all our family, friends, our dogs, alive and deceased. We also included our stuffed animals and baby dolls who were tucked in along with us. We always ended with a German phrase: Schlaf gut, und träum süß (Sleep well and sweet dreams).

All told, this ritual was rather inclusive for a child’s mind. (We covered the starving children around the world with grace at dinnertime.)

Eventually, I outgrew the evening blessings. Yet, prayer has always wound its way back to me in some form or another. A nightly ritual with my young girls included the required reading of Goodnight Moon or The Runaway Bunny, along with the grand German tuck-in and a sweet dreams.  In recent years, I’ve practiced loving-kindness meditation, which is a blessing of sorts. It has all the components of my childhood ritual of repetition of well wishing. With loving-kindness phrases I direct blessings toward myself, my loved ones, a benefactor, people outside my tiny tribe, those who are difficult (or with whom I struggle), and the rest of humanity. A large circle of caring. Music can also serve as this kind of expansive blessing. Just listen to Mary Gauthier’s heart opener Mercy Now. The difference is that I now dwell in the comfort of being part of a divine source, a universal alchemy of love, rather than praying to a separate god.

My mom, Omi, now in her 80s, will not let me forget about Jesus. As if I ever could—or would even want to. A few weeks ago I was on a 7-day silent retreat at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. I am not Buddhist, but I appreciate Buddhist psychology and mindfulness practices. These teachings are an important part of my orientation toward life and the healing arts. During the retreat I gave up my iPhone. I was able to forgo my birthday and mother’s day.  But just before I Ieft home my mother sent me a small gift, lest I forget my upbringing: A silver keychain, engraved with “Find Peace in His Presence.” It was, of course, blessed by her local priest. She added a sticky note with a reminder to attach it to my car keys.

This is very much like my mother. Earlier, when she could comfortably drive long distances and visit us, many tokens would appear: small bottles of holy water next to the toothpaste holder, medals of Mother Mary or St. Christopher in our coat pockets, prayer cards of various saints left at my children’s bedsides, and an assortment of angel ornaments and glow-in-the-dark rosaries.

To her credit she slowly became more tolerant of my “diversity” in spiritual thinking. In my home office, I have a small antique chest, an altar of sorts, as well as a fireplace mantle. On it are statues of the Virgin Mary, Nepali Goddess Tara, and a Buddhist bodhisattva Kuan Yin (all feminine deities of compassion and wisdom), along with a Buddha and a Christian cross. When she read my book, The Kindness Cure, she hoped that I would have included the word of God. The quotes from Father Gregory Boyle, Mother Teresa, or St. Francis didn’t quite cut it for her. That’s ok.  She has an unwavering faith, perhaps even for my conversion back to family tradition.

Faith, it so happened, was a theme of the silent retreat. One of the guiding teachers, Kamala Masters, offered a beautiful evening talk. These dharma talks are like bedtime stories. She described faith as a kind of “coming back” home. She was raised Catholic, too. When she was in her 50s she trained as a Buddhist nun in Burma for a year when her grown children had left home. It was a promise to herself to go deeper. Rather than look for strength outside herself, she began to look for strength from within, for an experience of compassion that was not just about sacrifice and caring for others but about inner connection and self-compassion.  I found her to be incredibly brave. When I was in her presence I thought, “Mom would like her.”

During the retreat we had been on a schedule of repetitions: walking, sitting, walking, sitting. Day after day, 5:30am to 9:30pm. My body was in pain by midweek, my butt bones bruised and my back muscles flared in spasms from an old injury. I found myself standing rather than sitting for a good part of the the week. These were moments that drew my focus to pain, a litany of complaints, stories of all sorts, and mental suffering. My attention was hijacked by an internal chaos that I’m usually too busy in real life to notice. (And my friends thought I would be having a relaxing week.)

There was some external relief during that retreat of virtual silence. Every afternoon a different guiding teacher taught an element of a loving-kindness meditation. It came at a tender part in the day, in the late afternoon, when I was on the brink of exhaustion or boredom.

