Announcing: Been There Voices ... stories of wisdom from women who have lived long and learned much

From diversity comes wisdom

"I wanted a perfect ending. 

Now I've learned, the hard way, 

that some poems don't rhyme, 

and some stories don't have 

a clear beginning, middle, and end." 

 -- Gilda Radner

Few of us have fiction-perfect stories; all of us have struggles and joys, lessons learned, lessons forgotten and learned again. What we have after decades of surviving the ups and downs of life is Wisdom. Hard-earned wisdom stories that can be shared with others and, possibly, help them on their own journeys. 

The purpose of Been There Voices is to create an ongoing series of stories and thoughts from a diverse group of women who have lived long enough to gather wisdom and are caring enough to want to share what they've learned. 

To start the ball rolling, I invited several women friends who have had varied lives to join a loosely defined process of sharing our stories and our wisdom. The ball is rolling slowly as we gather biographies and ideas into the Been There Voices tab shown at the top of this blog. Click here to meet the women who are sharing their stories.

Early in the pandemic, Barbara Gaughen-Muller, one of the voices of this project, invited me to be a guest on her peace podcast. It was a chance to share some of the thinking I had been doing about gratitude and generosity and their role as two sides of the same coin. I had been fascinated by so many of the pandemic scenes: generosity -- a pianist playing to Venice from a gondola -- and greed -- people stripping store shelves of toilet paper -- and how those actions related to feelings of gratitude.

Barbara suggested I use the podcast in the opening announcement for this new group as an introduction to me as well as to this fledgling process of increasing the number of us who are sharing our wisdom. 

We women who have reached the wisdom stage of life (and some reach it earlier, or later, than others) now live in a world which offers us multiple opportunities for sharing the lessons we've learned; however, sometimes we forget how much wisdom we've gathered, how much we've survived and how we have thrived.

These strange and challenging times desperately need wisdom. I hope we can be an example of shared wisdom and encourage others to tell their stories whenever possible. It is through story that we share our human connections as well as our collected wisdom.

Click here to watch

Please join us … please share your own wisdom in the comments section, or if you would like to be a guest contributor or a contributing member, please send an email to jwycoff at me dot com.

A question and a thought for you:

How might you tell your story ...

and to whom?

"Our species thinks in metaphors 

and learns through stories." 

-- Mary C. Bateson

Repeating the Lesson: Doing what I didn't want to do

If you want to hear the podcast, click here.

My friend Barbara Gaughen-Muller asked me to do something I didn’t want to do. We’ve been friends for almost 30 years and I would do almost anything for her, but I didn’t want to do this. so I resisted for several months.

Barbara is a peace activist and hosts a peace podcast, doing 15-minute interviews with a wide range of luminaries on their views on peace. She wanted me to do an interview with her, but I kept going through all those pesky little mind reasons for resisting ... not knowing what to say, not liking to be on camera, not being familiar with Zoom ... etc. etc. However, Barbara is a hard person to say no to ... she is one of the most positive, encouraging, joyful people I've ever met, however, she's also persistent in the sweetest, most gentle way. So, finally, I thought of something I might talk about and said "yes."

After worrying about and mapping out my presentation that only loosely touched on peace, the morning of the recording, I took a leap and threw it all away. I had awakened with the idea that personal peace is like a two-sided coin ... one side gratitude, one side generosity. I decided that idea was enough to launch us into a conversation. And, it was.

 

We had fun conversation, laughed a lot, and she made it as easy as sitting in her living room. Later that afternoon, I thought: that was so fun I want to do it again.

This isn’t the first time I’ve learned this lesson about doing things I'm resisting, and every time I re-learn it, I think I won’t have to again. However, it doesn’t seem to work that way. This seems to be one of those lessons I guess I’m going to have to repeat until I truly get it. 

 

Thanks, Barbara, for being such a gentle and generous teacher. To see more about Barbara and her podcasts, click here.

 

 

Pieces of Peace

Copyright free for all non-commercial use.

I’ve been "for peace" since Vietnam became a part of my personal life in the mid-60s. I put flower stickers on my car (I was very naive) and took them off when, as a young, Marine wife, I was informed that Camp Pendleton found them offensive. 

I talked peace and backed the movement. I protested Iraq and never believed the WMD line. I thought I was thoroughly grounded in peace.

It wasn’t until Pacifica Graduate Institute sent out a call for submissions for their Pondering Peace in a World of Turmoil program, that I really stopped to think about what peace means. (The Pondering Peace program happens this weekend ... if you're anywhere close to Santa Barbara, check out this exciting event.)

Recently I read an article about what happened in Syria. The article told the story of how four years of devastating drought led to massive shifts in population from ruined farms (85% of the country’s livestock died) to urban ghettos. Homeless, jobless, hungry people are the fodder of revolution. We think of Syria as a victim of politics and religious differences when it is actually an early blow of climate change and what happens when desperate people are deprived of their basic needs. (For more about what happened in this Florida-sized country, read Imagine Florida.)

As I thought about peace, it suddenly became more than the absence of war. When people don’t have their basic needs met … food, shelter, safety, knowledge, work … they will fight to get it. Of course they will.

Those words had to be part of answer. Then, Barbara Gaughen-Muller, a friend and long-time peace activist, told me about a book she’s working on focused on the idea of “peace begins with me.” That makes sense so I began thinking about what I need to embody in order to truly support peace. The words that came included … gratitude, openness, hope, expression, courage.

However, it’s not just about our physical needs or how we are as individuals. Peace is about relationships and our interactions, how we live together. More words were needed for that part of the picture … equality, justice, compassion, forgiveness, generosity.

These aren’t all the words, of course, but, in the process of thinking about all these levels, I realized that peace isn’t something we do or don’t do (war). It’s about who we are and how we choose to be, individually and with each other.

Each of us is … or can be … a piece of peace. What word would you add as a "piece of peace?"

Love Notes: Barbara Gaughen-Muller

Barbara Gaughen-Muller

Some miracles happen instantly: a call out of the blue, a sudden connection that takes you in a new direction, an insight that greets you when your eyes open in the morning.

Other miracles develop over time, building momentum until you’re finally gobsmacked by their magnitude. Barbara Gaughen-Muller is one of those slow building miracles in my life.

Barbara is a gift to everyone she comes in contact with. I call her a happy pill. She sees the best in everyone and never holds back in telling them how wonderful they are. I hope to someday be the person she thinks I am.

As often happens to people with an attitude like Barbara's, she has led a charmed life. She is a beautiful, larger than life presence who sweeps you up into her energy. She focused that energy into public relations and her talent for connection created magic from Hollywood to New York.

I met Barbara about 25 years ago and had the fun of watching her fall in love with Robert Muller, a life-long leader of the United Nations. Together they toured the world and hung out with a stellar crew of world movers and shakers. She lost Robert a few years ago but still pours her energy into the peace movement and played a key role in the Rotary World Peace Conference 2016 held earlier this year.

Over the years, in all my many zigs and zags, she has always found time to be a cheerleader for me. Talking to her for just a few minutes always gives me an "OMG I can do this” shot of adrenaline. And, sometimes, that’s all it takes … one person who believes in you.

Thank you, Barbara … I love you.

Barbara is also the co-author of Revolutionary Conversations which offers readers the brilliant SHARE model …  Stop-Help-Ask-Risk-Explore, which, once you understand it, becomes an almost automatic way of thinking.

Read more about Barbara here:

http://www.peaceconference2016.org/barbara-gaughen-muller/

https://www.seeintl.org/gaughen-muller/