What’s in a Name?

It turns out a lot, even if you aren’t unfortunate enough to be “A Boy Named Sue”.

“It’s that name that helped to make
you strong…

And I think about him now and then,
every time I try & every time I win.”

I share that sentiment!

It was a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon in February 1955. Shortly after my birth, the doctors started to take seriously my mother’s complaints of feeling unwell. It turns out she wasn’t ‘just’ a first-time mom not up to the rigours of pregnancy.

It was nothing less than an acute gall bladder, requiring a surgery that was nearly too late – peritonitis had set in. Whether she ever held me, I’ll never know – but it was more than a month before she would have the chance to hold me again. Much that I have come to understand about myself since reflects the loss of that bonding.

That’s a tragic beginning for any infant – the most fundamental experience of being connected to a secure place in the world is lost forever.

Kenneth Allen – near Drumscra, Northern Ireland

But it was accompanied by a gift.

I’m reminded of the dock leaves that grow alongside nettles – pay attention and you will find the cure for the sting close at hand.

That same day the Universe provided a cure – the first of many women who would step in and mother me over the course of my lifetime.

 

My hospital discharge was to come 5 days later, before my mother had become fully conscious.

Infants in those days could not be sent home without a name and this presented a problem.

My father was insistent I be called Margaret Mary after his mother. My maternal grandmother asserted rank and demanded Concettina – which, beyond the decidedly ethnic – in her dialect, was not as lovely sounding as it might appear.

Enter a woman whose name, ironically, I never knew.

She was a nurse, described to me often as a God-fearing Southern Baptist woman recently arrived in New York City from somewhere in the Deep South. She bore a faith-based authority and strength of character that stood her in good stead when dealing with my fierce, 6’5″ Irish father.

She sat with my mother through her intermittent periods of consciousness insisting that she name me. My mother – quite sure she was dying had little interest in entering the fray. She finally relented saying – “Think of the first woman’s name you can think of”.

It was a simple as that – she gave me the first woman’s name. She used my mother’s name in the middle – and that rescue comes to mind whenever someone points out that my initials spell my name.

The power in that name is that it distinguishes me from the needs and wants, expectations and desires of what went on to devolve into a very toxic family. It also bonded me to the woman who bore me – in spite of the wounds that kept us unavailable to each other in life.

I have also learned in the telling and retelling of that story, that sometimes the Divine enters the world in the guise of strangers. Others like her followed – people whose acts of kindness shaped my life and my orientation to the world. I expect it was that first intervention which allowed me to be open to her successors when they appeared.

At age three and a half – long before nursery schools existed – a paediatrician, Mary Pfaff – made it possible for me to enter a convent kindergarten. In those pre-Vatican II days, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary were addressed as “Mother”. Mother Catherine – was precisely that for the 9 months of the year I was in her care and through the letters she wrote me in the summertime.

By six, my mother’s best friend’s parents – Rose and Abe Goldstein entered my world – becoming significant in the years after I left the safe confines of Marymount and lived – just a few blocks from them – in Manhattan.

At 13 it was a nurse – at 15 an Aunt who was reintroduced to my life. At 25 no more unlikely an advocate than my father’s first wife, the mother of my two half-sisters who appeared to fill a void at the time of his death. At 27 I met my dearest friend who mothered me through the early days of my marriage and my first pregnancy – arriving at the hospital for the birth of my eldest and triggering a moment of panic when the nurse announced that “my mother” had arrived. The ‘real’ one as it turned out.

And then there was Alice – another God-fearing Southern Baptist woman transplanted from the Deep South. God may not have promised us tomorrow, as she often reminded me – but she witnessed that what we need is delivered if we’re willing to accept it, from unexpected and even unlikely people.

She and a tribe of other mothers helped to rear my children. They shared their wisdom and their experience of having been well-mothered – they modelled and taught what they knew and I did not.

The purpose of this introduction is not to tell you about them – but to ask you to imagine who you might be or what you might bring into the life of another, especially a child – if only for a moment.

None of these people was ever-present. The total time spent with some would hardly amount to a day or with others, a week – but when I stop to consider their impact on the quality of my life and the chances for my future – especially as compared to my brother’s experience – each in their way was life-saving, life-giving and life-affirming.

