Home
Jan 25
2017
1 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
When someone you love is ill everything slows to a stop. The focus of your mind narrows to a pinpoint. Your priorities become clear and all that is less important fades into a grey blur. You want to make it better, wave a magic wand so that all is well and the pain is over. Or take that pain yourself. But you can’t. And nor should you necessarily do so. We learn and gain so much depth and perspective when we go through hard times. Certainly, when I look back on my own life I realize that I would not wish away all the difficulties and tragedies that I have experienced, however painful they were at the time. I have come to see that it is these challenges that provide us with the opportunity to develop some wisdom.
Many years ago I was running a Creativity workshop for Kent County Council and I remember asking the group individually to draw something that gave them a sense of wonder. One woman drew a picture similar to the one below:
When I asked her what the picture meant, she said that once you have children your heart is living many lives, for as they wander around the world on their many journeys, one’s heart is not only on one’s own path but also on theirs. I found it touching and have thought of it often when I think about my children flying across the Atlantic or my grandchildren going to school or nursery for the first time, or taking a school trip. My heart seems to have flown around the world in multiple directions over the last few years. And there is always a sense of relief and gratitude in a safe return, a safe landing. There is also immeasurable joy in a school cup rewarding a 5-year old’s effort, or a 3-year old granddaughter telling me very seriously “When I grow up I want to be a tooth fairy.”
Another friend once remarked that, as a parent, you are only ever as happy as your most unhappy child. I have both experienced this and observed it in my friends who are parents. When a child suffers, you suffer. Now that I am older I find myself thinking about my mother and the worries she still felt for us all, even when she was in her eighties and we children were well into our fifties. We may have been adult but we were still her children and she, too, lived our lives alongside hers.
But, as I am learning, we have to be careful to differentiate and separate ourselves enough not to live our children’s lives too closely, especially when they become adult. One can’t live the lives of others. When my first grandchild was born I was so overwhelmed by love for her that I thought of her every day and perhaps too often. I had to pull my heart back a little and remind myself that she was not my child but that of my son and daughter-in-law and so ultimately the worries, pleasures and immediate concerns about her were theirs, not directly mine. I could love them but at more of a distance than my heart might have chosen! One needs to focus on living one life, on making one’s own life the best and wisest it can be, whilst giving as much love and support to one’s children and grandchildren as one is able.
I frequently remind myself of what I consider to be the wise words of Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet. He writes “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you …You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts… and their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth…the arrow flies and the bow is stable.”
As a parent you may have many ideas and suggestions about how your children live their lives but we have to tread carefully as we do not, ultimately, know what the future holds nor what is a ‘right’ solution to a problem that is not our own problem. One has to trust the child and the universe that they intuit what is right for them.
And that reminds me of the time when I was making a major life change and switching career. My parents loved me very much but were not enthusiastic about my retraining to become a management coach and business trainer. They didn’t understand what the role involved and were nervous of me starting my own business and setting up alone. But something in my gut told me it was the right decision for me – a future that I could see but they couldn’t. And I was right. The last 25 years of setting up and running Positiveworks have been amazing and enabled me to travel the world and meet so many stimulating people. My parents were also right in warning me that it would be hard work and a challenge with an uncertain outcome. But they couldn’t see what I envisaged and if I had listened to their advice I might have deprived myself of some wonderful experiences. I was living in the “house of tomorrow” and they were the stable bow.
So perhaps it is, as I sit in Hampshire with a chilly fog so thick that I can’t even see the hedge at the end of our garden, a timely reminder that we cannot know what the future holds for ourselves let alone our children. And perhaps also to question how many hearts we have trotting along the pavements or flying thousands of miles up in the sky and how many lives we are trying to live – whether we are getting the balance in supporting others enough but not too much. For holding too many hearts too closely can be tiring for us and potentially claustrophobic for them.
And of course I shall hope that my own sons will read this and put me right if the balance of my attention is out of kilter!
