Tough Conversations

Solutions Through Compassionate Communication.

Trading Places

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Changing roles is an inescapable byproduct of time. From your baby’s first step, to his first day at school — from the day she gets her driver’s license until her college dorm is in your rear view mirror — your role is changing. And your relationship evolves from all-knowing protector and teacher to “out to lunch” parent of a teen, to bankroller with a good idea once in a while, surprising your nearly grown college freshman.

Then, for several decades, the parent-child relationship becomes adult-adult. This period can be very pleasant. Like good friends, you help each other in a pinch, but live your own lives and make your own decisions.

Role reversal begins when the child assumes control of some aspect of a parent’s life. It may begin at the parent’s request and be relatively minor, such as taking care of Dad’s car maintenance, or driving Mom to medical appointments, doing income taxes or balancing checkbooks. This control shift is limited and non-intrusive. Inconvenience to the child is minimal and the parent is grateful. [Read more…]

Finding the Future in a Circle (Part II)

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[My last post reflected on my training in Reintegration Support Circles. This post continues to track my experience, especially in role-plays where we practiced how to conduct a Reintegration Support Circle with a returning citizen, his or her family members, and perhaps a clergy person or a community member.]

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After reaching consensus on Guidelines, a Keeper asked us to write on 3 x 5 cards a Value that we wanted to bring to the Circle and explain why the value is important to us. According to author Kay Pranis*, values “help people remember who they want to be in their best selves before they want to work together.”* I wrote “generosity.” Others wrote honesty, compassion, commitment, and authenticity. And so on.

The process deepened my engagement. I knew I was on to something very special and different from my experience mediating.

Next came Story Telling: Beginning with the Keeper, participants shared stories about a life experience. Examples ranged from what it was like to return home after a long absence to a how we felt when someone gave us unexpected but needed support.

Imagine how this process was intensifying: From identifying ourselves and sharing our feelings about taking part in the circle, to our relationship with the RC, to suggesting guidelines and sharing values, to telling a personal story, I felt an ever deeper connection with those in my circle. (And this was only a role-play!)

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Finding the Future in a Circle (Part I)

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Since my January 4th blog “Surmounting Tough Conversations After Incarceration,” I took a 30-hour training in Reintegration Support Circles. Support Circles are a means to resolve issues without shame or blame or winners or losers. Reintegration Support Circles seek, among other things, to re-unite Returning Citizens (RCs)* with family members, friends, clergy, social workers, and maybe other supportive members of the RC’s community (usually 6 or 7 persons) in a structured and circular setting. The aim is to generate a shared, positive vision for a Returning Citizen.

Circles are one of many processes associated with Restorative Justice, a conflict resolution process, philosophy, and set of practices, that is fast finding its way into schools, juvenile justice systems, and even adult criminal proceedings. Circles have their source among the ways of Indigenous peoples in North America, New Zealand, South Pacific, Africa, Alaska, and elsewhere.

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My Big “Reveal”

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Revealing that I’m eighty-years-old makes this one of the toughest blogs I’ve written. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Just as one’s sexual identity or race or economic status shouldn’t evoke raised eyebrows or muffled comments, neither should one’s age.

For years I dreaded mentioning my age. If someone found out, I’d hear one of those inevitable comments: “I had no idea. I thought you were 65 or 70.” Or, “I hope I look like you when I’m your age.” Or, “You look REMARKABLE (hate that word) for your age.” So-called compliments may sound positive, but they’re negative because they betray an ageist stereotype in the speaker’s mind.

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Palliative Care: Pros and Cons

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When my father was 93, riddled with cancer, chronically nauseated, and living on opioids he suffered a major heart attack. In the hospital, doctors determined his death was imminent but didn’t tell him. Dad denied his condition was serious. He was furious to be given a room on the heart ward instead of the ICU.

Dad had signed a DNR (do not resuscitate) and disclaimed extraordinary measures. But he changed his mind when push came to shove. He raged for two days until, at my request, a female resident physician sat beside Dad’s bed and gently told him the truth. Then he agreed to accept palliative (comfort) care. He needed to hear his time was short and he could control how it was spent.

