Law And More

The Peril of Not Likely Yourself - Lesson from "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Lawyers

Freddie Mercury, who became lead singer in British band Queen, was filled with self-hate.

The meme of how not liking yourself is so destructive permeates the smash hit film "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Mercury grows up in England in an immigrant family from Pakistan. The father is rigid, especially in his religious beliefs and notion about how an ordinary life should be lived. Of course, that clashes with the creative spark in the young son. 

As with so many creatives, the son follows his dream of artistic performance, despite the father's disapproval. But, as we all know who have taken the road Mercury traveled, there is hell to pay. The undertow of confusion is hard to shake.

Mercury gets lost in sex, booze, and drugs. It will be AIDS which shortens his life. 

But late in his life he does find the ability to love himself. He forms a lasting bond with the man who told him to only come around after he learned to like himself. And his performance is brilliant at the Live Aid concert.

This movie should be shown in rehabs and at recovery meetings. There's not enough of a conversation among the addictive about how self-hate probably got them into that pickle. 

It should also be showcased by the American Bar Association. Lawyers are notorious for self-destructive behavior. The cause could simply be they don't like themselves. 

Out of the Box Communications = Unexpected Results

Complimentary Consultation janegenova374@gmail.com – I help, not sell.

Pedophile Nuns - Latest Chapter in Roman Catholic Church Alleged Sexual Misconduct

Those of us who has attended Catholic school are not surprised by media reports of what is being labeled "pedophile nuns." Those "brides of Christ" had enormous power over students back in the 20th century. 

CBS focuses on the alleged sexual abuse of Trish Cahill.

At the age of 15 she confided to Sister Eileen Shaw alleged sexual misconduct by a priest who was also her uncle. Part the alleged way Shaw comforted her included alcohol and instructions on how to have sex with a woman.

Eventually, Cahill reported the situation to the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth. The Church settled with Cahill out of court for $70,000.

So far, almost 20 others have stepped forward to contend they were also sexually abused by nuns. I have a hunch this is the beginning of yet another major scandal associated with Catholicism.

Among the current lawsuits is "Joseph McLean, et al. v. US Conference of Catholic Bishops." The litigation leverages the argument that the Catholic Church caused a public nuisance. 

But, sexual abuse was only the tip of the iceberg related to how nuns allegedly used their power to damage young people.

In 1963, I arrived at all-women's Catholic college - Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the Sisters of Charity and named after now-Catholic saint Mother Elizabeth Seton. 

I was one of those classmates who were sitting ducks for allegedly being tormented by the nuns.

From the mean streets of Jersey City, New Jersey (pre-gentrification), I was the first in my immigrant family to become college-educated.

My mother was a cleaning lady at my public high school.

My father out started out making his living cleaning railroad cars.

In addition, I was already battling clinical depression, an eating disorder, and sub-zero self-esteem. In 1970, I had a nervous breakdown.

One day soon after arrival at Seton Hill I was pulled out of the Freshman Composition class by the head of the English department. That was Sister Miriam Joseph Murphy.

She reamed me out for talking too much after a reading on campus by a local poet. Murphy kept hammering that I had ruined things for everyone there and that Seton Hill professor - JoAnne Boyle who later became  a Seton Hill president - had baked cookies for the special event.

Talking too much and homemade cookies ... Even though I hadn't had a college education yet my mind questioned the connection with my behavior and the cookies. 

When the verbal flogging was over, I went to my dorm room sobbing. To this day, I wonder what prevented me from jumping from that fourth-story window. 

That hurt, as usual, hardened into rage. Too many opportunities in my life had been derailed by  extreme anger. 

Since 2013, I have been leveraging mindfulness to manage it. Underneath rage is always hurt.

Over Thanksgiving 2017, I traveled to the Seton Hill graveyard housing nuns and the institution's presidents. I had to verify that those who had broken me were indeed dead

Had I come from a privileged background with a father who was a lawyer I would have been informed that I could have sued for alleged intentional infliction of emotional abuse. That I didn't find out about until I attended Harvard Law School around 1985.

BTW, The Horror replicated itself in a different manner in 2014. Here is that story. And here is the story of the public nuisance type Christmas letter.

Mindfulness impresses on those meditating the importance of forgiveness. I am a long way from ready for that. 

Out of the Box Communications = Unexpected Results

Complimentary Consultation janegenova374@gmail.com – I help, not sell.

 

Lonely Lawyers - Catch a Re-Run of "Law & Order SVU" or "Criminal Minds"

According to Cigna's study, 56% assess that the people around us aren't really with us. Also, 54% of the folks in our little lives, we are convinced, really don't know us. Here are more details from Fortune.

Of course, there is no shortage of opinion put out there about the causes of this loneliness epidemic. Fingered is everything from too much screen time to working such long hours we have nothing left for building relationships. 

However, loneliness is not a 21st century phenomenon. Before Marissa Mayer and Mark Zuckerberg made nerdiness cool, we eggheads (as we were called back then) were segregated from much of social life. In addition, as Betty Friedan pointed out, many stay-at-home mothers were plenty lonely. 

Then, as now, some of us lonely souls bonded deeply and well with fictional characters.

I made it my business to get to the public library to check out the latest Nancy Drew mystery novel.

