Tips & Tools 2014 Annual by Andrew Weil, M.D.

Legacy Tips & Tools Annual 2014

Table of Contents Page 3 Page 4 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17

Introduction About Rachael Freed

January, 2014: Legacies for the Living as we Mourn: The Losses of Newtown February, 2014: Legacy Letters and Work March, 2014:

The Legacy of My Stuff (Redux)

April, 2014:

Legacy & Travel: Linking Past & Future

May, 2014:

The Legacy of Our Favorite Stories

June, 2014:

Legacy Writing: Remembering Lost Loved Ones

July, 2014:

A Legacy of Beauty

August, 2014:

Write a Legacy Letter Today!

September, 2014: Legacy: Learning to Let Go October, 2014: Legacy Letters & Charitable Giving November, 2014: The Legacy of Dreams December, 2014: Legacy: Priorities, & Passions over Decades

Welcome To The Fourth Annual Legacy Tips & Tools Online Magazine! In his endorsement of my book Women’s Lives, Women’s Legacies, Dr. Weil wrote, “The ethical will is a wonderful gift to leave to your family at the end of your life, but ... its main importance is what it can give you in the midst of life.” To introduce you to legacy writing, let’s unpack his words: First, what is an ethical will? The ethical will is a document from an ancient tradition in which fathers instructed their sons to pass their culture’s ethical values to the next generation. Why did I change the name to a “spiritual-‐ethical will?” To underscore that this ancient patriarchal practice has a spiritual as well as an ethical dimension. My goal is to make this tool accessible to moderns, especially women (whose voices have been silenced in today’s culture and who often believe we have nothing noteworthy to preserve for the future). Why do I describe this modern spiritual practice as “writing legacy letters?” Many are intimidated by the term “will.” But we can all write a letter (even in this day of easily deleted emails, texts, and tweets). Legacy letters vary in length from a one-‐page letter to a series of letters, or can be a lengthier document. How are these letters important to future generations? Legacy letters nourish the future with our words: filling the gaps in their history, connecting them to their roots, and providing them with our values and blessings. Dr. Weil says: “Its main importance is what it gives [us] in the midst of life?” In his book, Healthy Aging, he wrote that the ethical will is pertinent to those of us “concerned with making sense of our lives and the fact of our aging.” I’ve found over time and in diverse situations guiding people to write their legacy letters is that the process addresses deep universal needs that we may not even be aware we have. They include: the need to be connected (belonging); the needs to be known, heard, and remembered (identity); the need to make a difference (make a contribution); the need to bless and be blessed; and to celebrate life. I believe it both a privilege and a responsibility to record, communicate, and preserve our family and community histories, document the legacies we’ve received for continuity from generation to generation, and pass forward the experiences we’ve lived that make us who we are. Preserving our wisdom and our love establishes a link in the chain of generations, and passes on a legacy for those of tomorrow's world. May all your legacies be blessings, Rachael Freed

About Rachael Freed

Rachael Freed, founder of Life Legacies and Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality and Healing, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist. Her work, transforming the ancient ethical will, is explained on her website, Life-‐Legacies. Legacy Tips & Tools appear monthly on DrWeil.com. Rachael writes regularly for The Huffington Post-‐GPS for the Soul, and LegacyConnect.com. Personal email subscriptions are available here. Your Legacy Matters: Harvesting the Love and Lessons of Your Life -‐ A Multi-‐generational Guide for Writing Your Ethical Will is Freed’s latest book, published in the Fall of 2013. Freed is also the author of Women's Lives, Women's Legacies, Passing Your Beliefs and Blessings to Future Generations and The Legacy Workbook for the Busy Woman: A Step-‐by-‐ Step Guide for Writing a Spiritual-‐Ethical Will in 2 Hours or Less. For green readers, all legacy books are available as pdf downloads on Life-‐Legacies. Dr. Weil wisely said: “The ethical will [‘s] … main importance is what it can give you in the midst of life.” My work with individuals, families, and groups guides them to reflect, write about, and pass forward their interests, passions, and priorities – their histories, stories, and blessings. It includes coaching and guiding people to write special letters to accompany their advance directives and wills; this supports initiating difficult family conversations, and leads to peace of mind. An inspirational and experienced speaker and workshop leader, Freed designs and facilitates legacy programs and training for health care, financial, philanthropic, and religious organizations, and for public and non-‐profit institutions, empowering them to preserve and communicate their values and what matters most in their lives. Some of her programs include: The Mayo Clinic, The Holocaust Museum (Wash. DC), OHSU Center for Women’s Health Foundation (Portland, OR), The American Heart Association, MN Planned Giving Council, LutheranCare (upstate NY), Catholic Community Foundation (MN), Union of Reform Judaism Biennial (San Diego), AACVPR (national cardiac rehab assoc.), and LifeSprk (formerly AgeWell). Freed has trained cardiac professionals internationally to support cardiac families. Her book and journal, Heartmates: A Guide for the Partner and Family of the Heart Patient and The Heartmates Journal: A Companion for Partners of People with Heart Disease, are the only resources available nurturing the emotional and spiritual recovery of families coping with heart disease. For more information, visit www.heartmates.us.

Rachael served in the US Peace Corps in Tunisia, reads for the MN Society for the Blind, and chairs adult education and community legacy at Temple Israel, Mpls. MN. My other babies are now in their forties and are the pride of my life: Sid Levin and Debbie Stillman. The loves of my life are my seven grandchildren: Sophie, Mitch, Sam, Lily, Harry, Aidan, and Gigi. For more information, visit Life-‐Legacies.com or contact Rachael at Rachael@life-‐legacies.com.

Legacy Tips & Tools Legacy: Back to Basics – Our Stories Reflection:

January 2014

Principles of Practice:

In preparing for this month’s writing retreat about the legacies of migration (emigration – immigration) I discovered something important, an error about the way I have practiced legacy work all these many years. I’ve written, “Although we may believe we are our stories, that they tell who we are...our next step of growth is to live beyond our stories.” Being so focused on discovering or uncovering the lessons learned from our experiences (to be passed forward to future generations) important though it is in legacy work, I’ve discounted the power, meaning, and beauty of the raw experience of telling the story itself as we remember it.

