A Caring Adult by Saralee Sky

All children need people outside the circle of their immediate family to care for them and teach them needed life skills. Someone outside the immediate family offers: an outside perspective, a break from family patterns or rivalries, special skills parents may not have, a kind of caring that is offered freely, not just because she is “Daddy’s little girl.” This kind of nurturing does not take the place of parental love. Rather it fills in the cracks and helps to round out a child’s development and character. Children need role models, mentors and support in addition to Mom or Dad.

Since my daughter-in-law became pregnant with my granddaughter, Crystal, five years ago, I have been involved with Crystal’s life. I went through the pregnancy with Jackie and my son, Gabe, going to all the doctor’s appointments at their request. They were very young and inexperienced, and looked to me for support as they made the transition to parenthood.

Gabe and I were present during the labor and delivery. Jackie gave birth with grace and strength and Gabe and I provided the support and caring she needed. I was very proud of them both. Since Crystal’s birth, they have grown into loving parents and surpassed my expectations time and again. Whenever they had a problem or question, they would turn to me for help, but they would always make their own decision and I have respected their right to do so.

Jackie returned to work when Crystal was six months old, working part-time for me at the Camp Fire office. She brought little Crystal with her and the rest of the staff would take “baby breaks” and help to care for Crystal while Jackie worked as our Camp Registrar. That job ended when Crystal was almost a year old, and Jackie soon found full-time work. I became the babysitter for Crystal whenever Gabe and Jackie were at work, caring for her both at my home and at my office. I have a great picture of her sitting at my desk at age two. I was lucky enough to be “the boss” and able to make the decision to allow children in the work place.

When Jackie gave birth to Jordan in April of 2003, I decided to leave my job at Camp Fire to work from home and help take care of Crystal and Jordan. Jackie returned to work when Jordan was three months old. She and Gabe both work full-time. They vary their schedules so that they only need childcare two to three days/week. I provide most of that care, with other grandparents chipping in from time to time.

My connection to Crystal and Jordan is very close. I take them special places like the Children’s Museum, different playgrounds and parks, the library. We bake cookies, do art projects, rake leaves, read books, play computer games. I provide the kind of attention and opportunities that a busy parent often does not have the time to provide. On the days I do not see them, I am likely to receive a call from Crystal. What a joy it is to hear, “Hi Nana!” when I answer the phone. Just what does this connection and caring mean to Crystal’s and Jordan’s development?

The Search Institute of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities. At the heart of the institute's work is the framework of 40 Developmental Assets, which are positive experiences and personal qualities that young people need to grow up healthy, caring, and responsible.

The Search Institute's 40 Developmental Assets are concrete, common sense, positive experiences and qualities essential to raising successful young people. These assets have the power during critical adolescent years to influence choices young people make and help them become caring, responsible adults.

The Developmental Asset framework is categorized into two groups of twenty assets. External assets are the positive experiences young people receive from the world around them. These twenty assets are about supporting and empowering young people, about setting boundaries and expectations, and about positive and constructive use of young people's time. External assets identify important roles that families, schools, congregations, neighborhoods, and youth organizations can play in promoting healthy development.

The twenty internal assets identify those characteristics and behaviors that reflect positive internal growth and development of young people. These assets are about positive values and identities, social competencies, and commitment to learning. The internal Developmental Assets will help these young people make thoughtful and positive choices and, in turn, be better prepared for situations in life that challenge their inner strength and confidence.

One of the external Developmental Assets the Search Institute identifies is Other Adult Relationships. This is defined as, “children experience interactions and relationships with non-familial adults, including caregivers, relatives, older people, and community figures. These interactions are characterized by investment, enrichment, consistency, and caring.” I am such an adult in the lives of Crystal and Jordan. The Search Institute has codified what I have always known: children need people outside of their immediate family to be role models, supporters and mentors.

When I was a child I had my Hebrew School teacher, Mr. Palgon, as a role model. I loved the way he lived his deep faith and the way he was devoted to his own children and his wife. I loved being around his family and was sometimes invited to Sabbath dinner on Friday night. I also had my Uncle Sol and his wife, my Aunt Goldie. Uncle Sol was a Talmudic scholar and would often teach me about Jewish law and philosophy while sitting around his kitchen table. Aunt Goldie was a mother-figure for me, taking over that role when my own mother died when I was three.

Always in my life there have been people who materialized at just the right time to show me a way of being in the world, teach me a set of skills, or offer love and support. I am grateful for all of my teachers and mentors. I know that I am the person I have become – and am still becoming – in large part due to their influence and example.

