Applying the Golden Rule

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The Golden Rule is of no use to you unless you realize that it's your move.                                                Doug Larsen

I am myself plus my circumstances.                           William Carlos Williams

the many forms of love includes beloved sisters

Years prior to becoming a psychotherapist one of my family members taught me the essence of being an excellent therapist. She had gone to someone who was a Freudian and when she spilled out all her pain and grief about her current situation he merely listened and took notes. Afterwords she said, "I'm never going there again, he didn't offer me one kind word or say anything. What a waste of time." I vowed I'd be that kind of a therapist who responded with compassion and in addition I would be the kind of therapist who offered solutions. 

I was a psychotherapist for many decades and loved my work and furthermore unabashedly loved my clients. I was cautioned not to do this loving bit because when I started out in the business in the 70's the Freudian method of distance and noncommittal answers and questions were the go-to doctrine. You needed to believe in and then follow religiously an air of "I hear you but I can't get overly concerned/attached to you because you are my patient". Of course that was utter crap. There is another way, loving detachment. You can love someone and not become enmeshed in their difficulties.

Did these therapists really believe that there's a finite amount of love to go around in this world? I found you can love the client respectfully and then let go. I realized that to absorb their problems and worry about them was in fact an intrusive act. Their problems were not my problems and the clients needed an objective second opinion on their thoughts and proposed solutions. Along the way, I learned some good methods to be caring and concerned without enmeshment in my client's problems. 

I believed in firmly, graciously, gently telling clients the truth. I learned this from a mistake I made when I first started counseling. I had a client, Bella* who came to me because she suspected her husband was having an affair. Unbeknownst to her I was seeing the woman, Mable* that her husband was having an affair with. I tried to not say anything and even suggested that she not go to a meeting where I knew the Mable would be. Big mistake. As soon Bella figured out I was shielding these women from each other she was justifiably furious with me. Sin of omission or manipulation? Regardless, I should have referred Bella to someone who was not entangled in this mess. In my defense there were very few good female therapists available at the time. But really this was an error of judgement. 

Other counseling errors in judgement are written about as articles of fiction. Many people love the book by Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides and in it he gave a glaring example of how not to relate to a client. In the book the therapist falls in love with her client's brother, sex included. Duh. Bad idea. Conroy naively justified this relationship as OK because he has the therapist rationalize "he really wasn't a client but merely a consultant about Savannah [his sister]". Made my skin crawl. Another famous therapist, Yalom wrote [hopefully it was fiction] about his attraction to a few of his women clients. Please! If someone is coming to you for help and you feel attracted, you don't come on to them, you refer them on. Otherwise where is the clear headed objectivity in assisting the client with solutions to their life problems?

What was helpful in my brand of counseling [definitely not Freudian] was that I'd face the client directly. I'd stare intently into their face as I memorized their history. Don't ask me why, but this cemented in my brain the memories of their story. To this day I can recall many, many of my client's history. Always, I found their history valuable in assisting them with any problem they'd brought to the session. I'd also tell them, based on my many years of study, experience and research exactly what solutions I thought would best suit their situation. 

Here is an example.  Years ago Billy* came to me shortly after his son was born. Billy was in agony over the fact that "the baby might not be mine". We talked for awhile and I realized he not only didn't trust his wife, he didn't really like her although he did love her. Then along comes this second child that may not be his. He was not bonding and was ignoring the baby.  I asked him, "even if this is true, is this the baby's fault?" At this point he covered his face with his hands and burst into wracking sobs. I said, "you've got a great opportunity to bond with a darling, innocent boy, please don't waste this chance." He did bond with his son, even though the marriage didn't last. I was especially glad because he had ten years with this beloved child and then sadly Billy died far too young. 

This is the best of the Golden Rule, and in my counseling I tried to be scrupulous about doing unto to others as I would like them to do unto me. Kindness doesn't cost a cent, I always say and there could be so much more of this in the world. Join me and trillion others in the unfunded by highly successful kindness movement. Thanks for reading.

*As usual the names are entirely fictional. susansmagicfeather copyright 2017 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved.