Each in their way sustained me.

We don’t have to aspire to “be the change you want to see in the world”.

We can easily be the change someone needs in their life today. And that may amount to only a smile or a kind word – something we can all afford.

Special thanks to Sally Murphy for her recent presentation – at her Re-Stór event with Shane Breslin. She inspired the writing of this part of my story – for which I’d never quite had all the words.




Why Write? “…it is better to speak”

Audre Lorde’s answer to “Why write?” is summed up beautifully by her story about taking the name Gamba Adisa, which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known” in an African naming ceremony.

 What I leave behind has a life of its own…I’ve said this about poetry; I’ve said it about children. Well, in a sense I’m saying it about the very artifact of who I have been…

I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there.

A writer’s origin

She came into herself early, adopting a modified spelling of Audrey for “the symmetry” of it. She confidently dismissed discouragement in High School.

I learned about sonnets by reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s love sonnets and loving them and deciding I was going to try. I learned to write love poems by reading poems I never understood but the words would get me high…I was editor of my high school magazine and I wrote a poem about love. And the student advisor, the faculty advisor said it was a bad sonnet. And I really knew that it was a good one. But I knew that she didn’t like it because of the things that I said in it. So I sent if off to Seventeen magazine and they bought it. And I made more money from that one poem than I made for the next ten years.

In later life she described herself: Audre Lorde was a black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.

Artifacts as a call to action

I came to know her work through “The Cancer Journals” required reading for my daughters in high school.
At that time this is what most resonated with me:

…when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak

Perhaps not consciously – but I internalized – “So it is better to speak”.

And I credit that quote – and this poem – this artifact of her life with inspiring a vastly different future than I’d imagined.

A Litany for Survival 

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

A Litany for Survival is also the name of a documentary on her life and work. You can hear much of what is quoted above in her own voice.

For more on “Why Write” join our ongoing discussion on writing for life via the Empowering Change Mighty Network or view the second in this ongoing series right here.




The Irish Language

My relationship with the Irish language has evolved over the half dozen years I have been here.

It’s doubtful I’ll learn to speak it, I’ve little facility with language, but what I’ve learned about it has certainly informed my understanding of the people of this island.

Three people opened the door to that understanding.

Carol Conway, Freelance Catalyst, facilitator and youth leadership trainer was the first. I’d no idea that she “had Irish”. She’d studied it for the love of the language.

She held my frustration with the use of it – often politically on the border – as a weapon designed to divide an audience into “them vs us”.

“Eve, you won’t understand the Irish people until you’ve studied the Irish language .”

She got my attention with two relevant aspects of the language:

  • The absence of the possessive to have. I don’t have a coat. It’s the coat on me or the coat beside me.
  • Tenses are constructed differently. We haven’t had a conversation – the absence of a “past perfect” means we’re “after having a conversation” and after living here, one learns to ask, is anything really in the past?

The net effect informs our use of English – and I’ve heard it posited – makes us the storytellers we are.

Linda Ervine, is a Belfast teacher and an Irish Language evangelist. She sees merit in teaching the “Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language” going so far as to suggest that in refusing to become familiar with it we deny the connection of the language to the culture of Ulster.

Beyond opening my eyes to the inclusive nature of the language she opened the door to tolerance. In delivering “The Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language” as a talk at the 2012 PUP Conference she even addressed my intolerance of what I once thought was a Northern Irish ignorance of grammar. It’s not! *

This abstract is from the Slugger O’Toole blog on the event.

Linda Ervine spoke about the “hidden history of Protestants and the Irish language”. In what was probably the best delivered session, she explained how she had been filling out the recent census online when she looked back at the 1911 census and discovered that her husband’s relatives had lived in East Belfast and spoke both Irish and English. Yet their signatures were listed on the Ulster Covenant. Linda deduced that their knowledge of Irish wasn’t linked to their politics…

She quoted Douglas Hyde, son of a Church of Ireland minister, first president of Ireland and founder of the Gaelic League in 1893, an organisation set up to preserve the Irish language. In 1905 he said:

The Irish language, thank God, is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist.

