Category: parenting

Cathedral Building

Cathedral Building

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A few years ago, I was forever-changed by a beautiful piece from Nicole Johnson, entitled “Invisible Mother” which drew the perspective-changing parallel between Cathedral Building and Motherhood. I’ve re-posted it on Mother’s Day many times but it is worth re-visiting again, as this year I have had the honor of working with a group of people that has allowed me to draw new parallels. This year it occurred to me that this Cathedral Building notion also corresponds to the changes these incredible folks are catalyzing with respect to racism, addiction recovery, homelessness, and those returning to society from prison.

For ALL my fellow Cathedral Builders…whether they be mothers or change-makers, this is for you….thank you for your commitment to playing the long-game.

Invisible Mother

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’

Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I’m invisible.

The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more! Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?? Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock to ask, ‘What time is it?’ I’m a satellite guide to answer, ‘What number is the Disney Channel?’ I’m a car to order, ‘Right around 5:30, please.’ Some days I’m a crystal ball; ‘Where’s my other sock?, Where’s my phone?, What’s for dinner?’ I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history, music and literature -but now, they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She’s going, she’s going, she’s gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England . She had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when she turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, ‘I brought you this.’ It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe . I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription: ‘With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.’

In the days ahead I would read – no, devour – the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:

  1. No one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names.

2) These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.

3) They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.

4) The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A story of legend in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, ‘Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof. No one will ever see it’. And the workman replied, ‘Because God sees.’

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, ‘I see you. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.

No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, no Cub Scout meeting, no last minute errand is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, ‘My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for 3 hours and presses all the linens for the table.’ That would mean I’d built a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, he’d say, ‘You’re gonna love it there…’

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers.

Original author: Nicole Johnson

A Journey to the Summit: Your Fullest Self

A Journey to the Summit: Your Fullest Self

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If you have ever taken a Psychology course, you have likely encountered Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

A quick run-down of the image above: needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up. For example, someone experiencing homelessness is going to be more focused on securing their next meal and finding shelter than they would be in upgrading their computer skills. As they secure housing, a steady income, perhaps meet someone special, their needs move up the triangle accordingly. Also important to note, individuals may fluctuate between the levels based on their life circumstances. For example the death of a spouse might shift someone from Esteem, straight down to Safety (a life insurance sales person’s biggest sales pitch!)

The ability to climb this hierarchy is heavily influenced by an individual’s beliefs, fears, and internal programming developed from their life experiences. For example, someone who believes that all rich people are jerks that have only stepped on others to advance themselves, may never see their own wealth grow. Living with the subconscious belief that if they get too rich they will be perceived as a jerk, limits their ability to achieve “too much” financial success. This in turn limits their ability to satisfy the needs of Love/belonging or even Esteem because they are living outside of their true potential, choosing to play small in order to protect themselves.

Recently, however, I’ve seen another aspect emerging from these levels. This aspect is the perception of safety. It seems as though the litmus test for each level of Maslow’s hierarchy, could be:

how safe do I feel?

Easy enough to answer at the Physiological level, we can confirm if we have clean air to breathe, healthy food to nourish us, a reliable place to shelter and consistent hydration.

Similarly, at the next level, we can easily verify if we have enough money to pay the bills or if our body is ill or well. Although, as I look around our world, I wonder if this level is actually so easily achieved in our mental perceptions. We live in a world of wars, intensifying natural disasters, recessions, random violence, school shootings, stories of Me Too incidents and police brutality, riots and the hurricane of issues flowing from the recent pandemic – who could ever truly feel safe? And every ad you see in the media is desperately trying to appeal to your fear of scarcity.  I can think of half a dozen stories just off the top of my head where my teenage daughter has warned me about dangers she has been “informed of” on TikTok – “look beneath the car before you get in Mom, in case someone is waiting to slice your Achilles….If your windshield in covered in honey it is because someone is about to kidnap you!” Gratefully my daughter has never known physical trauma in her young life, but you’d never know it based on the anxious warnings she shares with me!

As we move up the levels, the boxes may take more introspection to check, but the perceived lack of safety is still there. For example, where does your mind go when you ask yourself:

Who in my life do I feel safe being vulnerable with?

