Entries Tagged 'Mother-Daughter Emotional Osmosis' ↓

Books such as Reviving Ophelia, Saving Beauty From the Beast, Queen Bees & Wannabes, Odd Girl Out and Girlfighting have elucidated the cultural context that puts so many adolescent girls at risk. But that’s only one part of the story. Daughters don’t become “unconscious” in the areas in which their mothers are fully conscious. Ophelia won’t need reviving if her mother has already been resuscitated—or never needed resuscitation in the first place. Beauty is less likely to fall for the Beast if her self-esteem is high and if her mother has taught her to be in touch with her instincts.

Each of us must take responsibility for the ways in which we keep “the culture” going up close and personal in our own homes and in our own lives. This is infinitely harder than blaming the culture. It is also a far more rewarding and powerful way to change the conditions of our lives—one mother and daughter at a time.

Christian Northrup, Mother-Daughter Wisdom.

I was marveling at this business consultant’s mad Excel skills as he magically made the machine do the math for me the other day.

“100 points theory,” he said.

“Huh?” I said, thinking the was expounding on the over-my-head nuances of Excel sheets and accounting.

“Everyone is born with 100 points, but not the same 100 points. I didn’t get many hair points (he pointed to his balding scalp), but I got a lot of Excel points,” he explained.

I kind of like this theory and have been thinking about it a lot lately. Especially in regards to what we expect of ourselves as people and how we can better parent our children.

It’s pretty easy to look over at the bald business consultant’s 100 points and think, “Why couldn’t God have given me a couple of badass Excel and Quickbooks points?”

Likely, there are plenty of people who look at me and say, “I wish I had her hair points or her prolific writing points.”

Seriously. On any given day you can find millions of people who are wishing they got someone else’s points.

That’s just a waste of time though. Everybody gets 100 points. That’s fair. As fair as any theory I’ve heard about why some people are born with money and others in poverty. Why some people are born stunning looking and others only average. Why some people have to count calories and work out vigorously everyday, while others stay thin no matter what. Why some people skate through life socially, while others struggle terribly.

100 points. Everybody gets them. They are just different points.

As parents, I think the best strategy is to focus on the points we do get and make them count. To focus on the points our kids got, and help them learn to really make them count.

It’s a huge mistake to expect that a different set of points might have made us happier.

Far wiser is to say, Hey, you did pretty good in the points department. You got 20 of these and 50 of these and 5 of those, 10 of that, 10 that will come in handy for this, and 5 of them you haven’t yet discovered. They’re yours and they are all you need to make a go of it in this life. They’re really, the perfect combination of points to bring you health, wealth, happiness and wholeness in this life. Use them well.

Our job as parents is not to be flawless or perfect.

Our job is to be our incredible, flawed selves with grace and humor so we can teach our children how to fall down and get back up.

Fall down, get back up. Fall down, get back up. Fail, try again. Win, raise the bar. Take risks, be bold, have faith. Practice. Learn. Get better. Try again.

Brush off the knees, wipe away the tears, put our big girl panties on and admit to our daughters, “yeah, I screwed that up, made a huge mistake, tried and failed, but I’m getting up and trying again. That didn’t work, but this next thing might.  It’s worth the risk, I’m better at it this time.”

That’s the human experience. It’s the beauty of it.

Ainsley’s 3rd grade friendship troubles around bragging and I’m guessing, vying for the position of “queen bee,” possibly taking the wrong tone with people, gave us another opportunity to discuss friendship – what it means and how to get it.

At first, I admit, I was completely and totally without advice for her. Remember when a young Matthew Broderick played Tic Tac Toe with the computer (back when the invention of a computer inspired awe and amazement in us) in War Games? Joshua, the computer, learned “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” It’s unwinnable. That’s how I feel about girl drama and frenemies.

What was your earliest heartbreak? Was your first experience of emotional devastation caused by a guy? Unlikely. If you are a woman, chances are your first experience of emotional treachery was at the hands of another girl.

Naomi Wolf says in her Bazaar article, Black Swan and Female Rivalry, which looks at the various terrible ways we sometimes treat each other, vying for position, sometimes vying for the same man, sometimes just out of pure spite, envy and boredom.

As a woman, it took me a good 30-something years to really understand what I wanted and needed out of friendship and figure out how to get it, and how to avoid the wrong people (drama-makers, takers and emotional-vampires). I’ve had bad friends, bad crowds, frenemies, been way too forgiving and loyal to people who weren’t deserving. I’ve also, at times, been a bad friend and screwed up in some major ways.

Like every parent, I’m hoping and praying that my daughter will learn from my mistakes and let me teach her how to both choose good friends and be one. I, personally, adore having friends. I think it’s so fun and intimate. I feel blessed by my current friendships: online and in-person, on the other side of the world and right next door, those from my early years and those I met yesterday.

Tips for Attracting Only the RIGHT Friends

The trick, in my experience, is avoid deciding WHO you want your friends to be. We get fixated on certain people and then hope they are what we want or expect. We might decide that Ivy, the cool, popular girl, is the one that should be our friend. That, we think, will make us happy. But, if Ivy is a gossip, a bully, a mean girl, is jealous or spiteful and always tries to steal your boyfriends, make the other girls side against you, or informs you that your clothes are ugly – well, obviously this is not a person who will make you happy.

Far more effective, is to decide what QUALITIES you want in a friend and how you want to FEEL in a friendship.