 Linda went on to illustrate how Irish is behind many place names, and words and phrasing we use in everyday vernacular. She also pointed to the Red Hand Commando’s motto which is in Irish! During the coffee break, several delegates signed up for Irish language classes at East Belfast Mission!

She concluded that language was neutral, only a tool to communicate.

She drove home Carol’s point about the structure of the language and what we have carried over into English. Things she used to correct about her Belfast students’ grammar were actually correct in Irish. This among people who are many generations removed from Irish speakers.

She is “Beating swords into plowshares” in Belfast.

And lastly, a cultural and evolutionary observation which bears out the message of both women:

Anthony McCann has proposed imagining an Irish cultural equivalent to “Ubuntu

Garaiocht: An Irish Value for an Energised Ireland

A linguist, musician and  a coach he reflects on Garaiocht as a deeply hopeful value which allows an understanding of the possibility of potential and an openness to a deeply hopeful future.

The link will take you to a brief video describing it in greater depth. In short- imagine the folks of this island – at our convivial best, in good company with a pot of tea and the time to express ourselves in stories. This concept of Garaiocht embodies:

1. Nearness
2. Hereness
3. Withness
4. Helpfulness
5. Conviviality
6. Continuous Action (verbal noun – a noun that acts as a verb) Can’t have an absence of action in the notion of Garaiocht
7. Mutual support/interdependence
8. Resourcefulness/Entrepreneurship the ability to make the best use of the resources that you have (opportunities for helpfulness)
9. Response-ability appropriate to context. Leadership quality with its core values at the heart of Irish life This notion of leadership which is not authoritative – not reliant on command and control.

In “sourcing” the wisdom from this ancient language – he reiterates Douglas Hyde’s point, Linda Erivine’s point and Carol Conway’s widsom when she told me:

You won’t understand the Irish people until you’ve studied the Irish language

We can better understand each other with the gift of a language that predates our generations of conflict. A language that is neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is neither a Unionist nor a Separatist.

Thank you Carol, Linda and Anthony – for opening the door to knowing what I might never have otherwise known!

For more on this subject: “Beating Swords into Ploughshares”

 

 

* at 16:55 Linda Ervine discusses the structure of the language. To “twig on” begin a bit before that for a fascinating overview of the words that have entered the Northern Irish vernacular directly from the Irish.

Here’s a  2022 update on Linda Ervine’s work




Happy Celebration of Light!

The solstice has passed, we’ve had our shortest day, and I look forward to longer daylight hours. Clearly our cultural and religious traditions support that desire.

In a 2010 post “Happy Chanukah, Ireland”, I reflected on the tradition of remembering the re-dedication of the temple defiled by the Greeks.

Celebrations.Light

“The miracle celebrated is one of faith and light. The oil found there was only enough to light the ritual lamp for one day; it lasted eight. We recall this by lighting candles every night for eight nights. On the first night one, the second two and so on.

The holiday, at this darkest time of the year reminds us that with faith and a commitment to re-dedication every night brings an ever-increasing amount of light.”

No Christmas celebration is complete without festive lights, be they candles in sanctuaries, in crowns on the heads of young girls or bedecking a tree.

The Christmas story of the birth of the “light of the world” complete with wise men following a star, was likely imported to the solstice season. Whenever the actual birth, I am intrigued by this “Winter Solstice described in layman’s terms“:

“From the summer solstice to the winter solstice the days become shorter and colder and from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears to move south and get smaller and more scarce.

The shortening of the days and the expiration of the crops symbolized the process of death to the ancients. It was the death of the sun.

And by December 22 the sun’s demise was fully realized for the sun having moved south continually for 6 months makes it to it’s lowest point in the sky.

Here a curious thing occurs. The sun stops moving south.

At least perceiveably for three days. And during this three day pause the sun resides in the vicinity of the Southern Cross (or Crux) constellation and after December 25, the sun moves one degree , this time North – foreshadowing longer days, warmth and spring.

And thus it was said, the sun died on the cross, was dead for three days only to be resurrected or born again.”

I love the imagery. Third day of darkness since the Solstice – December 25th as the archetypal birth of the year!

Whatever your faith tradition, even absent one – these are universal stories.

