As I was unpacking in my new office, I noticed my porcelain mouse reaching for the moon had been broken again.

This mouse was a gift from my dear friend Pat McNeal. I met Pat in 1995 shortly after my divorce. She became a wonderful mentor as I journeyed into this new phase of my life.

Pat knew me well and was a superb listener. One of the things she knew about me was that I was reading a book by a local transpersonal counselor Mary Elizabeth Marlow, titled:

Jumping Mouse: A Tale of Inner Trust.

Mary Elizabeth uses this Native American tale to illustrate our inner journey of trusting our intuitive calling. First, let me tell you the tale of Jumping Mouse in a very abbreviated form, and then I will get back to my porcelain mouse, Mary Elizabeth’s book and how it all relates.

The story starts out in Mouse Village where a little mouse named Jeremy hears a sound that no one else in the village seems to hear. He decides to leave Mouse Village to investigate this sound. Outside of Mouse Village, Jeremy meets a raccoon who told him that the roar in his ear was the river. Brother Raccoon took little mouse to the river, where he introduced him to his friend, the frog.

The frog offered Jeremy some medicine power, telling him to crouch really low and then jump really high. Little mouse took his advice and as he crouched down low he saw a glimpse of the Sacred Mountain. Jeremy then jumped and ended up falling into the river, cold and frightened.

When Jeremy was able to pull himself out of the river he yelled at the frog: “You tricked me.” The frog replied: “No harm came to you. You saw the Sacred Mountain didn’t you? Let go of your anger and fear. It can blind you. What matters is what happened. What did you see?” Shivering, Jeremy replied, “The Sacred Mountain.” Frog then said; “You are no longer just a mouse. You are now Jumping Mouse.”

Jumping Mouse then shook off the water and the anger and the fear and went back to Mouse Village to tell everyone about his experience of seeing the Sacred Mountain. However, no one seemed to really care about Jeremy’s stories. Jumping Mouse stayed in the village for awhile, but could never forget the Sacred Mountain.

One day he decided to leave Mouse Village again. As he journeyed out onto the prairie, he met an old mouse who told him that the Sacred Mountain did not exist, and that he should stay safe and live with him. Jumping Mouse thought about that for awhile, but later realized he had to continue his search for the Sacred Mountain. The old mouse told him he was foolish and that the sky was full of very hungry and dangerous eagles.

Jumping Mouse faced his fears and left the old mouse. Soon he met a dying buffalo. The buffalo told Jumping Mouse that the only thing that could save his life was the eye of a mouse. Jeremy felt he had to offer his eye, even though he could not imagine how it would help the dying buffalo. Once Jumping Mouse decided he had to give up his eye, it jumped out of head and the buffalo was healed and whole again.

Buffalo offered to protect Jumping Mouse from the eagles and led him across the prairie where they met a wolf who had forgotten that he was a wolf. Jeremy wondering if his other eye would help the wolf remember who he was, and as it popped out of his head the wolf was healed.

As Jumping Mouse is now blind, the wolf remembers he was the guide to the Sacred Mountain and the Medicine Lake. He takes Jeremy there. Alone and blind, an eagle swoops down and thumps him on his back. After falling asleep, Jeremy wakes to hear a voice telling him: “Crouch down low and jump. Do not be afraid. Ride the wind. Trust.” He rode the wind and looking down saw the frog, who said: “You are no longer Jumping Mouse, you are now an eagle.”

What Mary Elizabeth offers to her readers is a delightful description of how each animal guide and part of the story is an illustration of the stepping stones in our individual journeys that follow an inner calling.

As I re-glued my broken porcelain mouse, I noticed that his hands were missing and old dried up glue was obvious on various other broken parts. This reminded me of my own journey from the time when Pat McNeal gave me the mouse until now.

When I first discovered Mary Elizabeth’s book, it had literally fallen off of a shelf at a local bookstore in Virginia Beach. I was browsing in the store one day when it landed on the floor in front of me. Of course I was compelled to buy it. In a way the book was the frog. It promised me medicine power, if only I would crouch down and jump high.

