The FLOW  

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  The Language of Manhood

  The FLOW Experience

  Date / Time: 11/29/2009 11:00 PM UTC

  Category: Life

  Call-in Number: (347) 215-8864

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  What is maleness, masculinity, manhood? Is it as real as the last James Bond movie or rap video? Are we striving to achieve a media projection that has no basis in reality? Do we live for the next conquest and just ride into the sunset or is manhood a living, breathing, feeling entity. What concepts do we try to live and bring into our relationships? And, how do these roles serve us

• On Demand Episodes           47454          

  Date / Time: 2/25/2009 10:09 PM UTC

  The Intimate Enemies Within

  How do we, as relationship partners, end up taking paths that seems to be so contrary to the desires of our hearts? Are we victims? Or are we willing participants in our outcomes, from beginning to end? In our ascent for spiritual fulfillment, we must learn to let go and release ourselves from what is self limiting. Letting go and growing beyond who and what we have been up till this moment requires a gradual awakening to what no longer works for us, followed by the inner work to release it.
  
  

  Following this is the realization that holding on is of no further use. Those old tried and true solutions bring us no comfort. The spiritual work of letting go and growing begins with embracing and daring to act. The missing half of our lives is letting go. Letting go not only holds the key for ending what is unwanted, but the birth of a new nature. Letting go is strictly an inside job. Trying to change your life without doing the inner work, is like convincing yourself that a merry-go-round has a destination. We can decide to get off whenever want.

  The lesson in any painful emotional collision isn't in the crash. We often blame the other driver, get another car, and take another road starting the cycle once more. Each collision is trying to teach us is the only thing wrong in our life is the current driver, who says he knows the way home, but obviously he doesn't. We must learn to stop trying to change what we are getting for ourselves, and change what we are giving to ourselves. A book can have all sorts of maps pointing us in the direction of a meadow with beautiful flowers, but in order to get there, we must do the walking. And until then, we will continue partnering with the intimate enemy within. What are your thoughts and experiences? 
  
  Please share your comments or send an email to flow4theworld@comcast.net.

  • Tags:
  • communication
  • relationships
  • dating
  • marriage
  • spirituality
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• Date / Time: 2/24/2009 2:51 PM UTC

  The Dating Dance - How To Know Someone?

  The dating dance should begin way before dating. There are questions to be asked before the plunge is undertaken. What are we really after in the dating process? The standard answers are love, companionship, regular sex, stability, marriage, a willing partner...
  
  Despite these answers, too many of us are really looking for mommy or daddy and consequently relationships become venues for working out unresolved parental issues. Audrey Chapman, a family therapist, author, trainer, and nationally-known relationship expert says in her book Getting Good Loving, "The "entitled" individual is really looking for a partner that will take on a parental role. If parents disappointed the individual during childhood, then in adulthood he or she subconsciously makes the leap that a romantic partner can be an ideal parental replacement."
   
  The way to sort through all this is to take your time to get to know the other person. This is crucial in determining if there are issues that impact a healthy, self-affirming relationship. There is no time limit to this process. The first few dates, 3 months, 6 months, etc are all arbitrary parameters that have nothing to do with making a healthy connection. If you are in a rush to connect, why, should be the next question, and where has rushing gotten you in the past.
  
  From a gauntlet of failed expectations, some approach dating with such desperation, that their very actions betray that they have no faith in finding what they seek. Bell Hooks states in her book “All About Love “…we year for love—that we seek it—even when we lack hope that it really can be found.” And this lack of hope can be very evident in what in what individuals have settled for that amounts to merely a warm body. The dating dance is really a quest for self validation, a cry “that I am somebody” and I hope that someone else can see me! Taking the time to make a real connection will determine how you are seen and reveal attitudes regarding family, finance, religion and spirituality, personal & career goals, sex & sexuality, children, etc. What I am suggesting is not and interview or a check list.
  
  In a recent Time Magazine article titled “The New Dating Game”, “relationship experts” quoted offered such dating success determinants as accessing character by whether your ring finger is longer than your index finger; “a guy wearing a sweater probably means he already has a girlfriend”; and “wait 90 days before giving [a man] any “benefits.” Is this really the road to healthy connections, or merely one dimensional relationship cartoons, where the characters behaviors consistently deify reality?
  
  I understand that this is all foreign territory for many, but if we seek to end the merry-go-round of relationships with the same person in a different individual, a different, more introspective approach is in order. This is not a destination, but a journey of personal exploration, as well as exploring who is that other person. Are they really good for you, not just LOOK good to you? Making a connection that is self affirming, that fosters personal growth and not dependence, is the real goal of the dating dance, regardless of all the other things we call it. Magical visions of love or media induced frames or references have nothing to do with this.
  
  That's my take... What’s yours? Share your comments with The FLOW community here or on The FLOW website www.flow4theworld.com or send an email to flow4theworld@comcast.net.
  • Tags:
  • dating
  • relationships
  • communication
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• Date / Time: 2/21/2009 6:05 PM UTC

  Where Was Daddy? Documentary About How Fathers Impact Daughters Relationships

  How much of a woman’s relationship choices are influenced by their fathers? How do father’s impact daughter’s definitions of womanhood, self esteem and intimacy. How many women are trying to make up for the neglect, absence, or abuse of their fathers in their romantic relationships risking their own authenticity and relationship success?
  
  The FLOW has asked these questions at the 2008 Harlem Book Fair with the panel discussion Sins of the Father: How Fathers Impact Daughters Relationships and by popular demand, we repeated this panel at A Good Book bookstore in Baltimore, Maryland in January of 2009. Ray Williams, producer and filmmaker of the documentary film Where Was Daddy was a panelist at both these events.
  
  In Where Was Daddy, Ray explores this generally unrecognized, but significant, universal issue in the lives of women. On his website, www.wherewasdaddy.com  Ray notes,
  "Volumes have been written about the intergenerational degradation of the black father/son relationship and how it has affected the black family structure in America. But it is the relationship a daughter has with her father that cements her perceptions of men and provides the template for which she will use to attract a partner."
  
  Through compelling personal stories, Where Was Daddy paints a picture of women grappling with the issues of self-esteem, acceptance, intimacy, and even the possibility of ever attaining a meaningful relationship, based upon their relationship with their fathers. One woman, poignantly states that “… if my father left me that means that any man can leave me…” “…why am I even worth a man loving me for me, if my father, the man who is supposed to love, left me…”
  
  In the book, When the Past is Present, author David Richo says “…How sad it is that what shaped us became a burden and a secret too.” Ray Williams states that the testimonies of the women in his film become inquiry. The inquiry Intertwined in the stories of these women is how men are the victims of a culture that denies them healthy expressions of love in their relationships with pathological consequences.
  
  Author and social critic Bell Hooks puts it aptly when she says of women, “We learn to love men more because they will not love us. If they dared to love us, in patriarchal culture they would cease to be real men.” Where Was Daddy begins the much needed dialogue that is not so much an indictment of fathers, but a vivid testimony of how their unresolved pain flows through the generations.
  
  Share your comments with The FLOW community or send an email to flow4theworld@comcast.net.  For more information regarding Where Was Daddy www.wherewasdaddy.com.
  • Tags:
  • fathers
  • daughters
  • relationships
  • communication
  • love
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