Diane is one of my favorite clients. A warm and engaging woman, she is a loving grandmother and a talented painter. We worked—I think of it as playing, really—together a while back to help her reignite her creative energy after a major move.Diane was scheduled for hip replacement surgery recently, and she sent me a little note saying she was looking at it as an opportunity for greater mindfulness.
Do you see why I love her?
One benefit of mindfulness is an increase in our ability to shift our perspective. I wrote recently about an inspiring group of women breast cancer survivors—dubbing themselves
"Golden Mammaries”—who use word “memory” as their cue to shift their minds in a new direction.
Whenever they hear word “memory” they mentally replace it with “mammary” as in “I have happy mammaries of that time” or “Thanks for mammaries.” It’s a seemingly silly way to take a word that has become loaded with images of pain, fear and anger and overlay it with new, happier connections.
It has a way of making you grin. Happy mammaries? Now, there's a perky mental image! Think of a pair of smiley faces. How uplifting!
It works remarkably well. Connecting words that have acquired any kind of negative connotation with ones that are more benign (or vice versa) is a powerful way to develop greater linguistic intelligence while enhancing mindfulness.
