Life in today’s society is often rushed, with people multi-tasking, stressed, and clinging on for dear life. But sometimes the answer is a change in perception.
Embracing the mindset of wonder can do much to alleviate undue stress, improve health, and live a more fulfilled life.
Read more in my post entitled “Awestruck”
And consider embracing the awe of a full moon or even a blood moon by reading my post entitled “Shadowed Moon”
Each day we are filled will countless examples of hate and anger. We see it in politics. We see it in our newspapers. Many of us also see it in our lives.
What if each of us tried instead to fill ourselves with the countless examples of goodness and kindness, and truly learned to forgive?
How can we accomplish this as individuals? As communities? As a nation? As a global alliance?
Consider reading some of my past posts on this and closely related topics:
While in any situation we may each observe the same things…we never truly perceive the same things. We express ourselves in writing and speech from the starting point of our perceptions.
Our experiences are always shaped by these sensory perceptions. Many people with sensory losses may find that other senses become more acute. As someone who experiences synesthesia, my own perceptions are often further altered by a crossing of differing sensory modalities.
Enjoy my 2015 article on synesthesia entitled “Number Six Burns Like An Orange Flame”
Within each of us is a story that must be told. Tell it in words, music, or art. Each story is a link in the chain of humanity. Each chain a breath of life.
Add to the chain.
Continuing the theme of National Poetry Month.
We often forget that images, like words, are also poetic creations. Van Gogh was a brilliant artist who expressed a magnificent world in the ways only his deep sensitivity to color and sound could possibly perceive.
Consider watching the Van Gogh movie “Loving Vincent”
April is National Poetry Month, and Plato’s quote speaks with clarity on the power of poetry.
For those interested in reading more from me on poetry, check out these 2015 posts:
Periodically I will be posting a visual series I composed of my favorite inspirational quotes.
Each post will include one quote. Most quotes will be focused on writing and life. Some will address the moods of the day.
Capote’s quote expresses the emotion I feel when language and writing cross over into color and melody.
[NOTE: All images will either be my own photos or photos listed in public domain. Space-related images are all from NASA.]
[Image taken from James T. Webb family memorial website]
Getting a lot of attention in the media is a quiet movie celebrating the life and influence of Mr. Fred Rogers. A man of kindness and wisdom. A force for good.
I feel very privileged to have had if only for far too short of a time my own force for good in someone many of you may not have even heard of. Perhaps this was someone who many of you would have been very grateful to have known.
Dr. James T. Webb unexpectedly passed away last week at the young age of 78.
Dr. Webb (Jim to me and to so many of those he counted as friends) was a trailblazing gifted field psychologist, educator, author, publisher, visionary, and humanitarian. He also was the founder of SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) and Great Potential Press.
Sometimes stars just go out, leaving the skies that much more dark and lonely. But the truly large stars can set the skies ablaze in a glorious supernova. Jim, like Mr. Rogers, was such a supernova. Jim may not have been a household name for everyone, yet Jim left a massive legacy that will live on and grow and positively affect countless lives across the world and across generations to come.
I feel somewhat inadequate trying to piece together strings of words that can both adequately celebrate the remarkable person I knew Jim to be and also help me cope with my own feelings of loss for a very special friend, colleague, and mentor.
Jim lived a life that represented what many philosophers grappled with expressing in defining a life of meaning. One of Jim’s influential books entitled Searching For Meaning is a tremendous examination of the gifted idealistic mind and the struggles required to make sense in striving for contentment and hope and meaning in a world that can be filled with chaos and confusion. It is a book each and every idealist should consider reading. The book could never have been written by anyone who did not live an authentic life following the wisdom the book offers.
I am sitting here with my book copy in hand, inscribed by Jim with a hand-written message to me that brings me to tears whenever I read it. I recall when I first met Jim in person, when he invited me to attend a SENG conference. I sat in on his talk about existential depression that would later become the basis of Searching For Meaning. After his talk, he came to me wishing to hear my thoughts, but he could easily see that my face was streaming with tears. His is a wisdom that deeply understands. His is a compassion that deeply comforts.
Jim founded SENG in the Department of Professional Psychology of Wright State University in Dayton Ohio. The history is well known by many people in the gifted field. The story of SENG involves the tragic suicide of a profoundly gifted young man named Dallas Egbert and the young man’s parents reaching out to Jim to find answers and hope so no other parents of gifted children need to grieve for their own child in such devastating circumstances.
