When it all got to be too much, I’d give myself permission to take an afternoon off for “mental health reasons”. Inevitably, I’d find myself at the local multiplex, popcorn in hand, zoning out from my myriad responsibilities, letting go of my stress and my complicated life for a couple of hours while a story played out in front of my eyes.

Each year, the RiverRun International Film Festival gives me the same sense of liberation, of a well-deserved vacation from normal life. Now I live in a city I love, and to see my beloved Winston-Salem lit up with talent for 10 days gives my heart no small satisfaction. I spend 11 months of the year looking forward to RiverRun, in expectation of the magic and wonder it brings to my life and my community. On Sunday the festival came to a close for another year.

I knew it had to end. Why is it so hard to say good-bye?

Friday afternoon featured short films made in North Carolina, including The One Who Builds, a crowd-source funded documentary about Dr. Omer Omer, once a Sudanese refugee who dedicates his life to resettling other refugees in Greensboro, NC. I was honored to help fund this film, and seeing it come to life was deeply rewarding.

Proud directors of the short films made in NC, many of whom are students at the UNC School of the Arts.

Friday night found us at the screening of Mud, a film directed by Jeff Nichols and starring Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon. This Southern gothic fable told the story of two boys who encounter Mud (McConaughey) hiding out on an island near their river home, on the run from the law and bounty hunters, waiting to reconnect with his lifetime love (Witherspoon).  The Stevens Center was packed, and my favorite moment of the night was when the crowd erupted in spontaneous applause when the bad guy gets it toward the end of the movie. This is one of the many things I love about RiverRun: the audience is a part of the experience. More than mere spectators, we create relationships with the characters and filmmakers themselves. We’re emotionally invested in the outcome.

The Stevens Center was absolutely packed for the screening of Jeff Nichols’ film, Mud. Unfortunately, Jeff Nichols was unable to be in attendance due to a family emergency.

Saturday included a trio of films: Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself, I Am Breathing, and La Camioneta. All three documentaries featured dreamers, people who when faced with enormous challenges, chose to take great risks in order to live extraordinary lives.  I Am Breathing, in particular, moved me deeply. Neil, a man living and dying with ALS, invited filmmakers to document his final months. The result is a beautiful and moving film about his own transformation and the deep appreciation for living that emerged as he confronted his inevitable death.

Pictured Above: “I Am Breathing” co-director Emma Davie, who originally passed on making the film, but was so moved by Neil’s story she found herself compelled to help tell it. The film is available for showings on June 21 as a part of International ALS Day. Contact the filmmakers through their website for more information.

As I wrapped up my RiverRun experience for yet another year, a passage from La Camioneta (a documentary about the fanciful and elaborate buses that migrate from the US to Guatemala) sums up best why this film festival means so much to me: That life is what we make of it. Our ideas, beliefs, and perspectives are reflected in the experiences we have and the people who are drawn to us. And it is our anticipation of the gifts that life offers that ultimately determines our path.

Each and every actor, filmmaker, director, and producer at RiverRun started out with a dream. Each could have chosen a safer path, a more predictable one. Instead, they stepped out of the ordinary into a life of creativity, perhaps boldly, perhaps fearfully, but stepping out nonetheless. Their dreams fueled their passion, hard work, and dedication; attracted funders and backers; created visual magic; and ultimately drew audiences to view the final vision. RiverRun gives us all, artists and accountants alike, opportunities to participate in the creation of dreams.

And I, for one, can think of no better way to spend an afternoon than that.

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This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs, TED Talk Presenter, author, educator, business creativity consultant and maker of ruckuses, who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. Cyndi loves to blog and travel the world by plane and by film. You can read more of her writing on, The Sophia Project. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing or running with her dog, Daisy.

If you’d like to read more about the 2013 RiverRun Film Festival go here to see all Cyndi and Cheryl’s Blog Posts. Bridges Founder, Cheryl Schirillo and MyBridges Blogger, Cyndi Briggs, had a blast taking photo, blogging and playing their way through the Film Festival again this year. They also shared lots of  photos on MyBridges’ Facebook Page.

We enter into a different dimension during the 10 Days of RiverRun International Film Festival. I want to take advantage of every magical moment between now and Sunday evening when the credits roll for the closing movie.

You do things during RiverRun that you don’t do the rest of the year… like going to see a movie on 4^th Street at 11:00 am on a Friday.  It feels so decadent.  You strike up conversations with fellow filmgoers, many times people you don’t know, because you just HAVE to talk about the movie you just saw.  You run into some of your coolest friends (like Judy Malloy, co-owner of The Yoga Gallery, pictured above) who also take time out of their “real” lives to see bunches of movies.

For instance, I saw “Tey” (“Today” in Sengalese) at a/perture. The plot was about the day in the life of a 40-something man who knew it was his last day alive. It was very interesting and expanding. I loved listening to the actors speak Sengalese, a sonorous mixture of French and the native language, Wolof (FYI I know this little fact because of a fun, but also high-brow : ), exchange on Facebook after the movie with my friend Nikki Miller-Ka who’s ex-husband is Sengalese). But even more than watching the film, Tey, I enjoyed the spontaneous conversations with movie goers in the ladies room afterwards and then across the street at Camino. From “what was that?!”, to “how beautiful and moving” to “what have been your favorite RiverRun movies so far?”

I was sitting alone at Camino Bakery having lunch after my pre-noon movie and young woman next to me overheard me mention to a friend in line that I’d just seen Tey. She struck up a conversation and we talked about the film, then the differences between RiverRun and the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington (she’s visiting and scoping out our festival scene and the movies so she can bring the best bits further south).  We ended up finding out that we’re both entrepreneurial with a strong interest in the design work. So fun!

So what’s next on the movie circuit?

Cyndi and I will be busy movie goers this weekend.  Highlights include:

The One Who Builds in NC Shorts2 on Friday afternoon;

Mud on Friday night.  I’m still really excited about this movie even though director Jeff Nichols won’t be there as planned.  It has some great hometown UNCSA connections. The plot: “Two teenage boys encounter a mysterious fugitive named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) and form a pact to help him evade the bounty hunters on his trail and reunite with his true love.  Directed by UNCSA alum Jeff Nichols, the film also stars Reese Witherspoon, Michael Shannon, and Sam Shepard.”

Saturday Morning Cartoons, FREE Community Screening, 10:00 am on Saturday. The thrill of watching colorful, funny and sweet cartoons is something every child loves, and so do I! Animated shorts include a song about Beethoven (Beethoven’s Wig) to a beehive stealing bear (Honey Plot) and even a little boy acting like a private eye (The Case Of the Broken Lamp).

I am Breathing at 3:30 pm on Saturday. I’ve been told that this film is uplifting in that it captures the best of our human spirit. What comes to the surface when we’re faced with the unimaginable. The plot: “Within one year, Neil Platt becomes paralyzed from the neck down. As his body fails, he tries to make sense of his life in order to communicate who he is in a letter to his one-year-old son in this graceful and strangely affirming audiovisual diary.”

So, what are you seeing during these last magical hours of movie madness, live in Winston-Salem?

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This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Cheryl Schirillo, Bridges Founder, Imagination Installations Volunteer and Lead Co-Creator, writer, artist and serial-entrepreneur.

Be sure and check back here often for new posts as Bridges Founder, Cheryl Schirillo and MyBridges Blogger, Cyndi Briggs, photograph, blog and play their way through the Film Festival. They also share lots of  photos on MyBridges’ Facebook Page.

On opening night, after the screening of Casting By, I found myself engrossed in conversation with R.V. Kuser and his wife Marlene, the subjects of the NC Short Film Autism in Love. RV is a man who has autism spectrum disorder, an self-described empath who channels his gifts into educating others about autism. He is an excellent storyteller and leads a rich life. Each time he said, “It might sound crazy, but…” I found myself leaning in a little closer to learn from his experience.

R.V. Kuser and wife Marlene, subjects of NC Short Films Documentary, “Autism in Love”....... Both generous and lovely people!

On Saturday, I chatted briefly with the young Argentinian directors of Mar del Plata (Ionathan Klajman and Sebastian Dich), a small-budget buddy comedy about two lovelorn, lifelong friends who take off on a spontaneous road trip to the beach for a weekend. The movie is charming and witty. When I shared my impressions with the directors, explained how the humor translated beautifully from Spanish to English, they both looked so delighted and relieved they touched my heart. We are all just beginners after all, hoping the work we put out into the world reaches the hearts of others.

Meeting Ionathan Klajman and Sebastian Dich was a delight. These two film school friends were excited to share the inspiration behind their first feature film.

On Sunday I had a similar meeting Valeri Vaughn, director of documentary Art of Conflict. She spent seven years interviewing mural artists in Northern Ireland, documenting the politically-influenced public art that evolved during 30 years of civil conflict. Her commitment and dedication to bringing this art into the world struck me as profound. Valeri’s brother, Vince Vaughn, narrates the film.

Director Valeri Vaughn dedicated seven years of hear life bringing the Art of Conflict to the world.

Finally, Sunday afternoon I rolled into Far Marfa, a delightful, surreal, whimsical film about a lost musician trying to find his way in the artist town of Marfa, Texas. As I took my seat, I found myself in the middle of a group of laughing, high-spirited women asking for autographs from the film’s lead actor, Johnny Sneed, who sat two rows ahead. Turns out, the women were Johnny’s godmother and a group of friends from North Carolina and Florida who traveled all the way to Winston to support him. “She,” said one of the women “was the first person to hold him after he was born,” as she pointed to his godmother. I felt like I had a group of instant friends. Johnny autographed my ticket, too.

Lead actor Johnny Sneed with his fan club. That’s his godmother on the right.

This is the feel of RiverRun: a block party full of strangers about to be friends. Artists, movie lovers, family members, volunteers. All ready to meet and share and talk and laugh together. This is the true spirit of the festival.

For a full run-down of my “movie dance card” , keep reading:

Opening night kicked off with two films, Blancanieves and Casting By. We viewed Casting By presented at SECCA. The documentary highlighted the extraordinary contributions of casting directors to filmmaking. A role often overlooked in movie credits and absolutely overlooked by the Academy during award season, the casting director is responsible for finding the right talent to fill movie roles. Marion Dougherty was the first and certainly most well-known casting director in modern cinema, casting such films as Midnight Cowboy, Lethal Weapon and Slaughterhouse-Five.

The movie itself was impressive, but what struck us most was the important social conventions Marion Dougherty overcame during her long career. A woman in a field dominated by men, she excelled in the intuitive and feeling art of nurturing young talent, including Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Glenn Close, many of who attribute the start of their careers to Marion. In addition, she overcame racial barriers by suggesting Danny Glover for the role of Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, a role written for a white actor.

Saturday included Mar del Plata, a sweet, first feature film from Argentinian directors Ionathan Klajman and Sebastian Dich, and The Color of the Chameleon, a brilliant, bizarre, disturbing, and oddly funny examination of one man in the secret police in Bulgaria during the late 1980s and 90s. The disparity of these two movies highlights the importance of RiverRun. It’s an opportunity for first feature films and wildly independent films to find an audience and come to live.

Sunday found me back downtown for Art of Conflict and Far Marfa at a/perture. Art of Conflict documents the elaborate and pervasive murals in North Ireland, remnants and constant reminders of the violent civil war between Catholic/Republicans and Protestant/Loyalists from 1969 and 1998. The film is the result of seven years of dedication to trust building, interviews, and deep exploration of the conflict, and presents the images and stories in a balanced, fair documentary. The director, Valerie Vaughn, was in attendance. The project began when her brother, actor Vince Vaughn (who also narrates) took a taxi tour of Northern Ireland years ago and was struck by the political message and artistry of the murals.

Far Marfa was an absolute delight. Lead actor Johnny Sneed and director Cory Van Dyke were in attendance. The movie was funny, surreal, sweet, and heartfelt, a story of a musician seeking redemption as he stumbles through life and wonders if he’s cursed. When Carter Frazier (Sneed) is given a priceless abstract painting that he promptly loses, he sets out to find it in a town full of odd-ball characters, both helpful and hapless.

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This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs, TED Talk Presenter, author, educator, business creativity consultant and maker of ruckuses, who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. Cyndi loves to blog and travel the world by plane and by film. You can read more of her writing on, The Sophia Project. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing or running with her dog, Daisy.

Be sure and check back here often for new posts as Bridges Founder, Cheryl Schirillo and MyBridges Blogger, Cyndi Briggs, photograph, blog and play their way through the Film Festival. They also share lots of  photos on MyBridges’ Facebook Page.

But after I picked up my tickets, I felt so excited about the week of movies ahead and so intoxicated by the warm air and bright sunshine, I simply couldn’t force myself to head home. Instead I popped over to Wolfie’s frozen custard and ordered one scoop of “Movie Madness” – salted caramel with kettle corn – on a cone and found a seat on the sidewalk to savor it while I flipped through my RiverRun movie guide.

Time slowed. I felt my body relax. After a long winter of busy-ness and cold, rainy weather, a small gap opened up in my afternoon allowed for pleasure to return. Excitement. Fun.

This is the spirit of RiverRun. Ten days when we abandon our routine and go to the movies. It liberates us from the mundane and creates opportunities for magic to happen. When we find ourselves in the presence of artists and their passionate creativity, we open up to the possibilities in our own lives, and we begin imagining bigger dreams for ourselves.  RiverRun is my spring booster shot of inspiration.

How to get started if you’re new to RiverRun? First, check out the opening night events. Tonight, I’ll be seeing Casting By, a compilation of interviews with some of Hollywood’s brightest stars, including Clint Eastwood, Bette Midler, Martin Scorsese, and Glenn Close, all heralding the important role of the casting director in filmmaking. Afterwards, SECCA will host the opening night gala. Purchase tickets here.

Second, spend some time with the film schedule. It can be overwhelming. RiverRun is like a buffet of all my favorite foods. I know I won’t be able to see every single movie I want to see, but I’ll walk away completely satisfied nonetheless.

Finally, consider these lesser-known movie gems, small feature films that spotlight the incredible film-making art of those just out of the limelight:

THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON – Bulgaria / Director: Emil Hristow

In Emil Hristow’s über-stylish spy-movie pastiche, a charismatic schemer in an authoritarian police state, fired from his job as a secret-police informant, conjures up his own imaginary spy network and builds up an archive that he turns against his former masters.

APRIL 13 / 7:00PM / UNCSA – MAIN

APRIL 14 / 1:00PM / A/PERTURE 2

APRIL 15 / 11:30AM / A/PERTURE 2 – $5

REALITY – Italy / France / Director: Matteo Garrone

From acclaimed director Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah), Reality is a dark, comical look at a charming fishmonger whose sudden obsession with being a contestant on the reality show Big Brother leads him down a rabbit hole.

APRIL 15 / 5:00PM / A/PERTURE 1

APRIL 18 / 2:00PM / A/PERTURE 1 – $5

I AM BREATHING – Denmark / UK / Directors: Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon

Over a period of one year, Neil Platt becomes paralyzed from the neck down. As his body fails, he tries to make sense of his life in order to communicate who he is in a letter to his one-year-old son in this graceful and strangely affirming audiovisual diary.

APRIL 18 / 2:30PM / A/PERTURE 2 – $5

APRIL 19 / 5:30PM / A/PERTURE 2

APRIL 20 / 3:30PM / A/PERTURE 1

Here I am at last year's festival with Ron Livingston. As a diehard SATC fan, meeting Jack Berger was a thrill.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs, TED Talk Presenter, author, educator, business creativity consultant and maker of ruckuses, who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. Cyndi loves to blog and travel the world by plane and by film. You can read more of her writing on, The Sophia Project. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing or running with her dog, Daisy.

Be sure and check back here often for new posts as Bridges Founder, Cheryl Schirillo and I blog our way through the Film Festival.

It’s almost here. The 2013 RiverRun International Film Festival.

I’m like a kid at Christmas. A kid in a candy store. A kid on the first day of summer.

This feeling is the magic of RiverRun. For half an hour now, I’ve sat here at my computer, seeking the right words to sum up my love for this film festival, how much I look forward to it the other 11 months out of the year. I’m at a loss to describe the awe-struck feeling of mixing and mingling with the wildly creative and whole-heartedly dedicated artists who arrive in Winston to share their inspiration on the screen. How I will forever associate the Gateway YWCA with the school bus that carries movie-goers across the street to UNCSA for screenings. How there is nothing more satisfying to the soul than taking a two-hour break on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon to be transported into another world via film. Magic.

RiverRun is an incredible gift to our community, a true testimony to the dedication of the artists who make the city their home. Film festivals like this one aren’t necessary. They don’t provide food or shelter or clothing. A film festival won’t do your taxes or buy your groceries. You can’t get a film festival to babysit your kids or fix your car. In tough economic times, a film festival can seem like a luxury. Perhaps even frivolous.

But I would argue (vehemently) that nothing is more necessary than the creative inspiration festivals such as RiverRun provide. Last year, I was transported to a tiny village in Brazil, to the crumbing neighborhoods of Detroit, and into the frantic, all-night-all-day wondrous chaos of a musical written and produced in 24 short hours. I met strong and vocal women filmmakers passionately following their dreams and hoping to change the world for the better along the way. I rubbed elbows with directors and actors who take big risks for their art and give generously to those of us still finding our own. RiverRun gives me the opportunity, each year, to write and photograph wantonly, two of my greatest passions.

RiverRun reminds me that life doesn’t have to be ordinary. I recall that at my essence, down to the bone, I am a creative being. And that life, for all its mundanity, remains a gifted and wondrous thing.

Buy your tickets. Get on the bus. Come join the magic with us.

Be sure and check back here often for new posts as Bridges Founder, Cheryl Schirillo and I blog our way through the Film Festival.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from RiverRun 2012:

Here I am at last year's festival with Ron Livingston. As a diehard SATC fan, meeting Jack Berger was a thrill.

I had a great conversation at the Opening Night Party 2012 with Director Elizabeth Sperling of the documentary, One Night Stand. She's a truly inspirational woman who encouraged my own art.

Here I am with Paul Schneider... swoon. He's a UNCSA grad and all-around great guy.

It was fun chatting with, and grabbing a quick photo of, the Directors for Queens of Country: Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke.

My partner in crime for the next 10 Days... Bridges Founder, Cheryl Schirillo... and I are thrilled to be spending a lot of time on Main Street at UNC School of the Arts again this year. We'll be watching movies, taking in the scene, talking to folks famous and just fun from around the world, and of course blogging for you. Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you again soon.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs, TED Talk Presenter, author, educator, business creativity consultant and maker of ruckuses, who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. Cyndi loves to blog and travel the world by plane and by film. You can read more of her writing on, The Sophia Project. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing or running with her dog, Daisy.

“Make a ruckas and don’t follow the rules.” ~ advice Seth Godin gives to his “free range” kids. Photo credit: Cheryl Schirillo

Conversations I had this week with Seth Godin (entrepreneur, prolific author, and the most-read business blogger in the world) and Jenny Fulton (aka The Pickle Lady of Jenny’s Pickles who made it to the $1 million club) re-energized me and reminded me why I’m a serial entrepreneur. I reconnected with that repeated desire I have to jump outside my comfort zone to bring new businesses and grassroots projects to life. Seth and Jenny reminded me how exciting it is to go from Ah Ha, wouldn’t-that-be-cool brainstorms to realized dreams. MyBridges and Imagination Installations were both started from that place.

I know I’m about to launch something big and risky when I experience the following progression:

Feelings of excitement…

Followed by nervousness…

Followed by a strong inner knowing that it’s right on…

Followed by panic (Seth calls it the Lizard Brain)…

Followed by determination and the sense that it’s already happening so I might as well surrender.

Next I think about who would be fun to play with around the idea and then I bring people together to brainstorm. Before I know it we’ve co-created something amazing and fulfilling that builds social capital and brings people together to Think Big and Dream Big in their personal lives and for our community.

“Connect with what you are passionate about, something you really love, and make that your business.” ~ Jenny Fulton

Another excellent reminder from this week’s connections was… “Ask for what you want (people can’t read your mind), and then go out and get it.” ~ Jenny, Miss Jenny’s Pickles. Again and again Kernersville girl, Jenny Fulton, has fostered amazing opportunities in her life… getting on 60 Minutes, speaking to Congress (in the photo above), exporting her product to China.  Why? Because she was clear about what she wanted. She felt the urge and acted on it. She asked with enthusiasm.