From as early as high school, I can remember wanting to become a psychotherapist and move to Boulder, Colorado. Yet, I feared leaving Mouse Village. Reading this book made me wonder if I had been ignoring the sound of the river. I made the move to Boulder in 1998, and the journey has been very similar to Jumping Mouse’s.

There have been many set-backs, fears, regrets, obstacles, and challenges. There have been the people who didn’t care or understand why I had to move so far away, and why I had to take the risks that I did. The people who stayed in Mouse Village and/or with the old mouse– safe, familiar and comfortable.

Some days I feel just like my broken porcelain mouse reaching for the stars without my hands. However, the determination and trust in his eyes have not changed. He still stands strong with the extra glue. He has not been broken, but rather strengthened by the challenges.

So, on this beautiful, snowy, Colorado-spring day I am grateful to have followed the call to be in this place and do the work I so much love to do. Each step of the journey, and each change along the way has made me even more convinced that this is my calling. I may have given up both my eyes and gone blind, but I have also soared like an eagle with the wind and the voice of my soul.

About Patti Ashley: Mothering Beyond Image helps women connect more deeply to themselves and others, therefore feeling more authentic, mindful and whole. Please visit www.motheringbeyondimage.com — sign up to be on my mailing list and stay updated on workshop information. Mothers always want to know whether or not they are doing a good job. This workshop will help you know that you ARE!

5 Million Wishes for MOM – what’s yours?

When my children were young, I was a special education teacher. I worked with children who had emotional difficulties. I sometimes would have a child in my class that did not have the capacity to make good choices for himself or others.

I would get very upset when the violent movie and video game promotions targeted young children. For instance, when one of the first Batman movies came out, rated either PG-13 or R, there were backpacks, lunch boxes, pencils and other school supplies marketed to very young children. Children well under the age of 13. This would of course make my children want to see the movie. I would say no. Then unbeknownst to me, they would later watch the movie at a friend’s house when it came out on VHS.

The lack of regard for the images that are in front of our children every day is appalling to me. I knew that my children would never grow up with a desire to live out a violent scene in a movie. However, I had known other children for whom I sensed it could one day be a possibility.

Today it is happening. There have been sixty-one mass shootings in America since Columbine High School in 1999. The shooting in the theatre here in Aurora this past July, confirmed for me again my fear of mistaken literalism that could happen from the violence seen in movies and video games.

Well-known developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget discovered that children under the age of seven or eight cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. They live in a state of magical thinking. That is why the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to them are real.

Knowing that about young children it is even more disturbing to think that so many parents allow them to watch violent movies and play violent video games. The desensitization to such events must live on in their minds, and of course we have a small percentage of mentally ill children in the world that may lack self-esteem and possibly a conscience. Then we have the perfect set-up for a Columbine and an Aurora.

Banning guns isn’t going to solve this problem. Banning the violence in front of our children every day may be a better solution. What would it take for us as parents to just say “no?”

About Patti Ashley: Mothering Beyond Image helps women connect more deeply to themselves and others, therefore feeling more authentic, mindful and whole. Please visit www.motheringbeyondimage.com — sign up to be on my mailing list and stay updated on workshop information. Mothers always want to know whether or not they are doing a good job. This workshop will help you know that you ARE!

5 Million Wishes for MOM – what’s yours?

My good friend Donna Van Straten Remmert has just published her third memoir entitled Head Over Heels: Stories from the 50s. In the book she details what her life was like only a short while ago. It is amazing to read this perspective of her college days and to realize how far women have come.

Donna also recently shared with me an article that she wrote in May of 1979 for the Westchester Magazine, entitled “Corporation Wives”. She begins by citing a 1972 article by Vance Packard published in A Nation of Strangers, where he writes “Corporation wives martyr themselves to their husband’s career needs, are compelled to participate in social and community activities that may or may not interest them, feel lonely and isolated because of constant uprooting, and in general are at the mercy of their husbands companies.”

