If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.

If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.

If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.

If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.

If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.

If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.

If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.

If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.

If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.

If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.

If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.

If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.

If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.

If children live with fairness, they learn justice.

If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.

If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.

If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

Copyright © 1972 by Dorothy Law Nolte

I feel this now.

My friend Laura Roppe is living her dream and this week that dream took another step forward!

I remember meeting Laura a few years ago when we all huddled around a couch and listened to her speak of finishing a marathon. I’m always in awe of people who work out regularly and well finishing a marathon is about as hard as it gets!

“You know what the best part was?” She said, “The realization that I could do anything!”

Because of that one single experience she was brave enough to join a band and start singing. Gradually she has got out into the community and played around the San Diego area. She’s just recently made a CD but it was only when she stood in a Vons grocery store parking lot recently and took that leap did her dreams really take off.

The producer of  a radio program, Jeff and Jer showgram, Little Tommy was sitting in his car. Laura walked over, knocked on his window and made her pitch. He was impressed.  You can hear the whole story and listen to her reaction to her music being played on the air for the first time at The Jeff and Jer Showgram

Watch out you just might cry!

You can also listen to Laura’s music on her web site www.lauraroppe.com

In the upper right hand corner are her songs. Be sure to take the time to listen and feel the words. She’s a powerful songwriter! My personal favorites are Little Daughter and Float Away.  Here are the lyrics to Float Away. I listened to it 20 times to get all the words down and sobbed. I’m always startled when music can touch that part inside.

Here’s to you Laura. I am releasing you to my blogger world. I wish you the greatest success! You are an inspiration and I am proud to call you my friend.

Sheila

Float Away:

She says I think I’ll go home, turn off the telephone

Take a little pill to cope and float away

Forget about the day

She keeps telling herself she’s doing just fine

If she lights a candle, drinks a glass of wine

She can float

Float away

She’s not sure how she got to this place

The world is crashing down

All mixed up, letting go, giving up

Never thought she’d end up

Getting wasted

Losing faith

Floating away

She says this life’s too heavy

I’ve reached a breaking point

If  check out now, I can leave it all behind

And float

Float away

But she hears the voice of her little girl

Only thing that matters in this whole world

Gotta find a way

Not to fade away

She’s not sure how she got to this place

The world is crashing down

All mixed up, letting go, giving up

Never thought she’d end up

Getting wasted

Losing faith

Floating away

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

She’s not sure how she got to this place

The world is crashing down

Got to have faith it’ll be alright

Too much to lose if she loses this fight

Baby gowing up ashamed of her life

If she goes away

If she fades away

Won’t float away

No

Won’t float away

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

Hold on for one more day

 

Have you taken that step toward realizing your dream? Have you knocked on a few windows in a Vons parking lot?

I was going to write about guilt today because I snapped at Bree. She was taking a loooooong time to put on her seat belt and I became impatient.

This post was supposed to be about how guilt is a useless emotion. How we all make mistakes and we shouldn’t get caught up in the little things. Just Let. It. Go. I told myself.

So I mulled it over and tried to think of some witty banter between the Breester and I. Something that illustrated the complexities of a little girl and her mother. I reminded myself that she was okay and I didn’t need to worry over her for the whole day. Not for a little comment. But no matter how hard I tried to reframe the memory, it didn’t get amusing. It just made me want to to say I was sorry. To be more patient. To give her a hug. Anything but forget about it.

It seems guilt is a powerful emotion, and not quite as useless as I thought.

As reported in Psychology Today , Baumeister, Ph.D., lead a study out of Case Western Reserve University that saw guilt

as a kind of social glue rather than a product of the individual psyche. Its roots lie in empathy, or an individual’s ability to feel the pain of others, and fear of alienation by the social group.

The reason I couldn’t let it go, is that I saw her little face- just as you see it above-innocent and a smile ready and willing. I knew she was trying.

But wait, just as I thought guilt was all good they had this to say:

Levels of guilt and self-esteem are closely related. Individuals with low self-esteem are more prone to deep feelings of guilt than those with high self-esteem.

Ah hah! Maybe this is why as I’ve gotten older I feel less guilty about things. I have a stronger sense of what is me and what I’m willing to do.

So as with most things in life, it seems that guilt in moderation can be good. Just a little bit of it and it keeps you connected and involved and working to do better. But too much of it and either you are doing some very bad things or you need to work on improving your self esteem.

Here are some things I feel guilty about:

Here are some things I don’t feel guilty about:

How often do you sit in silence?