Both Seth and Jenny are fun to hear speak (and even more fun to talk with one on one on the sidelines) because they are truly excited about their entrepreneurial adventures and they want you to get excited too… to start going out and doing crazy, risky stuff. They are also humble and down to earth and they talk about how we ALL have the stuff we need inside to build big dreams and share them with the world. Hearing them speak this week rekindled my inner fire and energized me to keep going, to keep creating.  To be a visionary and an artist even though sometimes I don’t feel worthy of those monikers.

If all of us followed our passion and took just ONE of our ideas (or decided to make a difference with just one injustice that really bugs us) the world would be transformed… and fast.

What Seth and Jenny inspired me to want to share with you is this:

Be a leader, build your own sandbox and bring the brightest, most positive and creative people you know together, and then have fun birthing something amazing.
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As I think about my “creative sandbox” I want to take a moment here to say thank you to a few of the people I’ve had the honor and joy to play with over the past few years: Cyndi Briggs, Teddy Burris, Sandy Phocas, Nigel Alston, Carol Strohecker, Alan Joines, Amanda Zabel, Alan Shelton, Jan Detter, Jim Toole, Kristen Daukas, Mark Leach, White Star, Jamie Cheshire, Claudette Weston, Alejandro Manrique, Jennifer Kiger, Tammy O Klass, Gail Fisher, Cristin Whiting, and many, many more folks in the Triad Tribe (a phrase coined by another playmate, Kim Williams).

You all rock!

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I posted a question on Facebook asking folks from the Triad Tribe who were at Seth Godin’s talk to share a take away. Here’s what I got back:

Michelle Ferrier: My favorite takeaway from Seth Godin: Your comfort zone is not safe (borrowed this thought for the title of this blog post, thanks Michelle). Get outside of it and innovate. Show your passion.

Teddy Burriss: Thanks to Seth, I now know that I, and a bunch of my friends, are in a Category of 1. Best place for us to be.

“The internet is bringing the weird people together.” ~ Seth Godin as quoted/tweeted by Jeff SanGeorge

“Market to the interesting people on the edges, on the fringe. The people in the middle won’t listen to you…. they’re boring on purpose.” ~ Seth Godin (Me)

Kim Williams I’m paraphrasing- We become what we invest in with our time and energy. I said more on my blog.

Nigel Alston: “Fight the Resistance!” read Seth’s book, “The Icarus Deception.” (Great interview with Seth about this book here, titled “Seth Godin on The Icarus Deception: Risk Taking and Why It’s Better to be Sorry than Safe.)

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Cheryl Schirillo, is an internet entrepreneur, PR & Marketing Consultant, Social Media Strategist and Coach, mom of two teenage boys, scuba diver, swing dancer, ultimate frisbee player, StoryLine creator, and founder of The Imagination Installation’s Project, and this web site, Bridges Connecting Communities (www.MyBridges.net) Join her on Twitter @CherylSchirillo

MyBridges.net is a news & events web site for the Triad … a Community Blog if you will : )

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Build a Bridge, Make a Difference

And that is how it had been for most of my life. People told me I didn’t listen to them and I decided that most of what they were saying to me was just them trying to control me or at least trying to get me to do things their way. That is how it went until very recently when I began the practice of praying.

I began to pray after talking to a friend who said that prayer has been the only thing that has helped her to slow down her mind and to bring real serenity into her life. My mind is always going: it obsesses over things from the past and flings itself into the future. It meanders down the dark alleys of resentment and criticism and gets pleasure in romancing the existential angst of it all. Like that song says, “You can be addicted to a certain kind of sadness… “

Worn out from trying to think my way out of thinking so much, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by praying. Now, every morning and throughout the day, I pray for God to grant me serenity and for me to hear what it is I am supposed to hear so Thy will be done. I pray for God’s will to be done because I choose to believe that God’s Will for me is loving and positive and when things show up in my life that aren’t that (in other words, when “bad things happen”), that isn’t God’s Will but Human Will (including this human) run amuck.

The assumption that God’s Will is loving and positive has me listen very intently for God’s message. I’m a person of the pleasuring seeking variety and I am attracted to things that feel good. If I believe that good things are coming through listening to God, there is no way I want to miss it.

That is the other side of prayer that I recently discovered: it is not to simply have a one-way monologue bending God’s ear with my wish list and expecting a pot of gold or the perfect man or whatever else I had prayed for in the past to show up on my doorstep. I am finding that prayer involves much more listening than it does talking.

When God answers my prayers, God does so in a subtle way. So far, there hasn’t been the proverbial burning bush. Answers come in the fabric of the day through contact with other people and if I am not listening to them, then I am not listening for God’s message to me.

The ironic thing is, I am now so intent on listening to and for God that I am coincidentally listening much more to everyone around me. I am listening to them because I am listening for God’s words through them and in the process of connecting with God, I am also ironically connecting to the people around me in a way I never have before. When I am turned off by something someone is saying or when I think that what they are saying is flat-out wrong, I stop and pray, “Let me hear what I am supposed to hear.” Then I take a deep breath and I listen. I listen without judgment and with an open mind because I am listening with the assumption that in what they are saying is God’s message of love.

Now, when I sit in meetings, I am not “listening” for the best place for me to add my stunning pearls of wisdom that will blow everyone’s socks off and bring the meeting to a depth that would not have been possible without my having spoken. Instead, I remain quiet. When I feel the anxious scratching rise inside me that what I have to say is really important and I have to find a way to get it in to the conversation… I remind myself to listen a bit longer. In the process, some one else’s voice gets to rise and I contribute to them in my listening of them and I am able to receive once again through that contact point with God and another person.

You might be wondering, is prayer, aka listening, in fact been the answer to my prayers with all of my stinking thinking? It is, but only when I practice it. As soon as I am not listening for God in my listening of other people, all I hear is the whirl in my own mind. Around and around the mulberry bush I go until I open to God’s voice once again. I stop, connect again with God’s love and with the life I have been given that exists in the real world, out side of my mind, and I say that simple two-word prayer I have also begun to say lately…

“Thank you.”

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

I’ve started something new in my life. I’ve been praying.

I was taught to pray growing up. I said the Our Father every night before bed but for the most part, until recently, I haven’t had many conversations with God. That is, unless I got into a really tight spot. In those times, I would be on my knees in a prayer that would go something like this, “Help me!  Help me!  Help me!  Help me!  Help me!”

In those times I would plead, even beg God to hear me and intercede in whatever it was that I felt unable to deal with in my life. But I only did this when I was desperate. I only talked to God after all of my attempts at controlling a situation had failed.  I only addressed God in this way when I was at a complete loss for what else to do.

In those moments of desperation, I would repeat this phrase “Help me” over and over until I sensed a shift, until something told me that the prayer had been heard.  I can’t say for sure but I have a pretty good idea that in those moments God did not suddenly shift away from someone else’s channel on some big prayer radio station in the sky to tune into mine.  More than likely, the shift was within me, when my prayer went from my begging or even demanding something of God to one of surrender and humility.

I don’t know if any of you have ever faced such a moment or moments in your own life.  Maybe you have and you know exactly what I mean.  Maybe you haven’t and this all sounds a little too “religious” for your taste.  No matter the case, I share it with you because through this experience I have learned two things that have made a huge difference in my life.  The first is that there is great power in surrender and the second is that I don’t have to be desperate in order to turn my will over to God.

As I write those words they sound funny coming from me. A couple of weeks ago, if this article were written by someone else I would have stopped reading it about two paragraphs back. You see I am not a religious person.  I don’t go to church.  I don’t believe in any one specific tradition and even have aversions to some in particular. Religion aside, I have found a new kind of peace and happiness in my life in being open and willing to have whatever is happening in my life be a part of God’s or the universe’s plan for me, a plan that I might not currently understand and that I don’t have to understand.

When I allow “God’s will to be done,” as that old bed time prayer says, the obsessive loop in my mind that is constantly trying to figure things out slows down.  When I feel that obsessive loop start I can now catch myself and say, “I’m not in charge of this” and it becomes easier to let it go (Yes, and let God).  What that allows me to do is to live my life exactly how it is.  It allows me to appreciate the feel of the unseasonably warm air when I step onto my front porch.  I am filled with the excitement that is radiating off my son as he chatters about a moment of joy.  I listen to my body and notice when it is hungry and when it is not, when it needs sleep or when it needs to run.  I can sense when it is time for me to meet up with and connect with friends or when it is time to nest on my couch with a book.

So now, I pray. I pray just as I wake up in the morning as the seedlings of the first obsession that threatens to take over my peace begin to germinate.  In those early moments of awakening, I ask God to help, to show me the way, to send me a sign.

Here is the kicker. Those prayers are always answered — and I mean quickly.  I don’t have to wait more than a couple of hours and the answer is there.  I hear it in a song on the radio or in a passing comment by a stranger in the grocery store or something that I’ve read. The point is, when I am willing to be relieved of whatever pains me and when I am open to my prayer to be answered, it invariably is.

So now, I don’t just pray in the morning.  I pray all day long.  I ask for guidance and I listen, and through some moment of contact, I am told what to do. What I see is that over the days of practicing prayer, I have begun to develop that thing called faith.  That trust in God and the universe to provide exactly what I need when I need it.  That doesn’t mean life is always easy or that I always understand why things happen the way they do.  But I can trust it and I can allow the release to happen as it needs to so I can stay grounded and connected to myself and to that miracle space called the divine.

At the end of the day, I have a special ritual. I pick up my pen and my journal and I write all of the things for which I am grateful.  Within a few minutes I have filled a page.  On that list are silly things, like my duvet and Christmas lights.  On that list are the people I love like my Mom and Dad, my children, and my fellowship of friends.  On that list are also the challenges and people that I was grappling with (in my mind anyway) at the start of the day because they have shown me a part of myself and provided me with a space into which to grow.

They say that everything turns out all right in the end and if things aren’t all right then it isn’t the end.  In that space of prayer and surrender, everything is always all right no matter what is, because it is exactly as it is to be for the moment; and in surrendering to it a new place of peace is delivered.

Can I get an Amen?

What in your life has been moved and transformed through the power of prayer?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Do you have a person in your life for whom you are grateful every single day? I do. It is my friend Laura.

I first met Laura standing on my front porch a few weeks after I had moved into the neighborhood. She knocked on the door holding a basket filled with pasta sauce and packages of spaghetti. She told me that she had a son and wondered if our kids might enjoy playing.

It took several months for me to take Laura up on the offer of getting our children together after that initial meeting. I was recently separated and in a place in my life where my nerves were raw and I was overwhelmed with life as a single mom. Making pleasant small talk at a children’s play date with someone I didn’t know seemed liked more effort than I had energy for at the time.

Despite my reluctance, Laura persisted in creating a friendship with me in her unassuming and steady way. Though I can’t recall the steps we took to get from that place of reluctance to where we are today, what I can tell you is that when I have wanted someone to listen without judgment, Laura has been there. When I have needed someone to watch my kids so I could work on snow days, Laura has been there for me. When my car was in the shop for a month, Laura found someone in our neighborhood who had an extra car so I didn’t have to go without one. When my yard became an overgrown mess of vines, weeds and voluntary bushes mixed with my own haphazard attempt at landscaping, Laura surprised me by taming my wacky garden into a charming frame for my home one weekend when I was away. All of that is to say, that at each step along the way, Laura has intuited just the kind of support I have needed and has provided it kindly and generously.

There are so many things I admire about Laura. One of them is how she relates with her boys. She raises them in what I would call an “old fashioned” way and she does it with intention. She believes that children should play with rocks and sticks instead of video games. She believes that children should spend afternoons exploring the outdoors rather than sitting in front of a TV or computer screen. She loves the idea of taking children out to a field and point in a direction and exploring everything along that particular path. These aren’t just “good ideas” for Laura; it is actually how she lives.

I also admire how Laura connects with her husband. (Who, by the way, is an equally stand-up character.) She doesn’t just create “date nights” with him. It is as if she actually recreates dating him despite having been married for 14 years. When she shows up at my door with her kids so I can baby-sit them for the evening, she is all smiley, sparkly and sultry with anticipation. The phrase, “Lucky Guy” comes to mind.

Needless to say, an easy familiarity has grown between our families over the handful of years Laura and I have known each other. Now her children are now at my house nearly every day, and if they are not at my house, my children are at her house, or they are planning on the next time they will be together, or they are recouping from the last time. Now, her cloths are in my closet and my cloths are in her closet. Now we share meals together most weeks. Now we plan our Halloween costumes together. Now, we joke that when we are old and alone we will get adjoining apartments so we can live in true co-op style. I would do the cooking and she would do the handiwork around the house. (We understand that we wouldn’t want to actually live together because we both like our privacy.)

Who is the person for whom you are particularly grateful? Have you told them lately?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Monday was the observance of Veterans Day and the truth is, I had forgotten all about it — so much so that I had a full day of work scheduled and two kids home from school. I found myself scrambling at the last minute trying to find childcare so I could get in a few hours of work. As I did my morning cruise of Facebook, I ran across my friend, Colleen’s status update. It read, “Thankful for all the Veterans past and present willing to protect my silly but blessed life.”

My silly but blessed life… that really says it.

Yes, I am so grateful for my silly but blessed life. I am grateful to be able to openly write my thoughts and share them with you. I’m grateful that my class discussions can flow freely down any intellectual or philosophical path they are drawn to take. I’m grateful that I can create the family that I chose to create, one that is a reflection of my own values and a true expression of my heart. I’m grateful that my children can play in fields and run around our neighborhood with a level of relative safety, certainly without the concern of being maimed or killed by landmines or accidentally shot by sniper fire. I’m grateful I can debate with friends the merits of which high-end grocery store will have the best turkey for Thanksgiving or which sells organic produce at the best prices. And I’m grateful that I can enjoy it all with an ease that is so much a part of my life that I have the luxury of Veteran’s Day slipping my mind….

Those are the mundane details of my silly but blessed life. And in the mist of such silly every day blessings, it is easy to forget that another person quite literally dodged bullets to protect them. One great example of this is the ironic privilege to complain and argue about all of the political complaining and arguing of this past Presidential Election. What’s more, following the election, there is always someone who rather dramatically declares that they are “leaving the country” because their guy didn’t win. Now, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with making such a statement. I myself have been given to hyperbole when the voting didn’t go in the favor of my team. What is missing from that though is that when people make statements about leaving the country, particularly in a public forum, they miss that they only get to do that because they live here, in the wonderfully imperfect U.S.A. They didn’t have to arrange to smuggle that statement out of the country so it could be heard by the world. No one is going to drag them out of their bed at night because they spouted off on Facebook. Really, the worst thing that might happen is that someone might write a blog about it….

So once again, in the words of my friend, Colleen, “Thank you to the veterans past and present willing to protect my silly but blessed life.”

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Recently I was reminded that it is the simple things that count…

When it comes to giving and receiving gifts, I have always been partial to the gifts that make memories over those that are held in the hand. My kids have birthdays that are in close proximity and so every year we plan some kind of “experience” or trip to commemorate their entry into our family. We have taken exciting vacations to NYC, to Disney World, and for more times that I can even recount, to the kid-favorite, Great Wolfe Lodge. This year though, we opted for something simpler.

A couple of Saturdays ago, we piled into our car with our dog, Molly and our pet frog Skittles and drove to Cloud 9 Farm in the Great Smokey Mountains. Cloud 9 Farm is a beautiful place tucked off the beaten path in Fletcher, NC. In our less than twenty-four hour stay, my kids toured the farm, fed chickens and collect their eggs. They fed and cared for “Hamburger”, “Sir Loin”, and “Stew”, the three cows that were being raised for food. They harvested vegetables from the farm’s garden and together we climbed to the top of a barn piled high with hay bales. We built a bon fire, road bikes, and ate great meals together.

Despite all of the travel that my kids have had the opportunity to do, they tell me that this trip was their favorite.

Then over this past weekend, we were all together again. My son spent the afternoon with a dear friend who has become more family to us than anything. Together they built a model rocket he had given my son for his birthday. When they were finished we all went to a close-by field and shot the rocket high into the air. The kids ran around trying to catch the separated rocket parts that parachuted back to earth. We shot the rocket again and again hooting and laughing as we watched it fly.

Putting my son to bed that night, he had the rocket in bed with him, hugging it. He smiled with his whole face remembering the fun from the day. When I woke up the next morning, I found him sitting on the coach, again with the rocket in his lap.

When I look at those two experiences, what I see is that mattered the most was not just the exact activities we did together, or the gift that was given (although the activities and gifts themselves were pretty unique and fun). What seemed to matter most was the time spent together. At Cloud 9, we had the company of each other and the simple tasks of life on a mountain farm for our entertainment. We didn’t plug into video games or get pulled away from each by our cell phones and Facebook, as is so easy to do with our casual relationship with technology. With the gift of the rocket, it wasn’t the rocket itself that was the treasured gift. The real gift was time spent with an adult my son adores working on a project together and time spent as a family playing in a field celebrating what they had made.

With these two experiences, I am reminded again of the simple truth that we show people we love them by the time we spend with them. It really is that simple.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

She came home early from school today. She said she wasn’t feeling well. Sometimes with Julia stomachaches and headaches translate into needing some quiet time at home to regroup. No matter the case, I honor the request because she is not one to abuse the privilege of an afternoon home with mom. So I sit with her as she soaks in the tub with bubbles piled up to her chin. We tell our favorite stories about when she was little and laugh at the punch lines we already know so well.

My mind takes a serious turn as I’m aware that this is one of those moments that marks a milestone in her life.

I asked her, “What do you think it will be like when you turn ten?”

“Probably just like it has always been.” She replies with a smile. “It isn’t until I am a teenager that it is going to be drama city.”

She is probably right on both accounts, and yet for me, this birthday seems different. I find myself taking snap shots of her in my mind all afternoon: her long slender legs into which she hasn’t yet fully grown; her beautifully crooked smile and soft waves of caramel colored hair. Her whit and sense of irony that surpasses her years and which flip unpredictably into silliness that is precisely of her age; and not to forget her free and open heart that gushes love.

That is Julia on the eve of her 10th birthday.

I see her for what she is: An amazing little girl that is pretty darn well adjusted for having had a bit of an unconventional childhood so far.

I wonder about those rough patches she will bump up against in those “dramatic” years to come. I find myself fantasizing that I can perch myself on the front porch of her heart ready to pounce on anything that comes to prey on her innocence.

“Leave this one untouched! Don’t let her go through the self-doubt…the heartache…the confusion. Do those years really have to be so dramatic?”

But those aren’t her experiences that I am anticipating. Those are the left over fears and memories of my own drama years, experiences that really don’t have anything to do with her, unless I put them onto her.

Then suddenly there is freedom. The hackles of my protective mother-brain soften back down. I am no longer the self-appointed guardian of my daughter’s heart. She is the champion of her own heart and her own life.

She is going to go through whatever she is going to go through in this new land of double-digits. What’s more, she even needs to go through it with some degree of privacy, and in certain spaces of it, without my direct help.

No, I cannot do this for her. To try weakens her, diminishes her, as if she is unable to navigate the increasingly complex terrain of life in her own way. As if she is unable to recover from the spills and missteps she will inevitably take and that will serve as lessons that will enrich her life.

As I think about the years that are just around the corner, I hear the hum of my own fear. It is that fear as much as anything else that can trip her up. It is my own self doubt of my parenting of her that creates any doubt I have in her ability to forge her path powerfully in life. Therein lies the key to raising a daughter who believes in herself.

The key is to trust myself that I provide her with exactly what she needs for each chapter of her life and to trust her strength, her intelligence and her own knowing. The key is to get up underneath her and to launch her out into the wild, cheering for her as she goes. And finally, to be the steady and soft place for her to regroup so that she can venture out again.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

I’m in my first relationship completely clean and sober since… well… never.

For as long as I can remember one intoxicant or another has been a part of my life, especially my love life.  From my first crush to my marriage to even my last “What-Could-I-Have-Been-Thinking?” a buzz of some kind had been involved.

