"...and NO is an okay answer." - How To Be An Adult

 

Gee, I wish Mom was around to be part of this conversation.  Feels a little... funky, spouting off about what I think she expected experienced believed.  

On the other hand, I absolutely know a) she is where she longed to be since Dad left us 28 years before she passed, b) we shared plenty of discussions that gave me what feels like a good take on what she thought, and c) she shared enough in her Mindwalker1910 e-mails that others can, even now, figure out what sounds like the Gramster & what seems suspect.

Whew - got that off my chest.

Now, about "...and NO is an okay answer."  My family & friends are familiar with me ending a request with those words.  I never gave the words much thought, other than letting others off the hook if they couldn't or just didn't want to say YES.  

I've got to admit to goose bumps reading in Chapter 2, page 2 of David Richo's How To Be An Adult:  The art in assertiveness is to ask strongly for what you want and then to let go if the answer is NO. 

In other words, ask clearly for what you want, but let NO be an okay answer.  

Hurrah!  I wasn't nuts or manipulative or passive-aggressive - David Richo told me letting NO be okay is part of healthy assertiveness!

Mom was NOT fine with being assertive, let alone asking for anything.  Because she had to know what she wanted before asking for it, and that would always be a challenge for her, even after her counseling with Kevyn Malloy. Mom was incredibly better than she'd been, but with a long way to go.  

Kevyn had clued Mom into needing to know what she wanted, but it was still a struggle.  Now, here was David Richo, reinforcing the health aspects of assertiveness Kevyn had introduced.  The power of two!

In 2000, Mom still secretly regarded assertiveness as a 4-letter word.  Praise be, between Kevyn's intro & David's booster, Mom gained a fresh perspective on knowing & speaking her own mind - especially after reading:
Passive people do not ask for what they want.  Aggressive people demand (openly) or manipulate (secretly) to get what they want.  Assertive people simply ask, without inhibition of themselves or pressure on others.

That, perhaps above all else - especially the bit about manipulation - took Mom by surprise, helping her fully grasp the value of assertiveness.  She laughed as she observed she'd gone through life as passive, then been slammed as aggressive by children tagging her as manipulative, so she might as well give assertiveness a go!

Makes me break into guffaws remembering the first time she was assertive with me.  Confession - I totally did not recognize that Mom was being assertive;  all I experienced was her disagreeing me with in a strong style I'd did NOT like.  Bravo, Mom.  Instead of crumbling, she just looked me straight in the eye & said, "You want me to be assertive.  Well, this is it!"   

Strange, to feel irritated enlightened proud all at the same moment.

Mom immediately recognized the truth of what David lays out at the end of the page because it was what she experienced ~and~ how she'd responded:
Your assertiveness might be interpreted by others as aggression.  If this happen, adjust your manner to a level that is less threatening;  reassure people you love that you are simply asking for what you want (or your opinion), not demanding it (or expecting agreement);  continually acknowledge others' right to say NO (or I don't agree).  

Fifteen+ years later, am still filled with the indescribable feelings we felt, turning the page for the last line - Assertiveness is, after all, "power to" not "power over." 

Page 22 gave Mom an AH HA! moment, something that made her mind open wide.  Page 23 shared an ideal she'd already experienced/modeled (!) the year before.  Page 24 pulled it all together.

Imagine the power of that moment - having it reinforced that NO is an okay answer, read it in a book that left her feeling safe ~and~ seeing her best self.  

Still takes my breath away.   

  I

03/03 - 05/15 - Transforming Aging Summit online & free

 

There's still time to enroll in the online & free Transforming Aging Summit (March 3-5)!  Part of the bigger discussion, greater dynamic around aging,  the summit is either sponsored or inspired by the Center for Conscious Living  (its September Choosing Conscious Elderhood in eastern  PA workshop is on my wish list!).  Whether inspired by or sponsored, it bodes well for the value of the online summit!

 

I am grateful that it doesn't gloss over the realities of growing seriously & significantly older.  My dear old Mom would never have been able to do all she did unless she'd recognized the challenges she faces as an octogenarian+.  As the summit site makes clear, these include:

• Feeling isolated, lack of community
• Loss of purpose & vision for life
• Loss of meaningful roles
• Lack of passion, lower energy
• Physical pain & other health problems
• Denial of the aging process itself
• Death of friends & loved ones
• Absence of positive role models
• Unresolved emotional baggage from
  the past
• Confusion around making a contribution to the world
• Lack of spiritual guidance specifically for those in their later years

Yep, they're some of the realities faced as we age.  But they don't have to keep us from engaged energized empowered lives!

 

Oldsters & ancients need to shake off old images & create new paradigms of  aging.  "Conscious & positive" - who can't get behind that image of aging?  

 

The summit is a wondrous way for all of us - from youngers to centenarians - to hear from leaders in conscious aging.  Ron Penvy, who leads The Center for Conscious Aging, is among the precious few - Reb Zalman, Ram Dass & Gene Cohen - who introduced me to the idea of creative, conscious aging.  Because of them, it dawned on me that the way Mom lived all her days wasn't just a blessed fluke, but IS possible for others.  

 

How much more accessible can it be than online & free?!  There is still time to sign up for the Transforming Aging Summit, which starts tomorrow & continues to Thursday.  

Even if you can't, pause to savor the moment.  We are in a remarkable place when it come to getting older, taking quantum leaps toward what Reb Zalman called s-agng, into aging.  Am feeling spectacularly blessed to be right where I am, right when I am, with all the the right background experience passions to make the most of this singular moment.  You come, too!

awkward

How do I respond to a friend, pleasant acquaintance or stranger who stops me after church or pops off a note with glowing comments about "what a wonderful relationship you had with your mother!"  

