Is it possible that the TV icon somehow succeeded where God and psychotherapy had failed?

BY TIPPI STRACHAN — I don’t watch Oprah. I have no real justification for this, but whether it’s her mega-sprayed hair or the adoring throngs of “go-girl” women in her audience, the show brings a lump of bile in my gut.

How do I know? It’s always on whenever I visit my mom. The same mom who raised us to watch minimal TV now quotes Oprah like the Bible, and brings her up in every conversation. But I put up with this because — and I genuinely believe it to be true — Oprah fixed my mom.

Victim to martyr

Mom had an awful, abusive childhood at the hands of sociopathic parents. Amazingly she overcame, but overcompensated, as an adult determined to do things right. She was affectionate and ultra-responsible, pinched pennies as a housewife and kept us well-fed, well-groomed, clothed, sheltered, socialized, educated and safe.

She did her utmost to protect us from darker forces in our home (her three bad marriages) and lost herself in the process. She was isolated and missed out on decades of friendships, fun and popular culture.

During a period of depression she tried therapy, but soon quit because she came to the conclusion that there was no need to work on herself. It was a cry not for help, but sympathy.

Out of habit she prayed, but had little hope of gaining a better life through those intercessory petitions. Unfortunately, when her children grew into independent adults with their own life plans and loves, she totally lost it.

And when Mom no longer felt needed, she turned nasty.

I was off enjoying adulthood, and wanted nothing more than to build memories with her. I wanted us to visit each other often, take weekend trips together. I wanted my husband and I to make wonderful meals for my mom in our new home.

But she rarely made the 15-minute drive to see us. She had no time for fun. When we talked, she wanted to hear that I was struggling and had made the wrong choices. She wanted me to cry in her arms.

And when I didn’t cry, she did. Often. She cried with my brothers, too, and with all three of her siblings. If ever a kind stranger at a party approached her, she took advantage of the listening ear by describing all of her life’s hardships.

When she still felt unloved or neglected, she would spread gossip and sabotage our happiness. Mom was a drag.

Then one day my brother did something I will forever both curse and thank him for. He suggested mom start watching Oprah.

From martyr to mother

Gradually, Mom steeped herself in self-help and spiritual-actualization books. She would spout bits of wisdom she had never wanted to hear from a therapist, or any of us. She was suddenly up on current events and Hollywood celebrities — and felt like she belonged to the world-at-large.

Best of all, Mom stopped scaring everyone away with her sob stories. Maybe hearing so many other sob stories on TV drew her out of her own, and aroused a larger sense of compassion.

She learned to love herself, and to laugh. She made friends. A 60-something woman, she is finally one of the girls. For the first time in my life, she is funny! We visit each other often. We travel together. She feasts with my husband and me.

The transformation has taken years, but I remember seeing the first signs after my brother’s TV tip. I have the mom of my dreams, and I credit Oprah. The hairsprayed TV diva’s mega-hold on my mom may be annoying but I am reluctantly, somewhat queasily, eternally grateful.

BY RICK LEED — Everyone understands the concept of ‘giving’ to a child in need by opening your home as a foster parent and potentially (though not necessarily) proceeding to adopt that child. The most common and simplest way to view this metamorphosis is that you are doing good by helping someone else — by sharing your safe, warm personal, family home with a child who might otherwise live in a ‘group home’ (the word that has replaced the word Dickens made famous, “orphanage”) .

It is true: you are doing good by helping another.  But the good you are doing is hardly one-sided.  There are many studies, much research, and a long social and spiritual history that shows that the biggest beneficiary is the giver of this gift. You benefit in so many ways even more than the child for whom you are providing foster care.

Many agree that charity and kindness done in secret is somehow the best kind.

A case study from a famous surgeon

Here is one of my favorite examples. It’s from  a doctor who is a friend of mine. He is a wellness and fitness expert — and for the past two decades, also has happened to be the world’s most famous cosmetic surgeon:

“I met a young lady, a prospective patient, in my office for a consultation about plastic surgery.

“She was, to my eye, aesthetically perfect.  But, I noticed that something was missing, namely, that inner light or radiance that comes from a good soul or a charitable and giving spirit.

“This intangible inner beauty is, in some way, what the woman may be reacting to when she sees herself her in the mirror and isn’t happy with her reflection. But instead, she is thinking that outside tweaks — a slighter thinner bridge on her nose, a minor chin re-shaping, or fuller or larger breasts — may give her the something she senses is missing.  But I know it won’t really change the way she sees herself . . .”