Dec 21
2016
1 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
Michelle Obama recently commented that America is a country “without hope”. But I question whether, as we turn towards 2017, any of us can truly live without hope. We can’t afford to focus on the pessimistic view if we truly wish for things not to be as cataclysmic as many people fear. The question is, do we really know what we do want the outcomes to be – for ourselves, our families, countries and the world? Without a vision of a positive future we cannot create it.
It is easy to feel anxious, certainly. We sit at a pivotal moment where all kinds of world situations look as if they could go horribly wrong. Trump and Brexit have shaken up the norms to which we have become accustomed. There is the concerning potential that the clock will be turned back on the Cold War, European alliances, American diplomacy, the balance of power, the position of women’s equality. There have been the tragic events in Berlin, Nice, Paris, Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. Mass migration across Europe. It’s been a year of upheaval.
But we can get caught too easily into what Ekhart Tolle describes as our ‘pain body’ – the part of us that is attracted to negativity and pain. It is a part that the media exploits outrageously – always focusing on the negative dramas of any situation that is occurring in the globe, working on our fear. Even charities have to reinforce negative messages in order to encourage us to give more generously. But fear doesn’t help us stay healthy, nor does it help us to be happy – and remaining as happy as possible on a daily basis is surely a reasonable goal for us all as we head into the new year.
Here I am encouraging you to vision what you really would like to happen next year and beyond. What would you like for yourself as an individual in 2017? What would you like for your family, your work, your community? What would you like for the environment, for your country, for the world in general? What might that look like? How might some of the headlines run? What would you be seeing, feeling, hearing?
In my experience in my own life and as a coach I have seen visualisation work over and over again. People’s goals don’t always happen in the precise format that they want nor within the timescale that they hope for – but virtually always when goals are shaped and action taken towards them I have found that many of those goals are achieved. Indeed, David and I were pleased recently when we looked back over the new year jottings and goals we had created together over the last six years and realized that many of them had come to fruition. So I know that at some stage during December 31st we shall be working out what we wish for ourselves, our families and the world in 2017.
When it comes to world goals it can seem as if we can’t influence the outcomes. And yet if we all spend our time in the negative conversations I have experienced in 2016 focusing on the worst outcomes of Trump, Putin, Brexit, Turkey or Syria then we start to make it a reality before it is even happening. This wastes our precious moment of here and now as we are interrupting our peace of mind with speculative thoughts of catastrophe. No entrepreneur would do this, because they understand that optimism – or what I prefer to call rational optimism – is what initiates opportunity. They might check out the risks but nonetheless maintain a positive focus on how these can be overcome.
Could we therefore vision a world where Trump is not the disaster that we fear he may be, where Putin becomes a benevolent force, where Brexit works out well for all those involved, where IS fizzle out, where there is more integration between religion and races across the world, where women are treated as equals? Could new contracts, new leaders and new alliances actually be a good thing for the world? We may not be able to see this as a possibility today but equally none of us knows what the future holds so perhaps some modesty around our clairvoyant abilities is appropriate?
Let’s not feed the negativity and fear that exists in the world. There has been progress – fewer dictatorships, less bloodshed in war. Let’s build on this. We can’t create future success unless we acknowledge the successes we have created so far. We can’t shape a better world if we don’t know what we are trying to shape.
I won’t have time to write another new year message (we have between 10-16 people staying with us every day now between Christmas and new year!) so on that note may I wish you a very happy Christmas and a 2017 that brings what you would like.
