Growing Up is Sexy

Maturity is
sexy
and powerful.

Complaining, blaming, and walking around as if you are a victim is not attractive, unless you are trying to attract a surrogate-parent. Grown-ups don't need (or wanna have sex with) surrogate-parents.

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame them, it will not change you. -Wayne Dyer

Grown-ups want to date, play, and work with other grown-ups.

At any age, maturity means taking 100% responsibility for your life.

"...There is only one person responsible for the quality of the life you live...If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings - everything!" -Jack Canfield

Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses. -George Washington Carver 

Are you willing to give up all your excuses?

"...you have always had the power to make it different, get it right, to produce the desired result...You have control over only three things in your life - the thoughts you think, the images you visualize, and the actions you take (your behavior)...You either create or allow everything that happens to you." -Jack Canfield

Journeying

When I left my job to start the PhD program at UCLA, one of my co-workers said to me, "many are called but few are chosen." To me, her words and the wistful look in her eyes implied that she too had dreams of going back to school. My concern with her remark is the idea that you could hear the call and not be chosen. I don't believe that the Universe puts a desire in our heart to mock us. I believe we are all called and it is our decision to muster the courage to start the quest, to dare our hero's journey or to refuse.

The only thing that gets in the way of what we are meant to do is our own fear. Indeed the point of the journey is to overcome our deepest fear. Nothing and no one can stop us, even though they try - like crabs in a bucket who don't know how to get out but try to figure out how to pull you down.

The road is not easy - be prepared for the requisite tests, ordeals, and enemies. Know that there will also be mentors, allies, and rewards. And of course, the climax and resolution of Act III, with a renewed sense of who you really are.

Note (8/3/18): I read the whole story about "many are called but few are chosen." It's from a parable about a wedding feast prepared by a king. The king sends servants to invite the guests but the invited refuse to come. Then the king sends servants to street corners to invite anyone they can find. Now the wedding hall is filled with guests. The king notices a man who was not wearing wedding clothes and throws him out. Jesus ends this parable saying, "For many are invited, but few are chosen." My take on this story (and my strength is not in understanding parables, poetry, or dreams) is that many are invited, but we decide if and how we show up. We can refuse the call by not showing up physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Then we can't say it is elitism or velvet rope exclusion at play. It is us and it is our call.

Lyrics to Hey Jude

Hey Jude
The Beatles

Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude, don't be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better
And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah

Hey Jude, don't let me down
You have found her, now go and get her
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin
You're waiting for someone to perform with
And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah yeah
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude
Nah nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey Jude

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney 
Hey Jude lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC


Just because it needs to be said and remembered. And sang. Like really loud with lots of others. 

Love like that

Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

From Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift: Poems by Hafiz (1999), p. 34.

Truth Opened

Freud presented a paper in April, 1896 to the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna on the sexual abuse of his female patients by their fathers as the etiology of hysteria. Patients had told these stories to psychiatrists before, but Freud was the first psychiatrist who believed that his patients were telling the truth.

Freud hoped his paper would disturb “the sleep of the world.” However, according to Freud, his paper was “met with an icy reception from the asses.”

One of his colleagues reacted, “It sounds like a scientific fairy tale.”

Freud wrote to a friend saying, "They can all go to hell."

Initially, Freud felt that it was important for him to risk his reputation and ridicule in order to present his findings. After all, Freud's patients had shown courage in his office by confronting the pain of what happened to them in childhood.

Less than two weeks after he gave the paper, he wrote to a friend saying: "I am as isolated as you could wish me to be: the word has been given out to abandon me, and a void is forming around me."

Unfortunately, Freud later dismissed his patients’ disclosures as the fantasies of hysterical women who invented stories. The women betrayed again.

He said patients had been deceiving themselves and him: “. . . I was at last obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only fantasies which my patients had made up.”

In 1905, Freud publicly retracted his theory that hysteria in women was caused by early childhood sexual abuse. Instead, Freud developed a victim-blaming story, a myth, to explain away the trauma - he termed it the "feminine Oedipal Complex," later referred to as the Electra complex - that girls completed with their mothers for their fathers affection.

Now, over a hundred years later, we know the truth.
Truth is the beginning of all discovery and recovery.


For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Luke 8:17. 

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32

Peer-Reviewed Publication #3

Number 3 is magical because tenure (promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor) requires three peer-reviewed publications, or as the college dean who hired me said, "at least three."

This paper is dedicated to the work I had the privilege of doing at Harmony elementary school in South Los Angeles, under the visionary leadership of Mr. Robert Cordova (aka, Mr. C). My work in schools continues to inspire my research questions.

I tell students who are nervous about doing the research projects required for their master's degree, research is not about being good at math. If you can be curious, then you can do research.

As my mom used to say, "Thank you, Yesus!!"
Amen, amen, and amen to that.

Second Peer-Reviewed Publication

I have been working on this paper since the fall of 2011, while in my third year of the PhD program at UCLA.
Despite positive reviews from faculty and a "revise and resubmit" response from the first journal that I submitted it to, I could not get it published until now.
I must have submitted this paper - unsuccessfully - to nearly half a dozen journals.
Feeling discouraged, I told my daughter about this paper. I didn't know if I should give up on it or not. She asked me, "Mom, do you believe in what you wrote?" I said, "yes!" So I kept working on it.
Then I sent a draft to my colleague, Dr. Martinez. He said I should not give up on it.
The difference between success and failure is not giving up.
I am grateful that I had the emotional and instrumental support that I needed to finish it.
I am grateful to my mentor, Reevah Simon, for teaching me these parenting skills - they saved my personal and professional life. I am a better mother and social worker because of what she taught me.

Connecting the Dots Dream

Since elementary school, I have wanted to be a writer.
Most of my life, I have wanted to make a difference for the most vulnerable among us.
Now I am working on an "expert declaration" for a class action lawsuit on behalf of detainees.
It is the most important piece of writing of my life and most of my personal and professional experiences have led up to this.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs 

If you believe that dreams can come true, then you are right.
If you believe that dreams cannot come true, then you are right.
What do you choose to believe?