Robyn Fivush
speaker
93 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Robyn Fivush’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The developmental age matching, I think, is important because every child that age thinks their parent doesn't understand them and never went through anything like this. But this is she's like me. And of course, parents are identity figures. I'm like her.
ascending, descending, and oscillating. These are not about particular stories. It's about the shape of the whole family saga, so to speak. So this is really the family history. So ascending, in some sense, it's the American dream. You know, we came with nothing, we worked hard, and we succeeded. Ta-da! Descending is things are bad, they only got worse, things are never going to get better.
And oscillating is life happens. There's good in life. There's bad in life. We will talk about the bad things that happened, but we'll also put them in the context of all of the good things that happened. So, for example, we came, we worked hard. Unfortunately, we didn't have as much success as we might have liked. There were some back steps that we had to take, but we overcame.
And now we are here and we're still together. That's a characterization because all family sagas are a little bit of all of those. But the problem with an ascending everything's great all the time is it's not. And life happens. And if that's your model, when something bad happens, you have no resources. You have no, well, I know Grandpa Joe went through something like this and was okay.
You have nothing to rely on. So you just have no coping skills. Descending, of course, is this kind of spiraling down into rumination. So the oscillating story is one where you have a sense of life has its ups and downs, but we are a strong, persevering family. We will overcome. We will get through this. ¶¶
Transgression stories are stories that really challenge our sense of who we are. We did something that we're ashamed of, not proud of, we feel guilty about. We hurt somebody or did something wrong. And we all do it. I mean, hopefully in our lives, small transgressions. We lie. We cheat. Maybe we do a little bit of stealing or we betray a trust. We break a promise.
So, for example, we're working with adolescents. So the stories that the parents tell, the transgressions are minor. They cheated on an exam. Relatively minor. A lot of them are about lying to their parent or sneaking out. I think sometimes adolescents and young adults think that their parents don't understand their what it is to go through teenage angst.
Don't understand what it is to be angry or dark or moody. But in fact, we all have those memories. And it's one thing to say, oh, yes, I felt like that too when I was your age. I think it's another thing when you tell a story like this, it gives it a texture, a reality. It's like, You really were a brat. Wow, you do get it. You get who I am. You get what I'm feeling.
The object is a diamond engagement ring. So when I married my husband, unfortunately, both of his parents died relatively young and he neither was alive when I met him. So I never had the opportunity to meet either one of them. But when we got married, he was able to give me his mother's ring. His mother's name was Annie Lester. And He has a fairly large and very good storytelling family.
So I have been enmeshed in stories about Paul, his father, and Annie Lester, his mother, and everybody has these fabulous stories. But I never got a chance to meet them. But through this ring, I feel connected to his mother. And his mother was, she was a wisp of a woman who was a force of nature. She also was very wild in her teenage years, settled down, and was just fiercely loyal to her family.
And anybody who did any kind of threatened harm to her family got a lesson from Annie Lester. She had a sharp tongue and wasn't afraid to use it. She was stubborn but unbelievably loving. And I just love those characteristics. So I feel connected to her even though I've never met her. Stories carry a connection even when that person is no longer there.
And that connection for me with Annie Lester is a connection of love and compassion so that I can still feel that love and compassion even when the person is no longer there.
Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
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