There was the buzz to hide my nervousness when I started dating someone new.  I intentionally liked to play it cool, never wanting to seem too excited, hopeful, and most ironically of all, insecure.  A buzz gave me that false sense of courage and of charm — and lets face it, more than one person got through the gate because they also seemed more charming too! As the relationships progressed a bit, there was the buzz to get my nerve up to ask questions I was afraid to ask, or to have uncomfortable conversations that I might have otherwise side stepped.

The buzz was even there to soften the hard times; the times when it was apparent to us both that the relationship had run its course and there was little left between us.  We could distract ourselves from this with our favorite buzz, in our favorite location, doing our favorite things and pretend everything is great; two people lost in a world of intoxication and fantasy trying to delay the inevitable.

Then there was the buzz to celebrate new-found freedom when the relationships mercifully ended; or crying on a bar stool because it was over.  Then there was always the buzz because I was home alone and lonely and I just want to forget about being home alone and lonely.

And then one day I woke up.  I woke up to myself and saw that way of being doesn’t work any more, and it never really did.  That way of being had taken me away from my life and the people in it.  That way of being is part of the very reason why I felt so lonely all of the time.  Forget spending any time with anyone else, I wasn’t even being with myself!

So, I said good-bye to the buzz, to intoxication, to getting effed up, to taking myself out…

And now, I am living — in some ways for the first time.

Now, I am spending time with a man and there is no buffer between us.  And I am learning a lot about myself, like underneath it all, I am a little shy.  Underneath it all, I am not so “cool” and that in itself is cool in a whole new way.  Underneath it all, I am loving and tender.  Underneath it all, I have a crush so big that even after months of companionship with the same person, I still get tongue-tied and can only look over at him with my mind blank and my heart pounding.

In this new unvarnished terrain, I feel everything.  There is no hiding from those experiences from which I could hide before: uncertainty, vulnerability, love and disappointment.  It plays across my face for him to see and for me to see him seeing me.  There is no mask to hide behind any more.

There is nothing to help me ease into conversation that previously would have seemed impossible to have.  My speaking is more intentional now; my words are heart felt and some times come tumbling out for being held in for longer than they needed to be. They tumble out at unexpected times, like in the middle of a wedding, much to the surprise of myself and my companion.

Yes, in sobriety I have lost my “cool” and found what it truly is to be sexy because vulnerability is sexy and meeting each other eye to eye is sexy.  Giving it all time and space is sexy.  Not being able to hide complete unbridled joy to see someone again is sexy.

There is no hiding in sobriety.  What was once a terrifying thought is now a welcome and exhilarating experience.  If I had known as a teenager how amazing this feeling was — of how to naturally experience the kinds of thrills I had been seeking by getting high in the first place — my life would have likely taken a different path.  But then, I may not have been ready to meet someone on this plane, to live on the edge of vulnerability where life is more precious than can be imagined.  Where I well up for the beauty of it all.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

If anything were possible, for what would you wish? This is a question posed by Winston Salem’s own Imagination Installations Project. For those of you who aren’t yet plugged into the Imagination Installations, it is an emerging grassroots effort in Winston Salem fueled by more than 100 entrepreneurs, artists, community leaders, educators, and other innovators who love to think and dream big for our community and the world!

What are my big dreams for the world? I “Imagine When…” men and women rise in unity to honor and support each other’s greatness.

That might sound like a far-reaching notion. After all, the divide between the sexes has been around at least since the story of Adam and Eve. The differences between men and women, and the rights and privileges granted to each group because of those differences, is one of the topics that inspires the most spirited discussion with the undergraduates I teach at Wake Forest. You know the conversations: male politician’s involvement in legislation regarding women’s reproductive rights; the professional glass ceiling and inequity in pay for professional women; the lack of “pay” in the form of societal regard for women who stay home to raise children fulltime. During these exchanges, the air at times crackles with tension and then releases with the laughter of self-deprecating recognition on both sides.

But the story of the so-called battle of the sexes isn’t just a story about the hardships of women in society and the limits placed on them. That is just one part of a rather involved story about both men and women and the limits place on each by the very virtue of being in such a struggle for power. It makes me wonder, what is all of this battling between the sexes about in the first place? I mean, when you pull back that initial layer of social inequity, what is really underneath?

What I see is not just of the “battle of the sexes,” but a battle about sexuality itself. Here is what I mean… for whatever biological differences exist between men and women these differences do not explain why 82% of cultures worldwide raise females to be nurturers. They do not explain why females are raised to practice modesty and restraint in their sexual practices nor why men are encouraged to sow their wild oats. These particular differences open up a whole new set of questions such as, “What is at the source of how humans relate to their sexuality such that men and women continue in a power struggle vying for who is on top?” “What is it at the source of men and women using sex to control and suppress each other rather than as a sacred means to create honor and unity together?”

The answer to these questions are more likely found in the questions we ask together—The answer is more likely found in the process of questioning our current “reality” as a society and not resting in absolutes, as if “the way it is” represents a real truth. Perhaps the answer is for men and women to rise in unity to cause each other’s greatness, never at the expense of the other, but in communion together.

These are the kind of dreams I have for our community and world. What are yours?

Come write your Imagine When… on a dream flag Friday night during Gallery Hop in Downtown Winston-Salem’s Arts District. The Imagination Installation’s Crew is celebrating their 1st Birthday with a big party that includes a samba band, dream fortune cookies and the Dream Tent (details here). Come dream with me.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

My son, Colin, is seven and for a long time I believed that what he thought about could be boiled down into three main categories: (1) Beyblades—a very popular game played by boys his age, similar to tops (2) His best friend, Chase and (3) Food.

Colin stands next to me in the kitchen several times a day filling a plate with food trying to fill that hollow leg of his. He chatters excitedly with his face aglow, explaining to me in great detail about which beys are best used for offensive attacks and which are best for defense. Which beys he has custom made and how they have performed against those of his best friend.

I try to hang on to what he is saying. It is clearly so important to him. But I don’t. My mind is cluttered with the to-dos of managing the business of our family and getting ready for the next workday. I phase in and out of what he is saying. I try to ask him a couple of questions to plug back into the conversation but the thread of it is too far-gone.

I give him a hug, kiss the top of his head, and make a vague comment like, “I’m happy for you, Honey” all the while feeling guilty for not paying more attention to the things he cares about; guilty for not being able to “relate.”

So, one night recently, I am lying on his bed with him having one last cuddle before he goes to sleep. My heart weighs heavy because I am looking at this beautiful boy and wishing I understood him better.

I say to him, “Colin, of all of the little boys who could have come out of my tummy, I am glad it was you.”

He kisses my nose and says, “Thanks mom, and of all of the moms I could have had I am glad that it is you.”

The room is quiet for a moment and then I ask him a question…a question I feel sort of weird asking him but I ask it anyway, “Honey, what do you think about?”

Then he begins…

“Sometimes I wonder how many grains of sand there are in Egypt. I bet there is something like a kajillion billion zillion or something like that. So many grains of sand you can’t even count…”

“I wonder a lot what how many different kinds of sand there are.”

“You think about that?” I ask him, shocked.

“Oh yeah, I think about that a lot! There is the honey colored sand and the brown sugar kind of sand…” His voice drifts off in wonder as he contemplates the possibilities of sand. Then he continues…

“I wonder what it would be like to listen to your heart in a stethoscope. Would it sound like BOOM BOOM or would it just sound regular like boom boom?”

“I wonder how many stars there are in the sky. There probably isn’t a right answer for that. You can’t just fly around and say, there is one. There is another.”

“And I wonder what is on the other side of the galaxy. Is it all just one white place? What is it?” he says with a shrug of his shoulders.

I lay next to him in silent amazement. This is what he thinks about. Not just bey blade battles, not just his best friend, not even food. He asks himself questions about science and the universe. He asks himself unanswerable questions. He wonders…

We talk a bit more and then I say to him, “Colin, I’ve always been curious about what you think about and I really appreciate your sharing all of that with me.” And what he says next was like getting lopped over the head with brink…

He says, “You are welcome, Mama. Thanks for listening.”

And there is was… I hadn’t listening to my son. That isn’t what he said, but it is what I knew.

Since that conversation lying in his bed, something has shifted between the two of us. He did feel heard that night. He did feel understood. And now, as I listen to him, I hear that he has been saying a lot more to me than I thought.

For instance there are lots of times when he has asked for more freedom. He wants to be able to run around the neighborhood with his friend. He wants to be able to ride his bike on the street by himself. He tells me that he wants to “feel the wind in his hair.” He has told me these things many times but I dismissed them as one more thing for me to worry about.

Now, that I am listening for what matters to him I am out with him on the weekend working with him on his bike. I give him tasks to work on each week so he can develop the skills and maturity he will need to grow into those freedoms. As the weeks have gone by he has developed and he has matured—and not just in the areas that he cares about but in the areas I care about too: He cleaned is room and is keeping it clean. When I ask him to do something he (mostly) does it after the first request. When an angry reaction would have erupted out of an every day frustration, he now briefly tenses up and then handles it. Gone is the tone that can stretch the word, “Mom” out for so long I want to apply for a name change.

Theologian and Philosopher, Paul Tillich said, “The first duty of love is to listen” and for good reason. I have a new relationship with my son because I looked past what I thought I knew about him and I listened to what he had been trying to tell me all along. Inside of that listening, he is able to grow and expand into a young boy who seeks adventure, who loves to explore and has a thirst for experiencing life — and yes, that is something to which I can very much relate.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

….. I I watched the Democratic National Convention last week and it got me thinking. Not so much about politics ironically, but a lot about my relationship with men…

In watching Michelle Obama at the Convention she spoke with passion as she referred to her husband. She seemed to speak of him not simply as a political leader but as a person in whom she steadfastly believes. When President Obama speaks of the First Lady it is with both a humble and proud acknowledgement of the powerful woman that is his wife. He acknowledges her without unnecessary exaggeration. His stance is clear.

When I see the Obama’s I see a man and a woman in love. Yet even more than that, these are two people who seem to really like each other, to believe in each other, and as old-fashioned as this sounds, they honor each other.

Now, I am not particularly proud to admit this but for a long time, the idea of honoring a man would have resulted in a sarcastic chortle from me. “Honor a man? Yeah, right.” That seemed so submissive. What would I do once I gave someone else all of that control?

Let’s just say that this is one of those situations in which the lady doth protest too much.

When you look up the word, to honor, one connotation of the word is to worship and this aversion for honoring men is likely a reaction from having spent years worshipping them. Let me correct that, I haven’t worshipped men. These men didn’t get to be men. I fashioned them into heroes, heroes who repeatedly buckled under the continual pressure to satisfy my agenda. I didn’t want them to be heroes for themselves. I wanted them, even thought I needed them, to be a hero for me. I wanted them to fill the gaps and be for me all that I wasn’t being for myself.

That was before I understood what it meant to honor someone. In order to honor another person, I first had to learn to honor myself. You see, another definition of the word to honor is, to regard with great respect.

I had to learn to hold with regard and respect not just the parts of me that are easy to like and of which I’m proud. I had to learn to respect the parts of that have released into crash and burn under my own disappointment after self-perceived failures. I had to learn to look at myself as a whole and to take myself fully for exactly who I have been as well as the woman I have become.

It is only through learning to honor myself, to regard myself with great respect, that I now have the ability to honor another person. Now, when people are around me, they get to be exactly who they are and who they are not. People get to live their lives for themselves, exactly as they choose. No longer are men used to fulfill my personal agenda. No longer are men fashioned into heroes.

Because after all, men aren’t meant to be worshiped….

They are meant to be respected.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

It’s 6:30 pm and I’m sitting on the floor with the pieces of the grill in front of me.  The kids want to cook out but that’s not going to happen if I can’t put this thing together pretty fast.

“Screw…big washer…little washer…nut. Wait? Is that right?”

“Why do the washers have to be different sizes?”  I thought as I look from the packet of assorted screws, washers and nuts to the diagram in front of me back to the collection of metal parts at my lap.

I continue to fumble with the different grill parts.  About fifteen minutes go by and I have one of the handles successfully attached to the side of the grill.

“OK”, I think to myself, “Three more to go.  Maybe the next three will go faster now that I have the hang of it.”

Half way through attaching the second handle my friend says to me, “Are you wanting to do that all by yourself?”

“No! (I half-lie) “I hate doing stuff like this!” (I half-lie again)

He chuckles and comes over to me.  I watch as he works, handing him parts of the grill as he asks for them.  In about seven minutes he has the grill completely constructed.

All at once I feel anxious for having given up my thinly veiled, “I-can-do-it-myself-I-don’t-need-you” stance and that sense of peace and relief I feel when I am being taken care of by a man.

And therein lies the old conflict…”I can do it myself.  Come rescue me.”

Maybe the conflict isn’t quite as strong as that anymore, but there was certainly a time in my life when it existed just like that.  Now, the conflict resides in me more like, “I have been doing all of this by myself for so long that now it feels weak to give some of it away.”

The great irony is there was a big part of me that had wanted to simply ask, “Will you please put this together?” – without my having to touch one washer, large or small.  I wanted him to be his manly self and put the damn grill together without my having to do it.

When I first became single, it was a thrill to be the one to get to hammer the nails in the walls.  It was an act of freedom to climb on my own roof and clean my own gutters. But I have been cleaning those gutters for a while now.  And I have been vacuuming up the water that floods my basement when I don’t clean them.

But this isn’t about wanting a man around the house to do home maintenance that I don’t want to do any more.  It is about a lot more than that.

That Sunday night, I enjoyed the simple pleasure of being a woman, being taken care of by a man.  And once I allowed it all to happen, I enjoyed it.

As I watched my friend put the grill together, there was a certain order to life.  There was comfort in those old, familiar roles that men and women know how to step into. There was tenderness in the moment — in one person giving to another and the other person giving back by receiving — without a loss of independence and without a loss of pride.

And as I clean up from dinner that he cooked on the grill, I hear a familiar sound come from the family room.  “Oh my God.  Is he vacuuming?”  I peak in the room to see if it is true; and there he is, pushing the vacuum.  I’m all at once shocked, touched, and turned on.  I smile remembering the old joke that there is no greater aphrodisiac than a man pushing a vacuum.

For the third time in one evening, I am reminded of what is possible between men and women when we let each other in and allow ourselves to care for and be taken care of by each other.  I counted my blessings for having learned how to receive and to have a friend in my life who so willingly gives.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

My daughter has been “testing the limits” lately.   Even though this is a normal thing for kids to do, it is really unusual for her and has caught me off guard.

It all started a couple of weeks ago.  She had a friend over and seemed to do the exact things that she knew she wasn’t supposed to do — and had never done before.

How I responded was not my best parenting moment.  I took the whole thing personally.

“Why is she doing this to me?”

What followed wasn’t a loving teaching moment between mother and daughter in which I guided her development and maturation.  It was a good old-fashioned scolding — the kind that even when it was happening I knew I was going down the wrong path and saying things that I would later regret.  The kind in which I was being so righteous, it later took me not one, but two conversations to clean things up completely.

A couple of weeks went by and we hosted another sleep over for she and a friend at our house.  In the generous way that life does, I was offered another parenting-growth “opportunity.”  My daughter stepped over the line again; perhaps even a little bit farther than last time.

Did I react and get angry?  Absolutely.  But something was different.

After the parenting debacle of the previous week, I had made a commitment to myself.  The commitment was to not take her “testing” personally, and above all to not punish her for doing just the kind of thing that kids do when they are learning, growing, and expanding.  That doesn’t mean I don’t want to guide her actions and choices when she’s acting out, but that there’s truly an opportunity to make a difference for her when my focus is on her and not on myself.

So this past weekend through my anger I remembered the commitment I made to myself and to my relationship with her.  Even though I was mad, I actually reacted less and listened more.  I made it less about me and my feelings and more about finding out what is going on with her.  I helped her think through the choices she was making; starting from the first moment her choice occurred to her as a bad idea, to the unintended possible consequences for having overridden her gut instinct.  In the end, she took responsibility for her choices and reparation was made.

The magical moment though came as the weekend was winding down.   My daughter came to me and said that she had taken some time and imagined what it might be like for me to be a parent.  She put her arms around my neck and told me I am a good mom.

In that moment I saw from the outside in what it is to put oneself aside and to get into another person’s world.  I was touched by her generosity, maturity, and the understanding she offered me; and I had one of those moments I am so familiar with in being her mom in which I wished I were just like her.

In that moment I saw “testing the limits” from a new perspective. My daughter is testing the limits of what she knows about herself and the world in all ways. Sometimes that might be challenging for us both, and other times it is miraculous. I’m still learning the lessons she’s currently giving herself by testing her limits.  She knows what it is to put oneself aside, to get into another person’s world, and to offer them acceptance and understanding.

I read this article to my daughter to get her feedback, before allowing it to be published. Her response to it was as follows: “I love it. You finally understand me.”

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

The other day a friend asked me one of those interesting, philosophical-questions that don’t really have an answer. She asked, “When you are dead, what will you remember about this life?” Immediately what came to mind were scenes from my bed…

I’m seven years old looking out the window of my childhood bedroom on a hot summer night convinced I see a spaceship with circular, rotating, colorful lights flying by…

I am 16 years old, a jangling bundle of adolescent angst and frustration, staring at the Duran Duran poster that hangs on the dormer wall above my head unable to fall asleep…”I’m on the ride and I want to get off, but they won’t slow down the round about,” I sing softly to myself…

I am sitting on the bed in my college dorm with its thin mattress and spiral metal bed frame, chattering with my roommates and smoking cigarettes out the window that overlooks Washington Square Park. My roommates tease me strutting around the room, “Hey! I am Cristin Carr Whiting! Who the hell are you?” “I don’t do that!” I protest. “Yes you do!” they laugh back…

I am lying in bed, talking on the phone into the wee hours, in my first solo apartment after college. I laugh out loud when the L passes so close to my apartment that I can’t hear what my friend is saying for all of the noise…

I am a new mother. I feel the skin of her tiny body against mine. I feel the pull of her contented suck on my breast, the tiny scratch of her nails on my skin and I smell that no-words-for-it smell of her baby head as I drift in and out of sleep…

I am lying awake, with the house so still, my gaze steady on the wedding picture that remains on our bedroom wall even though we don’t live together any more. The feeling of loss and grief fills the night…

I wake up to a sunny morning sprawled horizontally on my bed, claiming it all as my own, perfectly and deliciously happy in solo, indulgent slumber. I smile into my pillow…

My lips rest on his back. My pelvis cups his body. The front of my legs meet up to the back of his as our breath falls together in sleepy rhythm…

Just weeks ago, I cuddle my two children in a crowded bed the night before they go away to camp for the first time, a brief moment to cocoon together before they spread their wings…

It is funny to think that our beds can tell the story of our lives: of dreams disappointed and realized, of love lost and found, of selves newly discovered and recovered to dream new dreams…

What stories of your life would your bed tell?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Why is it so hard to ask for what you really want? …… …………………… …………………….

Everyone has had the experience…

Maybe you want a raise or a promotion at work. Maybe you have admired someone for a long time and you want to move your relationship from a friendship to a romance, or maybe you want a certain kind of physical affection from your partner. (Let’s face it money, love and sex are the big places where most of us get stuck.)

At first blush, asking for what you really want takes bravery or courage. Even with the most artfully phrased and well-reasoned requests, you still can’t be certain what response you will get. Yet, while the element of uncertainty is part of why people get so tripped up when it comes to asking for what they want, there is more to it than that…

To ask for what you really want, requires vulnerability. Being vulnerable is something most of us avoid. Even more potent than risking an uncertain conclusion, is risking exposing that which one’s heart, mind or body desires most.

For some, being vulnerable is akin to being weak; a weakness that is born out of fear that the other person may now have an “upper hand” and a power imbalance has been created in the relationship, particularly if participation from the other person is desired to bring something to fruition. Perhaps Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails said it more emphatically than most of us will admit out loud when he sang the lyrics, “I’d rather die than give you control.” But when you look at how people are about being vulnerable in relationships, what he stated wasn’t so far from the truth.

And that is where trust comes in. Trust is that other emotion along with vulnerability that makes people squirm in their seats. It is trust that balances the uncertainty of the outcome with some sense of safety in making the request in the first place.

When it comes to feeling safe and secure, people fall into thinking that security has something to do with the other person. You may have noticed that qualities about the other person are sometimes used as an excuse for not making a request: “They’ll never go for it.” “They’ll just say no.” “They won’t understand me.”