“This is what I wish I could prescribe to the young woman: Go quietly, without calling your friends and announcing it, to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen or children’s hospital, and become a volunteer.

“After spending some hours doing something charitable like this, go home, and look in the mirror, just as you are, without makeup, with casual clothes, with your hair loose, unstyled, or in a ponytail.  You will see a more beautiful you.

“You will see some kind of smile radiating from your face even if your lips are closed, and you will see a more beautiful person because the beauty you added is more valuable, more potent, than anything a plastic surgeon, a makeup artist, a hairdresser, or fashion stylist could add.”

The sacred contract of parenting

So, what is the relationship between the views of this enlightened plastic surgeon and the concept for the motivation for becoming a foster parent?

Volunteering with children waiting for adoption in Colombia: Milena Arango Kaihla

Well, certainly, it is absurd to think of so dramatically changing your life by becoming a foster parent in order to look more attractive via ‘inner spiritual beauty.’  Surely, some hours spent at a homeless shelter or hospital as a volunteer are less messy, and less demanding than becoming a foster parent.

But the truth is that we can light up our inner soul, our innermost spiritual beauty, by doing something as special as becoming a foster parent.

No, of course it is not for everyone.  And it isn’t for someone who thinks it will make them look prettier on the outside by being a “prettier person on the inside” or for someone who thinks it will make others think of them as a “better person.”

Have you got “the right stuff” to be a foster parent?

There are many steps a person must take before doing this.  They demand a bit more than the indignities of, say, flying in America post-9/11. Fingerprints, a criminal background check, foster parent classes and then — a kind of personality test: meeting the child/children to see if there is a ‘match.’

At each stage, one is called to truly question their own motivation: Is the idea that, “I am doing a good deed for a child in need”? That may be valid. But it is essential that you not sit back, awaiting gratitude from the child or from the people in the bureaucracy who entrusted you with the child.

Direct and overt gratitude (however deserving it might be) may be slow in coming, at least in a verbally-articulated way.

Maybe the truth is that the way to proceed is this:  Don’t expect or ask for praise or commendation from anyone.  Just do it.  And just know that the heart that will be overflowing with gratitude will be your own.  The life that will be enriched the most is actually your own.

The best way I heard it put was this way:  A woman was helping her foster son with homework (not an easy task these days) while an adult friend of hers was present and watching.  The friend said to the woman, “Boy, that boy is lucky that you came into his life!”  And the parent responded happily, “Actually, I’m the one who is lucky he came into my life.”

Rick Leed is a Soul’s Code director, and successful film and television producer who has also developed international brands via cross-channel platforms.  His credits include DR. 90210 for E!; plus content for MTV, Discovery, NBC, ABC, Paramount, Fox and Disney.  He and his husband Joe raise David and Katie in a loving Los Angeles home with a swimming pool.

BY SUEANN JACKSON-LAND — I can close my eyes and see myself at around 8 or 9 years old, sitting with my knees scrunched under me on the floorboard of a 1974 Dodge Coronet. The first poem I wrote was a prayer. Rounding the corner in that same old big brown boat that disguised its ugliness as a car, I can also clearly remember hanging on to the interior door handle as the door swung open and I looked at the pavement racing past me.

Living with my mother was like that. You’d be riding along on a nice sunny day, enjoying the view of the Susquehanna River and downtown Harrisburg one minute and having a face first view of the macadam a minute later.

We had moved from Mechanicsburg to Lebanon, Pennsylvania in 1974. I believe it was around Thanksgiving of that year. The very first thing I remember about the house on Oxford Drive was that it had a fireplace in the middle of two rooms. Encased in a wall that you could see from both the family room and the living room, I found the perfect hiding place. My mother had become increasingly violent toward me and I was disappointed because I thought, too, that the move would somehow change everything and make us a family again.

“Three hugs,” they would say and all three of us would embrace in the kitchen. Three hugs.

My dad was gone all the time, working. We had a bigger house, two cars in the driveway and all the accoutrements of living in the “wealthy” neighborhood in little Lebanon. He was so busy trying to keep us afloat, perhaps he thought if he worked hard enough or long enough it would be easier to come home. Once again, we had wiped the slate clean and appeared to be the perfect family. Something was happening, however, that could not be stopped or somehow hidden, I was growing older. It was no longer possible to deny what was going on. I knew other children would find out and I would be teased or ridiculed about my parents. It was only a matter of time.

