Tag: Oprah

That Tricky Little Thing Called Self-Love

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“Aging is the extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” – David Bowie

This spring Miss O went to a neighbor’s yard sale and came back proudly carrying a gift for me. She’d bought me a beautiful necklace, or so she thought. It was actually a lovely beaded chain for a pair of glasses. Which actually might be something that I need more than a necklace these days since I’ve reached the age of needing reading glasses most of the time.

So when I heard a podcast on Oprah’s Soul Sunday about aging well, I was inspired to write a post for Dr. Kathy Garland’s Navigating the Change blog called One Thing to Love.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Projections

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“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” -Oprah Winfrey

My five-year-old daughter was sitting at the kitchen table doing her remote Kindergarten class the other day. To do the work, she needed the packet the school had sent home plus scissors and glue. I found the packet for her and then she couldn’t find her scissors and glue because she hadn’t put them back where they belong. She said to me, “You are making me have the worst day.”

Psychology Today defines the term projection as the “process of displacing one’s feeling onto a different person, animal or object.” We project our feelings onto someone or something else as a defense mechanism. Instead of owning our own BS, we can turn the issue into something else in an effort to protect our own egos.

I think of the time I found out about my husband’s infidelities. One of his friends, who was also my business partner, invited me out to lunch which was odd since we had never had a meal without my husband there too. When I arrived the sense of foreboding was amplified enormously because the friend had chosen a table in a closed section and also ordered me a beer. It was almost a relief when he started telling me of the infidelities because the build-up was so intense. But then I had to go home and tell my husband that I knew. He wasn’t home so I called my brother and four of my closest friends and then went out to dinner with my two best girlfriends. I finally saw my husband and asked, “Have you ever been unfaithful to me?” He answered “no” but seeing that I knew something, he then asked, “Who told you?” Then the next question he asked was, “Who else knows?”

The next months were a master class in projection. That is the perfect word for it. There is a source that is running the show but whenever you try to look for it, you are redirected to the pictures showing on the big screen. Any time the infidelities came up, he expressed his rage that his friend betrayed him (and yes, I saw the irony). Any time he got uncomfortable, he blamed me for revealing his secret. It made it so that we never could talk about the real problems. The message communicated was not that he was sorry, but just that he was sorry that I found out. By flipping the conversation to who I told, it made me the person who had been hurtful.

In a truly honest discourse, we would have been able to discuss not only the root issues but also my shortcomings as well. But if he was going to deflect, there was no way I was going to step forward either. I’m so grateful that marriage ended so I never wonder whether it could have been saved – but I do wonder if we could have cleaned and bandaged the wounds a lot faster had we not lingered in the defensive woods for so long. As it was, it took me many more years of my own work, reading, listening to others, and primarily having to sit with myself in meditation for me to finally own my part in the destruction. Projection might work as a defense but it does not work to heal and grow.

So I find it fascinating when I see the little examples of where my daughter projects. She moves past it and back to her happy place so quickly that it’s just a flash but when it’s calm, I try to guide her back to where it’s safe so we can remove our defenses and own our feelings and mistakes. It’s the only way we can take down the screen and really see what kind of day it is.

Who Are You Listening To?

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“It is the ability to choose which makes us human.” – Madeleine L’Engle

When the pandemic hit last year I had just started watching Season 3 of Bosch on Amazon Prime. One night I turned it on and the story line involving one of my all-time favorite detectives as he navigated departmental politics, the drama of his own life and homicide cases he works left me feeling wrung out instead of entertained. So the next time I was looking for evening entertainment, I had to find something else.

Instead I’ve been listening to podcasts as I clean, exercise and prepare for the next day. On Being with Krista Tippett, Soul Sundays with Oprah, Unlocking Us with Brené Brown, The Michelle Obama podcast and Revisionist History with Malcom Gladwell have given me the sound bites and food for thought for a year. What a difference it has made! Author Simon Sinek on Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast made a comment that put words to this for me – sometimes we work alone but that does not have to be lonely if we have sense of faith and community. Listening to deep and inspired conversations with curious and insightful interviewers has kept me company and inspired in this year of being apart.