“We all live within our stories.” - Salman Rushdie

To rectify my having ignored “the story” and its value for so long, I dedicate this January 2014 Tips & Tools to story as legacy. (It is also my New Year’s Resolution for myself and my work.) Because legacy writing is not about writing for publication, or to impress anyone, or attempt perfection, we only need to tell the story from our hearts to our loved ones’ hearts. So here are some suggestions for writing our stories, which by the way help us address our universal need to be known. There are three basic elements in every story we tell: what happens, where and when it happens, and to whom (characters). Tell your story as YOU experienced it –– without interpretation or analysis.(Let your readers hear your story from their perspective and have their experience.) Example: When I told my kids in a legacy letter about my experience at age 22 seeing a pregnant, homeless woman begging on the subway, I didn’t need to explain how I felt. I wrote that, “I looked down, held my purse and my heart tightly shut.” My kids would learn the lesson they understood from the story. In terms of style, write the story as you would if you imagined you were telling your loved ones while you all sit at the table after supper, sipping cocoa and munching homemade cookies, regaling each other with the stories that mean most to us. Then you will write from your unique voice, your way of speaking (and writing). The only other suggestion is to share the story’s details you remember. It’s often the details: singular, sensual, vibrant that will be remembered and that listeners – readers connect with.

1. Take time as you live, as you listen to others, as you read, to open your memory to your stories. The more you focus, the more will come as the days pass. Don’t discount any as unimportant – they’re alive in your memory and intuition. 2. Trust one of our best known and admired storytellers, Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees, and forthcoming 2014 Oprah’s Book Club selection, The Invention of Wings): ! ! ! !

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.

3. As your stories bubble up, capture them freely in your journal. 4. If you choose, write legacy letters to inspire younger generations of storytellers. Tell them your most memorable stories and after you’ve written them you may decide to share why they’re memorable to you and lessons you’ve learned from experiencing them and writing them down. But don’t let the “why” or “the lesson” diminish the richness of the story itself. ! ! !

So let’s go forth in 2014 honoring and enjoying our stories as well as learning from them. Passing forward our stories is a precious legacy gift to those you love.

May you tell many of your stories. remembering who you are and why you’re here in this new year – 2014, Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools February 2014

Legacies of Migration and Exile Reflection: Just a day after returning from a legacy writing retreat with a focus on migration and legacy, I found myself in a nail salon listening to a woman sitting behind me. Her voice was thin and dull. I heard no expression of feeling though she didn't seem to notice. What she said so blandly was heartbreaking! She described herself and her partner as 3M transplants. She was planning for the wedding of her son, who no longer lived nearby. She said that though both her husband's parents are still alive, they won't attend the wedding, because they’ve moved to Phoenix and no longer travel. On the surface a conversation I might not even have noticed – but after a week of readings, writings, and discussion about displaced people “innocent transplants” – more than 45.2 million refugees struggle on our planet today according to the UN Refugee Agency – her conversation gripped my heart. This disrupted family story has been repeated non-stop since God told Abraham to leave his father and his land and go forth – until this very day. Individual stories of psychic, physical, and family exile lurk beneath the studies and statistics. Whole villages forced off the land – generations of agricultural families moved as one to work in urban factories – for economic progress. In the Middle East 4.2 million people, families with children, have fled war and violence – to live in primitive refugee camps with no home in sight. Corporations and militaries transplant people at will. We have 640,000 homeless people on any given night in the U.S. (www.MoveforHunger.org). When my nails were dry, I continued on to the grocery store. On my way home, I found myself in a long line of cars waiting to turn left onto the highway. I was stopped right next to a homeless man standing on the median holding a sign that read ‘Disabled and Homeless Vet.’ I lowered my window to acknowledge him, and he told me he’d been waiting four years for Social Security to approve his disability payments. All this in our world in which conversation has become social media, in which families that sat by the fire on cold winter evenings passing forward family history, stories and values – the legacy activity of oral tradition – are no more. They’ve been replaced by individuals insulated from one another, attached to their devices of the moment, amusing themselves or trying desperately to communicate with others. How to not just turn our backs on problems so huge, so horrific, so beyond fixing? How to turn around our exile from ourselves and participate with our fellow human beings whose only legacy for their children is more homelessness and exile? What can each one of us do? What will we tell our children and grandchildren?

Principles of Practice 1. Take time for nostalgia – immerse yourself regularly in memories of home and family – write them down and share them. 2. Organize your piles of pictures – mail them to people with a note even if you’ve not seen them for decades. 3. Take your mother, aunt, cousin to lunch or tea and have a real conversation. 4. Gather friends for an all day “confab”. Silence all electronic devices. 5. Hug a child. Read a story to a grandchild or a young child in your building. In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. – Mother Teresa 6. Volunteer your time regularly to a cause dear to your heart. 7. Reach beyond your comfort level to communicate with someone different from you. Share how you got "here" wherever that is. 8. Have a good cry about all the homes you've personally migrated from. ReLlect and write about what was lost and what was gained with each physical and psychic migration in your life. 9. Write a legacy letter to someone you love about home. 10. Finally please don't fall back to sleep – think about your own and others’ migrations, displacements, homelessness, exiles. Talk about it with others; learn about it from others. Most important, don’t turn your back on this powerful legacy that affects all of us.

– Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools The Legacy of Lost Dreams March 2014 Reflection: When we write our stories to future generations, we are tempted to tell stories of our successes. It's how we want to be seen and remembered, as successful, talented, and wise. Though it may go against the grain,it may be more useful, more human, to tell stories in which we portray ourselves as we are when we're disappointed in ourselves, when we experience our assumptions, expectations, and our ideals as errors, when we discover that our long-held dreams are untrue, and our stories end yes, with some learning, but also with our disappointment and concomitant sadness and grief. A wise woman recently told me that when our idealism is broken the danger is to fall from idealism to cynicism. More productive is to see more realistically. Adolescent idealism transformed to more mature realism can result in seeing more clearly what is real, who we really are, who the other is, what the real situation is ... Yes, realism is an "ism" but a less opaque one than either idealism or cynicism. A friend told me about the Japanese tradition of kintsukuroi, the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer with the understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken - a metaphor might be how a young beauty becomes even more radiant when lines of experience and age adorn her face. Ted Bowman, friend and wise counselor, wrote "Loss of Dreams: A Special Kind of Grief” in 1994. Ted observed that when we experience a loss of a dream about how life would be, the loss can be as devastating as the loss of a beloved person, and needs to be acknowledged and grieved before we can move forward. One of my lost dreams goes back to adolescence. Remember the fifties when the movies taught a whole generation of us how love and marriage were supposed to be? An impressionable teen with raging hormones, I swallowed the Doris Day image whole, and mistakenly chose a mate I was unsuited for. Hannah Arendt wrote of a similar blindness in her love for Martin Heidigger, describing him as “a supreme being in a world drowning in mediocrity.” Wendy Steiner reviewing Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidigger in the NY Times Book Review 9/24/95 wrote: “What combination could be more durable than a totally self-absorbed man and a woman who needed to think well of him for the sake of her own selfrespect?” Steiner’s words opened my eyes. I saw how I’d spent many years trying to make my ideal dream real, and kept at it as long as I did because it was welded to my own self image. What a devastating realization. After much grieving, I could see that clinging to my dream had been a major component in the failure of my marriage.

homeland, we would have to displace the people who’d inhabited the land of milk and honey for generations. That blindness and the powerful ideal of Zionism (watch out for ‘isms’) led Israelis over decades, no matter how well–meaning, innovative, creative, or brilliant – to believe that occupying land belonging to another people was an okay thing to do. It was not. (Not different than in the Book of Joshua, when the slaves of Egypt wandered for forty years in the desert, then crossed into the land that God had promised them. The problem then, as today 3500 years later: there were already people living on that land.) So too I have needed to believe that my people, so maligned for centuries, are really better than all those who have persecuted us. So I'm grieving: For the loss of my dream that Jews, after the Holocaust of the 20th century, would be safe, respected, even loved by humankind. So far, I've only slipped into pessimism for short periods of time, being by nature an optimist. As I grieve, I continue to hope that Israelis will find a way beyond their amnesia to peace. Now that my eyes are open, I hope I can rebuild my ground realistically, understanding that Israelis are like all human–kind, capable of great miracles, as well as horrific deeds, blinded as all humans are by unexamined needs and dreams.

Principles of Practice: 1. Reflect about lost dreams in your life, a time when your story was about realizing that life turned out differently than what you'd dreamed it to be...a time of seeing that your dream was not real and maybe never had been. 2. Write about your loss, your grief, your disappointment, and how you were repaired/ healed. 3. Write a legacy letter to those you love. Have the courage to tell a story illustrating your false ideals, your blindness, your mistakes, your grief, in order that your loved ones can know who you really are–how beautiful, how human you are.

That is now long past history, and I have discovered a new blind ideal and dream just this year: I recently read Ari Shavit's 2013 My Promised Land, about the birth of Zionism and the birth of the modern nation of Israel. It is a powerful book that awakened me to the reality that Israel is far from perfect. Neither I nor the Jews fleeing Europe wanted to see or could see that to seize our © 2014 Life-Legacies, Rachael Freed

May you be blessed with the courage to see things as they are and to share your humanity with those you love, Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools The Legacy of Spring Cleaning April 2014 Reflection: Though by the thermometer it may not feel like spring, by the calendar spring has arrived. The ritual of spring cleaning has a long history. I can still see my mother wearing her 1940’s housewifely apron, the symbol for making everything “spick and span” as well as doing the deep cleaning. Those of us who live in the northern tier of the country change our closets as part of the spring regimen: from winter clothes to spring and summer. We throw open windows and doors breathing deeply to experience the sun-‐warmed air of spring, exhaling the dead old winter air. We feel new ourselves as we inhale the soft, fresh air of spring.. Spring cleaning in the Jewish tradition is linked to the holiday of Pass-‐ over. Every cupboard, every drawer, must be cleaned of “chametz” leaven-‐ ed products) as preparation for the holiday celebrating the exodus and freedom. Understood metaphorically we are preparing ourselves for new life, the promise of spring, emptying ourselves of the accumulated pufMiness of leaven, arrogance and pride. We ready ourselves for the new life of spring cleansing our souls as we do our clothes and kitchens. Though I am no expert about the Christian tradition, I think the coming of spring portends rebirth and renewed life, symbolized by the resurrection, and prepared for with the traditions of Lent. In Your Legacy Matters Chapter 10, “Cleaning out Your Closet”, is about prioritizing our material possessions through the perspective of legacy: “… the stuff we’ve been given, that we’ve gathered and collected, and haven’t given, recycled, or thrown away.” In this context spring cleaning means to differentiate the stuff that has meaning – things we inherited, mementos, and gifts: our objects infused with meaning that are symbols of our identity, our values, our relationships – from those things that we’ve accumulated though they have no special meaning. “To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard….I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.” – Anaïs Nin Spring cleaning time is as good as any to get started. I believe we have a responsibility to clean up our inner and outer stuff. Although the outer stuff may be easier to deal with, they are related, not separate. Looking through the lens of legacy, this is about respecting the next generation who will have to clean up after us when we’re gone. “I’ve imagined dying suddenly and watching from somewhere as my two children wander through the morass of my things: papers, books, pictures, collections, and accumulated mementos. Not only is it an unfair burden to leave them, but my stuff makes a statement about me.”

One caveat about the value of our possessions: When elders make the complex transition of moving from independent living to communal housing, their stuff can help maintain coherence and continuity of identity. “This special stuff is emblematic of belonging, kinship, and relationship, all basic and universal human needs throughout life. Precious objects are reminders of life history, achievements and life roles; they support security and the dignity of each individual’s life. Even when memory fades, this special stuff can provide comfort.” So as we spring clean, we can note and make a list of those few things that we would want to accompany us should we have to move from our homes. We don’t want to say what my friend’s mother did looking around the unfamiliar room that was to be her new home: “I feel like a refugee.”

