Congressman Cicilline is the trifecta for a career in public life:
Executive experience as the first openly gay Mayor of a capitol city –
Providence; deep legislative experience as a member of Congress for the
past 13 years; and now moving into a new role in non-profit leadership
as the CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation – the largest and oldest
community foundation in the nation and the only one exclusively serving
an entire State.
Italian, Jewish, gay, and progressive, Cicilline is a unique leader
who doesn’t fit into anyone’s mold. He has been an energetic leader in
the fight for equality as co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus,
a valiant voice for sanity in controlling gun violence, and a strong
advocate for equal opportunity for all citizens. He has been a
consistently effective voice for the dispossessed and the forgotten
people who need and deserve greater opportunity.
Rep. Cicilline will talk about his ascent in Congressional leadership
and the factors that went into his recent decision to leave Congress to
have a more direct impact on his native State through the profound
influence of the Rhode Island Foundation and its millions in annual
grants to support the arts, education, access to health care, and a
range of other programs that contribute to the richness and vitality of
life for all Rhode Islanders. And he will discuss his approach to
leadership and what makes a great leader . . . or not.
I woke up to a call from my neighbor telling me she heard kids in the stairwell trying to break into the vacant apartment upstairs from her. Call the cops! I said. I immediately contacted the city officials who I have complained to about this wide-open front stairwell door for years. Vagrants have been using it to crash, party, buy drugs, etc. The landlord is the real problem.
I often wonder if the landlord is deliberately trashing the building for the insurance. I love my city, I love my hard-working city government, and I'm not afraid to ask them for help, even if I have to bug them repeatedly! Then, exhausted by all the hoopla, I and my husband drove to our favorite dog-walking spot a mile and a half down the road in the state of Massachusetts. There's an old railroad grade for hiking, and a nice spot for our dog to get to the river.
After our walk and dog swim, as we were climbing into the car, a motorcycle cop came right up towards me and stopped. I was not frightened. I have been taking my dogs to this path for over 28 years. The town put up no-parking signs at the dead end recently, but we still come here.
Hi, I was just picking up trash and noticed a man's undies over there and my husband and I were laughing wondering about how the man got home. This is what I do when I come here, I pick up trash! Kids always respond and want to join in. Actions are worth a thousand words.
It's the adults that dump the trash, the cop said. Then Marsha's hubby pulled in to his driveway, and I asked him if he had a big trash bag because there's a pile of plastic Dunkin iced coffee cups, wine bottles, cigarette packages, and beer bottles down on the island in a firepit. No problem, Marsha's husband said, and he went and got me two. He had made that pile yesterday! Just hadn't got around to bagging it.
Would you like some gloves? the cop asked. Sure, I said, thanks. I put on the black latex gloves. They were olive green on the inside. Picking up trash is my way of saying thank you to the town for this beautiful spot, I said. My walks here are my daily 20-minute vacation. I live in the heart of the city at one of the most notorious intersections. I like to get involved. Well thanks, and have a nice day!
When I got home I emailed him to thank him again and to let him know there was a discarded couch and mattress in the road behind the cemetery.
We will always have tides...the question is the range!
tides (metaphor for mood, cycles, etc.)
Where are the smallest tides in the world?
The smallest tidal ranges occur in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean, all of which have oscillations of less than 3 feet (1 meter). The 5 Highest Tides in The World
Bay of Fundy, Canada.
Ungava Bay, Canada. ...
Bristol Channel, UK. ...
Cook Inlet*, United States. Cook Inlet experiences the highest tides of any spot in the United States. ...
Rio Gallegos, Argentina. Rio Gallegos witnesses the highest tides in the Southern Hemisphere. ...
*Cook Inlet, branch of the Gulf of Alaska,
Alaska, U.S. Situated in the North Pacific Ocean, it is bounded by the
Kenai Peninsula on the east and extends northeast for 220 miles (350
km), narrowing from 80 to 9 miles (130 to 14 km). The inlet is fed by
the Susitna, Matanuska, and Kenai rivers.Jul 16, 2023
Short stories are more like poems than like novels. Novelists put stuff in, because they are trying to represent a world. Story writers, as Poe implied, leave stuff out. They are not trying to represent a world. They are trying to express a single, intangible thing. The story writer begins with an idea about what readers will feel when they finish reading, just as a lyric poet starts with a nonverbal state of mind and then constructs a verbal artifact that evokes it. The endings of modern short stories tend to be oblique, but they, too, are structured for an effect, frequently of pathos.