The truth of the matter is that the sense of safety or security ironically comes less from the other person than it comes from oneself. It is that trust in oneself that says, “I am who I am and whether I get a “Yes” or I get a “No”. I am still me.” That is what is called having a sense of oneself as whole and complete. Whether the boss agrees that you are ready for the promotion, whether your friend returns your romantic affection, or whether or not your partner is interested in learning the art of the Venus Butterfly, your sense of yourself is not negatively affected. In fact, it is through honoring your wants and desires by making the request, that your sense of your self, your real Self grows.

So to come full circle, what it takes to have that kind of trust is in fact courage. Courage to make the request and trust in knowing that you are complete and even emboldened to be your true Self, regardless of what happens next.

What is it that your heart, mind and body desire most?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

When my children were born I started a journal for each of them with the intention of capturing the stories and moments of their early years as they were happening.  I wanted them to have a record of the small details that make up their life; the details that are so easily forgotten even though nothing could be more magnificent in the moment in which it is happening.

This past Sunday, I returned late in the day from dropping my children off for their first- ever week away at camp.  I sat in front of my computer to begin writing my lectures for the week and my eyes fell on the journals stacked on my desk.  I opened up my son’s journal and looked for the last entry.  It had been four years since I had written in it.

Four years?  Where has the time gone?

Shock and disbelief.

I turned to a fresh page in the journal and wrote to him once again.

I told him how hard it is to believe that he is old enough to go away to camp.  In the previous week I suddenly had to catch myself up to meet him at the place into which he had grown: a seven year old ready to be away from home for a week without his parents.  I told him how much fun I knew he would have and how easily I saw him blending in with the other kids as his dad and I made up his bunk together to settle him into his cabin.

As I wrote to him, I remembered something from my own childhood.  My Mom’s eyes filled with tears when we dropped my sister off at college for the first time and my own eyes welled up with thinking how quickly that day will come with my own children.

Then I turned back to the beginning of the journal and I skimmed through my earlier entries.  As I read, I was struck by how few of the memories I was able to initially remember and then felt the rush of images, sensations and feelings coming back that were captured in the pages.  I flashed forward to my son at 17 reading those old stories about himself and felt so glad to have recorded them for him.  I imagined him smiling at his sweet, adorable baby-self and hopefully feeling loved that his mom recorded those moments.

Bridge Builders, what moments of your life (or someone else’s) will you want to remember years from now?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Last week I turned lemons into lemon aide…

Not literally, though making lemonade has been a favorite thing to do with my kids this summer. A couple of times a month we get about four bags of lemons and roll them out on the table on our back porch; then we take turns squeezing their juice into a big glass bowl. There is usually lemon juice everywhere—all over the table, in our hair, and running up and down our arms as we work. After all of the lemons are squeezed, we begin the time-honored process of getting just the right balance between sour and sweet. It is a tradition we have just started this summer but one that reaches back in time for generations of mothers making lemon aide with their children.

That brings me to the point of my story…

I live not far from Wake Forest University where I teach part time. For months now driving back and forth to work I have thought to myself that I should get a bike to ride to work rather than drive.

I had nostalgic visions of centuries of college professors riding bikes through pastoral scenes to equally beautiful college campuses. The distance between my house and Wake Forest is perfect for a bike ride: too short to justify driving but too long to walk. There are even manicured trails that connect my neighborhood to campus so there is virtually no need to ride on busy streets.

But months went by since the thought first came to me and I never bought a bike.

Then last week my car needed to go into the shop for a few days and I still had to get to work, so I decided that the time had arrived to buy myself a bike.

My first day of riding the bike was less than romantic. I had barely gotten out of my neighborhood before the thought crossed my mind that perhaps this had been a very bad idea. As it turns out, I am pretty out of shape and there are hills between my house and Wake that I had never noticed before.

But when I got to the top of the first hill and I began coasting down with the wind in my face. The speed of my bike picked up with ease and I instinctively began to peddle backwards just as I did when I was a kid…and I smiled.

Life is a lot like lemonade… and a lot like riding bikes. With the bitter there is the sweet. With the effort of every up uphill, there is the jubilation of making it to the crest and there is the freedom and ease of coasting home.

What is old is new again. When’s the last time you made lemonade?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

I’ve taken on a new practice lately of being present.

This is something I have done before. How it has gone in the past has been something like this: I’ve walked around almost as if on eggshells with a cautious serenity-the kind that says, “Here I go, I am being serene and present now. This is my new thing. No one do or saying anything to ruffle my feathers, please!”

What I am finding now is that being present isn’t always so serene. In fact, it can have a raw feel to it. There are moments of heartbreaking beauty, like sitting with an old friend and being present to my love for her. I had the opportunity to spend time last week with one of my closest friends who I now get to see only about every year and a half. We first met in college and together have experienced the wanderings and victories of college and early adulthood together. We’ve experienced each other’s heartbreak and each other’s weddings, though in different orders for each of us. We’ve held each other, both literally and metaphorically, through the birth of children and the death of parents. Last week we sat together once again and our children played around us. As I looked at her across our mugs of tea, my heart ached because I never could have known how much she would come to mean to me, that first day of class in college when I asked her name, nearly a quarter of a century ago.

With the moments of beauty there are also moments of feeling assaulted by the reality of the present. Let’s face it… it ain’t always pretty being present. That is probably why most of us avoid it so much.

Being present I see how I’ve grown numb in some relationships and have allowed myself to fade off into La La Land to avoid the discomfort or hurt of the present. To be present is to have to deal with what is not working and to have to make choices I have been avoiding by not being present.

It turns out that the problem with the present also happens to be its gift: You can’t not know what you know, once you become present to it. To be present is to presence ones self… one’s true self without the ego interfering and trying to get things to be different than they are. To be present is to accept what is and what isn’t and to simply let it be.

Sometimes the present is beautiful and sometimes, if you let it be, it is an AFGE…You know, Another “Flipping” Growth Experience, which can also be beautiful once I stop trying to get it to be something else.

So, yes, being present doesn’t mean to go around in a perfectly preserved casing and not reacting to what is. Rather, it is to be fully connected to and engaged in life as it is actually happening vs. in my fantasy of how I wish it were happening.

Bridge Builders, the hour is now! What AFGE awaits you in the present?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

I read a quote from Osho recently that I really like, “You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love.”

As I travel along in life, I see that one of the biggest obstacles I have in experiencing love and freedom, is always hoping something better will come along — some better person, some better moment, some better anything.  Even though I know better, I so easily slip into that bad, cocktail party behavior in which I look past the proverbial shoulder of the moment that I am in to see if there is a better moment about to walk into my life.

The joyful moments of putting giggly kids to bed at night are interrupted by my rushing to the next activity: writing, a phone call, cleaning the kitchen; the joy of teaching this summer gets lost in the shadow of new professional project that I am eager to develop in the fall.

I see how I treat right now. I treat right now as if it is the moment that comes just before the moment I have been waiting for.  In actuality, right now is Right. Now. There is nothing to change, nothing to improve upon, and nothing to wish away.  Said another way, here and now is the “then and there” that I was striving to get to just a short time ago.

Take this moment. This moment is taking place at 11:38 p.m. on a very steamy Saturday night.  The temperature in my house is about 88 degrees and the air conditioner just can’t keep up with this summer heat wave.  We’ve dug out the fans from the basement and they are strategically placed around the house to give the illusion of cool.  My doors and windows are open because it is now cooler outside than it is in my house.

It would be so easy to complain about my hot house and the impending bill I see coming this week to fix my air conditioner.  But if I did that I would miss out on the fact that this is the moment I have been waiting for.  You see, growing up in New England, we did not have central air and every summer since I have been living in the South I wax nostalgic for the feeling of breeze blowing through windows and watching curtains dance in the evening air; I quickly tire of moving from one controlled-environment building to another as we do in the South.  Humid or not, I enjoy the feeling of the natural air on my skin.  And lucky me I have it, right now.

So now I am reminded to not just allow each moment to be just as it is, but to also allow the people in my life to be just as they are.

An old boyfriend used to say to me, “You and I will stop fighting once we accept each other and stop trying to control each other.”  He was right, except I didn’t see it until after our push-and-pull romance transformed into a steady friendship based in acceptance.   What I know now that I didn’t know then is the cost to a relationship of trying to control it and trying to regulate its non-domesticate-able freedoms.  Love can only grow when it is allowed to be impermanent. Impermanence doesn’t mean something has to end.  It simply means to accept that love is always in a state of flux and that is a good thing.  It is through impermanence that love can transform into its most authentic expression between two people, an expression that can grow richer when it is graced with the freedom to evolve over time.

So, once again, I’ve learned that freedom and love truly exist by being fully present in each moment and by accepting the glory of exactly what (temporarily) is.

Bridge Builders, what freedom and love do you see available to you when you accept that right now is Right. Now?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Today as I drove to work my spirit was open in a way that it has not been for some time. I felt free and light, possibilities swoomed around me like fragrant flowers. I could actually smell happiness, love, grief and loss. The ambrosia had me heady as if I had drank champagne. I had my windows rolled down and was listening to the sweet sounds of a woman singing about loneliness and the moon her voice crooned to the melodic twangs of an acoustic guitar. I turned my radio up loud and felt embraced and nurtured. I was the me the universe intended me to be and my battle scars from a life hard lived seemed to turn from scabs to diamonds, rubies, sapphires, turquoise that glittered and gleamed brilliantly on my skin. I was full and overflowing I felt I could weep and yell a warriors guttural victory cry all at once.

I saw a bus with steel bars up to its darkened windows and the words “North Carolina Division of Corrections Prison Transport” written on the side and could see bodies of people pressed up against the slight openings meant to vent outside air inside the bus. They seemed like caged birds hungry for fleeting fumes of freedom and I wanted to speed up to ride alongside the bus turn my radio up louder so they could catch a breeze of freedom like the aroma of a neighbors cook out in the summertime and have it as a keepsake during their days of incarceration.

I couldn’t catch the bus but have the memory of their life essence stretching itself against the constraints of its confinement. Life is meant to grow and blossom and will in spite of horrible circumstances and unfertile soil. I am a tiny flower breaking through the crack in sidewalk cement.

Life is possibility. ……………                                               …………..                              ………….

This essay was created by Teri Hariston, a writer, poet and truth-teller who lives in Winston-Salem, NC.  Teri is moved by the compliment of opposites as they unfold in life, love, and as exhibited by humankind’s inhumanity towards itself.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Teri’s bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

If I lived my life by the way things were supposed to go…

I would have not made the effort to have a good relationship with my ex-husband. When a couple breaks up, their relationship tends to stay frozen as if someone had taken a snapshot of it in that emotional time and place. Unless a couple makes a conscious choice to continue to work on their friendship, their relationship forever rests in that place of hurt and disappointment. My ex-husband and I chose a different path. As I write this I am looking forward to having lunch with him, his wife, and our children to celebrate both Father’s Day and my birthday.

If I lived my life by the way it is supposed to go, I would not be able to call my ex-husband’s wife my friend. She would have remained for me what she was when she first came into our lives: someone I thought was a threat to my relationship with my children. Who she is for me today is a partner in raising our children. And she’s also my fitness coach. She is someone whose very presence in my life has taught me how to expand what I know about love and how to trust someone despite what the old familiar script dictates.

If I had lived life the way it is supposed to go, I would not be able to call my ex-boyfriend my best friend. We would have parted ways, wishing each other well and perhaps touching base on Christmas or birthdays the way old lovers do. Instead he is my biggest supporter and the inspiration behind much of what I write. He continues to be a teacher to me about love and relationships, even though we are no longer a couple.

If I had lived life the way it was supposed to go, I would have not started writing blog posts about my life and about my relationships. I would have kept private matters private and been more discrete. Now, after writing articles for two years, my writing has been featured on multiple websites and what I write is shared around the world. I will submit my first book for publication by August and I am creating a career that includes public speaking to empower the choices we make about sexuality, love and relationships.

With all that extraordinary living, there are still boundaries yet to be broken. There are still unexpected futures to create. That will only happen by ignoring the stream of narration in my own head that says, “That isn’t going to work out,” “You don’t know what you are doing,” “You can’t trust people,” and even, “What makes you think you are better than anybody else?”

Sometimes, like every week (sometimes every day) those conversations stop my progress. I put a project aside I was really excited about just the day before. I get busy doing work with which I am comfortable and tell myself I will get to the projects that break new ground when I finish the other projects. I might even pick a fight just to throw that beautiful and uncomfortable experience of success and peace off track.

And then I stop and I realize that those movies that I had been playing in my head — where my work was rejected or even laughed at, where arrogance stopped me from seeing a flaw in my work, or where I had trusted someone who turned out to be besting me all along — are just that. They are movies in my head in which I am the writer, director and producer. Those things aren’t really happening and likely won’t happen. I had made it all up. None of it is true.

So I stop the movie. Then I send my work in to Oprah to consider for her magazine. I call my friend in humility. I share the dreams I am creating for my life with anyone who will listen, no matter how outlandish it sounds to me as I hear myself speak this future into existence — and then I do the things I need to do to create the future that was never supposed to happen if I had kept on living life the way it was supposed to go.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

What if everything that you thought was true was not?

As strange as this may sound, I have been actively and intentionally asking that question lately. “What if all of the old assumptions I had made about life, love, success, relationships and even myself were simply not true.” What then?

Upon exploring this idea, the first thing I saw was how much of what I thought I knew is really borrowed knowledge. Knowledge, or even simply just assumptions held over from past generations about “the way things are” and “the way things are not”. When I looked, I saw how I’ve limited my life by borrowing that knowledge from the past.

In some ways, it makes a lot of sense to live that way. It is hardly efficient to reinvent all of what I think I know about life. If fact, it can be down right trippy and at times pretty disorienting to question the nature of reality and to ask the question, “What is?” But that is what I am doing. There is one area of life where I have put a lot of time and attention, and it is the area that I am currently questioning the most, and that is the area of love and relationships.

During my exploration into “What is,” I’ve discovered that I’ve been on autopilot in terms of how I approach relationships. I’ve been a single mom for over six years now and I spent most of those six years thinking I either wanted to be, or that I should be, in a relationship. I told myself that my kids want a two-parent home and that a two-parent home is somehow innately better than our already-happy trio. I’ve spent a lot of time imagining that marriage is what other people want for me. I’ve also convinced a lot of people that marriage is a big goal for me. In return I’ve gotten a considerable amount of sympathy from people because I haven’t been in a relationship headed for married bliss.

What I now see though is that I have been single for six years not because I haven’t found Mr. Right, or because there is something not right about me. I have been single mostly because I really like being single. OK, that doesn’t say it. I LOVE BEING SINGLE. I love it. I love the freedom I have as a single woman and I love the trio that is my family. I love that when my kids are with their dad and stepmom that I live alone and that I really don’t have any accountabilities or obligations to anyone. I don’t have to share space at the bathroom sink or room on the coach, unless I want to invite someone into that space.

I love being free to invite into that space whomever I want to be there; and who is there is all based on choice and never obligation or assumption — even if I make that same choice week after week, month after month, or even year after year.

This is about more than living a bachelorette life—though it would be easy to have this conversation devolve down into that. What I am talking about is really the nature of love.
What I have seen is that, not only do I relish independence and freedom I also highly value love and meaningful companionship.

In the last six years I have been lucky enough to have the companionship of men who have meant a great deal to me. However, I was so busy at the time thinking I wanted something else (marriage), that I did not appreciate the considerable amount of love, joy, sensuality, friendship—and yes, even commitment—that they brought into my life.

What I now see is that love has nothing to do with the relationship status that one announces to the world in the old familiar ways with a ring on one’s figure, or in the contemporary cyber way, by changing one’s status on Facebook. What I see is that true love transcends those labels and structures and the expectations that come with them. When I allow love to take the course that love wants to take, beautiful connections with others get created. Connections that transcend anything that I thought was possible when I thought my family, relationships and love were supposed to look a certain way.

Bridge Builders, this is the story about what happened when I let go of my old assumptions about what love is, what a “relationship” is, and even who am I. What would be possible in your life if everything you thought were true was not?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

There has been a conversation running in the background of my life and I didn’t even realize it. It goes like this: “You Are MISSING IT!”

What am I missing? Maybe I am missing everything, maybe I am missing nothing, but what the conversation points to is my never-ending battle with time.

As I look at my children grow, the passage of time is so apparent. They grow like weeds. There they stand before me like smiling, bronzed-skinned, beautiful beanpoles with sun bleached hair tousled on their heads. Another school year ends and another summer is about to begin.

I stopped with a jolt the other day! Is my daughter really about to start the fourth grade in a couple of months?! With a quick calculation I realized that means that she will begin middle school in a couple of years. Holy Cow. Where did the time go?

Seemingly overnight gaggles of girls are calling my cell phone leaving messages for my daughter and there are three-way phone calls taking place in which they talk about who knows what? Can this really be starting already? Not only can it be starting already. It has started already. And if I spend much time worrying about what is to come or how fast it is going, I will miss what is here right now.

The passage of time also shows up in the mirror when I look into it. I saw “Snow White and The Huntsman” this weekend. I joked to my friend that one day I will turn into the evil queen as I look in the mirror and bellow with my fist raised in the air, “MY BEAUTY HAS FADED!” Yes, it will fade. As my children’s physical beauty grows, mine will fade. And that is as it is supposed to be, another reminder of the passage of time. Trying to do anything but accept it will have me miss that the beauty that radiates from within me, sourced by happiness, which is what truly makes anyone beautiful anyway. It’s just that it has taken me this much time to figure that out.

Then I look to my career. I have dreams of being an international guru who speaks on the topic of human sexuality. Even though I have made advances in my career, the dream I have for my career is not the particular path I am on at the moment. “There isn’t time,” I tell myself. “There isn’t time to raise children, to have a home and develop a career on that level.”

Yet, that phrase is so silly, “There isn’t time”. Actually, there is time. All there is is time. And at this moment, in order for that dream to happen, I need to claim that this time is my time to make that dream come true. Dreams don’t come true saying that “There isn’t time”. They come true by seizing the moment, moment by moment. Because in each moment, there is time.

We don’t enjoy our children’s childhoods by fretting about how fast the time is going by.
We don’t reflect real beauty by worrying over youthful standards of beauty. We don’t make our dream careers a reality by saying there isn’t time to have that dream.

Yes, unless I claim this time as my time, I will miss it all. I will miss it all because I thought that I was out of time.

Bridge Builders, what do you tell yourself you have missed out on? The hour is now! We are the ones!

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

At the end of last semester, I couldn’t help but spoon out a little life advice to my college students.  Some were leaving campus for the summer and some were leaving campus for good.  I couldn’t help but weave lessons about life and relationships into our lessons about the psychology of personality.  I couldn’t help but try to impart to them the lessons that it took me twenty more years to learn, but that I wish I had known at the age of 19.

Granted, some of these lessons are really about living by the Golden Rule.  They are lessons that most of us learn in kindergarten but can take much longer to truly live.  They are lessons that may best be learned through trial and error and even through suffering the necessary losses that come when we don’t learn those lessons.  Sometimes, life really is our best teacher.  And sometimes, someone says the right thing at the right time, and the lesson gets through anyway.

Here is what I told them.

I told them to be sure to let the people with whom they have shared this past year know how much they have meant to them.  To acknowledge and appreciate the people without whom, this past year of study and self-discovery at Wake Forest would not have been possible.  I urged them to let go of grudges they have held onto with friends and roommates, the origins of which they probably can’t remember anyway (this was met with knowing laughter).  I told them to peace up with their parents before they go home if they have been on the outs with them.  That way, their summer homecoming can be a peaceful reunion, not one that is anticipated with apprehension or dread.

I told them that now is the time to complete the semester as they had intended to perform throughout the entire semester.  That regardless to how they performed academically up to that point that right now they could be the student they had originally set out to be or–  to even exceed what they ever thought was possible for themselves.

“End this year well.” I told them, “So you can begin well whatever comes next for you.”

Finally, I told them not to assume that there would be another chance to do these things because they don’t know that there will be.

