Monthly Archives: October 2012

A good aunt’s soap box

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Malala Yousafzai has captured our hearts, prayers and worldwide attention in the past few days. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Yousafzai is the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot by Taliban supporters because she wants to go to school and has spent the last three years speaking out about the right girls have to get an education. Earlier today, she and her family made it to the UK, where she will have access to the medical care she needs to have a chance at recovering from being shot in the head.

Did you know her name means grief-stricken? Those of us following her story have been struck with grief, too, along with a sense of moral outrage that there are men in this world who believe it’s right to shoot a girl because she wants to go to school.

Yousafzai is a victim in a war not her own making, but she was persistent and loud enough to draw attention to herself through a blog she’s been writing since she was 11. Her voice has a power that the Taliban has tried to silence, and I only hope that other voices will join hers and sustain her cause while she struggles for life.

I want all of you with daughters and nieces (and sons and nephews whom you hope will grow up to marry fabulous women) to imagine your emotions if Yousafzai had been one of your own. What weapons would you take up in her fight? Would you fight for her against what so many take for granted: the right to go to school?

It’s easy, in the face of our fresh grief and outrage for this girl, to imagine what we would want to do if we were part of her family, part of her community. But there’s a culture war happening here in the Western world, too, and I wonder if it’s easier for us to ignore simply because there aren’t vans being stopped on the way from school and 14-year-old girls getting shot in the head over it.

I’m speaking of the mainstream media’s cultural war on what it means to be a girl and, ultimately, what it means to be a woman. Continue reading →

Trail Tales

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Most of my friends know that I don’t especially love reading non-fiction. When I pick up a book, I usually prefer to escape the real world and go to a fictional place.

But a dear friend from childhood – the friend I totally and completely bonded with in fifth grade because we both loved reading and loathed field day in equally passionate measure – has enthusiastically taken up with camping and hiking. For months, she kept telling me to read Jennifer Pharr Davis’ Becoming Odyssa, a book Davis wrote after hiking the Appalachian Trail. I figured I’d get around to reading it some day.

The same friend loaned me her copy of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Her prologue begins with her looking out over the trees:

The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep
mountain slope in northern California. Moments before, I’d removed
my hiking boots and the left one had fallen into those trees, first cata-
pulting into the air when my enormous backpack toppled onto it, then
skittering across the gravelly trail and flying over the edge. It bounced
off of a rocky outcropping several feet beneath me before disappearing
into the forest canopy below, impossible to retrieve. (3)

She had me hooked. That was the start of my adventures into trail tales. And because I surprised myself by actually enjoying a book about Strayed’s solo hike, I picked up Becoming Odyssa, too.

My recent reads about thru-hiking

Those of you who know me best may be wondering why I’d even read the stories of women hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail (Cheryl Strayed) and the Appalachian Trail (Jennifer Pharr Davis), given my own aversion to lots of outdoorsy activities and critters. Like stream crossings and big spiders and a lack of hot running water. But most especially snakes. Continue reading →

Feeling less than a good aunt

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I just finished reading Jennifer Pharr Davis‘ Becoming Odyssa, a book she wrote to describe her thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. I’ll talk more about the book on Wednesday, but I was searching for more about her online just now and came across her blog on tumblr. The most recent post included a list of who and what she would miss most on her hiking trip through Spain this summer. Number one on the list:

“My 20-month old niece. She is perfect. I am not biased.” (Source)

How many of you aunts – and uncles – have ever felt this way about your own nieces and nephews?

When my older nephew was still the solo kid in the family, I told him constantly that he was my favorite little boy in the whole world. I thought he was perfect, and I was not at all biased, ahem.

And then my second nephew was born, and suddenly I had two favorite boys in the whole world (yes, it’s possible to have two favorites), both of whom were perfect. And I loved them more than I imagined I could ever love two people. And I was not biased.

Both of my nephews love me (even as teenagers they still tell me this, and not just when I send money or presents), but I have never been a perfect aunt. Lots of times, I feel less than perfect. Like that time I yelled at my older nephew for breaking the cup holder in my car. Or the time I yelled at both of them for fighting in the backseat after a trip to Chuck E. Cheese (which, by the way, was the first time I truly understood how miraculous it was that my father never really followed through on his threat to pull the car over).

There’s a lot of distance between where I live and where they live, and so I didn’t get to see them regularly as they grew up, or get to see them in most of their favorite activities. And I quite possibly never ever sent anything on Halloween. (I understand some very good aunts never miss sending goodies on this oh-so-important holiday in the life of a child.)

But I’ve done the best I could to foster relationships with them and make sure they always know that even though I’m not perfect, I still pretty much think they are.

Searching for how to be a good aunt
Recently I was looking through the statistics page on my blog, more specifically, the search terms that bring readers to my blog. I was surprised and saddened to see this search: “I don’t know how to be a good aunt.” That line stopped me cold. Some woman out there was looking for online help, wanting to learn what it meant to be a good aunt.

So she typed, “I don’t know how to be a good aunt” to see what answers might come up. There was something in her search that resonated with me, and I wondered what that woman was going through to make her turn to Google.

That could have been me all those years ago, searching for an answer about how to be a good aunt. Let’s be honest. There are still days I could benefit from a magic Google search that has all those answers.

My older nephew was born when I was a sophomore in college, making me the first of my friends to become an aunt. I had no clue what being a good aunt entailed. I was busy trying to figure out what being a good college student and a good friend and a good adult and a good human being meant. And now this baby was on the way, and I knew with an unshakeable certainty that I wanted to be a good aunt. Even though I had no idea how to go about becoming a good aunt.