Which people in your life could you reveal your authentic self to and still feel safe? Immediate questions of “How would they respond, would they think I’m weak, or high-maintenance? Am I wasting their time?” float to the front of our minds in discerning safe from unsafe. My bet is lots of us wouldn’t feel safe revealing our entire true self to even our children or parents – they may get a VIP door for some backstage viewing of ourselves, but even they aren’t permitted to see all of us. Parents feel they have to be strong for their children and an example of what-to-do, and children seek their parent’s approval and pride to fill the “good-kid” bucket we’ve inadvertently socialized them to conform to.  

In this regard, safety takes on an entirely different meaning. It implies safety from judgement, it implies compassionate empathy, and it feels like a soft place to land.

Satisfying needs at this level mean that when you are experiencing intense emotional turmoil, you have people in your life that will sit with you in it, hold a space for you as you work through it, and not forget that this is just a moment, not your identity.  They don’t try to fix you, they don’t give you platitudes, they meet you where you are and help you get back to the center you know is there, but has just become out of focus.

On the higher levels of Maslow’s chart, the safety aspect also knocks at the door in the form of Foreboding Joy, as Brené Brown calls it in her book Daring Greatly. This is the idea that any amount of joy in our life is really just a set-up, as we wait for the other shoe to drop. I know this concept well as I struggled greatly with it when my children were little and my husband travelled extensively for work. We had a healthy family, financial well-being, a great home, wonderful extended family to support us – “we have it too good! No one has it this good! Something tragic is definitely going to befall us later, cause no one can be this fortunate. My husband’s plane is going to crash, my child is going to get hit by a car, what will it be, and when?! When?!” It was exhausting. I was not yet a fan of Brené Brown at that point in my life, but I did come to the same antidote as what she recommends: gratitude.  And very quickly, I was able to pivot from fear, back to joy and lean into it. I felt safe again. Nothing else had changed, just my perspective.

Perspective is also the hinge that blame swings on. When you answered that question above about “Who in my life do I feel safe being vulnerable with?”, did you slot each person that came to mind into a category based on their behavior towards you in the past, or did you consider how much you have allowed each of them to see of your true self? Is it their behavior or your armor that has prevented a deeper connection? Chicken or the egg?

Living small because it does not feel safe to fully enjoy the abundance in your life is 100% not why we are here. We are spiritual beings living in a human body so that we can expand, enrich and grow our souls. When we try to protect ourselves from all the dangers we perceive, we also keep out everything that allows us to rise up this hierarchy and truly experience life at an elevated level.

So the next time you feel “unsafe” in the ways described here, take a moment, and a deep breath, and bravely ask yourself, “what do I believe is true in this scenario?”.

Get curious, and answer the question, “What does my fullest self look like?”

Teen Anxiety – why everyone else knows how to get it right

Teen Anxiety – why everyone else knows how to get it right

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So, you know that loneliness you feel when you are with other people, but still feel alone and like you don’t belong? That feeling that few people dare to talk about for fear they might seem weak, and many people are quick to gloss over and respond with “ I shouldn’t feel that way cause others have it so much worse – what gives me the right to feel lonely when I’ve been blessed in so many ways?”   

Relax, exhale,  it’s alright, I’m not going to make you talk about it. I just need you to think about it for a few seconds so you can get into the appropriate perspective to keep reading.

At one particularly lonely moment in my life, I exasperatedly said out loud in my kitchen, with all my children present, “do you ever feel like you are living several different lives!?” It was really one of those moments where I meant to say it in my head but my mouth just didn’t get the memo, and thank goodness, because my children all responded with a huge exhale like they’d been holding their breath for days, and each with some form of “Gawd, all the time!”

I was shocked.  There was nothing leading up to that to indicate that any one of them had been struggling, yet all of them felt that way. That was an “aha” parenting moment for me.

It got me thinking that maybe the reason we are seeing record highs in teen anxiety is because no one has told them the truth about how hard it is to be your authentic self! They are living under an expectation that they should know who they are, and behave as themselves and if they don’t, there is something wrong with them.

