Mothers everywhere…

…are posting photos of their pride and joy entering a new phase of life – whether its “big school”, senior school, college courses, travel plans or first jobs.  The BPS magazine The Psychologist this month leads with “The Transition to School – Claire Hughes asks what matters and why” – talking about school readiness and the impact of family and community on successful transition and ‘developmental vulnerabilities’ (Brinkman et al., 2014).

For me this could not have been more poignant a subject.  After over a week of what I can only describe of total teenage rebellion from my 4 year old during perhaps the wettest summer holiday I can remember, I was on my knees – psychologically, emotionally and physically..and I had done something I often find difficult, embarrassing and vulnerable – I had asked for help.

Help arrived in the form of both family and friends and one thing stuck in my mind more than any other – ‘children are designed to be raised in a community – and that community doesn’t exist like it used to’.  I had been trying to cope on my own with two under fives for fear of failing in public.  The result was that I was isolated, my children were isolated, and the people who wanted to help felt ‘uninvited’ to do so. We were spiralling downwards and needed to reconnect with our community in order to recover.

Ironically my first two go-to jobs having dropped the boys off at school were a meeting around community dialogue (working with a number of passionate ‘Ipswich-ians’ to outline an Open Space event on the future state of the town) and the set up of a design planning session for Recovering from Motherhood for my own Resilience Series launching in Ipswich in November/December.

Talking to my own mother this morning about it all, she tells me she can no longer bear to watch the news following the reports of the 3 year old washed up on a Turkish beach and countless other heartbreaking stories of those fleeing Syria.  I reflected that the power of community and protection of others in danger has lead to a huge wave of opened doors across Europe – doors that may not even open regularly to neighbours and friends. Is our sense of community really so diminished in the UK…or do we become too easily paralysed in our goodwill by a fear of rejection, a fear of failure, a fear of judgement by others?  Is our famous ‘stiff upper lip’ still getting in the way of offering a clumsy, ill-thought through, perhaps foolish or unsustainable hand of help to someone who really doesn’t care if we have a plan or a solution…they just need a place to feel safe for a short while.

On a similar note I shared with my mother a wonderful comment made on Facebook about the news of a 13 year old who had been found wandering along the M5 near Oldbury on Thursday morning.  The news reels were full of the word “illegal immigrant”, “migrant” and “refugee”.  The comment on Facebook was incensed – “The word you are all looking for is CHILD”.  As I waved my son off to his second day at school, red jumper tucked under his arm, schoolbag swinging, I tried to imagine waving him off in 9 years time as he boards a small boat with 25 others to attempt a crossing of the worlds’  busiest shipping lane to reach a place he is not welcome and does not know. I could not.  I hope never to.

 

Becoming a Warrior

In September my eldest son starts school.  I find it hard to believe that its been 5 years since my life as I knew it was turned upside-down and inside out by the realisation that the bus I had been driving for so long now had passengers…with views of their own!  To see him dressed up in his new uniform ready to build his own bus and start to drive it…based on observation of his newly acquired stabiliser-free cycling…is terrifying and satisfying all at once.  With my youngest bringing up the rear with constant questions and narrative about the world…I am starting to remember where I was going when this all started and am quietly pleased that in fact the holding pattern that I put in place back in 2009 has actually stood me in pretty good stead.  I am still self employed, I still have money in the bank and in the business, I am still in contact and working with many of the same clients, and in fact I have learned an awful lot about myself, emotional intelligence, resilience and mindfulness as well as leadership and organisational development along the way.  I have built new friendships and grown new skills in staff engagement, surveymonkey and bullying and harassment (training not applying!) at Colchester Hospital, been trained in Open Space facilitation and Dialogue by the amazing Sheila Marsh and Roma Iskander at the Participation Agency, designed new courses with Dr Angela Smith with some great exercises, and helped my husband set up the beginnings of a route out of the rat race.

This week I made a big step forward though…I have joined Sam Pollock’s amazing Warrior Woman programme – a weights-based, holistic, female only route to building not only my fitness, but also my commitment, courage and strength to get back to who I need to be.  I have pushed ‘prowlers’, strained towards my toes and hollered my way towards a successful pull up (yes just the one).  My goal?  To regain my own freedom of spirit.  My measure? The ability to hang from a climbing wall overhang and calmly lift my feet up to where I want them.

Talking about Growth

Yesterday I met a wonderful couple at their home south of Manchester to talk with them about their work in the field of facilitating dialogue.  Janice and Phil McNamara from Summerhouses have, over the last few years, travelled an inspiring journey together and now work together using their diverse experiences and background to help schools, colleges and organisations improve the dialogues they share.  As someone who is also passionate about this field, it seemed bordering on criminal not to catch up with them to talk.

