What Cards Never Say: Mothers Day 2010

There's a teary story to this perfect game. Dallas Braden's mom passed away when he was a senior in high school. That's her mother, his grandmother, hugging him after he pitched his perfect game.

I thought, who wants to blog on Mothers Day?

Last year's should suffice. Or the ones from years before, maybe. Not everyone likes this holiday because not everyone has a mom, and many people have more than mixed feelings about theirs. I'm crazy about mine, lucky in this way.

Yesterday she said to me:

You know. I tried to access my email like you showed me and I couldn't. But I did find the family blogs and I read your daughter's and it was really funny.

My daughter's blog hasn't been touched in six months. But Mom didn't care. She read the old posts and had a blast doing that. This tells us that if you're blogging, you probably should keep at it. But be careful about your identity, okay? And as long as I'm handing out unsolicited advice, even if you're anonymous, it's not really necessary to be offensive. Okay, I'll stop.

This morning I woke up to a Facebook message, a Happy Mother's Day from one of my d-i-laws. And THREE cards in the mail. Slow mail is really fun, you know? But that's it. It's over. So I'll blog. Not everybody's having fun, is the truth.

Saturday I flipped through the week's Wall Street Journals to see why one of my patients almost had a heart attack. As a broker he manages OPM (other people's money). The investments of most of his clients flew through the window within 3 minutes as the market dropped 1000 points. Brokers across America had a bad heart day. Why did it happen? We don't know.

This is disheartening, confusion about investments.

Families are investments, too, so I kept reading and found a piece about these by a Mommy blogger, one that I had missed while blogging and cruising the Internet for four years. She's WholeMama and writes for WSJ! So I visited her blog, of course.

The tagline in the header:

Before I got married I had six theories about raising children. Now I have six children and no theories.

You have to love that.

Anyway, I'm going to quote WholeMama, not to be confused with DaMama, Motherhood is Not for Wimps.

Amy Henry, WholeMama, writes this for WSJ

Mother. . .

Giver of life. Homework helper. Life saver. Hem adjuster. Maker of peanut butter sandwiches. All true, all real, all important. Even so, I was surprised-- and even fearful-- when my 16-year-old. . .

She goes on to tell us, basically, that her kid told her she wanted to be a stay at home mom, a SAM.

Ms. Henry mentions that SAMS get no respect. Networking, maybe at the playground, so enviable to someone like me, Amy hears:

One mother admits she's considered pretending to be her daughter's nanny in hope this would earn her some respect.

Another remembers telling people that she has five children, only to hear a woman respond, "Oh, horror!"

I missed this feeling of horror. I never felt it was a horror. Not even once. For sure, not once. Fear, maybe, when one was missing in action after school, but never horror or regret.

Every day is Mother's Day, my friends, whether or not she was good or bad. She's in your head, your psyche. Try it. Get her out. You can't. EMDR can't do it. No amount of hypnosis.

So if you had one, and she was marvelous, consider yourself so, so lucky. And if you didn't have one, try to be one to others, a good one, for so many need these, good mom-figures in their lives, mentors, people who care.

And if you're working outside the home, don't look back, because yes, you are a role-model, someone your daughter is proud of, someone who has probably saved the family home from foreclosure more than once. And if you couldn't, it didn't make you a bad mom, or a bad anything. You know that.

And if you're a SAM, a stay at home mom, then reflect upon what author and theologian G. K. Chesterton wondered in 1929, when he predicted the disrespect (thank you Ms. Henry, for reminding us what the little people are thinking when they blather on jealously about the mindlessness of parenting). He asked how society ever got the idea

that bringing forth and rearing and ruling the living beings of the future is a servile task suited to a silly person.

Happy Mothers Day.

The grandmother of my children has a bunch of these.


Can't give 'em away. Direct from the basement, original boxes. Actually did sell one on Amazon.

Here are more Mommie blogs, thanks to Radical Parenting (check her out-- I just found her). If I forgot you, please poke me. It's been a tough year.

therapydoc

My Mommy's Place
Busy Mom
The Mommy Blog
Mother Thoughts
City Mama
Mama Bird
Mommy Blog
Parenting Blog
Mom Logic
Decoder
Author Mom with Dogs
A Mother in Israel
Holly's Corner
Mother-Wise Cracks
Pinay Mommie
Project Subrosa

Holding On and Letting Go

You're Wearing That is the title of a new book by Deborah Tannen.

