Christmas, birthdays, weddings, funerals, Sunday lunches, meet the in-laws, new job celebrations, religious festivals, anniversaries, etc., etc., etc.: the list of family gatherings is endless. And if you don't get on with some of your family members the get-togethers can feel endless as well.
Jo Ellen Grzyb is pleased
to announce
the publication of her book
Family Heaven FAMILY HELL
How to Survive the Family Get-Together
-from Thursday 4th October 2007
Family Heaven Family Hell is a compassionate, sometimes humorous, sometimes intensive look at how families work and how to turn your family get-togethers - whatever they are - from hellish to somewhat more heavenly.
Available at all good (and maybe not so good) bookstores or on-line at Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk or www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk
Published by Fusion Press:
ISBN 9781905745180 Price £10.99
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15 saw me back in New York, where, for better or worse, I do remember the '60s, having been passionately involved in the Civil Rights Movement which expanded to being passionately involved in anti-Vietnam War campaigning. Actually, I have been doing some form of volunteer/community work since I was about 9 and I doubt that will ever end. I'm a firm believer in the cliché about giving something back; to contribute where possible.
Various early careers included working at my beloved and now defunct B Altman and Co. selling gift baskets, being an artists' model for arts schools, grooming poodles in a pet store, cataloguing a superb collection of music manuscripts and memorabilia at a music rights organisation till I finally found my first metier: the performing arts.
I worked in development for the New York City Ballet for 10 years, the Mannes College of Music for three and I then joined with an old NYC Ballet colleague to start a business called Spuyten Duyvil Associates (quite a name for those non-New Yorkers out there, isn't it?), which also concentrated on arts development and fundraising.
Meanwhile, I was training as an opera singer, but alas, though the voice was very good, my internal self didn't know how to take that leap to go for a career, so I didn't.
Instead, I decided to change what I could and after a visit to England in 1981, knew that was where I was going to end up. It took two more years till I was able to obtain a work permit - all those years in arts development paid off - and I moved to London in 1983 to begin the next phase of my life.
And what a phase it's turned out to be. I may have kicked off my British career in the arts, working first for a ballet school, then a ballet company, a short stint as a consultant to the Arts Council and finally the London Philharmonic, but new careers beckoned.
I got involved in running career workshops (by this time I'd had a few and found it easy to change careers and even countries, so I knew I had a lot to offer). From there it wasn't too great a leap to doing career and life counselling and from there I made the next step to train as a therapist/counsellor.
So while working at the Philharmonic, running career workshops and thinking about setting up my own business, I trained and built a practice working with individuals, families and couples.
You might be getting the picture at this point that I'm a 'doer'. I am - I like being active in my life, not passive. I like being a decision-maker, even if the decision is to sit and do absolutely nothing for an hour, a day, a week.
I don't sit around waiting for someone else to make it happen for me - I just go and get it done, success or failure being far less important than the doing.
That's the same impetus that said - 'time to start my own business'. I'd gone on an amazing retreat with Denise Lynn in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State called Walking the Path of Power, and I came back knowing it was time to step out on my own once again.
I initially joined forces with two colleague that then got whittled down to one after a year. Since then Robin Chandler and I have built a strong and thriving business with a clear ethos. It's called Impact Factory. Our description of what we offer is quite a mouthful - we're a professional personal development company, working with large multinationals, medium and small size British companies and Central and Local Government. But that's another story, and you can read loads more about us and what we do at: www.impactfactory.com
Back to me and my story.
Here's some stuff about my personal life.
Now, way back when I was 19 I got married to Fred who supplied me with that terrific surname. We were real babes then - no, not 'hot' kind of babes; babes in the woods kind of babes, and we've had a lot of growing up to do.
So what's new?
So what do two people do who love each other but have to grow up. Well, they stay married for 12 years, divorce, stay friends and get married again 14 years later, what else?
I remember when I was training as a therapist we had to answer an interesting question, which was 'What do you value most in your life?' This was in the hiatus between marriages, and I answered: my clarity and my relationship with Fred. I was and am proud of the way we 'work' at our relationship. Kind of an awful word…work.
But that's what we do. Our relationship doesn't stay static and I'm someone firmly of the belief that my loved ones shouldn't be the people who get dumped on because they love us and they'll take it.
I believe that we need to be at our most careful, considerate and supportive in our personal relationships. Close relationships are fragile entities and it's frighteningly easy to mess them up unconsciously. So I believe in staying conscious!
Anyway, our biggest challenge is a cross-cultural one: Fred still works in New York and my life is here in the UK. Indeed, I became a British citizen a few years ago and Fred has very strong life-links in New York.
So what to do?
We haven't got that completely sorted out yet, but we're …..working on it!
In the meantime, when I'm not co-Directing at Impact Factory, or writing, or giving tons of time to my volunteer work, I can usually be found at my allotment or small garden. Back when I was in my mid-50s, I discovered I could do this green thumb thing! I, who kill house plants, am like a duck to water when it comes to outdoor greenery, digging in compost and manure and making things grow.
Boy, when some people say youth is wasted on the young, I know I'm not alone in bemoaning the fact that in my quite middle years I've taken up something which requires strength and a really good back, flexibility and strong knees. Right.
Needless to say I'm a passionate person who gets stuck in - stuck in to my relationships, my work, my garden or simply doing nothing.
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