The Power of Presence

by Joy Thomas Moore

  I hope that one day the need to talk about all these dos and don’ts will be banished to a box of relics that holds all the symbols of the misguided country we used to be. But for now, these values-inspired conversations are essential at the age-appropriate times in our children’s lives. It’s sometimes hard to do, especially for a single mom with no physical backups and who has so many other pressures confronting her on a daily basis. But to be truly mindful in our role as stewards of our children’s future, we must stop, dig deep within ourselves, and prepare for and have The Talk at times in our kids’ lives when they are needed the most.

  The Butt Stops Here

  You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, “I release the need for this in my life.”

  —Wayne Dyer

  My goal has always been to be a good mother—a role model of discipline, good judgment, and healthy habits, passing on to my kids the values that I want to see in the next generation and beyond. Mostly I’ve succeeded at that, I think, except in one major area. I smoked.

  I smoked a lot, sometimes a pack and a half a day, which meant that to be the perfect role model, I had to hide this habit from the kids. So I smoked on the back porch before they woke up and after they went to bed, I smoked when they got out of the car for school, I smoked at work and with friends over drinks. I seized any opportunity to smoke whenever I was out of their line of sight.

  I remember one spring evening driving back to the Bronx along the New England Thruway after a visit to Rye Playland. I’d spent almost eight hours alone with the three children in the sun, on the rides, and eating ridiculous carnival food and sugary soft drinks. By the time we got back to the car, I was dying for a cigarette.

  I kept looking in the rearview mirror trying to ensure that the kids were all asleep so I could open the window and sneak one. They were exhausted from the day’s activities, but of course they wouldn’t all nod off at the same time. Just as Nikki and Wes fell to sleep, Shani decided she wanted to chat. Then when she started to close her eyes, Nikki perked up, eager to describe some trouble she was having with her teacher. And I’m ashamed to say that while she was pouring her heart out, I was barely listening, mostly praying that she’d go back to sleep so I could satisfy the nicotine craving that was driving me to the edge of my nerves.

  For years I was dishonest with my children about my continued smoking. I didn’t want them to start what was obviously a disgusting and deadly habit, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t stop. It had me in its grip. Ironically, with all my efforts to mask the fact that I was smoking, they knew from the smell on my clothes, my hair, my breath. I was fooling no one but myself.

  As the kids got older and anti-smoking ads more prolific, all eyes were on me in my house.

  My internal battle was hearing what they were saying but not being able to do anything about it. With each “Mommy, you need to stop smoking,” or “Do you know what you’re doing to your lungs?” or “Do you know what you’re doing to our lungs?” I cringed because I knew they were right. Every year, on the Great American Smokeout, I took the pledge, and I did stop, at least while the kids were awake. I could be pure for a few days, maybe even a week. But before a second week began, I was standing outside after they’d gone to sleep to have a smoke. The more I sneaked, the worse I felt about lying to them. At the same time I needed my treat, my one little thing that was just for me in this world of relentless responsibilities.

  My indulgence in my shameful pleasure was a rebellion as much as it was an addiction. I was overwhelmed with all the things I had to do every day; it seemed that everyone in the world was telling me what to do and how much I needed to do more. In every way I could, I was being extremely responsible about all these demands. Was it selfish of me to want just one pleasure, one bit of the day that was completely mine, separate from all of the other demands? Something completely under my control?

  Well, yeah. That stuff could kill me!

  Of my three children, it was my youngest, Shani, who was the most persistent about my quitting smoking. Usually when she found my cigarettes, she’d throw them away, but she was not devious enough to bury them in the trash. The pack sat right on top, easy to put back into use. One day she surprised me. She soaked the cigarette pack under the kitchen faucet for a few seconds before crushing it in her fist. When I saw that soggy pack on at the top of the trash bin, I exploded.

  “Who are you to dictate to me what I can or cannot do,” I yelled.

  “I don’t want to be an orphan,” Shani yelled back in an almost pleading voice.

  Her words, the words of a terrified ten-year-old, jolted me.

  How could I possibly become so angry at her when all she wanted was for me to live? Her mind was forecasting a future without the only parent she had left. I think that’s the real difference between a one-and a two-parent household. No child wants their parent to die, but when there is only one parent, that fear of potential loss intensifies. But it also spoke to the values I was transmitting to my children. Was my habit more important than their feelings and fears? My words were saying I valued them more than anyone or anything else, but my actions in regard to my smoking said otherwise.

  I realized that my main problem was not my habit, it was my hypocrisy. I demanded a lot from my kids and held them to a high standard. They had very little control over how they spent their time because I scheduled them and watched them closely. Hell, I had sent my only son away to military school to reinforce discipline and adherence to standards and values. I encouraged their participation in sports so they’d learn to value their bodies—so much so that they wouldn’t engage in any activity, like smoking, that might impair their performance or damage their health. So here I was, abusing my body and jeopardizing my health. It was a double standard. I knew it and they knew it.

