Life Lesson #8 - Do For, Do With, Cheer On

In this podcast, you will be welcomed into a community of Ordinarily Beautiful People.  A community of people who uplift, inspire and motivate one another to do more, be more and try harder in life.  Life lessons in this podcast are shared from the unpublished, retro-historical memoir, written by the host Kim Farnes, Life Lessons of an Ordinary Woman.  

In this episode, you will hear about the Sunflower Theory.  How sunflowers lean on the support of other sunflowers during dark times; and how that is symbolic of our individual need for similar support.

You will listen in on how the host learned the difference between doing things FOR someone, doing things WITH them and when and how to CHEER others on, as they learn new things.

You will learn about a study conducted by the University of Washington in the 1970's on stroke patients.  A study to try and determine how sign language could impact and help improve a stroke survivor's ability to communicate. 

You will be invited to share your own, personal triumph stories by using the fan mail button on this podcast site, or by emailing the host at: lifelessons.ordinarywoman@gmail.com.

You will be asked to like, follow and share this podcast with others.  People that you feel would like to be a part of this amazing group of Ordinarily Beautiful People.

email: lifelessons.ordinarywoman@gmail,com

Facebook page: Life Lessons of an Ordinary Woman Podcast

Transcript

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Good morning this morning, my ordinarily beautiful friends. Hope you had a great week and that you had some fun reflecting on ways that you've left a place or a person better than you found them since the last episode. I received some great inspirational stories from many of you this week. Thanks so much for sharing those. Many of them made me appreciate and applaud the many ways that you support, encourage, and inspire others. You definitely all inspire me. In past episodes we've shared about how lucky we are to belong to a network of supportive redwood trees, communities or groups that we belong to, that offer us support when we need it most. But your responses this week made me think of how often we need support and encouragement from individuals too. Those vital one-on-one relationships that help lift us up when life seems to get too heavy. So on this, the eight-week, two-month anniversary of this podcast, I can't believe it's been eight weeks already, I wanted to talk a little more about how these intimate relationships, the individual people in our lives that guide us, lift us up, and cheer us on. When I think about those relationships in my own life, I think of a handful of people that's always been there for me and how my relationships with them remind me of the relationship that sunflowers have with each other. I thought a lot about sunflowers this week. They are my favorite flowers, and they were my mom's too, and they have a really good story behind them. So I thought I would start by sharing the sunflower theory with you. I know scientifically this doesn't really happen. It's more of a folklore tale, but I love to believe that it does, because I can close my eyes and picture it happening and it makes me happy. The first part of the sunflower theory goes, if you ever give someone a sunflower as a gift, be sure and give them two, because when the perfect sunny days disappear from the fields they are planted in, the only light left for them is the light that they create together. The theory goes on further to say that during the day when the sun shines bright, sunflowers instinctively turn their faces up to greet its warmth. They track the sun and its journey across the sky, turning to soak in every ray, standing tall, vibrant, and proud. But as a day fades and the sun dips below the horizon, something truly magical happens. The sunflowers don't simply wither and close. They do not lose their orientation. Instead, in the quiet embrace of the night, they slowly, softly turn to face each other, to find warmth, solace, and a comforting sense that their togetherness brings. In this week's life lesson, Do for, do with, cheer on, I'm going to share a story of how important it is in life to find your person, your individual people, like the sunflowers do. People who can and will support you through the good times and the hard times. A person who will help you feel less alone and support you in various ways until the darkness fades and the sun rises again. For me I learned that I needed these people when I was five, following the untimely and debilitating stroke my mom had. I've carried this life lesson with me into adulthood. So here it goes. Life lesson number eight, do for, do with, cheer on. It seems simple enough, the lady with the blonde hair and crisp white dress said. She can't do it for herself now, so you have to do it for her. You would think this lady sitting across from me on a brown leather couch in a white room was saying this to an adult, but she wasn't. I was sitting in a chair, too short still for my feet to touch the floor. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and the Tootsie Pop the doctor had given me was in my mouth. It was grape. I liked grape. Your mom had a stroke, she went on. She can't walk or talk, or understand simple things. Her words drifted off into a place I could no longer hear. As she continued talking, I shrunk down in my chair. It was a hard, plastic, orange chair, with round green felt material glued on the bottom of the legs, so that the metal wouldn't scratch or scuff the polished hospital room floor. I was confused, mad, and wanted to disappear. They had pulled me into this room, the people in white lab coats with pens in their pockets, and by the looks on their faces they seemed concerned. I didn't understand the depth of what was happening, but I knew it was bad. Just a few minutes prior, the three of us, me, my dad, and my sister, were in the room where my mom was. She was sleeping, but she looked different. She had tubes in her arms, more tubes coming out from her green gown, and was next to machines that made a lot of beeping noises. When she finally did open her eyes, she looked at us, but she seemed confused and scared. She was only thirty three years old. My dad tried giving her a rose. She took it and tried to eat it. Dad snatched it back quickly from her. Let's give this to her later, he said to us both. It was then that the white coat lady took me out of Mom's room and brought me into where I sat then in the cold, hard plastic chair. The lady kept talking. I know this is hard, she said, but you're gonna have to be her helper now. I tugged at my sock that had fallen down around my ankle. Okay, is all I managed to get out. As the years passed, many were a blur. My sister and I spent our afternoons learning to communicate with my mom using sign language. We were taking part in a study being done by the University of Washington to evaluate the effects that strokes had on communication. The study was trying to see if using sign language could somehow help stroke patients communicate more effectively by using different hemispheres in their brains. During this study, we visited a speech therapist and a sign language tutor five days a week to learn sign language with our mom. We were taught the alphabet, signs for pleasantries like please and thank you, and the signs to help her indicate her needs, like hunger, thirst, tired, or bathroom. We were also taught the no and the bad sign to let her know when she was doing something dangerous or something a mom shouldn't do. There was some success with the program. At the end of the study, Mom could spell some words that she would get stuck on, and through a lot of signs and gesturing we would eventually figure out what she was trying to say. This skill definitely came in handy later on when my sister and I would play charades with friends. No one could ever beat us at that guessing game. Most of our youth was spent doing things for mom. The first time this new reality sunk in for me, I'd been told by my dad the day after my mom had her stroke, and we were back at home, that I had to make lunches for my sister and I for school. I went into the kitchen and pushed a chair up to the counter in order to reach the bread, something that I had been yelled at for doing just two days prior. I'd already gotten the block of cheese out of the refrigerator and was set on making us cheese sandwiches. What are you doing? my sister asked from behind me. I'm making us sandwiches, I said. Dad told me to. She whispered, but you're standing on a chair. You know you're not supposed to do that, she said. I shrugged my shoulders and opened the block of cheese, determined to complete the task that I was given. I went to reach for the silverware drawer to pull out a knife to cut the cheese. Oh no, she yelled at me. You can't do that. I stopped mid-reach. I knew she was right. Neither of us were allowed to use knives from that drawer yet. We had barely been given the okay to use the kid safe scissors for our art projects. I started to cry and slumped down to the chair. My sister turned around and left the kitchen. I didn't know where she was going, but I guess she left to go tell on me for trying to use a knife. I sat there overwhelmed. I knew I was supposed to make sandwiches, but without a knife I didn't know how. Just then the idea came to me. That's a great idea, I said to myself excitedly. I stood back up and spread the six pieces of bread out on the cupboard. I took six pieces out of the bag because I wanted to surprise my dad and make his sandwich that he would need for work too. Just like Mom always did, I told myself. I brought the block of cheese up to my mouth and took a small, careful bite, then another one, and then another. So I built three sandwiches that way, bite by bite, with each bite of cheese gently removed from my mouth carefully, placed onto the bread, making sure to cover the whole slice. I had just finished making all the sandwiches when Dad walked into the kitchen. What are you doing? he asked me gruffly, seeing that I was standing on a chair. I'm making us all sandwiches for tomorrow like you asked me to, I answered. He came over to see what I had done. Look, I made you one too, I said proudly. Dad reached for a sandwich, and small wet hunks of cheese fell out of one. He looked puzzled. What? How did you make these? he asked. Well, I'm not allowed to use a knife, I said, so he used my teeth instead. I clamped my teeth together a couple of times like a mouse to show him how I did it. Well, that was creative, was all he said. He stood there looking at me, really looking at me, at a five year old me who had just become an adult with cooking responsibilities. He leaned against the counter. Well, he said, it