How do I respond, truthfully?  In many ways, it was wonderful.  But it was massively challenged, too.   In ways that were hard on both of us.

To her dying day, Mom was never truly comfortable with me.  Not like she was with my older siblings.  She never had to worry about them asking her about things she didn't want to look at, let alone answer.  She never had to fret about them taking her out of her long-established comfort zone.  They understood & played out their roles, she played out hers.  Life was as it had always been.

It's not comfy cozy, being a goad.  Which I was.  No one likes to be goaded.  Especially my mother, the anti-goad.  She was all about preserving the status quo, while I was about blowing up the bits the seemed useless, didn't work or did actual harm.  We were constantly colliding.  

How to get through all that without seeing their eyes glaze over or suspect they stopped reading my reply?  Because the last part is crucial.  In the end, something special came out of countless challenged difficult painful moments, beginning with our mutual determination to stick it out.  At the end of her lifetime, Mom finally had a sense of the person she was, not just as someone who helped others get what they wanted.  She learned it was okay to stand on your own two feet, to speak your own mind, even to ask for what you wanted - and it was okay if the answer was NO.  

Mom didn't get there because I pushed her.  She got there because I helped get obstacles out of HER way.  But it was always her path.  Whether it went in one direction or another was up to her, not me, not my siblings.  It was up to her.  

But it didn't make for a comfy relationship between the two of us.  Although nothing Mom wrote reflected conflict - one of the few things she truly loathed - it was a constant.  But that was our reality & we got through it, or at least didn't let it ruin what we had.

See why I ponder how to respond when others say, "If I had as good a relationship with my mother as you had with yours..."  Am tempted to give a quick smile in reply - but that sort of is a bit like a lie.  But giving a more honest answer is at best long, at worst convoluted.  Whatever answer I give, it's AWKWARD!!!!  

foreign concepts - How To Be An Adult

To this day, it amazes me how different my mother was with my dad than she was with her kids.  It was fascinating, experiencing them together.  Best friends, confidantes, lovers.  Both had things in their young lives that left them, in some ways, broken.  Dad always wanted to take care of others.  Mom strove to do what she could to help them avoid discomfort, even if it meant taking an incredible amount on her all-too-willing shoulders.  

They made a great pair.  (Alas, not so hot at team building, which seems to explain a lot about our family.) 

Mom & Dad were each others' salvation.  Dad never made a decision without consulting Mom, including whether or not he should start his own lumber business after the place where he was an executive burned down.  Mom knew Dad would work for someone else if she felt that was the financially best thing to do with , but she also knew that none of the offers that poured in offered him the opportunity to what he loved - both mill work & design (he was incredibly gifted at both).  They struck a remarkable balance that worked well for the two of them.  

Okay, I admit it - Mom was never assertive with Dad.  She didn't have to be.  The two naturally played off each other.  Neither diminished the other, neither sought to dominate.  

So, it wasn't that Mom forgot all her assertiveness skills when Dad passed too young, just shy of 63.  She'd never learned them.  She certainly didn't assert herself with Gran over the 25+ years her mother was widowed & leaned on Mom for making life work.   It wasn't any wonder she wasn't assertive with her children - she didn't know what assertive was!

Until she read How To Be An Adult, Chapter 2.  

Be clear about your feelings, choices, and agenda.  

Ask for what you want.     

Take responsibility for your feelings & behaviors.

I'm not surprised that Mom felt she needed to take a pause after reading those three characteristics.  Looking back, it amazes me she continued her reading at all.  Because those three were utterly foreign concepts to my mother.

From what I heard over the years - especially the things I heard off-hand, imbedded in stories told, in the smallest memories of Gran - Mom's life from her late teens had nothing to do with anything she wanted having legitimacy.  It was all about Gran, all the time.  Imagine that, from the time you're 19 to 45.  

And, being Mom, she had to make it okay fine sane.  

There's no describing how much reading How To Be An Adult in tandem with Mom helped me, too.  There was my mother, in upper & lower case, right in front of me.  Not allowed to show real feelings, be open, ask for things directly, give a different opinion, consider her own interests, say an inconvenient No, act as if she deserved...  anything.

We talked about that first page at Barnes & Noble/Jenkintown, over coffee & cinnamon scones.  As much as I had recognized Mom on that first page of chapter two, Mom had also seen herself.  It shook her up.

It also gave her hope.  Mom saw as unique in her challenges, an unfathomable aberration.  

Perhaps it was very day that I took her by the hand & marched her over to the extensive Self Help section, firmly stating, "Mom, if there were countless others in the same boat as you, there wouldn't be all these books!"  

That gave her hope.  There were others who felt as swamped as she did, there were things she could do to change. She wasn't alone.  And things could get better.

While reading that first page of Chapter 2, got a sense of how David Richo created a safe place for someone like Mom to read about assertiveness.  He doesn't pile blame on parents or others.  It's about the reader, and the reader getting healthier, developing a greater sense of wholeness.  And it's often just common sense.  

Writing about this, am awed at how Mom could not have changed, no matter what she read or heard or saw, if there wasn't a part of her already wide open for a better way.  I played Stephen Covey on the trip down to DisneyWorld, but it was Mom who lightly touched my arm & asked, "Play it (that part) again."  I suggested reading How To Be An Adult together, but it was Mom who made it happen, who the book down after reading the first four lines of Chapter 2 - and picked it up again.

The concepts might have been foreign to Mom, but the hope she got - at 90! - for a bigger better healthier life was clearly not.