“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” ~Albert Einstein

My kids taught me to text. They all have cell phones that they rarely answer except if I am calling, the condition that I set for paying for all their texting. But if I want an immediate response I know better, I text. Texting is actually quite convenient for taking care of the mundane details that can often jam up the works between all the kids and their various schedules. Increasingly I hear about their sorrows and joys over text too, although usually those exchanges put me into autodial on the phone. Come to think of it, most of the “love u’s” come through text now, too.

Our basic need to connect and communicate is in the process of another significant face lift. The endless hours that I stretched the cord from the kitchen wall around the dining room table for some privacy and spoke endlessly to a couple of my closest friends is folklore now. Most people don’t even have phones in their kitchens. We still do, just for old time’s sake, but my kids rarely pick it up anyway. They know that no one would call them at that number. They have their own.

The shift to personal phones was just the beginning of cell phone technology, although I am still partial to real voice exchanges. In my memory and my mind, hearing a voice, even when I am far away connects me to that person and gives me a chance to hear an inflection. I can hear my children’s mood on the phone, harder to decipher in a text. Emoticons choices are only a small piece of the communication I have learned, the subtlety of text relationships is being invented among our youth and there is some reasons for concern.

Read More »

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…” –William Shakespeare

The distance between our public persona and our private selves defines our lives and relationships in ways that everyone experiences, but cannot always name. The truth of this was written large at the middle school talent show that I attended where I watched my son and his friends impersonate a teen rock star and dance team. They pulled it off big time after hours of practice and some great costume finds. Amidst the middle school crowd there was no impersonation, they are stars at school. They boast to me sometimes on our way home from practice how they will spread out to fill a hallway, just to watch the kids get out of their way. The boys are funny, smart, and athletic and they know it.

Other kids are not so lucky to land in such a sweet spot in school as I witnessed at the show. Of the many kids who aspire to land on American Idol came and went, my heart cracked open when a girl had the courage to get up and sing a song about the rejection and pain of her middle school years. I was overcome by a deep compassion for her courage, the painful memories from my own past on the edge of middle school favor and the intensity that happens when the private self emerges under bright lights into the public sphere.

Most of us learn early to separate our personal dreams and visions from the scrutiny of public view. You only need to be mortified once to learn how to avoid the humiliation of sharing too much with the wrong people. Sometimes the injury is so great that the break between our public and private selves becomes so complete that we divorce our insides from what people see so completely that we can be left unable to see who we are, so busy at constructing who we think we should be.

Read More »

Many people have trouble talking about sexual topics, including me. Thinking about how to recognize and overcome some of the following obstacles might help you develop an ease and vocabulary for having meaningful sexual conversations in your relationship or with your kids.

Read More »

‘We are all androgynous, not only because we are all born of a woman impregnated by the seed of a man but because each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other — male in female, female in male�. We are a part of each other.’ -James Baldwin

The discrepancy between the male and female forms of communication is the topic of hundreds if not thousands of books. Since John Gray’s, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,’ the discussion and awareness of the biological imperatives that drive human communication has been dissected and examined over and over again. We know, for instance, that conversation serves different purposes for the male and the female. We also know that men and women have different comfort levels with personal conversations. Finally, we also know that conversation does not equal intimacy for both men and women.

Despite these findings being expounded upon in new books and magazine articles every month, the biological experience of falling in love continuously tricks us. We believe that loving someone should or will make them communicate, behave and think like us. This is one of those erroneous beliefs we can’t seem to let go of. We insist, to the point of destruction of the relationships that we cherish, to expect our partner to be us. Partly this is because the mirroring and connection that we share in the early phases of falling for someone diminishes the space between two people. For a brief and euphoric time you feel totally together, united. It is a sad awakening to the reality of living and loving someone after that initial connection fades. Many relationships don’t survive it.

Read More »

Perhaps it is because of the bittersweet nature of my childhood holiday memories, but I have long been intrigued by the endings in life. Although my fascination with endings was probably initially sparked by fear and insecurity, I have come to value my need to ritualize endings as a gift, one that serves to continuously remind me to be grateful even in the face of difficult relationships.

Read More »

Thinking of our lovemaking as another form of listening is I think as close as we come to hearing deep into another person’s soul.
Read More »

The skill of inner listening is the only true guide available to any of us. Without it, we can easily fall into a life which does not feel like our own and spend our lives in relationships that don’t meet our needs.

Read More »

Slowing down and paying full attention to the people you love gives you the chance to heal and connect in a way that words cannot. I am learning about the power of a loving silence, which gives the people you care about the chance to figure out what is inside of them.

Read More »

Just as breathing changes by the consciousness we bring to it, adding deliberate and loving intention to what and how we communicate can build shelter in our lives.

Read More »

The things you talk about with the people that matter in your life are the air in your relationships. This seems a timely discussion in light of the conversations that are bound to take place in the next several weeks as our family structures, past and present, collide back into full view. We call them holidays. Give yourself a new gift this time – pay attention to what you say.
Read More »