Rather than meeting my “words of wisdom” with rolled eyes and patient attention, these lessons were met with earnest listening.  I could see the expression on their faces expand with the knowledge that they have every say in how the rest of their semester goes, in how their relationships go, and truly, how their life goes.

Bridge Builders, how do you live these lessons in your own life?  The hour is now!  We Are The Ones!

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Here we are, rounding out the end of May and nearly six months into 2012. The year is almost half over!  In January, you probably made a vow to yourself that this year would be the year that you would have a breakthrough. You were dreaming big about an area in your life is important to you.  So how’s that going? Are you doing what it takes to achieve your goals and your dreams? Do you have the results you want?

At the start of the year I declared I would have a breakthrough in financial security and in health and well-being.  I have made definite improvements in these areas.  With my finances I have increased my income, decreased my spending and even paid down some debt.  In regard to my well-being, I quit smoking, began an exercise program, and made a few adjustments in my diet. I also made changes in my social group by letting go of a relationship or two that did not work for me, and I’ve made new friends with whom I am compatible.

With all this change, I’ve noticed something interesting. There is a difference between making improvements in your life and really transforming it.

So what is the difference between improving something and truly transforming it? Improvements happen on a behavioral level. You change your behaviors and you either have more of something or less of something. And that is all good.  In fact it is great.  Having more or less of something is one way that we measure if we have been successful in achieving results.

What is it to transform something then? For me, it’s about not just changing my actions to produce a certain result, it’s more about creating a new relationship with that area of my life.

This isn’t just creating a new habit.  I am talking about something more than that.  What I am seeing in my own life is that my behaviors with money and wellness are sourced by my relationship with those areas of life (e.g., I keep my word in those areas as long as it isn’t too hard, or as long as I’d rather not do something else, or as long as someone else doesn’t want/need me to do something else that creates a conflict with my commitment).  In the end, my relationships to those areas of my life are really just reflections of my relationship with myself: how I think about myself, how I feel about myself and how I treat myself.

What I have seen over these last six months is that I have had to get straight with myself to truly bring order to these areas of my life. That’s because it’s my relationship with myself that is the fuel for how I treat those other areas of my life.

I have had to choose powerfully.  Like never before, my Yes’s have meant yes and my No’s have meant no.  What I see is that each time my Yes and my No is in line with what I said I was committed to create in my life this year, my relationship with myself is restored and renewed.  Each time my Yes and No was in line with my commitment, I wasn’t just choosing my commitment, I was also choosing to be true to myself.

So what I have learned this year about creating a breakthrough in finances and a breakthough in well-being has actually been to transform my relationship with myself by creating loyalty: loyalty to my commitments, loyalty to my values and most of all, loyalty to myself.

Bridge Builders, what kind of progress are you making with those New Year’s Commitments you made with yourself?  Are you choosing powerfully so that you can have the life of your dreams?

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

One day at the end of this semester, I had an amazing conversation with my college students in class. I was talking with them about hunger in the U.S. We discussed the fact that, according to the web site FeedingAmerica.org, the total cost of hunger to American society is said to be about $90 billion a year. In contrast, it would only cost about $10 billion to $12 billion a year to virtually end hunger in our nation.

During that conversation, some of the students shared about their involvement in international hunger projects on campus at Wake Forest University.  Others then began to see what they had not seen before: the need for action against hunger in the U.S. and their ability to do something about it.  Days later some students shared with me that they had made plans to volunteer for various local hunger projects this summer because of our conversation in class. They saw a need. They saw their responsibility and the opportunity to make and difference in the world and they put action in place to do that, virtually over night.

I share this anecdote with you on the eve of college graduations all across this country.  Graduations, that with the toss of a cap in the air, propel students out into the world at large to become fully participating members of society.

When Pomp And Circumstance rings its last note, these young people start their adventure into the adult world, many of them on their own for the first time. These amazing human beings are full of life, new knowledge, and wanting to make a difference in the world. They are at a unique intersection of searching for their place in the world while at the same time brave with new knowledge and clear opinions and views. They are hungry to lead and are perhaps even hungrier to have adults in their life whom they can model themselves after.

So, as someone who was once their professor, I pass the baton to you. These students will be showing up in your places of work as new employees. It would be easy to pass them by, to think of them as too young to really know much or even too inexperienced to have much to contribute.  My request is that you put that aside and see them as I do.  See them for the miracles that they really are. See them as people who will one day be running your company, leading our government, and shaping the world in which we live. Take interest in their development; take interest in their lives.  Teach them as their professors have done and their parents did before that. Be the leader they are looking for, allow them to  learn from your example and join them in making world a better place.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

So take a few minutes, have some fun, share the love, and then share this link https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JSY3V5H with your friends so they can do the same.  ……………………………………………..    ……

And if you feel inclined to send a little love our way… we have a few voting suggestions for you : )  Thank you in advance for all the support you’ve sent us over the past few years.  We love you guys!!!

#8. Best Local Blog/Web Site:  MyBridges.net and/or ImaginationInstallations.com

#9. Local Facebook Group or Page:  MyBridges ………………………………………………    ……

#10. Local Twitter Feed: @MyBridgesNet

#86. Public Art Display:  Dream Tent by ImaginationInstallations.com at Earth Day Fair in April.  See some fun photos here if you want to learn more about Winston-Salem’s new, grassroots, “dream collection” project.

Take the Smitty’s Notes Survey here

This weekend I went to the Gallery Hop in downtown Winston-Salem. It was a gorgeous night. People filled the streets from Fourth to Trade and back again. Families milled in and out of the galleries and shops. Coquettishly dressed young women flirted with men at the outdoor cafes and patio bars that line Fourth Street. Same sex couples walked hand in hand down the street. Lady Gaga pulsed into the night as college students entered the new restaurant/club Encore, waved-in by drag queens with batted eye lashes who welcomed them through the doors.

Wait a minute… same sex couples, college students, drag queens, packed downtown streets?

Oh yes… this isn’t the dull, rollup the sidewalks after 5:00 pm downtown Winston of ten years ago anymore.

Always easily lured by a good rhythm calling me to dance, I ventured into Encore where a free event was being thrown to bring public awareness to vote against Amendment One this Tuesday, May 8th. As I moved to the music on what was one of the most crowded dance floors I have seen in Winston Salem in sometime, a thought came to mind. That thought was, “We Are The Ones!”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Amendment One, it is a proposed amendment to the NC State Constitution that if it passes, would ban ANY type of domestic civil unions other than those created through a traditional marriage. This includes the thousands and thousands of long-term partnerships between women and men in North Carolina who have children together, in addition to gay couples. As demonstrated by the same-sex couples walking hand in hand on Friday evening, banning gay domestic partnerships from the constitution does not stop it from happening. It does not stop two hearts from coming together to form a family.

However, it does stop committed partners (straight and gay) from being able to take care of each other. Amendment One would prevent commitment couples from being able to make medical, financial and other important life decisions on behalf of each other in a time of need.

In researching about Amendment One, I learned that North Carolina remains the only US southern state that does not have a constitutional amendment banning same sex unions. As I read that I felt all at once very proud of our State for having that distinction—and concerned for how easily we could become just like all the rest. On May 8th there is a very powerful opportunity for the state of North Carolina to distinguish itself. There is the opportunity to say, We Are The Ones to protect the constitutional rights of families, no matter their shape or form.

How do you do that? First, you vote against Amendment One on Tuesday, May 8th. Also, please share this post on your Facebook page, along with this wonderful video where republicans, democrats, clergy, business leaders and everyday people from all persuasions talk about why they are voting NO. Email the info to your friends. Share it with anyone that you know for whom voting against Amendment One would make a difference. Chances are, that includes more people than you think! Every vote will count tomorrow. YOUR vote matters. We are the Ones.

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

Even though I have two children, it is still sometimes hard for me to really know what it is like to be a kid today.

On some nights when my girlfriends come over, my daughter creeps out of bed and curls up on the couch with us.  She tells us about what she deals with at school.  She tells stories of harshness between children that far exceeds the social complexity of when I was in third grade.

My girlfriends routinely step in with sage advice.  Advice that I sometimes am unable to come up with on my own, as I listen to what my daughter has to say with my heart pounding in my chest.  Even for me, an “expert” in human behavior, it is sometimes hard to know whether to intervene or whether to let my daughter wade through these waters on her own for a bit. (Trust me when I say it is always easier to give advice about someone else’s kid!)

And then one day my daughter came home from school and she told me a different kind of story.  She told me that day at school she had decided that she “had enough.”   She told her teacher, “I am tired of kids at school being bullied and I am tired of being bullied.  I want to start a group where kids can go for help when they are feeling picked on.”

By the end of the day, my daughter had the alignment of all the third grade teachers at her school with her own teacher sponsoring the group.   In addition, eight other students signed up to provide support to their fellow students.  By the end of the week, the students had created profiles, through which they could be matched with students seeking support.

That was several months ago and since then much of the momentum behind the group has waned.  When I asked my daughter if it would be OK if I write a piece for Bridges about the group she said yes, but I later found her crying.  As I comforted her, she told me how disappointed she is that the group folded and that it is still important to her to help people.

I told her I am proud of her and that even though the group is no longer active she can still be there for people — one person at a time.  We talked about the boy who rides her bus who just lost his mom to cancer; how he could probably use a smile as he heads home after school with his mother no longer waiting for him.  We talked about how “helping” people also means starting at home and being the best big sister she can be.

This is my daughter.  This is a person who does not step over the suffering of others.  This is a person who does not play the victim in life or tolerate being mistreated by others.  This is a person who communicates what is important to her and advocates for what she believes to be right.  This is a powerful, beautiful person who, at nine years old, already knows how to declare, “I Am The One!”

I could not be more proud of her.

Bridge Builders, tell us about young people you know who are saying, “We Are The Ones!”

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

When I first moved to Winston-Salem from San Francisco ten years ago, people welcomed me to the area, and shared with me some of their favorite things about living here. They said that Winston-Salem has a great arts community (true); that Winston-Salem is centrally located and that you can enjoy a sunrise at that beach and a sunset in the mountains…all in the same day (also true); that this pastoral city is a great place to raise a family (true, true, true).  They left out one amazing quality however, something that in my book makes Winston-Salem a unique and extraordinary city. Its perhaps the best thing about this city… the soul of the city itself.  It is soul that says, We Are The Ones.  Let me show you what I mean…

Being able to dream big and to envision the future is essential to creating a vibrant city that’s evolving and growing. That’s what makes the Imagination Installation Project, and the people behind it, so special. The mission of this new grassroots initiative is to collect and share the dreams of everyday people in Forsyth County. The project took root in August of 2011 when Cheryl Schirillo brought together 23 people to brainstorm about the possibilities at Camino Bakery on 4th Street. Today more than 100 people are working together help our community Dream Big and Think Big. To learn more check out their web site at ImaginationInstallation.com or stop by their booth at Earth Day Fair, this Saturday, April 28th from 10:00 am-5:00 pm at the Dixie Classic Fair Grounds. Admission and parking are FREE and it is held rain or shine.

Extraordinary example number two is The RiverRun Film Festival which just completed its ten-day run in downtown Winston-Salem. For those of you not yet familiar with RiverRun, it is a non-profit cultural organization that seeks to create a deeper understanding of both film and people in our community, using the lens of international film. The Founders of RiverRun have worked hard to make the festival a community event, an event that expands each year, just as our community expands and develops. The festival is supported by a great many people: by the board of directors, by the filmmakers who fly in from all over the world to discuss their films, and by hundreds of sponsors who provide financial backing for the festival. As impressive as all of that is, it says nothing of the fact that the festival is also made possible by the dedicated commitment of 350 volunteers. Four people make up the year-round staff. Three hundred and fifty people volunteer each year and donate their time and their expertise. They say We Are The Ones to manifest arts and diversity in our community.

Another organization for you to know about, if you do not already, is Project Pearl. Melissa Ball and Fowler Ruffin founded Project Pearl in October 2011 as a non-profit organization to support adoptions at Forsyth County Animal Control. Project Pearl offers a unique contribution to the adoption of animals in our area with their “Lend A Lens” program. Through this program, local photographers take beautiful pictures of the animals that are available for adoption. The photographs capture the personality and unique qualities of the dogs, qualities that are sometimes otherwise overlooked in the shelter setting. Since the inception of the program in October, Project Pearl is responsible for the adoption of 463 animals and the adoptions at FCAC are on the rise!

These adoptions would not be made possible without the contribution of a cadre of volunteer board members, photographers, groomers, and other dedicated animal lovers who said We Are The Ones to support animal welfare in Forsyth County. To learn more about Project Pearl, you can find them on Facebook.

Bridge Builders, these are just three organizations that are collectively comprised of hundreds of people in our community that said We Are The Ones to make Winston-Salem a great place to live. What organization are you a part of that is an expression of your passion and what matters to you in our community?

Winston-Salem, We Are The Ones!

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on this essay click on the ““comments” button below Cris’ bio, or look for the white box at the bottom of the page. If you want more info, go here for step-by-step instructions.

This essay was created by Dr. Cristin Whiting, Psy.D: Triad Tribe author, clinical psychologist, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Articles from 2012 click here.

What I’m going to write next may sound a little dramatic, but stay with me: RiverRun changed my life. Just as every significant experience in my life changes me, even just a little, the experience of immersing myself in RiverRun caused a shift in me. The creative impact of all that talent and passion in our small city awakened me to my own unfulfilled dreams. Like most people, I want to have a voice in the world. Spending time with filmmakers and actors reminded me of the importance of the arts. As a writer, that reminder is no small gift.

RiverRun ended with a bang. Saturday night I attended the screening of Bright Star (directed by Jane Campion), starring Paul Schneider, (pictured above avec moi!) an Asheville native and UNCSA graduate. Paul was in attendance as he also received the RiverRun Emerging Master Award for his growing film career. I rolled in fairly late to the movie, spotted a seat about a third of the way down the aisle, and climbed over a very nice couple before sitting down. As I sank into my seat I realized Paul Schneider himself sat directly in front of me, surrounded by his whole family. Luck? Kismet? I don’t question these things. I just go with the flow.

After the movie, I met Paul and spent quite a bit of time chatting with Paul’s mom and dad, and petting his dog Leroy. It’s no small overstatement to say they were about the nicest people (and dog) I’ve ever met. The moment was a clear reminder that we are all just human beings, from the least of us to the most. We all start out people with dreams, filled with hope and self-doubt. The fulfillment of dreams arrives via hard work, a little luck, and a lot of risk-taking. During the Q&A, Paul remembered his first inspiration to become a filmmaker: Jane Campion’s earlier movie The Piano. When Jane Campion called Paul to audition for the role of Mr. Brown in Bright Star, his sense of overwhelm at the strangeness of fate struck a chord with me. It is a startling thing to experience the fulfillment of a vision, and always a small, welcome surprise when those we admire, admire us as well.

Meeting the filmmaker and star of the small indie film Pilgrim Song was no less affecting. The writer/director Martha Stephens (pictured above) is a whip-smart woman, another UNCSA grad, who’s chosen to live in West Virginia and make small films, passion projects. Her heart for filmmaking is apparent. Her decision to be an artist, and not an industry hack, inspiring. And her movie is tremendous. Affecting, funny, and real, it’s a coming of age story for a nearly middle-aged guy. Without a pat Hollywood ending, I was left wondering how his life and relationships turned out. Over dinner after the film, my friend and I discussed again and again what might have happened to the main character. Our imaginations sparked (thanks, Martha).

Here on the rainy Monday morning after the RiverRun finale, I reflect on what I’m taking away from these ten days of movie-going madness. There are several nuggets of wisdom gleaned from the conversations with the creative giants I met this week. These resonate with me the most:

Say what you have to say in your own unique voice. Don’t try to be anyone else.

Don’t isolate yourself. Connect with others and create community dreams. Make friends wherever you go.

Give up the hustle. Make space for life to unfold. Engage in the practice of allowing. Letting life unfold naturally results in the most amazing surprises.

With a strong vision, the work (though difficult) unfolds naturally. Trust your vision.

Don’t be desperate (true for creative work and relationships). Always have other irons on the fire. Cultivate many options and pick those that seem the best fit.

Creativity is a symphony of talents and voices. Lend your voice to that symphony. Be a part of the music.

So with this wisdom in my heart, I say goodbye to RiverRun for another year. Truly inspired and very tired, I return to my normal life. Until next April, when we’ll do it all again.

The MyBridges Crew (Cyndi & Cheryl) want to say a HUGE thank you to RiverRun International Film Festival for sponsoring our attendance at the festival. We had a great time blogging, taking pictures and posting on our Facebook and Twitter pages! You all do good work. And we’d also like to acknowledge the filmmakers of all the amazing movies we watched this year: One Night Stand, Detropia, See Girl Run, Found Memories, Queens of Country, The Fairy, Crazy Horse, Chasing Ice, Green, Wuthering Heights, The Art of Love, Bright Star, and Pilgrim Song. Thank you all for gracing our city with your talent.

For complete Bridges’ Coverage and Photos of 2012 RiverRun fun, click here.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs a writer, educator, and consultant who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. You can read more of her writing on her blog, The Sophia Project and in Skirt! Magazine. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing.

In life, we all hope for the “Hollywood ending” to our personal dramas. The broken dream that leads to an even better outcome. The lost job that results in career success and instant wealth. The broken heart that brings us to the doorstep of our true love. The perfect kiss in front of the perfect sunset.

In particular, the big studio movies hook us so firmly because the endings tend to be so satisfying, giving us everything we could want and more. While we all long for the Hollywood ending to our problems, real life is rarely so tidy. Even great gifts such as having a baby, falling in love, or landing the dream job bring new challenges. Life is change. The endings never really arrive, and we are always waking up to the next plot twist.

One of the things I love most about the RiverRun Film Festival, is that many of the films I saw last week  didn’t offer the perfect, satisfying ending. Many ended in unexpected ways, with loose ends still whipping around in the breeze. Green in particular left me hanging. A tense story about love and jealousy, Green ended about 15 minutes before a typical Hollywood film might. The characters’ stories were far from wrapped up, the dramatic climax yet to unfold. Since I saw the movie, I have played out possible endings over and over again in my imagination. What ultimately happened to the jealous woman and her patronizing boyfriend? What of the beautiful stranger who threatened the fabric of their relationship? How does it really end?

Similarly, the gorgeous Brazilian movie Found Memories left me full of questions. Did the young newcomer to this sleepy, dying village decide to stay? What happened to the relationships of the others? And why did it seem as if no one in the village ever seemed to die? Both of these movies play on my imagination even now. The writers and filmmakers invite me into their process, and long after the closing credits, we continue to create together.

This experience is what I love most about RiverRun. In my own life, I don’t seek the simple ending. How bored I would feel now, at 40, if the love, career, and life decisions of my 20s were the last I ever made. Our lives mirror the constant unfolding of our imaginations. Each day, as we learn new things and meet new people, we continuously rewrite the script.

Standing here in the middle of my life, I don’t want to know the ending yet. I don’t want my story to be predictable. I believe there are many, many characters and plot twists yet to come. I have no idea what they might be. But the unknown elements of the movie that is my life thrill me.

For complete Bridges’ Coverage and Photos of 2012 RiverRun fun, click here.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs a writer, educator, and consultant who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. You can read more of her writing on her blog, The Sophia Project and in Skirt! Magazine. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing.

……. ….. ……

Wow, what a whirlwind! The first weekend of the RiverRun International Film Festival has passed. Three days filled with movies, events, conversations with directors, writers, and actors. I’m blown away by the quality of talent present and by the generosity demonstrated by the creative guests visiting us in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Photo montage here.

Today I’m taking a break from movies to reflect and catch up on “real life” things like paying bills and answering emails. Truly, the past three days have felt dream-like. During my movie adventures, I’ve visited different worlds and cultures, experiencing myself in myriad ways.

The opening night movie, One Night Stand drew me into the creative chaos of musical theater. I was awed by the brilliance of the composers and actors who created new worlds on stage. Seeing the film reminded me of my own childhood dreams of being an actor, how fun it was to put on backyard plays for my parents and friends. That creative spirit is innate to all of us, and so easily accessible.

Detropia showed me the world of gritty urban decay in Detroit, Michigan. Visually stunning and emotionally raw, the film reminds us that what happened (and is happening) in Detroit can happen anywhere. That the rules of industry and are changing and while the US once ruled the world in manufacturing, we now are a country of imports, not exports.