I wish for peace and goodwill for all
Helen
Dec 13
2016
4 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
“When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep… “ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
They say that Christmas is one of the most stressful times of the year for any couple. So as we head towards the chaos of presents, parties, over-indulgence and young children’s excitement, I thought I would share some of the lessons I have learnt about love in my 50 years of endeavouring to get it right (and inevitably not succeeding!). I am not sure that anyone gets it ‘right’ of course. We just muddle along in the confusion that is oneself and another person. But some things work better than others, I have found, and I wish I had known them when I was younger. So here goes…
- I have come to see that love is an activity of the mind as much as the emotion because one sparks off the other. We need to keep love in focus, not just assume it will be there forever without conscious thought. You can train your brain to remember why you fell in love with one another in the first place – the first image, the attraction, the conversations and the interest you showed towards the other in those early days. This activates the emotions and memories that reinforce love even through the pressures of the Christmas season when one is woken early by children or under a deadline to put the turkey on the table at a particular time for the in-laws. I have found that one can fix many of the everyday challenges of living with another person if one holds love central. Once we allow it to fade it is much harder to reignite that wish to be together.
- I have just discovered, at my ancient age, Karen Horney’s model that one can become aware of one’s tendency to respond in three different ways to one’s partner – to turn towards them, to turn away from them or to turn against Realizing that I have a conscious choice as to whether I turn towards my partner and listen to their needs, turn away from them when they ask me for something, or turn against them and get angry, has been a really helpful insight. I become alert to what I am doing and make a more helpful choice, especially when I acknowledge that my response may have had nothing to do with them precisely but more to do with me just being in a bad mood about something completely different! It’s a great model to keep in mind.
- I don’t think I knew enough about the nature of love earlier in life, the give and take, joy and pain that is a natural part of being in relationship. Nor the need to express one’s inner being with one’s partner. I met my ex-husband when I was 18 and was very naïve and rather buttoned-up. I knew nothing about love nor, indeed, at that age much about life either! The myths about “happily ever after” did not prepare me for bumping up against another person’s perfectly legitimate but different habits and moods. Maturity makes a difference. Self knowledge enables us to achieve a degree of honesty about our own quirks and expectations of life and love. We can then learn to question whether those expectations are realistic! After all, the Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn movies of my youth gave us the impression that it would be so easy but of course that was just Hollywood. Perfection doesn’t exist.
- There can be some science to it: I have found that understanding personality types is both interesting and helpful to observe the different way each of us responds to a situation. Myers Briggs (http://www.myersbriggs.org), the HBDI (http://www.herrmannsolutions.com) and the Enneagram (https://www.enneagraminstitute.com) all give insights into why one’s partner does things the way they do and can also help one understand the impact of stress on behaviour. I become horribly nit-picky and anxious when I am stressed. Others become sharp, angry or withdrawn. Getting to the bottom of the emotional concern beneath the behaviour can be enlightening.
- The advent of young children inevitably skews the balance of the relationship. I didn’t realize how many men feel sidelined at the birth of a baby. I could have been more sensitive to this. It’s really difficult to keep the couple relationship central, even in the midst of a child’s demands but nonetheless so important. If you value family then value each other because if the two of you don’t hack it the family falls apart and that is sad for everyone. Divorce is a miserable affair. You won’t see as much of your children and are likely to have less money to spend on yourself or them. So keep the romance alive. Make time for the two of you to be adult, to be lovers and stay on each other’s side, as your children will test you on many levels as the years go by.
- I know it’s really hard in today’s 24/7 digital world to put love before career. But in my experience it can often be far easier to find another job and far less easy to find love with someone you can live with. Watch the balance of priorities in the midst of the reality of having to pay the bills. “I’m doing it all for you” has a hollow ring if you aren’t giving enough attention to the relationship. Being at the bottom of a priority list doesn’t feel good. Review your mutual priorities often as you and your partner’s lives change and the children grow up. Working late and focusing on career is ok some of the time but not all of the time. The reality is that work loses its meaning when life at home is unhappy.
- It’s easy to forget that we will change. When I hear people say things like “She isn’t the girl I married” I think to myself, of course she isn’t because you married her twenty years ago and none of us are the same people we were twenty years earlier (just look back at the photos!). Inevitably each of you will change over the years, and the nature of your relationship will change with time. This is totally natural but can take adaptation, particularly if one of you takes a new turn or develops an interest that you personally can’t understand. I know I found it threatening to be with someone as they changed. But it means a lot to have a partner who encourages you when you try something different – as David does now with my poetry.