Kamala Masters described a loving kindness meditation “like a gentle rain that falls on everyone, without exception.” I found great comfort in this. Whether I was immersed in my own dramas, or frustrated with people or situations in my life, or in the nation and world, seeing love like the spring rain outside of the hall melted away the physical and mental pain. At least for a few moments. Going through the rough part of this mindfulness practice—or life for that matter—is where we grow. When we direct kind attention or a loving awareness to all of our experiences we gain inner strengths and open our hearts. We bow to what’s difficult, as my teacher Jack Kornfield would say—to vulnerability, pain, oppression, anger, and all the uncomfortable emotions. We also open up to the beautiful emotions—gratitude, forgiveness, joy, pride, awe, love.  Until the discomfort inevitably arises. And then? We begin again. And again. Coming back to the rhythm of breath or cadence of a heart beat or sound of rain.

Or, like the reassuring orbit of a moon.

Kamala Masters read a poem by one of my favorite living poets, David Whyte. I felt in that moment, a great gift was shared. Maybe it was the simplicity of dwelling in a poem after such extensive quiet time. It felt so rich and then it was gone.


Faith


I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.
Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

⁓ David Whyte

After the reading I thought I could bear a few more rounds of walking and sitting. As the week unfolded, the bearing part melted away and tentatively transformed to bearing witness to my own experience. There happened to be a beautiful rising moon during that week in May. One clear evening, instead of the slow walking, I stood staring up for a long, long time. I thought of my girls when they were little. I thought of me and my sister.

Goodnight, moon.

I remembered then the rote prayers of my childhood. And of faith and love, patience and kindness. My mother’s mementos. All the rough patches. And how much of prayer is about faith or how faith is a kind of prayer—a common yearning for love, caring, hope, ease and peace—deep human needs that belong to us all.

Then it was time to tuck myself in.

Bring some self-compassion into your day: 21 Days of Kindness

Check out: The Little Deck of Kindfulness, a 57 day soul-care kit.

Photos: Tara Cousineau 2019

Moon Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Love Thy Neighbor

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I joke when I say I belong to the church of Mr. Fred Rogers. People close me know how much I admire the late great TV host and often send me quotes, vids or articles about him. So when my husband and I went to the local community theatre to see the new documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, it was as much about being a flock member of his media ministry as it was much needed relief from the recent weeks in our country. Images of children separated from their families and behind wired fences is nothing short of a battle cry for compassion, care and reason. Of course, children the world over are suffering in unconscionable ways. Somehow it hurts more when it’s closer to home and under our country’s watch.

We need you Mr. Rogers.

I was three years old when the first season of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood aired. I was five when I got a FAO Schwarz stuffed animal for Christmas, a spotted leopard named Rango. To me he was a kindred spirit to puppet Daniel Striped Tiger and he soaked up buckets of snot and tears. Decades later Rango was adopted by my youngest daughter, although not with the same passion I once held as a lifeline. Even one glance at the now floppy cub, who is relegated to a bookshelf, infuses me with a love so big that I grin with gratitude every time.

Fabulous reviews about this Rogers documentary abound and you will simply have to see it for yourself. It is a salve for our times. The subtitle is “A little kindness makes a world of difference.”  We all know that’s true. It’s just harder to implement on a moment-to-moment basis as seems warranted now.

When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed. – Fred Rogers

Mr. Rogers didn’t creep me out like some say. I was the perfect age for his pace of teaching and doctrine of love. I needed calm and consistency in order to deal with big questions I could only feel rather than understand when my family was breaking apart. We might all benefit from slowing down enough to listen to our own hearts and hear our own breath.

Fred Rogers’ kindness was fierce and compelling, soft and hard, timeless and true. He respected children: their vulnerability, imagination, and curiosity.  He believed that what mattered — an enduring empathy and respect for the human condition — in all its variations, was also “invisible to the eye.” This is the subtle caring that inhabits the spaces between and within each other. I imagine this belief was also a nod to the 1943 children’s book, The Little Prince, that also impressed me so:

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Mr. Rogers showed us that there is good in this world and we can be part of it: Love Thy Neighbor. Love Thy Self. His numerology was: 1-4-3.