The ancients coped with the darkness by celebrating with light. These traditions evolved in the myths created to explain what was fearsome, awe inspiring and confusing in the natural world.

Whether that light is literal or figurative, I’d encourage all of us to look within and not let the light go out.

Peter, Paul & Mary brought their passion for storytelling, peace and folk music together in “Light One Candle”.

When the breadth of suffering in the world overwhelms, we can remember that change comes, as with the return of the daylight, one degree at a time.

Consciously living in the light honoring “the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand”, seeking “the strength that we need to never become our own foe” and keeping faith with “those who are suffering pain we learned so long ago”, we can collectively bring an ever-increasing amount of light to the world.




Homecoming

We-Must-Be-Willing-Jpseph-CampbellYesterday I returned home, from home. Contradiction?  Perhaps not. Ireland is my home now, then again, so are the places where my children live. Sometimes that is Philadelphia and it’s suburbs where they were reared, sometimes New Orleans where two now live.

Home. It conjures images of holidays spent with family and friends, safe places, warmth and familiar comfort. Idealised images. Hardly the stuff of everyone’s reality. Yet we are, as a culture, obsessed with it. We outfit and decorate our nests with the care of young brides planning “their day” for years. We obsess about making the best choices. We choose houses and neighbourhoods for school districts, sometimes long before children are born. We make largely emotional decisions about the most significant investment of our lives. It is little wonder that we hold fast to the illusion of the “ideal” and deny what is often the “real”.

So in addition to Joseph’s Campbell’s wisdom, I will add Geneen Roth’s. The author of Women, Food & God reflects on what happens when you separate yourself from your story. I paraphrase here – but her message is that you are not your story; it is merely a familiar version of yourself. You without your story will come to prefer simplicity to complication, freedom over familiarity. You without a voice rehashing that version of you to yourself will begin to embrace that you are worth your own time, you will believe that longed for possibilities are out there. That you deserve a life without a “story”.

I’d already come to that conclusion (but still lose sight of it from time to time) when I made this home for myself in Ireland.

Having embraced that wisdom again, I am happy.  I am finally home. Home after a lifetime of longing for the childhood home lost to me at nine; after inventing and reinventing facsimiles of it; after telling myself I was homeless once and would likely be again. By letting go of that story, I finally know that I carry with me the only sense of home I will ever need.

Apparently it was waiting for me to own it, all along.*

 

*An earlier version of this post originally appeared as Gratitude for…Homecomings, August 20, 2010




On Storytelling & Learning to Repair the World

imagesA few years ago when a colleague’s grandson was only 6, he came home from school having been taught the biblical story of Joseph.

“Daddy, why did his brothers throw Joseph in the pit?”

“Because Joseph was his father’s favorite. Jacob didn’t treat the other brothers as nicely.”

The wee one went off. A good while later he was back, having seriously contemplated the matter at hand.

“They should have thrown Joseph’s father in the pit!”

That, dear readers, is precisely why we tell stories.

Whatever your relationship to, belief about, or even disdain for The Bible, the Book of Genesis is a good read. A psychology professor of mine once opened a class in group dynamics with:

“…and if you’re working with families don’t underestimate the complexity. Everything you need to know about that can be found in Genesis”

In an earlier post on Storytelling, I explored the archetypal nature of stories. Simply put, it’s the way in which groups, families, or societies behave, as demonstrated in common threads, patterns, or characters that appear across most human behavior.

Changing behavior, becoming resilient, and recovery of any kind all rely on our ability to observe our behavior, elucidate patterns, and reflect on their origin.

So whether it’s about a personal recovery – or a societal one, the lessons apply.

The six-year-old who has genuinely considered the parenting lesson at the core of the Joseph story will parent differently in later life. There is little doubt his own father’s parenting is at the core of his power to observe, reflect, and conclude.

There is application also to our wider human family and more specifically to us here on the island of Ireland. I would encourage us to consider the divisiveness of our “Green” & “Orange” narratives in the context of families, human behavior, and Genesis.

This Joseph story doesn’t begin with Jacob’s poor parenting. Jacob’s own father rejected him for his twin. His own favoritism of Joseph was born of his grief at Rachael’s death. Joseph was a motherless child, the first-born of his favored wife.

