Seagull Thoughts
Insights on connecting, communicating, and community by Mary Ann SiegelOwls and Gunshots
Last night, about 3 a.m.,
I heard an owl hoot in the darkness
As I was working at the computer.
I Googled “Owls in Southeast, US”
But found Canadian, Thai, and Nepali owls instead.
After listening to audios of hoot owls,
The sound was close enough
To send me to bed in peace.
But, as I was nearly asleep,
Two gunshots rang out into the night.
I turned over onto my back
So I could free my ears to listen,
And three more pops split the darkness.
Were they really gunshots?
I’ve heard them before at that time of night.
It’s possible –
I live a block from a subway station.
I turned back over to go to sleep,
Since this was not a problem I could solve at night,
Choosing to hold onto
The sound of the owl
Over the other option.
The truth is, I live where I do,
Because of its proximity to giant, green trees,
As well as rapid transit.
In my current brainstorming about what town to move to next,
And what to be close to,
I think I have just made my choice.
Words Cannot Describe…
…how good it feels to have two kids engaged, AND to spectacular people. I am too giddy and incoherent to make any sense but times like these need to be celebrated. Oh, my gosh, it’s an absolutely amazing feeling.
With joy, glee, expectation and acceptance of all that is to come!
Organizations Doing Disaster Relief in Haiti
After yesterday’s massive earthquake in Haiti in which over 100,000 are feared dead, I contacted The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta for recommendations of organizations known for fast disaster relief. Here is their response:
SAMARITAN’S PURSE http://www.samaritanspurse.org/
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=197&hbc=1&source=AZD0408H1001&__utma=1.3516537644142395400.1263428617.1263436222.1263467651.3&__utmb=1.1.10.1263467651&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1263467651.3.3.utmcsr=seagullwriting.wordpress.com%7Cutmccn=(referral)%7Cutmcmd=referral%7Cutmcct=/&__utmv=-&__utmk=144725044 I have heard they are gravely concerned about 800 missing staff members and have lost all three of their hospitals.
MEDSHARE INTERNATIONAL http://www.medshare.org/donate/critical-need-alert
My heart bleeds. The poorest nation in the Western hemisphere did not need this to happen. Please give generously.
My daughter is spreading the word about the following organizations recommended by CNN. She also recommends Plan, Path and ADRA, not on the CNN list below. Beware: post disaster relief work invites scams. She has made a gift to CARE and I am supporting Doctors Without Borders.
A note about the American Red Cross. I can no longer support them because of their leadership problems and the lack of follow-through I experienced while volunteering after Katrina. I do recommend the International Red Cross, however, and I have friends whom I respect highly who work for them.
Organizations providing basic needs: American Red Cross, World Vision, UNICEF USA, International Relief Teams, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, American Jewish World Services, Clinton Foundation, Yele Haiti, World Concern, Mercy Corps, Operation Blessing International, UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF)
Organizations providing shelter: Shelterbox, Habitat for Humanity International
Organizations providing medical aid: Direct Relief International, International Medical Corps, Medical Teams International, Operation USA, MAP International, The International Committee of the Red Cross, World Health Organization, Americares
Organizations providing food: World Food Programme, The Salvation Army, Compassion International, Food for the Poor
Lastly, please pray. THANK YOU.
UPDATE: Tracy Kidder, the author of Mountains Beyond Mountains which is about the work of Harvard’s Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti, reports in The New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/opinion/14kidder.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1263481309-duDYmjnv4o8aDNmILFGuqQ ) that Partners in Health, co-founded by Dr. Farmer, is one of the few organizations whose infrastructure is undamaged and still operating. I would think that this organization should be supported first: http://www.pih.org/youcando/donate.html .
Elizabeth Gilbert Revisited
When the Agnes Scott calendar arrived in December, with a prominent notice that author Elizabeth Gilbert would be speaking on campus January 11th about her new book, I tossed it out. But after seeing additional notices, and being attracted to that lovely campus - used so often as a Hollywood set - my car made its way out onto streets still icy from last week’s storm. I had to go. After all, the campus is only a few blocks from my house and I have been curious to see how a popular writer handles a book tour.
The event was first come, first serve. I got there much too early but had good discussions about life, books, and my neighborhood with folks around me. There was good energy in the crowd, mostly feminist as one would expect on a women’s college campus. The audience was a third students, a third that looked like they were the age of moms of the students, and a third professor types.
