Kissing The Mirror: Raising Humanity in the Twenty-first Century.

by Mama Marlaine

Overview

Wisdom of a Western Mom

Prepare for everything you ever thought about parenting to be flipped on its head. Mama Marlaine advocates:

Retiring “Children Learn What They Live.”

Retiring Academic Principles of Right/Wrong,

Perfect/Imperfect

Retiring the term “Therapy” for education in interpersonal communication.

Retiring Normal

Retiring the view of “Parents Raising Humanity.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452551067
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	07/24/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	140
File size:	186 KB

Read an Excerpt

Kissing The Mirror

Raising Humanity in the Twenty-first Century

---

By Mama Marlaine

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Mama Marlaine
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5107-4

---

Chapter One

The Assignments

When you were born, you arrived hard-wired with two assignments. Nothing you have ever been – or will be – asked to do is of greater significance than these assignments. Consciously or unconsciously, you have worked on these assignments every day of your life, every hour, every minute – you work on them even when you are sleeping. You will continue to work on them every day until you die.

Your proficiency with these assignments determines your health and well being, the quality of your relationships with colleagues, friends, and family, the quality of your relationship with yourself, and whether or not you leave this planet a better place than when you arrived.

Do you know what they are?

You are not alone. Every individual has the same two assignments. Up until now, you may have underestimated the significance of these assignments. You may have undervalued the benefits of education and guidance from qualified teachers. You may even have been told you were ill-equipped for these assignments – or destined for failure. In private moments, you might believe there is something permanently wrong with you.

This is not true. You were born exceedingly well-equipped to excel with the two assignments you were given and, with proper education and encouragement, you will. Central to success is being aware of the assignments and having able teachers. Central to success is a willingness to be humble and welcome a picture of yourself larger than the one you presently envision.

Welcome to The Mandatory Curriculum

The First Assignment ...

The first assignment in The Mandatory Curriculum is to live. That sounds simple enough doesn't it, a bit like permitting your heart to beat? Please pause a moment, however, and look at this assignment more closely. What does the low end of living, survival, entail? Who do you know that is surviving? What are their circumstances?

Now consider what the high end of living, thriving and living to your maximum potential, involves. Are you envisioning fancy cars, a mansion perhaps? Who do you know that is thriving? What are their circumstances? How do you define thriving?

On a sunny Seattle morning in March of 1992, I awoke to find my wrists and ankles bound in leather restraints and chained to a hospital bed. Ten months previously, I'd completed a Masters Degree program in Public Administration with a 4.0 GPA. Four weeks later, I gave birth to my second child – Alexa Marie – an exquisite, blue-eyed, auburn haired daughter.

As I tried recalling how I managed to end up thus confined, a nurse entered. "I cannot believe I left those scissors next to you!" She exclaimed as she picked up said hardware and rapidly left the room. "What exactly did she think I was going to do?" I wondered, "Pick up the scissors with my mouth and stab myself to death?" "Yes," my conscience answered, "that is precisely what she thought. What did you do, dear Marlaine, to inspire such thinking in another human being?"

The first thing I remembered was a conversation with my youngest sister BJ. We were seated on the back porch of my brother's home. BJ was smoking and – although I was a non-smoker – I asked her for one too. After inhaling deeply, I told her I wanted my ashes spread over the Cascade Mountains.

Just one hour earlier, I'd laid Alexa in her crib for her afternoon nap and attempted to sleep also. BJ was visiting our sister Renee with my four-year-old daughter, Ari, and wasn't due home for two hours. My husband of six years and I had recently separated and we were living on opposite coastlines. Although I left him – desperate to shield our daughters from our ongoing arguments – I was deeply distraught and hadn't slept or eaten properly in weeks.

My mother was greatly concerned and took me to a doctor. He diagnosed me as depressed and put me on anti-depressants. Underestimating the depth of my condition, however, he neglected to educate me fully on the journey one takes when recovering from depression. He failed to inform me it is normal for some patients to feel suicidal in the process of recovering from severe depression, and what to do if I did.

I once heard suicide described as anger turned inward. Although I now think there are a million reasons people attempt suicide, and that physical health factors in far more significantly than commonly acknowledged or appreciated, that definition describes my experience well. Unable to sleep, I got up from the bed. Before reaching the bedroom door, I detonated. Without any forethought or reservations, I angrily began slamming through every cabinet in the house, taking all the pills I could locate. I might as well have been a bomb exploding.

Afterwards, an abnormal calm settled in. I sat down on a chair at the dining room table fully prepared to welcome whatever came next. The thought of writing a note to loved ones didn't even enter my mind. Then the unanticipated happened – BJ returned home. Fortunately she was alone.

BJ was my youngest sister and what little conscious mind I retained demanded I prepare her for what was about to transpire – so I told her what I had done. With great cool and collectivity, she called paramedics. By the time they got me to the hospital and pumped my stomach, however, it was too late. So they flushed me with fluids and my family prayed for my survival.