 “Just be yourself!” they are told. “Right, if only I knew who that was!” they are thinking.

In actuality, most adults are wearing masks of their own, never truly showing their authentic selves, and never telling anyone, hence the misguided expectation!

Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, talks about this when she went to her first AA meeting.  She explained how she felt like she was always doing life wrong, how it felt harder for her than other people and she just wanted to know what everyone else knows.  And then she sat down and stopped talking because there was nothing else to say, she just wanted to know. Someone came up to her afterward and said to her “Glennon, it’s not hard cause you are doing wrong, it’s hard because you’re finally doing it right. “

Numbing all those years with alcohol and drugs, and armoring up to protect herself from anything that could hurt her, was keeping everything out. Not just all the bad, but also all the good.

Brene Brown also talks about this in her book Daring Greatly. She explains how it takes courage to be vulnerable, in fact, there is no courage without vulnerability, and that being brave enough to allow ourselves to feel may lead us into pain, but is also the gateway to joy, peace, fulfillment and self-understanding. Makes me wonder how many opportunities I have missed because of the armor I was wearing each time I knew I just had to get it right.

One of the questions I often get asked, is “four kids! How did you do that?!” and the truth is, I didn’t do it well until #3. It wasn’t until my third baby that I began to really understand that there are several types of cries babies make:  hungry cry, tired cry, wet diaper cry, loud noise cry, just-needing-a-snuggle cry. With my first two babies (relying heavily on the trusted knowledge I had gleaned from baby books) I rushed to eliminate the options each time my baby cried (check diaper, try feeding, rock them a little, sing to them, etc.); I’m supposed to know how to soothe my baby if I’m a good Mom, right? By the third time around, I learned how to listen, and connect, and finally gained an understanding that my baby was communicating and if I was still enough to listen, I could discern exactly what he needed. But I had to get comfortable with listening to him cry.

Understanding our own types of pain and what that dashboard is pointing out to us is much the same. Brene says that learning how to feel pain is the pre-requisite for learning how to discern different types of pain. For example, recognizing the difference between “Becoming Pain” (the type we learn and grow from), versus “Self-Betrayal Pain” (the kind we berate ourselves for). We have to become intimate with our different types of pain to know what to sit in and learn from.  What would it take to be brave enough to take off our armor and sit with our pain to better understand it? And do we have the courage to take it one step further and model it for our children? If our children never see their trusted adults as anything but “strong” and “right”, what expectations are they forming about what is acceptable for them? What they learn is that showing pain is weakness, and it is not safe for them to not get it right.

As parents, what is our response to our children when they are in pain? Do we encourage them to tell us more and sit with them in their darkness with an empathetic ear, or do we rush to fix it because we can’t stand to see them suffer? How do they ever get comfortable with discerning what their pain is telling them, if we are always slapping Band-Aids on it? I can attest to several examples where I have jumped directly into fixing or solving the problem my kids have been brave enough to present to me, so that I can help them to feel better quickly.  In doing so, I have robbed them of the growth that naturally happens as they are “becoming”.  Certainly, much easier than having that awkward conversation about feelings that you don’t know how to solve for them, especially when you’re already exhausted from a full day and dealing with your own heavy emotions, right?

Shadow of parents feet under the bedroom door

Recently, my husband and I were watching Reese Witherspoon’s new series Little Fires Everywhere. In it she is struggling with her 14 year old daughter and after one of their conflicts, the mom stands outside the daughter’s closed bedroom door, wondering if she has it in her to go talk to her daughter about it. The daughter sees the shadow of her Mom’s feet outside her door, and then sees her mom’s feet walk away without coming in. The look on the daughter’s face is devastating. As much as she was pushing against her Mom hours earlier, she desperately needed her Mom to care enough to come in. I turned to my husband and said “and that is why you have the awkward conversation”.  He nodded in agreement and said “so true”.

It may not be comfortable, in fact, in many cases it is quite awkward, but the message that comes with it is that they have a parent who sees all of who they are, and loves them, not despite what they are experiencing, but wholly inclusive of it.