Recently a friend caught up with me after many years of raising our families. We had a grand time sharing funny, sad and uplifting stories since the last time we lived in the same town. Our children were all within a few years of each other and a couple of our boys had particularly engaging teen aged years. One of her twins she shared, ‘skipped high school’.

She and her husband had divorced by the time the twins were in high school and each parent had one twin. Their agreement was to individually parent each son and ‘may the best son win’ or something like that. Can you guess what happened? Mom was the disciplinarian and her twin made it to school, made A’s and had a manageable high school experience.

The dad took the other son who spent most of high school somewhere else and made his living selling illegal substances. He passed wrestling and got out of high school by the skin of his teeth. Both sons joined the service and now the less successful son is 25 and in college. He has seen the hard side of life in the military. Before his military term was up he contacted a local state college with a plea: I don’t have anything to show you how much I want a degree – my high school years were fun but non-productive. However, I’ve learned how to work and I want you to give me a chance to succeed. If I don’t have a 4.0 by the end of the first term, I’ll leave. But I know I can do the work and hope you’ll give me the opportunity of a lifetime to get my education.

He was accepted and has been a stellar student.

Yes, he skipped high school not on achievement but lack of achievement. But through the wisdom of a military experience he was transformed.

It if can happen to this fine young man, do you know of others who have had similar experiences? Share them with me.

Company stayed with me last weekend – and arrived EARLY! I planned on the last two hours for the final sweep of dishes, papers, vacuuming, bathrooms etc but my guest arrived early. So he helped clean up a little and noted that this is really the way I live and was glad to have seen it. I didn’t like being caught and I reflected on other similar situations.

My son was just out of high school and we had moved to a smaller home where our belongings didn’t fit. They overflowed everywhere while we sorted and piled to give away, keep and throw out. The back porch became littered and it was time for company. We went in to a massive clean up cycle. Matt felt like we had betrayed the family by living with the mess until we wanted to ‘look good’ for the world. Well, yes and no. I didn’t anticipate the full force of his hurt and anger until he had piled the back porch with furniture up against the Great Room sliding glass doors blocking the arboreal view with a mess. It was an act of controlled rage that had to be remediated immediately. But his feelings were the most important focus of my attention. How could we clean up for strangers/friends and not for us/him?

I was recently reminded of this when I assisted a family with an intervention with a father who was a questionable hoarder. All the children were/had been unhappy with Dad for a dozen years, ever since the divorce and the beginning of the piles in the hallway, the piles on all the surfaces, the piles of paper, clothes and his collectibles. And with piles came debris and mold and a dirty home. The adult children had had it and suspected Dad was a hoarder so called in a local specialist. Unknown to the children Dad hired a few people to come in to the home to hide the debris and clean up the house. By the time D-Day arrived, the house appeared clean and organized as long as you didn’t open a closet door.

Now, the home had flowers and pot-pouri. The daughters were furious at the attempt to deceive a stranger and that Dad had cleaned up for a stranger but not them.

Have you ever done this? What motivates you to keep your home clean for the enjoyment of your family?

I am committed to the best practices in the coaching profession in order to provide you with a valuable coaching experience. This site is full of my personal writing about coaching and living with ADHD – I hope you connect with some of my blogs.

Please look around my site for general information and contact me for your coaching services. As Your Attention Coach, I am devoted to your growth and personal development through ADHD Coaching. My professional education includes specific training around the issues of living with ADHD. I believe there is a way to live with ADHD that is compassionate and satisfying – let me help you find your way to self fulfillment. I coach in person and/or on the phone according to my client’s needs.

Are you looking for change in your life?

What issue brings you to Your Attention Coach? I became a coach to help students and adults struggling with ADHD after my children with ADHD forced me to broaden my scope of skills. I become a better parent and a more grounded person. It’s been a fantastic journey of self-growth and I have so many practical tips and insights to share with you.

Are you ready to do something really different that you’ve always wanted to do?

Coaching will change your life with time and attention and a willingness to be coached.

Are we a good fit to work together?