- I could have been better prepared for the reality of marriage. What Gibran says is true. Love is a long journey and its lessons are tough and challenging. It isn’t for the faint hearted. It is a decision. A decision to commit, to be loyal, a decision to push through the problems and challenges. A decision to keep the positive aspects of the relationship to the foreground of our mind and not to keep harking back over old wounds or allow a spiral of negative dialogue to build up about how the other person is wrong. All divorces, just as all relationships, take two to create the dynamic. Each has to take responsibility for their part in what they contribute to the union. When you feel like judging or blaming the other person ask yourself “but do I do that too sometimes?”. It’s shameful how often I have realized that I have got irritated about something that, when I reflected on it, I have to accept I do too.
- I read John Gottman’s book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work a few years ago. He describes ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’ that break relationships – criticism, contempt, defensiveness (ouch, how difficult it is to avoid that one!), and stonewalling, which is where you refuse to talk about an issue the other person has raised. The book is full of good advice taken from well-researched cases. Read it, reflect on it, act upon it and it gives you a chance to keep love alive.
- As we get older the number of people we love grows – children, parents, grandchildren, siblings, friends, nieces, nephews and intimate partner. We have room for all of them in our heart but there can be times when, say, a baby arrives or a parent is needy and we get pulled in different directions. Watch for the real need versus the emotional blackmail and don’t lose sight of what really matters to you in the long-term.
- Learning about cognitive-behavioural psychology has been very useful. Reflecting on how we are all fallible and make mistakes, checking whether expectations of one another are rational and helpful. If you find yourself using should, must, ought-to’s in your thinking – “he should know how I am feeling” (even though he is not a mind-reader and you haven’t shared your emotions with him) or “she ought to have understood how difficult my day has been” (even though she hasn’t been there), then check whether your thinking is helping you connect or just pushing you apart.
- Life changes. It was my ex-husband’s 70th birthday last week and David and I went to his party to celebrate. It’s hard to believe that someone you have known since you were 18 is now turning 70 – scary in fact as it means that I must be heading for that number too soon. And 70 is an age I associate with my parents and their friends, not with myself. But of course I’d better learn to live with it. For me the most poignant aspect of the evening was that I could toast my ex for feeling blessed that we have a good relationship, that when either of us is concerned about our sons or grandchildren we can turn to one other and talk about it. That we have been able to share graduations, weddings, children’s parties and Christmas happily together. It’s a lonely place if you can’t talk about what is best for your children with the person who loves them as much as you do. You may not live together but you can remain loving parents, rejoicing in their successes, supporting them through harsh times. It’s not always easy but it means a great deal to those children when you do manage it. If you are parents you will be parents for life. No-one else cares for your children as much as the two of you do. So it’s worth keeping that relationship on good terms and I know many families who will be celebrating Christmas happily with ex-spouses and their extended families.
I love Christmas but it is often a muddle of family relationships, burnt gravy, spilt red wine on white carpet, noise and chaos. Acceptance, forgiveness and a sense of humour work wonders at releasing you to enjoy whatever happens. There’s no perfect template for living. Nor for love. But some things help, and as it has taken me to reach the age of 66 before I learnt many of them, I thought I would share them with you so that hopefully you don’t have to be the slow learner I have been!
Nov 30
2016
0
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
I don’t know about you but I found the interaction between boys and girls pretty confusing when I was growing up. At my kindergarten the boys would chase me with stinging nettles and spiders and yet I was the one who got into trouble when I screamed. The teachers didn’t reprimand the boys for scaring me. This seemed thoroughly unfair and left me with a sense that they were more powerful than I was. I was relieved when I moved on to an all girls’ school. But did this then cocoon me in an unnatural world where I wasn’t learning how to manage the opposite sex? Or sex? I do remember being rather horrified when boys tried to touch me up at teenage parties and finding it tricky to balance being polite and considerate with being firm enough to say “no”.
