The Anne Show

For Now

For now, I am blogging at Anne Giles Clelland's CEO Blog.

Traits

Traits of My Mother Which I Most Admire
Mary Wilson Burnette Giles

Intelligence
I don’t think she knows her I.Q score.  If the number were uttered aloud, a tsunami would rise. 

Audacity
Interjections of non-social norm sentences or actions into an interaction can be funny.  They can provoke cognitive dissonance which invites enlightenment.  It walks the talk of “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Iconoclasm
Even if “it’s always been done that way,” if a ritual or institution cannot bear the scrutiny of measurement on an integrity scale, my mother states openly and firmly, “The emperor wears no clothes.”

Generosity
Simply put, my mother senses need and gives unstintingly of her resources.

Traits of My Father Which I Most Admire
Robert Hayes Giles, Junior

Creativity
His ability to view situations and problems from heretofore unimaginable angles – as if he used a Dr. Seuss Whoville periscope – and to generate scrolling lists of possibilities is legendary.

Acuteness
Whether it’s noticing how cream stirs into coffee, laughing in celebration at the way a little kid wears a hat, or wincing at what the buzz of power lines might mean, my father thinks, feels, and senses life keenly.

Passion
Although the projects evolve, the theme is the same:  a life deeply lived.

Tenacity
Even after ten years of retirement, even on weekends, alarm set for 6:10 AM.  ‘Nough said.

You Are Perfect

I say this to my cat most days.

I said it the first time without forethought. 

I saw the curl of her self on the ottoman in front of me, leaned irresistibly to stroke her, and whispered, in awe, “You are perfect.”

I have made myself insane for years seeking absolute truths, debating the presence or achievability of perfection.

Then here’s a cat, an older stray from the Humane Society at that, not an ardently reared purebred, asleep in my office, and what I seek is here.

I wouldn’t change the mismatched tints of her eyes, the body-and-a-half length of her tail, the circle of her protruding lower lip.

I wouldn’t change her inner workings.  I am sorry she suffers.  Most cats run.  She and I have a system.  She sits up in discomfort, I lean over her, my hands opening as if from prayer.  I catch her upset.  I rinse my hands, she grooms, we settle back into our lives.

She is herself.  Therefore, she is perfect.

Having never had a child, I cannot know if human parents see their human children as perfect, if they accept the who and how of a child’s existence as the wholeness of the child’s occurrence on the planet.

I might have wanted to change a human child, to wish the child were different in some way, to urge the child to be other than he or she was in order to serve me in some way, to reflect well on me, or to gain some advantage in the world.

I think that might be natural in a parent, or at least natural in a contemporary American parent.

By wanting to change the child, I would have missed the perfection of the child.

Five Four-Drawer Filing Cabinets

“Kids, be free.  Be who you are, be whatever you want to be.  Just don’t hurt anybody.”
--From memory, lyrics to a song from the rock opera Hair, the score to which was one of my first record albums

“Like sand in the something of an hourglass, so go the days of our lives.”
--From memory, tagline to soap opera “Days of Our Lives” I watched with my mother and sister when I was a child

As my one-year quest to answer all of life’s questions before I turn 50 becomes sand in the something of an hourglass, I am having some insights.

I have not enjoyed my life as I could have.

Much, much of it was spent straining to intuit what others wanted and needed in order to rescue them from their sorrows or disappointments, or to launch them into new heights of growth.

I have five, four-drawer filing cabinets full of meticulously researched, thoughtfully expressed, carefully crafted, artfully presented handouts, proposals, letters, articles, short stories, poems, and plans representing effort after effort to lift and inspire.

One filing cabinet for each decade.

I found some of my efforts deeply moving and others have said that I helped them along the way.  Good.

But I find I have not been so much who I am, but more who I perceived others needed and wanted me to be.

At 50, I contemplate a life spent largely other-focused and chronically self-depleted.

I wonder, if like 40 years of television, 50 years of striving might be enough.

Television

The last decade of my fifty years of life, I have spent without television.

The few times I have watched it at someone else’s place, I have enjoyed it.  If someone else picks a movie on DVD, I’ll watch it.  I don't begrudge others their pleasure in television.  I'm sure I would find some programs of great value to me.

My television-less life is not from a moral or political decision. 

I find I have so many more interesting things to do.

For me, forty years with television is enough.

