Perfect on Your Own groups are designed to help you:

• Understand and work through the emotional nuts and bolts of divorce
• Learn strategies to help you and your kids regain your balance
• Provides a powerful support network of other women who really understand the emotional storm of anger and loss — as well as the practical hurdles – that accompany divorce

We’ll use the Reclaiming Your Self ebook as our guide. Included in the cost of the group, the ebook utilizes a beautiful page-turning format with a built-in journal to provide your with information and support as you work through the emotional issues of divorce and free yourself to move forward in your life.

Groups will meet for five 75-minute sessions.  Cost: $150
The next session begins on Wednesday, February 24, meeting from 7-8:15.

Please call 677-9800 if you’d like more information.

To reserve your spot, use the payment link below.

From the perspective of a therapist and parent coach, I think that the kids themselves, along with what you wish for them, provide the guidance –

Don’t we all dearly wish for our kids to feel safe and secure — as well as to grow into compassionate people! Exposing kids to material that overwhelms them is traumatic, and trauma prevents kids from feeling secure — and so should be avoided. However, what overwhelms (is traumatic to) one child will not overwhelm another, and age is not always a good indicator. Behavior is more helpful. A child who is likely to be afraid to go to school (or to bed) because of the possibility of losing mom or dad in an earthquake can cope with far less exposure than a less fearful child. It’s important to realize that kids don’t learn empathy from being traumatized; they learn it from having adults understand, respect and treat their feelings with gentle care. Embrace their capacity to cope and choose the level of exposure to frightening news accordingly.

Similarly, older kids who are glued to the images on TV are showing you that they’re ready to know more. Engage them in conversation about what they’re seeing, how they feel about it, what questions they have, what frightens or angers them. Don’t duck from their answers, and don’t be afraid. Just listen fully until you understand — and then check your understanding.

Generally — for kids under five, I’d avoid the TV entirely but answer simply and directly any questions that they ask. Little kids are not helped by having fears raised of losing their parents or being crushed alive; they’ll deal with fears like these as they are able to cope with them, hopefully metaphorically through fairy tales. For six to nines, I’d assume that they’ve heard enough at school that it needs to be a topic of conversation at home — but still guided by their own questions and — this is key — by their own level of intensity. To kids, often these things feel very far away and improbable, while to adults, the world can seem like it’s going to hell in a handbasket. If your child is not as upset as you yourself are, match his intensity rather than conveying your own. Older kids can enter into much deeper conversations about getting aid to Haiti and the barriers to this; and most school-age kids can learn a sense of responsibility for others by choosing some small way to help. All kids benefit from some perspective to help them understand that even though they see an ongoing array of terrible events on television, it’s a big world, and these things are actually relatively rare.

For me — I think I’ve had as much news as I can handle for today. And I suppose teaching kids to protect themselves from the nonstop barrage of today’s media is also a crucial life skill. So — I’m turning the TV off now and grabbing an escape novel, a glass of milk and a few back-to-the-womb Lorna Doones : )

My own practice field for living is the piano, and the power of this metaphor resurfaced as I was preparing for a No Lost Voices talk. Each group that I speak to is a little different from all the others. There are many threads to weave together and multiple objectives to be kept in mind while facilitating this conversation. As I mentally outlined all of this, my mind leapt to Claude Debussy’s Reverie which I’ve recently taken out to play — and which I invite you to listen to, sink into, for a moment now while you read.

Playing — it means to study, to channel the composer’s intentions through the keys, to experience. The pianist is charged with ensuring that none of the voices in a complex piece of music are lost, that each is presented and can be heard in its own range and volume.  Follow the separate voices in this deeply beautiful piece with your ear and you will hear always two and sometimes three threads simultaneously telling their parts of the story.  Each thread is spectacular in its simplicity; together they form an eloquent whole, a whole that is compromised unless each thread is played fully.