Palliative care (with or without Hospice) can be received in a hospital, a nursing home, or the patient’s own home. Medical interventions are out; comfort and pain relief are in. Surprisingly, comfort care often extends the patient’s life beyond expectations, perhaps because it allows him to set his own priorities as the end approaches. He might continue to attend church, meet a new grandchild, participate in a daughter’s wedding, or celebrate a family holiday. [Read more…]

The President’s Notes

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On February 21, President Donald Trump met with teenage survivors of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The shooter with an assault rifle had murdered 17 students and teachers. The group included parents of victims of this and other school massacres.

Trump said he was there to listen.

The delegation had come to talk about the death of their children and schoolmates at the hands of a disturbed young man on the other end of an assault rifle. Trump is a strong supporter of the right to carry guns, so I imagine this could not have been easy for him. Compassion is not his comfort zone; neither is vulnerability. But he allowed the meeting to be filmed, not knowing what his visitors would say. He was willing – and prepared – to listen to some hard messages from people who were suffering.

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What Makes a Conversation “Tough”?

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It takes guts to start – and sometimes to stick with – a tough conversation. We’re afraid of triggering anger or hurt. Or being misunderstood. But some conversations are necessary.

Let’s say I’m wondering whether Mom and Dad have a will. And who’s the Executor? And who is getting what? Here’s the parade of horribles that might be going through my head:

My parents might think I want them to hurry up and die.

They might think I’m greedy.

They might think I’m trying to curry favor over my sister to get more than she does.

They might think I’m trying to trying to control what they do with their own money, as if it’s already mine.

They might think it’s none of my business. And say so!

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Surmounting Tough Conversations After Incarceration

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For several years, our Tough Conversations blogs have mainly focused on families and aging. Sig’s current blog explores a different but equally challenging area of family interaction: namely, how families and returning citizens can prepare to reunite after the latter’s release from incarceration.

One of the toughest conversations I can think of is that of a returning citizen (ex-offender) with his or her family members prior to or after release from prison. After years of incarceration, how does an individual re-unite with his or her family?

Maintaining family contact while incarcerated is challenging. It’s said that when a person enters prison, the entire family (figuratively) accompanies him or her. Imagine a Dad not seeing his kids grow up for 15 years. Or a Mom, sentenced to 10 years behind bars and separated from her baby before its first birthday. This happens constantly.

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Grief and a Holiday Letter

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In October of 2015 the man who had been my husband for fifty-six years died. December found me still numb with grief. As my children and I struggled to navigate the season without a compass, we were feeling a lot of things. Joy wasn’t one of them. If it was there, it was buried under a thick layer of pain.

It was time to write the annual holiday letter Jerry and I had always written together, but I felt lost.

Should I just skip it and leave friends wondering whether they’d been abandoned? Should I spill tears all over the page? Should I put on a happy face to hide the pain?

None of those choices seemed right.

Then I reflected on what had followed Jerry’s death. I realized that this was a season when grief, like the Wise Men, came bearing gifts. [Read more…]

Winter Love – And Worry

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Dianne Rehm is the recently retired host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” a talk show from Washington, DC. John Hagedorn is a retired Lutheran minister. The Washington Post dubbed their Washington Cathedral wedding on October 14, 2017 ”a sign of hope.”

The gorgeous, adoring couple exchanged traditional vows surrounded by friends. What drew attention was the ages of the bride and groom. She’s 81, he’s 78. The Rev. Canon Jerry Anderson said they are the oldest couple he has married in 49 years.

The news made me smile. In many respects, their story is my story. Last April I married an old friend, Jim Le Gette. A few months after the wedding, we both turned eighty.

Like Dianne and John, Jim and I knew each other for many years (thirty in their case, fifty in ours). Like them, we’d lost mates after long, happy marriages. Like theirs, our friends were delighted but surprised.

It’s not unusual for older people to get together, even to live together. But it is rare for them to marry. Why? One reason may be more about their children than themselves.

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