“I
wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that
girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for
fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older
still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales
again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and
tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and
too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your
affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.”
Childhood experiences have a more profound impact on our lives than one can fathom.
They shape how we make decisions as
adults, react to our environment, and interact with others. They are at
the very core of who we are.
Dr. Gabor Maté is an addiction,
trauma, and childhood development expert. He wrote several books which
became bestsellers, and his expertise in these areas is highly sought
after. In this On Purpose episode, Jay Shetty invited him to discuss his
latest book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.
Born as a Jew in Hungary at the end
of the Second World War, Maté’s infancy was highly impacted by
antisemitism. To save his life, his mother chose to separate from him.
To a small child, this was a profoundly traumatic event.
What Is Trauma?
In today’s world, the word trauma
is used regularly. However, it is sometimes taken out of context and
exaggerated. For example, some people use the word “traumatic” to
describe a deeply unpleasant experience that didn’t leave any physical
scars. Dr. Maté told Jay Shetty that “all trauma is stressful, but not
all stress is traumatic.”
The word trauma
has Greek origins and means “wound.” As Dr. Gabor Maté explained, “It’s
a psychic wound that leaves a scar. It leaves an imprint in your
nervous system, in your body, in your psyche, and then shows up in
multiple ways that are not helpful to you later on.”
Since trauma is a wound, whenever
someone touches that particular topic, it can cause us to hurt if the
trauma is still raw and painful.On the other hand, over time, wounds
scar, and the scar tissue that emerges is rigid. This scar can cause a
traumatized person to be less flexible, and their emotional growth and
development will suffer as a result.
What happened to you can never have
“unhappened,” Dr. Maté explained to Jay Shetty. But the good news is
that one can heal trauma just like you heal a physical wound. Because,
he continued, it is not the event that happened to you but the harm you
suffered due to a particular circumstance. And it can be healed at any
time.
Healing
In various languages, including Dr. Maté’s native language, Hungarian, the word health stems
from the word “whole.” Trauma splits us from our true selves and
disconnects us from our emotions. Therefore, healing is the coming
together of the self to become whole again.
Dr. Maté explained to Jay Shetty that
“healing is not the absence of physical illness, but it’s the integrity
of a person who is no longer split off on themselves.”
Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds
Unlike the common phrase, “time heals
all wounds,” Dr. Gabor Maté strongly believes that time alone cannot do
that. Instead, it takes willpower and dedication to heal from a
traumatic experience.
He added that a wound might lay
dormant for a while and give off the impression that it healed. However,
it will hurt as much as it did initially when something triggers it.
You will be tormented all over again as if it were the first time.
If evoked, the trauma will impact you at its fullest until healed, Dr. Maté warned Jay Shetty.
Being Vulnerable
Our capacity to be wounded is called
vulnerability. We, as humans, are vulnerable from conception until
death, Dr. Maté told Jay Shetty.
Yet, trauma, especially during
childhood, makes people try to shut down their vulnerability. Being
exposed becomes too painful, and they will look for ways to appear
untouchable and strong. However, when we stop being vulnerable, we stop
growing.
In nature, everything needs to be
vulnerable to grow. In its absence, it is impossible to evolve. So, like
crabs need to get out of their hard shell to grow, so do humans.
Childhood And Trauma
Children are vulnerable by nature.
They haven’t yet developed a protection mechanism, so everything
terrible that happens to them gets deeply imprinted in their psyche.
Such wounds can be physical, such as violence, or physical or sexual
abuse. But they can also be mental, like a hostile environment,
abandonment, or emotional abuse.
