January is the month my father was born over a hundred years ago. I always think of him around this time each year, and remember his last few days that I spent with him in Zimbabwe at his hospital bedside all the way back in 1980.
January is also the month I started blogging twelve years ago. It opened up the Internet universe for me and I made some good friends - virtual and real. It connected me with people and places all over the world, and opened my eyes to so much more than I could imagine. In December I started a new blog but somehow as I celebrate January - I return to my old blog stomping grounds. I guess I will hang on to both for awhile.
It is hard to part from this old blog friend that has seen me through so many reflections - has helped me understand the complexity of my feelings - has been a place of comfort when I needed to write about what I was uncovering from my earliest emotional memories.
I feel like I am surrounded by writing: blogs and book. My mind is forever full of thoughts and ideas, and I find myself scribbling them down on bits of paper just after my shower, or while driving in the car. Life feels full even though I am in phased retirement mode, and am spending more time with my cats than with the world at large.
Because of the book I am now writing, I am constantly thinking about children needing attention. Today, I thought about how adults want young children to learn self-regulation. Somehow they see children's need for attention as getting in the way of learning self-regulation. Their lessons are so behaviorist in approach: do this and that to please me, your teacher, parent, significant adult - or I will show you how displeased I am. I will ignore you or punish you until you succumb and do it my way. I think to myself, "How will children learn about empathy, compassion, or to make a stand about anything, when they are learning only to please others?" I remember from a very young age learning to do anything for the significant adults in my life just so they wouldn't ignore me. Being ignored makes us invisible when we are children.
How can we learn about who we are or what we need when we are being ignored? Indeed, shunning is so much more powerful even than physical admonishment ...
My Fitbit is buzzing and vibrating because all I do is write lately. It tells me to get up and move. I realize as I write this that this is why I love my Fitbit! It relates to me ... constantly ...
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