I  L-O-V-E  Y-O-U.

This is heart work. We need his legacy and light to speak loud and clear. It’s up to us.

Your fellow lightworker,

Tara

More Matters in Kind

Love & Resist: Anniversary of Women’s March

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As we come upon the anniversary of the game changing Women’s March, I am in awe of what transpired over the last year. The most curious thing of all is what I found so despicable about our elected leader of the free world was, in fact, a very odd blessing. Light was cast on the dark shadows lurking around for so long. Not all my friends might agree with me or hold similar views, but it’s quite hard to ignore what happened over the year. #MeToo, #TimesUp, and Oprah’s amazing speech at the Golden Globes.

The times they are a-changin’.

One year ago my husband and I marched in Boston. It was nothing short of transformative. First, that my man went with me (he got into designing posters and he even gave one away to a mother and her kid on the subway so she’d have something). Second, that we became part of a peaceful tribe 175,000 strong, forming a “radical kinship” as Father Greg Boyle likes to say. Third, that we took tons of selfies together and sent them to our daughters—not only so they can confirm how their “awkward” parents are, but to see their core values in action (and what a good guy is all about).

I still have our posters in the family room and will dust them off this weekend. I didn’t get my hand-knitted pussy hat in time for last year’s march, but that hat has not seen the dust. I still wear it—and I will as long as it’s cold outside and this president is in office.

It’s not a time to be complacent. It’s a time to address the dark side with a legion of light workers. It’s not a comfortable time and nor should it be. We need to feel irritated enough to take action. The other day I was clearing my office and out of a book fell a prayer card my mother had given one of my girls: Joan of Ark. How apt!  The Novena begins: “Glorious St. Joan of Arc, filled with compassion for those who invoke you, with love for those who suffer, heavily laden with the weight of my troubles I kneel at your feet and humbly beg you to take my present need under your special protection.” The image on the front is of the armoured French girl of the 1400s, a spiritual warrior across the ages, holding her flag and sounding the call for compassion, social justice and new leadership. I believe Joan of Arc is at our sides protecting us and emboldening us right now, but mostly we have each other. Saints, angels, whistle blowers, courageous women and men… and those contrarian naysayers, too. We all belong. And we all need to evolve humanity. We can do better.

Be a kindness warrior.

My protest sign last year was on kindness. It’s been my calling and so I’ve been studying it, collecting science and story. The basis for my upcoming book has been the view that kindness is strong, not weak. It is courageous, not cowardly. It is heartful, not heartless. It’s not about being nice, agreeable, or virtuous. It’s about understanding, having boundaries, and taking reasonable action. It’s moving from empathic distress to motivational empathy. Taking a kind stance doesn’t mean giving in. One of the protest slogans seen all over the world last year was: “Feel the Rage, Be the Love.” These six small words perfectly capture both the challenge and the solution when facing difficult persons, places, or things. The meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg asks, “Why can’t we both love and resist at the same time?” This is a perfect question for our life and our times, and it forms the basis for reimagining kindness.

We all have something to stand for. For me it’s giving kindness the gravitas it deserves in the landscape of humanity. After all, we can’t survive without it. I invite you to join me. How are you going to rock your world with kindness?  

Get a FREE Rock Your World with Kindness Guide (PDF). 

 

 

Orlando: Hope and Love Last Longer

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dreamstime_s_51164798For a moment our hearts stopped.

We were out for a brief Sunday drive. My 16 year old was proudly behind the wheel getting in some road time. The local pop station was playing and she was humming a tune. Then we heard the announcement about the Orlando mass shooting. In unison, we both drew in a loud breath as our hands leapt to our mouths.

No. No. No. No. No.