Moreover, Dr. Maté explained to Jay
Shetty that children’s unmet needs could also result in trauma. They are
not a tabula rasa, as psychologists used to think in the past century,
but instead, they are born with a set of needs. One of these needs is
unconditional love and acceptance by multiple caregivers. They shouldn’t
earn their love; it should come for free.
Second, children don’t need to work
on getting their parents’ acceptance. They need their love, regardless
of their appearance, level of intelligence, or personality.
Third, children need the freedom to
express all emotions. Unfortunately, it has become challenging to meet
this need in modern society. We expect the young ones to behave in
social settings, be obedient and not disturb others. In a nutshell, we
teach them to suppress their big emotions, which are inconvenient for
grown-ups. However, repressing feelings is highly detrimental to their
development, Dr. Maté shared with Jay Shetty.
The fourth essential need of children
is free play in nature. Spontaneity, creativity, and imaginative play
are paramount for a child’s development. If we give them gadgets and
deprive them of play, we undermine their brain development and change
the course of their natural, healthy evolution as human beings.
Jay Shetty shared with the listeners that as of 2019, over 50 million Americans have suffered from an episode of mental illness.1
A high amount of children are being medicated with stimulants,
antidepressants, and even antipsychotic drugs. Unfortunately, their
long-term effects on developing brains have not yet been researched.
Growing Up Fit for Today’s World
Jay Shetty shared his concern
regarding children raised with different values than modern western
society. He asked Dr. Maté how they would fit in if their upbringing
didn’t match the norm.
The capitalist culture revolves
around work and performance and is results-driven. Moreover, qualities
such as beauty and intelligence are in high demand.
However, Dr. Maté told Jay Shetty
that children raised with their basic needs met would not automatically
buy into these values. They will perform at work but won’t identify
themselves with their jobs.
These people will enter the workforce
with a strong sense of purpose. In addition, as far as this topic has
been studied, they tend to be healthier and more grounded emotionally,
Dr. Maté explained.
Mollycoddling
“It’s not possible to love kids too
much,” Dr. Maté told Jay Shetty. A study looked at children’s evolution
for thirty years based on how their mothers interacted with them.2 The ones who received a lot of love were the ones who were the most emotionally grounded and healthy.
However, overprotection can turn into
mollycoddling. But this is no fault of the child. This is another way
parents don’t respond to the child’s needs but act based on their
anxiety and fears.
Dr. Maté explained to Jay Shetty that
protecting the child from every harm is detrimental to their
development. This is because caretakers no longer see the child as an
individual but only “see their own anxieties, their own fears, and their
own fantasies.”
On the other hand, forcefully
exposing children to pain isn’t a solution either. In life, everyone
will inevitably experience pain sooner or later.
What Is Identification
In Dr. Maté’s opinion, there is no
healthy form of identification. Some people identify with the victim or
survivor roles after being traumatized. However, this is an extremely
limited worldview, he added.
The word identification comes
from the Latin “idem,” which means the same, and “facere,” which means
to make. Hence, identification means to see yourself as the same as
something else.
If you see yourself as the same as a
nation, a race, a sports club, etc., you cannot accept other
perspectives and will stop growing and evolving. Dr. Maté told Jay
Shetty he feels more defined by his purpose and how he wants to help
others. This feels more authentic to him than summing up himself in a
single limited word, such as “doctor,” “author,” etc.
Keeping Pain At Bay
When parents aren’t emotionally
mature, they cannot support their children and their emotions. This can
cause children to develop “the mind to hold themselves with,” as Dr.
Maté described it.
He told Jay Shetty the egoic human
mind is primarily a defense mechanism. Addiction is one such mind
structure that keeps people from facing their pain. Drowning in alcohol
or drugs makes them feel less like the helpless child they once were.
Often, siblings who grow up in a
family of addicts find different ways of coping with the pain. Some may
end up following the same escape routes as the adults in their lives and
end up becoming addicts themselves. However, some siblings reject this
type of behavior and grow up appearing to have their lives together. Yet
Dr. Maté warns that even if they appear well, they have likely found
other ways to cope with their pain. Such mechanisms can include
immersing themselves in work and becoming workaholics or perfectionists.
