FAITH, HOPE, PROMISE

I had the great privilege and pleasure to attend a Tea Party Express Rally last week. It was held in a park in my home town, Mishawaka Indiana, just blocks from my childhood home. Whatever your politics, it is crucial that your voice be heard.

As we remember the events of 9/11 - all that our country stands for, all that we are doing to protect our freedoms, those lost, those who heroically served and survived, and those who would destroy us - not for anything we've done, but for WHO we ARE - there is a symbol of faith, hope, and promise in the midst of the pain and loss.

Watch this video and know that God knows, sees, hears and is ever present.

President Obama's Speech to Students

I have been asked by the Arizona Republic to talk about whether or not kids should attend and alternatives if they do not participate. The following is my submission. Whatever your politics or whether or not your kids will attend, this is a crucial conversation in our families, schools, communities, society, and in our churches and synagogues.

Blessings,

Beth

I have spent the last hour on google to get some perspective on this issue. My understanding of what the students will be asked to think about and answer is as follows:

During the Speech:

• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President asking me to do?

What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

After the Speech:

• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:

What do you think the President wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us

It would benefit all concerned to have more information about the content of the speech before deciding whether or not to allow children to participate. As a parent, grandparent, psychotherapist, and parenting coach here is what I believe to be important and helpful from the information available.

Discussion about civic and personal responsibility, the value of education, the importance of setting and achieving goals, and encouraging others along the way is extremely important and valuable conversation. I coach parents to engage with their kids on these topics and give them the tools to do so.

So where’s the rub? We want our kids to be critical thinkers, to have good problem solving skills, to be able to express their opinions and debate issues with those of opposing viewpoints. Parents, you’re on! The family is the place to learn these skills and practice them. Your child’s belief system determines how he moves through the world and you are the primary source of that set of beliefs. If we want our kids to make value based decisions, we need to be sure they have a firm grasp of those values and understand clearly why it is important to live and behave in a particular way.

Whether your kids will be in or out of school on Tuesday September 8, this is a wonderful opportunity to have some honest, direct, family-values conversation.

If your child will be participating, be there next to him. Take notes. Find out what your child is thinking about, dreaming for herself , and what worries him. Be crystal clear in your own mind and heart what your values are and what you want to instill in your kids. You set your family’s culture and identity.

Take each point and run it through the filter of your family’s values and beliefs. If you say, “The Smith kids study hard and do their best.” or “In our family being a student is your job, just like mom and dad have jobs.” Or “Our family believes it is important to volunteer our time and money to help those who cannot help themselves.” Or “We value hard work and taking responsibility for our words and actions.” Or “ Our family values include honesty, pitching in, speaking the truth in love, respect for ourselves and others, and worshipping God together.”(add all your own family beliefs and values here) – then you can listen to the speech and easily and clearly decide what is aligned with your family culture and values. Your children will be able to discern those things that do not align and you have an amazing conversation underway

I encourage you all to choose your words carefully. Emotions and opinions are all over the map on this one. Your kids are watching and listening. Do not provoke them to anger or fear. Use this for the good of your family. Use this to have safe, meaningful, discussions about tough topics with those whose views may differ from your own. Use this to teach your kids how to do that. Use this to find out what your kids are thinking and feeling. Use this to deepen your relationships. Use this!

Beth Madigan

Parent Coach

www.livewithintention.org

602.626.8036

The 7 Principles of Fierce Conversations

These principles are taken from Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. Enjoy and Implement!

Principle 1: Master the courage to interrogate reality.

Reality has a habit of shifting. People change and forget to tell each other. Not only do we neglect to share this with others, we are skilled at masking it even to ourselves.

Principle 2: Come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it real.

While many fear "real", it is the unreal conversation that should scare us to death. When the conversation is real, change occurs before the conversation is even over.

Principle 3: Be here, be prepared to be nowhere else.

Our work, our relationships, our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a relationship, any single conversation CAN. Speak and listen as if this the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It may be.

Principle 4: Tackle your toughest challenge today.

Burnout doesn't occur because we're solving problems; it occurs because we're trying to solve the same problems over and over. The problem named is the problem solved. Confront the real obstacles. Travel light - agenda free.

Principle 5: Obey your instincts.

Don't just trust your instincts - obey them. Tune in. Pay attention. What we label as illusion is the scent of something real coming close.

Principle 6: Take responsibility for your emotional wake.

The conversation is not about the relationship; the conversation is the relationship. Learning to deliver the message without the load allows you to speak with clarity, conviction, and compassion. (speak the truth in love. Beth)

Principle 7: Let silence do the heavy lifting.

When there is a whole lot of talking going on, conversations can be so empty of meaning they crackle. Slow down the conversation, so that insight can occur in the space between words, and you can discover what the conversation really wants and needs to be about.

T.W.I.S.T.

