Tara Mohr's Blog, page 5
March 20, 2020
tensions at home this week?
One day this week, I woke up to three messages from friends about the arguments they’d had with their partners the night before. They weren’t complaining about it, just sharing the update.
I too had had a very tense conversation with my husband the previous night. The pattern seemed too conspicuous to ignore.
I had thought he and I were disagreeing about some logistical thing regarding getting groceries in this strange new reality, but when the conversation kept getting harder and higher stakes, I realized the grocery matter was not at all the real cause of the argument. The real cause was our stress and fear.
Once I realized that, I could say, “Ok, you know what’s really going on? I feel afraid and overwhelmed, those feelings have been accumulating all week, and I need you, I’m just scared.”
Once I said that, he could respond with care, share his own feelings, and we could actually connect.
Everything softened. We started working so much more harmoniously as a team doing this intense new job we are doing – of trying to create some level of normalcy for two small kids while we cope with major change and stress.
So, if this week has felt like a time of escalating tension with close people in your life, know that it is totally normal during a time like this. And it does not mean there is anything wrong with them or with your relationships.
But you can also meet those tensions with awareness and discernment, because this is not a time to let anything get in the way of the connection and support in your life.
So, what can you do? You can know that the argument you are having is probably not about the thing it seems to be about. You can know it is most likely an expression of fear and stress looking for a place to go, so that vast uncertainty can get focused into something pinpointed for a little while.
Creating conflict is one unconscious way we attempt to connect because conflict is actually a form of relationship, of mutual impact. We try to get emotions heated so that at least there is some form of interdependence, even if in a pain-causing form. But you don’t have to use the not so effective strategy of conflict to connect, feel, or express emotions. You can ask directly for the connection and listening and love.
Remember, “Stop, drop and roll” for fire safety? Well, my version of it for these times is “Stop, drop in (to what’s really happening in your heart), and say it.”
Sometimes we might not have any awareness of our underlying feelings in the moment of conflict, and we realize only after an argument, or days of tension, what is really going on. Practices like journaling, meditation, prayer, or talking honestly with others can really help bring our feelings to awareness, so we have those realizations sooner. Then, you can circle back to your loved ones, make any amends if needed, share how you are really feeling and ask for support. And you can extend that same love to the people around you. They are likely needing it.
So, tensions – normal! Stop, drop in to what’s really happening in your heart, and say it. And keep loving and supporting one another.
Love,
Tara
P.S. For more resources related to COVID-19: See here for my post on the imperative of YOU practicing physical distancing. See here for my post on practices for grounding and calm during this time.
Photo by Chris Sabor
March 16, 2020
Navigating fear & change during the pandemic
These are extraordinary and difficult times, but we are in it together. And we will continue to walk through it each day, drawing strength from each other. Here’s what is helping me right now with grounding, quieting fear, and accepting change.
1. Practice extreme physical distancing. Our family has been at home for a week now. With today’s brave and wise order from our mayor, we will be home for the next three weeks. If your town/city is not there yet, please take it upon yourself to save lives now by staying home, if it is at all possible for you. If you have any questions about the why of this, please read yesterday’s post on Social/Physical Distancing. This is your gorgeous opportunity to save a life, maybe thousands of lives, by simply staying at home – pretty amazing when you think about it. One way to navigate your fear is to know you are doing all you can on behalf of others.
2. Make a clear plan for news and social media consumption – and follow it (even if imperfectly). I like to do this when I wake up in the morning – simply asking myself, “Okay, when will I be looking at news/social media today?” The answer for me has generally been 1 or 2 short periods during the day, not more. We all absolutely need to stay informed, and there is a lot of good information spreading in a grassroots way that is not yet coming in a centralized, succinct way. In this sense reading online is very useful. And, we also need to be discerning about what level of news consumption will best allow us to keep our connection to our center and to give our nervous system much needed breaks.