In a week where we have learnt of the sexual abuse of boys by football coach Barry Bennell, it becomes clear that young children find it difficult to assert their rights, even when they know that what is being suggested is wrong. Yesterday morning on the Today programme Maria Miller, Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, recounted that 2/3 of girls in school report being harassed sexually by their male peer groups, being called names such as slut or whore, being touched inappropriately and being rated for sex appeal. I feel lucky that didn’t happen at my school.
Ranulph Fiennes recently spoke very movingly about his own experience of being sexually harassed at school, which he writes about in his book Fear: Our Ultimate Challenge (Hodder & Stoughton). We need to help girls and boys find the language and behavioural skills to manage these bullying situations as today’s young people can suffer not only in the playground but also through social media, sexting, and at home. Mental illness among the young is increasing and incidents of bullying and harassment can lead to conditions such as depression, anxiety, self-harm and anorexia, so the more skills we give children to counteract these experiences the better for them, their families and also for the hard-pressed NHS.
It may seem strange but I didn’t realize until mid-life that I had as much right to my opinion and needs as the next person. I, like many girls, was brought up, both at home and in school, to be helpful, polite, accommodating. I am not alone. In my experience many people only learn about assertiveness skills and managing conflict when they are in their 30s or 40s and are sent on a training course at their place of work. But we need to be taught these behaviours earlier in life. Saying no is difficult in many different situations. I know many people who find it tricky to say no to a boss’s demands on a project at work. I knew girls who had sex with boys because they felt it too impolite to say no. They didn’t necessarily want to make love but felt that a rejection might be rude, uncool, or hurtful to the boy. Looking at the research on today’s teenagers it would appear that this still happens.
We are basically talking about power and how to enable children to feel powerful in themselves but not have to wield that power over others. It isn’t always easy to speak up for yourself, especially when the other person is older than you or in a position of authority. But it has to start with the self – with each individual working out for themselves what their personal boundaries are, what they are or are not willing to go along with, whether in relationships or in other areas of life such as drugs or crime. If we don’t have this clear within us then we can’t express it to others and there is no reason why they should be expected to know it intuitively.
The need to know what one stands for and where one is going was brought home to me when I did a leadership day with horses, which I may have mentioned before as a life-changing moment. I was put in a ring with a horse with no bridle and I had to somehow persuade him to follow me. It was only once I became absolutely clear where I wanted him to go and had embodied that sense of direction in my body language that he deigned to follow me. I had to make my intention clear to myself first and not give fuzzy or ambiguous messages. When others know what you stand for they often – though not always – respond with respect. We can help young people to be prepared for either.
Growing up is complicated. Well let’s face it, life and other people can be complicated! We have to learn to develop the confidence to express our needs and opinions. Schools can provide a safe environment in which children can begin to think about the social areas of life. They can introduce topics such as values and principles and, through questions, help the child to identify their own set of values and boundaries. My colleague Diane Carrington and I wrote a book on this subject called Future Directions: Practical Ways to Develop Emotional Intelligence and Confidence in Young People (Network Continuum). In my own life I have found role play to be invaluable in integrating new behaviours as one literally has to learn new words, voice tone and body language in order to convey firmly enough what one is requesting or rejecting. One has to practice and rehearse the words sufficient times so that one’s response becomes built into muscle memory. This develops a sense of self and one’s rights that are firmly centred within.
They always say that you end up teaching what you need to learn and I did, indeed, find myself teaching assertiveness classes when I first set up my business, Positiveworks. I taught others and therefore learnt for myself that to be assertive means:
- Respecting yourself and giving respect to others. Recognising that you have as equal a right to your opinion as others do. You may have different opinions but can still honour one another.
