Clare Consultation, LLCIdentity and Work
I was going to title this Identity, Work, Motherhood and Death, but that seemed a touch too ambitious. Nonetheless, all apply. On August 31, at the turn from midnight to midnight-01, and for the first time since I was 15 years old, I became unemployed. Sheesh. Actually, I’m self-employed now and giving a good go at establishing this new career. Still, there’s the tenacious pull of my 30-year academic career. And it’s… Read More
Speaking Earth Day
Yesterday, Gary and I spent the day with a small group of people investigating grief. It was a rich, intelligent, and healing time. We call the workshop The Nature of Grief. And, in it, we weave together Gary’s storytelling and literary acumen with my knowledge of psychology and education applied to emotional, mental and spiritual health. It’s good work. We can tell by the responses of the people who join us –… Read More
Brain Development in Times of Torture
What we need here isn’t balls. What we need is a big collection of myelinating orbitofrontal cortices. And we need it ASAP. Considering the many Elders I know, the many more of whom I’m aware, and the millions I have every reason to trust are out there, it’s my considered guess that we have all the developed brains we need to be far more wise than we are being. Unfortunately, those… Read More
Gratitude in Four Days
My dear friend, Valerie is a rock star. This designation, star, is certainly figurative, but it’s also for real – like, it’s her job. That’s not all. Valerie’s a mom, and a wife, she’s a sister and a dancer and a teacher – and she is one of Dr. Day’s two daughters. Valerie, her father, her sister and brother have been engaged for months now with the precious progression of Dr. Day’s transition… Read More
Grief Comes Home
Recently, a friend just older told me something about death that seems now obvious – the observation that sometime in a person’s fourth or fifth decade there is a subtle shift of awareness that shows up as no longer understanding one’s life in terms of how long it’s been since birth, but rather in relation to how much time is left. It’s a shift that calls forward a new relationship with death… Read More
Having it Happen
I was 19 when I met my fairy good mother. Thirty four years later, in February of 2009, Mayme and I had our last conversation. She is the … voice in 100 VOICES – AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE. I found Mayme through her daughter Margie. She was in a nursing home and spending her days increasingly occupied with Alzheimer’s. In spite of her condition, Mayme remembered me immediately and, well above the… Read More
Leading with Age
I’m pretty sure I’m on a soap box. Have been for a few years, now. My subject from this modest elevation: The Reclamation of Elderhood ™ . Like most of us, I remember my grandparents. I remember a few great uncles and aunts. I even remember some of their friends. My maternal grandmother, for example, was born in 1896. I know too little of her life. I know she was raised in… Read More
February 1 – Re-imagining Underway
February. The love month. The month my skin has historically hit its most green (being of “olive” complexion – or so I’ve been told). The shrimpy month perhaps made so out of some vague attempt compensate the rutheless grind mid-winter in the northern hemisphere can present whether rainy in Portland, sub-zero in eastern Montana or, this year, astonishingly dry in California and wildly cold where my Mama lives in Georgia. It was February, 2009… Read More
One Change Leader — My Mama
There it was – the enormous stack of mail that comes from being away from home for awhile. Daunting as it seems, it’s always possible, even curious, to riffle through – separating the “must attend to this” ones from the far more plentiful immediate candidates for the recycling bin. In a way that has become exceptional and continues a bit thrilling, there was a hand addressed envelope from a real person —… Read More
“He knows everyone in business.”
Every word was about kindness, about humility, or generosity of the most precious kind: of time and attention, of friendship and guidance, of wisdom. Last Thursday night, a man well into his 80’s retired … again. This time from a talent and career management firm called Right Management. I still don’t know enough about this man, Jack Stowell. My friend, Terry OConnor said, “Come as my guest. Jack wants to meet you.” … Read More