Several of the woman I interviewed spoke of a similar feeling of inadequacy, this “less than” feeling that made them doubt I should even group them with other good aunts for the series. In some cases, there are strained family relationships that take nieces and nephews out of reach of aunts who would love to be more involved with them. Sometimes the separation happens because of the demands of an aunt’s career. Sometimes there’s no tangible reason to pinpoint why the aunt/niece/nephew relationship never really takes off. This is true not only with biological relationships but also with the children of a good aunt’s closest friends.

If I’ve learned nothing else from the good aunt series, it’s this: being a good aunt is about intention (actively cultivating the relationship in whatever way works) and attention (spending time letting the children know they’re important to you). Beyond that, there’s no magic recipe. There’s no Google search that can guarantee you’ll be a good aunt.

There are as many different ways to be a good aunt as there are different aunts and different nieces and nephews. And it may take a lot of trial and error to figure out what works best with the children in your life. You may even discover that what works perfectly with one child doesn’t work at all with another. If you’re really struggling, I encourage you to enlist the help of the children’s parents, grandparents and other aunts and uncles to help you figure this out, too.

I think Jennifer Pharr Davis is onto something that may help you, though: start with the belief that your niece/nephew is perfect, and therefore deserving of your love and attention, and together, you’ll figure out a way to forge a strong bond.

Have any advice to share about what makes a good aunt? I’d love to hear it. And apparently, there are others out there who’d love to hear it, too.

Running thoughts: hospitality, humility and humidity

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I really thought that here on the first Wednesday of October, I’d be waxing poetic about the joys of autumn, like the fabulous pumpkin chai I recently discovered at Caribou Coffee. (It’s really awesome, and if you like pumpkin or chai, you’ve gotta try it.)

Instead of writing about the delightful fall, though, I find myself astonishingly grateful for air-conditioning and an order from my doctor to take a week off from running. After all, a run right now would be more like swimming, only without the refreshing water part.

Many of us southern runners love autumn because it lacks the main summertime ingredient that causes us to struggle: humidity. We’ve survived the awful stuff all summer, and in many cases, fall is the time of year that we ramp back up with our running. We can add in more miles and even change up the time of day we run, simply because we’re no longer trying to dodge suffocating heat and humidity. But this week has felt more like late August or early September. Yesterday was so humid outside that the windows of my house fogged up (from the outside). With the start of fall, I thought I was done with tracking sweaty footprints across the floors, not to mention the drenched shoes and running clothes.

While out with my dog this morning, I found the humidity to be overwhelming. So I tried to turn my thoughts to a topic I’ve been working out for my most recent book chapter: hospitality. Do you mind if I revisit the topic? Continue reading →

Thanking your good aunt

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The month of guest posts has ended. The contest is over. And now it’s time for me to say several thank yous.

First and foremost, I’m grateful to the four talented (and busy) writers who said “Yes!” when I asked if they would write a guest post for me in September. Please know that I deeply appreciate all of you for adding one more thing to your busy schedules. The results were beyond what I was expecting, and for sharing your gift with me and your inspiring messages with my blog readers, I thank you.

For those of you who might have missed a guest post along the way, here are links and a brief summary:

  • Jerel Law, author of Spirit Fighter, blogged about his sister-in-law, an amazing good aunt who thinks nothing of flying the less-than-friendly skies to get from Hawaii to her niece and nephews on the East Coast. Her presence is a soothing, necessary balm as the Law children learn to navigate life without their mother.
  • Tracey Finck, author of Love Letters to a Child, blogged about the power of a good aunt’s pen. I hope you took her up on her suggestion to buy some stamps and sit down and write your niece/nephew/significant-other-child-in-your-life to let them know you’re thinking about them. If not, it’s never too late. I hear they even sell stamps at CVS and Wal-mart these days.
  • Allison Cain, author of Revision of a Heart and several other good reads, blogged about a great way to pray about and through pain, whether emotional or physical. And who among us can’t use a good prayer cue for turning our troubles over to God?
  • Shannon Hale, author of How to Pray When You Can’t Sit Still, blogged about her remarkable aunt Grace who had the courage to show her nieces she loved them, even though she couldn’t shower them with perfect gifts or perfect amounts of attention. I hope Hale challenged you to rethink a reluctance to share your love with those who are important to you.

And now about that contest
I want to thank those of you who embraced the guest bloggers and commented on their posts. And a huge thanks to those who entered the contest, too. I loved reading stories of your own aunts and how they’ve influenced you. Thank you for sharing those stories, and thanks for taking time away from what I know is a busy month to pay tribute to a special aunt in your life.

Thanks also to those of you who have told me about your own good aunts in person. And also to those of you who have spoken of a deep lack of good aunts in your life or a loss of a good aunt in your children’s lives when a sister or sister-in-law died too young.

Of those who entered the contest, Wendy ended up winning (congrats!). I was literally pulling her name from the folded pieces of paper when a telemarketer’s number popped up on my caller ID, identifying itself only as “Winner.” Serendipity? Coincidence? Just plain fun (so atypical from the caller ID these days)?

You can read Wendy’s tribute to her aunt Kate in the comments to the contest announcement. Wendy is a talented writer in her own right, and I encourage you to check out her blog, especially today’s post that might give you an idea of the type of friend you can be to the moms of your favorite kids.

Wendy: look for an email from me in your inbox asking which of the four guest bloggers’ books you’d like to receive as your prize. You can’t go wrong with any of the choices, and I’m looking forward to seeing which one you select.

If I could declare each and every one of you readers a winner, I would, but I don’t have enough money in the budget to send all of you books. Maybe as a pat on the back for encouraging me, you’ll treat yourself to one or all four of the books highlighted over the last month? If you do, let me know what you think of them.

I also encourage you, if you haven’t already, to thank a good aunt in your life. These woman can be easy to overlook, but if your good aunt is still alive, I’m betting she would love to hear your words of gratitude.