- Taking responsibility for yourself, including the recognition that you have a responsibility towards others in how you communicate and act.
- Knowing what you want, feel or need and asking clearly for it by expressing your needs and feelings honestly but without punishing people or violating their rights.
- Being able to say no, or that you don’t understand.
- Being clear about what you want to accomplish, and then being prepared to negotiate on an equal basis of power rather than trying to win.
- Allowing yourself to make mistakes, to enjoy and talk about successes, to change your mind or to take time over a decision.
I was obviously a late starter but I came to see that each person has a right to their own opinion but not a right to force that opinion or need on others. And that you can say no to another person just because it doesn’t feel right to you but you don’t have to be unpleasant. You learn the language that helps you feel strong enough in yourself not to give your power away to another person or compromise your values. Useful phrases can include “No thanks, that doesn’t work for me.” “I can see what you’re saying but I don’t agree”. “I’d like to think about it.” “ I’ll decide when I am ready.” It’s the tone of your voice that will tell the other person whether you are choosing to be rude or whether you are understanding their position but holding your own position. It helps to keep your inner thoughts supportive too – such as “Just because the other person wants me to do something doesn’t mean I have to do it. I am the director of my own life, I can say no if I want to.” In this you have to become willing to be unpopular or be subjected to put-downs, called a spoilsport or worse, because ultimately you know that it is better to stand up for yourself than it is to be popular with others on their terms.
This is particularly difficult in teenage years, of course. Parents and teachers can support young people in these situations but only if they open their eyes to the kinds of challenges their children are experiencing and are willing to talk about them. Sex education is still often taught on a biological level. The assertive behaviours required in multiple situations in life and work often don’t get taught at all.
One doesn’t want to frighten a child but bringing these issues out into the open can help them be prepared and plan their response in advance. Teachers can be role models of assertive behaviour in how they discuss and deal with both boys and girls equally – unlike the teachers at my kindergarten. They can show zero tolerance of disrespectful behaviour on any level. Learning to manage conflict or demands are essential social skills that can be readily shared with children at school and at home. The earlier they are taught the better. They are life-skills.
Links: Future Directions by Helen Whitten and Diane Carrington https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Future_Directions.html?id=FY2tAwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y .
NHS advice: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Sexandyoungpeople/Pages/Itsoktosayno.aspx
Nov 24
2016
1 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
I woke this morning realizing that I am one of the luckiest women in the whole of the history of the world. Born in 1950 I missed the impact of war, though its aftermath shaped my childhood and made me value the peace we experienced in England. Yes, girls were still regarded as less important or intelligent than boys and we were told to become secretaries, teachers and nurses rather than managing directors, pilots or doctors but the social and political changes of the 1960s overturned much of those attitudes and we did, indeed, become more than had been anticipated for us. With the pill, for the first time in history, we gained control over our lives with an ease that no previous generation of women had experienced. We could plan the number of children we felt we could manage financially, enabling us to work alongside motherhood and to become economically independent. Research overturned the concept that women were not as intelligent as men and we achieved excellent results at school and university, providing career opportunities we hadn’t thought possible.
I want my granddaughters to be as free and empowered as we have been. But I have fears that there are forces potentially trying to turn back the clock to a time when women had less power and influence. Trump’s anti-abortion and misogynistic rhetoric puts such attitudes centre stage. In addition, lad culture, internet porn, those who resent and berate feminism such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Erdogan’s reforms, plus integration with radical fundamentalist cultures who believe women to be inferior to men, could reverse the changes I have enjoyed. We have witnessed leaders introducing repressive regimes in Iran, Afghanistan and in countries across the globe. Let’s be watchful that we don’t sleepwalk back in time on these issues…
Throughout many parts of the world today women still do not have the same legal or voting rights as men. Women the world over, eg half the human population, throughout history have been treated as inferior mentally and emotionally. Social behaviours and laws have been developed to control them and, until the 1960s we could not easily limit the number of children we had so women frequently experienced multiple pregnancies and births. Death in childbirth was common and the effort of carrying and raising that number of children was gruelling. This remains the situation today for women in many other parts of the world.
