Love, Care, Trust & Respect

"I'm not that woman that makes it easy for you.  Even if I have been before, I'm not now . . . Never make it easy for someone not to have to come up with the basics of love, care, trust and respect in a relationship."             

--from Baggage Reclaim blog by Natalie Lue

If the best thing a father can do for his children is to love and respect their mother, then the best thing that a mother can do for her children is to love and respect herself - and in this way expect others to do so as well.

Instead of walking around asking: why is s/he doing that to me? 

We can ask ourselves:  why am I putting up with it?

If we were raised to believe that our needs don't matter or that other people's needs are more important, then we will believe that we are being needy for having basic needs or just any needs.  This core belief could be underlying codependency.  The antidote is self-love, self-respect, self-worth, self-care and knowing our own value.  If this is not something we learned in childhood and therefore take for granted, it is not so easy to learn but it is never too late.

Wake up every morning and ask: What do I want to do today for me?  What would be loving, caring, trusting and respectful to me?

Now it is within our power to value ourselves.

Wishing everyone love, care, trust and respect for self and others in the New Year - one baby step at a time.

Love, Pride, Honesty & Loyalty

Some days are packed with growth spurts.

My mentor/father-figure told me that he read how if you live near crime & violence, at first you are repelled by it, then you become desensitized until finally, you join in.  That is, if you are not a person of strong character.

Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.

Roughly translated that means:  Tell me who you spend time with and I'll tell you who you are.

Who are you?  Who do you wanna be?

Who you give your time and energy to, what you listen to, what you read, what you watch, what you spend your time thinking about, what you believe...it all matters.  Eventually, it makes up who you become.  And who you draw to your life because water seeks it's own level.

We can choose a different direction at any time - a 180 degree turn, a 45 degree turn, a 10 degree shift...The point is to actively choose and accept the consequences of our choices.  I don't wanna passively allow people or information to seep in and have an influence on my life that I do not choose.  I am not a victim.

At a pipe ceremony I learned about praying to the four directions - North for Unconditional Love, East for Pride, South for Honesty, and West for Loyalty.  Men and women, young and old, came together to pray for our communities, families, and ourselves.  Sitting on the living room floor in the dark with the smell and wafting smoke of cleansing tobacco in the air, we all revealed our stories.  No one held back.  The courage of one inspired all to reveal more.  Disclosure, confrontation, confession, and storytelling is the way we understand, make sense of things, find meaning and ultimately find resolution.  It always has been how we heal, it always will be.  There were tears and pain.  That part is inevitable.  There was also laughter, lots of it. 

This year, I choose love, pride, honesty and loyalty - to God, the Creator, my ancestors, myself, my daughter, my family and inner circle of friends.

Some days are like that.  Thank you, Yesus.

Making Sense of Our Story

Writing about important personal experiences in an emotional way for as little as 15 minutes over the course of three days brings about improvements in mental and physical health.

This finding has been replicated across age, gender, culture, social class, and personality type.

Using a text-analysis computer program, it was discovered that those who benefit maximally from writing tend to use a high number of positive-emotion words, a moderate amount of negative-emotion words, and increase their use of cognitive words over the days of writing.

These findings suggest that the formation of a narrative is critical and is an indicator of good mental and physical health. Ongoing studies suggest that writing serves the function of organizing complex emotional experiences.

Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative
James W. Pennebaker and Janel D. Seagal The University of Texas at Austin
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 55(10), 1243–1254 (1999)

Confront & Confide

...I have learned that confronting traumatic experiences can have meaningful physiological and psychological benefits.  Conversely, not confiding significant experiences is associated with increased disease rates, ruminations and other difficulties.

Confession, Inhibition and Disease
James W. Pennebaker (1989)
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 22

Confiding

. . . most people naturally discuss daily and significant experiences with others.  Even major traumas such as the death of a friend, a shared natural disaster, or a house fire are usually discussed in detail with close friends.  Less socially acceptable traumas, however, can be far more difficult to confide:  marital infidelity, embezzlement, being the perpetrator or victim of rape . . . talking about a trauma with others can strengthen social bonds, provide coping information and emotional support, and hasten understanding of the event, the inability to talk with others can be unhealthy for a number of reasons . . .

Confession, Inhibition and Disease
James W. Pennebaker (1989)
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 22

Working Title for Dissertation Proposal

Families, Stories & Resilience:  Does open family communication about traumatic memories promote the development of posttraumatic resilience among Latino youth living in urban communities?

Evaluating Dissertation Quality

Adams & White (1994) proposed 6 indicators of dissertation quality:

1. Research was on a researchable topic of some potential value to the field.
2. Research was guided by some explicit theoretical or conceptual framework.
3. Research was relevant to theory and could contribute to theory development.
4. Research has practical relevance within the research setting.  It could have helped change or improve something in that setting.
5. Research has practical relevance beyond the research setting.  Something could have been learned that might inform practice in another setting.
6. There are no serious flaws in the research (e.g., sample too small to draw reasonable conclusions, generalization of findings from a single case study, use of an inappropriate statistic, blatant errors in logic, inappropriate research design given the research problem, serious misapplication of some theory to the research problem).

The Dissertation:  From Beginning to End
Peter Lyons & Howard J. Douek