Oh! We are having fun with fierce women willing to have fierce conversations in the workshops! This week we discovered the secret to Getting Anyone to Do What You Want. T.he W.ay I. S.ee T.hings it's all about how you behave and what you say. BE the kind of person others are pleased to do things for - the kind of person others want to spend time with, to get along with, and to share themselves with.

Communicate honestly, directly, and clearly. EVERYTHING is about the nature and quality of our relationships. We succeed or fail one conversation at a time. Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations, says the conversation is not about the relationship - the conversation is the relationship.

She writes, "A fierce conversation? Doesn't fierce suggest menacing, cruel, barbarous, threatening? Sounds like raised voices, frowns, blood on the floor, no fun at all. In Roget's Thesaurus, the word fierce has the following synonyms: robust intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled, uncurbed, untamed. In it's simplest form, a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real."

You know how I love a word study! I am loving the word fierce - don't you? Stay tuned for the 7 principles of Fierce conversations. Until then BE fierce.

Find Your Music

This week I had wonderful evening with some wonderful women. Lanette Rajski, my friend and colleague, and I facilitated a workshop called Quit the Chaos. Each woman came with some pretty daunting circumstances. Because they were willing to be honest and do some work, everyone left with tools to calm their minds, build energy reserves, and develop stress resiliency. Sometimes the biggest hurdle is carving out time for ourselves - seeing ourselves as worthy and giving ourselves permission to put everyone and everything else aside for few hours.

I want to invite you to do just that. Scroll down and register or click right here for an e-class (one that is delivered to your e-mail inbox and can be done on your own schedule) that will forever change the way you think of your wellness and the importance of taking time out to take good C.A.R.E of yourself! Don't hesitate. Don't tell yourself you will think it over. Don't wait for a "better" time. The time is now. Class begins Monday September 7! AND it is deeply discounted for this offering. See you there!

Now for more of When the Heart Waits. "It's anguish to come to that place in life where you know all of the words and none of the music."

She tells a story of taking a long walk on a chilly evening, feeling restless and frustrated. She came upon a cocoon and immediately knew it was an epiphany to grace her inner darkness; God speaking to her about waiting, transformation, and hope. She broke the twig off and carried it gingerly home where she grafted it, with duct tape, to her own backyard tree. "I stood at the window watching the cocoon, which hung in the winter air like an upside-down question mark. Live the question, God whispered. Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping - they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness."

Summer days are dwindling. Fall is in the air with the promise of quieter and slower days. I know many of you resonate with Sue Monk Kidd's blistered spirit in the face of upheaval, change, and crisis. Are you being asked to enter a cocoon? Do you sense a shift ahead? Is transformation calling to your heart? Are you feeling anticipation - or anxiety - or both? Think of it as an invitation directly from God's heart to yours. Enter the chrysalis. Wait for the sound of the music - YOUR music.

When the Heart Waits

Goodness! The days fly by...I have had a great week with girlfriends at the lake and am currently ensconced in a Chicago suburb with my grandkids. On the way here I began a book given to me at the lake last week, When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd, written in 1990. If you have read any of her books (Secret Life of Bees) you know what a gifted author she is and how her style draws you in. This one is really resonating with me. She talks about change, waiting, and spiritual growth or "soulmaking".

"It's always difficult and risky to try to put soulmaking into words. In many ways waiting is the missing link in the transfromation process...waiting as the passionate and contempative crucible in which new life and spiritual wholeness can be birthed."

She describes her life as making no sense, "curled up into the frightening mark of a question." To all appearances she looked and seemed fine, but inside she was in turmoil with a "chorus of orphaned voices crying out for all the unlived parts of me."

"As a woman I sometimes felt that I had been scripted to be all things to all people. But when I tried, I usually ended up forfeiting my deepest identity, my own unique truth as God's creature."

She began her journey of transformation with T.S.Eliot's question, "Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/ She wondered, "Is it possible that I'm being summoned from some deep and holy place within? Am I being asked to enter a new passage in the spiritual life - the journey from the false self to the true self? Am I being asked to dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self - the one God created me to be? Am I being compelled to disturb my inner universe in quest of the undiscovered being who clamors from within?"

I wrote to you in the last newsletter that I woud be blogging this month about whatever was put on my heart. I love God's synchronicity and timing. Thank you, Kim for the gift of this book and for listening to the nudge to give it to me. My universe has been disturbed and I am stepping in. I am not yet sure of what I am being asked to do but I know I will be given the grace and strength to meet the challenge.

Mother's Day All Year Long!

You all know we talk a lot about self care here. Join me for an eClass designed to help you take very good C.A.R.E. of yourselves.This offering is a pilot group and is deeply discounted.
If you haven't seen it or have procrastinated you can get the information and register by clicking here.

The class will be delivered to your e-mail inbox each Monday in September. Look for your back to school, time for me, takin' good C.A.R.E. lessons on September 7, 14, 21, & 28.

We will be underway soon and spaces are going fast!
Click here to read more and register!