National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg excerpts from the book and interviews the author. I excerpt from her excerpt below, but it's worth reading the whole post, and I'm sure it's worth reading the whole book (sight unseen I say this).

Most of us instinctively identify You're wearing that as a mother's communique to a daughter, and that's what the book is all about, mothers and daughter and how they talk to one another.

Quick and dirty:

You've heard it here before that when you talk to a significant other you should try on the idea that your S-O is important, as important, indeed more important than your boss, and you wouldn't speak to your boss harshly. You wouldn't second guess or psychologically undermine (out loud) your boss's choices. You wouldn't yell at your boss. You wouldn't hang up on your boss.

Parents assume that they have the right to do these things to children. Children, especially when they get older, assume that they've earned the right to do them to their parents.

Earn the right? There's a right to emotionally abuse a family member?

A little harsh, let's dial that down.

Of course if you don't correct your children then they might grow up feeling the world owes them a living and that they're always right, or conversely, that no one cares about them and they're nobodies. But there is a right and a wrong way to advise people, and probably Dr. Tannen discusses all of this in her book.

(Why is it I didn't get an advance copy of THAT one, by the way?)

Recently a patient told me that the state of being angry is now considered emotionally abusive, a real kick to therapies that encourage you to beat your pillows. I still like the beat your pillow concept. Who does it hurt, after all?

But for sure if you're in therapy or have ever been in therapy and the topic of anger has come up then you know that the expression of anger can be extremely abusive, even in low tones. It's exactly what we tell people in anger management.

You have potential to emotionally damage by being angry-- either at your spouse or at a child-- at anyone, if the way you express your anger as volatile and unpredictable, or if it's cruel, biting, mean.

I've told you this on my Because of You post that discusses Kelly Clarkson's song. She bemoans the domestic violence she experienced by watching her parents fight. I tell you that her anxiety, her fear is a response to trauma.

So no, you don't have the right to be angry, rather, you don't have the right to express it without sensitivity.

I titled this post Holding On and Letting Go because so much of what happens between parents and children is about control. We have such a need to hold on, take care of, protect our children, that letting them fly can be supremely difficult.

Sending them to kindergarten can be hard, how can we do weddings? The stress of letting go (and the energy it takes to hold on, double entendre intended) is a variable that surely drives the way moms and daughters talk to one another.

So when it comes to communication, walking on eggshells, even if it is uncomfortable and doesn't feel intimate is a good thing. The intimacy will come if we're careful about how we talk to one another. It's okay to have to watch what we say-- to think and rethink everything, to couch communication in the most sensitive, caring fashion.

When the kid is about to stick a finger into an electric socket or run into the street, THEN you can scream. But most of the time children aren't doing that. They're not sticking fingers into electric sockets. They're not running into the street. They're looking both ways.

I don't mean to minimize this subject in any way, trust me. I understand that if your child's shooting up that you'd better do something and it might be best to be strict, calculatedly rejecting, even mean. We can talk about that another time.

Meanwhile, here's a quick excerpt of the book, excerpted from the NPR website. Congratulations Ms. Stamberg and National Public Radio and thanks Dr. Tannen.

A woman in her sixties expressed this: “I always assumed that once my daughter became an adult, the problems would be over,” she said. “We’d be friends; we’d just enjoy each other. But you find yourself getting older, things start to hurt, and on top of that, there are all these complications with your daughter. It’s a big disappointment.”

Small Spark, Big Flare-up

Especially disappointing—and puzzling—is that hurt feelings and even arguments can be sparked by the smallest, seemingly insignificant remarks. Here’s an example that comes from a student in one of my classes named Kathryn Ann Harrison.

“Are you going to quarter those tomatoes?” Kathryn heard her mother’s voice as she was preparing a salad. Kathryn stiffened, and her pulse quickened. “Well, I was,” she answered. Her mother responded, “Oh, okay,” but the tone of her voice and the look on her face prompted Kathryn to ask, “Is that wrong?”