  I’d be lying if I said I never bought a pack of cigarettes after that soggy mess landed in the trash. But from that day on every time I bought a pack of cigarettes, I told myself that I was not going to start the new year smoking. I smoked all the way to 11:59 PM on New Year’s Eve. When the ball dropped, I stopped smoking and I’ve not bought a pack of cigarettes since. That was twenty-eight years ago.

  It took the kids a while to say anything about me not smoking. I think at first they might have thought that I was hiding my smoking again. But when Wes came home for spring break, I overheard the three of them talking about not smelling smoke in a long time and wondering if I had really stopped smoking? I never told them I overheard that conversation. It just made me more determined to show them that I had really stopped, for myself and my health but just as much for them, for their sense of security, and for the love they had shown in wanting me to do better.

  LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Avoid maternal hypocrisy.

  The relationship between children and parents has certainly morphed. Gone are the days of “children should be seen and not heard” or “do as I say, and not as I do.” Hypocrisy is to family values as kryptonite is to Superman. You can work a lifetime to define them, build them, and sustain them, but the one time your children see you violate a rule or family value, your credibility slips away like quicksand.

  As moms, we are often called upon to do things we might not have done without the urging of our children. Regardless of the habit, be it smoking, drugs, alcohol, or even being a shopaholic, our children can provide a powerful compass away from vice. If we are smart enough to follow, they can help lead us to do the right thing. Of course, we will screw up from time to time. But I’ve learned not to expend energy on getting down on myself; these times can be the most powerful teachable moments we have. They’re times that urgently call for open communication and your willingness to apologize and admit your mistakes. Amy McCready of Positive Parenting Solutions says that saying we are sorry to our kids when we violate our core values, as hard as it can be, puts our children in position to recognize their own flaws—and helps them learn to apologize too.

  “It also shows them it’s okay to ma
ke mistakes,” says McCready. “Kids that don’t experience much failure have trouble knowing what to do when problems do arise—they don’t have the confidence to take risks, they won’t courageously face their problems head-on or roll with the punches.”

  So next time you have a not-so-shining moment, remember you are human. Ultimately, making such mistakes—coupled with discussing with your kids what you have learned from them—helps foster resiliency in children. Believe it or not, being an effective role model is not about living in perfect accordance with our values all the time—it’s about trying hard and showing a willingness to take responsibility for our mistakes.

  If we want to be role models, the times when we are not our optimal selves could be our most precious opportunities to act in the way we would want our children to act. It is through our faults that we can foster true strength.

  Reclaiming History/Discovering Presence: The Candace RedShirt Story

  Teach your children that we have taught our children that the earth is our mother… Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.

  —Chief Seattle

  Candace RedShirt is originally from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She was born of the Oglala Lakota tribe, the great-great-granddaughter of Chief Red Shirt, whom history recognizes as the most photographed American Indian in the eighteenth century. He became known as a conciliator between the Indian tribes and the white settlers, promoting cooperation with the US Army and even opposing Chief Crazy Horse during the Great Sioux War of 1876–1877. For these and other efforts to promote cooperation and education for all tribes in the newly forming Indian nation, Chief Red Shirt was posthumously selected for induction into the Nebraska Hall of Fame, and the US Postal Service honored him with a 10-cent Great Americans series postage stamp.

  His bravery, integrity, and perseverance, among other attributes, were clearly instilled by the teachings of his tribe, known as the Twelve Lakota Virtues: humility, perseverance, respect, honor, love, sacrifice, truth, compassion, bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. Living by such a code gave a common language to the tribe and kept its members connected to their values and life purpose. The problem, says Candace, was that growing up she knew next to nothing about her family history or these family-bonding values, because Indian culture was systematically stripped from the day-to-day lives of Indian families. The vehicle for the erasure of the culture was the Native American boarding schools. In their absence, the presence between mothers and their children was lost.

  Native American boarding schools were founded in 1882 with the expressed goal of dismantling families and wiping out Indian culture. Attendance was mandatory, and hundreds of thousands of children were removed from their homes to go to these more than one hundred schools located all across the country. Some families were never reunited.

  Candace was taken from her home and forced to attend an Episcopal Indian girls boarding school in Springfield, South Dakota, for seventh and eighth grades. Then the government moved her almost 150 miles farther north to attend a coed Indian boarding school in Flandreau, South Dakota. She was then five hours away from home and stripped of her Indian name and clothes.

  Beyond the prevalent physical abuse, Candace says it was the systematic dehumanization of the spirit in these schools that has had the most lasting impact. For some, like Candace’s mom, alcohol dependency became the salve for the pain of reservation life and then the inevitable family separation. There wasn’t even an echo of the Lakota virtues in Candace’s family by the time she became a teenager. In fact, because of her mother and father’s addiction to alcohol, Candace says there was a lot of family violence. She was placed in foster care several times and, reacting to the dysfunction, rebelled and engaged in risky teenage behavior. The result was an estrangement from her mother in later years that continues to this day.