See Girl Run reminded me of my own lost loves, and the adolescent dreams for romance that linger. This romantic comedy surprised me with its depth and complexity. Even those of us with perfect seeming lives can find ourselves existentially lost, seeking wholeness from the past.

Found Memories transported me to rural Brazil, to a culture that moves slowly, patiently, with intention and grace. This simple yet complex movie caused me to think deeply about my own life and the eventuality of death, and how important it is to appreciate beauty in the meantime. (Click here to read Cheryl’s altered-state experience at this gem of a film.)

Finally, Queens of Country was a wide-open full-on romp of a movie, hilariously side-splitting with stunning costumes and music, while tackling complex social issues along the way. A movie about falling in love with yourself, I left the theater reminded that wholeness lies not in another, but within our own hearts.

After three days at RiverRun, I felt like I’d entered another world. I had a hard time falling asleep last night, my mind so full of new ideas and images. The weekend changed me, broadened my imagination and my vision for how my own life might unfold.

The cherry on the sundae of all this creative goodness? Meeting Ron Livingston last night after watching Queens of Country (in which he stars). I’m a huge Sex and the City fan, so I spent about five minutes reminding myself not to call him Jack Berger. I got my minute with Ron, who seems like the nicest guy in the world, and went home giddy and satisfied.

One more glorious week to go! I can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Drop by this space often between now and April 22 to follow Cheryl and I as we blog our way through 10 films in 10 days.

For complete Bridges’ Coverage and Photos of 2012 RiverRun fun, click here.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs a writer, educator, and consultant who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. You can read more of her writing on her blog, The Sophia Project and in Skirt! Magazine. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing.

Bridges’ Blog Post #2: How a good movie is like a great first kiss.

There’s nothing like a first. The first day of school. A first kiss. The first day of a new career. Like all firsts, the opening night of the 2012 RiverRun International Film Festival was charged with anticipation. I arrived on 4th Street to find it closed off, a block party in progress, a band playing, and people everywhere enjoying a perfect spring night in April. The air hummed with the possibilities of creativity and new beginnings.

River Run’s Opening Night got me thinking about all the firsts in my own life. How every ending heralds the start of something new. And how dreams born in an instant can produce amazing results when brought to fruition. Here, in no particular order, are the lessons I learned at the opening night of RiverRun.

Creativity is a family affair. One of the first people I met, Mitch Phipps, is the father of the lead singer of the band, Below the Line, that RiverRun hired to rock the crowd on 4^th Street. His daughter, Britannie Phipps, belted out song after song in a powerful voice that belied her young age. Mitch and his wife, Emily, fairly beamed with pride as he told me about his daughter and the talents of her band. “We want to get to Nashville,” he said. His use of the word “we” spoke volumes: this is a family affair, a group effort, a collaboration of love and support. Wouldn’t be amazing if families came together to support each other’s big dreams? What if we were all a bit more inspired and a bit less “practical”? What a lovely world we could create.

If you see a red carpet, you better walk down it. OK, yes, the red carpet was mainly for show. And yes, a car dealership was using it to promote their new Mercedes. But seriously, when there’s a red carpet, walk it. Life can feel awfully mundane. We need to take every opportunity available to remember that sometimes, a little celebrity does us all good.

When vision, creativity and hard work come together, miracles happen. The opening night movie, One Night Stand, documents the creation and production of four 15-minute musicals, all within 24 hours. The event is a fundraiser, but these bright stars of Broadway and television (including the likes of Rachel Dratch, Richard Kind, and Alicia Witt) come together for the creative challenge, to push themselves to new limits. The fear, excitement, trepidation, joy, and nausea of the writers, composers, and actors are palpable and presented with humor and heart. Watching these creative giants in action inspired me as did the filmmakers who brought it to life. Elisabeth Sperling and Trish Dalton poured four years of their lives into the creation of this gem of a movie. Their passion for the project shines through every perfect minute. I left utterly inspired.

Creative types are people, too. I had the great fortune to meet and chat with filmmaker Elisabeth Sperling after the movie. After watching her movie, I felt the tiny hitch of hesitation we all feel when meeting those we admire. She was entirely down to earth, humble, and accessible. Like so many creative people I’ve met over the years, her generous nature reminded me that there is room for all of us at the artistic table. Creativity is not only for the elite. It’s for all. When we access our creative selves, we carry the power to inspire, to heal, and to change the world. Elisabeth’s collaborative spirit reminded me that when women come together for a common purpose, we can accomplish anything.

Horror movies still scare the crap outta me. Because yesterday was Friday the 13th, RiverRun sponsored a late night showing of the movie by the same name at a/perture theater. This guy was in attendance. It took all the courage I had to take his picture. Some things, like my utter fear of horror movies, never change.

Drop by this space often between now and April 22 to follow Cheryl and I as we blog our way through 10 films in 10 days.

For complete Bridges’ Coverage and Photos of 2012 RiverRun fun, click here.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs a writer, educator, and consultant who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. You can read more of her writing on her blog, The Sophia Project and in Skirt! Magazine. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing.

Photo Album of Cheryl & Cyndi’s Big “Movie” Adventures click here. ……………… ..

Cyndi’s First Bridges’ Blog Post on the Film Festival:

Online Dating, Celeb Crushes, and Outer Space Travel: All in a Week’s Work

I have a confession to make. I have conflicted feelings about the word film. Yet here I am, blogging for the 2012 RiverRun International Film Festival. Let me explain.

A few years ago, I tried dating on Match.com. Match asks all kinds of personal questions of its users: Work, family, religion, hobbies. When checking out a prospective date, if I read that he “loves foreign films” I would immediately move on to the next guy. I lost interest even faster if he dropped the “s” and made the word singular, as in “I adore fine foreign film”. To me, use of the word film denotes pretension. Trying too hard. Bad kisser. Next!

See, I’m a movie person. I love movies. I love a great story, losing track of time in a darkened theater, learning something about myself from watching the characters on screen. When I was a teenager my mom and I made a Sunday ritual of going to the vintage theater in my hometown, buying a big tub of buttered popcorn and a box of Sno-Caps and watching a movie together. We bonded for two hours and it gave us something to talk about all week, even during my snotty adolescence. Movies move me.

But films? I hear the word film and I imagine some director’s surrealist nightmare of two young angst-ridden lovers having an endless argument in a swamp somewhere. With subtitles. Or a black and white three hour epic about the evolution of a rock. Films make me feel dumb and uncomfortable. Films imply a particular haughty attitude adopted to make others feel bad, “Oh, you didn’t like the film? Perhaps you simply didn’t understand the director’s vision. Too bad. The symbolism and metaphor were profound.” Puh-lease.

So last year, when my dear and trusted friend Cheryl insisted we attend as many films as possible at RiverRun, I hesitated for a moment. True, she is a bastion of good taste (why, she founded the very website you’re visiting now!). But I had this aversion to… films. Would I spend the whole week bored and insecure, wondering how I missed the meaning of obscure and unwatchable films?

RiverRun forever changed my relationship with the f-word. It made me a lover of films. Last year we carefully picked five (just five) movies to see together, and each and every one delighted me in it’s own particular way.

I’m thinking in particular of the film Space Tourists. The unassuming title failed to capture my attention at first. But this documentary of the unimaginably wealthy people who can afford the 20 million dollar price tag (that’s right: $20,000,000) and the unimaginably poor people who make a living harvesting the scrap metal that falls from the sky during the shuttle’s take off captured my imagination. The images of the abandoned cities in rural Russia, cities built of concrete during the height of communist power and space exploration haunted me. An era and a culture so foreign to me, yet so evocative of my own failed dreams and lost innocence. Watching Space Tourists, I suddenly got why those smarty-pants guys on Match.com loved films so much: a beautiful story of our own humanity, told without gajillion-dollar special effects, major celebrities, or tagline dialog. The film struck a chord in my heart and mind.

So this year, I’m excited. So excited for the kick off for RiverRun films this Friday the 13^th. I’m ready to be challenged, entertained, educated and yes, moved. I’m ready for the red carpet, the parties, the fun and festive atmosphere. I have my tickets and press pass. I cleared my calendar. I’m hoping to rub elbows with the movie-types in town this week, Paul Schneider in particular. I think he’s dreamy. I can’t help but wonder if he’d use the word film in his Match.com profile. I don’t think I’d mind.

Get connected to the 2012 RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, by checking out their website here. And drop by this space often between now and April 22 to follow Cheryl and I as we blog our way through 10 films in 10 days.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs a writer, educator, and consultant who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. You can read more of her writing on her blog, The Sophia Project and in Skirt! Magazine. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing.

We’re so excited about the thousands of people from the Triad Tribe who share their news, events and inspirations here on the web site and on our Facebook and Twitter pages. We love discovering new people, places and ideas and sharing them with all of you. Check out our Local News & Events page here.

BECOME A BRIDGES’ SPONSOR

Advertise with us and connect with the vibrant Bridges’ Community of movers, connectors and creatives from the Triad Tribe. We offer sponsorship logo space on our web site and training on how to use social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) more effectively in both your professional and personal life. Bridges can also build Social Media Campaigns for your business, non-profit or grass roots movements. Click here for more information on sponsorship/advertising.

Our mission is to give you a new way to connect to your hometown and make it a better place to live.

In essence, Bridges is a news & events web site for the Triad, a blog hub, and a fun source for good quotes and great photos from the Triad Tribe.  When you post something on the web site, read our articles and share them with your friends via Facebook or Twitter, you’re participating in an online forum created for, and fueled by, people who want to be in the know about issues that matter and who want to use that knowledge to make a difference. Click here for information on how to share your local events on the web site.

We’re so excited about the thousands of people from the Triad Tribe who share their news, events and inspirations here on the web site and on our Facebook and Twitter pages. We love discovering new people, places and ideas and sharing them with all of you. Check out our Local News & Events page here. You can also advertise with us and connect with the vibrant Bridges’ Community of movers, connectors and creatives from the Triad Tribe. We offer sponsorship logo space on our web site and training on how to use social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) more effectively in both your professional and personal life. Bridges can also build Social Media Campaigns for your business, non-profit or grass roots movements.

Stop by our Who’s Who Page to see who’s been talking on Bridges lately. Create Your Free Bridges’ Account/Register here and become part of the Bridges Community so you can post stories and photos. It’s free and only takes a minute. Be sure and upload a profile photo/Avatar so we can “see you.” Build Your Profile to showcase your interests, your businesses, and causes you’re involved in.

Learn about our latest big adventure, The Imagination Installations, here.

Bridges was launched in April of 2010 by Cheryl Schirillo of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Cheryl is a community innovator, a conduit and a storyteller (aka as PR/marketing professional). She’s also a mom to two amazing teenage boys and a scuba diver, swing dancer and ultimate frisbee player.

If you have  suggestions about how we can improve this interactive community forum, please send an e-mail to info@mybridges.net We look forward to hearing from you!

For complete Bridges’ Coverage and Photos of RiverRun fun, click here.

Film Festival Post #3 below: Celebrities, Country Queens and 3-Days of Non-Stop Movie Adventures

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Wow, what a whirlwind!  The first weekend of the RiverRun International Film Festival has passed. Three days  filled with movies, events, conversations with directors, writers, and actors. I’m blown away by the quality of talent present and by the generosity demonstrated by the creative guests visiting us in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Photo montage here.

Today I’m taking a break from movies to reflect and catch up on “real life” things like paying bills and answering emails. Truly, the past three days have felt dream-like. During my movie adventures, I’ve visited different worlds and cultures, experiencing myself in myriad ways.

The opening night movie, One Night Stand drew me into the creative chaos of musical theater. I was awed by the brilliance of the composers and actors who created new worlds on stage. Seeing the film reminded me of my own childhood dreams of being an actor, how fun it was to put on backyard plays for my parents and friends. That creative spirit is innate to all of us, and so easily accessible.

Detropia showed me the world of gritty urban decay in Detroit, Michigan. Visually stunning and emotionally raw, the film reminds us that what happened (and is happening) in Detroit can happen anywhere. That the rules of industry and are changing and while the US once ruled the world in manufacturing, we now are a country of imports, not exports.

See Girl Run reminded me of my own lost loves, and the adolescent dreams for romance that linger. This romantic comedy surprised me with its depth and complexity. Even those of us with perfect seeming lives can find ourselves existentially lost, seeking wholeness from the past.

Found Memories transported me to rural Brazil, to a culture that moves slowly, patiently, with intention and grace. This simple yet complex movie caused me to think deeply about my own life and the eventuality of death, and how important it is to appreciate beauty in the meantime. (Click here to read Cheryl’s altered-state experience at this gem of a film.)

Finally, Queens of Country was a wide-open full-on romp of a movie, hilariously side-splitting with stunning costumes and music, while tackling complex social issues along the way. A movie about falling in love with yourself, I left the theater reminded that wholeness lies not in another, but within our own hearts.

After three days at RiverRun, I felt like I’d entered another world. I had a hard time falling asleep last night, my mind so full of new ideas and images. The weekend changed me, broadened my imagination and my vision for how my own life might unfold.

The cherry on the sundae of all this creative goodness? Meeting Ron Livingston last night after watching Queens of Country (in which he stars). I’m a huge Sex and the City fan, so I spent about five minutes reminding myself not to call him Jack Berger. I got my minute with Ron, who seems like the nicest guy in the world, and went home giddy and satisfied.

One more glorious week to go! I can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Drop by this space often between now and April 22 to follow Cheryl and I as we blog our way through 10 films in 10 days.

For complete Bridges’ Coverage and Photos of 2012 RiverRun fun, click here.

This Bridges’ Blog Post was written by Dr. Cyndi Briggs a writer, educator, and consultant who lives and works in Winston-Salem, NC. You can read more of her writing on her blog, The Sophia Project and in Skirt! Magazine. When she’s not watching movies or writing, you can find Cyndi out salsa dancing.

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Winston-Salem, NC: Artists, architects, graphic designers, planners, industrial designers and other creatives are invited to participate in an Imagination Design Marathon: a day of hands-on design to imagine a public art installation that will capture and share our community’s collective dreams.  The event will take place on Saturday, June 2, from 10 am – to 3 pm at SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art), 750 Marguerite Drive, Winston-Salem, NC 27106.  To sign up, or for more information, go to http://ImaginationInstallation.com or to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ImaginationInstallations

The Design Marathon is a collaboration between two emerging grassroots organizations: the Imagination Installation Project and the Community Design Studio. The charette* event will be an opportunity for designers, artists and other creative folks to work together on a community-building design challenge. The goal is to promote artistic collaboration and community design, while fostering new connections among members of Winston-Salem’s Creative Class.

Teams formed at the Imagination Design Marathon will have an opportunity to present the work they created during the event to the public this summer.  The teams’ designs will serve as tools for the Imagination Installation Project to raise funding to construct public art installations.

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About The Imagination Installation Project

Winston-Salem’s Imagination Installation Project is about building Imaginariums: places where people can record their dreams and discover what others have shared.  The Project is a grassroots effort started in August 2011 and fueled by more than 100 entrepreneurs, architects, artists, activists, community leaders, business owners and other innovators who love to think big and dream big.  Their mission is to harness the power of the community’s collective dreams.  They’ll do this by gathering “Imagine When … ” statements from everyday people in Forsyth County and then sharing them through art installations, a billboard on Business 40, a web site, Facebook & Twitter pages and Imagination Events.

The Goals of the Imagination Installation Project are to:

Showcase the incredible people, projects and organizations in our community.

Build Dream Maps of Forsyth County (data visualizations on the web site)

Become a nationwide model for results-driven imagination.

Connect people with common goals and interests.

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About Community Design Studio

The Community Design Studio is a collaborative network that engages creative professionals with local design service and action through community partnerships.  The group uses the power of design to inspire, educate, and serve, working with local partners toward a sustainable and equitable community.

By collaborating with existing community groups and facilitating integrated approaches to problem-solving, the Community Design Studio unites designers’ creativity with others’ knowledge and experience in community service to the benefit of Winston-Salem.  The group aims to create lasting community change through public education and designer accountability.  In other words: the sustainable and equitable community that we seek requires that designers not only involve communities they serve in design decisions, but empower them to continue to take responsibility for their surroundings. Community Design Studio projects operate at a local scale, transforming the face of our city piece by piece by involving its citizens in design decisions.

For more information visit their Facebook Page: http://on.fb.me/GO0Dp1

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*What is a Charette? (The event format the Imagination Design Marathon is built on)

A Charette is a meeting that uses intense effort to solve any architectural, artistic or design problem within a limited time. From a creative standpoint, a Charette can be divided into three portions:

1. Listen. Listen to what the stakeholders in the Project have to suggest (in this case the Imagination Installation). Work together with them to come to an understanding about the project, what their goals and limitations are, and how these might fit with your ideas.

2. Envision. Imagine together all of these various considerations to come up with a realistic and creative proposal which will be interesting while at the same time financially, responsibly, and otherwise feasible.

3. Draw fast! The ability to work with creative team who can bring ideas to a tangible design sketch quickly, allows for instant communication.

A Little History on Charettes

The term “Charette” (little cart) appeared in the late 1800’s. Architecture students at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris who needed to rush their designs to their instructors, placed their drawings on a cart which was called a charette. Later the word broadened in meaning and came to describe any intense, short-term design project. Today the word is used by the architectural and design community at large to describe any intense, on-the-spot design effort.

For Immediate Release  |  Contact:

Cheryl Schirillo, 336-682-9737,

Cheryl@MyBridges.net

Imagination Design Marathon

Charrette at SECCA
Saturday, June 2, 2012, 10 am – 3 pm

Let your creative juices flow during the Imagination Design Marathon at SECCA!

Join us for a day of collaborative design to imagine an art installation to capture and share our community’s dreams. A collaboration between the Imagination Installation Project and the Community Design Studio, the event will be an opportunity for architects, artists, graphic designers and other creative folks to work together on teams.  Our goal is to promote design and art in our community while fostering new connections between members of Winston-Salem’s Creative Class.

Results/Charette Drawings from the Imagination Design Marathon will be displayed during an art exhibit over the summer, and will be tools for the Imagination Installation group to raise funding to construct their vision.

For more information regarding the Imagination Installation please see the “Imagine When” section of the MyBridges blog.

What is a Charette?

A Charette is an intense effort to solve any architectural, artistic or design problem within a limited time. From a creative standpoint, a Charette can be divided into three portions:

1. Listen. Listen to what the stakeholders in the Project have to suggest (in this case the Imagination Installation). Work together with them to come to an understanding about the project, what their goals and limitations are, and how these might fit with your ideas.

2. Envision. Imagine together all of these various considerations to come up with a realistic and creative proposal which will be interesting while at the same time financially, responsibly, and otherwise feasible.

3. Draw fast! The ability to work with creative team who can bring ideas to a tangible design sketch quickly, allows for instant communication.

A little history

The term “Charette” (little cart) appeared in the late 1800’s. Architecture students at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris who needed to rush their designs to their instructors, placed their drawings on a cart which was called a charette. Later the word broadened in meaning and came to describe any intense, short-term design project. Today the word is used by the architectural and design community at large to describe any intense, on-the-spot design effort.

One day at the end of this semester, I had an amazing conversation with my college students in class. I was talking with them about hunger in the U.S. We discussed the fact that, according to the web site FeedingAmerica.org, the total cost of hunger to American society is said to be about $90 billion a year. In contrast, it would only cost about $10 billion to $12 billion a year to virtually end hunger in our nation.

During that conversation, some of the students shared about their involvement in international hunger projects on campus at Wake Forest University. Others then began to see what they had not seen before: the need for action against hunger in the U.S. and their ability to do something about it. Days later some students shared with me that they had made plans to volunteer for various local hunger projects this summer because of our conversation in class. They saw a need. They saw their responsibility and the opportunity to make and difference in the world and they put action in place to do that, virtually over night.

I share this anecdote with you on the eve of college graduations all across this country. Graduations, that with the toss of a cap in the air, propel students out into the world at large to become fully participating members of society.