Life changed for those of us born after the Second World War. We began to see that we were just as bright and capable as men and men started to adjust to treat us as such. Our relationships became generally less subservient and in the western world men have taken an almost-equal role in raising the family, cooking and sharing the responsibilities of home life. As a single woman I was able to take a mortgage – a simple right that was denied previous generations unless a man signed the deed for you. I set up a business, borrowed money to invest in that business, travelled the world on my own without hassle.
In my youth it was edgy for a woman to go into a pub or cinema on her own. Today we can go where we choose. Whether single or in a relationship the opportunities to participate in culture, travel, clubs and social life has been easy for me. Now, as an older woman, the opportunities are amazing in comparison with those of previous generations.
Equal pay and equal rights aren’t working perfectly but I think young women can’t imagine how different it was for their mothers and grandmothers, some of whom had worked in the war but then were hurried back to the kitchen. I and my peers have benefited from the NHS and medical advances that would have amazed and potentially saved the lives of our grandmothers and their children. It’s easy to forget how dangerous and damaging back-street abortions were too. Girls put their lives and health at risk and seldom took the decision lightly. Those who carried their babies to full-term were ostracised and had to have them adopted, at great personal cost. Don’t let’s go back there.
We have had a tendency in this country to accept behaviours that are unacceptable, including forced marriage, FGM, bigamy, domestic violence, honour killings and women losing their children post-divorce. We have fought hard to change the lot of women in the UK within a very short time. What the suffragettes started was carried on but it isn’t so long ago that the generation of women born before the Second World War were frequently subjected to the kind of behaviours we see in Mad Men, where men felt entitled both to touch and undermine them. Those men would have found it hard to conceive that their secretaries might one day become their bosses. We can’t tolerate a return to that sense of entitlement that existed then but internet porn and lad culture do indeed threaten to turn back the clock and encourage men to abuse girls, as the research in Peggy Orenstein’s book Girls and Sex demonstrates [Harper Collins].
It’s too easy to lose what one doesn’t appreciate. Think about your daughters, granddaughters, nieces and the future generation of women wherever they may be. We need to protect their dignity and their freedom to contribute to business, the arts, science, politics and more, with their minds and creativity. Our sons and grandsons benefit too where there is a balance of equal respect. The world needs the voices of women in senior positions to counteract Trump-style chauvinist behaviours that could otherwise overwhelm us. Those countries where women work and are in positions of influence do better economically and are civilised places to live. We all need to be alert to any chipping away of women’s position or respect. It’s not a joke. Generations of women and girls have suffered and still do across the globe.
Speak out, write about it and complain should these rights and freedoms be put in jeopardy. Not just for your own family and friends but for the whole of civilisation. 50% of the human population has just as much right and just as much to offer as the other 50%. It may be different but it is every bit as valuable a contribution to humanity. Let’s work together to ensure that male and female voices have equal status in taking the world forward in 2017 and beyond.
Nov 08
2016
0
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
I have had an uplifting couple of days visiting Salisbury, an old haunt where I was confirmed and where my sons were at school, and then driving down to Devon through the most beautiful landscapes of autumn. What a stunning country we live in. I do enjoy the changes of the seasons, the sweeps of fields, hills and golden woods. I enjoyed noticing the horses, cows and sheep grazing on the green grass and my journey was an enriching experience. I felt fortunate to inhabit such beauty.
And I have been questioning how it is that I know those things that uplift me but don’t always make sufficient time for them. It’s so easy to get buried in emails and lost surfing the internet. All very interesting but this seldom raises my spirits in the way that, say, standing under a night sky does. When I had a flat in Nice I would sit on my balcony almost every night looking up at the stars but now I live in the countryside, where the sky is clearer and less light-polluted, I hardly ever remember to get my fix of wonder by going out into the garden and looking up. More fool me.