As the tea flowed and we nattered, the openness and authenticity of our communication enabled me to reflect on my own journey and the challenges and gifts that have shaped that journey.  It brought to mind something my partner has often repeated to me in my moments of fear and growth:

“A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared stuck.

The man decided to help the butterfly and with a pair of scissors he cut open the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man watched the butterfly expecting it to take on its correct proportions. But nothing changed.

The butterfly stayed the same. It was never able to fly. In his kindness and haste the man did not realise that the butterfly’s struggle to get through the small opening of the cocoon is nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight.

Like the sapling which grows strong from being buffeted by the wind, in life we all need to struggle sometimes to make us strong.” – from Ack Paul Matthews

The description of my day that I had given to my partner which prompted him to repeat this wisdom once more was “somedays it feels like I am standing on a bar-stool trying to pin something to the ceiling!”. Those days are tough days to get through and I find myself testing all my resilience capabilities to find the courage and faith to move forward. I equally find that I learn more in those days than I could ever have imagined – and meet the most amazing people travelling similar paths.

To stick with the butterfly metaphor, each time I feel the urge to cut the cocoon and take the easy way, I reach out and connect with new travellers; I beat more blood into my wings and it reinforces my sense that I am travelling the right way…both in direction and in pace.

Lessons in Love – courtesy of Hepburn and Tracy

My flatmate and I spent all of on Saturday during the windy-rainy thrashing of the Derbyshire weather, curled up on the sofa watching Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy at their best. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so educational an afternoon!

We had debated before, the impact of modern-day movies on the somewhat flawed perception often characteristic of our generation; that relationships should just feel right and you should instinctively know when you have met “the one”. As far away from reality as this clearly is for many of us, there is a vague sense that maybe we are doing something badly wrong as we slog along with our independent successful lives never quite achieving the perfection we see on screen.

In the films “Woman of the Year” and “Adam’s Rib”, Hepburn and Tracy portray two marriages set against a background of growing pressure for women’s rights. These partnerships don’t follow the simplistic “girl meets boy, nearly misses boy and finally gets her man” formula of films like The Holiday and Bridget Jones, but instead are a complex engagement from the start of two intense, competitive and independent spirits constantly teasing and playing on the edge of each other’s tolerances – even to the point of tripping over that edge.  That final sealing-kiss is won through the realisation that in order to survive as a couple, they must accept that two halves do not, in fact, make a whole. Their marriage requires the combined strengths of two complete individuals able to express themselves as well as to listen, adapt and accept one another.

There is a great moment where Tracy complains that Katherine has not made an effort to catch up with him when she finds herself in Chicago at the same time as him. She confesses; “well yesterday I didn’t quite feel I wanted to be with you…just like today you clearly don’t quite feel you want to be with me…or else you wouldn’t carry on with all this”.  Their famed on- and off-screen chemistry aside, the screenplay is filled with wonderful, sharp comebacks and asides like this – right down to the under-the-table-skirt-lifting and tongue-poking in the court-room of “Adam’s Rib”! It really is a delight to watch and we were smiling all afternoon.

In the world of Spencer and Katherine, marriage is not so much a question of when to compromise and when to move on – but a question of how you can both get what you need without losing touch with each other; A blending of conflict, confusion and comfort in equal measure.

I am reminded in fact of the wedding of a friend a few months back where the reading took me by surprise in its pragmatism and honesty.  My partner is still somewhat uncomfortable with it…but thats OK with me 😉

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A weekend filled with Dialogue!

I am exhausted!! I have just finished my first module of the ITS NLP Coaching Certificate. Having been coaching for several years and started to see the slowly constricting legislative belt around the practice, I felt it was long overdue to get myself the tick in the box. More importantly, it has been a little while since I immersed myself in the intense, eye-opening, warm embrace of the ITS training programmes and I wanted my fix. I certainly got it 😉