Elizabeth Gilbert did not disappoint, despite arriving quite late. She was fast thinking, fast talking, bright, funny, confident, ever kind and charming, and much more animated than her reflective, thoughtful muse persona I’d seen in a TV interview. She read from what seemed to be the first chapter of Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage. I didn’t remember Eat, Pray, Love having quite so much sarcasm as this new book. But then the reviews have not been kind this go around. How easily could anyone top Eat, Pray, Love’ s success? Readers cannot help empathizing, if not identifying, with that bestseller’s plot: a broken heart and tears on the bathroom floor. Her repeated mention last night of that event demonstrated how terribly painful that divorce still is to her, and to her new husband who was avoiding marriage with her or anyone else for the same reason. But the plot of this new book, according to the reviews I have read, doesn’t elicit much empathy: woman meets the man of her dreams and is forced to marry him because of some vague rules about his Visa status imposed by Homeland Security. They still live happily ever after, just married. She talked about love in marriage as having “limits.” Love limits your freedom as much as it expands you. Not being able to take off and travel indefinitely is that limit she feels she must adhere to, to keep her new relationship with ‘Felipe’ strong and intact. I was interested that she said love relationships are full of “release and bond” cycles.
As a writer she is insightful and fun. As a speaker she is captivating, smart, gracious and compelling. I think her draw is the fact that she manages to turn lemons into lemonade in quite such adventurous and brave ways. She makes her life look enviable. Grabbing the audience from the first moment she strolled onstage – tall, straight and in hippy clothes - she held up her new book and pleaded with the audience to PLEASE buy it, not just this week, but right that minute, not so she could rival her own success with Eat, Pray, Love but to knock Sarah Palin off the best-seller charts! There were anti-Bush (W) comments as well to which the audience roared approvingly. Her humor is unbeatable even if it is, like her writing at times, a little contrived. Somehow I drew satisfaction that while not a literary genius, she is a solidly good writer who does a fine job of telling a story, and she decidedly deserves the praise she gets.
That acclaim is not universal, however, as I was waiting to see. Sure enough, a pert student stood up and asked how she would respond to critics who found her writing self-absorbed and narcissistic. Gilbert’s answer was direct and perfect, that she has just written two books about herself so, yes, she is narcissistic. But the argument is defensible, she said. How can one write a memoir otherwise? She says the people who use those labels for her probably do not like her books, pure and simple.
She gave a tip to writers: pick one person you want to write to, and your words will have universal meaning, as all very specific examples do and must. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love to a friend whom she thought would like to hear about her travels, and travails.
I admired her honest talk about her depression that lasted four to five years. And her worry that she might not end up in a happy relationship. How she always “looked over (her) shoulder to see if trouble would follow” but how she eventually learned not to worry.
An entertaining and inspiring evening. The expected energy did not disappoint, whether or not one agreed with her life, her character, her premise, or her promise. I wish her increasing success as a writer but even more so, in her very admirable personal journey.
Last Minute Gift Ideas
Several years ago I recommended Kiva, the international microlending fund, as an organization to support if your family makes a donation to a charity at Christmas. This has been something we have done over the years instead of giving gifts to family members, or ‘in honor of’ or ‘in memory of’ friends.
But recently there have been reports that Kiva lets donors down by investing donations in questionable ways. The money may not end up going to the particular individual that donors believe they are investing in. And because I no longer feel I want to support Kiva, I am amending my recommendation.
Nicholas Kristof’s column today in The New York Times lists several exciting new nonprofits I didn’t know about. Here is his link. Merry Christmas!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/opinion/24kristof.html?hpw
Surrendering to the Power of the Moment
The word ‘surrender’ has been on my mind this past week. It’s hard to surrender the past. I get into trouble when I respond to people and situations with my mind, or ego. I want to let go of all I think will get me through difficult encounters, stop resisting, and just let things be.
At the beach last weekend with my daughter I carried along Eckhart Tolle’s Practicing the Power of Now. It was a gift to her from my older daughter. But when she said she had too much to read between now and Christmas and could I give it to her then, I started it. It’s one of my favorite books ever because it’s so timely.
After experiencing excruciating pain in a recent breakup - where I’d acknowledged to myself, as part of my healing, that words expressed to me felt not only unfair but cruel - I knew I needed to learn how to surrender more gracefully to the moment; notice my feelings and let my acceptance create a space for love and grace to enter. Surrendering to the power of the moment gets us out of our mind where negative thoughts reside; it doesn’t mean we don’t speak up for ourselves. The goal is to let Being become more important than Doing so that we shake off potential conflict.