And so it will be when this next group of friends meets in a cozy living room, a spot of light on a dark January night, to take up the topic of No Lost Voices.  Each person in the room is a container for the multiple strands of voice that we think of as Self; the group is comprised of the threads woven from those strands.  I can hardly wait to hear the sound of this group, a blend of voices unique to this winter night.

* * * * * *

Emotions swirl more wildly than snowflakes during the winter holidays; an abruptly developing storm is not so much a surprise as an expected part of the mix of the details and pressures of families, those unlikely collections of quirky individuals, getting together.  So when my daughter, in the midst of an undignified wrestling match with a dull, right-handed scissors (she’s a lefty) and a roll of flimsy (okay, cheap) wrapping paper announced in utter disgust that she was staying home, it was just one of those holiday things to be gotten through.

To her in that moment, what was the point of all this fuss; of expending blood, sweat and tears (perhaps literally; I should have replaced the scissors, but honestly, I was using the good one and was in a rush of my own) — to wrap gifts in paper that would “end up in a landfill the day after tomorrow?”  Obviously, she was going downhill in a wheelbarrow, as her father would say.

Earlier that day, I had heard a recording of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, played on the air by Terry Gross (Fresh Air).  Terry’s affection for this particular delivery summoned up imprints in my mind, bright images of moments when my daughters and I had created occasions to be together with friends or family.  The efforts to make these things happen had been monumental — but all the mess is largely forgotten; only the constellations in that inner sky of memory remain.  So my Leo’s and Orion’s are a midnight campfire on the beach, a ferry ride on the ocean, a Hendrick-style birthday for someone who had never experienced one before, a drive in the country so baby Belle could be there while my younger daughter and son-in-law chose a tree for her first Christmas, and most recently a one-day round trip to Chicago for a bridal shower where we (I) accidentally drove almost to Iowa by mistake –

Every single one was logistical chaos, impractical and tons of trouble.

I wouldn’t trade a single one of those moments.

This I explained to my daughter, saying some other possibly (read: definitely) unhelpful things as well, and falling into sudden hysterical laughter at her flash of rage over paper that “tears from the corner of a box but is impervious to scissors!“  This, too, was not useful to her; she threatened to simply drop the gift into a grocery bag; I gave a withering response about how the way gifts are given demonstrates caring.  Suddenly I realized that this was my gift, and I was quiet after that, fortunately, since it turned out to be a gourmet 6-quart saucepan, unwrappable by the best… But wrapped, nonetheless.

The squall subsided, but of course; the holiday was better than wonderful.  Its pure wonderfulness underscored the sadness that followed.

Upon our return home the next day, my daughter was faced with the terrible, indelible, incomprehensible news of the loss of a friend.  Without warning and for no reason that could be accepted, her friend had been taken.  “This is  crazy!” she thought to herself, “I have to call Juana to ask what in the world is going on –” and then realized with that deeply human despair that she could not call Juana, ever again.

* * * * * *

Your voice, the spark of the universe that resides within you — please share it today.  Tomorrow is not promised.

And so, I wish for you and yours a joyful new year filled with the sounds of your voices ringing clearly as bells.   Our stay is brief, but if we look and listen, we truly are surrounded by The Beauty of the Earth (your gift — and you can open it now!).

I was working with a young couple awhile back.  Though much hurt had happened between them, their love for each other was very clear, reaching through their pain as they struggled to find their way back to it.  They had never learned to fully listen to each other and simply accept the experience of the other without judgment, leaving them both feeling alone, not understood; fearing that their raw emotions would be rebuffed.

In my mind’s eye, I imagined reaching outward with cupped hands, as if someone had tossed something precious and fragile to me, my hands lowering just slightly to absorb the force of the landing — and that is how I wanted to teach them to catch each other’s feelings.  As well, it was the level of responsibility that I wanted them to feel accompanying the trust that they might extend to each other.