Energy

Several people have described me recently as “energetic.”  I would prefer “catalytic,” since that would mean the energy helped make something happen, rather than dispersed like a downed powerline in a hurricane, snaking and sizzling ineffectually.

However, that I would be described as energetic makes sense to me.  As I count down the days until I turn 50 (21 left), I realize I have practiced energy for half a century.

I think hard, feel hard, exercise hard.  I eat well, I sleep okay, I nap great.

After fifty years of disciplined, intentional energy training, how would I not be full of ideas, passion, and strength?

Absolutes

An excerpt from There, Anne's Triathlon Training:

Insights I have had as a result of a one-year quest to resolve all personal issues before turning 50 so that the next how-ever-many could be error-free:

Despite my creativity, my intent, my will, my earnest, intense effort, I am hard to change.  As much as I might wish to be different, other, or more, after 50 years of a practiced pattern, the pattern probably will not be subject to much altering, despite my best efforts.  There’s a “this is it” finality to that which saddens me somewhat. 

My striving and seeking to find the one truth is a quest I must relinquish.  My striving and seeking to find, in any situation, which is black and which is white, which is good and which is evil, must be relinquished.  My yearning to always, always follow the high road is admirable and sweet, but ultimately naïve.  “Always” is much rarer than I thought.  What is right and what is wrong in any situation is so often unclear and the choices seem to array themselves on a continuum of sort of right or sort of wrong.  Judgment calls must be made and uncertainty must be tolerated.

I think I believed I would find peace in absolute certainty.  All I had to do was determine that absolute and I would be free of the unquiet of doubt.

Probably peace, although I still find myself resisting this, is found in accepting the ever-presence of uncertainty.

Women's Circle Protocol

“Live deep,” Thoreau wrote in Walden.

For me, living deep means talking deep with women.

I want no question, topic, thought, or feeling off the table.

That said, I want to hear and be heard in safety.

I want free flow and structure.

I want women who tend to withhold to come forth and speak; I want women who tend to dominate to choose what they speak.

This is the smallest town on the planet.  I want what is said and heard to be confidential.

Women's Circle Protocol

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM.  Free flow of conversation, eating, and drinking.  I’ll provide a light, plain, inexpensive meal, water, and two bottles of red wine.  If you’d like more or other, you are welcome to bring it.

7:00 PM.  Circle of chairs.  Round robin sharing.  5 minutes per person, with a timer.  The speaker has the floor, is uninterrupted by others in the group, and shares about herself, rather than comments on the sharing of others.  The timer is passed until 8:00 PM or until all who care to have shared.

8:00 PM – 10:00 PM.  Free flow.

Each meeting will have a different group leader who will be the first to speak.  She will use her first 5 minutes to present a topic or to pose a question and to share on the topic or question.  When the timer is passed, the next woman may share on the group leader’s topic or question, or share on what is in her heart or on her mind.  When the timer sounds, she passes the timer to the next speaker, and so on.

The way to keep a women’s circle safe is to 1) use “I statements” rather than “We statements” or “You statements,” 2) practice silence during another woman’s sharing, 3) practice a balance of speaking and listening, 4) answer the question, “How was women’s circle?” with no more and no less than “It was a good meeting.”

Women’s circles devolve 1) when a member has issues for which she is not seeking outside counseling and with which she burdens the group, 2) when a member focuses on the care-taking or advising (i.e. controlling) of other members rather than on her own experience of the group, 3) when a withholder withholds, 4) when a dominator dominates, 5) when a member attends irregularly, 6) when a group allows casual attendance by non-group members, 7) when who’s in the group and who’s not becomes known and an issue, 8) when a group member suggests a new group member for motivations other than the best and highest good of the group, 9) when any member betrays the confidence of any member of the group or of the group itself.

***

"The Women's Circle Protocol" was written by Anne Giles Clelland.

It is a synthesis of various sources and experiences including:

The New Valley Girls, Fortune, 10/6/08

The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World: The Essential Guide to Women's Circles, by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., 1999

Sacred Circles: A Guide to Creating Your Own Women's Spirituality Group, by Robin Deen Carnes and Sally Craig, 1998

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Irvin Yalom, 2005

12-step recovery group protocols; Unity-based sharing protocols; study and research on group dynamics while earning a graduate degreee in counseling; group therapy protocols; experience as a group member, as a group facilitator, and others.