The Other Part of Motherhood

Present politics of today are being, again, run by men that have absolutely no interest in the health and well being of more than half of their constituents: the women of the USA. This callousness, this insensitivity is something that we women have been fighting since the early sixties. The current group of Republicans in the House and Senate are proof positive that misogyny rules. They want to go back to restricting a woman's right to choose, to take away access to birth control especially for poor women and restrict medicare for the poorest among us, the elderly women. Is this just stupidity or just plain meanness?

Women have a right to privacy with their bodies

Love one another.  Jesus

This is a sculpture of grief. Held aloft by all these people is a dead  baby.

In 1975 I had a stillborn baby girl, we named her Sarah Emily. It was a difficult pregnancy and I suffered through it with the naive hope that everything would be worth it when I held that baby in my arms. Since we had two sons Sarah was a very wanted and longed for baby girl. Then the disaster happened, she died prior to the induced birth and I was a grieving mess for quite a while.

Here's where it gets more pertinent to what is going on today.  I got up my courage and we tried again and in 1977 I had another pregnancy. Sadly, it also ended when the baby boy died in utero. I didn't want to carry around a dead baby inside of me and very fortunate for me I was able to have a therapeutic abortion. Would this happen with the current climate of restrictions looming out there now? I believe not. I know it would have been made imminently more complicated if the current recommendations for the new ACA were enacted.

Imagine, if you dare, what it would feel like to have a painful and disastrous pregnancy and then be told that nothing could be done about you carrying a dead fetus? The argument might run along the lines, "we believe that there may be a slight chance that the fetus is viable". The importance is shifted from me, my grief and reality to the viability of the fetus. Wonder if I did give birth to the tiny one inside me and his health was very, very compromised? Would there be any assistance in his life because of numerous preexisting conditions? I see that the men who are in favor of the new restrictions on women's health care are truly not interested in women or in any child that is born, but in controlling the woman's body. Privacy between a woman and her Doctor? Forget it. If only men could get pregnant...

What did happened to me: we did find out through more sophisticated blood work that Mr. G and I have a blood incapability very similar to the RH factor, it is the Kell factor. Our little babies were dying internally by my body attacking their blood. How incredibly lucky it is for us that we have two sons! How sad that anyone should have to go through losing a child and how much worse it could have been for me and my family if there was some stiff opposition to what I wanted for my body which was to end the pregnancy. I was given a choice, to carry that little girl and that little boy until nature took its course. I chose to end the pregnancies with medical intervention. You might ask yourself, why are these political men gleefully causing suffering to their female constituents? Trust me and all the families who have lost children, losing a child to stillbirth or miscarriage is stunningly difficult.

Happily for me and my family, many of our friends rallied and the boys were well taken care of. I in turn went on to learn from my suffering and my grief and was able to help others who had similar losses in their lives. I then became a full time counselor for over thirty years. As awful as these losses were grief added to my depth of understanding for my work.

One  of the joys of my life is having good relationships with all my family. I have a very special relationship to my "nieces to pieces". I have so many wonderful young women in my life and then the wonderful bonus of granddaughters. So gratitude after all is what life is all about.

May all of you who have suffered find comfort and some peace. I send you love and hope.

susansmagicfeather copyright 2017 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved

When We Sanctify Our Lives

Knowing is not enough, we must do. Thinking is not enough, we must act.                                                     Susan R. Grout

at the Earth day rally

One of the most interesting and challenging parts of the life we lead is trying to be a good, loving and responsible person in all our choices. Here are some questions that I've been rolling around in my head for a long time.

1. Do you have to be constantly in prayer to have a good and holy life?
2. If you're frequently on a computer or cell phone are you missing out?
3. Is it harmful to be on my phone all the time?
4. Do you have to tithe to a church to be promoting holiness?
5. What exactly is necessary to be a good person every day?
6. How can everything be sacred when there's so much trash?
7. Why do we ever allow junk in our lives? 
8. How can we have more time to ensure we're contributing the goodness of our society?
9. How can we effectively combat the people who are actively destroying the environment?
10. What is the most effective way to approach people who are abusive to others? to the earth?
11. Can you have a close relationship with your community without sacrificing some privacy?
12. How does "love one another" get supported in churches who are against homosexuals, feminists, people of color, transgender people?
13. How can we better accept people who have radically different viewpoints from us?
14. Can we promote radical kindness and generosity through doing more volunteer work?

I seriously thought about doing an entire post on the above questions and let each of you contemplate exactly what your answers were to the posed questions. You could stop right here and answer all the questions for yourself. But then I decided that was unfair and if I'm going to blog about philosophy and therapy I need to answer my own questions. Here goes.

1. Do you have to be constantly praying or being prayerful? No if you are completely content with the way things are going in your life and with others. No if you prefer to have a mantra or have a running internal dialogue with positive affirmations and you meditate frequently. Yes if it feels wimpy not to have a solid spiritual base and you want to have a close relationship with a higher power. Yes if the word constant is modified to be often. Personally I find having a spiritual center gives great meaning to every day life, I like the word 'often' always is too demanding..

2. If you're frequently on machines are you missing out on life?  A young woman smarter than myself stated, "I think cell phone usage is like what we thought about smoking 20 years ago. We know it's bad for us but it's hard to stop."  One of the most aggravating things I see about cell phones is the phones are no longer just for convenience of communication. Today, if we're honest phones have become playgrounds for young and old. Most distressingly I see parents paying absolutely no attention to their children but are on their phones constantly. Important business? No, mostly nonsense. This is going to come back to bite them. Just wait until their kids are old enough to spend most of their time on the cell phones. Precious interactions lost.

3. Is it harmful for any of us to be on my phone all the time? I would like to side stepping the entire lethality issue but I can't. Once my husband and I were driving on I-5 and a woman in the car next to us was texting and swerved into a lane in front of us and the man in the car to her right was driven off the road into a ditch. Oblivious and still on her phone, she never even knew he went into the ditch. When we called the sheriff he said, "this happens all the time, did you get her license number?" We hadn't and so no consequences for the texter, huge ones for her victim.  The amount of time you can look away from the road while driving is tested to be 2 seconds.

4. Do you have to tithe to a church to promote holiness? The bigger question is what is your church doing constructively to promote goodness for our planet and it's people? Contributions that in turn promote good for many win hands down as far as I can tell. Even if your church is the great out-of -doors, does that organization you support contribute to the holiness/goodness in all of us?

 5. Be a good person on a daily basis. How? St. Augustine said it best, "if you are loving and diligent, you can do whatever you want." Loving means action not just thinking. What acts can you do on a daily basis to help our earth and/or another human being?  Can you make a daily pledge to show up and be kind to everyone you meet? Diligence requires that you assess what is necessary for you to enable you to be the best possible citizen this world has to offer. That can be volunteer work, care giving, contributions to causes that hold goodness as one of their values.

6. Do you have things and people that are sacred in your life?  Have you rid yourself of trash and garbage so that you are surrounded by only what is beautiful and pleasing? Are the people in your life ones who bring out the very best in you, who elevate your thinking?

7. Can we eliminate people and things that bring us down?  Any therapist worth their philosophy will tell you to encourage joy by being joyful and side step the people or ideas or things that seek to interfere with that.

8. How can we have more time for volunteering for the good of our communities?  One huge hint: turn off the machines. Less time on the cell phones, computers, TV and movies can stretch out the day and night impressively. Try it. Then what are you going to do with all of those extra hours? It is a new fad that young people are proud of saying No! to volunteering. Then the "me" time is usually with their machines....I read and often follow the advice to have a tech free day, says she writing on her computer.

9. What can we do about the people, organizations who are actively destroying the environment? Fight. Get active and get educated. Upset that there is a threat to clean air and clean water? Write letters, call your congressman, show up for demonstrations, vote out of office people who are complicit in destroying this planet.

10. What is the best way to handle abusive people who are bullies? I encourage people to speak up and do so with an advocate by your side to let the bullies know that their behavior will not be tolerated and you won't be quiet about it.

11. How can you have a close community without sacrificing any privacy? You really can't. You can have some privacy, but not lots if you desire closeness with your fellow humans.

12. How does "love one another" get supported in churches who are against homosexuals, feminists, people of color, transgender people? The only words we know for a fact that Jesus uttered is "love one another". If you suspect that your church or congregation is homophobic, intolerant or racist how can they be following that loving principle? Not possible.  Find a group that really does love and actively participate in promoting the goodness therein for all people.

