Welcome to Conversation With Katherine and my podcast Season of Living Spring

I often think of life as divided into seasons.  There is the spring full of promise and exciting.  Summer when we are growing and enjoying the fruits of our labor.  Fall is a time of reflection an if necessary course correction. Winter is hopefully a time of peace and benefiting from all of our labor.

Lets start with spring.  Those of you who live where there is snow know that there is nothing more dramatic than spring.  Everywhere there is change.  When I have young clients.  I think of them as being in their spring season.  They are full of promise and hope.  They believe that any adult that is over the age of twenty is old and doesn't know what they are talking about.  If they are exceptionally smart then that creates a bigger problem. When they are very smart they know they have all of the answers because they have thought about the question.

Warm and fuzzy on the outside and Attila the Hun on the inside.  Everyone knows a person like this but sometimes they are very hard to spot.  Let me tell you about who I am not talking about.  I am not talking about when you get into your emotional Sunday best to try to impress.  When you are on a first date, job interview, meeting your lovers family and friends for the first time.  There is a little pretender in all of us.  No I am talking about the most scary of the Pretenders.

Welcome to Conversation with Katherine and my podcast Buying the Upside

When you meet that special person and your eyes lock and your heart beats a mile a second you have a spark.  You may say to yourself, this is the one.  I say that you are buying the feeling not the person.  Buying the Upside is very common in the American culture.  This is a romantic culture in which we have such hopeful optimism about what romance brings to our lives.  Other cultures have similar concepts, how they define their upside is different.  All upsides are not warm and fuzzy.  Some people have dark places in their spirits.  They see the world as a pretty gloomy place.  In their world, all men are dogs and all women are a word that rhymes with witch.  Now, it would be nice if they would just meet each other and leave the rest of us out of their world but no, no they have just got to raise havoc with the rest of us.

I find that people are like gems.  Some rough, some polished.  If you are walking down the street and you see a shinning gem do you pick it up? Do you pick it up and then decide that it is not big enough, shiny enough, not valuable enough and then toss it away.  Then another person walks by and picks up that same gem and decides it is the perfect gem for them.  

A diamond does not lose its value because you throw it away. It just doesn't have value for you.  In your spring and summer seasons of life many times you wrestle with the "Why". "Why didn't they love me, like me,want me, care about me".  You look in the mirror and think that if you change your hair, your clothes, your weight, your style that you will become "good enough" for that person.  Most of the time it does not work.  Everyone does not value Everyone.  It is sad, but true that you can make yourself over and it still won't work.

It is interesting in my life how having expectations have shifted my reality.  In my spring season I wrote this letter to myself about how I wanted a man to treat me.  Now I don't have a copy of that letter but I remember being very idealistic about what I expected.  I think that one of my expectations was that a man in my life would open my door.  I am bemused by my memory of what those expectations meant to me at that very young phase of my life.  I imagine expectations to be like the tide that comes to the shore.  You think that you know what to expect but every time the tides do a different dance.

Welcome To Conversation with Katherine and my podcast Failure

Failure is an interesting thing.  It can take us to dark places in our spirit.  It can makes us question ourselves and others.  There are people that lose their faith because of failure. If you are fortunate and you come out of the other end you will gain perspective.  Perspective is one of those interesting words that is hard to define, but you will know when you have perspective.  You will be able to see the picture with clarity and without blame.  Perspective leads to wisdom.  This is the gift that is given you when you complete the process. 

Let there be no mistake failure "sucks".  But it is also life's pruning of our spirits and a reminder that life is a fluid process.

Welcome to Conversation with Katherine and my podcast Witness/Observer

It is my personal belief that being a witness to others is a powerful gift that we give to them and to ourselves.  When we are the Witness/Observer of the event in the lives of others it can have an impact on our lives.  What we witness becomes a narrative in our "mind world" which is filtered through our thoughts, beliefs, truths and sometimes faith.  When Hurricane Katrina happened in New Orleans, there were people in "talk radio" that said the people that were suffering were being "punished" by God.(side personal private rant. If I were God I would be very tired of people using my name to describe their very personal "mind world" end of rant)

I recently heard some sad news.  A person that I used to work with had a tragedy in her family.  Her husband was killed in a house fire.  I was a "witness" to their very loving relationship.  Let me share with you what I witnessed.  This was a unique couple, the man was the Meat and Potatoes and the Ice Cream Sundae all rolled up into one person. The woman would be huffing and puffing around the house and her husband would quietly be in the background.  He was a "fixer upper" in the home.  He always had all of these projects that were in various stages of completion.

He was in the middle of one of his many projects. putting a new tile in the kitchen and he was two years into the project.  Now that would have made me "crazy".  I would not have been able to tolerate something unfinished for that length of time. I said to her "why don't you just go and hire someone to finish the job". her response "I love him more than I need a floor"

Welcome to Conversation with Katherine and my podcast Ice Cream Sundaes.  Ice cream sundaes are attractive to the eye, sweet to the taste and not good for your long term health.  How do you spot the ice cream sundae in your life.  I describe them as the too, too people.  Too tall, too short, too rich, too poor, too fine, too ugly, too hot, too cool.  They are as individual as any ice cream sundae and they come in all sizes, shapes and colors.  They all have one thing in common, they do not bring substance to your life.

Their are people who have a life of ice cream sundaes.  Every relationship they have is based on how good the person makes them feel.  They don't look for anything deeper than that feel good experience.  They try the different types of sundaes but they never look for the meat and potatoes type of person.

Welcome to Conversation with Katherine and my podcast Meat and Potatoes.  
A meat and potatoes person brings gravitas to the relationship.  They usually don't bring to the relationship trauma or drama.  They say what they mean, keep their commitments, they are reliable.  The downside is that because there is no drama and/or trauma they can be somewhat boring.

You have to be in a certain season of your life to have a genuine appreciation for this type of individual.  It could be all of the fast pace, fast living that we see in the media where all problems are solved in thirty minutes or less and love happens in under an hour with commercials. That may be why appreciation of this individual is so rare.