3. Make your daily plan to be of service. Service is an antidote to fear. We have got to get away from thinking about ourselves (and away from thinking period) and into loving action – multiple times a day. So every day – and especially when you are getting caught up in fear and worry – ask yourself what you can do to be of service. For example, you can call those in your community who might be feeling particularly afraid or lonely. You can find a way to support a small business that is being hard hit. You can do a video call with someone who could use a pick-me-up and put your adorable dog in the camera frame for them to see, giving them something to smile about for a few moments. And you can think about – or pray on – how your knowledge, skills, personal strengths or other resources can be of service during this crisis, and then act on your ideas.
4. Do your self-care top three. Identify three practices that are your foundation for staying well-sourced during this time. Maybe that’s keeping to a calming bedtime routine. Maybe it’s singing or listening to music or having a living room dance party. For me right now, the core three are exercise (via online videos or playing tag with my kids in the house!), meditation, and connecting with others (via video) each day. Identify and do your self-care top three, schedule them in your calendar each day, and shift what they are when needed.
5. Ground in crone energy. This one is the hardest to explain, but let me try. The crone is the wise, elder woman. The one who knows what she knows from the heart and from lived experience. The one who has been shaped by the lessons of a lifetime of community tending and caregiving. The crones who came before us put up with a lot. Crones of our own time were already putting up with a lot – violence, war, injustice, pain turned into pain turned into harm.
The crone sees the folly of the world for what it is: deep unknowing, deep “I have not learned that yet,” coming from young, still immature souls. The crone knows how pain and unhealed wounds turn into more pain, which turns into harm done – through greed, deceit, heart-hardening, and denial. She grieves that, but she also looks at it with total clarity and compassion. When confronted with that folly, she does not feel like a little girl being attacked by something bigger than her. She knows she is bigger than it, that she can call in parts of that folly for healing, for a teaching, for an embrace, like a grandmother would with an unruly adolescent. She stands in this place even if that folly takes her out, in her physical incarnation, this time around. She is present to heal what needs to be healed and can ache in her heart, with tenderness, with wisdom, for what is not yet healed. This is the time to ground in crone energy, to stand in that place, as we encounter what is now unfolding.
I’m sending love to all of you, and I’ll keep sending writings too.
Love,
Tara
Photo by Felix Mittermeier
March 15, 2020
COVID-19: What To Do Today
It is a rare thing when an email – a single email, a word on the page – can help save lives, but in this collective moment, that rare thing is happening.
In our family, over this past week, we have made a daily practice of asking “what can I do to be of service?” For me that has meant things like reaching out by phone to those who may be feeling isolated, or hosting online gatherings to help preserve connection during this time.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that one of the most helpful things I could do would be to voice my support for extreme social distancing here via this platform, which reaches many thousands of people around the world.
From everything I have learned from the epidemiologists, scientists and doctors, our primary work as human beings right now is to practice social distancing in order to try to slow the spread of COVID-19, so that our medical system will not be overwhelmed, and those who are severely sick can get needed medical treatment.
This is the time to practice social distancing, now, in small ways and big ways. That means not only avoiding large gatherings but also eliminating all nonessential in person contact with others – whether at a store, an appointment or even a small get together of a couple friends. Because of the exponential rate of spread, preventing just one infection today will prevent 2600 infections over the next three months. (See the links below for more on that.)
Our economy can recover over the long-term. We cannot bring back lives lost.
The amazing thing is that there is actually something very concrete each and every individual can do to slow the spread of the virus: stay home and reduce in-person contact with others as much as possible. Handwashing, keeping physical distance if you absolutely need to be around others, and disinfecting are also key, but the broader social distancing and staying at home if possible is critical.
Unfortunately, the importance of social distancing is not being communicated clearly or forcefully enough in a centralized manner; and so we now rely on grassroots, distributed sources – individual experts, outlets, and each other to relay this imperative. So I’m doing my part today to let you know where I stand.
If you are unclear on the reasons for social distancing, are worried about “overreacting” or “going too far,” or still think the need to distance may not apply to you (because you are young, asymptomatic, etc.) please check out one of these excellent resources to learn more.
Social Distance Game (see how many lives your level of social distancing can save)
The Math Behind Why We Need Social Distancing
One Simple Chart Explains How Social Distancing Saves Lives
Thank you for reading and for listening. I’ll be writing more tomorrow on my practices and ideas about how to manage fear and anxiety during this time (more my wheelhouse!) – stay tuned for that. But today’s note had to come first – it’s more time sensitive, and important.