This story and SENG’s founding was unknown to me at the time (I was actually a student at Wright State University precisely during this period). Unknown to them, however, was that I had been a classmate if only for a brief time in middle school with Dallas Egbert. I’d never forgotten that experience, Dallas’s sad eyes, nor my extreme shyness as a child and feelings of inadequacy to offer any help or lasting comfort. That experience stayed with me, and perhaps was one influence in my eventual career helping others as a pediatrician.
The circle truly became complete and gave significant meaning to my life once I had the opportunity to discover SENG and even work directly with SENG, as a board member, speaker, researcher, and eventually as chair of their advisory committee. I felt in some small way like I was finally giving back somehow, maybe giving back to all the kids like Dallas that I have known. And at each step there was Jim, my lodestar.
Since our first conversations, Jim trusted in me. Perhaps more than I did. I don’t know if he truly realized how much that meant to me. We worked together to form the online informational SENG Misdiagnosis Initiative, we produced parent and clinician brochures, we spoke together on panels at conferences, and we worked together to increase awareness of the complexities of giftedness and the risks of medical misdiagnosis by gaining approval to have this topic presented not just one year, but two years, by the American Academy of Pediatrics at their national conferences. Jim even granted me the incredible opportunity to be included as an additional co-author of the highly revised and expanded second edition of the book Misdiagnosis & Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children & Adults. Jim gave me the ability to accept my own giftedness, to feel comfortable with my own voice, and to forcefully express my own opinions.
Ultimately, this was one of Jim’s messages to all of us. This is part of his legacy for all individuals – gifted or not gifted – around the world. That you are powerful. You are important. You are strong. You are perfect just the way you are. May Jim rest in peace. May his amazing family be comforted by the extraordinary life he lived and shared with us.
He made OUR lives filled with meaning.
For those of you who knew and loved this man of kindness and wisdom, this force for good, please take a moment to leave your condolences on the James T. Webb Memorial website here: https://jamestwebb.com/in-memoriam-dr-james-t-webb/
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” – Maya Angelou
In 2010, President Barack Obama spoke at the University of Michigan and said,
“We can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it…It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning –- since, after all, why should we listen to a “fascist,” or a “socialist,” or a “right-wing nut,” or a left-wing nut”? It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out…. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”
Yet for much of 2016, leading up to this past November’s presidential election, and subsequent to it, America has been embroiled in a deeply destructive time precisely of tearing each other down, demonizing people, and coarsening our culture. No side was without blame. No side came out unscathed.
We waded through a mucky and noxious campaign season drenched in media bias, misinformation, unsubstantiated dossiers, brutal ad campaigns, a contentious and tainted Democratic primary, divisive fear mongering, calls of Russian interference and hacking, battering debates, and constant name-calling between candidates and between citizens on opposing sides.
We endlessly talked AT each other and PAST each other and never truly WITH each other.
And now, just a day away from the inauguration, these attacks continue unabated directed towards the U.S. president-elect as well as party against party and citizen against citizen. Many dozens of congressmen and congresswomen vow to boycott the inauguration. Some entertainers have bowed out as a result of significant personal threats. Protests are scheduled. All this, during what is traditionally the unique moment when our democracy undergoes a peaceful transition of power.
Even as a life-long liberal and Democrat, I cannot in any way condone the current state of events. I’m embarrassed and ashamed. Most significantly, I’m fearful for our democracy.
What is our collective responsibility to the growing divisiveness in our country? How can we easily distinguish between the tolerant and the intolerant? Where do we draw a line between civil disobedience and serious acts of disrespect? Where do we likewise draw the line between elevating the level of discourse and sending, as President Obama fearfully stated, “signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response”?
Many in the country are hurting. America has 43 million people living in poverty. We have been at war for over a dozen years. Soldiers have endured multiple tours of duty and suffered grave injuries. To this day, we bomb upwards of seven countries, with over 26 thousand drone bombs dropped in 2016 alone. We routinely waste government monies that could go to people in need. Many cities and suburbs suffer with failing schools and economic downturns. Opioid addictions and deaths are frequent. Gun violence devastates many communities. Police violence makes our nightly news. A single life-threatening illness can financially crush a family. We see the children of lead-contaminated Flint entering their third year of drinking from bottled water with no end in sight, while infrastructure elsewhere is also failing.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at Stanford University that resonates as strongly today as it did 50 years ago. He said,
“There are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for situation. And in a sense this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity…Tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infected vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”
America is a country of many such islands. Separate and unequal. A complex mix of diverse peoples, diverse challenges, and varied political leanings. There is no one political party with all the answers. It would be arrogant to say otherwise. There is also no one political party who is responsible for all this country’s successes or its failures. Ours is an imperfect union, but a union just the same. We are a country of immigrants, its origins born of unfathomable violence, with a complex relationship with itself and its many precious peoples. We are all threads in our human historical tapestry, and for the sake of our future existence, we desperately must find a peaceful common ground.