How much of this story is owed to that accident of birth? To the times in which he was born?

And if you never knew the historical context or the family background does it inform your understanding of Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers? Leave you more compassionate, perhaps?’

A “family conflict of legendary proportions” is how it is further discussed by David Lewicki, Our Dysfunctional Families (Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28), an excellent read.

3cc4bee70e877c0133a073f41c368d1aI would argue that were we to explore the Irish historical narrative in this way, and other nation’s stories, we would come to a more compassionate understanding of ourselves and each other.

For more on changing narratives in Ireland see On Changing Conversations in Ireland or listen to a range of speakers from the Changing Conversations series at the XChangeNI Summer School 2014.

 

 

 

 




Changing the Conversation, the Disservice of Silence

Albert Samuel Anker "Grandad tells a story"Oh, we Irish are grand storytellers. Poor though, in frank and open conversation. Worse at speaking truth to power. Perhaps the former comes naturally. For the latter, skills are required.

We teach polite, we teach deference, we don’t teach assertiveness or skills to influence¹. That is a very specific skill set.

We lack a belief that we are entitled to be heard. Not to always get our way, rather to be respected when we assert our needs, our insights, and ourselves.

How else can one explain the dearth of leadership across public institutions in two governments in Ireland? We whinge to our friends, but we are silent in public.²

Imagine finding your voice as a way to take back your power. And to empower others.

I tell this story often, to illustrate the way in which we silence ourselves.

The butcher enquired of my special request. “What would you be wanting that for?”

I’d forgotten that even a paying customer’s whims are not always humored in Irish villages.

“My children are coming and it’s their favorite.” His politely stern retort: “Well, your children will just have to learn to eat Irish”

The child in me recognized the tone. Educated by an Irish order of nuns in an academy with a mission to transform the daughters of immigrants into ladies worthy of the upper classes their parents aspired to, I knew to smile, nod and change my order.

It would have been an automatic response before a thity year journey of finding my voice. My response was polite but fierce.

“Well, I will learn to eat Irish, my guests will learn to eat Irish, but my children will get what they have always gotten. I’ll be in tomorrow at two to pick it up.”

I did and it was lovely.

Apart from my reputation as that “cheeky American woman”, all goes well enough. I shop there and enjoy conversations about children and grandchildren and have fine meals of my choosing.

Two friends related how they handle the same shop. “The Irish way” I’m told.

One, an American expat said “Eve, you will just have to learn to act Irish”. The other, a woman with a family of six, regularly drives 18 miles round trip to shop elsewhere because “he always tries to talk me out of what I want”.

Surely these responses serve no one.

Failure to assert what we need, and in this case, what we are entitled to as paying customers, does a disservice to all.

I don’t get what I want, the environment suffers the insult of extra emissions and the butcher misses an opportunity to serve, to please and as in his case with me, excel.

It belies a disrespect of both the merchant and us. It is in his best interest to sell the meat already cut in the case. It is simply incumbent upon me to insist on what I want. That is a transaction of equals.

Working with a group of clients I used this example to explore the nuances of language, practice assertiveness and exercise our voices in a new way.

Months after the long forgotten session I ran into one.

“I have a butcher story for you. I remembered what you said about asking for what we don’t see, or sending a dish back.”

In the past out of “politeness” she wouldn’t have asked for something she didn’t see.

“So I asked for rhubarb.” He didn’t carry it, he didn’t know why, but he said “The farmer up the road has a field of it. Leave it with me and come back tomorrow.”

A few hours later a lad from the store delivered a bunch to her house. Now, in season he carries it.

Her assertion provided an opportunity for him to be generous, prove his skill as a wise merchant, and my point.

A fine man, willing to please, he is rarely given the opportunity. In our deference we don’t empower each other to do better.

Power and influence are there for the taking. It requires no force, just practice. In fact you may find that the more softly you speak the harder they listen…and pay attention.