  Candace became pregnant when she was eighteen, and when Candace’s son, Brandon, was two months old her mother kicked them both out.

  She told me to get my screaming crying baby and get the hell out of there because she had to go to work.

  This was quite a far cry from the Lakota virtues of love, compassion, and wisdom, and from a culture that believed in the sacred nature of marriage and family.

  When I think back, I felt like we were thrown out like trash. I went to the Denver Indian Family and Health Services and this woman took me under her wing and referred us to a domestic violence shelter for women with children. Brandon and I stayed there for a couple months until I could get into the social service program, and get a little check. Then I had to go walking all around the town, which I didn’t know at the time. I got to see the bigger picture of the world of what was going on, where people wouldn’t rent to people with children but they would accept pets!

  After landing a tiny studio apartment, Candace was let into a program sponsored by the Denver Housing Authority. Using funds from HUD, the housing authority created special campuses of learning where residents could get a case manager who would help them get a job or go back to school. They also created an escrow account for each family to put away a portion of any money earned while they lived there.

  When Brandon was old enough, he started Head Start, and that’s when I learned something about myself. I loved being around the energy of children, the innocence, the things they say. To me, you’re always in a state of happiness and joy when you’re with children. I started volunteering to go on field trips, and eventually the director asked if I could volunteer every day.

  Candace used these days with Brandon and the other children to help instill in them a sense of history about who they were, regardless of their race, and—most important—to always provide words of affirmation. She says she learned from the staff at Head Start that positive words could give the strength needed to cope with bullying, for example, or the compassion to keep from becoming a bully. Contact with them also helped her make a personal vow to never say anything that would hurt someone’s feelings or tear them down. Little by little, Candace was reclaiming the traditional Indian values that she believed underscored who she was and wanted to be. “Always look for the positive or don’t say anything at all” became her mantra. These were values she yearned to learn as a child while she was being incrementally stripped of any self-worth or self-awareness. Candace began to recognize the strength in her heritage and turned to history—back to the lost Lakota values—to learn as much as she could about where she came from. That kind of identity was integral to Candace determining the next steps in her life.

  Candace passionately believes that a modern-day Native American mom’s job is helping her children reach a productive adulthood through the traditional routes to education and career guidance—and possibly most important, through helping them regain the stolen culture and value system of their ancestors. For Candace that journey started within herself.

  I wanted to be able to learn the Lakota language at least well enough to speak it and sing ceremony songs. Losing language, religion, and the values held by our ancestors was the result of ethnic cleansing, and there was an impact on how we grew up and what we thought of ourselves. It was like a virus in a computer program.

  Getting rid of that virus and allowing herself to take pride in being a Lakota woman, in being a woman of color, in living in poverty and surviving, in experiencing the struggles but still having a beautiful heart that can be loving, kind, and giving—that was Candace’s journey to becoming a mother who could be present for her children.

  She went on to have two more children, a son, Cody, and later a daughter, Candace Rose. When she had Cody, she was overwhelmed financially and made a hasty decision to allow a couple, whom her sister knew, to raise him. Thinking it would be done in the traditional Indian way, where a family member would take the baby to raise until the mother was able to resume her parental role, Candace agreed to letting them take him home. Shortly after, she regretted her decision and wanted him back. The couple refused, and the case went all the
way to the Colorado Supreme Court. Ultimately, the court ruled that even though there were no formal adoption papers, it was in the best interest of Cody to stay with the couple, who were in a better financial position to provide for his needs. The fact is that being a single mother worked against her too. She was up against a two-parent family, and the judges made note of that. Candace recalls one question from the guardian ad litem that haunted her for years: “You don’t have a driver’s license or a car. If Cody gets sick, how will he get to the hospital?” She became convinced that the car could have swayed the decision in her favor. Eleven years later, by now thirty-four, when she, Brandon, and Candace Rose moved on from the special housing program, she was presented a check from her escrow account for $10,000. The first thing she did was buy her first car.

  Candace feels her biggest achievement as a parent is that both Brandon and Candace Rose are caring, responsible, hardworking, culturally aware, and generous adults. Recently, Candace Rose began a charitable effort to work with college sororities in Denver to donate unwanted items like microwaves, bedding, or irons—anything that would otherwise be discarded at the end of the school year—to charitable organizations. And Brandon, after having honorably served in the military and receiving training on Apache helicopters, came home after tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan and started working at Denver International Airport. He began as a mechanic with a small commuter airline and is now working as an inspector at the airport. Although Candace never had a chance to be physically present for her son Cody, she says that several years ago the three siblings found each other through social media and helped the birth family reunite. A recent visit by him revealed, in her words, “a strong, healthy, happy adult man with a good heart, who gives the biggest hugs!”