ITS is the only NLP certification programme I know taught to 100+ pupils at one time using 1/2 speakers and around 7 assistants. When I first did my Practitioner training back in 2001 (my my is it that long ago?) I found it not dissimilar to my first experience of Glastonbury – the requirement to become close to and form some kind of bond with a vast array of faces in a very short space of time. It was exhausting. The model is based on the concept that the presence of such a large group both extends greater potential to learn from others, and broader experience of the wealth of human diversity. I still have many good friends from those weekends in the Polish Centre in Ravenscourt Park – and a huge store of good memories too. Whilst the course has its critics (often non-ITS trained Practitioners – loyalty in these courses grows fast!) I went back in 2004 for my Master Practitioner and on Thursday I re-entered the fold and began my route to ICF Certification. After 5hrs a day of listening, watching, feeling and practicing, plus an extra 2 hrs spent networking, co-creating and generally meeting an endless stream of new faces I have a to do list as long as my street and a buzzing energy to move forward…coupled beautifully with the desire to sleep for about a week 😉

And just in case I had not spent enough time during my days in focussed attentive learning, I chose to spend my tube journeys reading the full text of David Bohm. This has by contrast to the ITS sessions required the dislocation of my normal attention to detail and the ability to let my mind enter the wide and fast flowing stream of consciousness that is David’s way of writing. To attempt to correctly position every concept and each connection is to condemn oneself to eternal mental spaghetti…which given my days’ activities is not far from my state anyway!!

So for all those with whom I interact and connect with over the next couple of days…my profuse apologies if my eyes seem a little glazed and my handshake a little flimsy…I am still hearing you and I am still with you – its simply the fluffy clouds of exhaustion I am peering through. 😉

On Dialogue

David Bohm – “On Dialogue” and “Thought as a System” are by my bed along with William Isaacs “Dialogue and the art of Thinking Together”. Yet another example of the guide appearing just when the pupil is ready, I picked up these books just when I need them most for both my personal and professional life.

David Bohm: “..the general tacit assumption in thought is that it’s just telling you the way things are and that it’s not doing anything – that ‘you’ are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don’t decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us. Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn’t want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking. That is what I call “sustained incoherence”.

William Isaacs: “..When I learned physics in high school I was taught to think of atoms as a set of microscopic billiard balls zooming past one another and sometimes colliding at high speeds. That image seems to fit the way most people interact when they’re talking about difficult issues. They zoom past each other. Or they collide abruptly and then veer away. These collisions create friction…..we respond to it by tryng to cool things down, to at least get to “maybe”, to compromise. We never learn to live over time in close context with the heat…”

Both Bohm and Isaacs have worked across a huge scientific community in search of a means by which they can address what they both see as a fundamental flaw in current communication practices – the lack of true open dialogue between people. I cannot agree more….and am reading on.

Looking for….

There was a really short programme on Channel 4 last night about singles adverts in the paper and the history of their development ( I particularly recall one that was read out from “Disinterested Lady – Go ahead…write to me…see if I care!!” but that’s going off the point). Driving back up the motorway from London today it got me to thinking about the number of different media that have sprung up in the last few years purely focussed on helping people to stay or get in touch – Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Friends Reunited, Dating Direct, Twitter, Naymz, there’s even a few sites like SocialGo and Kwiqq.com dedicated to helping people to start their own networking sites. Despite the relative failure of the first recognised social networking site in 1997 – SixDegrees.com, Wikipedia will provide evidence to anyone who is interested that social networking is now a huge phenomenon.

So why this incredible desire to find and connect? To be found and linked to? My own theory is that right from the first day at school, even the extroverts amongst us take time to get to know people – time to make that first connection. Its not easy making the approach or knowing what to say. Even people you already know can be hard to stay connected to without a constant flow of communication.

Sites like Dating Direct, Facebook and all the others create a kind of latent level of communication; a warm call rather than a cold-call; an expectancy that means you skip that sense of first contact and “do they want to talk to me” nerves and move into the next phase. They create the illusion of “keeping in touch” even when you simply read someone else’s profile once a week and never speak to them again – a kind of online curtain twitching 😉

Whilst I find anything that encourages people to feel more connected to be a good thing, what depresses me slightly is how many times people rely on this slightly oblique way to communicate or connect and miss out on the infinitely more satisfying route of actually talking to and meeting up with other people! For me it echoes the practice of sending emails rather than walking down a corridor or (my own personal sin) sending a text rather than picking up a phone.

In my work coaching and training senior managers, so many times have I said to people “Have you actually had that conversation or asked that question?” only to find that people had sent an e-mail, left a post-it or maybe even gone so far as pencilling it in their “to-do” lists but never actually truly connected. How many things do you keep meaning to say? How many people do you follow on Twitter without ever sharing your viewpoint? How many people are you LinkedIn to that you’ve not actually met up with for coffee? Why not move off-line and book a date with a face instead of sitting in and looking through the glass. See how it feels to do actual rather than virtual social networking. If you’re not sure where to start – call me! 😉