As a portion of the Langston Hughes poem “Let America Be America Again” states:
“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.”
America has survived many difficult times. We must survive this period as well. But to do so, we also must take steps to begin our healing journey:
Most importantly, we must acknowledge and take to heart the profound words by President Abraham Lincoln when he said,
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I still believe in America. I believe we’re better than our divisiveness. I believe in Maya Angelou’s brilliant words that say,
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”
America’s mighty dream: To someday become a UNITED States of America. Make it happen.
“It’s okay mommy. It’s okay, I’m right here with you.”
These are words that resonate over and over again in my head. Words spoken by Dae’Anna to her mother, Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, when police killed Philando Castile this week in Minnesota. Words from a four-year-old child that express such enormous heart at a time of inexplicable and terrifying loss.
Can a young child understand death?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we sometimes forget the impact upon the children left behind when adults become victims of violence. We also sometimes overlook the enormous toll that children and young adults experience when a parent, sibling, friend, or other loved one dies as a result of illness, accident or violence. According to research, one in nine Americans reports losing a parent before turning twenty years of age. These are each unique losses from which almost no one ever fully overcomes. Furthermore, over 70,000 children also die each year, and over 80% of them have siblings to cope with the grief. By the time a child becomes 18 years of age, 20% of them have likely experienced the death of a loved one.
The understanding of death doesn’t come easily or equally. Infants have little understanding of death, though they do recognize the presence or absence of a parent figure. Toddlers and young children may not understand the finality and permanence of death, and thus can have a magical belief that a deceased loved one will one day return. These toddlers as well as older children can also place blame on themselves, erroneously believing that they were somehow responsible for the deaths. Superstitions and belief in the boogeyman can aggravate guilt as well as fear. Older children and teens may understand the permanence of death, yet they may persist in feeling guilty for surviving when a loved one has died. They may have also previously held the belief that death is only for older people – a belief shattered when a child’s friend or peer or sibling dies.
Articulating feelings of grief is a slow process. Initially signs of grief will appear in behaviors such as disbelief, shock, and anger. Children may no longer be interested in schoolwork or activities that previously brought much joy. Children may become anxious and overly concerned with safety and health. They may feel another death is imminent. They may frequently cry or instead be exceedingly quiet and unwilling to speak. Physical symptoms often occur including headaches, stomachaches, fatigue, and lack of appetite. Children and young adults may also be at risk of self-harm as a result of grief. Processing grief requires patient and loving adult support and understanding.
It’s obvious that a toddler like Dae’Anna has the loving support of her mother, as well as her extended family. I hold much hope that she will grow up to become a strong and secure adult, especially in viewing her extraordinary emotional intelligence to stay composed at a time of terror by reaching out to comfort her own mother. She no doubt was gifted with this emotional intelligence from her mother Diamond who herself remained acutely composed in an unimaginable situation.
Each day children experience the painful deaths of loved ones. Deaths that will forever change their experience of life. No type of loss is more painful or of greater importance. Yet, experiencing loss through violence adds an additional layer of burden to one’s life. A complexity that casts a long dark shadow over one’s trust and hope for humanity. This is a challenge that requires one to gather all possible strength to meet it with love, not hate.
We can do our share to help children who have suffered grief. Many suggestions are similar to those I gave in a recent post dealing with trauma. Further suggestions included here are picture books about grief as well as websites discussing childhood grief.
Regarding picture books, it is true that a picture can speak a thousand words. For children experiencing the death of a loved one, neither the child nor the grieving surviving loved ones may always be able to find the right comforting words. Sharing books about grief and death together – even for older children – can assist in building resilience so needed for both parties during difficult times.
It is also necessary to realize that grief is a process with unknown duration. Each child must be given full freedom to process grief in his or her own time and in his or her own way. Never rush children nor expect them to “pull themselves together” or articulate their loss. Below I list two websites as well as some book resources that may help.
NOTE: If you are the parent of a child who has suffered grief and you are concerned about the mental or physical health of your child, please contact a medical professional to make an appointment for a full assessment.
GRIEF RESOURCES:
Below is a brief sampling of poignant picture books dealing with death (I’ve tried to indicate whether the characters are human or animal). Please pre-read to assess your particular child’s sensitivity:
Additional National Child Traumatic Stress Network Book Resources:
This article is also posted here: The Huffington Post.
Marianne Kuzujanakis 