Love you, and sending virtual hugs to everyone,
Tara
Photo by Terry Vlisidis
Coronavirus – What To Do Today
It is a rare thing when an email – a single email, a word on the page – can help save lives, but in this collective moment, that rare thing is happening.
In our family, over this past week, we have made a daily practice of asking “what can I do to be of service?” For me that has meant things like reaching out by phone to those who may be feeling isolated, or hosting online gatherings to help preserve connection during this time.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that one of the most helpful things I could do would be to voice my support for extreme social distancing here via this platform, which reaches many thousands of people around the world.
From everything I have learned from the epidemiologists, scientists and doctors, our primary work as human beings right now is to practice social distancing in order to try to slow the spread of coronavirus, so that our medical system will not be overwhelmed, and those who are severely sick can get needed medical treatment.
This is the time to practice social distancing, now, in small ways and big ways. That means not only avoiding large gatherings but also eliminating all nonessential in person contact with others – whether at a store, an appointment or even a small get together of a couple friends. Because of the exponential rate of spread, preventing just one infection today will prevent 2600 infections over the next three months. (See the links below for more on that.)
Our economy can recover over the long-term. We cannot bring back lives lost.
The amazing thing is that there is actually something very concrete each and every individual can do to slow the spread of the virus: stay home and reduce in-person contact with others as much as possible. Handwashing, keeping physical distance if you absolutely need to be around others, and disinfecting are also key, but the broader social distancing and staying at home if possible is critical.
Unfortunately, the importance of social distancing is not being communicated clearly or forcefully enough in a centralized manner; and so we now rely on grassroots, distributed sources – individual experts, outlets, and each other to relay this imperative. So I’m doing my part today to let you know where I stand.
If you are unclear on the reasons for social distancing, are worried about “overreacting” or “going too far,” or still think the need to distance may not apply to you (because you are young, asymptomatic, etc.) please check out one of these excellent resources to learn more.
Social Distance Game (see how many lives your level of social distancing can save)
The Math Behind Why We Need Social Distancing
One Simple Chart Explains How Social Distancing Saves Lives
Thank you for reading and for listening. I’ll be writing more tomorrow on my practices and ideas about how to manage fear and anxiety during this time (more my wheelhouse!) – stay tuned for that. But today’s note had to come first – it’s more time sensitive, and important.
Love you, and sending virtual hugs to everyone,
Tara
Photo by Terry Vlisidis
March 13, 2020
Resources during COVID-19
These are extraordinary, difficult times. Below is a list of posts that you may find helpful when you need support for dealing with fear and coping with change.
Fear
5 Strategies for Dealing with Fear
Inspiration
Spirituality
My Evening Journaling Question
Poems
Hey Beautiful, This is Your Time
image by: Timothy Dykes
February 5, 2020
Navigating Feedback
Most women I know have had experiences of being devastated because of feedback they’ve received. Watching this week’s comments on the SuperBowl halftime performances, I’m reminded of how we’ve made women – and particularly women of color – a kind of canvas for our judgements, our evaluations, our pronouncements. That act involves deep objectification of women – and both men and women do it.
For the past ten years, I’ve been working with women around coping with, navigating and healing from feedback – in settings ranging from corporate boardrooms to artists’ studios. The steps I recommend for any feedback situation are:
1. REFRAME the feedback: The feedback doesn’t tell you any facts about you; it tells you something about the perspective of the person giving the feedback. Reframe the feedback as information about them. What does this tell you about their priorities or preferences?
2. Is the feedback truly RELEVANT? Women forget to ask this, and instead feel they have to incorporate all feedback. We need to ask: is this feedback essential to incorporate in order to achieve my goals? Those goals might include professional ones (like getting work published) or personal ones (like a loving relationship with family members.) If the feedback is not truly relevant to your aims, you have permission to not attend to it.
3. REVISE your approach. If your answer to #2 is yes, then you can think about how you can revise your approach to work with/relate to this person more effectively, now that you know more about their needs and perspective. Going back to #1, the feedback isn’t a verdict on how you measure up – it just tells you how to be more impactful in your relationship with them.
