ANNOUNCEMENT! Today I have added a new page to my website– Family & Human Development. Please, check it out!
Family Fridays—“Look For the Helpers”
Because of the unusually intense tornado season throughout the US this spring, I decided to begin today posting Family Fridays.
So many families, particularly in the South, Mid-West, and Northeast, are reeling from the sudden destruction of their worlds and daily lives. The rest of us are left to watch in amazement and, perhaps, feel some guilt at being relieved that it was not us. Of course, whether a tornado or another crisis, we sometimes wonder, “how would we deal with such circumstances?”
In studies of family stress, Froma Walsh discusses what people need whenever they experience an unexpected crisis. What contributes to helping them to cope, recover, and be resilient? Two very important factors are social support and resources, such as after the tornadoes–water, food, shelter, and medical aid. When a sudden crisis happens, people and their families find themselves quickly needing immediate help from others.
I often wonder how to make sense of this type of life event myself. Recently, I heard the story of Fred Rogers‘ (TV’s Mister Rogers) answer for making sense of scary things. As a child, Fred’s mother always told him to “look for the helpers”. For some reason, this was very helpful to me. While it does not change the bad thing that has happened, “looking for the helpers” gives me a way to focus on something positive and reassuring in the midst of it all. And, I know by personal experience that whenever life has been especially challenging, it was the help of other people who made it possible for me to cope. Looking for the helpers after these intense storms, we see real life examples of the needed social support being given to people, which helps them through a crisis, and how important that help really is…
May we all have helpers when we need them, and may we be helpers whenever we can…
Walsh F. (2003). Family resilience: Strengths forged through adversity. In Froma Walsh (Ed.), Normal Family Processes (3rd ed., pp. 399-423). New York: Guilford Press.
**I’d love to hear your comments!
Related articles
- Life Changes – Unexpectedly Sometimes! (jonibeach.com)
- Things I learned from Mister Rogers (ragrobyn.wordpress.com)
- Can We Learn Anything From Tornadoes About Resilience? (psychologytoday.com)
- Keys to Resilience (winnebago.uwex.edu)
With Our Senses Awake…
We will live this life only once.
Experiencing the world @ us, in ways beyond what we can imagine on our own, is truly an exciting experience of the senses. It can be…
seeing with our eyes, a huge vista in nature, beautiful beyond words…
hearing with our ears, music that tickles our ears and vibrates our bodies… holding a in our arms, a sweet baby who is warm, new, and beautiful…
smelling with our nose, honeysuckle’s scent swirling past us on a path…
tasting with our tongues, golden cookies freshly baked, steaming from the oven….
Or, it can be… a work of art, large in size, vibrant in colors, and amazing to our eyes.
These things all peak our curiosity, take us outside of ourselves, and remind us what it is to be alive…
As a parent caring for your family, an individual working each day, or an artist creating an original design. It is through our senses that we take in information from @ us and the environment in which we live. This information can serve, among other things, to remind us of the importance of the everyday, encourage us to value those @ us, and to inspire and motivate us to accomplish more than we can perhaps imagine!
♦ These are some of the things that help remind me to enjoy my family or motivates me to engage in one of the arts? How about you? ♦ (If Comment box is not on page, click below on small gray words, “Leave a Comment”)
Joni Beach 