Principles of Practice: 1. Reflect about your memories of spring cleaning from your childhood. Then think about what spring cleaning might mean to you today as you change closets, clean out cupboards and drawers awake to the metaphors of spring. 2. Meander through the rooms of your home making a list of at least ten things you want to recycle or get rid of this spring. Make a second list of five to ten of your most precious possessions. Write about the meaning of each. 3. Write a legacy letter to those you love explaining what your valuable things mean to you, and your preference to have hem accompany you should you have to move to a smaller living space. (If those are things that you want specific people to inherit when you are gone, make that clear in the letter too.) 4. Make a commitment to yourself to stay awake to the meaning of your spring cleaning as you do it this year and journal about any insights you have about yourself or your things.

“I ask myself, ‘How will they know the junk from the stuff with meaning? What might they conclude about their mother who held on too long and too much?’ I imagine their resentment – being left to go through my things because I didn’t take the responsibility to leave life expressing what ‘I say’ I value, including simplicity, order, and beauty.”

May you be blessed with the courage to let go of the stuff that has no meaning and with the time to share your stories of stuff and spring cleaning with those you love, Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools Loneliness and Legacy

May 2014

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” – Mother Teresa

Reflection: At a professional meeting I attended recently, we were discussing ways to reduce loneliness experienced by seniors and people living alone. “All the lonely people, where do they come from?” – The Beatles, Eleanor Rigsby This is not a new topic. I used Dr. James Lynch’s long out–of–print 1977 bestseller, The Broken Heart, when I worked with cardiac families decades ago. Lynch suggested that loneliness was a major hidden cause of heart disease. Loneliness still exists and may reach down into all generations, exacerbated by the isolating factor of technology. Dr. Lynch’s more recent book, A Cry Unheard: New Insights Into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness stresses the importance of human dialogue.

The antidotes to loneliness include: purposeful activity (service to others), interesting dialogue, companionship, intimacy, and love. All of these can be addressed, at least partially, by writing and writing legacy letters and blessings. Writing can help us heal by providing us insight and clarity, building our courage to share our thoughts and feelings. Writing can help us forgive ourselves, develop more positive personal and spiritual relationships. This writing does not change the physical circumstance of being alone, but being alone is not the same as loneliness.

“Dialogue is the elixir of life and chronic loneliness its lethal poison.” Finally let’s differentiate personal writing from – Dr. James J. Lynch legacy writing; its speciLic purpose is to communicate and preserve what means most to us I recall a woman who described maintaining a long distance dialogue in our lives. This implies dialogue, relationship, with her granddaughter by writing journal entries and mailing the journal intimacy with loved ones. Each time we write a back and forth. I raced out to buy a journal for my granddaughter and me though we lived only a few miles apart. She was four and could barely print blessing to someone, we feel our hearts opening, her name – she still writes in it when she visits me, though she is now away our chilled bones warming, and we experience at college. What interests me most is how every time she goes to the special being blessed ourselves. secret place where we keep our journal, prior to taking up her pen, she begins at page 1 and revels in her growth and our dialogue over the years. Principles of Practice: Today long distance dialogue can be written on a computer – on a blog – 1. Reflect and write about the different kinds of but my personal preference for intimate dialogue is pen and paper, with a loneliness you’ve experienced throughout your place perhaps for occasional illustrations, and no fear that one of us will life, and assess how lonely or not you are at this mistakenly hit the delete button. Consider some of these many reasons for loneliness: 1. Situational loneliness: if we live long enough, most – perhaps all – of our friends and partners may have died; our doctors, hairdressers, even Linancial advisors, have retired, and for many of us it feels like too much energy to begin those intimate relationships again. 2. Circumstantial loneliness: the isolation and suffering (grief) we experience with a divorce, a life-‐threatening diagnosis, a loss of a partner or other loved person. 3. Psychologically induced loneliness: just a few though there are many – we may be naturally introverted and Lind it hard to initiate rela-‐ tionships – we may not have learned basic social skills – we may see others as content and busy and feel different – we may habitually isolate because of guilt about things we’ve done, or shame about who we are – we may believe we’re intrinsically unlovable – we may have low vitality because we lack a passion, meaningful activity, or a sense of purpose beyond ourselves. “Living alone poses no health risk … so long as we have intimate ties of some kind….[we] need relationships that provide love and intimacy and … relationships that help us feel like [we’re] participating in society in some way.” – Lisa Berkman, Harvard epidemiologist New York Magazine 12-‐1-‐08

stage of your life. 2. Then reflect and write about the antidotes and skills you presently possess and want to develop to diminish your loneliness now and for the future. 3. Write a legacy letter to someone you trust enough – or love – to hear your thoughts and feelings about loneliness. Conclude with a blessing. 4. Commit to yourself to stay alert to the dangers of loneliness and persistent about strengthening yourself and your relationships.

May you be blessed with the skills and practices to reduce your loneliness, using your pen (mightier than any sword) to build connection with those you love, Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools

The Legacies of Water

Reflection: ! It’s difficult for most of us to remember or be moved by a lecture. As storytelling beings, we tend to remember stories and their details. Occasionally a story may open us to a new perspective that foreshadows a change in our values and behaviors. It follows then if we want to make an impact on future generations, we would likely be more successful if we share our personal memories and memorable stories. !

We all know that water is basic to life – that in fact our bodies are made up of 50–65% water – that clean water is at risk planet-wide (note the 2014 water contamination in West Virginia) making what we’ve long taken for granted a scarce and endangered commodity. We are plagued with floods, droughts, and tsunamis. Ismail Serageldin, World Bank VP for Environmental Affairs, predicts that the wars of the 21st century will be fought over water, not oil.!

Water, water, everywhere, And not a drop to drink.! – Samuel Taylor Coleridge!

Consider the World Health Organization’s (WHO) statistics: 1.1 billion people have no access to any type of improved drinking source of water; that many millions walk miles daily for clean well water; that refugees, especially children, die everyday from dehydration – while we let water freely run in our kitchens and bathrooms without a thought for its value. We remain unconscious at best and entitled at worst as we waste the elixir of life.!

