Happy Friday! It’s been a sweet week around here with birthday celebrations, snow, and so many captivating discoveries. Hope your week has worn well for you. Here are this week’s faves of mine (please share yours as well, in Comments, below).
1) Beyond the Guitar’s “Halo” – For twenty years, Halo and its sequels are wildly popular videogames (first person shooter). I don’t know it personally but first saw it played by son Nathan and his high school buddies. Halo Infinite came out before Christmas 2021. It is the latest rendition of the game. The theme is beautiful as you’ll hear with Nathan’s arrangement and performance below. Another amazing feat of taking a gorgeous orchestral piece of music and rendering it beautifully and a single instrument. His classical guitar.
2) Best Film Scene – Full disclosure: I haven’t seen the 2021 film CODA (“children of deaf adults”), but I will. It came to my attention from Josh Larsen’s tweet below, looking for fan favorites:
What was your favorite opening scene at the movies in 2021?
Most Moving Moment?
Funniest?
Musical Moment?
Scene of the Year?
Finalizing my choices for next week's Filmspotting Wrap Party… pic.twitter.com/yhihNqn95k
— Josh Larsen (@LarsenOnFilm) January 16, 2022
Several folks replying to his “scene of the year” question posted “CODA (2021) – The Audition”. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched that scene. Goosebumps. Every. Single. Time.
[The song “Both Sides Now” was written and first performed by Joni Mitchell in 1967.]
In mid-life, my mom began working in a printing company. It was a loud workplace and everyone wore earplugs and communicated often with hand signals while on the floor. She made friends with a deaf woman named Mary. Mom didn’t have to learn sign language to communicate with Mary on the floor, but their friendship grew as did my mom’s determination to learn how to truly be a friend to her. I can’t tell you how proud and enthralled I was at Mom’s learning sign language at her age…just to truly know and understand her deaf friend. They had a long beautiful friendship even after retiring from their work. Both have since died.
We have a hearing-impaired son (whose hearing is assisted with hearing aids, but who still engages with the world a bit differently because of his hearing issues. He struggles learning languages and depended more on lip-reading early on before we knew for sure he had hearing issues. He amazes us still how he has dealt with life in the hearing world.
This scene…this movie…captures some of this tension. Also the tension of the blue collar work world juxtaposed with the arts symbolized in the young [CODA] Ruby’s pursuit of admission to Berklee School of Music. You see the beauty of both.
Josh Larsen and others like him are why I stay on Twitter. I follow the most remarkable people and they open up ideas to me that are life-giving. [I don’t follow people otherwise.] Josh is a podcaster but has also written the book Movies Are Prayers. Check it out. Here’s a review.]
[P.S. I LOVED the review of the film CODA by some deaf moms. Oh my goodness! How rich and tender. Can’t wait to see the film myself.]
3) Secure Attachment – The flourishing of relationships is strongly impacted by the nature of attachment from infancy. The baby with her parents/caregivers. Was (s)he seen, truly seen, by the adults caring for her and was she soothed, kept safe and secure, in ways that communicated the same to her? Or was the attachment more geared to the caregivers’ needs or emotional strain at the time?
Photo Credit: Gabor Mate, dr_anniephd, Instagram
Psychiatrist, research, and educator Daniel Siegel has given us so much help in parenting our babies. His work on attachment-based parenting is ground-breaking and foundational to how we look at the role of the adult caregiver in raising resilient children into adulthood.
When parenting our little ones, we need to be aware of how our own stress (including the past experience of our own being parented) is affecting our attachment to them…how we communicate our care for them. Then how ever secure our children’s attachment to us might be, when hard things happen to them (trauma later in life), they can fall back on the security of their early childhood attachment. Let’s say, these young people, even young adults, did not have a close attachment to their parents, they can psychologically “walk those memories back” such that they can become more secure and flourishing adults.
This may make some wonder why I pose these ideas. “We’re all doing the best we can”, right? My parents were divorced when I was little and I have huge gaps in my memory. I wonder at that. My mom was super loving and understanding of our needs, but she had to work long hours and just wasn’t there much.
Also, in my family and friend groups, there are those who have endured terrible trauma in relationships, both as young children and into their teen and young adult years. Are they flourishing? I hope so, but it isn’t always clear. Reading and thinking through AND talking together about attachment (having reading so much of Siegel’s work) have been helpful and made me more hopeful.
Monday Morning Moment – As Adults We Still Need to Feel Safe, Seen, Soothes, and Secure – Deb Mills
The 4 S’s of Attachment-Based Parenting – Daniel J. Siegel – Podcast
I just read his brief but illuminating paper “The Verdict Is In – the Case for Attachment Theory”. Siegel and his co-author Alan Sroufe
The Verdict Is In – The Case for Attachment Theory – Alan Sroufe and Daniel Siegel – pdf
Photo Credit: Dr. Dan Siegel & Dr. Tina Payne Bryson
The Power of Showing Up – Daniel J. Siegel, MD & Tina Payne Bryson, PhD
Mindful Parenting: 4 S’s of Secure Attachment – Esther Goldstein
The Neurobiology of Attachment to Nurturing and Abusive Caregivers – Regina M. Sullivan, PhD
4) Letters to Children – Author C. S. Lewis felt great responsibility in answering the many letters he received through the years. Especially replying to the children who wrote him. The small book C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children is especially delightful as he writes both eloquently and playfully to them With respect for them as fellow readers and a certain peership with them in loving the characters and stories in his books. In particular The Chronicles of Narnia. No question was treated as childish. In fact, we can learn quite a lot about Lewis in his correspondence with these children.
For this blog, I’ve screenshot just a few of the letters. They were magnificent. In fact, in one of his letters he shared with a child the two favorite books he had written: Perelandra and Till We Have Faces. What a wonder to have a letter from this great storyteller! Lewis wrote hundreds of letters over the course of decades of his life, right up until the day before he died.
[I have saved letters…especially from my mom and a few other adults in my life. Letters these days are a treasure. Are you writing any? Are you young people saving any?
5) Birthdays – This is my birthday week.
Photo Credit: Samantha Reynolds, Instagram
The weather here has been quite cold and wet. A small snowfall stayed with us due to temperatures remaining below freezing. This kept me wanting to stay inside, except for one trip to Cracker Barrel for a birthday breakfast. In the country store attached to the restaurant, you can always find word art, images of which you will find below.
My love languages are words and acts of service. Blessed with both for my special day. Cards. Grandchildren drawings. A dinner at home with the kids taken care of completely by them. Sweet birthday. Thanks to many of you for your greetings, and I hope your 2022 birthday is a good one. 
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That’s it for this week. Please do add any of your favorite finds or experiences of the week in the Comments below. You are a blessing!
Bonuses:
The One Unexpected Sign You May Be Gaslighting the People Around You – Anna Brech [Hint: Beware of unintentional use of gaslighting.]
It is such a strange feeling when people make the choice to stop loving you. They just no longer respond and fade away. Where does that love go?
— Douglas S. Bursch (@fairlyspiritual) January 15, 2022
Photo Credit: NICABM
Photo Credit: Instagram, K. J. Ramsey