If you want more on this, check out the Playing Big book chapter on Unhooking from Praise and Criticism, or join our Playing Big online course – registration closes today!
Love,
Tara
Above image by Josh Berquist
January 30, 2020
on the other side of tears
This weekend, I was listening to a powerful conversation between Alanis Morisette and developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld.
I was first introduced to Neufeld’s work by my friend and mentor, Lianne Raymond – she’s long studied his work and shared many life-changing insights from it with me over the years.
In this interview with Alanis, one idea in particular struck me and called out to me to be written about, and shared with you.
Neufeld says,
“So often, happiness
is on the other side
of tears that have not yet been shed.”
He speaks about the irreducible necessity of “having our tears” – of crying about our losses, about what didn’t go the way we hoped, about the limits we’ve come up against and been thwarted by. The tears must be shed, he explains to us, so that we find our way from frustration to sadness, to the renewal that comes afterward.
And, he offers us this seeming paradox: happiness is on the other side of our tears.
If you aren’t sure how radical that is, just consider how often, when you want greater happiness in some troubled area of your life, you think to yourself, “Okay, first step is to cry.”
There’s so many ways we chase happiness in our culture – the goal setting and health regimes, the seeking for new or different relationships. Of course, some fraction of that is worthy and useful. But much of it – we each know – turns out to be a futile pursuit, a run on a racetrack that takes us right back to where we started.
What I hear in Neufeld’s words is the hint that happiness often doesn’t come out of the discovery or achievement of some next thing. It lies on the other side of the tears we need to shed about things that have already occurred. It comes out of going into our grief to complete what has unfolded, so that there is truly room for “next.”
I recently was chatting with coach Laura Riordan, who created a model called “Sustainable Mom” to help mothers design an approach to their parenting that is not endlessly depleting and exhausting.
The first major step in her process is helping moms to grieve the loss of the life they had before, to grieve the loss of the woman they were before motherhood. Only then, she has found, can they go on to design the next chapter of their lives with clarity.
I almost fell over when she told me that. The grieving immediately resonated with me as a necessary piece, missing from every method for creating work-family balance or maternal self-care I’d encountered. Yet I had never seen or recognized what was missing – the need to grieve is often a blindspot for me, too.
Most of us are taught that tears are to be gotten done with as quickly as possible, or not shed at all, so we all carry ungrieved losses around with us.
If you feel like you’re futilely trying to change something, if it feels sometimes like you are trying to slap pretty wallpaper over a decaying wall, perhaps it’s time to take a break from the striving and looking forward – and instead look inward at the disappointments, and allow the yet uncried tears to come out. What if we could let go of our fear that’s a bottomless well and trust there’s a finite and restorative process waiting for us there?
It is impossible – gloriously impossible – to know what you will find on the other side of your tears.
Love,
Tara
Image by Paweł Czerwiński
September 17, 2019
my evening journaling question
I don’t do nightly journaling perfectly, not at all. There are many evenings when I fall asleep with the kids at bedtime, other nights when I’m simply resistant to writing, and still other evenings when I choose to give my attention to something else — a conversation with Eric, a long voicemail exchange with a friend, or of course, a very pressing puzzle game on my phone.
But when I do write for a few moments at the end of the day, I often give myself the prompt of this beloved question:
What really happened today?
What “really happened,” for me, has to do with aliveness, with movement. It’s how I ask, where was there true aliveness in the day? When did something in me move? When did I really feel, or encounter something new, or grow? When did something that mattered to another human being’s heart and wellbeing happen?
Every day has events and appointments, its swirl of action. Every day offers us the tempting opportunity to summarize it according to the things written in the calendar, or the tasks accomplished by its end.
And so we have to intentionally look at the day through a different lens. When I ask myself this question, I’m looking for what I consider to be the real plot of the story, my real life.
When I ask myself what really happened, my answers turn out to be things like this:
the hearty shared laugh with a friend
the moment of feeling a fear and naming it
any real moment of extending care or meaningful support to another human being
moments when I was shown a blindspot of my own, or when a long held belief was challenged
moments of present witness to a child’s delight, and moments of truly attending to their tears
It’s always moments – not hours or events – that comprise what really happened that day.
