Between Us Girls

Huffington Post Journal: Installment #3

The third installment of my volunteer journal is up at the Huffington Post for those of you who might like to take a look.  Click here to read it.

Old Age: A Preview

It is often said that with age comes wisdom. And while I do believe that's true, I'm also becoming quite well aware of the fact that wisdom, like age, does not come alone. Wrinkles, moles, achy joints, a little sag here and a little bag there; these are all midlife harbingers of things to come.

Take cataracts for instance. Why? Well what could possibly scream “old” louder than cataracts? Not much, I can assure you.

Sitting in the waiting room at the eye surgery center, my husband surveyed the room and said “You're way too young to be here.” “Tell me about it,” I responded with a sigh. While some of my hair color does come from a bottle, I do still have a lot of my own natural color mixed in. I couldn't say the same for the rest of the room. Gray hair, white hair, bald heads, canes. What the hell?

At 46, I am young to have cataracts. Why I have them is anybody's guess . . .it's either a side effect from my year-round allergy medication use or just luck I suppose. But, whatever the cause, I have a cataract in my left eye that has grown very rapidly and is robbing me of my sight in that eye. I also have very early signs of a cataract in my right eye. So, there I sat, with my gray-haired comrades, waiting for the doctor to disintegrate the lens of my left eye with ultrasound, suck it out with a little vacuum and

More Huffington Post Journal

I have a new campaign volunteer journal installment up over at the Huffington post for anyone who is interested.  Click here to read about my volunteer experiences over the past week and, please, leave me a comment so I know you've stopped by!  Thanks.

My Huffington Post Journal

For those of you who are interested in the current presidential election as much as I am, check out my post at Huffington Post.  For the next few weeks, I am keeping a journal of my volunteer activities and posting the more interesting portions (once a week) at Huffington.  If you're interested, click on the link to my post and please leave me a comment there.  Thanks!

Hazing - Are Our Kids Going Too Far?

Hazing is a well-known and long-standing part of the fabric of our society. If we haven't been through it ourselves, we likely know someone who has. But the practice of hazing as a way to indoctrinate a new member of a club, team or other group is on the rise and the ages of the participants are dropping. Is this just a normal part of growing up or should we be concerned?

College fraternities and sororities are perhaps the best known of the groups that regularly require hazing as a rite of initiation, but lately it seems that many high school and even middle school groups are joining in. School band members have been suspended for participating in dangerous hazing rituals, cheer leading squads have jumped into the fray and even some church youth groups are sheepishly admitting that they too have crossed over to the dark side.

Although many still think of hazing as a harmless prank, a joke that leaves everyone, even the “hazees” laughing, hazing is more pernicious than it might appear at first glance. Hazing is defined as “any activity expected of someone joining a group (or to maintain full status in a group) that humiliates, degrades or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person's willingness to participate.” The key here is that the activities are, by their very nature, designed to humiliate and degrade . . . and include the risk of physical or emotional harm. And the fact is that, as with so many things, our kids are busily trying to outdo each other. Hazing is becoming an on-going game of one-upsmanship. The activities are getting more risky and more violent.

Should we be concerned? What's causing this and why are our kids directing so much anger and viciousness at their friends?

These are good questions and I'm afraid I don't really have the answers. Could it be that our kids have been exposed to so much violence, from the nightly news to movies and video games, that they have become desensitized and callous? There is a lot of psychological research that suggests media violence can have such an effect on children. Have we as parents lost sight of our values or are we simply failing to

Taking Action to Reduce Stress

We're all familiar with stress. We know the symptoms; headaches, stomach upset, sleepless nights, irritability. And we know the causes; marital problems, job issues, parenting challenges . . . oh, and I almost forgot . . . a crashing stock market, a failing economy and a rapidly disappearing faith in a financially secure future.

So what do we do about it? There are lots of stress remedies out there and I've tried them all. Well, most of them anyway. Exercise, positive thinking, yoga, meditation . . . you name it, I've done it. While I've gotten some benefit from each, I think that I may have finally hit upon the most powerful of all. Action.

The Art of Diplomacy - What's in It for You?

We hear so much about the need for diplomacy these days in everything from international relations to bi-partisan relations, but the art of diplomacy isn't just for national leaders and members of Congress. Diplomacy, the employment of tact to find mutually acceptable solutions to a common challenge, can be employed by everyday people in everyday situations to the benefit of all.

Think of the many challenges we face: Your daughter, a freshman in high school, wants to date a senior. Your five-year-old son doesn't want to share his new Play-Doh set with his cousin who is in for a holiday visit. Your coworker speaks so loudly on phone calls that you can't focus and he's tired of your dirty looks. Your Aunt Rose doesn't speak to your Aunt Mary, but is the sister of Mary's husband, Bob who rarely gets to see Rose. How are you going to please everyone with the seating plan at your wedding reception?

Situations like these pop up all the time and they can really push our buttons if we let them. The result? Anger, arguments, hurt feelings, crying and worse. So how can the art of diplomacy make a difference and what's in it for us?

Well, diplomacy is a way of handling sticky situations that leads to consensus and compromise. In other words, it is a way of finding a solution that everyone can live with which, admittedly,  is often easier said than done. Happily though, diplomacy involves certain skills that, given some practice and patience,