Diana's Blog: Quirky Words and Book Reviews

January 4, 2009
I was at a Christmas party today. Yeah, I know. But we had a huge -- for Portland -- snowstorm just before Christmas that knocked a lot of parties off the calendar. Good thing it was postponed -- there's no way we could have climbed the hill to Amadeus in Milwaukie in that ice and snow. The restaurant is in a stone building that reminds me of Timberline Lodge, a hotel on snowy Mount Hood. And, by the way, it just started snowing again, beginning a refrain in my mind of will I need chains, and how will I get those chains on the car to get to work by four in the morning?
That aside, I am grateful for that party -- it was a group of ten women, of whom I knew only two, and it was the loveliest energy I've experienced in awhile. It was a gift exchange, and I had in my possession the softest white blanket with a cute lamb's face until the very end when it got "stolen" and I ended up with a more appropriate gift -- a gold clutch. I was amused by the choice made for me. It was the energy there that felt good, softer than that blanket -- gentle and accepting.
I used to take happy feelings and torture myself with them, spinning tales that would question the lovely beginnings -- up until a few years ago, I would have asked myself did they like me and will I be invited again and all those ridiculously demeaning questions. During this past year, my consciousness has shifted because of the EMDR I've been doing -- the result is self-confidence. As I've mentioned in these blogs before, having my real dad severed from my life when I was five, about the time my stepfather began raping me, and having my mom alcoholic, schizophrenic, suicidal and neglectful messed up my self-image and motivations.
I love that word, confidence. I break it down into two parts -- con, which means with, and fidel, which means faith. This new confidence -- born of Faith -- is what I am grateful for -- whoppingly huge piles of gratefulness! I'll write it here, and I'll write it in my journal, which I've been keeping most of my adult life, and I'll also write it in GRATITUDE: A DAILY JOURNAL by Jack Canfield and DD Watkins. Obviously, any journal will do, but Jack and DD write in the preface about the importance of living in gratitude, humming with gratitude. The Universe loves to give you what you appreciate, what you focus on. As they put it, "the Law of Attraction will respond to the higher vibration you are creating."
I am grateful for the beautiful quotes sprinkled throughout this book -- one of my favorites: Joy is the simplest form of gratitude (Karl Barth)
After the party, I spent the afternoon listening to authors' audio quotes that I have gathered over the years, designing a seminar for Thursday called Your Best Year Yet: Let's Get It Started. It was so wonderful listening to their brilliant thoughts. One of the authors I will include is Melody Beattie, with her comment about trusting Faith, and letting go of Fear, to make the best choices you can. She's in Jack and DD's book, too. Melody's lovely quote says it all:
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Deep breath.
Thank you!

Labels: book review, DD Watkins, friendship, GRATITUDE A DAILY JOURNAL HONOR AND APPRECIATE THE ABUNDANCE IN YOUR LIFE, Jack Canfield, transcending the trauma, WOMEN

IF HOLDEN CAULFIELD WERE IN MY CLASSROOM. What a great title! I open the first few pages and am pulled into a middle school classroom, kid by kid.
Bullies who reveal they want to be loved.
Exhibitionists who reveal they miss their dad and will do anything to draw him back into their lives.
Angry kids who reveal the sadness that was born because they were separated from their birth parents.
Bernie Schein teaches in a small school -- just 750 kids. Paideia, near Atlanta. It feels like SUMMERHILL. My mother was going for her degree in Childhood Education, and I would read her books wherever she set them down. SUMMERHILL was about an experimental school, and very creative, fascinating kids. I wanted to go there. I wanted to grow up and teach there. I wanted to find a college eventually that would be like Summerhill. None of that happened.
I was also pulled into another book my mother left around -- the very dangerous THE THROWAWAY CHILDREN by Philly attorney Lisa Richette. The kids were the same age as me. They had the same pain, born of similar sexual abuse and violence. I read, and I wondered what would happen if I acted out like they did. I trapped it all down, sublimated with reading. Tears and tantrums and speaking out were absolutely forbidden to me. So I read about Lisa's kids, and I wept, and experienced at least some of the rage that really should have been expressed.
My mother got to take a lot of interesting classes. One was ceramics. She was tired of teaching school during the day, taking classes at night, and having three kids of her own. Sometimes, whether I was in elementary school, junior high or high school, she would let me come "teach" with her and in the summer, be a camp counselor. I loved those three year olds! My mother would tell me after class that one little boy -- the one who dressed up in ladies' clothes, played house and talked with a lisp -- was likely gay. One of my campers, when I was sixteen, was a little girl who had twisted bald spots in her hair. The three-year old would suck her thumb incessantly. Her father would thrust a tip into my bathing suit top between my tiny breasts. I told my mother we had to do something for her, that her father must be doing bad things to her. The little girl was tough and strong even at three. But nothing was done. I do the math sometimes, to figure out how old she would be now, and wonder if she made it.
My mother didn't have time for all her homework, and my stepfather, being a creative man, often did it for her. The ceramics class, for example. I came home from junior high one day, and there was a nude torso sitting on the kitchen counter. He had molded it out of clay. It was of my body.
I felt ill. But I didn't know until decades later when I picked up a book called WOMEN, SEX AND ADDICTION by Charlotte Kasl at one of my radio stations -- opening to a chapter about Margot, whose father painted her nude body -- that this was wrong. So very wrong.
What if I had had a teacher like Bernie Schein. I wonder...

Labels: Bernie Schein, camp counselor, Charlotte Kasl, classroom, Holden Caulfield, IF HOLDEN CAULFIELD WERE IN MY CLASSROOM, mothers, school, SEX AND ADDICTION, stepfather., WOMEN