This will give you a sort of check-list to refer to when you meet someone. You might have “honest” and “loyal” on your list of qualities, meet someone and realize after you’ve hung out a few times that they lie and gossip about their other friends. The fact that “honest” and “loyal” is on your list will make the lies and gossip stand out like “red flags” and you are less likely to ignore such a warning. Maybe this person isn’t meant to be your BFF.

Writing down the feelings you want to feel when you’re with your friends gives another sort of check list. Say, you’ve had a few girls-night-outs. Ask yourself, “how do I feel when I’m around this person?” Is it really fun? Do I feel excited? Does time fly and I wish it weren’t over when it’s time to go home? Do I feel understood? Do we talk about things that I find interesting or exciting? If so, this is a fantastic friendship to pursue and will probably bring blessings to your life.

But, if there are other feelings . . . maybe an anxiety tickle in the pit of your stomach, maybe an urge to get up and leave several times, maybe your inner-self whispers “be careful” or “don’t cross her,” such feelings are likely NOT on your list of feelings you wish to have in a friendship and one should run, not walk, away from that person.

Learn it and Teach It

Writing this down, or putting it on your Dream Board, has magical qualities that cannot be intellectually explained. It’s a form of spiritual power. It’s a form of prayer. Is there a bigger power than the personal power of being able to create your own life?

You can’t teach this to your daughter unless you learn it first. If there are drama-makers, gossips, liars, emotional-vampires, “dementors,” joy-stealers or other intolerable people in your life, ask yourself, “what they are doing there?”

The list or Dream Board has another useful magic power, it can make people, who don’t possess the qualities you’re looking for, get suddenly busy or move.

At first, you might think you’ll be sad about this, then you’ll notice how much lighter, happier and more joyful you feel now that someone’s not sucking the joy out of your life with their incessant complaining, gossiping or back-biting. You might feel pity for your “friend,” but let me assure you there are plenty of other complainers, gossips and back-biters who will fill the void of “friendship” for them. Whatever you do, Dear God, please resist the urge to “fix” or “help” them.

Girl Culture and friendship can be rough and emotionally scarring, especially for girls, where it’s a form of currency or capital. The stakes (your heart and your daughters’) are high and that makes friendship a crucial discussion point with girls.

Sit down with your daughter and talk about your past friendships – the mistakes you made, how it made you feel, what you would have done differently. She can’t learn from your mistakes if you don’t share them.

Sit down with her and make the list of qualities and feelings you want from your friendships, put them on a dream board, pray for them, wish on a star, throw a penny in a fountain. When she meets someone new ask her how she feels when she’s around that person (which is not the same as asking how she feels about that person).

Then sit back and trust that great friendships are coming your way.

2011 Dream Board

I love Dream Boarding. The art of collage, combined with the optimism of dreaming up anything your heart dares to desire, added to a bold dose of faith that “anything is possible,” proves to be a potent and powerful combination in my life.

It’s goal setting, only more fun and creative.

The number of things that have happened or are happening from my last dream board is nothing short of miraculous.

The problem was . .  . I wasn’t feeling it. Amazing, exciting, wonderful things were happening and I was feeling neutral about it. This bothered me. It was depressing. Why put forth all the effort to make all that amazing stuff happen if it wasn’t going to bring me the happiness, joy, fulfillment and validation I had expected?

Just in time, exactly what I needed appeared where it always does . . . Martha Beck‘s column in O Magazine. She writes of two women, one who wanted her business to succeed and one who wanted to have a baby. They thought it would make them feel loved or successful. It didn’t. It made them stressed out and that was disappointing. You know the feeling, you get the job only to find it eat at all your family time or your boss is a jerk, you have the baby only to find you’re so sleep deprived that it’s hard to find the love, you come back from the honeymoon expecting wedded bliss and you find yourself locked in a power struggle over housework or starring into the dark wondering when the snoring is going to turn to music.

Turns out it’s a simple lack of adjectives that accounts for this disparity between what we want and how we expect to feel when we get it. Do we really, really want a successful business or do we really, really want to feel happy, stimulated, creative, focused, validated and successful? Prior to this month, I would have answered, No Martha, I really, really want to be a best-selling author and to achieve this list of goals because I know that’s what will make me happy. But, having achieved a long bad-ass list of goals this year and feeling disappointed in the emotional payoff was enough to make me consider another perspective. Perhaps, Martha is right. Perhaps putting the feelings I’m hoping to achieve on the dream board rather than the goals I’m hoping will make me feel that way, will lead to those goals or better. (In my experience, I usually get better than my dreams.)

I went to last year’s dream board and looked. Sure enough, where I had written adjectives (feelings I wanted in my marriage) I had experienced a positive shift in my feelings. Where I had focused on achievements and goals (work) I had achieved a lot, but found it disappointing emotionally.

This year, when I brought home three pieces of poster board, collected all the old magazines, scissors, colored pencils and sharpies the kids and I focused on adjectives to describe how we want to feel in 2011, instead of goals we wished to achieve. I still have the goals. They are still on last year’s dream board and since many of them were super-ambitious, I’ll keep trucking along. But, this year, the focus is going to be more on feeling good while I achieve them. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Words for 2011: present, productive, powerful, inspired, excited, pleasure, joy, validated, successful, wealthy, confident, connected, loved, intimate, successful, fun, miraculous, electrifying, effortless, in flow, healthy, fit, sweet, happy, content, adventurous, passion, spiritual, sexual, stylish, charismatic, lucky, unified, fortunate, valued, feminine.

Ainsley's Dream Board