The boy who was ‘hogging’ the hammock

A small group of friends and I have been meeting weekly to learn Marshall Rosenberg’s revolutionary way of interacting with other people. We’re studying his book “Nonviolent Communication.”

I’ve wanted to blog more about this, but it’s hard, because most tense conflicts in my life involve my husband, and there’s the off-chance he might read this blog.

But I’ll tell a little story about the effectiveness of nonviolent communication involving my grandson, Cadan, age four. No chance he’ll read the blog.

He and a neighbor girl, Caitlyn, were playing in the backyard hammock. After a while, Caitlyn walked up to me and said, “He’s hogging it!”

I made a mental note that this was “violent” communication, in that she was blaming Cadan for her upset and making him bad.

I didn’t say anything back to her.

Cadan came up and we all were discussing something else for a minute. Then he wanted to go back to the hammock. I might have said, “Caitlyn says you were hogging the hammock,” or “You need to be nice to your friends and share the hammock,” or some such thing. The problem with those two statements? The first is a blaming statement. And the second is a command (which is essentially demeaning).

Instead I applied a little of the techniques we’re learning and I simply made a non-judgmental observation. I said to Cadan, “Caitlyn says you were lying in the hammock in such a way that there was no space for her.”

I really didn’t need to say anything else. With genuine feeling, Cadan said, “Oh! I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.”

And they went back to the hammock. I didn’t hear any more complaints, so I suppose it went well.

To me it felt like a tiny, lovely, triumph.

By the way, I gained insights into nonviolent communication with children by reading the excellent book, “Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids,” by Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson.

Short movie about Spokane’s grande dame

We’ve finished the short video, like a movie trailer, about the book Sally. Take a peek…

Growing Bolder

Last week Sally was interviewed by the “Growing Bolder” radio show of southern Florida. To listen to the dynamic interview, click here.

Sal was likened to Paris Hilton of her time, pal-ing around with Theodora Roosevelt in post-war Europe. The radio interviewers wanted her to share her secret to personal fulfillment in a nutshell, (they asked for the Cliff Notes of her life), which she wasn’t quite able to do.

As her biographer, I’ve probably spent more time trying to synthesize and summarize her lessons than Sally herself. To answer the questions of “Growing Bolder,” I would say Sally had three major shifts in her life:

First, therapist Virginia Satir helped Sally break free from unhealthy dynamics with her husband, so she felt strong enough for the divorce that happened after 20 years of marriage.

Secondly, at age 73, Sally had a spiritual vision that injected new energy in her life. While writing in her journal, she saw a female divine figure who said she had come to accompany Sally in her later years. “Sophia” revealed a new agenda. “I want you to know that I’m coming to live with you and be with you and change your life in womanly ways…” She said they would start a new life together.

Sally’s third epiphany happened at age 80, when she began to slow down. Mentally, she was preparing for the proverbial alternative. Instead of settling into her easy chair, however, she traveled to California to take an art workshop. Michelle Cassou teaches a method of painting that defied everything Sally had ever learned. Sally began to paint in a way that releases unconscious images. The paintings are startling (see many of them on the SallytheBook website). She has now produced over 200 new paintings.

“Lots of things that have been worrying me go away when the picture’s finished,” she told me. “I couldn’t have imagined what it would feel like.”

Shedding Ego and Worries

Twenty years ago, Sally painted a picture of her inner self: a blindfolded girl in a nightie is walking forward, hands outstretched, into the darkness. She felt that was happening in her life. Like an immature girl, she didn’t know where she was going.

Of course, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Now, she tends to have open eyes as she walks into the unknown. She recently did this painting, which somehow captured a sense of freedom and delight, even though the context, the future, is unknowable. Maybe this new understanding has something to do with reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth,” which helps us let go of ego, the “pain body,” and those haunting worries.

Hello, and thanks for all the fish!

Remember the line, “So long, and thanks for all the fish”? This was the message left by dolphins as the Earth was about to be destroyed, in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (Late in the tale, Wonko the scientist points out that the dolphins were the actual creators of the planet.)

I thought of this line when I read (actually listened to as an audiobook!) Lynne Cox’s book, Grayson.

This charming and astonishing tale tells the true story of the author’s encounter with a baby gray whale off a Los Angeles beach. Cox was 17 years old at the time and in the middle of a routine two-hour open-water training workout when she became aware of something huge and unknown swimming below.

Wrestling with fear, Cox continued to swim. When she saw a friend gesturing wildly on a pier, she headed for shore, assuming her companion was a shark. But before she reached sand, the friend called a halt to her sprint. She was being followed by a baby gray whale, separated from its mother, he told her. If Cox swam in, the baby would, too, and it would die.

