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Features Blog - thebroadroom.net
The Right Words at the Right Time by Marlo Thomas
posted by TheBroadroom.Net,
Monday, October 15, 2007
at 10:12 PM (Pacific)
For those of us in need of hope, a hero, or a healthy dose of inspiration, here is a heartwarming collection of personal revelations from some of today's greatest luminaries whose lives were changed by hearing the right words at the right time.
The Right Words at the Right Time
By Marlo Thomas and Friends
Published by Atria Books
January 2004; $16.00US/$24.00CAN; 0-7434-4650-X
Author
Marlo Thomas graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree. She is the author of two bestselling books, Free to Be . . . You and Me and Free to Be . . . A Family. Ms. Thomas has won four Emmys® and the Peabody Award and has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame for her work in television, including the long-running hit series That Girl, which she conceived, produced, and starred in. She serves on the Professional Advisory Board and as the National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Ms. Thomas lives in New York with her husband, Phil Donahue.
The following is an excerpt from the book The Right Words at the Right Time
by Marlo Thomas and Friends.
Foreword
"Tell me a fact and I'll learn. Tell me a truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever."
-- Indian Proverb
When I was a child I loved to watch my father shave. I sat on the closed toilet seat and marveled at the sound of the razor gliding over his face, pushing aside the foamy soap like a shovel in the snow. I adored him, this grand figure who slapped lotion on his cheeks every morning, buttoned his clean white shirt and hugged me good-bye.
Once, my father made a movie with Margaret O'Brien and he often took me to the set. I would cue his lines as we drove to the MGM studios with the windows open and the heady mix of Old Spice and a Cuban cigar swirling about us as we carried on a kind of rehearsal in transit. On the set I played jacks with Margaret between takes, and when the bell rang, I would join the crew in their silence as the cameras rolled and the boom mike moved into position to record the dialogue I knew by heart.
I was in awe of my father and sinfully envious of Margaret O'Brien. I wore pigtails. I wanted freckles. I wanted to be Margaret O'Brien. Ten years later, at age seventeen, I got my chance.
I played the lead in Gigi in a summer stock production at the Laguna Playhouse south of Los Angeles. The excitement of finally being a real actress was painfully short-lived. All the interviews and all the reviews focused on my father. Would I be as good as my father? Was I as gifted, as funny? Would I be as popular? I was devastated.
I loved my father; my problem was Danny Thomas.
"Daddy," I began, "please don't be hurt when I tell you this. I want to change my name. I love you but I don't want to be a Thomas anymore."
I tried not to cry during the long silence. And then he said, "I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd but they don't listen. They just run their own race. That's what you have to do. Don't listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race."
The next night as the crowd filed into the theater, the stage manager knocked on my dressing room door and handed me a white box with a red ribbon. I opened it up and inside was a pair of old horse blinders with a little note that read, "Run your own race, Baby."
Run your own race, Baby. He could have said it a dozen other ways: "Be independent"; "Don't be influenced by others." But it wouldn't have been the same. He chose the right words at the right time. The old horse blinders were the right gift. And all through my life, I've been able to cut to the chase by asking myself, "Am I running my race or somebody else's?"
The impact those words had on me made me wonder if others had such words too. What follows on these pages are the stories that changed the lives of more than one hundred remarkable people who responded to my invitation to reach back into their own lives in search of that moment when words made all the difference. Each one is a brief glimpse into the heart, a moment of awakening, a lightbulb that revealed a truth that has stayed with them for a lifetime, or a challenge that moved them to action. Muhammad Ali responded to a teacher's assertion that he "ain't never gonna be nuthin'." Billy Crystal, Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric and Kenneth Cole also received words of discouragement that goaded them on to achievement. The right words moved Al Pacino to pull out of a downward spiral. Paul McCartney's words came in a dream; Steven Spielberg's came from Davey Crockett. Chris Rock's words, like mine, came from his father; Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's from her mother-in-law on the eve of her wedding. Rudolph Giuliani, Cindy Crawford and Gwyneth Paltrow heard the words that changed their lives during a moment of crisis. Itzhak Perlman spent his entire career, almost forty years, living by a single, eight-letter word first spoken to him by a Russian music teacher when he was ten years old.
All of these stories confirmed something I've always suspected: that whether we know it or not, each of us carries our own unique slogan, a custom-made catchphrase that resonates throughout our lives.
The royalties from this book will help fund research now underway at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the hospital my father founded in 1962. Along with our Nobel laureate Dr. Peter Doherty, our talented physicians, researchers and nurses strive every day to save the lives of children who come to our doors from all over the world and who are never turned away because of a family's inability to pay.
I thank the men and women who offered their stories for this book on behalf of the children, and with the hope that their right words at the right time would be just that to someone else.
And I thank my father for all his words that continue to live in my heart.