Krista Tippett’s podcast with Nicholas Christakis, professor of sociology at Yale, was so uplifting to hear his message about how our species is wired for good – to love, to cooperate, to teach each other stuff.

I loved hearing one of the rare interviews with psychiatrist Dr. M Scott Peck did with Oprah. She asked how he got so much done and he replied that he got so much done because he spends two hours a day doing nothing. He used to called it his thinking time but then people felt free to interrupt him so he renamed it his praying time and then no one dared.

When Brené Brown interviewed psychologist and author, Harriet Lerner, it was a master class in apologies. I so related to the point she made that adults often use a child’s apology as a launching point for a lecture instead of “thank you for saying that, I appreciate it.” Her point was that neither children nor adults feel much like apologizing when that is likely to happen.

Michelle Obama interviewed her mom, Marian Robinson and they laughed about how Marian used to foster independence in her children by letting them get themselves up and ready for school, “it’s up to you” she would quip, “I already got my education.”

One of the Brené Brown podcasts was with neuroscientist David Eagleman whose research at Stanford shows that our brain is constantly changing and making new connections. He made the point that even in the hour of listening to the podcast, our brains would be changed by it. And I believe it was in the same interview that he said who we are is shaped by the five people that we spent the most time with. It is that point that sticks with me as I consider how to spend my precious free time. Who am I listening to and is it what I want to be shaping me?

I Had a Dream

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“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I had a dream last night that was so clear. I was scheduled to preach in a church and while I was practicing my sermon, I became so late that I couldn’t shower or even dress for the sermon. Someone called and asked “where are you?” and I had to just go on undressed, unwashed, holding my baby who was crying and preaching from the heart that “God has a plan. And if you don’t listen, you end up here, unshowered and undressed, holding your baby and living it out. God has a plan, and if you don’t hear it in the whispers, you will bow to it’s shouts. God has a plan and the only thing you have to do is get on your knees and listen.” I told the story of how I asked my beloved dad when he was 78 years old the question of how he seemed to go through life without any speed bumps and his answer was “obedience.” He told me that he at each point in his life when he was in doubt felt God’s hand guiding him and just tried to follow, sometimes hesitantly and sometimes boldly. I told the story of listening to an Oprah Soul Sunday podcast where she talked about listening to the whispers that we hear because if we don’t, the voice gets increasingly louder. I told the story of how I was practicing a sermon I’d written – but it was from the head and so circumstances forced me to show up and deliver what I knew from my heart. I pointed at my baby and said “God has a plan for him at his age” and pointed at a 93-year-old friend in the audience “and God has a plan for her at her age and for all of us in between.”

I’m neither a theologian nor a preacher – my dad was. I don’t usually remember my dreams or put great store in them. But this dream had the ring of Truth so that even in writing about it, I get a shiver of respect. It brings together many things I’ve heard over the last few months and made them fit. Bishop Michael Curry talking about “thin places” as moments when the Truth of God is somehow more apparent and accessible. Poet Nikki Giovanni talking about her belief that nothing in our lives is wasted. That “you are always taking what ingredients you are given and making what you can make. My grandmother didn’t waste. There was nothing that came into her kitchen that she didn’t find a use for. I feel the same way about experience and words.” Rev. Dr. Scott Dudley asking “How big is your God? Is he bigger than your worries?” All three of these things slot into place with the essence of this dream. That somehow all my worries – about my kids going back to school, the details of my work, the how of my life, the fears that I will never fall in love again – get packed into a manageable box. That the only thing I have to do is live into this faith that all the good, bad and the ugly fits into a plan. And there is something bigger than myself, God, that is weaving it together. All I have to do is listen.

I write this to you because I’ve struggled with this all of my life. First as a child believing without question but also without substance. Then in my 30’s not really giving faith much of a thought at all and suffering because deep down I knew there was more to life. And now in my 50’s when it seems like I am continually having a-ha moments that bring my faith, experience and the patterns of life together so that it all makes sense – to my head and my heart. I write this to you because whether you believe and feel the jolt of affirmation or don’t believe and store the words away until some time in the future when they are ripe for you, I feel it is every individual’s job to speak the Truth of their own life. Because God has a plan and all we have to do is listen.