Question 1) write a reflection and strategies. How do you balance the important aspects of your life?  What’s important?  What is the measure of success?

What is our legacy to ourselves, our children, and the world?  Please go to the discussion board folder entitled ‘WBL Ch. 6’ now and post your answers, reflections and strategies.

Borysenko’s chapter on the 30’s transition talks about the juggling act that women’s lives become in the years from 28-35.  The balance of self and other, work and family, children and creativity.

When I fill out my calendar for the week, I use Steven Covey’s model from the book ‘First Things First’ where I write a list of my roles in life and the tasks that I want to complete during the coming week to be sure that I’m taking care of the priorities in my life.

Below is a sample of a week in the life of this ’40 something’ woman. ROLES GOALS Self:  physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual balance Daily prayer/meditation/communion, Mindful walking, Quiet, contemplative reading time, Holding peace and happiness within, Spend time in nature-hike, garden, walk, smell the flowers 🙂

Mom & Partner Work together, play together, cook together, eat together, sing, be kind, listen, hug, look in their eyes 🙂 Minister Meditate, pray, daily communion, Be available to receive people’s joys and burdens, Listen compassionately, Teach people who want to know about God Teacher prepare weekly lessons, read assignments, chat., return emails, calculate midterm grades and post, Friend

Stay in touch, pray for friends’ concerns, visit when possible Daughter/Sister/Neice/Aunt Stay in touch, pray for family’s concerns, visit when possible Homemaker Love the space, clean, cook, laundry, groceries, happy feelings Covey has you then go on to schedule the day and time during the week when you will do each of the tasks you have set for yourself.

I like this model for trying to live life by the compass (what’s important) rather than by the clock (what’s urgent).

According to Alfred Adler, work, love and community are all areas of life that we must balance in order to be fulfilled. Borysenko says that ‘The gift of the age thirty transition is a values clarification,…’. (pg. 117)

Though I have gone into the next stages by many years, I certainly still grapple with what’s important and how to balance all of the important aspects of my life.  How do you balance the important aspects of your life?  What’s important?

What is the measure of success?  What is our legacy to ourselves, our children, and the world?
 

Question 2 ) Write about the ‘BLUEBEARD’ and consider when your own ‘Bluebeard’ has led you astray…in the guise of caretaking. Bluebeard The story of Bluebeard speaks of the time when women first start to hear their own voices…and how, once heard, one cannot ignore the voice of the wild woman any longer.

It speaks of the naievete of women and how they come to be conscious of the forces that would keep them silent and powerless.  Pinkola Estes tells us that each of the characters in this story represent a part of a single woman’s (or human’s) psyche.  Bluebeard is the ‘death instinct’ that psychologist Melanie Klein theorizes about (1975).

Klein theorizes that the two fundamental organizing forces of the psyche are love and aggression.  Aggression splits the psyche while love unites it.  Bluebeard is the aggressive aspect of the individual’s psyche which has the intention, covertly at first, to destroy the ego’s integrity.

Being innate, this aggressive tendency must be acknowledged and addressed. The story of Bluebeard helps us to navigate the dark waters of the unconscious.  It gives us signposts for danger and shows us what to expect when we pretend that the ‘death instinct’ is not really that bad.

Most of us have made choices in relationships with others or with ourselves that we later regret.  Bad relationships, addictions and other self-destructive behaviors can also leave us with our own psychic signposts…if we care to pay attention to them! The bleeding key is the knowledge that there’s no going back to ignorance of this death force.

Once you have been bitten by the bug of consciousness, you cannot go back to naievete…not to say you can’t or won’t make the same mistake again!!! Why is it that Bluebeard wants to kill his ‘curious’ wives?

Because they know more than they should?  Because he can no longer fool them into blindly following/obeying?  Because he is afraid of his ‘alter-ego’, the creative force?

Pinkola Estes refers to the double standard of curiosity…men are called investigative or inquiring, women are called nosey or busy-bodies.  “In reality, the trivialization of women’s curiosity so that it seems like nothing more than irksome snooping denies women’s insight, hunches, intuitions.  It denies all her senses.

It attempts to attack her fundamental power.” (WRW pg. 52) I really resonate with Carl Jung’s theory of integration.  All of the ‘archetypes’ are part of a single psyche.  Each one has a purpose in life and in relationship.

Most of us choose, or are socialized, to suppress some of these archetypes as ‘bad/weak/fearful/feminine/masculine’ etc.  Once we do this, it causes a split in our central, integrated Self.  The journey of life is to reintegrate the Self.

To aquaint ourselves with all aspects of the Self, acknowledge and validate them, and integrate them into what Carl Roger’s calls the ‘fully functioning person”; someone who is free to move in any direction at any time.

Integration and freedom!  Sounds good to me! But first, we must face our own demons…real or imagined.  The archetype that Bluebeard represents is one of them…probably the most fearsome.

The key is to be able to see consciously and clearly all of the parts of the self…without fear.  Without this integration, we are shattered and scattered; a fraction of our potential selves.
 

Question 3 Watch Ted Talk ‘The dangerous way ads see women’ with Jeanne Kilbourne and write a response https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8yLaoWybk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8yLaoWybk