The Mercury / Friday 

Adolescent boys can be very unkind to girls.

I have heard many sad stories.

I implore you to teach your sons to value all people and your daughters to expose poor behavior.

If you are a parent to girls:

• Listen for what your daughters are NOT saying. What they are not telling you will reveal reams about their experience. No – I am not trying to be obscure.

• Affirm your daughters when they advocate for those they consider victims and ask if they need someone to advocate for them.

• When girls are victimized they may not immediately inform but believe they have to tough it out. Like learning to cross the street, you may have to assure your daughters that it is safe to speak even though it may be scary.

• Encourage your daughters to show up, stand up, and speak up and that doing so is essential and not selfish. Literally applaud them when they do.

• Repeatedly assure your daughters that you are the only parent they will ever need, that it is safe for them to test everything about life by testing it with you.

• Know that the most powerful means to teaching anything is by modeling it yourself – your words will be hollow and meaningless if you do not display what you teach.

I admit I live a charmed life. My sons, now 19 and almost 15 are easy (compared with what some parents have to deal with) and I travel extensively. We live in a comfortable home among splendid neighbors in a city that has everything but mountains and an ocean. I love my job working day-by-day with some of the most gifted men, women, and children who grace the planet. I have a platform and an audience for my writing that I never anticipated. We are in good health. I earn enough money for our needs and we have everything we need.

Yet, there is room and a place and a desire for grief.

I grieve friendships lost.

I travail over errors of judgment and at times I find surges of primordial regret barreling from within me. 

I grieve wasted time, squandered moments with my parents who’d have given anything to know me better, to talk with me more deeply, to reach into matters more substantial than I was apparently willing to offer.

I grieve not being more fun with my sons, not loving sports as they do, and my lack of ability to discard a sometimes-overwhelming sense of responsibility to offer them a more carefree version of myself.

How about you?

“My son (23) is moving to London. We lived there as a family when he was very small. My husband is very upset. He says he is too young to be heading off into life on his own with so little to his name and hardly a completed education. Now since the attacks of last week my husband is saying the UK is unsafe. How do I support both my husband and my son? Right now they are not talking which is very upsetting. Our son leaves in 3 weeks.”

This is a complex family circumstance (aren’t they all?) for several reasons:

• Your husband may be finding a way to make this inevitable separation easier for himself by stimulating conflict. It’s “easier” to watch someone go if you’re peeved.
• The UK is no safer or more dangerous than anywhere on the planet. Recent events, as sad as they are, give credence to your husband’s fears of facing his son’s departure.
• Heading off alone to London at 23 is a sure-fire way to become more completely educated. It’s a fabulous city that is bounding with opportunity.

I hope they make repair soon. Conflict face-to-face is tough enough. Stretching it across the oceans will make it even more intense.

I know, I know, it’s counter-intuitive

• Defining yourself, setting personal goals as if you are alone in this world, and getting your focus off others, will deepen your levels of connection and intimacy with others. Authentic intimacy is contingent upon the development of a secure self. To work on your Self – to set and achieve goals, to develop and new skills, – is not selfish. Not to do so, usually is.

• Freeing others of their debts to you (gross or trivial, real or imagined) will make you free. The resentments we love to collect poison our vision and taint all our relationships. Our resentments may be specific and targeted at one or a few people, but the emotional toxins they promote are generic and impact all of our relationships.

• All growth requires some loss and will probably elicit some grief no matter how much change is wanted or necessary. Men and women grieve the loss of even the worst of marriages and even the most abusive of circumstances. People become accustomed to the most trying of circumstances and will often grieve quite unexpectedly when those circumstances change.

• “Getting a life” outside of your children and “outside” of your marriage is (usually – there are often exceptions) good for you, your children, your spouse, and for your marriage.

As I said, it’s counter-intuitive….

“You and Me” is 16 years old this week. Thank you, readers.

1. Clarify why you are at work in the first place: you are there to earn a living, to support your family, and to do your job to the best of your ability.
2. You are not at work to check Facebook, sit on your phone, send text messages that are not work-related, play games, make friends, gossip, or be underhanded about your workplace in any manner.
3. Mind your own business. Focus on what you are doing and not what others may or may not be doing.
4. Tell the truth to your workmates, supervisors, suppliers, and customers. If you are working where telling the truth is difficult then it is time to reassess your career.
5. Be punctual, use no profanities (no matter what kind of job you hold) and never help yourself to anything that is not yours or for your rightful use.
6. Don’t cheat – not with hours, reimbursements, sick days, leave time, or mileage expenses.
7. Don’t speak or write anything about anyone that you have not first said directly to him or to her. There are extreme circumstances where this will not apply. In general, speak to people and not about them.
8. Don’t talk about your ex, your surgery, your ailments, or your in-laws. No one is interested even if they pretend they are.