13. How can we accept radically different viewpoints? Ah, I am going to use a newly defined 'dirty word': be liberal minded, be open minded and open hearted. Realize and  know if  there is veiled racism or bigotry you are allowed to say how disappointed you are. Fighting bigotry is an active ongoing posture, not a passive one.

14. On promoting radical kindness and generosity, you have to be the one who is out there dedicating your life to being kind and generous. The easiest way is to volunteer your time. As noted you will have so much more time if you put down the phone and the machines.

Please note: none of this is directed at the people who are working two or three jobs just to stay afloat. However, if you know someone in that position, offer a helping hand or even cash. It's good and holy.

Expect to work hard for goodness, kindness and to save the earth. As Bob Marley said, "the evil doers in this world never take a day off, so how can I?"

susansmagicfeather copyright 2022 Susan R. Grout 

The leucistic robin who visited us this spring, it felt like a small miracle. 

The Fortunate Mother

I am a fortunate mother, I think about this all the time especially around Mother's Day. We've been blessed with two fabulous, loving sons who then brought to us these incredible families and four beloved grandchildren. As I write this I'm thinking back to the times when our sons were little and under my wing. I realize that I had a better grasp of my son's thoughts, dreams, desires and wishes when they were those dear little boys of ours. I also realize that it's natural for our boys to differentiate from their parents. This is true for sons and for daughters too. It's healthy to become your own person though truthfully part of me misses the more intimate involvement. Hence, most of the stories below will be from the time they were tiny to about ten years old. More later!  I'll share some of the funnier stories from their past, the "boys" might wish I hadn't but 'still she persisted'.

I always wanted children, lots of them.  Dick was as delighted as I at first my pregnancy and the birth of Zachary Ethan Grout forty seven years ago. Because he was our first we had no idea how fortunate we were to have such a handsome, healthy, good natured child. Zachary was smart, very early to talk, and on schedule with everything that most babies do. He was delightful and I thrived on being a mom. Then drama. When Zach was only eight months old I had a horrible miscarriage and ended up U of Washington hospital for three days because I almost died of a staff infection. [Another story...http://susansmagicfeather.blogspot.com/2011/03/nde-near-death-experience-and-carrying.html]
The experience changed me, rattled me, but one happy consequence, D had a chance to be very close to Zach with days of the mothering role and their relationship blossomed and was sweet.

We had Zachary in Seattle but this was the time of the Boeing bust and "will the last person out of Seattle please turn off the lights".  No work for the newly graduated D so when he got the job offer, we moved to Boise, Idaho. Nothing but glamour for us...

Here's a few of the comments about and from Zach from the inadequately kept [by me, sorry guys...] baby book for the boys: "I'm worried about Z's growth, thinking he won't be tall." [he's well over six feet tall] Zach is an incredible climber and did so out of his crib before he could walk. Someone suggested we put a net over his bed.

One of Zach's first sentences, "that pisses me off." Where did he get that? Zach, at two years old had an inherent honesty about him and once when I was napping he came to his father and said, "I didn't take any cookies, did I Dad", [the evidence of the obviously stolen cookies: a chair pushed up to the counter]. Also at age two he climbed our backyard fence as I, inside the house overheard that distinct rattle, rattle, rattle punctuated by, "funtastic, I did it!"  Although I was very pregnant with Josh I ran to retrieve the escapee. Josh was born when Z was two and a half and eventually he had fun making the baby in the infant seat smile by talking to him and showing Josh his toys. More fun when the little brother could respond.

Dick's boss took a job in the San Juan Islands and hired D to go with him to found the S.J. Islands Planning Department and so we moved again to the islands. This time to our permanent home. Having a brother is built in companionship and Z and J used to entertain us with "the Bonzini brothers" doing tricks for us every night in the living room with the overturned furniture and cardboard boxes.  San Juan Island is where Z really learned about friendships at our co operative preschool. At the age of four, he was reading all of the names of the kids in his preschool class to help the teacher. Christmas time he came home from preschool and asked me, "when are we going to be making spirits bright Mom?" and "Goodness is God's last name." When Josh exclaimed to Dick's boss Bob McAbee that "I'm two and a half!" Z with a sly grin said, "I knew him when he was two." One night Zach was late playing outside and D was calling and calling for him. Soon he came strolling up the driveway and D said, "Zachary why didn't you come when I called you?" to which Z answered, "I didn't hear you til the third time."