Here we are again.  Here we ALL are again. Aurora. Boston. Columbine. Newtown. San Bernardino. Virginia Tech. It’s times like these that we need to take a pause. A pause to not only to register such horrific events and the fragility of life, but to truly appreciate all the good we have in our lives – and the good we can give to others with courage, kindness, gratitude and care through social action.  We are part of a larger humanity in which there is much more love than hate.  It’s up to us to prove it.

And if we needed anything else to bring us to tears Sunday it was the compassionate sonnet for Orlando delivered by Lin-Manuel Miranda in his acceptance speech for a Tony award for the best original score for the smash musical Hamilton. 

Watch the video clip:  Lin-Manuel Miranda

“When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day / This show is proof that history remembers / We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger / We rise and fall /  and light from dying embers remembrances that hope and love last forever / Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

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Photo Credit:
© Xenbuddism | Dreamstime.com – Rainbow heart

One Big Boston Group Hug

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Baby Chic with Egg Shell 123RF Stock Photo

Patriots Day.

Easter Monday.

She was born on a Good Friday.

My daughter turned 14 on Marathon Monday in Boston. Every year her birthday also falls on a school vacation week. As she’s gotten older, this reality has gone from the anticipation of egg hunts to disappointment when all her friends are away. Not to mention that last year we were in a surreal citywide lock down after the bombings.

So, this year was special indeed. We spent it at the Boston Marathon.

Redemption. Forgiveness. Compassion. It was all there. We could have opted out. High security. Large crowds. Nervous peeps. But we chose to participate. And am I ever so happy we did.

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We had five young teen girls in tow. We scored a spot in Kenmore Square, between mile 25 and 26. My older daughter was at Hereford Street with her friends – just at the turn of the finish line – with a mom who cried every time a wheelchair team passed by.

I think there are relatively few experiences in life that makes an impression like a community coming together with compassionate purpose. Over 32K runners and a million strong along the sidelines from Hopkinton to Boston, all cheering like mad. You could feel the energy and good will. For me, it restored faith in the greater good of humanity.

I thought about the work in compassionate conversations. Dr. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, whose work I can’t put down, describes the way we communicate with one another can fundamentally change the brain. I thought, “Whoa, what kind of ‘neural resonance’ might be happening along the Boston Marathon route?”

They write that, “kindness builds cooperation and cooperation builds a better brain.” Let’s hope we sprouted a few more compassionate circuits by witnessing this race!

Even more so, the outpouring of support represented for me meaning making at the societal level. When people stand up for what they believe in, life has purpose. Nobody knows what the personal values of the people on either side of us might be, but it brought them to the marathon.

Newberg and Waldman write: “Even though everyone has a unique set of values – running the spectrum from highly idealistic principles like truth, integrity and growth, to highly interpersonal values like love, family and friendship – when people openly share their values with each other, they come together and express mutual support.”

With Boston Strong slogans everywhere, there was certainly a sense of camaraderie. But more than that there was a resilient sense of respect, awe and love – it was ten people deep on both sides of a 26.2 mile stretch.

I believe the 2014 Boston Marathon will leave an impression of a lifetime on my daughters. We saw the elite runners, the dad of one girl in our tween entourage and scores of people from all walks of life and all abilities. A blind man. A pregnant woman. Survivors from last year’s bombing in wheelchairs. The National Guard in combat boots. Team Hoyt. The runners for the foundation created in memory of little Martin Richard, MR8. Runners from Germany, Mexico, Chicago, and San Diego, Canada. Thousands upon thousands of runners and many more spectators. Truly Impressive.

And then the next day, my newly minted 14-year-old ran 3 miles across town.

 

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A Gift of Self-Compassion: Parenting Your Inner Child

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Girl on dad's shoulders - Version 2

This is one of those way way back stories. It takes place in a small family room set up for my sister and me. It was a nook of sorts and had a black and white TV. Family lore has it that my first words were “I Love Lucy!” learned in that very space. There is no doubt in my mind that this could have been true. After all it was once a place where our family of four gathered to watch the Ricardo’s antics with reverence. It was the last place we could be found together before my parents finally divorced.