! !

Water is the driver of nature.! – Leonardo da Vinci!

So is it possible for us to affect this terrible legacy we’re leaving the future? The best way I know is to tap my memories and share stories with my grandchildren hoping they will value water before it’s too late. !

! !

strategy of ‘flushing with a friend’. One afternoon my seven and nine year old kids came home from school and proclaimed their plan to participate in the family’s water preservation efforts: they wouldn’t bathe anymore!!

We never know the worth of water till the well runs dry.! – Thomas Jefferson!

One afternoon I took a dying friend for a ride around the Minneapolis lakes; we stopped at the southern shore of Lake Calhoun. I opened the sun– roof and the waning autumn sun warmed the tops of our heads as we sat – each with our own thoughts – silently watching hundreds of ducks playing at the water’s edge before flying south to their winter homes. We’d talked a lot as we drove, but the twenty minutes or so of silence at the lake had a different quality. His wife told me later that he’d said that afternoon was the best he’d had in a long time. For me too, and the water was more than just the setting! !

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.! – Jacques Cousteau !

Principles of Practice: 1. Take some time to reflect and write about your own water memories and favorite stories. 2. Choose the person or persons you want to share these memories and stories with.

! !

Here are some of my favorite water memories: !

Born into a water sign, Scorpio, it’s no wonder that I love being in and around water: Viewing the unique blue of Crater Lake in Oregon; canoeing in the pristine Minnesota Boundary Waters–boiling lake water for tea at the evening campfire; watching the sun paint the clouds as it sets in the Gulf, feeling awe at the power of the Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah, the Pacific Ocean and Lake Superior; enjoying “the lakes” in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota; listening to the sound I make trailing my hand in the water from a rowboat; sitting at the creek’s edge feeling the spray as wind and water play; riding my first bike around Lake Harriet everyday during my tenth summer.!

! !

June 2014

Here are two of my favorite water stories: !

3. Begin your letter explaining the context of the importance of water specifically for this time in history. You may want to share how blessed you feel for the privilege of having an abundance of water. Share your story(ies) and memories. Conclude your legacy letter with a blessing. ! 4. You might want to follow up your letter with a conversation in which they share their water stories with you.

May you and your loved ones be responsible stewards of our planet and always enjoy water, the elixir of life.

– Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools

Legacy: Read, Read, Read… Reflection: ! Read – read – read – that's what summer is for! What better way to share values, to let ourselves be known to the next generation, than by sharing our love of reading: to share our favorite books from youth and adolescence and how books have expanded our adult lives. !

! !

We may have fond memories of librarians and libraries, of visiting those humbling places that held more books than we could read in a lifetime. ! My personal favorites included “The Little Match Girl” a tragic Christmas story by Hans Christian Andersen and “Hansel and Gretel” the frightening German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. With all the attention on California Chrome who might have been the next Triple Crown winner, I remember being a fourth grader in love with horses and their stories. I was enamored with Black Beauty, and The Black Stallion. As a “tweener” Nancy Drew was my first feminist heroine, and I loved books that made me cry: Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the Civil War novel, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Those books taught me about love, danger, & death, important for a protected Midwestern girl growing up in the 1940s and 1950s when such topics were taboo.!

I remember books I read aloud to my own children, then their children, in the 1970s and then again in the last decade. And my pleasure in passing forward a love of books, of stories that could make them laugh and cry, develop their empathy and compassion, tickle their imaginations, and teach them values. Here are some of the titles I read dozens of times beloved by both boys and girls over the years: Early Bird by Richard Scary, Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne, Why Can’t I Fly? the tale of a frustrated ostrich by Ken Brown, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, the Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel and the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace,! ! Recently I read a Hardy boys mystery to my nine-year-old grandson, Aidan. Although I had to translate some "old-fashioned" details for him, the action and adventure was fun for both of us. And my fifteen–year–old granddaughter, Lily, who is fascinated with the myth of Merlin. Finally she is mature enough to enjoy us reading the mystical Mists of Avalon – about Merlin, the romance and intrigue of King Arthur’s court, and a tale of women's spiritual power hidden beyond the mists, still one of my all-time favorite novels! There will be those who’ll argue that a tablet or a video can do the same things, but beyond using our own imaginations, there’s something so tactile, so wonderful about holding a book, turning it around to show its illustrations, holding one side of the book as a child grips the other, turning paper pages shiny and slippery or textured and thick, imprinting us deep within.!

! !

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him….” – Salman Rushdie !

Why did I love to read? Stories took me far away from difficult family dynamics. Stories expanded my mind and imagination, and developed my feelings and ethics. I have sweet memories of riding my bike to the library on grade school summer days: I’d fill my basket with books for the week, and eagerly ride home to sit in the green apple tree and read, read, read.!

July 2014

My first book list was not really a list, but a commitment to read every book on the library shelves beginning with authors whose names began with “A” and my goal was to get to the end of the alphabet before junior high school. (This goal I failed to achieve.)!

When I was a college student, I promised myself I’d read all the books I’d listed when I graduated, then after I finished teaching school, then after my kids were less demanding, etc. Another failure! As a middle-aged adult, I experienced the joy of reading aloud in a tiny studio for the Minnesota State Services for the Blind, fifteen years of joy coupled with service. I returned last year, and hope for another fifteen.!

And now in the autumn of my life I realize how much reading has meant to me and ways it has shaped me and broadened my horizons. I have the privilege and time to read even more. I won't live long enough to read everything I'd like, but reading has been a teacher and a guide – about the power of ideas – the beauty of exquisite writing – a companion that's taken me on adventures into the past and the future and all over our planet and further. !

Hopefully my book memories will remind you of yours – from childhood and beyond, as well as books you’ve read to your children and perhaps theirs.!

If I could leave one value to my grandchildren, it just might be: read read, read – with curiosity, with joy in words and ideas, with openness to learning and with the escape of adventure and the delight of exploring the unknown. Read, read, read! And remember how much I love you.!

