Ampersand Gazette #74
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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Do you want to be Helped, Heard, or Hugged?
I’m doing something in this issue that I haven’t done before, which is reprinting a piece from an earlier Gazette. This originally appeared on December 25, 2023; at the time, I applied it to the holidays. Now, I think we ought to consider it as a viable lens for the U. S. presidential election.
“When you have a friend or family member who is upset … ask this one question …
Do you want to be helped, heard or hugged?
It clarifies needs. It de-escalates swirling emotions. It helps us take positive action.
Each option—an embrace, thoughtful but solicited advice, or an empathetic ear—has the power to comfort and calm.
Finding out whether your loved one wants to be helped, heard, or hugged “is really asking, ‘How can I meet your needs?’”
“You’re asking permission—and also being very intentional—which is a sign of empathy.”
Excerpted from a Well Column by Jancee Dunn in The New York Times
“When Someone You Love Is Upset, Ask This One Question”
April 7, 2023
This question goes a long, long way in the accountability department, and also helps with minding your own business. You’ll be amazed at how quickly it can de-escalate an upset, and around the holidays, that’s not such a bad thing.
There’s nothing worse than needing just to vent and having someone launch into helping before you’ve gotten whatever it is off your chest. Asking this question also often takes fighting about how you’re communicating off the table, too.
Think of the last time you were really upset. What did you want? If someone had asked this $64,000 question, would it have helped the outcome? Try it sometime, you’ll see that it works.
Oh, and speaking of work … while this seems like a question for closer personal connections, it works at work, too, especially since you can say, (as hugging is often frowned at in human resources realms) “Consider yourself hugged,” and accomplish the same thing.
Also, it doesn’t matter the age of the person you’re asking. Once a small child has even rudimentary language skills, it works just as well on them, even on teenagers.
Think on this a moment, Beloved. There’s honor in this question. It says, I see you. I hear you. I want you to have the power in this situation. How may I add to your sense of well-being in this circumstance? Yes, real, old-fashioned, Leroy Jethro Gibbs-type honor. And I’m sure I don’t have to say that we on our small green marble can use all the honor we can get right now.
That’s where the piece ended in December …
As for the current climate … if my clientele and friends are any sort of barometer, people are quite het up about the coming presidential election. I do not diminish anyone’s passion over U.S. politics when I say this.
What I’m interested in here is … the wildly swinging emotional pendulums that a great many of us have ahold of by the bottom. Instead, this question … helped, heard, or hugged … lets you grab the pendulum from the top. Quite a vital distinction. Especially when it comes to believing polls.
Eek. We are addicted to them, and some even live and die by their numbers. Have a look at the three hearts in the image. They are, left to right, Red, Blue, and Green.
In order, helped … especially when your Red Root Chakra is freaked at what could be, or what that number could mean.
Heard … especially when your Turquoise Fifth Chakra wants to screech at what so-and-so said this morning, or how such and such referred to you-know-who.
Held … especially when your Green Fourth Chakra is scared out of its wits at what c*o*u*l*d happen, or what the Electoral College or the Supreme Court might mean.
In the next nine days (and probably more), there is going to be a LOT of emotional pendulum-swinging. When you’re upset, find a mirror. What do you need? To be helped, heard, or held? When a friend is upset, be the mirror. What do they need? To be helped, heard, or held?
Beloved, the political process is what it is, and adding our emotional valleys and peaks does nothing to alter it. The outcome will be information for all of us. Until the information is definitive, you have a new skill that you can use to offer serenity to yourself, your loved ones, and everyone else. Use it. Please. Oh, and VOTE.
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To the Editor:
Re “Life in SpaceX’s Company Town,” by Christopher Hooks (Opinion guest essay, May 26):
What a sad, sad essay, so well done by Mr. Hooks. The SpaceX mission is to save humankind from the potential collapse of this planet by going to other planets? Yet, we take ourselves—the source of our troubles on Earth—with us.
Space will not cleanse us of our hubris, our avarice, our destructiveness. Elon Musk thinks that by going into space he might “find out the meaning of life”? The meaning is right here, right now.
Meaning is made, not found. The meaning is a series of clichés: Be kind to one another. Help one another. Care for one another. Make sure everyone is fed and housed and supported. Take care of the Earth for our own sake and the sake of all other beings.
Get the stars out of your eyes and live the lovely, amazing, humble, deeply satisfying human life that this planet makes possible for us.
Jonathan P. Levin
Northampton, Mass.
from Letters to the Editor in The New York Times
June 23, 2024
This letter addresses one of the great mystical secrets of life, one that few of us have ever stopped to realize, let alone ponder. That is that meaning is made, not found.
I remember when I first heard this from an old metaphysical wizard, and it rocked my world. The reason was because I, like so many of us, believed what I’d been taught about reality—that facts were objective truth, and that art was subjective fancy. That’s what I was taught in all the schooling I had until I began to learn metaphysics.
It was a big revelation, and a scary one. Then a magical one. Then scary all over again. I? I make the meaning in my own life? So do you, Beloved. As shocking as that might be to you.
Now many years have gone by since I first heard this concept, and I’ve come to the notion that yes, indeed, we do make our own meaning. In fact, that’s the real purpose of Free Will—to choose what the events in our lives mean.
I’m also in full agreement with Viktor Frankl who wrote that humans can live without a great many things, but one of the few we cannot live without is meaning.
Think on this please. Let’s say you go for blood tests one day, and you get a call a couple days later asking you to come back to the lab because your samples have been lost. Wouldn’t you be grumbly about that? I would. Rugga-rugga, I’d say, that stupid lab lost my blood et al.
But then, what if, when I got there to give blood again, the tech recognized me and said, “Oh my God, I am so sorry we lost your samples. But you know what? That led to the whole team having a brainstorming meeting, and now we’ve put a new protocol in place that should prevent it from happening to anyone ever again!”
What happens to me? I have been given not only meaning, but good meaning, to a “bad” experience, and now I don’t feel so badly about it, do I? No, not only that, but I get home and I crow to my partner, You won’t believe what happened when I went back to the lab today!
And so now, not only do I have a good meaning to my crummy experience, but others are benefiting from it as well, so I feel satisfied with that meaning. We do this all the time when we reframe experience for ourselves and others.
Now, I’m not quite as cynical as Mr. Levin, the letter writer. I don’t think meaning boils down to “a series of clichés,” but I do think that the gift of creating positive, useful meaning for our life experiences is a blessing. It’s even more of a blessing when we actively use it.
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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …
Mike Dooley
P.S. If you’re not happy, then it’s not the end.
Dr. Susan Corso
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And in publishing news …
Reclaim Your Energy: /programs/claudiu-murgan-14?via=claudiu Stop Hidden Leaks and Rediscover Your Power with Expert Insights from Susan Corso | Spiritually Inspired #189 | Claudiu Murgan
Discover surprising ways you might be leaking energy—and how to reclaim your power! 🌟 Susan Corso shares why self-awareness is the key to a more vibrant life and how one small word, "And," can create powerful transformation. Dive deeper into her insights in her new book!
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Jacqueline Retrograde is FINISHED!!! Here is the cover, and the new blurb.
A debut. An auction block. A glimpse at a whole new life.
Jacqueline Bailey is the eldest of the four Bailey sisters, yes, those Baileys. A gifted equestrienne since her papa placed her in the front of his saddle at age two, Jacqueline has been dragooned—oh, not kicking, not screaming, instead unwittingly, almost before she noticed it—into becoming a New York High Society Gilded Age debutante.
The truth is, she can hardly believe it. Viewed through the perspective of a highly private individual, this inside look at the idiosyncratic mixture of the nobs, those of the Knickerbocracy, and the swells, those of the Nouveau Riche, as they take on their allegedly proper social roles, brings into high relief the eccentricities and hypocrisies of all performance-based social behaviors.
Jacqueline is well past disenchanted when we meet her on the natal day which qualifies her as a legal adult. A fun outing, wherein her circus antecedents make their presence both known and useful, leads to a burgeoning friendship, to be sure, or could it be … more, when she’s cast in another unplanned role, this time as hero.
Heroics, to no one’s surprise, are not all they’re cracked up to be, so when a desperate, and jealous, debutante uses the incident to further her nefarious matrimonial aspirations, Jacqueline’s mettle comes to the fore. Everyone already knows there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Entering into this backstage look at the world of the pre-Victorian debutante, Jacqueline is brought face-to-face with her true self, Jaq. No one could predict that being a deb is the trigger to her wildest dreams come true. Perhaps not immediately, but slowly, surely, and inexorably as Jaq steps out upon her true path.
Will Jacqueline implode over the demand to be a fragile feminine flower of flummoxed femininity? Will the girl whirl hoops be the end of Jacqueline? Or are they the dawn of a newly-minted gender freedom that Jaq has unknowingly been seeking all along …
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I am thrilled to show you my new banner for fiction.
As promised, this is the new version of the Fiction Book Banner, which includes Jacqueline.
Now, may I draw your attention to the little book on the bottom row of the image that seems to be hanging out all by itself? That’s the next publishing project. It’s called The Mex In-Betweens. My bookhusband (and legal spouse) Tony Amato, having edited every single one of my books, started reading the first Mex Mystery, Oklahoma! Hex, again. As he did, he made a list of back stories he thought would make intriguing singles—short in-betweens. There’s a round baker’s dozen of ’em in this volume.
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My review request this issue is … if you love queer romance, would you please read Attending Physician—the permafree book that starts my Boots & Boas Romances? If you love it, would you leave a stellar review? I need four more reviews of four stars and above to do one of my special series promotions … please.
Reviews really are the engine that powers the career of an indie author.
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Let’s talk about “bad” reviews for a moment, shall we? There are some on Attending Physician. As if I didn’t already know that butch-femme can be quite the in-your-face topic within the queer community. When I was coming up, and coming out, into that same community, there was NO place for butch-femme. In fact, I didn’t even learn those words until after I turned 40! For real. Fortunately, I met a for real butch who knew what I was instantly, and said as much. I was running a meeting when she said it, and I remember having to hold onto the table in front of me to keep from passing out—that’s how deeply the word femme resonated for me.
Anywho, back to “bad” reviews. I’m usually relieved when I receive one. I know that sounds hard to fathom, but those reviews merely tell me who my book isn’t for. Let’s be honest, darlings, butch-femme isn’t for everyone. I say, yippee, more for me!
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So I’m still writing along in Prismatica, Book One, and definitely coming toward the end. This time I’m writing fewer words as I get toward Finis. It doesn’t always go that way, but it is this time. It might not even go that way in the next book. I never know. This is one of the many things that keeps me writing.
Oh, and the title changed. Book One is now called:
Who knows what I’ll write next … will it be … Jaq Direct, the final book of The Subversive Lovelies? Likely. Or Impending Decision, the fifth book of The Boots & Boas Romances? I think maybe this one too. Or Shrew This!, book eleven of The Mex Mysteries? Or the second Prismatica? Or a new chakra aid to clearing energy blocks? So many books, so little time …
The day is definitely coming when I’ll be writing two books at one time.
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The Mex In-Betweens are the brain children of, you guessed it, Tony Amato.
And what are in-betweens, you want to know? They’re the scenes that, for whatever reason, don’t fit in a finished book. I’ve finished a baker’s dozen
from Oklahoma! Hex, and it’s time they were out in the world. Now, how many editors do you know who make magic like this?
Do you have need of someone to partner with to help you with your book ideas? In all seriousness, I know a guy. He’s edited my books for twenty years, and counting. Tony Amato is a singularly outstanding (and much sought after) book coach and editor.
May I encourage you to reach out if you need book-husbanding? He’s worked on fiction, micro-fiction, memoir, science fiction, metaphysical fiction, young adult fiction, erotica, singles, series, audio scripts, and nonfiction in realms from business to the spiritual, and everything in between. Oooh, also in-betweens! Really, you name it, he’s done it. Like I said, if you need anything in your writing life, Tony Amato is the person. Find him here.
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“Purity is in the mind of the beholder, but beware the man who vows to protect yours.” —Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
The sentence above is from a review of Amy Sohn’s book, The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age.
It’s about eight women who she dubs “sex radicals,” each of whom takes on the prurient, sanctimonious Anthony Comstock, the man whose eponymous law, passed in 1873, came to connote repression and prudery.
These sex radical women were charged with violating state and federal Comstock laws. They supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and women’s right to pleasure. They took on the devilishly deceptive censor. In their willingness to oppose a monomaniac who viewed reproductive rights as a threat to the American family, and risking imprisonment and death, they redefined birth control access as a civil liberty.
“This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control their bodies.” As I said last time, “This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control our bodies.” And, God help us, we still are.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the always-delicious Mae West, “Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from.” I can, and so has Amy Sohn.
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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one?
This is my fiction brag shelf.
it holds all but one of my currently
published fiction books.
It’s inspiring for me to see it on the shelf.
I draw your attention to the mug,
which I received as a delightful surprise gift
from a client friend.
If you can’t read it, it says:
I WRITE.
What’s your superpower?
The thing is, I’m really asking.
I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we?
Until next time,
Be Ampersand.