All of my professional life I have worked for and with children. Babynut is my way of offering mentorship and support to young mothers and babies. I wish you all much joy and success as you negotiate the roles of parent and child. It is all about the journey and finding key people to help along the way.

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Life is a Series of Gestalts by Saralee Sky

“Our life is basically…an infinite number of unfinished situations – incomplete gestalts. No sooner have we finished one situation than another comes up.” (Frederick Perls) A gestalt is an ultimate experiential unit, a whole. The physical world maintains itself in terms of gestalts, for example, water consists of the gestalt of two hydrogen units combined with one oxygen unit. Split the hydrogen away from the oxygen and you no longer have water.

The human organism is also composed of gestalts: physical, mental and emotional. Our physical body is composed of many gestalts: a circulatory system, a digestive tract, a muscular system, etc. The mind thinks in terms of gestalts. We puzzle over a problem until we have solved it. The alphabet is a meaningless list of letters until the letters are combined in patterns to form words and sentences. Emotionally we need to complete an experience – a gestalt - in order to move through it and continue on with our life. We anticipate our birthday and get increasingly excited as the day approaches. Then the big day arrives. We have a party, play games, open presents, eat cake. Whether the day will live up to our expectations determines whether we will feel happy or sad when the day – and the gestalt - is over.

We can rely on the wisdom of our organism to present the most pressing unfinished gestalt to our consciousness. Let’s look at a little baby for an example. The baby is hungry and so she cries. The mother interprets her cries correctly and offers her breast. The tears stop as the baby quenches her hunger. She is happy and content for a time. A short while later the baby cries again. Mom knows she has just nursed so she looks for some other reason for the tears and discovers a very wet diaper. Mom changes the diaper and the cries stop. The baby is left alone to play in her crib and is happy for a time until she becomes lonely or tired. She cries again and Mom picks her up and rocks her to sleep in the rocking chair. The physical warmth and nearness of her mother is soothing and satisfies the baby’s need for nurturing. Contented, the baby falls asleep. These examples show the ebb and flow of unfinished, then finished gestalts.

Once an unfinished gestalt has achieved completion, it will recede to the background and another unfinished gestalt will soon arrive to take its place in the rhythm of life. The need for completion is so very basic to our ability to grow and thrive as a human organism that it cannot be over emphasized. If a gestalt is unable to be completed, it will present itself again and again until it is completed.

Here is a physical example: A little boy is playing happily in the sand box when he gets the urge to pee. This need to urinate competes with the need to continue to play in the sandbox. At first both gestalts compete for the little boy’s attention, but gradually the need to pee becomes uppermost in the little boy’s mind. He must complete this gestalt, either by running to the bathroom or by peeing in his pants. He chooses to run to the bathroom. Now that gestalt is complete. It recedes into the background and the desire to play again becomes uppermost in the little boy’s mind, until he gets hungry and wanders inside looking for something to eat, and so it goes.

Here is a mental example: A woman sits in the living room doing a crossword puzzle. She moves along quickly putting in the answers she knows for sure and leaving blank the ones she is unsure about or doesn’t know. She returns again and again to the ones she is unsure of, getting most of them. Still, a quarter of the puzzle remains undone. She chooses to set it aside until the next day, when her mind is sharper. The desire to return to the puzzle surfaces from time to time throughout the day until she has the time to sit and work on it. When she sits down for the second time she is able to complete the puzzle and also the gestalt. The puzzle recedes into the background leaving room for a new activity.

Here is an emotional example: A little girl must go to day care so that Mom can work. She misses her mom a lot throughout the day and is cranky by the time Mom picks her up in the evening. Mom has to run errands on the way home which makes the little girl even crankier. She has a “melt down” in the grocery store and cries and cries because Mom won’t let her eat a candy bar before dinner as they shop. Mom realizes that the little girl is simply at the end of her emotional rope. She stops the cart in the middle of the aisle and says “You look like you could use a hug. Come here, sweetheart.” Mom picks up the little girl and just holds her as people move around them in the aisle. The little girl feels loved and valued and soon calms down. They finish their shopping and go home.

As infants, we need to receive love, nurturance and support from our parents. When we do, we see the world as safe and inviting. As children we look to our parents to have our needs respected and addressed. When they are we see the world as a place where needs will be met and experiences – no matter how painful – can be learned from and put to rest. As parents, the more we are able to help our children complete all the gestalts that come up in their lives: physical, mental or emotional; happy, sad, or momentous; the healthier and more present-centered our children will be as they grow into adults. Gestalts that are completed as they happen will recede into the background of our lives and be forgotten. A completed gestalt may also become a memory, but one that no longer holds a lot of emotional charge.