This galvanizing premise sets up the rest of the book, which is tension-filled. I couldn’t believe the number of sea residents and the assorted dangers that threatened the protagonist, a girl wearing only a bathing suit. Beyond the excitement is a pervasive spirituality that makes me wonder at the intelligence of dophins and whales, and at our human ability to connect with them.

Lynne Cox is best known for swimming over a mile in the Antarctic (again, wearing only a Lycra swimsuit). This remarkable feat is featured in this week’s New Yorker (April 21, 2008), and Cox’s book, Swimming to Antarctica.

If you haven’t read Grayson, rush out right now and get a copy!

‘What a coinci-blence!’

I took my grandson, Cadan, to the children’s museum yesterday. While standing in front of an insect aquarium, another grandmotherly visitor pointed out a brown lizard resting on a leaf. Cadan, age four, watched it intently. Then I pointed to the silk-screened image on Cadan’s shirt and said to the woman, “He’s got a gecko on his shirt.” And I read the ID beside the aquarium, which noted that the brown critter we had all been observing, now climbing up the wall, was also a gecko.

As we walked away, Cadan said, “What a coinci-blence!”

And I’m thinking, “What a coinci-blence that I always feel so happy when I’m with this boy!”

A Conversation with Death

A couple of weeks ago, Sally telephoned me.

“Don’t come over tonight,” she said. “I’m coming down with a cold, and I’m probably contagious.”

This was our Sunday ritual, where my husband, Larry, and I bring dinner, and we all watch something from BBC on Sally’s cable TV. I was sorry to miss “movie night,” but I told her to get well.

Three days later Sally called again. She suggested I host the women’s group that meets at her house every Thursday morning. Her cold was worse, and she wanted to stay in bed.

She is remarkably hearty, even at age 87, and Sally’s absence from the group because of illness was unheard-of. But I agreed, and from Sally’s chair I greeted the fifteen or so women who joined in a circle. As we welcomed the new spring season, and we each planted a bush bean in little paper cups filled with soil, the sound of hacking and coughing came from the next room.

This stirred me to action. After the meeting I ordered a mobile chest x-ray and we got Sally started on antibiotics for a secondary infection that was causing her to cough up dark sputum.

Two other friends — Jeanie and Elizabeth — and I took turns showing up every day to nurse the patient. As days passed with slow improvement, it dawned on us all that Sally was sicker than she had ever been before.

Wobbly on her legs, pale, wracked by periodic coughing fits, she slumped in her recliner all day, wearing a bathrobe, a blanket on her lap, too drowsy to turn on the TV.

After about a week, she seemed to come awake as though from a long dream. She told an amazing story.

While apparently sleeping, hour after hour she was actually watching a vision.

An expanse of green ocean spread before her, and a sky filled with billowing clouds met the water. Along the horizon glowed a strip of brilliant light. The sun was setting.

Transfixed, she watched this band of light. It was beautiful and comforting. Her mind emptied of all thoughts, and in the stillness she became aware that she could slip effortlessly through this sparkling portal between earth and sky.

“It would be so easy,” she told me later.

Without words, she sensed a Presence. “Are you ready?” she was asked.

“No. Not yet.” Her boys — grown men now — still needed her. “Not yet.”

And so she got better. Her lungs cleared, and the coughing subsided. Her legs grew stronger, and she began to walk steadily around the house again. She resumed dressing herself and forwarding emails at her computer.

She no longer thinks of herself as invulnerable, however, and neither can I.

Ever since I’ve known her (for over 20 years), Sally has not feared death. “It’s just like a ticket to Paris,” she says.

But now she’s given us another vision as well, of a gentle voyage across the water. Instead of a city, or an island, or a dock — we are beckoned to a brilliant light.

Attracting vs. Purging

Oprah made it official. Now we’ve all heard of the Law of Attraction, how having upbeat, happy thoughts creates good things in our lives. “The Secret” is out. If you just pretend you’re ALREADY healthy, wealthy and surrounded by loving relationships, soon enough you will be. It’s a delectable philosophy, because all the change happens first inside our heads (and hearts), where we have quite a bit of control.

Motivational gurus like Norman Vincent Peale have told us this for a long time. I liked reading The Secret. I also really like a book called The Writings of Florence Scovel Shinn. (DeVorss Publications, 1988.) This is a collection of works by a woman who reinvented herself after a divorce. (Shinn wrote from the mid-Twenties to Forties.) The titles of her books capture her message: “The Game of Life,” “Your Word is Your Wand,” “The Power of the Spoken Word,” and “The Secret Door to Success.”

The idea that I can change my world simply by changing how I think and speak is revolutionary. Our culture imbues us with the idea that AFTER we get the big break, after our boat comes in, after a stroke of good luck, then we will be a success and be happy. Or else, we have to work really, really hard, and eventually we will claw our way out of our hardships. Either way, only AFTER the outside world changes will I be happy. Then, of course, the question is, for how long? This is not a stable happiness.