Developed countries, and increasingly underdeveloped countries, place an exceedingly high value on academic education. The general logic is this; the higher an individual's education, the higher the level of employment they will procure; the higher their level of employment, the higher their standard of living; the higher their standard of living, the greater their potential for thriving. Consequently, millions of children around the world spend the majority of their most formative years being educated in academics.

Let's imagine you have a high paying job in a field of your preference, and ample money to enjoy a high standard of living, what other things will contribute to you thriving? What about your health, your relationships, your thoughts? The fact is, you might have a high paying job and earn a great deal of money but if you do not prioritize taking care of your health and your stress levels you may not thrive. You may die a premature death.

What type of education have you received to strengthen your physical and emotional health? Who were your teachers? Have you completed nutrition and fitness classes? Have you ever attempted to strengthen your mental fitness? Have you ever even thought about mental conditioning? Are you able to maintain a clear mind for five minutes? Does it matter?

The Second Assignment ...

The second assignment in The Mandatory Curriculum is to commune with others. This too sounds easy, right? Think for a moment what it means for you to be around others. How important is it? How important are relationships to you?

At the low end of communing with others we ignore, judge, abuse, torture, and kill one-another. Who do you know that is judging someone today? Who do you know that is killing someone? Why are they doing so? Who taught them how to get along with others? Who taught them communication and conflict resolution skills?

At the high end of communing with others we thrive personally and empower others to do the same. Who do you know that is thriving personally and empowering others? What skills enable them to do so? Was the way they learned those skills accidental or intentional, passive or proactive? Does it matter?

The phone in the hospital room rang jolting me back to the present moment. Despite my dire circumstances, I found it incredibly funny to have a phone ringing next to a bed where someone had their hands and feet bound. When the same nurse who'd chastised herself about the scissors re-entered and picked up the receiver – which in those days was still attached to a cord - then asked, "Would you like to speak to your sister?" I was simply grateful she didn't fear me strangling myself.

"Hello," I said, cradling the phone between cheek and shoulder. BJ took a long draw on her cigarette and exhaled before answering. "Thank God you didn't die," she finally said. "I forgot where you wanted those ashes spread."

The next day I was asked if I would like to spend a couple weeks in a mental hospital. Having failed at murdering myself, I decided to accept the invitation. Billy flew to Seattle and took our daughters back home with him to Pennsylvania. Ari returned to the pre-school she'd attended prior to me taking her to Seattle and Billy found a day sitter for Alexa.

A week into my stay in the hospital, I was delivered papers informing me that Billy was seeking custody of our daughters. I was also mandated to appear at a preliminary custody hearing in Philadelphia in five weeks. Billy and I had only recently moved to Pennsylvania from Virginia. We were still living in corporate housing when I left him. I had no friends or family there, no funds for a hotel, and I was prohibited from seeing our daughters until my court date.

Excruciating while it was being separated from my daughters, the singular positive was Billy had the opportunity to experience exactly what working full time and caring for two young daughters alone entailed. Despite doing his very best, Alexa lost four pounds and was diagnosed as "possible failure to thrive."

Weeks later, a subsequent daycare provider informed us that Alexa repeatedly chose to settle in her car seat rather than play around the room like a normal one year old. The sitter expressed concern that such behavior possibly meant the interim childcare giver Billy hired (after returning with the girls to Pennsylvania) had kept Alexa in her car seat for a large portion of the day. Regardless the reasons for her weight loss, the bottom line was this: I had not only failed at the assignment of thriving personally, I was failing miserably in my role of helping those most innocent and dependent upon me to thrive also.

Life Skills ...

The skills that enable people to survive and commune with others are appropriately called Life Skills. Life Skills include but are not limited to: Personal Care, Time Management, Organizational, Respect for Self and Others, Communication and Social Skills.

In contrast to academics, which children may or may not learn depending on geography, gender, and economics, acquisition of Life Skills is mandatory. Every individual, be they a world leader or a knife wielding gang member, learns and utilizes some measure of Life Skills. The only things optional about Life Skills development are your appreciation for their value, the time you dedicate to learning them, and the individuals you engage as instructors.

Consider for a moment the last thing that troubled you: Was it your weight or appearance? Difficulty communicating with a work colleague or family member? Physical or financial health? Time management or organizational skills? If your answer is yes, you were challenged by Life Skills. Now think about how you learned these skills. Who were your teachers?

Parents, daycare providers, and relatives are typically your first and most influential Life Skills educators. How you eat, stand, play with others, and solve problems all are learned, initially, from them. Where did they learn Life Skills? From a nutritional college, mediation clinic, or spiritual retreat? Not usually ... The bulk of their Life Skills were learned from their parents. If their parents stood tall, they stood tall; if their parents ate junk food, they ate junk food; if their parents screamed and yelled, they screamed and yelled. Ironically – despite an abundance of uniquely qualified educators – the Life Skills educational process more closely resembles genetic inheritance than academics.