So, what happens when a gestalt is not able to be completed? What happens to an unfinished gestalt? It will continue to resurface in a person’s life until it is completed. It will pull the person’s attention and awareness away from the present and into the past; or it will use up energy in the form of avoidance as the person tries not to deal with or be aware of the unfinished situation.

Let’s examine some possible unfinished gestalts from a person’s childhood. A little baby cries and is eventually picked up and fed and changed. Then the baby is put back in his crib. Soon he cries again – he is tired and lonely. No one picks him up. He’s allowed to cry himself to sleep again and again until eventually he stops crying and learns to go to sleep on his own. As he grows up he is rarely hugged or nurtured. Physical needs will be met, but not emotional needs. He grows up cold and unable to express his emotions but has no idea why.

A little girl spends her days in day care and her evenings running errands with her mother. Whenever she cries and makes a fuss she is yelled at by her mother in front of strangers and even punished – no treat, no dessert, certainly no hugs. She grows up feeling unloved and unlovable and goes from partner to partner, never getting her needs met for love and nurturance. Her partners say nothing they do is enough.

Again and again in the lives of these two people the unfinished gestalts will resurface and demand completion. Once the man realizes how he was never encouraged to express himself emotionally as a child, he can express his rage or grief for that little child. He will gradually be able to get in touch with his emotions as an adult, and all the energy spent in not feeling anything will be freed up to be used in the present in whatever way the man chooses. Once the woman realizes that she feels unlovable and needy as an adult because her emotional needs were never met as a child, she will be able to express her sorrow for the little girl that she was and gradually become the woman she wants to be, loving and lovable.

The key in both of these examples is putting attention together with awareness. Frederick Perls says: “Awareness – by and of itself – can be curative.” Once a person becomes aware of an incomplete gestalt in his life, he will be unable to ignore it until he takes steps to complete it. We all expend a lot of energy trying not to face up to our incomplete gestalts from our childhood. But once we begin to pay attention to what our inner Self is trying to tell us, we can heal old wounds and live much healthier and happier lives.

Situations will continue to emerge that remind us of incomplete gestalts from our past. Once we choose to put our attention and our awareness on these situations, we will be able to get to the root of the problem and express the unmet need or emotion that has been lurking all these years. Sometimes therapy is needed to help work through the resultant feelings welling up from the re-opened wound. But in the end, the result will be a freeing up of energy, a new zest for life and a more present-centered awareness. “We can rely on the wisdom of the organism.” (Perls)

Saralee Sky, M.A., has 30+ years of experience with children, as a mother and grandmother, as a therapist for abused children, as the director of three nonprofit agencies serving children, and as co-owner and manager of Womb To Grow LLC and http://www.babynut.com. Babynut provides natural, organic and alternative products for pregnancy, adoption, childbirth, parenting, babies and toddlers.

Looking Back on My Childhood - A Tale of Three Mothers by Saralee Sky

I have always been driven to reflect on all that has happened before to bring me to this place, this moment in time, in understanding and awareness. I now support new mothers and babies through my product offerings and articles, and I want to share with you some of the events in my life that led me to this chosen field.

My mother was sick before she gave birth to me in March of 1949. I was actually a doctor’s order. “You have too much time on your hands, Trudy,” said Dr. Bloom. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Go home and have another baby.” So she did – me. Many years later in therapy I would imagine her cells dying all around me while I sucked out what was left of her life force through the umbilical cord in her womb.

My mother’s condition – scleroderma - worsened when I was a baby and toddler and so I spent a lot of time at my Aunt Goldie’s house. Aunt Goldie was my mother’s older sister by twelve years. She loved Trudy as a daughter and I occupied a special place in her heart as Trudy’s little baby.

In September, 1952, I was having lunch in my high chair in Aunt Goldie’s kitchen. I was three and a half years old. The phone rang and Aunt Goldie went to the alcove in the stairwell to answer it. She listened, then threw back her head and wailed, a sound so primal and so full of pain it echoed in the collective unconscious of all humankind. I sat there in my high chair too frightened to cry and completely ignored. But I knew as I sat there alone, staring into my reflection in the silver tray: a connection was severed. My mother was dead.

Later that afternoon, I sat on the back porch playing with my marble collection. My favorite brown cat’s eye marble rolled off the porch and into the dirt below. I looked and looked for that marble for what seemed like forever, but it had vanished. I cried and cried, my grief inconsolable, the loss of my marble a tangible way to grieve for the mother who gave me life.

Before my mother’s death and after, I spent most week days at home with a house keeper, who left me alone to occupy myself for the most part. I was alone, but not lonely. I had this inner presence, this calm inner Self that kept me company. I was content with my own company and I had a rich fantasy life complete with many “imaginary” friends.

