Real Family Therapy by Lori L. Silver from Storytime Tapestry
We grew up with two parents that couldn't get along and never should have married, especially each other. They did however manage to produce two beautiful daughters who felt very lucky to have each other growing up. Many nights my sister Cindy and I spent huddled together in the same bed listening to them arguing violently and uncontrollably. When you live through something like that it either "makes you or breaks you". At a very early age I was forced to be strong, smart, responsible and tougher than any child should ever have to be. I say to this day that I didn't really have much of a childhood. Of course what I'm referring to is the "typical childhood" that each and every one of us wants to give our kids. As I look back now, I guess I wouldn't change one thing. As all of it has truly made me the person that I am today.
We lived in a garage. Oh sure Mom, Grandpa, Cindy and I worked hard to make it look like a house but truth is...it was still a garage and everybody in the neighborhood knew it. One by one we met and were introduced to neighbors and brought them through for 'the tour.' Time after time we listened to, "Oh this is REALLY cute," "It's not what I expected," "Oh you don't have running hot water?" "You use a COAL furnace to heat with?"
"All of you live in this small space?" until I thought I would run screaming out our newly installed frontdoor that had replaced the typical pull-down garage door model.
Mom and Dad had split up again. This time she said it was for good. Cindy and I were hoping it was even though we missed Dad alot. At an early age we knew that those two were like oil and water and would never "mix up" good. Times were extremely tough for us. We wore second-hand clothes and ate a lot of pork and beans and peanut butter sandwiches but at least we ate. We had to heat water in huge pans on a small gas stove to do dishes and take sponge baths using a big washtub. Once a week we got to go across the street for a real shower.
I would run the hot water out standing in there singing up a storm, it felt so good!
To this day, that feeling comes back every time I step into a shower. Because of going without for so long, I still relish each and every one and probably always will. Life was extremely hard but we had each other. Many nights we had to wear hats and mittens to bed and huddle close together to keep warm. The place was small and it was real drafty. The coal furnace just couldn't keep us warm in the bitter winter months. I remember Mom coming around many times in the middle of the night to wake us up because she was afraid that we would freeze to death.
Time after time I watched my mother work two or three jobs, have junky old cars that were always breaking down, be up all night tending the coal fire and then go to work for 10 or 15 hours on her feet. I'd catch her late at night crying over a mound, literally, of unpaid bills. Dad remarried and didn't do much to help any of us. He hardly ever came around anymore and we missed him less and less.
There was one upstairs loft room that had no insulation where Mom slept. Cindy and I shared an old, hard, green, fold down couch in the tiny living room. We had no dresser, or posters or stuffed animals, toys or girl things. There just wasn't room for us to have our own space like that. The kitchen was tiny and the bathroom had only a toilet at first. A sink was added later. We did the work ourselves with the help of neighbors and family members.
One Spring day I'll never forget and still call "our family therapy day" I was around 8 years old. It was 1964 and Cindy was close to being 6. We got off the school bus and walked down the road together as usual. About half way home we heard pounding and hammering, hooting, hollering and a whole lot of noise coming from our small house. We ran home as fast as we could and threw open the front door. There mom stood in front of the wall between our tiny kitchen and even smaller living room. She had a towel tied across her face, plastic goggles on top of that and a sledgehammer in her hand. She was beating the wall down!
At first we were a little scared but as the light from the door fell across her she stopped and turned with a HUGE smile on her face. We knew then that everything was alright. She walked over and in the corner were goggles, face masks, and hammers for us. She said...."Come on kids, we're gonna take this wall down and get some light in this box!".
We followed her directions and a few days later the wall was gone, the room now looked huge. Later we installed a nice, big bright window right where the wall seam had been. After that our lives definitely took a turn for the better! Together we could do anything we put our minds to!
Within a few years we added a couple of rooms off of the side of the house. Now we had a living room and a real bedroom for Cindy and I to share with a dresser, a closet and a door that closed. We could finally put up posters on the walls and have friends stay over. We were in heaven. Mom would watch our little black and white tv late at night when we were in our room and not keep us awake. Life was great!
Mom will never really know the invaluable lessons that she taught us that Spring day and all through our childhood. She may never know how we've carried that wisdom and her zest with us our whole lives. To think that it all started on a typical day with one wall coming down is amazing!
Later on when both Cindy and I were gone mom fell on hard times and lost our house for taxes. She didn't tell us until it was too late and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it. True to form she picked herself up, shook herself off and started all over again. Nowdays when I'm blue or having hard times I may drive there to look at our house and think back on many, many years ago.
Oh, it looks so much different now but I know that living as we did after my parents divorce was a huge turning point for all of us. It taught us to be strong, resilient and resourceful. It made us appreciate what we had and each other. It brought us closer together than we have ever been. It changed our lives profoundly for the better and I am thankful for every minute of it.
Lori L. Siver ladybounty2000@yahoo[dot]com
A featured story of April 23, 2012 of and with thanks from the Storytime Tapestry, a daily ezine by Carol Roach
George Butista: A Certified Yoga Instructor, Wellness Specialist, Sports Nutritionist and His Radio Talk Shows
Ever since he was a kid, George was always active. He was an athlete growing up playing high school baseball, football and heavily active in the martial arts and strength training. After high school George's passion for music led him to become a musician and he has been a part-time professional drummer for the last 20 years.