Principles of Practice:

1. Take time to muse about books and stories you’ve loved and learned from over the years. More will come as days pass, so feel free to add memories and titles to your lists. ! 2. Then reflect about ways books and reading have been memorable, important, and an enrichment of your life. 3. If you’ve read to others (children, grandchildren, friends, the ill, or the aging) consider what that has meant to you. 4. If you choose, write legacy letters to inspire younger generations of readers. Tell them your stories about books that have made a difference in your life and why, and lessons you’ve learned from your reading experiences.!

May your stories and memories about books inspire those you love. ! Rachael Freed

Legacy Tips & Tools

The Legacy of Sensual Life

August, 2014

Principles of Practice:

Reflection: !

For over 15 years I’ve been a volunteer reader at the Minnesota State Services for the Blind. I recorded my first book, Heartmates, soon after it was published, when I became aware that blind people of course also have heart disease in their families. Realizing the importance of this service, I’ve continued to read weekly over many years.!

Though I experienced both the pleasure of recording in a small studio and the value of serving people in need, blindness itself was abstract. My experience was limited to knowing briefly one blind legacy writer and I’d read Helen Keller’s 1902 autobiography. Until . . .!

. . . this May when a woman whose diabetes was diagnosed when she was just ten years old and as a result became totally blind by the time she was 24, hired me. She’d been advised by a shaman to write her story as her medicine. An RN and college graduate, she is an accomplished creative writer, but had stayed defended from reexperiencing her life by telling her story descriptively, not fully from the inside out. As I guided her into and through the excruciating depth of reliving her experience, my own defensive shield shattered reading her every word. It would be hubris for me to say ‘I get it’ but her rage, courage, disappointment, and grief about her loss of a ‘normal’ life, a life I’ve so taken for granted, have affected me deeply. My understanding and compassion for the breadth of her losses has made me acutely aware of my blessings.!

So this month, this beautiful summer month of August, when everything ripens to bursting, when flowers make us catch our breaths seeing their gorgeous colors – smelling their rich perfumes, hearing mother birds sing their pride as their babies learn to fly, when the sun’s rays make every dew-washed blade of grass sparkle like crystal, tasting the marsh-mellow browned over a campfire, touching a newborn’s tiny fingers and toes, when we know deep within that some Power beyond us creates from a perfect template, let us celebrate. !

1. Take some time to reflect about each of your senses (you may find some more developed than others), and write phrases as they come to you about the personal ways you appreciate them. [e.g. my hearing – awakened at daybreak in Tunis by the mystical call to prayer echoing from minarets across the city accompanied by the wake-up call of the city’s roosters.] ! ! Here is a list of senses to consider: ! sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and you may want to explore others: the gifts of memory, intuition, internal awareness of time and space. ! 2. After you’ve created the phrases naming your word pictures, choose 1-3 to refine and expand: write a fuller description that captures your awe and joy in sensual experience. ! 3. Using a template of 3–5 paragraphs, write a legacy letter. Open with a paragraph of context: express your gratitude for your senses and your hope to share with your reader some things about your delight in your sensual life deep within you.

Then in a 2nd and perhaps 3rd and 4th paragraphs expand your description of the special sensual experiences from your list of phrases. ! Conclude your legacy letter with a paragraph blessing your readers to value and communicate their special sensual awarenesses that bond people with threads of shared gratitude and awe for the gifts of their senses. !

4. You may want to follow up your letter with a conversation in which you share the wonder of the gifts and blessings of your sensual lives–perhaps each person sitting around an August picnic table “There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, could share one sensual thing they delight in.

the other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein !

I invite you to explore each of the senses you’ve been given, to appreciate them with your expanded awareness, and to communicate your awe and joy of sensual experience to those you love . . . to influence their awakening and to share about this aspect of who you are and your gratitude for the rich life of the senses.!

May you and your loved ones be blessed to share riches of our senses found as near as home and all over our planet,

– Rachael Freed

! !

Legacy Tips & Tools

The Legacy of Voice Reflection: !

Meandering through FaceBook this morning, I was attracted to poet and educator Clint Smith’s TED talk. It was only four minutes long, but unbelievably powerful for me.!

He spoke with passion about how “silence is the residue of fear.” He quoted Martin Luther King, Jr: “In the end, we’ll remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”!

Here are the inspiring words with which Clint Smith closed his TED talk, a gift and a legacy to all of us: “I will live every day as if there were a microphone under my tongue, a stage on the underside of my inhibition. Because who has to have a soapbox when all you’ve ever needed is your voice?” (www.ted.com/talks/ clint_smith_the_danger_of_silence)!

! !

Principles of Practice:

Holly Christy Ibarra commented about herself hearing Smith’s talk: “People think I am quiet by nature. However, I also know that I have a very loud mind. I am just too afraid to speak up. I am afraid of confrontations and of judgments so what I do is shut my mouth, stay at a corner or avoid as much as possible.” How honest and how familiar!!

No one, not even me, would describe me as quiet by nature! But I too have often avoided a conflict by silence about things that really matter. Yet I know that keeping dialogue going, keeping conversation happening, especially when people have opinions different from my own, is one of the few ways an individual can make a difference. Failing to use my voice makes me less human. !

Today’s issues are anything but easy: this week alone there is the shooting of Michael Brown, a black high school graduate by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri; there is a breakdown in talks–end of a fragile ceasefire and renewed killing in Gaza by Hamas and Israel’s IDF forces; there is President Obama’s order to bomb ISIS in Iraq (the fundamentalists who announced they’d beheaded American journalist James Foley); there are clashes in Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia, because of enforced quarantine as a method to stop the spread of ebola.!

Every week has its opportunities for us to observe and appease or speak out about: ignorance, injustice, racism and all the other ‘isms’, homelessness, poverty, starvation, climate change, bullying, entitlement, greed. Occasions to speak up are everywhere. There are those who say “it’s too hard, too depressing; I’m going to ignore it all.” But if silence is the life we choose and the legacy we teach, what hope is there for the generations who follow us?!