It’s really important we want to work together. All my tips and insights have meaning when we click. Who you are matters.

An Adventure Begins with One First Step…

Contact Maureen Nolan, ACC at 404-713-0488 or email today and take your first step to change.

It’s My Birthday and I’m Sharing It With You!

Email me at maureen@yourattentioncoach.com or call me at 404-713-0488 to make a 15 minute appointment!

This is my ADHD birthday gift to you!

Did I intend to get fired?

It wasn’t my intention not to pay attention on the job…or was it?

The ghastly job seemed to have all my attention. I worried about it; thought about it; dreamed about it; talked about it; stayed late; arrived early and in the end I was fired from it. But what was my intention during that time?

This job was a dead end when I said yes. The first day of work the ‘boss’, the woman who asked me to apply for and then to take the job; who was the mother of my son’s friend, told me we wouldn’t become friends. That we would be working at the same place every day and then some, but we wouldn’t become friends. That was her intention.

My intention in taking the work was to provide income for my family while my husband began a professional transition. My intention was to support his desire to change his life. I had no intention to change my life or the world. My intention was not related to friendship, but it would have been an OK perk on the job to be friendly at least.

So, serendipity found me fired and quickly hired to work at a school for students with ADHD and LD where my intention again was to support my family. This time, however, I found a calling and a life’s work. In the end, I was completely changed and passionate about working in the world of ADHD. My strengths were used to create my job and my weaknesses were otherwise managed. I grew in confidence and stature knowing that in that environment I made a difference.

I’m a born coach, maybe even born again. I was the student and young adult who asked the questions no-one else thought about. That’s what I love – asking the questions whose answers will change your life.

What do you want in a job?
What are your intentions in taking the work?
How will you make a difference in this field?
Is there a future for you with this company?

My story is the story of many job seekers and office workers. If you can’t pay attention it may be because it’s not worth your health and the health of your attention to remain.

What is your attention-to-intention-on-the-job story?

Forgive me, Donald. 

Ah - Food!

My literary and food life converged today at the lunch counter at Tacqueria del Sol in Decatur. Next to me, a lively woman was talking about her recent trip to NY City and her encounter with the rudest/most authentic restaurateur in the city – maybe the world. Christiane Lauterbach (for the uninitiated, she has been reviewing restaurants in Atlanta for over 25 years) had been in NYC as a member of the review board for the 2009 James Beard Foundation Awards. Told by another critic not to miss this place, in the retelling of the experience, I was reminded of a restaurant in St. Louis in the ’60′s/’70′s when I lived around the corner at Grand and Lindell.

It was an Italian restaurant, very old with equally old Italian men servers. We were warned they were the meanest men alive and it was a point of pride to survive a meal. I was eighteen and student poor but we saved up to get a lunch and a lesson. Remember that age? My attention was on the dare, certainly not the menu. Their accents were challenging so it didn’t really matter what they said because I couldn’t understand them anyway. I knew Southern and Ohio accents by that age. I made it through the meal, wide-eyed and food innocent (the scent of burned food in my home was common, another blog topic on attention) linking Italian food and rude servers until I married an Italian (see blog on divorce and attention).

Maybe the issue was communication not insult. But in Ms. Lauterbach’s newly found restaurant, the insult was the entree of communication and the meal was all the better for it. This attitude she conveyed, is an authentic life lived through insult and straightforward passion.

My blogging is my authentic life, not an insult rather an entry to a life with attention as I know it. It’s not literary; nor a talent but an expression of my lifelong challenge and passion – Authentically my Attention.

What’s your authentic challenge with attention?

Wendy at forty!

Frankly I’ve been in attention overload for a couple of weeks. Wendy invited me to her 40th birthday celebration, given by her friend Maria Maria Sangria. Need I say more – with an inventive name like that I should have been forewarned. We had found our way to a magical ten-acre untouched forest in way SW Atlanta where a giant forest spirit protected the land from being developed. And a reclusive creative artist kept the house and land as sacred space for visiting shamans and citizens.