When Pomp And Circumstance rings its last note, these young people start their adventure into the adult world, many of them on their own for the first time. These amazing human beings are full of life, new knowledge, and wanting to make a difference in the world. They are at a unique intersection of searching for their place in the world while at the same time brave with new knowledge and clear opinions and views. They are hungry to lead and are perhaps even hungrier to have adults in their life whom they can model themselves after.

So, as someone who was once their professor, I pass the baton to you. These students will be showing up in your places of work as new employees. It would be easy to pass them by, to think of them as too young to really know much or even too inexperienced to have much to contribute. My request is that you put that aside and see them as I do. See them for the miracles that they really are. See them as people who will one day be running your company, leading our government, and shaping the world in which we live. Take interest in their development; take interest in their lives. Teach them as their professors have done and their parents did before that. Be the leader they are looking for, allow them to learn from your example and join them in making world a better place.

Cristin’s April 24, 2012 post was about embracing diversity. …………………………………………………………………

This weekend I went to the Gallery Hop in downtown Winston-Salem. It was a gorgeous night. People filled the streets from Fourth to Trade and back again. Families milled in and out of the galleries and shops. Coquettishly dressed young women flirted with men at the outdoor cafes and patio bars that line Fourth Street. Same sex couples walked hand in hand down the street. Lady Gaga pulsed into the night as college students entered the new restaurant/club Encore, waved-in by drag queens with batted eye lashes who welcomed them through the doors.

Wait a minute… same sex couples, college students, drag queens, packed downtown streets?

Oh yes… this isn’t the dull, rollup the sidewalks after 5:00 pm downtown Winston of ten years ago anymore.

Always easily lured by a good rhythm calling me to dance, I ventured into Encore where a free event was being thrown to bring public awareness to vote against Amendment One this Tuesday, May 8th. As I moved to the music on what was one of the most crowded dance floors I have seen in Winston Salem in sometime, a thought came to mind. That thought was, “We Are The Ones!”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Amendment One, it is a proposed amendment to the NC State Constitution that if it passes, would ban ANY type of domestic civil unions other than those created through a traditional marriage. This includes the thousands and thousands of long-term partnerships between women and men in North Carolina who have children together, in addition to gay couples. As demonstrated by the same-sex couples walking hand in hand on Friday evening, banning gay domestic partnerships from the constitution does not stop it from happening. It does not stop two hearts from coming together to form a family.

However, it does stop committed partners (straight and gay) from being able to take care of each other. Amendment One would prevent commitment couples from being able to make medical, financial and other important life decisions on behalf of each other in a time of need.

In researching about Amendment One, I learned that North Carolina remains the only US southern state that does not have a constitutional amendment banning same sex unions. As I read that I felt all at once very proud of our State for having that distinction—and concerned for how easily we could become just like all the rest. On May 8th there is a very powerful opportunity for the state of North Carolina to distinguish itself. There is the opportunity to say, We Are The Ones to protect the constitutional rights of families, no matter their shape or form.

How do you do that? First, you vote against Amendment One on Tuesday, May 8th. Also, please share this post on your Facebook page, along with this wonderful video where republicans, democrats, clergy, business leaders and everyday people from all persuasions talk about why they are voting NO. Email the info to your friends. Share it with anyone that you know for whom voting against Amendment One would make a difference. Chances are, that includes more people than you think! Every vote will count tomorrow. YOUR vote matters. We are the Ones.

Cristin’s April 17, 2012 post was about her love for her community.

Think Again about that Recent College Grad

When I first moved to Winston-Salem from San Francisco ten years ago, people welcomed me to the area, and shared with me some of their favorite things about living here. They said that Winston-Salem has a great arts community (true); that Winston-Salem is centrally located and that you can enjoy a sunrise at that beach and a sunset in the mountains…all in the same day (also true); that this pastoral city is a great place to raise a family (true, true, true). They left out one amazing quality however, something that in my book makes Winston-Salem a unique and extraordinary city. Its perhaps the best thing about this city… the soul of the city itself. It is soul that says, We Are The Ones. Let me show you what I mean…

Being able to dream big and to envision the future is essential to creating a vibrant city that’s evolving and growing. That’s what makes the Imagination Installation Project, and the people behind it, so special. The mission of this new grassroots initiative is to collect and share the dreams of everyday people in Forsyth County. The project took root in August of 2011 when Cheryl Schirillo brought together 23 people to brainstorm about the possibilities at Camino Bakery on 4th Street. Today more than 100 people are working together help our community Dream Big and Think Big. To learn more check out their web site at ImaginationInstallation.com or stop by their booth at Earth Day Fair, this Saturday, April 28th from 10:00 am-5:00 pm at the Dixie Classic Fair Grounds. Admission and parking are FREE and it is held rain or shine.

Extraordinary example number two is The RiverRun Film Festival which just completed its ten-day run in downtown Winston-Salem. For those of you not yet familiar with RiverRun, it is a non-profit cultural organization that seeks to create a deeper understanding of both film and people in our community, using the lens of international film. The Founders of RiverRun have worked hard to make the festival a community event, an event that expands each year, just as our community expands and develops. The festival is supported by a great many people: by the board of directors, by the filmmakers who fly in from all over the world to discuss their films, and by hundreds of sponsors who provide financial backing for the festival. As impressive as all of that is, it says nothing of the fact that the festival is also made possible by the dedicated commitment of 350 volunteers. Four people make up the year-round staff. Three hundred and fifty people volunteer each year and donate their time and their expertise. They say We Are The Ones to manifest arts and diversity in our community.

Another organization for you to know about, if you do not already, is Project Pearl. Melissa Ball and Fowler Ruffin founded Project Pearl in October 2011 as a non-profit organization to support adoptions at Forsyth County Animal Control. Project Pearl offers a unique contribution to the adoption of animals in our area with their “Lend A Lens” program. Through this program, local photographers take beautiful pictures of the animals that are available for adoption. The photographs capture the personality and unique qualities of the dogs, qualities that are sometimes otherwise overlooked in the shelter setting. Since the inception of the program in October, Project Pearl is responsible for the adoption of 463 animals and the adoptions at FCAC are on the rise!

These adoptions would not be made possible without the contribution of a cadre of volunteer board members, photographers, groomers, and other dedicated animal lovers who said We Are The Ones to support animal welfare in Forsyth County. To learn more about Project Pearl, you can find them on Facebook.

Bridge Builders, these are just three organizations that are collectively comprised of hundreds of people in our community that said We Are The Ones to make Winston-Salem a great place to live. What organization are you a part of that is an expression of your passion and what matters to you in our community?

Winston-Salem, We Are The Ones!

Cristin’s April 10, 2012 post was  about romantic relationships .  ……………………………………………………………………….

Maybe He’s Just Not That Into You …

When we evolved this Bridges’ Blog for 2012 we declared, “We Are The Ones!” We are The Ones who will create the life of our dreams… and that includes the relationships of our dreams. Romantic relationships demand lot of our time and attention. This makes sense given that our need to belong and our need to love and be loved is a part of our very DNA. But love and romance can be confusing and the path to true love is a winding one. So for all of you who declare that “I Am The One to create real love in 2012”, this essay is for you!

If you have spent any time reading books and articles about relationships, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “He’s just not that into you.” If you haven’t run across that expression yet, it refers to the phenomenon when one person (in our cultural reference it is the woman) is invested in a relationship and she wonders whether or not the guy is invested as well. For simplicity sake we’ll use the words “he” and “she” that way in this essay, but where the “he” and “she” belong in the sentence is open given the relationship you are in.

The simplest way to answer the question as to whether he really is into you or not is this… If you are asking yourself the question, he probably isn’t.

A man who is really into a woman can’t hold himself back. He pursues the woman like he wants her and he isn’t going to let her get away… and then when he has her, he doesn’t back off, he sings his love and admiration for her from the mountaintops. So, if you are still wondering whether the guy you are with is really into you or not, ask yourself the following questions:

Does he tell his friends and family about you?

As I said a moment ago, a man who loves a woman doesn’t want to hide her. He is proud of her. He wants photos of he and his gal together all over Facebook (In other words, he doesn’t take his gal on vacation and then only post photos of himself holding an umbrella drink). He brings her around to his family, shows her off to his friends and makes his love for her clear to them. If your fella is keeping you on the down low, or if he only comes around your friends, he is probably not that into you.

Does he share his life with you?

Do you really know what is going on in his life? Does he include you in what he is dealing with and is he open about how he spends his time? When you ask him questions about himself does he answer you openly or does he respond in generalities—or even more telling—does he become defensive if you ask questions? If a guy doesn’t include you in his life, chances are, he is just not that into you.

Does he make time for you?

Ever notice that it doesn’t matter how busy you are, you always make time for the things and people that really matter to you? If you feel like you are about third down on his priority list, you are probably right. It’s another sign that he is just not into you.

Does he hide relationships that he has with old lovers and girlfriends?

If a guy is spending time and maintaining close relationships with former lovers and girlfriends and he doesn’t share that with you with complete transparency, be wary…It is another sign that he is probably just not that into you.

Is he there for you the way you are there for him?

Do you feel equally supported and nurtured by him as you nurture him? Is he interested in you and your life? Does he patiently listen to what you are dealing with the way you listen to him? Does he consistently step in to support you when you need a lift up? If you feel like you are giving more than you are getting, you probably are—and that may be another sign that he is just not that into you.

Can you count on him to do what he says he is going to do?

Does he keep the plans he makes with you or does he cancel at the last minute? If he cancels does he appreciate and acknowledge the impact that has on you? Does he take into consideration your feelings when he changes his mind? If not, then he may not be that into you.

What is the answer to all of this? The answer is simple. Hold yourself in the highest regard. Recognize yourself as the queen (or king) that you are.

So often the temptation is to cut a guy some slack, to give him another chance…and then a couple months later to give him another one and then another one. The temptation is to tell yourself, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad” or “He is getting better” or “He was sorry” or “He has so many other good qualities” or even “But he is so good in bed”. All of that may be true, but you can’t expect someone to hold you in a higher regard than you hold yourself. In the end, you get what you tolerate—and that may add up to a year’s worth of giving someone chances who was never really that into you in the first place.

Bridge Builders, You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For to create the romance of your dreams. To get the relationship and love you deserve, you have to let go of the one who doesn’t deserve you! The Hour Is Now…What are you waiting for?

In the March 27, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin decides it’s now or never.

I Want To Do That

My friend has a big birthday coming up. You know, one of those that ends in a zero, one of those that makes you take stock of your life putting into sharp focus what you like about how things are going as well as what is missing. I asked her how she wanted to spend her birthday and she said, “I want to scream! I want to be scared!” And I completely understood what she meant.

My last birthday that ended in a zero was almost two years ago. Since that time I have a different view of life. There is a “Now Or Never” urgency to my life now. Ironically there are simultaneously things that are creeping into the “Ain’t Gonna’ Happen” category. For example, a friend recently shared with me that he used to heli ski. For those of you who don’t know what that is (I didn’t know), it is when you are dropped from a helicopter onto a remote mountain-top and you ski your way down the jagged, snowy terrain.

When I saw pictures of it, my first thought was, “I want to do that.” It wasn’t until days later that I realized, I’ll never do that. I’ve never been that great of a skier and in fact, I’m not even what could be called a “good” skier with any generosity. In the moment I realized I’ll never know what it feels like to ski down virgin terrain quite literally on top of the world, my heart sank. It sank not because my heart was set on heli skiing but rather because in that moment I realized that there are some experiences in life that aren’t options for me any more. There are some moments of wonder that I have already missed. They just ain’t gonna’ happen.

It was then that something clicked for me. In the days since, experiences that have played in the back of my mind have come to the fore: Sleeping outside enveloped in cool night air; exploring colorful coral reefs and encountering the creatures that live in them; paddling down a western river that cuts a swath between mountains. I want to dance with abandon again. I want to restore myself with the disciplined balance of yoga.

Now there is a pull toward nature. There is a pull to be in my body in a whole new way, to test its limits and to rejuvinate that glorious feeling of strength and agility. Yes, there is the pull to do things that scare me, to scream with delight and to be oh-so wildly alive.

Bridge Builders, the hour is now. This is the moment you have been waiting for. What will you do with it?

In the March 13, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin asks discovers something unexpected during a month of picture taking.

30 Ways to Photograph Love

I have taken on a fun, little project lately. You may have heard of it, it’s the 30 Day Photo Challenge that is being documented on Facebook. The idea is that for one month, you take a picture a day and post it on your Facebook wall. Locals from the Triad Tribe like Paige Lester-Niles, Arminda Lindsay, Cyndi Briggs, Cheryl Schirillo, Teddy Burriss, Tammy Friedeck, and Amanda Zabel are capturing different subjects: gratitude, wonder, etc. You get the idea.

The subject that I am capturing is beauty.

On the first morning of the photo challenge I took to my back yard and looked for something to take a picture of. I saw some daffodils in the morning sun. “Those are pretty. That will work,” I thought and I unceremoniously snap the shot on my phone and post it on my Facebook wall, though somewhat dissatisfied by my selection.

“They are pretty but I wouldn’t really call them beautiful” I think to myself as I walk back in the house. (A momentary lapse in my Lenten promise to give up cynicism, as if the first flowers of spring are not sufficiently beautiful to qualify for my Facebook post.)

“My pictures will get better as I go, “ I decide.

Later in the day I am at Wake Forest and my class asks to meet outside. Towards the end of class I look at them and feel so grateful to be their professor. The day is so pretty. Our class discussion had been vibrant and rich. And in that moment, I ask to take their picture for the 30 Day Photo Challenge. They happily agree.

A few days later, my daughter has a new friend over; a girl from our neighborhood that she likes very much. They are having a great time together sitting snuggly side by side sharing the same rocking chair and some Italian ice. I take their picture too.

Another night I am out with friends, we are celebrating the showing of my friend Caitlin’s gorgeous travel photography exhibit at Rioja Wine Bar in Greensboro. It is a moment of jubilation, victory and reunion among friends. I take our picture together.

As I review the rest of the photographs I have taken over the last couple of weeks, there is a certain theme: What I realized that I had captured were not so much beautiful objects but rather beautiful moments; the natural ordinary moments that make up an extraordinary life… sitting with a friend at coffee, watching my son’s soccer game, getting my hair cut. What makes the moments beautiful are the people with whom I share them, and of course the love I have for them. I realize that in my attempt to capture beauty, what I have ended up capturing is love.

C.S. Lewis, once said, “This moment contains all moments.” That quote summarizes what I have learned so far in taking these pictures; that this moment isn’t just any moment. This moment is the moment. It is the moment I’ve been waiting for. And it is beautiful.

In the March 6, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin asks “if anything were possible, what would you do?”

Dreaming Your Reality

It is a great moment when someone asks you a question, one of those questions that uncovers a want you didn’t know you had…

I had a conversation with my nine-year-old daughter this week in which she asked me one of those questions: “If you could do anything in the next ten minutes, what would it be?” In the moment I answered off the cuff. I said the first thing that came to my mind, but have thought about my answer ever since.

What I said to her was this, “I would book a family summer vacation to someplace fantastic that we would remember for the rest of our lives.”

In hindsight, I could have responded that I would cure cancer, end famine, or create world peace. But I didn’t and that’s fine. My response to her I realize was much more personal, much closer to my heart. You see, I’ve had the experience over this past winter of feeling like I blinked and the last four years of my children’s life got compressed into a season. It is as if one moment I was playing in the park with a three and a five year old and the very next moment we are making plans for sleep away camps. As this winter begins to give way to spring, I am very aware of the budding of the two young people I live with, young people who are in their last few moments of being children.

In the days that have passed since my daughter and I first talked I have found myself thinking, “How can I make that vacation together happen?” An idea that began as a spontaneous answer has started to bubble and simmer; it has started to take shape and form.

I have caught myself daydreaming of vacation destinations. I have imagined us playing in sparkling sun-lit surf and sight seeing in foreign cities, the location of which I can’t quite discern with the image foggy around the edges. I have found myself considering my summer schedule and calculating how long we could get away. My mind has drifted to making checklists of bills I want to have paid in order to make a vacation financially feasible. In short, her simple question has created a whole future for which I have begun to chart a course. I am moving our dream from a wish to a reality.

Bridge Builders, if you could do anything in the next ten minutes, what would you do? What actions can you take (sharing your dream out loud with friends, asking for help) to make your wish a reality?

The time is now, Bridge Builders! We are The Ones the world has been waiting for.

In the Febraury 24, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin talks about how loved you feel when someone truly shares themselves with you.

…….. Generosity & Love

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~ Buddha

I was talking to a friend the other day who recently had a birthday. She told me that it was a wonderful day and that the man in her life had gone all out to make it special for her. She said that he showered her with flowers and gifts as well as love, thoughtfulness, fun and time. I was delighted for my friend in hearing her happy news, but it wasn’t until later when I considered what she said that I really saw just how generous this man had been to her. The thing that she talked most about wasn’t the things he bought her but rather how generously he gave of himself to her.

Now, this isn’t just a story about romance and being in love, but there is a lesson that we can learn from that wonderful time in a relationship when we fall in love and we want nothing more to do that to fully share ourselves with another. There is an openness that we tend to bring to relationships when we are falling in love. There is a certain optimism and expectant joy at these times that has us want to give to another in such a way that leaves them moved, nourished and cared for; and it is in giving ourselves so generously and allowing ourselves to be given to that love is created.

So why don’t we do that with everyone? What about the possibility of approaching life with a fundamental openness, with an assumption of benevolence, with an assumption of love, just as we do when we are falling in love. Why not set down our cynicism for even a short time and see what happens when we move into the world like the world is our lover? What kindness would you bestow on others? What attentiveness would you provide people you don’t even know? What concern would you have for their lives and their happiness?

I had this experience over last weekend. I worked at a booth at a trade show with a group of friends. You know how these things are…thousands of people make their way through isle after isle of purveyors, each booth set up one after another for as far as the eye can see. In a crowd like that, it is ironically easy to be anonymous and to talk to only a few people.

My typical pattern in that situation would have been to give just enough of myself to interact with customers and to make polite social chatter but to not actually relate to anybody. Rather than take that typical approach, which would have resulted in a long-draining weekend for certain, I approached everyone like they were my friend, as if they were already someone important in my life.

What transpired over the three days I spent at the booth was that a little bubble of a community was created. I quickly got to know the business people in the other booths that surrounded ours. I learned about their business and their families. I was introduced to their spouses and their children. Through out the weekend we exchanged stories, laughed a lot, and yes, gave of ourselves to each other. And at the end of the weekend, I left the trade show peaceful and happy with the experience of loving many new people, and even being loved.

So Bridge Builders, as the Hopi elders do, ask yourself, “Am I in right relation?” The time is now. The time is now to set down cynicism and to be open, to be generous and to create love and community with the people around you. The time is now to lavish the people in your life with love and time. The time is now to treat people that you don’t know, like they are important people in your life. When you do, that is exactly what who they will become for you and who you will be to them.

In the Febraury 17, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin talks about how a hug can be a profound connection.

. Free Hugs

Have you heard the story about the Free Hugs Campaign? If not, here’s how it goes: there’s a guy by the name of Juan Mann, who goes through some turmoil in his life. This turmoil has him move from his adopted town of London back to his hometown of Sydney, Australia. Even though Sydney is his hometown, he has no friends or family left there. To his sadness and regret, there is no one there to hug him and welcome him home.

So what he decides to do is this…He makes a sign that says, “FREE HUGS” and stands on the busiest pedestrian intersection he can find. Within minutes, the usual us-and-them social barriers melt away. Person after person opens their arms to receive a hug from him. Others reached out to give a hug. Still others opened their arms to join with him in a mutual hug. Through his free hug campaign, Juan Mann went from being someone who was “on his own” to a man who created connection with and between hundreds of people.

Interestingly, research of evolutionary psychologist tells us, that the need to belong is one of the most basic needs in human nature. It has been found in study after study that people who spend a lot of time with others enjoy higher levels of self-esteem. And this is even true on a national level, not just among individuals. Those countries whose citizens frequently spend time with family and friends have been shown to have higher levels of self-esteem than countries whose citizens have less social interaction.

Not only that, brain research tells us that feeling socially excluded is experienced in the same way as is a physical pain. Which may explain why people use words like “hurt”, “wounded” and “damaged” to describe the experience they have of being socially excluded.