Last night this new technique came alive and made sense when I watched the riveting documentary, Reporter, with my long time friend Lucy who asked me to be her guest at the fundraiser for The Atlanta Women’s Foundation. It was about The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s 2007 trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo to assess the situation there, and find an individual around whom he could state his case for aid. Through adventure after adventure, in village after village, the resilience and strength of the people balances their reality of desperate poverty, pillaged land, displacement, rape, starvation and disease. A continent of stark contrasts Africa is.
Kristof’s modus operandi of researching a story was the illustration I needed of how to surrender to the moment. I was already familiar with his quote, “In general, when you interview warlords or people heading militias you don’t get interesting answers unless you raise tough questions. You do that, knock wood and hope for the best.” He did that throughout, relentlessly, by inquiring, stating what he wanted, always moving, covering ground, waiting and listening until he got the facts he was looking for.
Kristof took tremendous risk in trusting the power of the moment. After his hoped for but dreaded interview with a militia warlord, he and his crew were invited for dinner at the compound. The situation was dire. They felt they couldn’t refuse but their safety demanded that they leave early enough to travel the four hours back home before dark. However, they gave in and not only experienced one of the best meals of their stay in Africa but also received protection: the warlord sent armed guards to accompany them, along with relaying commands to his militias along the road that the reporter and his crew were not to be attacked. It was tense to watch, perhaps because I’d been thinking about my own habits of resistance; my need to move on and not linger to witness the result, even though it could be wondrous instead of disastrous.
I admit I have difficulty in surrendering - inviting or creating space for grace to enter. But there’s no reason I can’t become more open, like Kristof, to a new presence or way of Being. Miraculous things had happened during his time with the warlord. The interview had produced the statement that rape was permissible in time of war as well as a teenage fighter’s plea for forgiveness for his wartime atrocities. And Kristof’s crew had been given protection on their journey home. Could these things have transpired without his having surrendered to the power of the moment? If a reporter could achieve his goals with strangers in time of war, there was hope for me in my most meaningful relationships.
How we negotiate our conversations - a minefield for so many reasons - is dependent upon our ability to get out of our heads and allow big stuff to happen on the spot; inexplicable stuff, good stuff, stuff beyond our control. Like Kristof, we can only set things in motion and then let go and hope for the best. Though learning this process comes on blind faith at first, I trust that good things will come out of my surrendering to the warlord that sometimes lives inside me, and the warlords outside that talk to me harshly and heartlessly. Perhaps a braver spirit and example on my part could inspire the warlords around me to not feel threatened.
My receptivity to a new way of Being alternates between being terribly scary and terribly exciting. Yet every time I turn on the automatic pilot switch, I discover there is help along the road in the dead of night when I least expect it. The protectors I find the most helpful come unarmed. They just bear witness to my Being. And that gift is everything because it inspires me to give it to myself.
A Primer For Happiness
When my best friend emailed me the link to Marcus Buckingham’s article in the Huffington Post, “What’s Happening To Women’s Happiness?” (September 17, 2009), I stared at his question at the bottom of the email, “How can I help the women in my life buck the trend?”
Evidence of such a decline wasn’t anything I had seen or felt. Were women really less happy? Having two daughters of my own, and a son who cares about and relates to women, I was moved to address his heartfelt question. After all, my relationships in the past have not been with men who spent much time thinking about women’s happiness. My friend has three daughters, as does his college roommate who emailed him the link, but that alone didn’t explain their concern. I was impressed.
So I read the article about how women are calling themselves less happy in their marriages and the workplace, despite advances in equal opportunity. Looking at my own life and how happy I have been through the years, I didn’t think I matched the data in the article. I have created a new life, ever since divorce and widowhood, which is balancing the frustrating parts of my married years when I was in my 30s and 40s. Unable to encourage my now deceased husband to help out more with the kids and around the house – like reading to them before bed, attending more of their activities, and helping with carpools – I felt like an overworked, single mom much of the time. He took very good care of us financially, loved life, and was very generous in many ways, but not in the ways in which I needed support.
Now, looking back, I smile at how far I’ve come. I love living alone. Though not yet satisfied with my career accomplishments, I am completely happy in my personal life, which means I have bucked the trend of unhappy women by increasing my happiness immeasurably. But I didn’t arrive at this place easily, and there was a huge cost. A primary caregiver to my husband for 23 out of the 29 years of our marriage, it was an agonizing decision to leave him, and my children as caregivers in my stead. But I had to do it. He didn’t care for his health, and I felt like an accomplice by working harder on his health than he did. I had lost self-respect by not caring for my own needs, which all caregivers must learn to do to survive long term.
There have been other painful events that have led me to see the world through new eyes. But I regret none of the subsequent anxiety and fear. Living without answers to my questions, “How could this be happening to our family?” and “What will happen to us?” got me to where I am now. I have more healing to do, yes, but now I see future challenges as opportunities for a life made richer by the peace that comes from self-acceptance. I am gaining trust that good things really do happen, that life is not just drudgery, and that when we are grounded in compassion and good will, we attract like-minded people and events to us. This has not just been my belief but my experience.
Here are a few recommendations, learned in the trenches, for how to simplify life and find happiness. My path in finding balance and peace has been to listen to and nurture the emotional and spiritual sides of myself:
1. Let your journey teach you to identify your needs, and learn how to ask for help in satisfying them.
2. Visualize where you want to go. Imagine yourself doing the things you want to be doing with the people you want to be doing them with.
3. Face your feelings head on and accept them, whatever they are. Forgive yourself for having fear, regret, and anger. This allows you to forgive others as well.
4. Find your passion and joy in connecting – to people, nature, animals, and ideas.
5. Laugh at yourself and life’s events. My friend’s parents kept an “Accident Book,” writing down every outrageous mishap, big and small.
6. Take risk, get out of your comfort zone, and let go of needing control.
7. Let life’s lessons be your guide. Your outlook on life is greatly influenced by your health, so eat healthful food, and get plenty of sleep and exercise. Become a good manager of your body and all your resources. Make time for yourself and be present in the moment. Put the past and the future out of your mind and take the normal ups and downs with grace and equanimity.
A Locker Room Full of Wisdom
Some of the most helpful insights that come my way occur during heart to heart chats with friends, in locker rooms no less, which seem to rank right up there with hair salons as effective soul-searching venues. Last night at the gym some of us stumbled on the value of letting go of needing control over our lives. I’ve heard the argument before, “Let go and let God,” but this time I heard it with new ears. I was changing my work habits, so for me this conversation was not a stumble but a dive into affirming the destructiveness of fear in keeping me from achieving my career and relationship goals.
My friend from New York said, “For all the worrying I’ve done in my lifetime, it got me no further. The problem was still there. I had a job with the government for 12 years. The negativity of the environment was dragging me down. I had to get out. And you know what? I quit the job and never missed a mortgage payment.” I felt a surge of hope and excitement that mindset could bring about such speedy change, which I knew, but I didn’t have enough examples.
I get so much from working out with women from all over the world; their experience of tough times gives me a wider range of viewpoints, along with proof that my problems are not unique. We are more alike than not, despite our differences.
I know I need positive-thinking people around me, and finding them involves choices. I can control those choices, but I need to leave their outcome to God. He does what is right for me in His own time. My job is to hang on to patience and flexibility. And faith.
This locker room story addresses a strategy I had adopted that very day, speaking to me in a new way because I was ready to hear it. This strategy – revolutionary for me – was to reprioritize my goals. My children and significant others have always come first. And yet at the top of my TO DO list I always wrote “Career” because I have less demonstrated experience. I’ve been a volunteer for more years than I’ve brought in income. And without greater trust in myself, I feel more urgency for my publishing goals to work out fast. But I sabotage myself; the pressure to get it all done slows me down. Then a few days ago, something made me pull out an index card and write ” Kids and Boyfriend” first and “Career” second. I was finally listening to my heart, not my fear. It wasn’t impossible to achieve because I already had number one! I was reminded of my neighbor who shouted to me over the fence that the reason she worked so hard was so she could play – take her kids on trips. But until yesterday, I didn’t plan play time. I felt I had to put career first, not seeing I already had abundance, in and from those I loved. Relaxation didn’t have to happen by default, by diverting from my goal and then feeling like a slouch. I had been stuck. Making career my top priority had only pulled me down.
Yes, mindset is critical to success. The book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dweck, was suggested to me by my friend Paula, a former academic dean of a girls’ school. My understanding is that it’s about raising children to take risk and achieve, and how praise can make them satisfied and not keep striving to grow. I bought a copy today for a baby shower this weekend. A gift of knowledge lasts longer than a box of diapers, thankfully.
My new mindset is not rocket science. I expect it to motivate me to work harder and take more risk, so the weight of my goals won’t paralyze me. With family first and career second, when I send off a query and proposal, I will remember that rejection by an agent isn’t anything when you have family behind you. This makes it easier to ignore the negative voices in my head that say, “This is too hard; I’ll never get there!” I can let go of wishing I could control the outcome.