We arrived after 10 pm in the warm April evening to meet women in long dark dresses and drapes, young women in bright dresses and skirts, men in street clothes, African dress and Jamaican hair and children and dogs of no particular description. It seemed not everyone there knew Wendy nor that it was her birthday. I discovered two Italian matrons who had just flown in from Italy for the weekend, and a Ghanaian spirit dancer on his way to the islands.

Only a little panicked I recalled attending the wrong wedding once and thought maybe this was the wrong party. But even in a forest glen like this, cell phones work and Wendy called to locate me. It was time for the drum circle and fire. I didn’t see a birthday cake or hear birthday songs, rather the drums started up and we gathered around the fire pit for a couple of hours of chanting, dancing, praying and a celebration of all of our lives.

In the dark, small lights lit semi-circles of chairs in the woodsy clearings up a straw strewn path past the fire pit to an outdoor open-air grotto. I grew up during the ’60′s and ’70′s in Atlanta; I saw the Allmann Brothers play for free in Piedmont Park; I didn’t make it to Woodstock, N.Y. but to Woodstock, Ga. for a similar festival, and I’d been to some unique parties in St. Louis during college, but I’ve never been to SW Atlanta for a Drum Circle celebration.

This was heaven on earth. People of all descriptions came and went with the wind, and when I left at 1 am the Jamaican music was just beginning. I was high on life for two days before the stimulation and pleasure of the evening began to wear off. I can only describe my state of mind as a kind of attention hangover – there was too much sensory input in the dark night with the drums and chanting for me to pay attention to time and space…can there be too much attention? Is too much attention simply an out of this world experience?

What is your attention hangover story?

Alice Walker in Her Garden

I love driving on Friday nights in Atlanta’s springtime. Aside from the warm, flowery scents and breezes to enjoy, there are literary and arts events galore to attend. Emory University recently held an evening celebration to honor the poet/activist Alice Walker having shown the wisdom, sense of heritage and mission to preserve ‘unique materials of permanent research value’ of Ms. Walker’s in the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Books Library (MARBL). With her blessings she has donated her complete archives to Emory University for research and study.

Emory University also had the grace to invite the public to share in the honorary evening with a few of Ms. Walker’s favorite people, from her English teacher at Spelman College and her friend Gloria Steinem to the writer who convinced her to let him script her novel into the movie ‘The Color Purple’. An hour after eight different, fluently presented recognitions from city, county and Emory representatives, Ms. Walker took control doing this cute little butterfly thing with her hands on her chest to acknowledge endless applause, looking for the all the world like she’d take flight.

It’s her words that really got me flying. The poetic imagery was delivered with the quiet strength of one used to having people pay attention. The seed of the evening’s theme took root while she shared memories from her new and old poetry. She is a force in creating world peace starting from the years of her involvement in the then young civil rights movement. It’s sad that thieves have stolen her name using it as a website hostage, but in spite of their efforts to control her, she has created www.alicewalkersgarden.com to chronicle her life and passions.

A large pink flower under her collar contrasted with a black dress, a subtle suggestion of an iconic lighting technique used for illuminating the face and suggesting the grace of a saint from below, as if the light of the soul came from both within and below, shining radiant light upward toward her face, like the sun was in her belly. I loved the continuous visually referent garden imagery in her language, a message of her commitment to the world.

There are people who yearn for unbroken things but Ms. Walker penned ‘I will keep broken things – I will keep myself.’ She recognizes the value of what appears broken as fully human, fragile and more precious than a porcelain dish displayed on the wall – never used but beautiful. She believes that saving even one turtle’s life is enough for a human to feel fulfilled and yet she exhorts us to see the possibility of world peace simply because it seems impossible. ‘There is a duty to life,’ she said while recalling a reflection of the Dalai Lama’s about America, ‘that it is a country where people do not seem to love themselves.’ What kind of action can unloved people take?

