ACA Blog

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to speak to a group of courageous young women ages 14 -19 about my life and experiences as a teen mother. I was invited by Family First, an organization in downtown Atlanta that provides counseling and assistance to young pregnant and teen moms. I was ecstatic about the opportunity to speak with this group of women of course because even 20 years later I still identify myself as a teen mom.

Movies and books about cross-cultural relationships just wouldn’t be complete without the jokes about language misunderstands and mishaps. Who can forget the scene in “Lost in Translation,” where a Japanese woman is asking Bill Murray to “lip” her stockings, rather than “rip.” Or in “Under The Tuscan Sun,” when the protagonist confuses the Italian word for single with the word “celibate.” At times jokes of this nature can cross the line, but as with jokes of all genres, there’s no doubt a grain of truth in the awkwardness felt on both sides of a couple that just can’t understand each other.

Horses communicate primarily through the use of body language, eye contact, voice and smell. As we learned last time, observing the horse can often provide clues about his emotional state and temperament. This week, we will discuss how understanding horse communication may help counselors communicate with clients on a deeper level.

In brainstorming about what I would write in this, my first blog with the ACA, I really struggled with getting started. I typed and deleted, typed and deleted and then once more, some keystrokes followed by a stab at the ole backspace. Nothing seemed adequate for describing or introducing what it is that I do and where I live. I’d come up with a smorgasbord of topics that I wanted to write about, but I didn’t feel I could just jump straight in to one of them with no introduction.

This weekend my husband and I were watching our favorite morning show ‘Up with Chris Hayes’. I like this show because it makes me think. Each weekend intelligent, interesting, and well-informed people discuss the issues. I can almost feel my brain gaining density as I listen to the conversation. In the last segment of the show four fiction authors were the focus. Ayana Mathis, author of ‘The 12 Tribes of Hattie’, used the term ‘severely impoverished’ in making her point.

“I’m an awful parent” is a common lament of many of the parents I work with professionally. These parents will enter my office with anger and regret tattooed from face to toes. A child or teen is commonly tugged in their wake, head downcast. Meeting individually with these parents to check-in regarding the cause of their disparaging facade, they commonly spill forth tales of their child’s becoming quite the little terror recently, to which they with all the heaviness of an over-stressed individual, responded in anger, only to deeply regret it later.