So I have been thinking about what it is that makes one person experience a sense of awe from being in a sunset or a sacred place and another from being in a science lab. Where do you gain your sense of wonder?
For me it’s cathedrals. Put me in a cathedral with a choir singing and I am transported to another realm. I can’t help but experience a sense of wonder. I don’t have to think about it. It just happens. I look at the beauty of the stained glass, carved wood, towering arches and something happens inside me, unbidden. Awe.
I was visiting Salisbury in the hope of finding the gravestone of an ancestor, Thomas Bucknall. He is recorded on our family tree as having been buried in St Edmund’s Church Salisbury in 1783. And so I spent Sunday afternoon wandering around damp graveyards only to discover that St Edmunds is now deconsecrated and has become an Arts Centre. No-one I spoke to seemed to be clear about what had happened to the graves.
And so I moved on to the church of St Thomas, in the centre of Salisbury, to see if anyone there knew where I might find information, as the parishes were amalgamated in 1973 becoming St Thomas and St Edmund’s. What a delight that was – a chapel with medieval wall paintings and, above the Chancel in the main church, a Doom Painting, depicting a Bishop being dragged to hell. But the concept of doom brought my mind back to the US election, to Syria, Brexit, Mosul and the hope that doom would not be coming our way soon.
I have always been drawn to sacred spaces and sacred music. I don’t really know why as my parents weren’t particularly religious. I think it may have been due to my prep school headmaster, John Booker, or Mr B as we called him, at Knighton House in Dorset. The Bookers had created a simple white chapel in the basement of the school and Mr B took our services. I still remember him often, as a warm, wise and spiritual man. His wife, Peggy, led the choir and carol services in the local church in Durweston. For me it was a special time and I continued to enjoy going to church even though my next school, Cranborne Chase, did not push religion down our throats and many of my friends weren’t interested. But we were encouraged to think about what it meant and to me it resonated and has been a part of my life ever since.
David and I are lucky to have Winchester, Chichester and Salisbury cathedrals all within a short distance and can go to services or listen to sacred music. On our travels in Russia and Eastern Europe we visited Orthodox churches with exquisite wall paintings and were given concerts by black-robed Orthodox priests with their sonorous bass voices. Fabulous.
And so on Sunday night, to shelter from the cold and from the potential doom of the US election, I took myself to evensong in Salisbury Cathedral. As I walked down the nave that familiar sense of wonder took me over. I looked up to the ancient stones and thought of the history of the kings and bishops who had walked the flagstones over the centuries. And felt angry again that the government are potentially dropping History of Art from the school curriculum. Whether or not you believe in Christianity these churches and cathedrals and the art within them hold our history. I remember my mother being horrified by a young woman next to her in a jewellery shop who looked at a gold crucifix on a chain and asked, “who’s that little man?” Will generations to come know anything about the stories and beliefs that have shaped our past?
I have noticed that a building takes on the energy of what happens within it. For me a cathedral presents an energy of wisdom, as if the centuries of worship and song have seeped into the stones, encouraging us to be still, to reflect and question what we can learn so as to access the better part of ourselves as we go back out into the world.
The bishop spoke of truth and wisdom in a thinly-veiled attack on the “post-truth” politics of Trump and Clinton. He reminded us of the Magna Carta housed in Salisbury Cathedral, implying that we should take the judiciary seriously. And the choir sang the Nunc Dimitis and Magnificat, their pure young voices echoing around the aisles. Truth, wisdom, forgiveness and love, yes, good values to hold within us whether we believe in Jesus Christ or not.
I left feeling uplifted, reminding myself that it is up to me to seek out these moments. They exist if we look for them – in the night sky, in music, a painting, a sunrise, in the innocence of a child, a cathedral. In this uncertain world we can still find wonder. Each of us will see awe in different places. It’s up to us to make it happen.