“No, no,” her mother replied. “It’s just that personally, I would slice them.”

Kathryn’s response was terse: “Fine.” But as she cut the tomatoes—in slices—she thought, Can’t I do anything without my mother letting me know she thinks I should do it some other way?

Gotta' love it.

copyright 2007, therapydoc

Intimate Opportunities

No, not what you think.

I'm thinking about opportunities to connect and simply be with people, the ones that will make a difference years from now.

Here's a typical decision.

My d-i-l, an up and coming therapy doc, did something really wonderful. She's young and idealistic and she put herself on a registry that searches for people who agree to willingly go through dialysis to become stem cell donors. Plasma phoresis can be a brutal procedure. They stick a catheter in your vein for hours, perhaps in the neck. But there are types of leukemia that respond to healthy stem cells, and it's a rare opportunity to save a life. Her DNA made a match.

D-i-l went through dialysis for 6 hours, and days of hormonal preparation that made her sick and crazy (she felt a little off, she tells me). My son was with her the whole time.

It wasn't easy and it wasn't risk-free. Without the procedure, the person she matched (and she has no idea who this person is) had little to no chance of survival. We don't know if it worked, either.

So why do I mention this? Not to brag, although I'm incredibly proud of her and fall off my chair at the thought of these generous, wonderful, idealistic kids.

I mention it because healthy people her age (early 20's) are really independent. They'll tell you, I don't need you with me, and maybe they don't, but if you're not there when they need you, any procedure, even a minor procedure, can be a pretty lonely, empty, scary experience.

But the default for young people is often, "I don't need you, I'm cool." And sometimes they are, sometimes they're not.

If you offer therapy to a kid in college, it's likely the kid will say, "I don't need it." By the way, it's a GREAT time to get therapy, college, if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to college.

It can be a real relief to parents when a kid says "I don't need it" when it comes to therapy And parents who are still on the fence about the actual benefits of therapy will say, "Okay, good."

You know what I say, right? Every one needs it, at least for a little while, at some point or perhaps several points in their lives, if only to deal with everyone else. So on that score, push the idea with your kid. Tell the kid to just go, try it.

Kids in their early twenties, even in their teens, maybe at any age, want to be independent and should be encouraged to be independent. But almost all of us have one foot in childhood, even if it's an unconscious foot.

That piece of us that's in childhood wants company. It's a healthy, social piece, assuming it's not a whiny, overly dependent personality disorder (we'll get to those another day).

I remember once telling my mother I'd stay overnight with her when she was in the hospital. She said, "No way, I don't need it," but she thanked me for it. I'm not patting myself on the back. I feel I'd have been a snail not to have stayed. It's not a question of being a good person. It's a question of quality time and being there for someone.

But back to young adults. When your kid is going through a medical procedure and tells you, "I can handle it alone; you don't have to be there with me," don't buy it. Be sure that SOMEONE in the family or perhaps a close friend is there. It doesn't have to be you, but someone.

If it is you, it's an opportunity. It's one of those snapshot memories you two won't ever forget. Remember the time. . .?

Delicious.

(As I was writing this I ditched the computer to get a cup of coffee and caught an NPR story on daughters pulling away from mothers during adolescence, and I thought how that ties into this, how it's not so easy to create these memories when your kid is itching for separation. So for sure, we'll have to talk more on that another time.)

But working people like me feel we've missed too many opportunities for intimacy with our kids. ANY opportunity you have to be alone with your kid that gets you out of the everyday hum drum is something to really consider seriously, if they'll let.

Sometimes you have to construct the opportunities, create them, take a kid on vacation overnight even, alone with you, perhaps. The time together doesn't have to be a medical procedure. Any time will do. Family vacations are fine, but they're also potentially really stressful.

Going fishing works, or to a spa maybe even. It can be hard to find a good hook.

In my family, going out and buying a new marine fish made for intimate snapshot memories. Picking it out, bringing it home. You bring fish home in plastic bags. Plastic bags can break.

These kinds of memories go in the What We Won't Ever Forget Book of Life.

You could be writing it right now maybe, at least working on the intro.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc