Tag: Kelly Corrigan

Palm Frond

“We don’t believe what we see. We see what we believe.” – Kelly Corrigan, a takeaway from her discussion with Mónica Guzmán

Mónica Guzmán is a journalist who wrote I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Guzmán describes herself as a lifelong liberal from Seattle who has parents who were once Mexican immigrants, who now happen to be fierce Trump supporters. Guzmán wrote this book in 2022. I just downloaded it to my Kindle. I imagine that an election year is as good a year as any, to read a book like this.

The only time that real, lasting changes occur anywhere, is when people change their minds. Real changes only occur when people examine their beliefs and find loopholes and pitfalls and questions where there used to be ironclad answers. Sometimes it takes extreme events in our lives to allow ourselves to fully and openly examine our own beliefs.

The other day, I was driving on the road and up in the distance was a blondish hump lying in the middle of the road. I instantly felt sick to my stomach. “It’s a dead animal,” I thought. “It’s roadkill.” Then my imagination really got to the best of me. “It’s probably a dead dog.” And due to the size and the color of the mass on the road, it was most likely a golden retriever. Someone’s beloved family dog, their gorgeous golden retriever, had been left in the middle of the road to die by some horrible jerk! I was sick to my stomach. I had tears in my eyes. And then as I got closer, I saw that it was a large palm frond that had probably been blown down in one of the storms we have been having. Yes, what I saw up ahead on the road was a palm frond all along. “We see what we believe.”

Sometimes just knowing why someone believes what they believe, helps us to gain empathy and understanding, even if we don’t share their beliefs. Sometimes exploring why we, ourselves, believe what we believe, helps us to gain empathy and understanding about ourselves. How many times do we watch a movie and a character has an extreme reaction to a situation, and just as we are scratching our heads, wondering about their over-the-top reaction, we get a flashback to the backstory of what most likely caused that character’s extreme reaction in the present time? Sometimes our beliefs come from irrational, exaggerated places in the dark corners of our minds that stem from extreme experiences, or frightening people who did not allow us to disagree.

In a divisive year, in a divisive time in our country, there is no better time to figure out how to feel better. The only way to figure out how to feel better about anything, especially troubling things, is to explore these situations with open-minded curiosity, and with the aim of finding some kind of understanding. I am hoping that Guzmán’s book has some good ideas about how to do this, because our current system of dueling parties, extreme media platforms, and people screaming at, and denigrating each other on social media, is getting us nowhere and has been getting us nowhere, for a long, long time.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2268. What is your favorite conversation topic?

Sherpa

How’s everyone doing this holiday season? Are you taking breaks and taking your own “temperature” every once in a while? I always find it a little surprising that when every year that we bring them out of the attic, our traditional Christmas decorations often look a little worse for wear. Despite the fact that the decorations are only placed out, in “safe spots”, for a few weeks out of the year, and then get carefully wrapped and put away safely in boxes for most of the year, they still get aged and frayed and faded and sometimes even broken. It turns out that the holidays can be wonderful and exhilarating, but they can also be a little hard on things. If the holidays deteriorate objects whose only job is to sit and to look pretty for three weeks out of the year, what might the holidays be doing to us?? Here’s a holiday hug from me to you! It’s okay if you are getting a little frayed, if your energy is blinking off and on, like Christmas lights with a short, and if at times, you are questioning if you might even be a little broken. Be gentle with yourself. You are more precious than your most favorite heirloom decoration. Treat yourself as such.

Kelly Corrigan recently quoted George Saunders who says that when you do good work, no one is going to ask you to stop. He says, “The mountain keeps growing as you climb it.” Be a good Sherpa guide to yourself this holiday season. Sherpas know that in order to keep climbing mountains, you have to take breaks. Sherpas know that in order to survive the mountain climb, you must have good boundaries as to how much you can do in any one day. Sherpas know that even if you are climbing the mountain as a group, the climb is really an individual pursuit for each climber, and every climb is unique, even if the same climb is achieved, year after year. The Sherpas most important duty is the safety and the rescue of any of their climbers in trouble. Be a good Sherpa to yourself this season of climbing Mt. Holidays. If we are honest with ourselves, there is only really one true summit in the end, and we all are going to reach it. The journey is far more important than any summit.

“The higher you climb, the more you realize how small you are in this vast universe.” – Tenzing Norgay, renowned Sherpa mountaineer

“The real hero of the Himalayas are not the mountaineers but the Sherpas!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

See

“1. Being a great listener isn’t genetic and it isn’t magic. It’s a skill set that can be taught, learned and practiced.  

2. Don’t be “that guy” at the bar. Ask questions. 

3. Beware of stacking…where you take one thing you know about a person and stack up all the other things you assume about them underneath.  

4. Treat attention as an on/off switch, not a dimmer. All or nothing.” – from Kelly Corrigan’s takeaways from a conversation that she had with author, David Brooks whose latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

So, I read this synopsis this morning in my email, and so I have now added another book to my long queue of must-reads. But in the meantime, my curiosity got to the best of me and I read a whole other manuscript of an interview with David Brooks about his latest book.

David Brooks claims to have written this book because he is concerned of the epidemic of loneliness and despair and separateness that many various statistics and anecdotes point to, in our society today. He claims that we must learn to look at each other with open minds and open hearts, and to be vulnerable enough to share our own open minds and open hearts with others. Below is one of David Brooks favorite quotes that inspired David himself to become more emotionally available:

“In the middle of life, I learned that if I seal myself off from the pain of living and from the emotions of living, I’m sealing myself off from the holy sources of life itself.”  – Frederick Buechner

And so David says this:

“I realized along the way that to see others well, you have to be open-hearted. You have to open up your heart to other people.” 

The interviewer asked David Brooks why paying attention, which seems like such a simple act, is actually a really profound moral and creative act?

Brooks answered that there is almost nothing better you can give to a person than the gift of just being seen, without judgment or expectations. He said that a friend had an a-ha moment when David Brooks was trying to explain this concept. His friend said this:

“That’s what we do with our grandkids. We just behold them.”

Wow. That’s beautiful. What if we just “beheld” people? What if we really did utilize the “namaste” idea that “The Spirit in me beholds the Spirit in you” with everyone we came in contact with today? I have a sneaking suspicion that if the majority of us did this on a regular basis, the world would be uplifted in ways we never could have imagined.

David Brooks also said this in the interview: “We like friends who are linger-able. People you just want to linger with.” Isn’t this the truth? Aren’t there certain friends and family members that time just flies by with, and you sometimes wish that it would never end? I have certain friends whom I have lunch dates with, that I learned not to schedule anything else for later in the afternoon, because I am so excited to linger with these “linger-able” people as long as possible. I think that I might spend some time today on what traits makes certain people so “linger-able.” And I will spend some time in gratitude for the “linger-able” people in my life who find me to be “linger-able”, too.

What are the different practices of diminishers and illuminators? – Another question asked of David Brooks by the interviewer, Cherie Harder of The Trinity Forum.

“. . . diminishers, first, they don’t ask. So if you’re not a question-asker, you’re probably a diminisher. Secondly, they stereotype, and so they have labels. And thirdly, they do a thing called stacking. And stacking is when, if you learn one fact about a person, you make a whole series of assumptions that you think must also be true of that person.”

Wow. I know that I have sometimes been guilty of being a diminisher and making snap “stacked up” opinions of people. I also know that people have “stacked up” me. I find it interesting and amusing when people are shocked to find out that I am a deep thinker/writer, or that I love hiking, or that I have three sloppy dogs, because on the outside I’m also a stay-at-home spouse of a banker, who likes pretty clothes and accessories, and enjoys riding around town with my convertible top down. So they have already pigeon-holed me into a certain stereotype. To add to this point, the most right-wing leaning, conservative in their politics person whom I have ever met, lives in California, gardens her own vegetables (and she’s been a vegan longer than anyone I know), is a tech expert, shaves her head, does not wear make-up and wears the same t-shirt/jeans combination “uniform” every day of her life. And she’s not a lesbian or a transgender person (even though she has been confused to be these labels many times). She’s in her sixties and she has been married to her husband for decades. Hmmm. Categorizing and pigeonholing people sometimes makes navigating our lives and our experiences easier and more streamlined, but wow, do we miss a lot, when we smugly assume that our assumptions are the unquestionable truth. If we treat each person as an intriguing world unto themselves to explore and to get to know, we will never be bored.

Number 4. on the list above is a big “ouch”, isn’t it? As a mother of four, I have often prided myself on my multi-tasking abilities. “I’ll listen to you while I’m doing the dishes, or folding the laundry, or secretly thinking about my grocery list in my head. In fact, I’ll listen to you as I’m doing all of these tasks at once.” I need to remove the “dimmer” option on my listening switch. It’s not helpful for any of my relationships.

I’m going to end this post with some poignant quotes David Brooks uses to remind people who are in the throes of depression, that they are still very much needed in this world:

“Life has not stopped expecting things of you.” – Viktor Frankl (Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor. If you are still here, there is a reason for you to be here. Make it your purpose in life to find that reason, and to be it.)

“Without your wound, where would your power be? Your low voice trembles into the hearts of men because of the wounds you carry. In love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.” – Thorton Wilder

If you are in pain, if nothing else, try to use that pain for love’s service. You know pain intimately, so another sufferer will feel “seen” by your full attention and understanding, more than from anyone else. Your pain will not be for nothing, and perhaps it will be alchemized into another molecule of deep, authentic love that our world sorely needs.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Be Patient With Us

This is graduation time in America. Our nephew just graduated from high school. This year, out of our group of eight best friends from college, three of our children have graduated from high school, one has graduated from college, and one has joined the Coast Guard. Our daughter has been attending graduation parties more often than she practices tennis, these last few weeks.

No one told us how hard these transition times would tug at our hearts, when we started having these children, did they? Or perhaps the older people did tell us these things, but most likely, we weren’t really listening. We were busy being busy. And when the children were little, it often felt like those “raising the children” days would go on and on, forever. (in a good sense and in a bad sense)

I was watching a video of the author Kelly Corrigan, giving a recent commencement speech. Kelly Corrigan is an amazing writer and an engaging, sincere speaker. She gave excellent, funny, yet heartfelt advice to the graduates, but the part of her speech that got me beyond misty-eyed, and reaching for the tissues, was this part:

“Speaking of deep connection and great rewards, before I go, I want say something about the people who raised you. I have identified a fundamental difference between parent and child that I think helps explain all the crying and staring and weirdly-long hugs.

So… you were little and then, at some point you came into consciousness and looked over and there we were: the tall people cutting apples the way you liked them. You have never known a world where we were not.

But for us, we were just regular people and then you came and changed the whole thing. We could win the $19 million-dollar California Super Lotto tonight and you would still be the biggest thing that ever happened to us. We love you more than you have yet loved anything.

So yeah, maybe we want to stare at that face a little longer, hang on to that body that we once carried, take one more family photo. Be patient with us. This is hard.”

I have told my children often that they will have no idea how much I love them, until they have children themselves. Yet, it has also been of the highest, most deliberately practiced importance to me, that my children never feel like my love is a cage. It is my own greatest privilege, to feel and experience, the love that I have for them. As a mother, I have made an earnest effort to embody Khalil Kibran’s poignant reminder to us parents: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

I see too many parents living through their kids these days, and that’s sad. We are all meant to add a unique, authentic footprint on this world, which we have all co-created. When we are focused on living through someone else, we have stifled their footprint with a heavy load, and we have robbed the world of our own developed, distinctive mark. When we take “ownership and possession” of our kids, and try to make them conform to the “image” we wish to portray, we all lose.

That being said, it’s not easy to let go. We keep our most precious material things in safes, with encrypted passcodes, hidden away under lock and key. We do this because we dread losing these things, right? At the same time, any of us parents, would empty our safes, our bank and investment accounts, our jewelry boxes, etc., if it meant keeping our children, alive and well and happy and thriving. That’s the big Catch-22 of parenting, right? In order to healthfully fulfill our parental duties, we must let go of what is the absolute most precious to us. It is our job to send our babies out into the world, in order for them to fulfill their lives’ purposes, lessons and adventures to the fullest. We spend eighteen years making sure that our children are safe and protected, and yet at the same time stimulated to go after their own dreams. We best give our children permission to go create their own lives, when we show them that we are living our own personal purposes, lessons, adventures and dreams. Most importantly, we let our children know that we will love them until the end of time, but with an unconditional, freeing, cageless love, an unfathomably bottomless love, which also comes through us (just as they did) from our Creator.

I love this quote, which I saw the other day on Twitter, directed to the writer’s mother: “You’ll always be a shareholder in all of my successes in life.” (Wisdom Amplifier) That’s the right word, isn’t it? Shareholder. We all have shareholders in our own lives, who have helped spear us on, to our own successes. Parents, siblings, lovers, family members, friends, teachers, ministers, counselors, mentors, employers, even detractors, are all shareholders, in whom we have become. Shareholders are invested. If we take this idea to the macro-level, we are all shareholders of this life on Earth. Are we invested? It’s easy to be invested in our own children, our own best friend’s children, but are we invested in the children of the world? Are we invested in co-creating a world that is safe and secure and nourishing and empowering for all of us? As my children have grown and started leaving the nest, considering these things at this higher level, has been helpful to me, as I work on letting my own children go. I’ve been reminded to become reinvested in my own life’s experience (as an example to them), and to make sure that I am also invested in doing my own little part, to make this world a better place for all of us. Still, it isn’t easy. As Kelly Corrigan says at the end of her address, “Be patient with us. This is hard.” It is perhaps one of the hardest tasks which we will ever do, as parents – letting our little birdies fly from the nest, with the secure feeling of being confident and blessed to do so, freely and uninhibited, with excited anticipation for all that lies ahead.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning, friends and readers. I slept in this morning. I had a really good night’s sleep and I woke into a morning that simply could not be prettier. So I spent a lot of time in the back yard with our dogs, and all the while, nature lovingly surrounded us with its incredible, synchronistic sights and sounds. I think that I was experiencing poetry in that moment, with no words, yet it was pure poetry. I think a gift that we all have gotten from this quarantine experience is the gift of more compassion for ourselves. We have been given more “guilt-free” time; this time is free of the judge-y “shoulds”. Why not sleep in? Why not lull around in nature? Why not have an empty calendar open to some spontaneity? It’s like quarantine has given us permission to do things that maybe we could have been doing all along, but we had some kind of irrational judgment that there were better uses of our time.

New readers, Sundays are poetry workshop days. On Sundays, I typically share a poem that I have written and I strongly encourage you to share your poems in my Comments section. This is creative free-flow. I would never allow any negativity in this beautiful, calming Sunday space, so please, please share your profound souls with us. Poetry connects us like not other form, in the written world. It is word music. Today, honestly, my own creative juices aren’t singing, but I have two poems that I will share with you that came to my attention this week. The first poem is by the great author, Kelly Corrigan, and the second poem is a beautiful offering from my friend and poet, Walberto Campos. Enjoy!

To Alessandro

by Kelly Corrigan


I should haven’t been standing so close
this morning at the Safeway.
I thought she was about to leave–
the woman with the good haircut and fancy bag,
her mounds of kale and yogurt and nuts,
enough for another apocalyptic week.

But then the machine betrayed her.
She swiped and inserted and stood back.
She reapproached.
She said “This doesn’t make sense,
I don’t know why this isn’t working,
I just used this card last night.”
Her hands were shaking.
Then Alessandro, benevolent ruler of Safeway line 5, said
“Take your time.
It’s not your fault.
There’s no rush.”

There was though.
There were 11 carts behind me in the pet food aisle and
23 more down the water and sports drink aisle.
People leaning back against crates of Gatorade
shifting from foot to foot
scrolling then staring then
leaning around each other to see what the hold up was.

We were looking to Alessandro and his $11-an-hour army
running distribution and provisions for a nation unnerved:
the twenty-two-year-old at Target wiping down the door
handles and carts,
the thirty-nine-year-old at the farmer’s market who’d rather
be home with her jumpy children, her husband who just lost his job at the corner bistro,
The fifty-five-year-old at CVS who smiles behind his mask as
he hands over your asthma inhaler or anti-anxiety
medication.

In Alessandro’s army,
every soldier seems ready to serve
standing at attention,
saying the thing we most need to hear:
“Take your time,
Its not your fault,
There’s no rush.”

Many blessings to you today, my friends! Enjoy a guilt-free Sunday. Follow your whims!

G and G

I love the writing of Kelly Corrigan. I just binge read two of her books which I faintly remember reading, at least snippets of, before. (on an aside, don’t you love the word “snippet”? It’s a great, fun word. It would make a really good, cute pet’s name. Snippet, come here, boy!) The first book of Kelly Corrigan’s books that I just read, is actually her latest book, entitled Tell Me More. One of my favorite chapters in that book is “No”, in which she talks about evolving to understand how important it is to cultivate the ability to say “no.” Kelly’s mother has perfected the ability to say “no”, to the point of an exact science. In Kelly’s words:

“My mother had her own mind and she used it. . . . She didn’t demand her way, but she didn’t pretend to be without preference either. . . . Very few people I’ve known are able to set themselves free the way my mother has. Liberated by the simple act of saying no – which I submit is impressive for any woman, and downright radical for one raised in the Nice’n Easy generation – my mom had always been able to find outs where others could not. Looking back, I think it came down to her impressive willingness to be disliked and her utterly unromantic position that people should take serious – if not total – responsibility for their own happiness.”

When Kelly Corrigan was growing up, her parents were, in many ways, polar opposites. Her father was an easy-going, extremely loving, extroverted sports fanatic. Her mother was the practical, no fuss/no muss sort who was introverted to the point of preferring a “Party of One.” They usually drove separate cars to all outings, including church and family gatherings. The second Kelly Corrigan book, which I just devoured in a little over a day, was called Glitter and Glue. Glitter and Glue is a name Kelly’s mother came up with, for the style in which she and her husband parented and raised up their family. Kelly Corrigan’s dad was the “Glitter” and her mom, was the “Glue.” Kelly didn’t come close to fully appreciating the “Glue” part of the equation, until she became a female head of household, herself.

We all need “Glitter and Glue”, don’t we? Too much glue, and we are just a gloppy, boring puddle of mired down rules, and rigid necessities, but without the glue, the glitter has nothing to stick to, nothing to help it shine. It just falls to the ground in a difficult to clean up, spread out, pointless, formless mess. Now that we are in our Second Half of Adulting, we now have to do a lot of our own self-parenting. Our own parents are getting up there in age, or are sometimes even gone, and our children have grown past the need of tireless, uninterrupted daily parenting. We need to take responsibility for our own needs now, and part of that includes parenting our own selves with a strong foundation of glue (our habits, our beliefs, our routines), and yet, a sparkle of glitter that makes it all fun and exciting and seemingly, more worthwhile and meaningful. Because in the end, Kelly Corrigan’s mother is absolutely and totally correct. We are all completely responsible for our own happiness, as “unromantic” as that seems.

“Learn to say no. And when you do, don’t complain and don’t explain. Every excuse you make is like an invitation to ask you again in a different way.” – Kelly Corrigan, a takeaway from her friend’s three years and $11,000 worth of therapy