The “secret” says that the catalyst is inside and doesn’t require physical labor. Just a commitment to mental watchfulness and shifting. Be happy now. Then, of course, you’ll always be happy.

I believe this secret, by the way. But it isn’t the whole story. Following that advice, you might be inclined to ignore your problems rather than exhume them and heal them. One reason I wanted to write about Sally Pierone was to study what she did to identify her problems and transform herself into a clear, self-actualized person. Not all therapy leads to that result. If it’s just a rehashing of old hurts, then it can do more harm than good.

Sandra Blakeslee wrote a Sept 19, 2000 piece for the New York Times, “Brain — Updating Machinery May Explain False Memories,” about research showing that every time we exhume a memory, we “update” it with proteins, like a computer revising a file with a new program. That would suggest that we can remake our personal history based on our evolving wisdom and experience. (Scientists are trying this with drugs.)

In my view, this is something Sally has done with her paintings. She unleashes a troubling image, paints it in a new light, and when that old memory pops up again in her mind, she says, “I already handled that.” It no longer drags her down.

Somehow, I like the idea of incorporating both philosophies: First, guiding my mind to notice things to be grateful for and focusing on everyday pleasures, expecting the unfolding of good fortune. And second, allowing deep-seated pain, guilt, and remorse to bubble up, get reprogrammed and laid to rest.

We received an astute response to Sally’s book this week from Dotti Trogdon, who knew Sally in the old days and must have believed that Sally’s happy façade was for real.

Dotti wrote in an email that we captured “the vitality and spunk of Sally on the page in a swift-moving story. The first section of her time in Europe is vivid and enthralling. Now the shadow of her return to Spokane and a wretched marriage looms. Reading it stirs up memories of course and thoughts of our own passages, each individual human story a wonder of highs and lows and endurance. The roles of parents and husbands so problematical… Irrepressible joy bubbles up from Sally’s paintings — even the ones that represent conflict and sadness are painted with such exuberance that anyone would simply cheer her on… Even those who appear confident and ever-upbeat are haunted by inner demons and require the encouragement of friends.”

This last is perhaps the key — to give friendly encouragement to our friends. And to ourselves.

Theodora Roosevelt Dies

After living for decades in anonymity, Theodora Roosevelt died last month in North Carolina at the age of 88.

The eccentric novelist, granddaughter of President Teddy, was close friends to Sally (Paine) Pierone in the 1950s while Sally was living in Paris. The new biography, Sally—The Older Woman’s Illustrated Guide to Self-Improvement, may shed new light on the reclusive Roosevelt.

The Jan. 5 death was largely unnoticed in this country (The Charlotte Observer published a piece on January 22), but the Telegraph of London ran an extensive obit January 29, detailing Theodora’s colorful career and her nine novels. This was picked up by January magazine, a prestigious Canadian book blog, which ran a flattering article that summed up, “…The Telegraph obituary paints an amazing portrait of a life well lived.”

Married three times, Theodora was known as Theodora Roosevelt Keogh O’Toole Rauchfuss, according to The Observer. She had no children. One of her novels, The Fascinator (1954), was dedicated to Sally Paine.

The biography of Sally contains a number of references to Theodora and her first husband, Tom Keogh (who died in 1980), including a melodramatic marital spat, when Theo hid herself in Sally’s apartment and Tom botched a suicide attempt. For Sally, who was art director of The Marshall Plan at the time, those memories are colorful but tinged with the regrets of an elder looking back at the follies of youth.

Sally turns 87 this week.

(Photo shows Keoghs during a visit to the Paine family retreat at Hayden Lake, Idaho, circa 1953. Photo courtesy Sally Pierone.)

Nonviolent Communication

I kept hearing about a book by this title, by Marshall Rosenberg, and Sally even hosted an 8-week class at her house, but I didn’t go. Somehow the concept didn’t seem very appealing. Maybe it was just the title. I’m not a violent person. Certainly not when I’m communicating. I never even shout. But two of my three grown children were hearing about it, too. So now, we’re all into it!

I’m reading a treatment of the concept intended for parents, called, Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids (authors Hart and Hodson), which is fascinating to me as grandma of a four-year-old.

The idea is that when we tell somebody what to do (like, “Pick up your toys”), we’re treating them “violently,” or disrespectfully, by attempting to rob them of the ability to choose. We treat ourselves this way when we think, “I should do such-and-so.” The subtext is that I’m not okay if I don’t. Instead, I’m learning, if I say to myself, “I could do such-and-so,” or I might, or perhaps I’ll…, then I retain my own dignity. Self-compassion.

The difference is subtle but profound. To my grandson, I might say, “Would you consider picking up your toys?”, and I’m finding he’s much more cheerful about it. In the women’s group at Sally’s we’re going to start studying the book and sharing experiences of incorporating it. Since none of us were taught about this as children, we’re taking baby steps.