Most parents and families have year-end traditions, associated with the holidays and this time of year, that serve them and enable them to enjoy the season.  In addition to the normal stuff of the holiday season, I have made it a practice to set aside time to accomplish three things:

1.     Reflect on the current year

2.     Pace myself, to be more present in the moment and, as a result, be better able to navigate time with (extended) family and/or circles of friends and honor them while we are together

3.     Prepare for the coming year

I have a tool that helps to achieve these things and I encourage my family, friends and clients to complete the two-page exercise as individuals and as collectives (e.g., as groups of individuals) as well. It is a healthy, contemplative practice with mindful, practical and real implications, which is why I’m so committed to it year after year.  Of course, these practices are only useful to us if, much like a new year’s resolution, we act upon, consider, and honor them in our day-to-day lives.  Well, this year, before I had a chance to breathe life into this tradition and guide my family through our collective process, our lives were turned on their heads.

On Monday, December 27, 2010, my youngest son, Patrick, 12, managed to impale himself on his closet doorknob after standing on an unstable surface to put something away on a high shelf in his closet.  To make a long story short, he damaged the anal sphincter muscle, his rectum and the deep muscle tissue in this area and required emergency bowel surgery that night.  We spent the next 2 ½ days with him in the hospital.  Thanks to the competence, compassion and commitment of a large number of medical professionals (from room technicians to charge nurses, ER doctors to recovery room nurses, pediatric surgical specialists to hospital childcare advocates, to EMT’s and ambulance transport services) associated with multiple medical facilities, we had the best, imaginable care and Patrick has a great prognosis – bottom line (pun intended) he may truly turn out as good as new!  Whew!

In addition to the relief that came with each day of progress came the joy we got to experience with the outpouring of care from friends and neighbors, family and loved ones, far and wide.  I’ve made meals for people in trouble and forced myself on people in tough situations but have never been the recipient of this kind of loving care and service.  It is a very different experience to be on the receiving end of so much kindness and compassion.  What a gift to be reminded of all the good people and goodness out there.  I, for one, am committed to paying it forward.

In my own contemplative practice, one of the elements of the current year reflection is to highlight the top five roses and the top five thorns I am grateful for, the thorns being things that happened that seemed “bad” (and probably were unfortunate) at the time, but that, in retrospect, contained many gifts in them.  Well, I count Patrick’s dance with a doorknob among the thorns of my 2010!

Of course, no mother wants to see her child in pain, hurt or injured in any way, but when it does happen, AND it does happen, it helps to surrender to the situation and, as in our case, to the professionals around you, to learn to lean on others and receive their gifts, to do what you can to continue to make self-care a priority so that you can stay strong for your self, your child/children, your spouse/significant other, family and friends, and then mine for the meaning and gifts in the experience.

By expecting the unexpected, each of us is more prepared to shift gears when called by circumstances to do so and we are more likely to know on whom to lean, when and how.

This, coupled with an attitude of gratitude, focused on both the roses and the thorns, empowered me and everyone in my midst to step up and be a better version of ourselves; and to collectively grow and heal.  It was magical to be a part of and to witness.

Today, Patrick’s movement is still restricted and he has some lingering pain, but his wounds are healing nicely and he’s as spirited and playful as ever.  He is restricted from contact sports, so no wrestling for a while, but is otherwise recovering a sense of normalcy with each passing day.  He is a bit wiser and more mature for the experience, two of the upsides of aging.  Yes, he grew up a bit this past week and now he knows, perhaps more than most, that he has an extended community of family and friends and amazingly competent and caring professionals upon whom he can always rely and for whom he will forever be grateful.  What a nice platform to stand on as he (and as all of us) welcomes in a new year.

I’m imagining that our individual and collective contemplation exercises will take on a whole new meaning thanks to the gifts of the events of this past week.  In fact, I have a great feeling about 2011.  I will share this contemplative process with you in subsequent blog articles.

May your new year be filled with roses and thorns and the wisdom and patience to know them as the blessings that they are.

Love,

Dori

P.S. – Come visit us at www.worldclassparenting.com to find out more about how to become a professional parent leader – parents who are committed to empowerment through conscious parenting, partnering and leadership, and who are proud to make professional parenting the priority in their lives.

Empowerment through conscious parenting, partnering and leadership.

My youngest son, Patrick, the 4^th of our 4 boys, will turn 12 tomorrow.  Soon, he we will be a full-fledged teenager and well on his way to launch, to moving out of our home and into his life and his adventure.  It seems imminent, to me.  My third youngest son, John Robert, who will be 16 in March, is a sophomore and pushing 6 feet tall.  On Friday, he wants to get his learner’s permit.  Ah, it will happen, for sure.  And my second son, Matthew, now 18 and a senior in high school, chose life abroad on a student exchange in Italy over all the milestones he could experience here during his final year of high school.  My stepson, Dan, 27 and married, is a graduate student, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, living just far enough away and so consumed by his studies and work that it is difficult to see him, in person, very often.  We are grateful for new technologies and applications like Skype that help us to connect, “face-to-face.”  Time is flying by and I feel it.

As the mother of four boys, I’m hopeful that the old saying, “A daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life.  A son is a son until he takes a wife (or equivalent),” will not fully be our truth.  I will miss them, no matter their quirks, or mine, our issues or challenges.  They made our house a home.

Contemplating their departure brings me to tears, some days.  And on others, all I feel is joy and pride and relief, enjoying the space that’s being created for me, and for my husband and me, and for the life we’ve begun to imagine together after all of our kids have “launched.”

That imagining includes World Class Parenting.  Why?  Because World Class Parenting is as much about building powerful, conscious partnerships, as it is about building purposeful, conscious parents. It keeps me honest and present and it reminds to stay in choice, to actively nurture my relationships with my self and my husband, to keep all of my relationships “up-to-date,” and to be a finisher as it regards actively parenting my boys.  Why?  Because no matter how independent, tall, far away, old, young, playful, assertive, different, contrarian, difficult, or challenging they are, our children need us to love and accept and believe in them, period.

It is the number one thing our World Class Parenting coaching and course participants learn how to do – to begin in love and assume the best; to KNOW that they (the parents) matter and are THE most important source of belief, love, resilience and support for their children, especially during their formative years and throughout adolescence.

While I may not be the first one my children will share their secrets and heart’s desires with over time, I know it matters to them that I was there for them when I was the one they wanted to turn to and that I’m there for them now, still creating the safe container, still ready to listen, always holding them big and with compassion, serving as a resource.  As a World Class Parent, I will not assume that they always know or remember this.  I will forever be here to remind them that they are loved and that they matter, both in word and deed, physically and energetically.

Call to Action: Think about what you can do and how you can be, consciously, to remind your children that they matter and that they are loved.  HINT: You could just tell them this!  NOTE: Avoid apologies, caveats, explanations and the “big hairy but’s” that negate the wonderful things you say/do.  REMEMBER: It’s really that easy.  Just take a deep breath, look them in the eyes, tell them like you mean it, and pause…let the silence work its magic!  You can do it and it matters that you do!

Love,

Dori