Alienation
One can choose to be alone but not
lonely. Dr. Maté explained to Jay Shetty how these two states could
often coexist. You can be alone but not feel lonely. Similarly, you can
surround yourself with people and still feel lonely.
According to Dr. Maté, loneliness is a
perception. He explained to Jay Shetty that the values of capitalist
societies alienated humans from their nature as social beings. We, as a
species, need to live in groups. Yet, especially in light of the recent
pandemic, people were isolated and spent time with very few others, if
not completely alone.
This unnatural behavior has a massive
impact on the human psyche. “The more isolated we become, the more
vulnerable we are to be hurt by the world that we live in,” Dr. Maté
pointed out.
In Eastern and indigenous societies,
elders played a crucial role. They were the impersonation of wisdom and
were valuable members of the group. But in capitalist society, people
perceived as lacking economic value, hence unable to work, are often
discarded.
This mentality shift has caused older
adults to feel lonely. Additionally, this idea stripped them of their
purpose in life, and life without meaning can be very lonely. As Dr.
Maté shared with Jay Shetty, “Loneliness is also created in a society
that has a very rigid and limited set of values.”
Another type of alienation in the
Western world is population segregation by age. Often, we only spend
time with people in our same age group, which can have a limiting effect
on our view of the world, our development, and learning possibility. In
years past, people grew up in large families or groups, surrounded by
members of all ages, which provided more easy exposure to different
views and perspectives.
Human Nature
Dr. Maté thinks human nature is
difficult to define. For example, when people do something callous or
cold-hearted, society judges them. Others would say “it is human nature”
to be mean. Yet nobody speaks the same when people do philanthropic
work.
He also reiterated to Jay Shetty that
childhood experiences can have a great effect on a person’s development
and used Buddah and Hitler as an example. Because of their unique
childhood experiences, these two men grew up to go on very different
paths.
Spirituality And Healing
Indigenous cultures rely on a
so-called quadrant wheel to define a whole existence. It involves our
emotions, physical bodies, social relationships, and spiritual selves.
Dr. Maté went on to share with Jay Shetty his definition of
spirituality:
“Spirituality (…) means a sense of
connection to something larger, which is difficult to define and may be
different for every person or every group.”
Maté believes everyone needs
spirituality in their lives, one way or another. It is part of who we
are as humans and plays a role in our healing process while trying to
become whole again.
How To Heal
As Dr. Maté told Jay Shetty, the
first step in healing the trauma is acknowledging it. The good news, he
added, is that trauma can be healed. Traumatizing events can never
unhappen, but we can heal the wounds they cause.
It is essential to take a look deep
inside yourself, identify patterns and triggers, and understand the
cause behind them. For more insightful ideas on healing trauma, Jay
Shetty recommended the listeners read Dr. Maté’s newest book, The Myth of Normal.
More From Jay Shetty
Listen to the entire On Purpose with
Jay Shetty podcast episode on “Understanding Your Trauma & How To
Heal Emotional Wounds to Start Moving On from The Past Today” now in theiTunes store or onSpotify. For more inspirational stories and messages like this, check out Jay’s website atjayshetty.me.
1Hellebuyck, M., Halpern, M., Nguyen, T., & Fritze, D. (2019). The State of Mental Health in America. Mental Health America. https://mhanational.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/2019%20MH%20in%20America%20Final.pdf
2Maselko
J, Kubzansky L, Lipsitt L, Buka SL. Mother’s affection at 8 months
predicts emotional distress in adulthood. J Epidemiol Community Health.
2011 Jul;65(7):621-5. doi: 10.1136/jech.2009.097873. Epub 2010 Jul 26.
PMID: 20660942; PMCID: PMC3118641.
“Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” is an idiom often used to
describe a futile action in the face of impending catastrophe or that
contributes nothing to the solution of a current problem.
Clémence Michallon was born and raised near Paris. She studied journalism at City University of London, received a master’s in Journalism from Columbia University, and has written for The Independent since 2018. Her essays and features have covered true crime, celebrity culture, and literature. She moved to New York City in 2014 and recently became a US citizen. She now divides her time between New York City and Rhinebeck, NY.
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