I find that as I ask this question, I begin to live my days more and more aware of these alive moments, and therefore more able to create them, notice them, and meet them with presence.
What might be shown to you if you ask yourself, “What really happened today?” Not the events, not the list of accomplishments, but those moments of inner movement or outer action that mattered to someone’s heart and wellbeing – yours or another’s?
What really happened today?
Love,
Tara
Photo Credit: Aaron Burden
June 4, 2019
200 years early
Today I want to tell you about Lucinda Foote, a young girl who applied for admission to Yale College – in 1783. She was only twelve years old at the time, but she was brilliant and ready. She aced her entrance exams – “translating and expounding with perfect ease” in Latin and Greek, her examiner wrote.
“Were it not for her sex,” he continued, “she would be considered fit to be admitted as a student of Yale.”
We don’t have Lucinda’s own account of the experience, so we can’t know what drove her – whether she harbored a genuine hope that she’d be admitted 200 years before co-education was seriously on the table; whether she undertook this act as a protest against an exclusionary system; whether she simply was moved by a blind passion to further her learning. I wish we could peek inside her mind and know.
That she applied does not surprise me – women everywhere have remarkable courage. What strikes me most about her story is what happened after her exam. Lucinda Foote “was declared to be worthy of admission by the Yale President.” And then, “she was given a parchment to document that achievement — and nothing else.”*
It was this – that the time was taken to give her a congratulatory document but then to deny her admission – that caused a pang of pain in my chest, because I saw in that gesture so many of our time.
We still have our ways of saying to women, “You are qualified. You cleared all our bars. You clearly deserve this. Yet this door is closed to you.”
You took all the right steps in your career, but we won’t be giving you this job.
Your pitch is excellent, but we will not be investing in it.
You are the most qualified candidate, but we will not be electing you.
This part of Lucinda’s story persists in our historical moment – acts of cognitive dissonance, of recognizing women’s qualifications but not opening the doors to power to them. This is compounded for women who hold multiple marginalized identities, be that of ethnicity, class, sexual orientation or others.
And here the lie told to women is exposed: “Just go get educated, go get qualified, and then you’ll have access to all the power roles in our culture, of course you will. We will wait here while you go get yourself ready.”
This turns out to have been less a roadmap for women’s advancement than a stalling technique for the systems that exclude us. And it has indeed kept us busy for quite a while.
So, to the solutions. What constructive things are there to say about this troubling reality? One is that we must recognize the Lucindas in our midst and open the doors of access wide for them, especially when it makes us uncomfortable to do so. Another is that we can be incredibly resourceful in working around and outside of exclusionary institutions; Lucinda Foote went on to pursue a full course of college studies – independently. And another lesson is that sometimes we’re called to show up in ways that are hundreds of years early for the culture – remembering it will mean something to someone generations down the line.
Love,
Tara
* Thelin, John R.. A History Of American Higher Education. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Photo by Thomas Kelly
April 22, 2019
The human being is…
Rabbi, scholar, activist Abraham Joshua Heschel tells us, “The human being is a disclosure of the divine.”
Has there ever been a more gorgeous use of that word, disclosure?
It is one thing to say, or even to know, that each of us is created from divinity. That is a truth that can help us be decent and kind toward one another.
But it is another thing to hold that every human being is a disclosure of the divine. To disclose is to make known. To expose to view. To reveal or uncover.
Heschel believed that the divine was hidden, and couldn’t be seen or known directly by us mere mortals. But, he offers to us in these words the idea that each human being offers us some clue of what the divine is, some reflection, some refraction of the sacred. It is in us that the hidden divine is revealed.
We can look at each other – even the others that challenge us – and say, what do you show me about divine wisdom, mercy, brilliance, creativity? What do you show me about what the divine is? We can look at each other and ask, who are you as a piece of a hidden divine revealed?
Love,
Tara
P.S. I’m writing after a few week’s pause in sending these messages out – it’s been a while! Our family had a stream of late Spring colds that we seemed to just keep passing to one another, and then I got deeply involved with some new creative projects that I look forward to sharing with you as they come to fruition. Glad to be in touch again today!