When we moved I was 9, but I was an old 9. I began to yell back at my mother. Like so many snapshots in my memory, the story is incomplete. The last memory I have of my mother alive was the day she grabbed a pair of scissors and chased me around the house. I can’t even tell you what I did to spur it on. From the living room, I tried to run and crawl through the fireplace because I knew then I’d be in the family room and I could run out the patio door to the backyard; but I knew she was going to catch my leg so I just ran to the corner of the doorway in the foyer and crouched on the floor. I was cornered.

She was coming at me with the scissors raised and I was yelling at her, “Mommy don’t! DON’T!” I could hear myself crying and screaming but somehow I wasn’t in my body any longer. I was standing aside and watching the crazy woman and the little girl. The mommy, my mommy, came to a halt in front of the crouched girl and started making faces at her. She was crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue and saying, “Aw com’n, SueAnn, it’s just a game. See? I’m not going to hurt you. Whatever gave you an idea that I would do that? Don’t overreact, now.”

That’s how my life has been. Right there. See with your eyes, feel with your heart, know with your intelligence, but rely on someone else’s explanation of what really happened. Deny it. Suppress it. Act it out. And when you really want the answers and gather up the courage to ask, the pleas will fall down an empty canyon gathering darkness and going nowhere. It’s just your imagination.

I was just looking at the date of “when” in time I began writing this chapter and it was July 2, 2001. Three days later I would be hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. I have always denied any suicidal thoughts because I, above all else, did not want to become my mother. Doris began to attempt suicide long before I was old enough to even recognize the word, let alone the act.

I have scant memories of my mother being hospitalized in the Polyclinic Hospital in Pennsylvania for drinking rubbing alcohol or was it Clorox, I can’t remember now. What I do remember is that she was gone for a little while and she learned how to make octopuses out of yarn. Creative, we are, the Jacksons. I suppose we must learn to escape the doldrums and the voices that loom in our collective subconscious. My mother came home with a purple octopus and an orange octopus and it was a brief glimpse, a warm touch, from the person other people knew.

This story has been told so many times that I recite it now without the emotion that used to accompany it. It became my explanation for every single thing that I did wrong or that was wrong with me. It was my crutch for a long time, and, truthfully, I needed the crutch.

I think what hurt most was my pride. I’d like to be emotional, or even a daughter, and say that I missed my mother; truthfully, I was relieved.

SueAnn Jackson-Land is a writer living in Sudbury, Ontario. She would like to be a chaplain, but is mostly just grateful to still be breathing, to be given the opportunity to learn, to forgive (and be forgiven) and go on.

BY MICHELLE MORRA-CARLISLE -- Movies want audiences to sympathize for their characters, and I usually oblige. My heart sank right along with Leonardo DiCaprio in the Titanic. I ached for Jamie Foxx as his character battled schizophrenia and homelessness in The Soloist. I even mustered some emotion for Angelina Jolie as she screeched about her stolen son in The Changeling. Pretty heavy subject matter compared to public speaking – yet I have never felt such agony for a character as I did for Colin Firth in The King’s Speech.

The actor reportedly had a similar response when he watched a newsreel of the real King George VI stammering through a speech. Though the King did a good job of making his stutters sound like dramatic pauses, his obvious struggle brought tears to the eyes of Firth and director Tom Hooper.

This isn’t a story about someone being mocked for his impediment. The King had support. The British masses in stadiums and in their livingrooms sat with bated breath, respectfully rooting for the King. Yet all of their collective good will and that of his loving wife and daughters could not help His Majesty get those words out smoothly and painlessly. For me, it’s a story of not only the King but those who loved him.

We walk alone

Nothing feels quite as helpless as watching someone go through their own personal hell. Those of us who know stutterers hold our tongues while they take several seconds to get a word out, and must resist blurting it out for them. We can’t cure someone else’s speech impediment any more than we can stop a family member from drinking or drugging herself to death. When the mentally ill battle voices and hallucinations we ourselves can’t hear or see, they feel isolated no matter how sincerely we care. We can go mad trying to cheer up a depressed friend who cocoons in bed for days on end, unable to face the ‘darkness’ even when it’s sunny out. And no matter how much we love thunderstorms, we can’t convince our children or pets to relax as they tremble in fear because their sky is exploding.

The sufferer, too, feels helpless. During hard times I’ve had nights of terrible fear, worry or sadness, when I felt alone even though my husband was lying next to me. Many times I snuggled up, watched him sleep peacefully and longed to crawl into his happy, oblivious head.