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,! because I wasn’t a Communist.! Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,! because I wasn’t a Jew.! Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,! because I was a Protestant.! Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.! – Martin Niemöller! © 2014 Life-Legacies, Rachael Freed

September, 2014

1. Make a list naming those things you keep silent about: in your family, with your friends, in your community, at work, at play (sitting in bleachers, walking on the golf course, on the court, at the card table). ! 2. Reflect about the last time you heard something you disagreed with and kept silent. Reflect about the last time you heard something you disagreed with and you spoke up. Reflect and write about what happened in each case and how you felt about the other and most important about yourself. ! 3. Consider using your voice to call, write, or email your government officials, your police department, your family, your friends, your minister, priest, or rabbi with your opinion/feeling about something that matters to you. ! 4. Write a legacy letter to someone of a younger generation to share your voice and your values about something in our world that matters to you and/or to inspire and support youth using their voices too. (See my letter to my children about the homeless in Your Legacy Matters, page 26.)!

5. You may want to follow up your letter with a commitment to continue to live the legacy of your voice. May you be blessed with a voice that opens your heart to our world, maintains your dignity, and your humanity,

– Rachael Freed

! !

Legacy Tips & Tools

The Legacy of Community Reflection: ! I recently worked with a women's book club. They’d chosen of my three Legacy books, The Legacy Workbook for the Busy Woman. I invited them to read chapter 2, “Breaking the Silence…”: – and to write about one domestic activity they liked, and one they didn’t.!

These women are serious and diverse, suburban and materially comfortable. The book club began 20 years ago. The newest member had been coming for 8 years. Some do full-time work outside the home and a smaller number were stay-at-home Moms, all of them approaching or having arrived as empty–nest pre–-Boomers. They pride themselves as being a book club that really discusses the books they read; the over than 200 books they've read have expanded their perspectives to include most of the world spatially and throughout time. !

Because they’d been together so long, I also invited them to write a paragraph or favorite story about the club itself. My hunch that the legacy of the club itself is profound for them turned out to be true. They wrote how when isolated as new neighbors they’d been invited to join at the shared mailbox at the end of the block. Some spoke of the enhancement of their lives through reading and hearing others share deeply in this, their only safe place. Reflecting, writing, and expressing added to their appreciation of the gifts the book club has given them – sharing it aloud deepened their intimacy yet another level.!

One woman shared the good news about her husband’s life and voice; he’d just had a second surgery removing tumors on his thyroid and a nerve connected to his tongue. Another had just lost her beloved father and shared what it meant to her to see her father’s nine healthy grown grandson pallbearers sobbing as they bore his casket. Another shared her pain and powerlessness to protect her biracial 15-year-old daughter who was called out by a teacher and came home saying she hated “all white people.”!

“Every person is de.ined by the communities she belongs to.” – Orson Scott Card

! They shared their writing about domestic chores: hating when the task is unappreciated or taken for granted, but often enjoying a sense of completion especially when doing the task for themselves. Some especially enjoyed domestic tasks that make the world more beautiful. One club member passed her smart phone to show a picture of a “table-scape" she’d created for her goddaughter’s wedding shower.!

I was profoundly moved by the privilege of participating for an evening in such a book club, a real community of safety, support, and love, in which different perspectives and experiences were respected, appreciated, even honored.!

“Communication leads to community; that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.” – Rollo May

! I share with you the power and perhaps the necessity of a community of women that gives us a place to thrive – when our lives are full with personal blessings and curses and in a world more often than not, harsh, cruel, and dehumanizing. We see a world beginning to awaken to the brutality, harassment, and abuse of women. It’s a relief to know that women know and have built for themselves communities of care and openness.! ! What a legacy they leave for those who see them, know them, passing on to their children and grandchildren, the power and beauty of intimacy and caring.!

Principles of Practice:

1. Take some time to reflect about communities you belong to and note ways they help you thrive and ways you and your participation enhance each of those communities. ! 2. Reflect and write about what you value about domestic tasks (refer to Chapter 2 in The Legacy Workbook for the Busy Woman), women, book clubs if applicable, and communities. ! 3. Write a legacy letter to express your values, experiences, and learning about domesticity and/or communities to a woman of a generation younger than you. Bless her with your opinions and feelings about the bonds possible between and among people different from you and her. ! 4. Explore ways to directly express appreciation and gratitude to the people in your communities.

May each of you value the communities you are a part of, may you express your appreciation. For those of you isolated, lonely, and lacking such community, I hope you will .ind, join, create, and build relationships so you will thrive and preserve for the future the strength of women trusting each other.

– Rachael Freed

! !

October 2014

Legacy Tips & Tools

Harvesting the Light: Legacy for the Holidays

Re#lection:

! The days are getting shorter; the nights longer and darker. Temperatures are falling, but when our perspective is legacy and we warm our hearts and those we love by communicating gratitude and stories about how blessed we are, it feels like a summer day. Another way to say it is: Our eyes may be dimmer, our hearing impaired, but as long as we have memory and a passionate interest in stories, our own and others,’ we’re blessed.!

! !

In this Tips&Tools we’ll explore ways we can light our way and the way of those who will come after us.! One way we can approach our national holiday of gratitude, Thanksgiving, and the holidays of light, Christmas and Hanukah, is to participate by remembering, communicating, and preserving holidays of earlier times. All families have idiosyncratic traditions that when captured on paper will can light the way for younger generations of the family. Ask everyone invited to sit at your holiday table to reflect about and bring their favorite Thanksgiving story from an earlier time. Share them at the table to add memory and story to the aroma and taste of turkey, sweet yams, and pumping pie. !

Making the Thanksgiving centerpiece about storytelling, ritual remembering, provides meaning that outlasts the food. What better moment than Thanksgiving (think ‘giving thanks’, a day about more than stuffing...our turkeys and ourselves) to reflect on your life: from the present through midage – young adulthood – adolescence – early childhood...stopping by the way, as on a snowy evening (echoes of Robert Frost)… to smell pine needles, sip apple cider, make angels in fresh snow, tell stories of past days in front of a crackling fire … to recall memories of holiday activities, traditions, family coming together to celebrate.!