How often do you give eye contact?

How often do you sit in silence and make eye contact?

Lance posted Shhh…at his blog The Jungle of Life yesterday. He discussed silence and how it important it is to have in our life.  Silence gives us the opportunity to grow and understand ourselves.  I couldn’t agree more Lance.

Just before medical school I attended a workshop which was fun and a little intimidating.  One particular exercise stands out.

The leaders took about 10 people -me including- from a group of over 100 people and had us line up  side by side in front of the room. Hands by our side we all turned and faced the audience. No one was allowed to speak.The room was absolute silent.

We looked at the audience. The audience looked at us. At me.

No talking. No laughing.

We just stood and looked. At strangers.

After a while people started to shift around. Some started to laugh right out loud and some just stood there.

What did I do?

I cried.

I couldn’t stop.  All my insecurities came bubbling to the surface. I never realized how much I covered up my fear with my nonstop chattering. When you took all that away. I was just me.

The lingering silence just kept on going. The longer I stood there the more I really looked at the audience. Some of them were also having a hard time. As I slowly realized they were just like me, I  stopped crying and a gentle peaceful feeling washed over me. This simple act of standing quietly and just observing had taught me more than any self-help book I had ever read.

Now I watch the children who come in my office.

They stand there waiting.

Silent. Looking up at me.

And I feel their vulnerability.

They too are just like me.

James W. Prescott, PhD, an American developmental psychologist, proposed that the origins of violence in society were related to the lack of mother child bonding. He said “The easiest and quickest way to induce depression and alienation in an infant or child is not to touch it, hold it, or carry it on your body.” Harry Harlow also did extensive studies looking at the relationship between affection and development. You may know of his most famous study done with Rhesus monkeys, between 1963 and 1968. He placed the monkeys into two groups. The first group was offered a choice between two mothers, a terrycloth mother without food and a wire mother that provided a baby bottle containing milk. The second group also had a choice between two mothers, a terrycloth mother that provided food and a wire mother with no food. Interestingly the researchers found that the monkeys clung to the terry cloth mothers regardless of whether she had food or not. The only times the monkeys went to the wire mother was when she had food. The terrycloth mother provided something more important than food: contact comfort. Harlow concluded that affection and emotional connection is integral to mother child relationships. He later went on to do studies that showed the complete psychological deterioration of monkeys who were kept in social isolation.

Unfortunately we see this in real life when we observe babies who are kept at orphanages with a high caregiver to child ratio. The child never has the opportunity to bond with another person and therefore develops disorders of attachment. This disorder significantly impairs their ability to relate to other human beings for the rest of their lives!

The good news is that we can continue to bond and increase our well-being by touching and being touched! Dr. Moberg in her article The Antistress Effects in Response to Non-noxious Sensory Stimulation (posted at NIH’s website The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) describes the antistress properties in stimulation.  Oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the posterior pituitary gland mainly in response to touch. Most people know of this hormone as a female hormone because it increases dramatically in labor and breastfeeding. But both men and women secrete oxytocin. It is known to lower blood pressure and other stress related responses and it has been called the calm and connection hormone.

We’d all do well to remember Shilpan’s helpful advice at hugging a stranger. But don’t stop there, hug your family, your kids, your animals or just get a massage. As you increase your oxytocin levels, you’ll increase your sense of peace and well being and that could only lead to good things.

Currently this is my special place.

Now that it is summer and Gabby-Girl is going to camp I’ve had to adjust my schedule a little. I now have to get up a little earlier to get the kids off to camp/daycare. I could wait till the last minute, get everybody off and then come sliding into work just in the nick of time. But I’ve learned not to do this. It makes me a very cranky frazzled person. I usually like to go and have some quiet time to read or write.

I always wanted to have just one special place. That one get away location that meant something to me, that was all mine. You know- like the old tree in the woods or the one flat rock next to the stream. It never happened. As I went along I realized that there was no perfect location, each spot was good for me at that particular time.

For years my perfect spot was the bathtub. I would sink in the bubbles and read. Now it’s my car. I cruise all over the island looking for places to write. I’ve been in front of empty warehouses, bookstores and a variety of ocean side spots. This current location is my favorite so far but then again I’ve only been here for two days.

Do you have a special location that you call your own? How often do you go there?

Once I stepped outside of my own EGO my real concern was in my patients. My real concern was whether I was going to be able reverse the liver damage on that two year old, intubate that premature baby or stop the brain swelling on the 4 month old in the PICU.