The irony is, despite what research tells us is a clear human need, there is a competing social message that tells us that we really “need” is to be able to be alone; that to want connection is being needy in some way. Bridge Builders, how often do you bury the desire to connect with another person, and flip on the TV instead or make do posting comments on Facebook? Sometimes it seems that we live in a culture that suffers from a sort of connection anorexia where we are supposed to get away with the bare minimum of what we all really want, or that even research tells us is to the benefit of humanity.

So Bridge Builders, do as Juan Mann did, be The One! Embrace your need for embrace! Reach out and touch the people in your life, (or with their permission) whoever is the next person you meet. Chances are they too are hungry for contact…especially the kind of contact that comes in the form of a simple, perfect, elegant, beautiful, warm and lovely, feels-good-from-the-inside-out-and-back-again hug.

In the Febraury 10, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin talks about how fast the world can be transformed when you step up and take action for what you believe in.

……………….. ………… Speaking Your Truth Rocks

An amazing series of events took place a couple of weeks ago; under much controversy, Susan G. Komen for the Cure withdrew financial support from Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program. It was an announcement that came as a shock to many, and yet these events were not simply watched and allowed to unfold by an apathetic audience. Across this country, concerned individuals and corporate sponsors rose up and said, “We Are The Ones!”

On the day that the announcement of Komen’s decision was made, Planned Parenthood jumped on social media informing the public of Komen’s withdrawal of funding from their program. A tidal wave of voices flooded the Internet on Twitter, Facebook as well as in email campaigns, all criticizing Komen’s decision and defending Planned Parenthood’s programs. This wave of voices transformed into a sea of donations to Planned Parenthood who received $3 million dollars in donations over the next four days. By the fourth day, Komen revoked their decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood and announced that the funding would be reinstated. In addition, Komen’s Vice President of Public Affairs and several members of their Board of Directors resigned and new plans for how Komen will disperse funds to their partner programs in the future are under way.

All of that took place over four short days. All of that transpired because literally thousands of individuals stood up and said, “The hour is now. I am The One!” This is what results when a sense of urgency is allowed to take over the banality of our everyday viewing of world events. This is what is possible when individuals move past their complacency and whatever they think is reasonable or even probable. Simply put, when this happens, anything is possible.

One issue that has come of increasing concern to me is our food source. This is a concern that I think about on a personal level: “What is it exactly that I am feeding my family?” It is also a concern that has begun to develop as I open myself to the real experience of animals that are raised as a source of food. Finally, it is a concern that I have as I learn about the long-term health, economic, and environmental implications of various farming practices.

While this issue has been in the back of my mind for a while, I haven’t taken action on it until recently, and mostly for financial reasons. “It costs too much money to live like that,” used to be my excuse. Now as I consider the massive implications of not “living like that”, I have reprioritized my spending to include products I once told myself I could not afford. I’m eliminating a lot of unhealthier convenience purchases I told myself I could afford. In other words, I am quite literally, putting my money where my mouth goes.

This is just one step toward addressing a complex issue, but as I take each step, the next step presents itself, and then I take the next one and the next one. If we all did that with just one aspect of our lives, the world would be transformed. And as the Planned Parenthood story illustrates, it wouldn’t take long.

As you look at your life and what is happening in the world, what are the issues that really matter to you? What is the next step for you to take to translate your concern into action?

The hour is now. We Are The Ones!

In the Febraury 3, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin talks about how surrender and accountability follow when you share your dreams with your oldest and dearest friend.

.Conversations with God

“Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

What Mahatma Ghandi may have been referring to in this quote is the power of sharing your dreams. We have talked about the power of speaking your dreams out loud; how sharing your dreams calls them forward and even creates accountability with each other to bring those dreams into fruition. What then is the purpose of sharing those dreams with God?

In part that would depend on your particular view of God and what God is for you. I don’t have a very formal relationship with God. God for me just “is”. God doesn’t belong to any particular religion or doesn’t look a certain way. God is just God. My conversations with God ebb and flow. Like a good friend I’ve had all my life, sometimes we talk a lot and sometimes we go through periods when we aren’t in touch so much, but either way, “it is all good”, as they say.

With that picture set, here is what I find: When I talk to God about my dreams, something shifts in what those dreams are for me. They transform from thoughts or musings that rattle around in my head, to intentions that are the “real deal.” The dreams I speak to God are the ones that really matter to me. They are the ones that are big enough that I get in touch with that life-long friend to share.

It is in sharing that dream with the oldest and best friend I’ve ever had that I surrender to what is to follow. It is in sharing those dreams that I create an intention and new direction for my life, the purpose of which is to fulfill on the dream that I spoke. The path to fulfilling those dreams is sometimes winding but the path has been chosen. Should I step off that path, because it becomes “too hard” or “I don’t feel like it anymore”, we both know it (God and I, that is).

That is the other great thing about sharing my dreams with God, when I decide that “I don’t want to” anymore, we both know that it is a huge lie. We both know that I have simply bumped up against something that I need to sort out before I can keep going. And God waits for me on the path, holding my intention, until I am ready to pick back up and start again.

Bridge Builders, what dreams do you share with God?

In the January 24, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin writes about the Year of the Dragon. According to Chinese mythology, 2012 will be a year of energetic flow across all realms: in ideas and creativity, in business and economies, even in the area of love!

.The Year of the Dragon

At the beginning of 2012 we re-invented this Bridges’ Blog by declaring that We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For! We Are The Ones to bring leadership to our communities, to bring love to our relationships, to make dreams come true in our lives and the lives of others.

When we created the idea for the “We Blog” we also decided to gather together in person as a community in support of our dreams (click here to sign up for the first meeting on Feb 7 at 7pm). However, we didn’t realize that 2012 also happens to be The Year of The Dragon in Chinese mythology (read Cheryl’s post about meanings & predictions for the year here).

After reading about the power of the Year of the Water Dragon, it causes me to wonder, is it simple serendipity that has us declare that We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For, or are we being pulled by the power and magic of The Dragon?

According to Chinese mythology, The Year of the Dragon marks the end of a fifteen year period of scarcity and bad luck. The dragon is a mystical and dynamic creature and as such it is a reminder that everyone has dreams and the time to pursue them is here! The serpentine dragon also conjures the yang energy, which moves like a flowing river. It has been predicted that in this Year of the Dragon there will be a great deal of energetic flow across all realms: in ideas and creativity, in business and economies, even in the area of love!

The dragon can’t do it alone however. Now more than ever it is the time to step into living the life you truly want and to maximize this creative energy that the dragon unleashes. It is time bring to fruition those dreams and projects that you have set brewing for the last few months, or even years! In the words of Anais Nin, “Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

I recently threw a dream into space like a kite, and what a got was a new career! For a while now I’ve wrestled with the feeling that I hadn’t truly manifested all I can be professionally. Sure, I’ve worked as a psychologist for over ten years now, but I have always downplayed the level of training that I have. The title, “Dr. Whiting” was one with which I had never quite grown comfortable and because of that, I didn’t really use it much. Not surprisingly, a lot of people in my life didn’t even realize that I hold a doctorate degree, until I recently told them.

I realized one big down side of not sharing that information about myself with people. I have actually been holding back from others the full contribution that I can be to them. Once I started sharing the training that I have, people started to make requests of me. Requests for support I am able to easily provide, like talking to their kids about graduate school, or referring them to a good psychologist in another city. Not only that, career opportunities have suddenly started to open up including requests for me to consult on various projects, and even an adjunct teaching position at Wake Forest University’s Department of Psychology.

That all opened up because I dared to say, I Am The One. I am the one to make the difference in my own life and in the lives of others.

Bridge Builders, what is opening up in your life as you declare that You Are The One? What dream will you throw into space like a kite? What talent is there in your life that is high time you owned and shared with the world?

In the January 17, 2012 Bridges’ Blog Post for “We Are The Ones,” Cristin illustrates how when you share your dreams out loud you put a stake in the ground for the future you are creating for yourself, your children and your community.

… ……… The Power in Speaking Your Dreams Out Loud

August 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously shared a dream …

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

This was a dream that Dr. King spoke on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 200,000. It is a dream that has been shared with millions more in the forty-seven years since and it is a dream that will be shared for generations to come.

By sharing this dream, Dr. King created a defining moment in the American Civil Rights movement. His words educated, inspired and moved masses into action, including the Kennedy administration, which advanced civil rights legislation through congress in response to the shift in social consciousness created by these words.

That is the power in sharing a dream. By sharing a dream, the dream becomes real, both for the person sharing the dream and for those who are moved and inspired by it. Sharing a dream creates a butterfly effect by inspiring others to dream and then to share their dreams with others.

Sharing a dream creates accountability because it puts something at stake. Dr. King couldn’t speak those words and then go eat a sandwich and forget about it. By sharing his dream, Dr. King committed himself to a future to which he would be held accountable for creating in the here and now. It was a dream that others were inspired to make real. By sharing his dream, the dream did not just belong Dr. King, but belonged to everyone who wished to claim it as their own and to declare, “We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For.”

Bridge Builders, you have already begun to so generously share your dreams here. Last week you spoke these dreams “out loud”: of creating financial freedom, realizing business ventures, and empowering the dreams of others. You dream of deeper relationships with your children and sharing your gifts and creativity with the community.

Come share your dreams in person so that we can inspire and be inspired by each other. When you speak your dreams out loud you put a stake in the ground for the future you are creating for your life. We will gather at the home of Cheryl Schirillo on Tuesday, February 7^th at 7:00 p.m. You are invited to join us. We Are The Ones …

___________________________________________

In the January 10, 2012 post on Bridges, by Winston-Salem author Cristin Whiting, sets off in a new direction. It’s all about results.

… ……… …………… Time to Step Forward

There is an old Hopi elder prophecy that is a call to action. It says that the Eleventh Hour is no longer, but that The Hour is here. It is a prophecy that urges humanity to look at itself with a discerning eye. “Are you in right relation?” the Prophecy asks. “It is time to speak the truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. Do not look to anyone outside of yourself to lead. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For! It is a simple and powerful declaration. It declares that we are the ones to make the difference, to cause unprecedented results in our own lives and in the communities in which we live.

Bridge Builders, ask yourselves the questions that the Hopi Elders posed: Are you in right relations? If not, with whom do you need to set things right? If your relationships are already going well, how can you create unprecedented joy and love between you and those who are important to you in your life? Is your heart fully open? If it is not, now is the time. The hour is here.

Being the one: Bridge Builders, in what areas of your life are you tolerating being less than spectacular? What areas of your life are you waiting for someone else to be the one to come clean things up for you? What stops you from creating the life that you really want?

Bridge Builders, ask yourself, are you the hero in your journey or have you given your power to someone else? Are you unsatisfied with the leadership, or lack there of, in your community? Are you seeing a lot of talk, but not many results?

It is time to stop waiting. It is time to stop sitting on the sidelines, feeling frustrated. We are the ones who will make the difference. The hour is here.

That is the commitment of this weekly blog, that each and every person who reads it is fully empowered to have the life that they really want; that each and every person creates results in their life that surpass their own expectations; that each and every person experiences fulfillment and aliveness in the areas of their life that matter to them most.

Bridge Builders, share with us, what are those areas of your life in which you will create unprecedented results. What impact will you make on the community? When you look back at the end of 2012, how will you know that you were the one you’ve been waiting for?

There are two ways you can contribute to this powerful conversation. One, make a comment below. Two, put 7:00 pm, Tuesday, February 7^th on your calendar. This is the date for the first monthly meeting in Winston-Salem where we’ll gather in person. We’ll come together with other Bridge Builders at Cheryl’s house to share our goals and design a plan that will achieve results in each of our lives, and in our community. 2012 is already becoming a year of unprecedented aliveness … join us!

Editor’s Note: To make a comment on Cristin’s Abundance Essay, click on the ““comment”" button below her bio.

This essay was created by Triad Tribe author and clinical psychologist, Cristin Whiting, Psy.D. In addition to writing for Bridges, Cristin is launching a new website and multimedia blog called The Love Tango: The Extraordinary Dance Between Sex, Love and Intimacy. Cristin also writes monthly on the topic of relationships for Dr. Lara Fernandez.com who’s tag line is “Live the life of your dreams with your soulmate by your side.” She also blogs for Triad Mom’s on Main. Beyond her writing, Cristin is the mother of two children who are the joy of her life. She also volunteers as a leadership coach, empowering others to live lives they love so they can be a contribution to their communities. Cristin currently resides in Winston-Salem and has a private psychotherapy practice.

To read Cristin’s other Bridges’ Essays on Abundance click here.

Well, I did it again, despite posting this on my Facebook , Twitter and LinkedIn feeds just yesterday morning via Seth Godin’s Blog:

“The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer.

Let me guess: check the incoming. Check email or traffic stats or messages from your boss. Check the tweets you follow or the FB status of friends.

You’ve just surrendered not only a block of time but your freshest, best chance to start something new.

If you’re a tech company or a marketer, your goal is to be the first thing people do when they start their day. If you’re an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/responded/insisted to what happened yesterday.”

________________________________________________________

But it’s so much fun to start my day bopping around on The Twitter, seeing what my friends are doing on Facebook (and more importantly which of my posts they got jazzed up about).  And yes, I am inspired and motivated by what others are sharing … but like Seth so clearly points out, it totally derails me from mobilizing ME to make the difference I can make through journaling or blogging or laying down tracks for the Imagination Installations, or Local Love on MyBridges.net or another vital if-I-don’t-do-it-it’s-not-gonna-happen endeavor like “We Are The Ones.”

So even though it’s significantly later in the morning than I would like, I’m still gonna take some of that fresh morning “get it done” attitude and write this blog post.  As my friend Robin White Star Woman reminded me yesterday,

“When you notice you’re not doing what you set out to do, that you’re not being the ‘best self’ you’ve committed yourself to being, you don’t have to beat yourself up. Just make the commitment to start again, fresh and do it … right now.”

So beginning now, I have a message to share. Something that’s been coming up regularly this week.  It’s about the value of being vulnerable.  About stepping into your place in the world with an open heart.  Not foolishly and willy-nilly … but when you sense that even though it may be really scary or require a leap of faith … it’s the right thing to do … you JUMP.  You make the call, invite people to the table, you say out loud to your lover how you’re really feeling in that moment , and why.  You’re specific, fearless and clear in your communication.  And darn it, you Think Big, Dream Big and right in that moment start taking the steps to make it happen.  Don’t delay (even for one more cup of coffee) or your brain will throw on the emergency break and put you back in auto pilot, into your repetitive pattern comfort zone where the ego likes to keep you.

Don’t listen to those little voices. Your Soul Work is calling to you.  Pick up the phone!

……….. ………. Dream It. Share It. Be It.

The Imagination Installation Project is about building Imaginariums: places where people can record their dreams and discover what others have shared.

We do this by collecting “Imagine When … ” statements from everyday people in Forsyth County, North Carolina and sharing them through public art installations, and our web site, Facebook & Twitter pages and Imagination Events.

Join the Imagination Movement:

Click here to get on the Imagination e-list so you can dream big with us and receive fun e-mails

Follow us on Facebook & Twitter.

Visit our web site ImaginationInstallations.com

History: On August 30, 2011, Cheryl Schirillo brought together a grassroots group of entrepreneurs, artists, business people, educators, designers, and community leaders started meeting in downtown Winston-Salem, NC to brainstorm the Project.  As of November  over 200 people are directly involved in the project and we’ve collected thousands of dreams.

To read about the first Deep Dive/brainstorming meetings Click here to see highlights.

Our Slogan: .………………………….  ……………………..  ………………………………………………….. Dream It. Share It. Be It.

Goals: ……………………………………………………………………………..

To showcase the incredible people, projects and organizations in our community.

To become a nationwide model for results-driven imagination.

To connect people with common goals and interests.

To build Dream Maps of Forsyth County (data visualizations on our web site)

To populate the city with both physical and online venues (art installations, web site, imagination events) that serve as a conveyners for the community.

Look below to see how our first group of dreamers completed the sentence ”Imagine if …”

Imagine if everyone felt safe to share their dreams. ~ Tammy Caudill

Imagine if we really knew our neighbors. ~ Gail Fisher   …. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Imagine if I had time to breathe. ~ Jim Toole    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     . . . . .      . . . . . .    . .

Imagine if we lived without fear. ~ Jan Detter   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     . . . . .      . . . . . .    . .

Imagine if biking to work were the new normal. ~ Cheryl Schirillo

Imagine if every human being knew their true value. ~ Amanda Zabel

Imagine if different aspects of culture really could connect. ~ Carol Strohecker

Imagine if all points of view were honored. ~ Robin White Star

Imagine if people actively choose to hope. ~ Kathryn Mobley

Imagine if you could put the world on hold without any consequences.

~ Connie Chesner

“Imagine if we could do exactly what we wanted all day, each day, without stress, anxiety or fear, and get paid a good salary for simply doing what we love and are gifted at.  Imagine!” ~ Cyndi Briggs

Imagine if everyone had a friend. ~ Tina Stearns

Imagine if all cars were electric. ~ Johnathan Schirillo, 13 yrs. old

Imagine if you had as many words for love as the Eskimo’s have for snow. ~ Connie Chesner

Imagine if W-S had public health so effective, and health care costs so cheap, that companies were eager to do business here and other municipalities traveled from across the country to study our success. ~ Jim Toole

Imagine if there was no more hunger in the world. ~ Cheryl Lindsay

Imagine if there was no terminal illness. ~ Julie Crayne

Imagine if we were a connected and caring community. ~ Teddy Burriss

Imagine if everyone felt loved. ~ Debra Chiarello

Imagine if … imagine if those two words could change the world.

~ Tammy Caudill

Click here to get on the Imagination e-list so you can dream big with us and receive fun e-mails.

Folks from the Triad Tribe (like “too cool for school” Audrey pictured above)  have started dreaming about roving Imagination Installations for Winston-Salem.

Our next meeting is December 2 at noon, location TBA (First Friday’s at noon are our standing monthly meetings.)

The first Deep Dive/brainstorming meetings happened in August  Click here to see highlights.

Click here to get on the Imagination e-list so you can dream big with us and receive fun e-mails.

Look below to see how our first group of dreamers completed the sentence “Imagine if …”

Imagine if everyone felt safe to share their dreams. ~ Tammy Caudill

Imagine if we really knew our neighbors. ~ Gail Fisher   …. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Imagine if I had time to breathe. ~ Jim Toole    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     . . . . .      . . . . . .    . .

Imagine if we lived without fear. ~ Jan Detter   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     . . . . .      . . . . . .    . .

Imagine if biking to work were the new normal. ~ Cheryl Schirillo

Imagine if every human being knew their true value. ~ Amanda Zabel

Imagine if different aspects of culture really could connect. ~ Carol Strohecker

Imagine if all points of view were honored. ~ Robin White Star

Imagine if people actively choose to hope. ~ Kathryn Mobley

Imagine if you could put the world on hold without any consequences.

~ Connie Chesner

“Imagine if we could do exactly what we wanted all day, each day, without stress, anxiety or fear, and get paid a good salary for simply doing what we love and are gifted at.  Imagine!” ~ Cyndi Briggs

Imagine if everyone had a friend. ~ Tina Stearns

Imagine if all cars were electric. ~ Johnathan Schirillo, 13 yrs. old

Imagine if you had as many words for love as the Eskimo’s have for snow. ~ Connie Chesner

Imagine if W-S had public health so effective, and health care costs so cheap, that companies were eager to do business here and other municipalities traveled from across the country to study our success. ~ Jim Toole

Imagine if there was no more hunger in the world. ~ Cheryl Lindsay

Imagine if there was no terminal illness. ~ Julie Crayne

Imagine if we were a connected and caring community. ~ Teddy Burriss

Imagine if everyone felt loved. ~ Debra Chiarello

Imagine if … imagine if those two words could change the world.

~ Tammy Caudill

Join us and share your “Imagine If …. ” dreams by adding a comment below.  It’s easy, just click on the “contribute” button at the bottom of this column to add your voice.

If you’re new to Bridges here’s a bit more info on how to post/comment:  After you click on the “contribute” button at the bottom of this column, just type in the white box (of course you have to sign in first at the bottom of the page).  If you don’t have a free Bridges account yet, no problem, it takes about 30 seconds.  To register click here: http://mybridges.net/register