Another way is to initiate a tradition that can begin in 2014 and still be enjoyed 20 or 50 years from now as North winds blow and we anticipate a long winter and need the light of story and memory to keep us warm until spring emerges.!

Here are two simple legacy activities to engage every age: Prepare ribbons -colorful paper strips: two (2) for everyone. Have pens or markers available. Before sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, invite everyone* to write three (3) things they’re grateful for on this day, Thanksgiving 2014.! (*Everyone includes all but infants and toddlers. By the age of four, gratitude can be understood and nurtured. Children under the age of writing can be coached by an older child or an adult.) The strips can be signed or not as each individual chooses. The second activity is similar: repeat this process asking each person to write a Thanksgiving blessing for the family, tribe, country, or our planet. Collect the gratitudes &/or blessings in separate crystal bowls, hand-thrown pots, or paper bags.!

Pass the bowl/pot/bag around the Thanksgiving table before the meal, asking each person to pick one (so they are not reading their own) and to read it aloud for all to hear. Collect the gratitudes and/or blessings and preserve! !

them in a book. Include a list of everyone present (and their ages), the location of the celebration, the menu, even a special recipe, as well as pictures of the people and the table. Copies of the book make memorable Christmas/Hanukah gifts, and can be saved and reread as you make this the first of what can become an annual tradition.!

A third suggestion is to reflect about and jot a simple list of your precious and meaningful holiday memories. You may be prompted by the visual feast of festive decorating, the smell of traditional food, the memory of a grandmother’s traditional recipe, unexpected visitors, a special decoration packed away to carefully unwrap for use as it has been down through the generations.!

Look over your list and decide on one to write about. Write for only 15 minutes. You can return to your list as often as you choose to write about other memories you’ve rediscovered. Write the story of your memory, filling in the setting, introducing the people, describing your feelings, and your understanding of the tradition as it has made its way down to you today. Take another few minutes to incorporate your story into a legacy love letter, introducing the story as a holiday gift you want to share with someone. One way to close the letter is to express what it meant to you then, what means to you now, and your hope that the tradition and its story will be passed on as part of what you and those before you have valued.!

And finally, this is the harvest season, with cornucopias overflowing, a time to preserve for the winter, and a time to share with those less fortunate than ourselves. You might find a project for all the family to participate in (many churches and synagogues pack Thanksgiving dinners and need packers and drivers to deliver food). Check your local homeless shelter to see if they need warm coats and mittens that you could gather and deliver as a family.!

In whatever way appeals to you, this is a time to think “legacy” to respond to our yearning to bless and be blessed, and to engage your family to reach back or reach out before they pull up chairs to celebrate in our American way, watching football and eating ’til we’re stuffed.!

May all your writing and traditions bless you, those around you, and those who come after you, – Rachael Freed

! !

November, 2014

Legacy Tips & Tools

The Legacy of Confusion Reflection:! I !recently stepped up to be the speaker at an Al-Anon meeting when the assigned speaker didn’t show up. What better topic than “confusion” which I was feeling at that moment and from my experience just days before. !

I had been invited to a gathering in which each of the 15 persons attending was asked to share their confusion and pain about a topic. We went around the circle – I was the 6th person to speak. All who preceded me began their 2-minutes with, “I’m not confused, but I feel pain about …” I’d felt confused when I sat down, but now I was further confused by the others’ certainty about a complex reality.!

I looked up ‘confusion’ in my trusty Al-Anon book, Courage to Change, and found the following: “Confusion can be a gift from God….I feel serenity slipping from me while a war is waged within my mind and loud voices urge me to take one path or another….Today I will remember that uncertainty is not a fault but an opportunity.”!

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

! The passage of time with its inherent loss of roles and demand for new ones (think becoming a mother or an empty-nester, graduating from high school or retiring from a career) is confusing. The transition from one role to another may take weeks, months, or years. And how do we care for ourselves, what do we do, until a new role becomes clear? !

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

“Too many choices. They get easily confused.” says the protagonist in Christina Nichols’ novel, Waiting for the Electricity. That reminded me of when I returned from the Peace Corps in Tunisia, a third world country, going to shopping for a much needed raincoat. The choices were overwhelming: khaki, black, white, plaid, print, single-breasted, double-breasted, chino, shiny patent-leather, silky-poly, breathable polyester, trench coat, lined, unlined, with buttons, with snaps, with waterproof zippers, full-length, threequarter length, jackets, with inside pockets, with zippered pockets, with hood, without hood, ultra-light-packable, reversible, washable, dry cleanable only, inexpensive, moderately expensive. I was beginning to understand “cultureshock.” Confused and barely able to breathe, I left the store without making a purchase.!

Perhaps it is only aging that has brought me to this new place: confusion, uncertainty, and doubt. I am finding it easier, more honest, more authentic, these days than earlier when I thought I was supposed to know, that to be worthwhile I must be certain, to hold onto my opinion no matter the evidence, to be right, that it was a sign of impotence or ignorance to be unsure. And today I’m beginning to welcome confusion and uncertainty - they give me space to observe and learn.!

December 2014

Principles of Practice: 1. Make a list of 3-10 things you are sure or certain about in your life. Then make a list of 3-10 things that you feel confused, doubtful, unsure about in your life. ! 2. Choose one from each list. Reflect and write a paragraph about each for the purpose of understanding how each feels inside you, how each is a pattern of how you make your way in the world (note if it seems to be in flux), how you think you are perceived by others about your certainty and uncertainty, and whether you experience one or the other as more acceptable, understandable, and preferable to the other. ! 3. Reflect about (or meditate on) how you experience yourself when confused or in doubt. Do your best to articulate your feelings (and body sensations) in words. ! 4. Write a legacy letter to a close friend, sibling, or adult child to share your learning about confusion. If you have snippets of story, examples you can share, do. Close your letter with a blessing to them that takes into account what you’ve learned about certainty and uncertainty. ! 5. Explore ways to give yourself permission, space, and time to further explore confusion and uncertainty.

May you have the courage to explore your confusion. (remember it may be a gift from God) May this exercise teach you something of value to communicate and preserve for the generations that will come after you.

– Rachael Freed