A few hours after I started writing this, I was driving out of a parking spot when a man I’d walked out of the building with came up to my car. With a big, curious smile he blurted out, “What do you think is going to happen with health care?” He told me he was a surveyor, had gone through his savings and now was using up his 401k. He said, “Even if health care doesn’t pass (after the President’s speech tonight) we will be OK.” His faith was so unshakable, it stunned me.
We need faith whenever we find the courage to start over, whether it is creating and advocating a new health plan or adopting a new way of looking at our own priorities. And between us, we really can devise ways to get there that motivate and sustain us all.
Invigorated By The Sound of School Buses
The beginning of the school year, and getting back to a more regimented daily routine, has always been invigorating to me. So when the yellow school buses started rolling last week, I grieved my unfinished summer goals briefly before putting myself into a new gear. The momentum of the buses, and the children starting over with new teachers and new classrooms, was energy I could draft from. And like the children, I discovered anew that the loss of summer’s freedom fades quickly.
When I heard that the five year old twins down the street were starting Pre-K, I felt a thrill and a shock. Had five years already passed? I watched them bicycle by my house and pass the school bus - the whole family – mom, dad and the five kids, including two sets of twins, forging on like the indomitable ducklings in Make Way for Ducklings, one of many books they mastered long ago. Home schooled until now, they seemed to be wiser, more curious, and more street savvy than their peers. Though their bike ride to school would be a long one for short legs on new bikes, through the busiest streets this quiet part of town can boast, they peddled full steam ahead, undaunted, completely oblivious to how contagious their commitment and energy were to me.
Soon, neighborhood kids all around me spilled out of their houses, their new haircuts and wet, slicked back hair making them look two years older and as many inches taller. The five year old next door climbed in the car wired into his first headset, his little brother toddling along behind and, like all younger children, wishing he could go to school, too. Kids live in so many different kinds of pecking orders, and I felt a sudden envy of their seemingly easy adjustment to balancing them all.
Don’t we adults compare ourselves to others as well? I’m reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, the inspirational biography by Tracy Kidder of Dr. Paul Farmer and his work to eradicate Infectious Disease in Haiti, Peru and Russia. The man is superhuman – his heart, mind, vision, mission and energy. It is impossible not to feel guilty I don’t do more with the time given me, or compare myself to how much he gets done in a single day. His accomplishments are sheer magic. And he started with so little. Public school buses and new school clothes was more than he could claim as a child and yet his peripatetic family life gave him more than enough coping skills for life: compassion and curiosity, commitment and passion, and the zeal of searching for cures.
Though many of our public schools in Georgia suffer in budget, imagination and resources, it is entirely possible that any of these schools, public or private, excellent or poor, could foster another Paul Farmer, a young kid who grows up to succeed despite hardship and with nothing to bank on except his experience in making do and overcoming.
We owe our success in life to the motivation we receive from our parents, or parent substitutes, from life’s adventures, or from luck. Shortly after the school buses pulled away, a young man knocked on my door. He wanted to sell me a bottle of some miraculous cleaning fluid I’ve bought before. His pitch made more sense to me than most of the folks I’ve talked to in the last year. With only a seventh grade education and foster homes to fall back on, he’d adopted Zig Zigler and Og Mandino as his role models, to better the life of his three year old son. He is today’s Paul Farmer and he will make it by sheer grit, hard work and wise choices. And he inspired me to set my goals a little higher like the five year old twins riding their bikes to school.
Nothing feels as good as making progress on my dreams. The harder I work, the more I like myself. Just like the cyclical rhythm of the waves at the seashore, the momentum and energy of going back to school is as compelling and secure as any rhythm I experience.
But, aside from the energy, I rejoice in feeling like a kid again, when I know in my gut that the whole world lies ahead, with nothing impossible. I smiled at my memories of losing my lunch money, falling down and getting stitches, and not being able to remember the difference between ‘through’ and ‘though’ and ‘thorough’.
The youth passing by my door remind me I can overcome mountains beyond mountains. Summertime helps me see ways of crossing over, of overcoming my perceived obstacles. But fall gives me the energy to actually do it. The sound of the school buses starts that cycle of faith each year in which I transform dreams into triumphs, from opening my eyes to the inspiration and know-how that surrounds me, to realizing I won’t lose my passion and ingenuity en route.