I’ve always liked that about medicine. It seemed to put it all into perspective. I knew a psychiatrist who once said that peoples fears and neurosis served a purpose. At some level they benefited from it. I don’t think we’re conscious of what benefit we receive but often when the fear becomes an indulgence and we are suddenly aware of this fact, it falls away.  Here’s an excerpt I read recently.  It’s by the author Abigail Thomas who writes of her experience with her husband following a traumatic brain injury.

Old fears are evaporating, the claustrophobia that crippled me for years is gone. I used to climb the thirteen flights to our apartment because I was terrified of being alone in the elevator. What if it got stuck? What if I never got out? Then there I was one Sunday morning in the hospital, Rich on the eighth floor, the elevator empty. What had for years terrified me now seemed ridiculously easy. I haven’t got time for this, I thought, and got right in. (emphasis placed by me)

- Abigail Thomas “A three Dog Life”

We learned to dive.
We held hands and shared air and a kiss under water.
We went to breakfast. Twice.
We saw a movie.
We drove. In silence.
We laughed over stupid jokes.
We drank lots of wine.

We didn’t fight. Or pick or snap at each other.
We didn’t clean the house. And most of all…
We didn’t feel guilty.

Van Boven explains that this is because experiences are more open to positive reinterpretation. The appeals of purchases soon wither after acquisition but experiences quite literally get better with time. This process of positive reinterpretation means that you get to enjoy your vacation again and again even long after it’s over. We had a great time when we took the kids to Australia. I’ve already thought less of Jacob vomiting at the breakfast table and more of the magic butterfly dances and the sleepy koalas.

Another reason you should focus on experiences rather than buying objects is because “experiences are more central to one’s identity”. If you think back on who you are, most likely it’s because of what you’ve experienced and not what you’ve bought. That perfect sweater or cool bracelet didn’t make you who you are today and you certainly won’t remember it when you’re old and gray. We would do best to forgo that impulse to amass more materialistic goods and instead plan on using that money in learning to dive or ride a horse.

Because we’re in Guam and are lucky to have such proximity to different countries and their diverse cultures, we’re taking advantage of it. But, your next family vacation needn’t take you to another country; it can easily be a weekend in the woods camping. And you don’t have to spend a lot of money to fully appreciate the experience. Some of the best moments of our Australia trip were the simplest. I can still see the look on my children’s faces when Jacob ate his first ice cream cone,Brianna held a butterfly and Gabby danced in the water fountain.

Don’t forgo certain life necessities in favor of experiences. We all need to prioritize and focus on what our family needs. But if you’re debating whether to buy a new car or save for that family vacation, go for the family vacation. Experiences will contribute more to you and your child’s happiness than buying the latest car model. Remember that your life is a collection of your experiences not your possessions. For more ideas on how to focus on more fun and less stuff go to the Center for a New American Dream.

Sometimes, it’s hard to make friends though. For me friendship is almost instantaneous, but not so with others, they need time and trust to open up. Is Seinfeld right when he said at some point you just stop taking applications? Not for me. I’m not living in my small town where I was raised. I don’t have people next to me who have known me for 30 years. I start over so many times it hurts. But with each new friendship, I discover new interests, new families. And my life is richer than ever. It’s not hard to find a friend. They are everywhere, just ask my husband.

He’s from the south and soooo easy to be friends with! He forgives the lapses in time and effort. He assumes we all have been busy and takes very little personal. And even when it is personal he figures that they were just working through something and he’s there to come back to. I love this about him. When he says “friend”, it could easily be someone he’s worked with for only three weeks. They are not a “colleague” or an “acquaintance” or “co-worker” They are his friend.

The older I get, the more I am grateful for my friends, new and old. I am particularly grateful for the couple of close friends that kept me in their lives through the hectic days of medical school and residency and even the early years in San Diego. I can’t believe they stuck around when I didn’t return their emails or calls. I was a little self absorbed and a little exhausted and not a good friend.

There is always the opportunity to make new friends and rediscover old friends. I now take the time to reach out and make friends as well as reciprocate. I don’t do it out of obligation. I want to do this. It makes me feel good. My heart is fuller because of my friends.

• What do you think? Do we value friendships more or less as we get older? Have you changed?

• Do you make new friends? Have you used Facebook and other social networking sites to keep in touch? What about blogging? Does it add friendship to your life?

• Do you have an opportunity to reconnect with someone? Try Facebook and let me know how it worked out!