A poem titled "Children Learn What They Live" is internationally famous. Its popularity among educators and the families they serve is tragic. Why do people around the world readily support children spending decades learning math, sports, and music from third party credentialed instructors, but accept children's education in Life Skills as being limited to parents' behavior? What price do we pay for this impoverished narrative for human development?

Immediate Opening: Most Important Job on Earth - Raising tomorrow's leaders! No prior education, training, or experience necessary.

If the first great irony in life is that the most important and widely shared job on earth – parenthood – has yet to merit any standard formal preparation, the second greatest irony is that we accept the Life Skills our parents teach us as if we were computer clones. Even if we hated the quality of Life Skills learned – barring some major personal crisis that requires us to examine their inferiority – we typically do very little to assess our abilities and continue our education as adults.

As a society we wholly condone formal adult training for everything from tattooing to mountain climbing. When it comes to the critical tasks of marriage and childrearing, however, the majority of people simply wing it. If difficulties arise family members attend "therapy."

Webster's defines therapy as "remedial treatment." Remedial comes from remedy, which means to "restore to health." Therapy, therefore, is a term that describes restoring someone to a state they were previously. If an athlete breaks their leg, they attend "therapy" to regain mobility. If someone suffers a stroke they attend "therapy" to regain their cognitive and motor skills.

How many individuals attending therapy to improve communication and relationship skills previously had what anyone would term highly competent ones? How can someone regain something they have yet to learn? Relegating education of communication skills to the confines of a doctor's office typically causes people to feel shame and embarrassment when attending class; this doesn't exactly create pride in the enrollment process. Does learning more effective ways to thrive in relationships really need to be any different than learning any other skill? Why do we wait for a crisis to learn something that can prevent it?

Think for a moment how critical interpersonal communication skills are in your life. Did you ever have formal education from third party instructors? Children are taught to read, write, and spell, but how many are ever taught active listening or conflict mediation? How might the world change if they were?

I obtained my undergraduate degree in communications and not one class provided instruction on interpersonal communication skills. The only place people received that type of education was when studying to work in mental health, legal, or enforcement fields (psychiatry, social work, law, therapy, the military etc.) In other words, we routinely prepare people to respond to crises in Life Skills but we do not prepare all people to excel. Why?

We routinely prepare people to respond to crisis in Life Skills but we do not prepare all people to excel. Why?

Problems in our personal lives become problems in society. Take a moment and consider today's media headlines. What do you find? Stories about bullying and wars; local and global financial crisis; environmental decay? Inferior Life Skills have their roots in personal problems and, not coincidentally, societal ones. Examine any news headline and ask yourself, what skills are necessary for avoiding or resolving the problem? Then ask yourself, where do people learn these skills? Who are their educators?

State of the Union 2011: Lawmakers Cross Aisle, Sit Together, Make History

Bipartisan Seating Plan Yields Unusual Bedfellows in Show of Civility, Unity BY DEVIN DWYER WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2011 ABC news

Yes, you read this headline correctly. Lawmakers of differing perspectives – governing one of the most powerful nations in the world – made international headlines in 2011 simply by sitting next to each other for the first time in 100 years. Is it really so surprising that if sitting next to each other took 100 years for some of the world's most sophisticated leaders, we have trouble with more complicated issues?

People in developed countries are more likely to spend hundreds of dollars on their hair and nails, or even thousands on new cars or plastic surgery, than they are to further their education in communication and conflict resolution skills. While it is popular to blame media for today's difficulties, the truth is the problems exist first.

Independent of every other headline topping newspapers around the world daily, I think the one above serves as a clarion call for us to reassess our appreciation for our Mandatory Curriculum and embrace a more proactive Life Skills educational process.

Lesson #1 Every human being faces the same Mandatory Curriculum - surviving and communing with others.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Kissing The Mirror by Mama Marlaine Copyright © 2012 by Mama Marlaine. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

Section One The Mandatory Curriculum....................1
Chapter One The Assignments....................3
Chapter Two Curriculum Scholars....................14
Chapter Three Torch Bearers....................16
Chapter Four Baby, You Were Born This Way....................18
Chapter Five Mandatory Matters....................25
Section Two Algebra and Apples....................31
Chapter Six Heart Surgery with a Chainsaw....................33
Chapter Seven Failure....................36
Chapter Eight Difficult....................39
Chapter Nine Graduation....................41
Chapter Ten Learning....................42
Section Three The Life Skills Report Card....................47
Chapter Eleven The Life Skills Report Card....................49
Chapter Twelve Personal Care....................56
Chapter Thirteen Organizational Skills....................65
Chapter Fourteen Respect for Self and Others....................68
Chapter Fifteen Communication & Social Skills....................77
Section Four The Change....................95
Chapter Sixteen Andragogy....................97
Chapter Seventeen Billy's Heart....................100
Chapter Eighteen Coffee Beans....................103
Chapter Nineteen Agape....................104
Chapter Twenty Occupy or Exemplify?....................106