I thought then of the sort of charming uninhibited bliss that even adults can feel — sometimes expressed by a certain juvenile silly grin that tells me they know their feelings are safe — and this is the environment that is required to nurture children’s voices!  There’s nothing to be gained and everything to lose if children experience being invalidated by their parents; at least in their own homes if not always in the world at large, their vulnerable selves can be cradled, their sparks of self revealed and gently amplified.

A child’s silence is the poignant evidence that her fragile self cannot withstand the risk of disclosure.  She will share her voice when she perceives that it is safe to do so; when she can count on her feelings being provided a soft place to land.

It’s a funny thing, the elements that can cause one to suddenly feel at home.  Some of my best times as a child were spent with my grandmother and my aunt and uncle’s family in Manitowoc, Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Michigan. To this day, the sound of tires on a gravel road makes me feel that I am driving up the long driveway to the house on the bluff overlooking the lake, a place where there might be squabbles, but there would be no fighting, no intense sadness, none of the sense of imminent doom that I felt so often apart from those weeks in the summer.  The sound of a gravel road instantly blesses me with a sense of well-being.

Many nights, returning to my grandmother’s house on the country roads that lead through this small town, there would be the scent of a skunk floating on the air.  To me, this is perfume (though only in small doses, I later learned); how delightful to find it here, a little outside the city where I now live.   Likewise, I was surprised, when I moved here, how the slight bit of mildew in one of the doorways summoned up those summers when the lake breeze always left things just a bit damp.

Not that I’m seeking to directly recreate either of those in my home beyond faintly, distantly.  But my associations to what might be, to other people, unpleasant sensory elements are contented ones.

The last time I visited Manitowoc, I was dismayed with an advance in technology that had replaced the hollow echo of a far-off fog horn with an electronic phony twin.  No matter — in my own home, I have a little lighthouse that reminds me of the sound exactly as it used to be.  Just the sight of it brings the reassuring sound of that old sentinel to mind and I am transported to the psychological space of summer freedom, wide open spaces, the sun, building sand castles beside the icy lake, full picnic baskets that included home-grown tomatoes and my grandmother’s deviled eggs, quadruple solitaire and laughter.

Creating  A Space That’s You: Find a moment to write down five sounds and scents from your own happy memories and imagine the ways you could weave them into your space to welcome you to each new day.

I don’t think I fully appreciated this possibility as the first-time mom of an infant who seemed to have only two settings: scream and catnap (with one eye open). But the perspective of years and the tremendous advantage of a good night’s sleep seem to have a substantial positive effect on one’s powers of observation. That is my impression, anyhow, though I’ve chosen not to ask anyone directly, “Don’t you think I see more clearly than I did 30 years ago — or is it just me?”

But to return to the point, take this engaging conversation with my very first grandchild, Belle who is now six and a half.

Mimi: “Belle, how delightful to see you!”

Belle: “I’m so happy to see you, too, Mimi! But Mimi! Please note that there’s not so much as a scrap of breakfast left in my tummy!”

Mimi: “How about a little snackerel of something, Belle?”

Belle: “Well, yes, I think I might!”

Mimi: “Ummmm! Yummy milk!”

Belle [by turns]: “Now I want it, now I don’t.  Ha!  How clever am I! Now I want it, now I don’t.  Look what I can do!”

And so she went on, fascinating me with her fascination.

You’ve determined, of course, that Baby Belle is six and a half in months, not years.  While my daughter and son-in-law and I each secretly believe that her joyful exhales of “Haaaaai!” actually constitute an official greeting directly personally at us, mostly we’re not delusional and know that she can’t talk yet (probably).

In words, that is.  Because Belle and I absolutely had this conversation today, but I would have missed it if I’d been busy or distracted or if I’d just been listening and not watching.  Belle’s sharp eyes dart around, watching everything, and her face and hands and actually her whole body speak for her.  She breaks into a smile of delight as a greeting and exhales (or says –  you decide), “Haaaaaaai.” She reaches for her bottle, takes a few long satisfying slurps, and then looks up and pushes it away.  She smiles, then, and reaches to pull it back, deliciously well-pleased with her ability to express and implement a choice.

