Valerie Gillies Archives - Mothering in the Middle

Learn to Ride the Waves

by Valerie Gillies

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf” – Jon Kabat-Zin

In the last few weeks, the why question has come up every day. It really is a foolish question. Honestly, outside of a scientific topic there is rarely a good answer for “Why?” If I could say why a vibrant, kind, friend succumbed to multiple myeloma last week, don’t I also need to know why the shell of a nasty ancient relative remains alive in a nursing home? This is complicated, and our hearts yearn for simple answers that we can wrap in tidy packages, secure with twine, and pack away, so that we can go on with our daily tasks without interruption. […]

Christmas Tree Lights

by Valerie Gillies

I am very opinionated about Christmas tree lights. Flashing is not permitted in our house. Period. I wish I could also stop the flashing going on with the kids I work with at this time of year. Parties, treats, memories, disrupted schedules, past trauma, all combine to make the human equivalents of having left a bucket of kerosene soaked rags in the basement. One little spark and—boom! It’s a tangled mess of emotion, exhausted parents, and zipped up kids. […]

The Tragedy in Sandy Hook (A Commentary)

by Valerie Gillies

Dear Reader: Valerie’s daughter attends school one mile away, in the town of Sandy Hook. Her school was on Lockdown earlier today.

How do you talk about this? What words are there for explaining to your child that someone, for whatever reason there could possibly be even in the most warped brain that has ever been made, even if the person was mentally ill and couldn’t help himself, could have walked into a school that is around the corner from hers, and killed 18 little children, babies really, mowed them down with an assault rifle? And if he truly went there to kill his mother in her kindergarten class… OMG OMG. There is nothing, nothing at all that a person can say that works, that will make sense, that will make it better. […]

The Storm Before The Calm

by Valerie Gillies

The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos. – D. H. Lawrence

I work with kids who have attachment and trauma issues. Big ones. And until a few weeks ago, I honestly didn’t know what they were feeling. Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, I have experienced more of an understanding. In my case, I call it menopausal anger disorder. (Maybe they will put that in the new DSMV to go along with shyness and some other ridiculous new psych diagnoses.) […]

How It Ends Matters…

by Valerie Gillies

“There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.” Rainer Marie Rilke

There’s an old video game called Prince of Persia. You progress from room to room, and need to choose, hidden among the clutter — shall I take the flashlight or the dagger? or maybe the rope? There is no way of knowing what will come next, what you will need. You just have to do your best, with no time to think, and keep on moving. […]

Eating Crow (Or, How to Ingest the Reality of Getting Older)

by Valerie Gillies

“In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet” – Sir Winston Churchill

I have long fancied myself to be a natural woman. Having worn denim for a larger percentage of my days than all other fibers combined, never having changed the color of my hair, succeeding in four unmedicated childbirths (like it was some sort of contest), remembering with grimaced face the few times I have been peer-pressured into manicures. For over 50 years, I have run pretty much on my own steam, glorifying in how well this machine was holding up, how tough and independent I could be. Well, baby, it’s now time for me to take her in for the 50,000 mile checkup, and I’m not liking it. […]

Back-To-School Tips for Dealing with Dysregulated Children

Valerie Gillies

Back to school does not bring out the best in dysregulated children. If you are seeing an increase in tantrums, meltdowns, clinginess, or regression to younger behaviors, you are not alone. Children all over America are bouncing off the walls, finishing off the summer with a bang. […]

Runaway

by Valerie Gillies

And I would run away
I would run away, yeah…, yeah
I would run away
I would run away with you

Cause I am falling in love with you
No never I’m never gonna stop
Falling in love with you

The Corrs “Runaway”

I use music like a pyromaniac uses gasoline. It’s a mood accelerant. Sad? I can be sadder in a flash. Elated? Romantic? Hyper? There’s a tune for just about everything. Technological improvements, like the iPod I can’t quite master, caused me to misplace some of my favorite tunes. How appropriate it was that I found the loaded CD holder yesterday, the first of my 48 days of summer. I popped in Runaway and was swept back nearly 20 years, late at night after all four chicken pox ridden children had finally collapsed, my lover and I falling into each other’s arms in the dim light, and slow dancing around the kitchen. I don’t dance. But I did. And it felt so good that my mind captured it like the rare prize that it was, and beautifully stored it in sensurround. […]

Tears

by Valerie Gillies

“Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes” – Jean Rhys

I always excelled at staring contests. It’s a cultivated skill. Without too much effort, I can turn everything off, blank out, and suspend time. It works great for balancing yoga poses. And I have to say that even though it’s probably not the optimal way to approach the milestones of life, it works for me in its own crooked way. […]

Roadtrip (The Journey of a Mother-of-the-Bride)

by Valerie Gillies

“The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch” – Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood

I’m heading out on a road trip tomorrow—a real, week-long one that will take me halfway across this country. Never have done anything like this before. But there’s the matter of this dress, and this young woman who needs to get her car to Houston, and her compulsive mom who has an obsession with putting things in order before she lets go of them. This is hard stuff, much more difficult than I could have imagined, yet somehow exhilarating. Like jumping of a cliff. […]