the healing power of narrative

Well it has been an awfully long time sinc I last posted. So MUCH so MUCH has been happening. My parents-in-law moved here from China and we have been enjoying them being here a great deal. They have been cooking wonderful food for us and helping us with all manner of small tasks which has enabled me to get things done even with all the driving back and forth between Hartford, CT and New Jersey.


The drive between CT and NJ has been so beautiful though on the parkway through the fall colors and the leaves blowing around in the wind.

In New Jersey I am blessed, blessed, blessed to be in the same tiny Baha'i community as Shamim, Johanna, and Arian Taherzadeh. They are nurturing my soul and healing me healing me healing me. They fill my heart and whole being with love and joy and beauty. I feel as though they were a tender gift to me from above. Shamim is also a child of africa and in fact we knew each other growing up. Little Arian is simply a phenomenon. He has changed my whole view of the world and what potential a human being can attain in two and half years of life when nurtured in beauty, spirit, life, love, tenderness and joy. His is fluent in Farsi, Icelandic (Johanna comes from Iceland) and English and is able to have really meaningful conversations in all of these languages despite the fact that he has only been in existence for such a briefly fleeting moment. Every Thursday nights I go to their sweet home to study Ruhi Book 6. Attending a study circle on a regular basis has been something I have been yearning for for literally years. I feel the light and warmth slowly, ever so slowly being fanned into flame within me :)

In other wonderful news...I am LOVING my job, my work, my career as an assistant professor. I LOVE my students, I love the LEARNING and progress that this job allows. and i am very grateful to MBH for the fact that he is so supportive of my career :) He is proud of me, celebrates my achievements and supports me to have time to do my work.

MBH is a ballroom dancer. He has gotten so good. I have joined a dancing team with him (we are still beginners) but we train on Sunday afternoons and MOnday evenings and i have to miss Thursdays because I am in New Jersey. We will be in a competition next week! Mother altered my long burgandy dress that i got for my wedding so that I could use if to dance standard (Walt and Foxtrot for this competition) and we all went out on a shopping trip to find my Latin/Rhythm outfit (rumba and swing).

I just sent off a revised manuscript to a very good journal--my first sole authored publication (well it is not accepted yet!). I am now working on an invited book review of a book about Influential Chinese Educators. The author, Ruth Hayhoe takes a very spiritual approach to her work. She uses a narrative approach. One sentence caught my attention and prompted me to try to dash off a blog update:

She talks of "the healing character of narrative within psychology--the importance to human well-being of the ability "to create a narrative that is coherent and satisfying and that will serve as a justification for one's present condition and situation."

I thought that was a wonderful statement about the power and usefulness of blogging! I should try to get time to do more blogging once a week or so.