Marlo Thomas
New York City
Spring, 2002
Copyright © 2002 The Right Words, LLC
For more information, please visit www.rightwordsbooks.com or www.writtenvoices.com
 
Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do? Breaking the Rules to Get What You Want in Love, Life, and Work by Victoria C. Dickerson, Ph.D., with Carla Fine
posted by TheBroadroom.Net,
at 9:58 PM (Pacific)
Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do?
by Victoria C. Dickerson, Ph.D., with Carla Fine
Published by Perigee
August 2004; $14.95US/$22.95CAN; 0-399-52999-3
Have you hit a quarter-life crisis? Is the Big 3-0 looming large? Are you hearing from friends, family, and everyone around you that you're "supposed to":
--Have a fabulous career
--Be financially independent
--Be married with children
--Have your own home
--Enjoy a busy social life
--Have a great body
--AND do it all right? You are not alone. Women in their twenties and early thirties face greater pressure to succeed than ever before. And those who don't "have it all" can be left feeling guilty, full of doubt, and resentful.
In Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do?, nationally acclaimed clinical psychologist Victoria Dickerson lifts the pressure to "fit in" by showing you how to:
- Decide what you -- rather than society, family, or friends -- really want out of life
- Say "no" to self-doubt -- and diminish its power over you
- Challenge the cultural expectations that pressure you to conform
- Acknowledge and take pride in your unique abilities and accomplishments
- Create a support community that shares your values and accentuates your strengths
Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do? shows women how to put pressures and expectations into perspective and see them as the wonderful options and opportunities they can be.
by Victoria C. Dickerson, Ph.D., author of Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do?
"Look Good, Be Thin" is an expectation that affects us all. How we look is inextricably connected to how we feel about ourselves. Of course we want to always look our best.
But . . . how do you really feel about how you look?
- You feel fat, your stomach bulges, your butt’s too big.
- Your thighs and arms are flabby.
- Nothing fits right.
- Your hair is just wrong.
- You’re super sensitive to what your boyfriend says.
- You think others are looking at you.
- You endlessly compare yourself to other women.
Plus there are countless "recipes" for success, to make you feel better, to look good, be thin. There are articles that say: "get slim" (by tonight) and tips from the top ten celebs on how to dress, to look "just right."
No wonder you’re obsessed about your appearance. In a Garry Trudeau Doonesbury comic strip, a young woman staring at a bathing suit magazine says to her friend, "Look at these models. Wouldn’t it be cool to look that gorgeous?" To which her friend replies, "Well, yes, but you have to remember that their body type is not actually found in nature. Becoming the new feminine ideal requires just the right amount of insecurity, bulimia, and surgery."
How could there be a solution to what the message "Look Good, Be Thin" implies?
Weighing just the "right" amount, having a "fit" body, the right clothes, make-up, and hair style all may seem like a solution--but it isn’t. Because, as you already know, nothing is ever right.
The problem isn’t how you think you look, it’s the self-doubt.
The first step is to conquer the self-doubt.
Here are ten tips on how to do that:
- Notice that the expectation about how you are supposed to look gets you to constantly compare yourself to others.
- Pay attention to how this expectation exerts control over the decisions you make about your eating habits, fashion picks, workout plans, and so on.
- See how your constant concern over your appearance negatively influences the way you think about yourself and leads to an ongoing experience of self-doubt.
- Watch how the obsession about how you look interferes with your relationships.
- Understand that the expectation to look a certain way may isolate you and often gets you to act with insincerity toward others.
- Ask yourself if you really want these pressures in your life.
- Notice when you are engaged in activities or events that give your life meaning and during which how you look or what you eat become a non-issue.
- Make distinctions between when you are doing something that feels good to you and when you are caught by how you think you are "supposed to" look or feel.
- Reconnect with what you do in your body that has always felt good: like dancing or doing yoga or swimming or playing tennis or whatever.
- Delight in what delights you.
Remember that battling the expectation to look a certain way is life long, because we live in a culture where appearance is important. But you don’t have to let it create self-doubt. You can be in the driver’s seat and decide for yourself what works for you. You can live with confidence!
Victoria C. Dickerson, Ph.D., has been a nationally acclaimed clinical psychologist for more than twenty-five years, specializing in working with women in their twenties and early thirties. She presents workshops and lectures extensively throughout the country.
Her book Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do? - Breaking the Rules to Get What You Want in Love, Life, and Work is available at all major booksellers.
For more information, please visit www.breakingtherulesbook.com or www.writtenvoices.com.
Copyright © 2004 Victoria C. Dickerson, Ph.D.
A Mother's View of Afghanistan by Masha Hamilton
posted by TheBroadroom.Net,
at 9:50 PM (Pacific)
Below is an original article from veteran middle east correspondent, Masha Hamilton about reporting in Afghanistan from the perspective of a woman and mother.
We are printing it as part of an effort to help promote Masha's forthcoming novel about journalists affected by violence in the war zones of the world, The Distance Between Us.
A Mother's View of Afghanistan
by Masha Hamilton, author of The Distance Between Us
Published by Unbridled Books
November 1 2004; ISBN: 193296102X
My neighbor Jessie was giving in to guilt during our morning jog. "I adore this kid," she said of her one-year-old. "But we spent a couple hours in the park yesterday and I was bored enough to cry. Today I couldn't wait to hand him off to the sitter." Jessie felt safe revealing to me what some might regard as a moment of maternal shortcoming because I am--ta dah--the reigning local Queen Of Maternal Shortcomings.
How'd I get the title? It began when I left my three wonderful children, ages nine to fifteen, to spend a month cloistered at an artists' colony--no visitors, and phone calls only during mealtimes. Maybe that could be forgiven. But then I left them again, several months later, to spend two weeks traveling in Afghanistan.
That's right, Afghanistan. Where foreign aide workers and American football heroes and election volunteers and average Afghans keep getting shot at and sometimes killed. Where I couldn't even bring back one of those "My Mom went To Kabul And All I Got..." T-shirts, because of course they don't make those T-shirts for Kabul yet.
While I was preparing for the trip, I came in for my share of criticism--most of it friendly, some not-so. A couple fathers said outright that I, as a mother, should not venture to a place considered unstable at best. My own husband balked at first, though he eventually came around. (Maybe it was when I began humming Cat Steven’s "I'm looking for a hard-headed woman.")
When I told my daughter not to do anything foolish while I was gone, like walking in the park after dark, she began jabbing her finger at me, swinging her hips and speaking with emphasis. "You are going to Afghanistan, and you are telling me not to do anything dangerous?" Even Jessie urged me to write a note to my kids explaining why I'd done it, in case I never came back.
I didn't write the note. But I did think carefully about what it meant to me to be a mom once the days of Play Dough and finger-paint are past, and in these times of terror alerts and video-taped beheadings and war.
First, I'm a normal mom: I love my kids. I know their teachers and their friends. I home-schooled two of them in the early grades, and taught all three how to read. I've baked bread with them, read to them and taken them to museums. When they were small, was constantly pulling out the construction paper and scissors. Sometimes, watching them sleeping, I cried a little over the parts of their lives that I would miss, once they grew up.
I'm passionate about them, actually. But I'm passionate about other things, too. The Middle East, and Russia, and war and journalism and the stories we make up out of whole cloth and the ones that have some basis in reality. Women's issues and shiatsu and reading. Friendships.
My desire to go to Afghanistan was fueled by a longing to know, as much as possible, what it means to be an Afghan woman today. My interest stemmed in part from that infamous footage I saw several years ago of the woman in the blue burqua shot in the head in the Kabul football stadium during Taliban times, which came to represent the cruelty to which Afghan women were subjected. I was further drawn to the country after reading Jason Elliot's wonderful An Unexpected Light: Travels In Afghanistan, published in 2000. Finally, I was curious to know whether we have, as the Bush administration insists, substantially improved the situation for the country's women.
I wanted to go for personal, geopolitical reasons. The world our kids are growing into is more threatening that the one we inhabited at their age. Increasingly, people--not just Americans, of course--view their global neighbors through a lens of "us" versus "them." This seems to me as wrong as it is dangerous. Links between women and mothers from various cultures can be a crucial step in dispelling this limited way of thinking.
Occasionally I felt a jolt of fear as I prepared for the journey. So much was unknown, and so much of the news from there was bad. But I've lived overseas and ventured into unfamiliar places as a journalist. I knew I could make contacts and find help when needed. Plus, I arranged to meet a friend, a photographer who is also a mother. It would be her first visit to Afghanistan as well.
My trip was all I'd hoped for. I interviewed women in prison, child brides, those who'd been jailed in Taliban times, and those who'd been refugees in Pakistan. I talked to a twelve-year-old girl who was in jail for refusing to marry the man her father had chosen, a man who was nearly 40. I sat on the dusty ground with an elderly matriarch and her extended family of 25 as she showed me her box full of wishes: what she will put in her room if she ever gets a room of her own. I practiced shiatsu on women who'd never experienced massage before. I learned about those who live in the country where some 18,000 of our soldiers are now based, and where we are likely to remain involved for some time.
On a personal level, I learned more about myself as a mother, and about how I hope to send my children off into young adulthood. It's important to me that they know the world is not so scary that we should avoid it. I want them to understand that women--and mothers--must live their lives as fully as they can, and as much according to their beliefs as possible. And I want them to recognize that some risks, once measured, are worth taking.
For more information, please visit www.writtenvoices.com.
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