¹The Elements of Influence

ElementsOfPower

The Elements of Power

²Irish voter turnout, 2014

For more on the painting – The Storyteller: http://robvanderwildttellerstalespictured.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/this-man-is-a-real-storyteller-and-so-is-his-painter/

 

 




Peace to Prosperity – the Space In Between

I’m passionate about celebrating the privilege of living in a place so beautiful that C.S. Lewis modelled Narnia on it. Carlingford Lough & the Mournes is where he spent childhood summers with his grandmother.

I’m passionate about working to teach entrepreneurship, creating jobs and bringing investment.

The granddaughter of a reluctant emigrant, I returned a century after he left to find work. The children of this island are leaving again. We are exporting 1000 a week. 54,000 left in a 12-month period between 2010 & 11.

Sadder still is we are now exporting our first generation reared in peace. We must focus on exporting their intellectual property, not our children.

I am passionate that to do this, to create jobs and have our children take their place on the world stage, they must find their voices.

Whatever does that mean?

Tolstoy suggested that everyone wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change themselves.

If we are going to compete in a global economy, we are going to have to sell our location, our gifts, our talents and ourselves.  We just aren’t very good at that.

Reared with generations of conflict our parents and we were taught to “not get above our station”, not “raise our heads above the parapet” and for some of us, to be unfailingly polite. Fitting in, sometimes invisibly, mattered, so from a young age we were silenced.

How? Well, in my Irish American family, with shame and humour. Oh, the “reared in conflict” way of being crossed the pond.

Delighted to be meeting my dad and brother for dinner, I confidently strode in with a new, 1975 permanent – the rage of the day. Was I greeted with: “you look nice”? No. “Hi, love, how are you”? No. A hug? No.

My father, his loving blue eyes, glaring over the rim of his glasses said:

“My, don’t you look like the ass-end of a poodle”.

Every time I saw him for the next six months, I blew that perm out straight. Never wore a perm curly again!

Fifteen years later, while studying counselling, I read that the Irish discipline their children by chastising with shame and humour. Definitely. I skipped to the Italians, my mother’s tribe, they didn’t. Then I read about my husband’s ethnic background. They didn’t chastise at all – they lavished praise and encouragement.

Oops! An “aha” moment: for the better part of two decades, when he’d done something that annoyed me, I made a joke.  He thought I was amused. He continued the behaviour. He never got the “cease and desist” message.

I took the lesson on board in my personal relationships, framed my communications with clients and coworkers more carefully and never gave it a conscious thought again.

Until I moved to Ireland.

I walked into a village butcher shop, asked for brisket and went on to describe it.

“What would you be wantin that for?”
“My children are coming and it’s their favourite meal.”
“Well, your children will just have to learn to eat Irish.”
(momentary stunned silence)
“Well, I will learn to ‘eat Irish’, my guests will learn to ‘eat Irish’, but my children will have what they have always had, I’ll be in tomorrow at 2 to pick it up.”

On leaving I had two reactions. Initially, simply dumbfounded; then shocked by my response. In spite of believing that I no longer defaulted to adaptive responses learned in childhood, I’d been close to changing my order.

Had it been for myself or for a guest, I likely would have. But no, only because it was for my children!

 They have been the motivation for the most significant life changes I have made.

In my office in Newry, I observed someone a bit younger than I tense up. Stiff shoulders, straight back – but why.  Weeks later I observed it again.  A bit after that I asked what was happening?

 “Didn’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The helicopter”

No, these American reared ears don’t hear – or listen for helicopters. It means only a traffic report, an air ambulance, a visiting dignitary ferried from an airport.

Not so for my border colleagues and neighbours. The sound of a helicopter catapults them back in time. They know in their bones this sound means danger.

My American childhood, unencumbered by conflict, allows me to meet and greet a police officer – feeling secure and safe. No so for my border and Northern Ireland reared neighbours. They are reactive, still carrying the fear and/or the rage of past encounters.

These adaptive responses – survival skills – served them well during the troubles. They no longer do. Now it is problematic; as our reactive responses do not serve our children well.

Do I want them to “get over it”? Absolutely not!

The pain and trauma of generations of conflict needs to be honoured. It needs to be talked about. Not having had an unencumbered childhood is a loss. We must individually and collectively grieve it.

For our children, though, we can change our behaviours. Why?

Because, in our automatic, adaptive responses we transmit to our children our fear and our anger.