But we struggle alone. My late grandmother (who wasn’t fond of human frailty) used to say in her most ominous voice: “Laugh and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone.”

Mind you, that old saying is a bit harsh. Alone doesn’t mean lonely. Even though we can’t fight other people’s private battles, we can cheer them on. King George VI’s wife (whom we know as the Queen Mother) didn’t try to cut out his stammer with a surgical knife. She loved him as he was and encouraged him as he overcame that embarrassing hurdle with the help of speech therapist Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush). The Queen was always there for him, at a lovingly detached distance. So were his daughters, Margaret and the future Queen Elizabeth. According to the eulogy Winston Churchill delivered when the King died, he was “greatly loved by all his peoples.”

As second-born son, he was never supposed to be King, so his role as second fiddle, side-kick, shy, stammering younger brother in the shadows suited him fine until King Edward VIII, gave up the throne to marry his twice-divorced American fiancée. Suddenly the young prince’s private hell would go public. And no more hiding in the shadows – he was suddenly King, the most public figure in the British Empire. Never mind the speech impediment , he had to lead a country in time of war.

What didn’t kill him made him stronger. “The last few months of King George’s life,” Churchill wrote, “with all the pain and physical stresses that he endured -- his life hanging by a thread from day to day, and he all the time cheerful and undaunted, stricken in body but quite undisturbed and even unaffected in spirit…”

King George’s life was a victory and that, too, was his alone.

BY MICHELLE MORRA-CARLISLE – I wonder how many people feel cheated every Christmas because there is no fluffy snow outside, no cozy fireplace and no Tiny Tim. I must confess that I was down on my own family for years. If ‘A Christmas Carol’ had starred us, Tim and his siblings would have lived with Mrs. Cratchet and only visited Mr. Cratchit on weekends.

This is by no means a sob story. I am, in fact, about to brag about the Christmas I’m about to spend with my mother, husband, sister, stepsister, half-brother and his girlfriend, stepfather and stepfather’s first wife (stepsister’s mother). As my sister puts it, “all three of our parents are twice divorced.” Yet I challenge any nuclear family out there to have a more fun, more loving time than we will have.

It wasn’t always so. Coming from a broken home we’ve had our share of disappointments, moved several times, and spent a lifetime of Christmases divided between this parent and that one. My sister and I were always together but didn’t see our stepsister for years after our mother’s second divorce. Our half-brother, caught in the middle, yo-yoed between our “family” and theirs.

Yet lately, thanks to one freakish party five years ago that each one of us happened to attend, we have joined forces. Since then, every birthday, Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas – and the days in between – are oh so much better than when we were in our separate corners. United we stand… and eat, dance, sing, drink, cry, hug, laugh and support each other.

No Bradies allowed

When we all lived together, (mom, step-dad, step-sis, sis, bro and me) we faithfully attended church every Sunday for years. Yet because our parents were both divorced-and-remarried sinners, we were never allowed to be one of those families that carry the gifts of bread and wine to the altar. Technically, we shouldn’t have been in a Catholic church at all. We went, though. Like our more “normal” friends we feasted and exchanged gifts at Christmas, found magic in midnight mass, and sincerely believed each New Year would bring hope for a more peaceful, joyful life.

It didn’t. Over the years the dysfunction kind of filtered through to us kids in different ways. But I have since realized that, despite having been the only kid my schoolyard with a stepsibling, so-called dysfunction is a whole lot more pervasive than I once thought.

At last count by the U.S. Census Bureau there were approximately 13.7 million single parents in the United States who were raising 21.8 million children. More than half of American youth live in non-traditional families, including stepfamilies, non-relatives, grandparents or foster families. And the Child Welfare Information Gateway reports that between 8 and 10 million children in the U.S. are being raised by gay parents. Who’s to say that a great number of those people can’t have their own great memories with loved ones, no matter how unorthodox the demographics of their dinner tables?

There comes a time when the quest to be normal or perfect is so out of reach, a great sense of relief comes from giving up the charade. My family is light years away from ever being Dickensian or nuclear but we have found our own new way of being and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Besides, our family troubles are so far in the past that we can, and do, have a good laugh over some pretty whacked out memories.

Who is the authority on family anyway? If it’s Jesus – the man with a virgin mother, earthly stepfather and celestial bio-dad – I somehow doubt that he would have snubbed my family in church.