After my mother died, Aunt Goldie took the place of a mother for me. She made a promise to Trudy before she died to look after me, and she took that promise to heart. I spent every Saturday at her house until my father picked me up after work.

She would often spirit me away to the bathroom with her, closing the door and telling me about my poor, dead mother as she sat on the toilet. As soon as I cried, she would let me go, my tears her proof that I still remembered and grieved for my mother like she did. I was affected by the sorrow in Aunt Goldie’s voice, the tears in her eyes and the weirdness of being closeted in the bathroom with her. But the truth was that I remembered Trudy only through Aunt Goldie’s bathroom soliloquies.

Each week night, Uncle Sol would drive my Aunt Goldie to our house to bathe me and put me to bed. Uncle Sol would sit and talk in the living room with my father while Aunt Goldie and I went upstairs. This ritual was a very important part of Goldie’s and my day. Aunt Goldie gave me my bath and put me in my crib. Then she would talk to me, telling me stories about her day, about her family, talking and talking in a chair by my crib. I listened to her voice, the words unimportant, the sound a soothing invitation to sleep.

Fifteen months after Trudy died, toward the end of 1953 when I was four and three quarters, my father started dating Naomi. I have vague memories of Naomi being at our house from time to time. She began teaching me school-type things: she taught me to tell time, she taught me to count by two’s, five’s and ten’s, she taught me to read. She seemed pleased that I was such a quick study. Still, it was Aunt Goldie who bathed me and put me to bed each night.

On March 19, 1955, two and a half years after Trudy died and a week before my sixth birthday, my father married Naomi. The ceremony and reception took place at the synagogue. I wore a beautiful flowered dress. Pictures of that evening show a little girl with curly hair, a tentative smile and eyes full of uncertainty. Daddy and Naomi went to Florida for their two week honeymoon. Upon their return, the changes to my life began in earnest.

Naomi had more modern taste in furniture and home décor than did my mother, Trudy. Over the next few months the interior of the house was completely redone. Gone were the gauzy white curtains, the old-fashioned, overstuffed furniture, the maroon patterned carpet. In their place were floral drapes, sculpted, fifties-style couches and chairs, beige carpets and walls. Everywhere I looked was the color beige – bland, benign, boring.

All the pictures of my mother, Trudy, were taken down from the shelves and hidden away. I wouldn’t rediscover them for many years. I was not even permitted to have a picture of my mother in my bedroom. That was the past – the Trudy era - and this was now – the Naomi era. Still my Aunt Goldie came to put me to sleep each night. I clung to this ritual like a starving child to a crust of bread.

Daddy was willing and eager to let Naomi be the woman of the house. He handed me over to Naomi with a sense of relief and a symbolic washing of the hands. He never liked the role of father to a motherless child and now he could relinquish it by providing the child with a new mother. He was like the fathers in fairy tales - Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel - absent and unwilling to rescue his child from the new step mother.

Naomi was seemingly up to the challenge. A spinster in her mid-30’s before my father married her and took her from her parent’s home to ours, she had ideas and theories about how to raise children and I was her guinea pig. Only one major obstacle stood in her path: Aunt Goldie. Goldie was a constant reminder to Naomi that I was not her natural child. I don’t remember when the nightly bathing and bedtime stories stopped. I only know that they did stop soon after the redecoration of the house was complete.

Some of Naomi’s changes were for the better. After all, I was six years old and still sleeping in a crib. Naomi got me a big girl’s bed. She told me a few bedtime stories, then turned out the light left the room. No more voice of Aunt Goldie talking me to sleep each night. She also took on my thumb-sucking habit with great zeal. Soon that was gone as well.

Visits to Aunt Goldie’s house were reduced to Jewish holidays. She was no longer welcome in our house. I missed Aunt Goldie terribly, but was told I had a new mother now. Aunt Goldie must have been miserable, too. We were simply cut out of each other’s every day lives.

I started out calling Naomi by her first name, but was strongly encouraged to call her Mommy, which I soon did. I wanted a Mommy after all, even if I didn’t particularly want this mommy. The simple fact was that I really didn’t like Naomi and she didn’t like me. Naomi was unemotional and sarcastic, with anger and resentment seething just below the surface. Her eyes were cold and dead. They reflected no light. I was expected to kiss her good night each evening, and I could never hide my revulsion as I got close to her pocked, makeup-covered skin and her dead, brown eyes. My father never seemed to notice. But she did. She would turn her face away from me at the last moment so that I could kiss her on the cheek, not her mouth. She was as uncomfortable with this nightly ritual as I was, but insisted on it all the same.

