May 2009

When it comes to Mother’s Day, on the one hand, I resist the idea of setting aside o ne day out of the year to honor mothers. On the other hand, I think it is a sweet idea to set aside one day to honor mothers.

Whenever I slip to the downside opf the issue, I remind myself of the year my next door neighbors had a Mother’s Day party in their backyard. Children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren emerged from a second floor deck overlooking the grassy grounds below.  The old honoree, seated in a chair adorned with flowers was being praised in song and poetry.  Each member of the family stepped forward, megaphone in hand, and spoke from the heart.  How proud that woman must have felt to hear such expressions of love and devotion and appreciation.
I thought, of all the gifts they could have given her, these were the ones that would mean most to her. Not another scarf or bottle of perfume or handbag for this 90 year old matriarch. They knew that she would carry their sincere, uplifting words ion her heart and in her memory for a long time. They told her of her value to each of them, young and old. They told her how much she was loved. If you were to make a list of “gifts” you would cherish, what would they be?
Here’s my wish list. (Incidentally, my “children’ are 60, 56, and 52 years old.)

1. live your lives fully
2. be true to yourselvesbe honest
3. be loving
4. be trustworthy
5. be sincere
6. have integrity
7. laugh everyday
8. have compassion
9. give of yourselves

And one more: let me remain a significant person in your lives. When my mother lived in a senior citizens’ building, she told me that some of the residents rarely saw their children. One man sat in the lobby every day waiting for a son who never arrived. How does that happen? How can we prevent such a disconnect from our children? What do we have to do to maintain close relationships with them?
Take anothr look at my list and it becomes apparent that I would stand a good chance of seeing these qualities in my children if they saw them in me. But suppose we haven’t done all the right things when our children were young; does that mean we will have alienated them forever?
Being the optimist that I am, I believe families can heal their relationships at any time – as long as both sides sincerely want to reconcile.
In the 1970s, I was drawn into the cult phenomenon after I read a letter a mother wrote to the Jewish Times. She was looking for help in getting her son out of a destructive cult. I got in touch with her and as a result I became involved in helping other parents with this problem. These were families ripped apart by manipulative recruiters and their leaders who were able to persuade young people to end their affiliation with their families and become part of a new and better family – the cult. Cult leaders were skilled at exacerbating the ordinary differences between parents and their children and in time, the members rejected their parents and siblings. They also gave up their college education and their career goals. These nefarious leaders referred to themselves as the new parent, widening the gulf between the actual parents and their sons and daughters.
Parents go through a range of emotions when they learn their children have become involved in cults – anger, sadness, fear, resentment, guilt, worry, and self-recrimination. And yet, I knew that it was possible for them to transcend their pain and enter into and honest dialogue with their children. The set of communication skills I developed in my parent-education workshops worked equally well with these unhappy parents.
Coaching these parents toward honest and open conversations with their children resulted in more than 400 cult-involved individuals reconsidering their affiliation with these groups. They not only returned to their families, but started building closer, more authentic relationships than they had before their involvement.
If reconciliation was possible for such alienated families, I believe it is possible for others in less extreme circumstances to reunite. So returning to the question of whether it is possible to establish a new relationship after having made our fair share of mistakes, I can say without hesitation – it can happen.
It takes a desire to reconcile and the courage to be honest with each other (without rancor) and with oneself. The next step is to learn the art of listening.