Our house in town had a staircase with a partial wall at the top of the stairs. There the boys [Z age 5 and Josh age 3] drew some lovely pictures of people and trees. I said, "Zachary! you know you're not supposed to draw on the walls."  Z  "I didn't it was Josh! see there's where he wrote his name." Me "Zach, Josh can't write." When he was six we overheard a conversation Zach had with his little brother,  "when you grow up you'll be a man." Josh "I don't want to be a man I want to be a boy." Z: "A man is a boy, Josh, except a thirty year old doesn't play."

Zachary was a well liked boy and had an easy time in school. We had built and moved into our new house when he was eight and I, cruel mother, made the boys make their own lunches and walk the mile home from the school bus. For this I am now grateful as they are independent and capable. They were strictly forbidden to watch TV more than 4 hours a week. Ah but on their own at home after the long walk each day "Gilligan's Island" called. Truthfully, we didn't care. To choose their 4 hours of TV a week required studying the TV guide and negotiations for shows. We all have our standards and limiting the TV served us well, more time as a family.

Even though on Facebook Joshua Elias Grout claims to have been born in 1902, he was in fact born in 1972, a very welcome addition to our little family. He'd obviously sucked his thumb in utero because he was sucking that thumb only hours after he was born. Another cute thing he did was to hold his eyes open to their max when we sat him up. Brought a smile to everyone's face to see this smiley, wide eyed baby. He was the kind of baby you could plop in an infant seat and he'd be happy watching the world go by. Josh wanted to do and be everything that Zach could do. Therefore  he "crawled" on his hands and feet and walked when he was nine months old. Gasp.

When Josh was one years old we moved to SJI.  I babysat for a friend, Cathy E. Sam and Josh E. were almost exactly our boys ages and I enjoyed them and this lead to nicely creating life long friends for Z and J. Josh was always physically active and also developed a good vocabulary early on. The one thing that I noticed was at age three he could count up to 20 but he didn't know his colors. We figured out that he was probably color blind as it was prevalent in a couple of my uncles.

From the baby book: Josh was always very affectionate and in the house in town after D had gotten the boys ready for bed Josh would walk down each stair saying, "I wove you, I wove you" to me. Makes me teary and tickled to remember that. Josh was enamored of his brother and also the big kids on the block who he followed around like a puppy. This had consequences. My Grandmother, GG was ill and I was very concerned. Vail age 5 helped Josh then almost 3, make a card for GG which I found.  I opened it up and there was 'writing' on it. I said to Josh, "what does this say?" Josh holding the card says  "Ah, it says, fuck you."

We had an oil heater and didn't want the boys playing next to it, it was hot. I was upstairs and heard them in that room through the floor grate. I yelled down, "whoever is in that back room better get out!" and he answered, "no one down here can hear you."

Zach convinced Josh that a hard hat their father owned was a 'cowboy hat'. Josh would wear it on his head and say "MOO!"  I used to take the boys on trips when D had to work. We'd go to Olympia and we'd go visit Sally and Dirk. This was the era when filling your own gas tank was new and novel. I filled the tank, proud of myself, and blithely drove down the road until I heard something on top of the car. Not wanting to swear, in deference to the boys I said, "God Bless America!" stopped the car and fetched the cap off the top.  Josh told his Dad about it later and said, "when Mom said God bless America I thought she'd runned over a baby eagle."

Lucky me, we raised these boys on an island, in our own house with lots of room to run around, close enough to friends that they could walk to see. Both of them loved to be outdoors, loved sports and had good friends. These boys were good sports and good companions which made life pleasant for a mother. This was true even when I was going through very rough times. [the stillborn Sarah Emily in 1975 and the last pregnancy which was unsuccessful and resulted in a therapeutic abortion in 1977.] The boys were so affectionate and caring, even when they didn't really grasp what was going on with me. Every family has difficult times and grief can interrupt even the most stalwart among us.

We didn't hover over the boys and I'm quite sure we never monitored their school work, trusting that they would remain good students as they were both so bright. I trusted their judgement which when they became teens which wasn't always the wisest move. As I said, more later!

This is my Mother's Day gift to myself. Reveling in the joys of the boys.
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