Belle is talking.  And she is surrounded by people who are “raising” her voice by carefully paying attention and receiving her messages. Already she speaks with joy and confidence.

Hers will not be a lost voice. And if someday as a teenager in search of independence, she offers us fewer words, how important that she is teaching us now how to listen without them.

“Why are you doing this?”

There was some skepticism, maybe a fear that I’d show up and deliver some kind of sales pitch.

Well, I actually understood that when I thought about it later.  I’d just come from a presentation much like that.  The promised information was re-promised — for $3000.  If you purchased before leaving the room.

But the idea that I could be perceived that way hadn’t really occurred to me as an issue.

It was a good question, I decided.  Tough questions often are.

So no, No Lost Voices is not a sales pitch.  I’m committed to this project because I intend to make a difference.

There’s far too much needless pain that results when people are prevented from speaking.  I want to get people talking about that.  I want to get parents — and teachers –thinking about it for their kids.  And I want to free up those voices because our communities need them.

But most of all it’s because each individual human being is entitled to self-expression.  Without it, our sparks dim and become buried out of our reach, hopelessness gains ground, despair sets in.  Human beings should not be locked away inside themselves.

Not ever.

That’s the why of the No Lost Voices challenge.

It’s not like women don’t already have enough of a fight against feeling inadequate. Trying to be a 50’s mom with a new millennium career and manage a household flawlessly, often with no outside help — well, believing that this is possible is simply a delusion! At least for most of us. Okay — certainly for me.

And now all of that is no longer enough. The bar has been raised. “Adequate” people are supposed to be able to point to something and say, “This is my passion” — and then build a life or a career around it.

Which is great in theory. But it leaves women hammering away at themselves trying to pound out whatever their “passion” is supposed to be. And you usually can’t find it that way.

But what really is possible is to have passionate moments by following sparks of curiosity and energy. I think out of those sparks a pattern emerges, over time, making it possible to have and share more and more of those passionate moments.

I think that’s good enough. Imagine what the world would be like if more of us did that –

[Read the No Lost Voices kick-off post here.]

The promise of that statement is the heart of No Lost Voices .

The challenge: to deliver the message of No Lost Voices to 100 groups in 50 weeks, come rain, snow, sleet or stagefright. It is about reaching women – whether adults or teens — whose selves are buried and whose voices have been lost; it is about informing parents, mentors and people in positions of influence and authority so that this happens to fewer and fewer girls and women – and when it does happen, it is not so extreme. It is about sparing as many as possible the pain of struggling to know Who am I? Do I have a right to be that? Am I good enough? It is about encouraging you if you must travel this difficult path.

The vision: No Lost Voices

Inspiration always seems to strike when there’s not a pen handy.  No Lost Voices started that way – at 70 miles per hour in the dark.

My older daughter and I were driving home from Indianapolis late at night after a pleasant little day trip.  Élise is very politically aware – and outspoken about her beliefs.  Inevitably our conversation drifted to the state of the world – and of our own country — which, it must be admitted, is in all to many aspects in serious trouble.  What can one person do in the face of such rampant abuses of power, I wondered.

My answer to that, shaped in the car that night, is that we can each throw ourselves into what we do best.  For Élise, that is writing, internationally.  For me, it is helping women reconnect with the essence of themselves – which they have so often lost along the way in the interest of meeting the needs and expectations of everybody else.   Change at any level begins with people finding their own voices.

If I look back, that really was the start of the No Lost Voices challenge.

So that’s what I’m setting out to do.  It’s liable to be a path filled with fascinating people (and some really rotten ones), heroic stories, unexpected (and expected) stumbling blocks, continuous learning, and metaphorically dropping a peanut butter sandwich “jelly side down” (thank you so much, Erma Bombeck) more than a few times.  I’ll keep you posted.  Starting tomorrow.

Oh, okay! Starting now.