Introducing HOW TO BE AN ADULT

In the interest of full disclosure, I totally love David Richo!  Am bidding farewell to February & welcoming March by sharing some of what I love most from the very first book I read by him  - How To Be An Adult, a handbook on psychological & spiritual integration.  

Am writing about it here, on older2elder rather than over on Dream Reweaver because it was one of those rare books that Mom & I shared together, a process that helped us work better individually & as a team.  

There aren't many books that I can vividly remember finding, but can still recall spotting How To Be An Adult on a bookshelf at Borders/Warrington.  Felt like it pulled me over to it.  

 

The book was first published in 1991, but I came across it in 2000.  Sublime timing.  Earlier and either Mom or I or both would have been unable to process its message;  at that point in time, both of us could fathom "Consciousness elicits grace to match every accepted challenge with newfound adequate strength."  Eighteen months later and Mom would have been gone.  

There are no accidents.

It was helpful for each of us to have the other there to share bits with, rather than processing on our own.  Did it really take us almost a week to move through just the short preface & introduction?  Yep.

The real grabber was the first chapter - Growing Pains & Growing Up.  It would take until after Mom's reunion with her O! Best Beloved to begin to grasp how much she had to accept & handle traumas dating back to her childhood.  David gave her a fabulous permission slip to give it a go!

At the time I read the first paragraph of that first chapter, I hadn't a clue how starved Mom had been for those very things.  Not by her father, who seemed a genuinely loving parent, but spectacularly by her mother.  

We are born with inalienable emotional needs for love,safety, acceptance,

freedom, attention, validation of our feelings, and physical holding.  

Healthy identity is based on the fulfillment of these needs.

After Mom read that, it was hard for me to get the book away from her so I could read it too! 

Right after that passage came the description, The Adult Whose Needs Were Mostly Met in Childhood....

• Is satisfied with reasonable dividends of need-fulfillment in relationships.
• Knows how to love unconditionally and yet tolerates no abuse or stuckness in relationships.
• Changes the locus of trust from others to himself so that he receives loyalty when others show it and handles disappointment when others betray.

To this day, I think reading those three things had more of an impact on Mom than the six describing adults whose needs weren't met in childhood.  She seemed galvanized by the ideal far more than by reading the ones that had been her real. 

Those three descriptions contained words that were familiar yet foreign to her - reasonable, yet tolerates no... , receives loyalty, handles disappointment when others betray.  In simply reading them, especially that last, Mom - at almost ninety - could see where they didn't fit into her life while being given assurances that, even as she edged toward 100, they finally could.

This is going to be fun, sharing the parts we underlined & page tabbed, asterixed & slapped with PostIts!  Realize that as I share my experience with reading this life-expanding book, Mom will be with me since most of the time I won't be able to recall which of us tabbed that page, stuck a sticky on this one, underlined a passage.  

Let the fun begin!  And can't wait to welcome March!!!

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