Through those years he realized he also was dealing with a lot of chronic conditions such as allergies, bronchitis, frequent sinus infections and lower back pain due to severe athletic injuries. He decided that he needed to take full responsibility for his health and not leave it in the hands of prescription and over the counter medications, which many times made the conditions worse. So he read and studied hundreds of books and tapes on nutrition, health, spirituality and personal development.
For the last 12 years George has been using Strength training, yoga, meditation, and high level nutrition to enhance his healthy lifestyle. He has since has used all these principles to help heal the injury, heal all his other chronic conditions and keep himself in shape. He has studied, Ashtanga Yoga, Hatha Yoga, sports nutrition and various forms of meditation.
His goal is to help spread the message of natural health and healing and to do his part to help people take responsibility for their health. His philosophy is that healing is not only physical but mental as well. Your outlook on life and your ability to be in the moment have just as much to do with healing as eating right and exercising. He also believes that making a few simple changes over time can lead to a major difference. It all starts with taking responsibility for your health and letting your body's natural healing ability take over.
Afternoon Naps Are Good for Learning: An Article for Mental Health by Psychology Expert Carol Roach
New research is breaking the old paradigm that people who do sleep in school don’t learn in schools. It turns out that these people who are accused of dozing in class actually learn better by having that little snooze. According to a recent study a little nap is good for consolidating memory.
Pay attention; those words rang oh true for so many students who were caught dozing off in the classroom. Young students were punished for sleeping in the classroom. Parents were called to the school or notes sent home saying the child was inattentive and many parents were told they were not parenting properly. These kids needed to get more sleep at home, to go to bed at a decent hour, and it was the parent’s responsibility to make sure this was done.
The current feeling is that lack of sleep prevents students from learning. Now there is new research which may change the thinking of a lot of professionals, psychologists and educators alike. Some researchers at the University of Notre Dame maintain that a short nap after learning may actually enhance new learning.
The psychologist and her team studied university students who maintained at least six hours of sleep each night. They were tested on their ability to recall facts and events (declarative memory) and their ability to remember world facts (semantic memory). The results showed that they scored better after a fresh night’s sleep then they did when tested after being awake all day. They also found that students remembered the material easier directly after having a short nap...
Please read the full article at Knoji Knowledge Network: http://psychology1.knoji.com/afternoon-naps-are-go...
There are some things that parents can do to both provide more structure for teens and monitor their behavior with an increased level of confidence.
Know your teen’s friends – Parents should know all your teen’s friends, as well as their families, if possible.
Know where your teen is at all times – It should be mandatory that your teen keep you informed of where he or she will be at all times. Don’t settle for a vague, “I’ll be hanging out with my friends.” That’s not specific, and won’t help you locate your teen should you need to or if there’s a panic call for help. Require your teen to give you specific details, including who they’ll be with, where they’re going, what they’ll be doing, if there’ll be responsible adults in attendance, and when they’ll be home. If they can’t or won’t provide the details, don’t allow your teen to go.
Educate teens on distracted driving – Although the dangers of texting and cell phone use while driving are becoming more well-known, and many states have or are enacting laws prohibiting such behavior, make sure your teen knows the dangers of distracted driving. The obsession of teens to be constantly in touch with their friends by texting, especially, is something that parents need to nip in the bud. If parents see their teens repeatedly violating the law by texting and/or using cell phones while driving, either take away the cell phone or restrict driving privileges – or both.
Limit Internet use – Establish rules that teens need to abide by for limiting Internet use when parents aren’t home. Educate teens on the dangers of unsafe use of the Internet, and know what your teens are doing when they’re online.
Encourage an after-school job for your teen – To keep teens busy and out of trouble in the all-important hours of 3 to 6 p.m. when millions of American teens are left unsupervised, encourage your teen to get an after-school job. In the summer, a part-time job can be even more important, since there are many long hours while parents are away at work that teens can wind up doing things that can land them in trouble.
Why and How Chaos is Natural with Zero Resultant: Our Brain can use it without Comprehension
In the natural world, with exception to humans all living and nonliving ones do what they know. The human ego helps us in thinking but useless knowledge prevents us to practice it. We notice animals and birds follow natural laws and principles.
For us the confidence seems as the most potent thing. Our confidence cannot help us to avoid corruption and thus thought pollution that harms the natural world in which we live.
The faith made Lord Jesus give his life on the cross, Socrates drank poison, all martyrs and soldiers, and others to sacrifice their greed for sake of duty. By faith one can sacrifice selfishness not by confidence as it seems.
Thus, it seems that the confidence is the Force that Ego seem to use, but Faith is the Power that we have at the Pineal Gland and thus the rest of the body. If we are doing technological works on brain control, we can easily understand that nature gives faith as power that runs body from womb to tomb...
On the other hand, the ego simply seem interfere with natural laws and principles and thus we have egoistic and egocentric people becoming rulers and dictators. The misuse of ego is considered a mental disease in Ayurveda and other Spiritual or Holistic Health Sciences as it disturbs not only the individual but rest of the natural world.
All of it usually leading to weakening of pineal gland that needs faith in the natural laws and the principles because it works naturally as we say from womb to tomb...
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