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Neurons Ring! Are You Listening?
I remember a lecture on neurons and the paths they take at adult Sunday school one winter. The lecturer was a respected psychologist and had been influential in my husband’s life. So I was primed to take what he said seriously. He pontificated at length on the manipulation of our neuro-nets by the world of advertising. From his point of view, Christmas provided the perfect opportunity for people to be set up for greed and disappointment. I don’t necessarily disagree, except that God made our nervous systems for a reason. He mentioned how the smells of pine and cinnamon, the ubiquitous strands of lights, and the shiny wrapped presents send…
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What Your Metaphors Reveal About You
One of my favorite metaphors is in Alice Walker’s essay, Beauty, When the Other Dancer is the Self. In it, she writes about her blind eye resulting from a BB gun injury from one of her brothers. She charts her relationship with her blind, scarred eye, from painful adolescence to the moment when her little girl first notices it. “You have a world in your eye,“ says her daughter, carefully observing what is left of the scar tissue. All at once, her eye becomes a metaphor for the internal worlds inside Walker that have grown because of the injury. I have posted a link at the end so you can…
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Step Family Stumbling Blocks: What to Expect
I get a lot of Brady Bunch jokes when I tell people that my husband and I have a ‘blended’ family of six kids. Four daughters of mine from my first marriage and a son and a daughter from my husband’s previous marriage meant that I had three kids in high school for six consecutive years. We married over thirteen years ago, bringing together our children with stars in our eyes and high hopes in our hearts. We wanted to rock step family life. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Was it easy? Absolutely not. But if I had been aware of a few salient facts, I think the process might…
Healing Through Art & Words