Because in our effort to care for them we rear them as we were reared.

“Don’t put your head above the parapet” (Don’t take chances)
“Don’t be getting above your station” (Quiet that ambition)
“You won’t be bringing shame on this house” (Don’t tell the truth)

To take their place on the world stage our children need to “put their heads above the parapet”; To lead in a global economy they need to “get above their station” and to model to the world how a post-conflict society comes to thrive – they need to tell the world the truth:

That it was hard; their parents, grandparents and great, great grandparents were wounded and scarred. Some neither forgave nor forgot – but in service to the future, they made peace, spoke civilly and kindly to each other so that in the space between peace and prosperity our children could throw off our survival skills and adopt their own ‘thrival’ skills.

Will it work?

Back to the butcher. I’d related the story in a group I was running – as an example of assertion vs. cheekiness. I ran into a woman 6 months after it ended.

“I have a ‘butcher’ story for you”

“You, do?”

“I remembered that you said speaking up, asking for something you don’t see or sending something back presented an opportunity for a shopkeeper to serve.

So I asked: Do you have any rhubarb?

“No, and I don’t know why. John up the road has a field of it. Leave it with me and come back tomorrow.”

A few hours later there was a knock on her door. The lad from the butcher’s, holding a bunch of rhubarb.
“He said to give you this.”

We can throw off the adaptive behaviours, and model new and assertive ones better suited to the 21st century.

One day, one transaction, one kind and civil conversation at a time. For our children.

I know it will take time, but I come from a tradition that says restoring the earth and repairing the world is our obligation – “Ours is not to complete the task, but neither may we desist from the labour”. (Ethics of the Fathers)

I am proud to live among the people who made the peace. I am reminded too of an Irish expression I didn’t understand when I arrived in a hurry to do everything. I appreciate it better now:

“We’ll get there.”

Thank you to Frank Kernohan from Corporate Image for a video of the talk.




Storytelling…Why We Tell the Stories

A Belfast filmmaker recently described the experience of growing up next door to a police station. Awakened frequently, the family regularly evacuated often returning to blown-out windows, collateral damage in Northern Ireland’s decades-long Troubles.

Did he realize that 25 years later the irony we’d be struck by in his remembered reference that building next door as “the playstation”?

My work centers on helping folks get “unstuck”. I support the journey through career changes and business start-ups.

The method is grounded in their stories.

We come to appreciate that one is not “Sean the accountant” or “Susan the mother of 4”. In their telling and retelling I come to know them as they begin to understand themselves. They describe where they came from, I reflect their stories back. They see themselves in a different light – and often start moving in a new direction.

Not one I choose for them, but one illuminated by the light of their own story-telling process.

Simply put storytelling is the way in which we share the full measure of our experiences.

Stories are delivered not entirely in the words.

And therein lies the magic.

An adolescent’s yarns spun about where they were and what they did reveals important truths, if only in what was left unsaid.

Believe them or not – the onus is on the listener to ‘take what you like and leave the rest’. Even carefully chosen words unconsciously deliver a message at that moment, and a richer one later when compared to other tellings.

Sometimes hard truths and experiences are so painful that while we initially take in the whole story, we describe only part of it to ourselves and others; it is how we are able to live with the pain.

Later, over many years in the retelling, we process the experience in safer times and places. Ultimately, we come to terms with the whole truth, by observing the edits and enhancements over time. The fear we experienced at the moment begins to dissipate.

Remaining silent keeps the experience as raw and the fear alive.

When we devalue storytelling we lose a way to communicate, even with ourselves. And to heal.

How many of us have told the story of a difficult experience many times?

In each retelling, we let go of a piece of shock, pain, or horror and come to terms with it. The episode remains planted in the past, but we continue to grow and learn new ways to cope. In retelling or reframing an experience, we apply new coping skills to the remembered event.

That Belfast filmmaker now tells stories for a living; more importantly, he has come to understand the grievous long term impact of having believed a life of midnight evacuations and shattered windows was normal.

He now knows it was not. It was traumatic.

The message to us that day – and the ‘why’ of telling his story, was to remind us that:

Fear is the Enemy of Creativity; Fear is the Thief of Dreams