Donna wanted to refute this common belief and asked other women if they agreed with Packard. Most of the women said they did not feel that they had to play the role of the corporation wife. However, Dr. Wesley Fisher, an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University at the time, said that even though the women’s movement had created an ideological shift towards executives’ wives working, the 1979 article quoted him as saying “the most successful executives today have rather traditional marriages in which the wife, even when she is well educated and possesses professional skills of her own, is supportive of her husband’s career and has no strong career ambitions of her own.”

Women now make up more than 50% of the work force. Times have certainly changed since 1979, only thirty-three short years ago. Now that many women are working and no longer expected to be a corporation wife, it is easy to forget how far we have come. Reading Donna’s memoir and article reminds me that women have had to fight for their right to be successful and independent, something that we may now take for granted as we have so many more choices today.

To read more about Head Over Heels and Donna’s two memoirs preceding it, The Littlest Big Kid and The Jitterbug Girl, visit www.donnaremmert.com. Donna’s recollections of her childhood and young adult years will put you in stitches, and help you see that your own stories are valuable as tools for individuation as well.

About Patti Ashley: Mothering Beyond Image helps women connect more deeply to themselves and others, therefore feeling more authentic, mindful and whole. Please visit www.motheringbeyondimage.com — sign up to be on my mailing list and stay updated on workshop information. Mothers always want to know whether or not they are doing a good job. This workshop will help you know that you ARE!

5 Million Wishes for MOM – what’s yours?

In December of 1995, I couldn’t help but notice the stress of many parents who were shopping with children. That inspired me to write this article about spanking for a local publication. Even though how we parent has changed dramatically since 1995, stress can still create situations that can cause parents to reach a breaking point. Hopefully in 2012, parents are reaching out for support when stressed and learning alternatives to spanking. Here is an article that puts things in perspective. (The following was printed in the Hampton Roads Shopper, Dec. 1995)

While out shopping for presents last month, I couldn’t help wondering what children are learning about the “season of giving.” What lessons are parents teaching their children when they expect them to tolerate lengthy shopping trips in crowded malls? And, to top it off, they subject the children to spanking, yelling, and shaming in public.

Here are a few examples of what I witnessed:

A three-year-old wandered off and touched some display items. The mother yelled at the child, and the child didn’t listen. The mother in anger, pulled down the child’s pants, spanked his bare bottom and yelled some more. The child smiled as if he was familiar with spankings and didn’t seem to mind. Obviously, the spanking was not teaching the child anything.

A two-year-old was yanked by the arm and shamed for not walking close enough to his mother. The mother pulled a wooden spoon out of her shopping bag and pounded the child from behind. The child cried and looked totally violated.

I am not saying that children shouldn’t be disciplined, but “spare the rod and spoil the child,” doesn’t mean spanking children to discipline them. This old belief came from a misinterpretation of a biblical text. The early shepherds used “rods” to keep their sheep within boundaries. They provided them with limits. They did not beat the sheep to stay within the limits.

As parents, we must provide good guidance so that our children don’t stray too far away from our boundaries. Spanking, humiliating and ridiculing have the opposite effect. These methods push our children away and cause them to seek revenge, hurt others, and often rebel in adolescence.

There are alternative discipline methods and techniques that may take longer to implement, but will be much more effective. Learning effective discipline requires study and thought. Parenting classes provide excellent forums for learning these alternatives.

Treat your children like you would want to be treated. Set limits and guidelines for appropriate behavior. It is our responsibility as caring adults to make sure our children stay within boundaries. It is also our responsibility to do that with respect.

About Patti Ashley: Mothering Beyond Image helps women connect more deeply to themselves and others, therefore feeling more authentic, mindful and whole. Please visit www.motheringbeyondimage.com — sign up to be on my mailing list and stay updated on workshop information. Mothers always want to know whether or not they are doing a good job. This workshop will help you know that you ARE!