It was also the “playroom” where we played with dolls, built blanket forts, and colored. One day I was there with my best friend, Heidi. My first true friend. I met her at kindergarten orientation with Ms. Francin. We were paired together and it turned out we both lived along winding Old West Mountian Road. Later it was her dear family who showed me a different kind of home life.

This one day Heidi and I had gleefully discovered a new painting technique. We dipped our brushes in the murky watercolor set and whipped them. Back and forth, back and forth. We splattered tiny rainbow polka dots over the white sheets of paper in front of us. It was thrilling.

I didn’t learn of Jackson Pollock until I was grown up and every time I see a painting of his I think back to that fateful day. It resulted in one of my first clear memories of shame. My mother came in with a look of horror, followed by a litany of screams and German cuss words. She pulled me aside and spanked me in front of my new friend. I was confused. I was red hot.  Heidi froze in place. When I looked at the wall behind me I discovered that we had indeed “ruined” the walls. I instantly felt like I was a terrible little girl for having spoiled something of value belonging to someone I loved. And I had an unwitting accomplice.

The artist in me shut down.

Toward the end of the 6th grade, when I was about 11, we had to try out for the junior high chorus. I had loved singing as a young child. Apparently, I could blurt out the German lyrics of many a childhood lullaby. But I had become a shy girl in public. There were too many problems at home. Heidi had moved far away the year before. And while the school day was a reprieve, I held my breath for most of it. I barely spoke in school and when I was asked to sing a song in the concrete corridors of Barlow Mountain Elementary School – just in front of the gym doors where others could hear me – I became mute. The next year I ended up in music appreciation class with 20 obnoxious boys.

The singer in me shut down.

When I was in my first college English class I wrote a personal essay of what I thought was the triumph of overcoming the hardship of my postwar upbringing and of being the first child in my extended family to go to college. The classic story of a first generation American. The teacher gave me a C+ and told me visit the counseling and writing centers. It was the C+ that crushed me.

The writer in me shut down.

My childhood experiences are not uncommon. So many of us know intimately the empathic failures of the adults in our world. (Forgive them for they no know what they do). My mother was not a mean person. She was overwhelmed. The chorus judges were not bad people. The English teacher was green and didn’t know what to do once he got piles of personal stories. But who has that perspective as a kid?

Every one of us has closed off part of our selves because we learn in many small ways over a long time that who we are is never good enough. We have learned the language of comparison, judgment and perfectionism.

Yet I know that the little artist in me had some sense that I had self-worth for I grew up to love art and fashion. I know the singer in me has not died for my crooning in church moves me to tears – even if I get choked up and can only finish a hymn in a whisper. I know the writer in me lives in some small and big ways for I would not have been able to dabble with this blog or write a dissertation.

Now that I have my own girls I am mindful of my words and actions on their vulnerable hearts – I know I have failed them and will fail them. I also know something else. It is my instinct to nurture them the best way I know how. But it is a gift to also care for the child within myself even as I age. How can I not see my younger selves when I see my girls at their tender ages? It’s inevitable. For all the hurts I may have endured, something far greater and more beautiful persists. That is the courage to create, the willing to sing out of tune, and the commitment to speak my truth – on paper, in person, in prayer. I practice compassion for that shy, yet feisty girl.

A brave girl.

I bring her with me and let her know that all is well. I love her. She has been a great teacher. I carry her on my shoulders in triumph and together we go forth with whole hearts.

 

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It is a privilege and a gift to be a candidate in Brené Brown’s The Daring Way™ method, a training and certification program for helping professionals who want to facilitate Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability, courage, shame, and worthiness. We are a community of wholehearted practitioners who believe in the power of owning our stories, and who recognize that vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.

Additional Resource:

Download Dr. Brown’s Parenting Manifesto. Read it (1) for yourself as a parent and (2) in parenting your inner child.

http://brenebrown.com/downloads-badges/

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