One day, on the way home from First Grade on the bus, Bonnie L. yelled out, “You have a STEP mother. Saralee has an evil STEP mother!”

“I do not!” I yelled back at her, hot, angry tears flowing down my cheeks. I ran from the bus stop to our door, crying all the way.

“What’s the matter?” asked Naomi as she opened the door. “What happened?”

“Bonnie says I have a step mother!” I said between sobs. “I do NOT have a step mother do I? You’re not a step mother are you? Step mothers are EVIL!”

“Bonnie was wrong,” answered Naomi. “I am your NEW mother, not an evil step mother.” She let me cry myself out, my head in her lap. I was grateful to her for taking me seriously, for reframing the situation to be more palatable to a six year old girl.

I learned that day that when I was miserable – really miserable – Naomi would be there to comfort me. But when I was happy and independent and enjoying myself, she became disapproving and cold at her best, and downright nasty at her worst.

I was so upset with Bonnie because I knew in my heart she was right. I DID have a step mother and she could sometimes be evil. I had a big problem and that problem was trying to deal with a woman who could only handle misery. My natural, sunny disposition was a threat to her belief that “Life was one kick in the teeth after another.” She made it her main goal to teach me that life lesson, and I made it my goal to prove her wrong.

As I continued to grow up under her cold, disapproving eye, I tried my best to please her and always seemed to come up short. The calm inner Self that always kept me company disappeared from my awareness in my efforts to be the child Naomi wanted me to be. I held on to my belief that life was more than one kick in the teeth after another, but we were never able to openly talk about the tension between us or the dislike we each felt for the other.

The Jewish holidays I spent at Aunt Goldie’s house with my cousins and uncles and aunts remain strong and happy memories, especially Passover. I was the youngest for many years, so it fell to me to recite the Four Questions, and to find the Afikomen (the hidden matzah). We sang in three languages, Yiddish, Hebrew and English. I was coddled and loved and I soaked in that love to last until the next holiday, when I could be with Aunt Goldie and my “real” mother’s side of the family again.

My father died of a heart attack when I was 13. He died while watching the 11 o’clock news. I slept through the attack and the ambulance arriving and departing with my father inside. I awoke the next morning to be told I would not be going to school that day. Instead I would be attending my own father’s funeral. That was on a Friday. On the following Monday, Naomi insisted I return to school rather than sit shivah (seven day mourning ritual) with the rest of our family. When I protested vehemently Naomi said, “Life goes on.” and pushed me out the door. I was not permitted to grieve.

My father’s death left me alone with Naomi. She became even more angry and bitter. Life had dealt her a stunning blow, taking away her husband after only seven years of marriage, and leaving her with a teenager to raise. No amount of achievements or awards won on my part did anything to soothe her bitterness and resentment.

My connection to Aunt Goldie remained strong, in spite of the physical distance Naomi placed between us. I didn’t get to see Aunt Goldie very often, but when I did, our love for each other was evident. Naomi never understood that there was room in my heart for everyone, for all three of the mothers who were placed in my life.

When I became old enough to drive I would visit Aunt Goldie more often, especially for Friday night shabbos dinners. When I went away to college and came home a hippie with long curly hair, no bra and lots of tie dye, Naomi was disgusted. But Aunt Goldie welcomed me with open if disapproving arms.

After college I moved to California to be with the rest of the “kooks’ as my family called the “make love not war” generation. I had my first child, Joseph, at home with midwives in 1975. I was unmarried though living with the baby’s father. I chose not to circumcise him, which goes against Jewish law.

My step mother, Naomi, was ashamed of me. When I wanted to come home for a visit and bring baby Joseph, she let me know I was not welcome in her home (my old home). My Aunt Goldie again welcomed me, though she and Uncle Sol also disapproved of my decision not to circumcise Joseph. “If he isn’t circumcised, he isn’t a Jew!” Uncle Sol said.

I moved far away from the family that raised me so that I could seek out and discover my own ideas and beliefs. I needed to reflect upon all that had happened to me as a child, to finish unresolved situations from my past. The distance was necessary to be able to rediscover my Self, the calm inner presence that made me feel at peace as a child.

Now so many years later – Joseph turns 30 this year – I look back on the three women who were mothers to me, and to my own choices as a mother, and I realize that we all do the very best we can with the situations and experiences that are given to us in this life. Mothers were once babies themselves, and their life experiences shape the way they parent their own children. I tried my best to raise my children with the awareness that they have their own thoughts and dreams, their own inner Self and room in their hearts for everyone who loves them.

I have great compassion for all little babies born into this world, looking for love, nurturance and guidance. This article and my web site are my offerings to them and to the mothers who raise them.