Fuck, Stories Can Be Beautiful

I'm crying in the cafe after reading that excerpt.  Fuck, stories can be beautiful. 

It reminds me that my daughter, at age 11, still wants to be tucked in and hear stories. 

It used to mean I read Cinderella to her ad nauseum. 

Then I turned her on to children's bible stories (I enjoyed reading them over and over too). 

Now she just wants stories about my childhood and life - my past Halloween costumes, things I did with my mom, embarrassing crushes I had on boys, etc. 

Anything that will help her to understand her thoughts, feelings and experiences. 

Any story that will bring meaning to all the changes and newness of life. 

Connection, integration, meaning, making sense of it, digesting, learning, growing, acceptance, belonging, soothing, understanding, seeing - fuck, stories can be beautiful.

Storytelling (Fucken) Heals (Duh!)

The evaluations that day indicated that people were pleased with the workshop, felt understood for the first time since 9/11, and wanted to continue meeting in the large group. In that setting, they asked to continue working with the therapist assigned to them.

Teenagers and children could join if they wished, but were clearly listening even as they did artwork. They always moved in when stories were being told about their lost parent. The kids seemed hungry for such stories. 

One of the interactions in the multiple family meetings that was most poignant occurred when a worker spoke up. An operating engineer we shall call Bill (not his real name) had survived, but was injured, bumed, and traumatized. On the recommendation of his therapist, he and his wife attended the meeting with his fellow workers’ families that day. He wanted to connect with the families of his missing coworkers, but was afraid the wives would ask him about their suffering in the inferno just before he was miraculously blown out. What happened instead was that Bill told a story. After being quiet all day, he shifted in his chair, leaned over toward a young girl who was crying, and said:

Honey, I want you to know that your Daddy led out a thousand people. He knew the building, and it was complicated. He led them out-and then he went back in, but that’s what we do. That’s our job. He was going in for more people, but he didn’t make it out that time. The next time you go to a ball game, I want you to look at the crowd and see what a thousand people looks like and know that your Daddy saved that many people. 

For centuries, storytelling has helped heal trauma and loss by providing access to meaning. Nothing a therapist could have done that day would have equaled the healing power of Bill’s story for the little girl, her mother, and for himself and his wife. Brothers and sisters in the union family were connecting by breaking their isolation, sharing stories, painful as it was. Everyone, including therapists cried, but with a new and more positive meaning about the tragedy.

HEALING LOSS, AMBIGUITY, AND TRAUMA: A COMMUNITY‐BASED INTERVENTION WITH FAMILIES OF UNION WORKERS MISSING AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACK IN NEW YORK CITY
Pauline Bossl, Lorraine Beaulieu, Elizabeth Wieling, William Turner, Shulaika LaCruz
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Volume 29, Issue 4, pages 455–467, October 2003

How We (People of Color) Grieve

There is a cultural chasm dividing European American families and families of color, especially immigrant families, around issues of death, loss, grief, and ambiguity. For the European Americans, there is often the seemingly impersonal and bounded culture-keeping a stiff upper lip and the avoidance of public displays of emotion. Get over it; move on. For African Americans and Latinos, among others, there is often a more direct, intimate, and expressive tradition around death, as well as with ambiguous loss. The cultural differences existed in therapists, too.

HEALING LOSS, AMBIGUITY, AND TRAUMA: A COMMUNITY‐BASED INTERVENTION WITH FAMILIES OF UNION WORKERS MISSING AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACK IN NEW YORK CITY 
Pauline Bossl, Lorraine Beaulieu, Elizabeth Wieling, William Turner, Shulaika LaCruz 
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Volume 29, Issue 4, pages 455–467, October 2003

Families - where it's at

The New York therapists who volunteered to help us with these meetings were an eclectic group. Those who felt most successful working with families in a community setting, regardless of their original training, could approach multiple generations flexibly and systemically. Therapists accustomed to quiet professional offices were challenged, because typically, families were large, including parents, children (newborns to teenagers), grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and even clergy. The Union Hall was alive with sound and activity, but this was not the case at the first meeting. That was eerily quiet-at first.

HEALING LOSS, AMBIGUITY, AND TRAUMA: A COMMUNITY‐BASED INTERVENTION WITH FAMILIES OF UNION WORKERS MISSING AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACK IN NEW YORK CITY 
Pauline Bossl, Lorraine Beaulieu, Elizabeth Wieling, William Turner, Shulaika LaCruz 
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Volume 29, Issue 4, pages 455–467, October 2003

Meditation and the Brain (and the Body)

Scientists have found that Tibetan lamas who do something called "loving-kindness meditation" have thicker-than-average neuron development in parts of the brain associated with happiness.  Meditation has also been shown to lessen heart disease, high blood pressure, infectious illness, and many other indicators of both health and aging.

Steering by Starlight
Martha Beck

Dating Psychology

PRAT, to pretend rejection to increase desire

Pimp
by Iceberg Slim

Do you - like a fish - prefer a lure that's moving away from you?
Do you like it when someone heaps on the praise and attention that you feel you never got from ______ or ________?
Or do you like it when someone is direct about what they want or like about you (and it resonates with your own desires and self-concept)?

When someone feigns disinterest to lure me in, I get turned off instead.  
First, it's disingenuous.   
Second and simply, I want someone who sees me and gets me and thusly wants me (duh).

This PRAT game sounds like it goes over well between two insecures.  I know who I am and what I want.  No games necessary.  I either like you or I don't.  You either like me or you don't.  The next part is the really fun part (more fun than disingenuous games).

Balance

All work and no play can lead to writer's block, breakdowns, or divorce.

Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less
Evelyn Hunt Ogden