In the midst of the generous evening’s imagery, I oddly recalled a man from my early twenties who said he had nothing more to talk about, that he had run out of things to share. I yearn for nurturing language and creative vision and mission and passion that moves me to action. Thank God the man knew the limits of his attention and dropped away and Ms. Walker hasn’t yet found her limits. She continues to grow her language, and I had an evening of attentional inspiration about peace  that nurtured me and that inspires me to action. I’m an American who loves myself.

However, practically speaking the next time I go to Glenn Memorial Chapel at Emory University I’m bringing a seat cushion. I will. I love my comfort. I’ve attended events there for over twenty-five years and still I forget they are the hardest pews in history. However, honoring Alice Walker took a little edge off the the physical discomfort for me. Sometimes a little physical ache hurts so good while participating in the care and tending of the garden of peace and love, and attention.

What’s growing in your ‘garden of attention’?

Weight carries symbolic language; wait; tight; loose; overweight; heavy and flat: it is almost a dialect full of symbols of distraction and of personal and social interpretation. If you pay attention to the weight, what are you not paying attention to? What is weighing you down? Why, your feelings. “Metaphors transform unconscious patterns that hold and reveal deeper truths,” said Dr. Anita Johnston at a workshop Tuesday in Chattanooga, TN at the Center for Eating Disorders at Focus Healthcare of Tennessee. When your attention is more about being flat than being self-attentive, then what is abandoned in your soul? Carl Jung said that metaphor is the healing symbol on the emotional level.

What does this have to do with attention? Everything! It’s all about mind/body connection – and our ability to be fully in our body and fully attentive all at the same time. Dr. Johnston promotes the conceptual use of mythology and symbolic language as an entry point to consciousness. And consciousness is an entry point to attention. We need our consciousness in order to pay attention to the world within and the world without. She reminded us that in eating disorders there is a point of departure from full consciousness, often a trauma is the distraction to full attention.

Symbolically the disorder is like filling your home with many flags – ‘the flag is a symbol of the experience of being free, but you’re not more free because you have many flags’ Dr. Johnston explained. The eating disorder is like the number of flags, it is the symbol of nourishment but the resulting fat/thinness does not mean you’re more/less nourished.

How do you get someone back in their body? Use laughter to disconnect the Left Brain monologue long enough to feel again. Feelings are waves of energy said Dr. Johnston, suggesting the metaphor of water, the language of one who lives in Hawaii. Feelings pass like waves on the shore.

This body/mind disconnection is like a war against the body and the soul of the person.Dr. Johnston reminded us that we humans have a body, a mind and emotions, yet we are much bigger than the sum of all the parts. The body becomes the vehicle to take me places. The mind is the co-pilot and emotions help me understand all the parts. Recalling the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia, don’t fall asleep while all the brooms (Left Brain monologue) work to drown you (keep you under or over-nourished). Feed your attention.

And that’s my distracted childhood environment in a nutshell. It was all delivered day after day with a kiss and a smile and a badge of being a good child to my mom. It was different with Daddy. ‘Can’t you see what’s in front of your face?’ he would say coming up behind me when I couldn’t see what was in front of my face that he had sent me to retrieve. It was either momentary blindness or paralytic fear of his anger that completely blocked from my view whatever it was he wanted. I was trained in both physical and emotional distraction.

I remember asking one of my kids to get something for me that we all knew I was capable of retrieving on my own. I didn’t get anywhere with them. My Irish grandmother would tell us cousins to get something for her because our feet were younger and healthier than hers. But my kids knew my feet and legs were quite healthy, thank you very much. Have I trained them to be distracted, too? 

I believe we were born distracted and then endlessly drilled to develop it more fully, helplessly/naively hoping that someone in the world around us had a better handle on attention than we did. (Excuse me while I pick up the letter to take to the mailbox. I’ll just take that cup to the sink while I’m on my way out and maybe stop and pet the dogs which reminds me I have to buy more food and what’s that collar doing under the bureau? It sure is dirty – I better take it to the laundryroom…

Will I ever make it to the mailbox – oh, well there goes the mailman and my neighbor Jeannie is outside so we can talk about our flowers and…

What was the name of this blog? 

What’s your intention today to stay attentive and feel good about it?

Maureen