looks like you did a good job with the tools you had. Buddy said, It looks like it's time I taught you to use a knife safely. We're gonna have to work together on this kind of stuff now. So together we stood side by side, me on the chair so I could reach, and with his hand over mine showing me how to cut slices off the block of cheese safely in order to make my first of many sandwiches. When my mom came home from the hospital several weeks later, I learned quickly that she too would now need help, relearning how to make her family sandwiches. So we taught her. It took time, but eventually she was able to make us all kinds of sandwiches on her own. Grilled cheese, tuna salad, turkey on rye, and my dad's favorite peanut butter and mayonnaise. We ate whatever she made us as she relearned to cook other things too, and we never complained. Okay, well sometimes we did. Um but we did always tell her thanks and cheered her on with every milestone she reached. Things were different for our family when we were out in public. When mom would try and ask others for something she needed, others would look at my sister and I and ask angrily, what does she want? Or what is she saying? For years I answered for her. This was my instruction that day as I sat in that cold, hard plastic chair when I was five. You'll have to do things for her now. That responsibility echoed in my head all the time from that day forward. Then one day a neighbor who had more patience than most with my mom gave me a suggestion. I was crying angry tears one day as I was telling her about the cashier at McDonald's, who had just yelled at my mom, then me when she couldn't understand what my mom wanted. She gently put her hands on my shoulders and said, Kim, why don't you ask the people who are overlooking your mom to ask her what she wants or needs first? Then and only then, she said, Tell them if they can't understand her, then to go ahead and ask for your help. I nodded my head. She went on to say, and if that doesn't work, point them out to me and I'll introduce them to my five friends. When she said that, she made a fist and punched an imaginary person in the face, like she was going to hit someone. That made me laugh. Her advice that day came as such a relief. It not only helped me help my mom get her needs met, but it helped others to be more compassionate and understanding of those that participated in the world differently than they did. In my family we understood that we often had to do things for mom, but as she learned new things we were able to do them with her. We never got to a place where she could do everything she wanted on her own, but when she did relearn a skill or a new word, we were able to cheer her on. Those were the moments of pure joy. When the sun set on who my mom used to be, following her stroke, she relied on the warmth, strength, and support of her family and a few friends to get her through. She knew that we would support and encourage her during her dark days of relearning how to live independently again, and would cheer her on and be there next to her as she learned to stand tall and proud again, like sunflowers do when her days got brighter and a little easier. Outsiders would often comment on how patient my sister and I were with our mom, how we encouraged her with our words and high-fived her accomplishments. They'd watch as we waited for mom to spell out a word using sign language, and quite a few people asked us to teach them some signs so they could do things with her to help her if we weren't around. Whether you're doing things for someone, with them, or cheering them on, using words of encouragement is important. Supportive phrases help people feel motivated, reassured, and less alone during difficult moments or when they're facing big challenges. Whether it's a simple you can do it, I believe in you, or I'm here for you, these words can boost confidence, offer comfort, and remind someone that their progress matters more than perfection. It's also important to remind people and even yourself that it's okay to ask for help if needed, that when trying or learning something new, it's okay to go at whatever pace is comfortable and be gentle with yourself as you go. Also to always remember that trying something new is brave. I heard a quote recently that I really liked. It's from Samuel Goldwyn, a Polish-born American film producer, the first to produce the United States' first major motion picture. He said, When something does something good, sorry, I'm sorry, when someone does something good, go ahead and applaud. You will make the both of you happy. I love that quote. It's fun to cheer people on. Thank you again for your ongoing support of this podcast. I truly appreciate it. I'm wondering who you feel that you support, like a sunflower does in the dark when times are tough for them. Who do you picture as your supportive sunflower when you close your eyes and envision yourself leaning into someone? Please send me your thoughts, feedback, and stories on this. I love to hear them. You can reach me by hitting the fan mail button on this hosting site or emailing me at lifelessons.ordinarywoman at gmail.com. Also, please like, follow, and share this podcast with others who you think you would like to have join us in this community of ordinarily beautiful people. Until next week, please remember that I love you and that your presence is a present to those around you.