Although Nancy had a sometimes boyfriend, he didn't seem important to her - at least not as important as solving a mystery. So, I figured we were soulmates. Had we actually talked, I knew Nancy would understand me. 

Isolated housewives could feel companionship with any of  the diverse crowd on the soap operas.

Today, we have Olivia Benson on "Law & Order SVU" and David Rossi on "Criminal Minds." They are open systems. They could take us in fully and, yes, understand exactly what we were all about. 

No surprise, the re-runs of both shows are popular. No matter what is going on in my day or how alienated I feel from "normal people," if I invest an hour with a re-run, I will feel whole again.

Overall, we might feel less lonely if society gave the okay to our developing deep relationships with fictional entities. I have always had a hunch that those real relationships are over-rated. 

It was in my junior year in college that I finally had real relationships. There were two classmates who let me into their lives and seemed to care about me. They were female. At the time it was an all-women's institution of higher learning - Seton Hill.

That was then.

Not long after graduation one of them refused to talk with me. She believed, and was probably right, that I didn't understand what she was going through during her nervous breakdown. It was straight out of Mary McCarthy's "The Group." 

When I called the other, she told me that I had always been a "pain in the ass." That was that.

Later, I made a whopper of a mistake assuming I could conjure up human closeness from College Past. Here is that saga of extreme horror.

Do we just have an illusion of intimacy?

All New Year's Eve day and all New Year's day, there will be re-runs of "Criminal Minds." Those folks constitute my social network.

So, no, I won't have to be lonely in the final days of this holiday season. None of you will have to. Just turn the television channel to ION.

Out of the Box Communications = Unexpected Results

Complimentary Consultation janegenova374@gmail.com – I help, not sell.

Lawyers & FIRE - No Day at the Beach, Even When on the Beach

FIRE - financial independence, retire early - represents a transition. In fact, a major one.

So, it should be no surprise that FIRE is not the gateway to utopia.

Transition often is a brutal experience.

That's exactly why society manufactured all the traditional rituals to encourage those embarking on change to continue to move on with it.

Classic are the graduation galas for youth going forth into careers after college. Who the heck welcomes exiting the womb of a sturdy friendship network, infrastructure of needed services (including the counseling center), predictable schedules, and being treated like a protected category?  

Perhaps society needs to cook up similar rituals for those embracing FIRE. In MarketWatch, Chris Mamula chronicles the harsh realities of leaving a career at age 41. Essentially, his message is that the process is exchanging one set of problems for new ones. 

For instance, instead of the responsibilities of the job there emerge those ranging from developing new reasons for getting up in the morning to what it takes to make new friends.

The hardest nut to crack, I would add, is that early retirement usually entails relocating from high cost of living locations where a career played out to somewhere else. That somewhere else, no matter how amazing, might never feel like "home."

A 62-year-old former lawyer I coach still ponders if it was a mistake to sell his house in Connecticut and move to a wonderful beach community in Pensacola, Florida. He pines for "home" so much that he is focusing on how to put together another career path so that he can afford to return to CT. We have discussed become certified in addiction counseling. No, he doesn't want to ever practice law again. 

The most useful way to prepare for FIRE is to observe others who have taken that option. In southwestern Arizona, the middle-class retirement developments in Oro Valley are full of those whose investments and career earnings facilitated early retirement. Not one I interviewed for articles on aging seemed content. Too often their conversations drifted back to memories of their working years.

What I have concluded is this: The least painful version of FIRE is semi-retirement. Have lined up a mode of continuing to earn income, either as an employee or an entrepreneur. The money is not as important as the identity working creates. In addition, it automatically generates a social network. 

Here, free to download, is my book on finding and taking the ramp out of one's comfort zone. 

Coaching and Thought Leadership Ghostwriting about Issues Associated with Careers.

Complimentary consultation, sliding scale fees. Please contact Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.

Lawyers, Of Course You Can't Afford Retirement, At Least Not Forever

Even The Wall Street Journal is defaulting to the platitude that retirement will be more expensive than we had planned for. 

Just about everyone - both retired and those considering retirement/semi-retirement - has become filled with angst about making ends meet. 

Actually, the conversations we are having have become downright specific on the expenses we should be most concerned about. 

For example, this week as the Dow tumbled, a tenured humanities professor I coach cut right to the chase. He saw the world as binary: locations in which he would need a car when he stopped working and those he wouldn't. He was considering the latter, in particular towns in Mexico. What he was focusing on in our coaching session was what kind of small online business he could launch now to prepare for generating income during retirement.

It's become financial common sense that there are too many variables involved in funding retirement to assume we can assume anything. According to the latest numbers from the Federal Reserve, one-third of those who have retired have returned to the workforce. There is even a label for that: reverse retirement. 

So unpredictable is paying the bills during retirement as well as semi-retirement that I recommend to clients to think of themselves as Gen Scramble.

We don't know what expense will emerge and when. If it can't be absorbed in a current budget, then off to work we go - forever or for a while.

Here, free to download, is my book on survival work that can scale to well-paying employment opportunities Download Outwitting ageism.

Thank you, The Wall Street Journal, but no one needs to be warned of the growing unknowns associated with ending a career path. We see it played out all the time among our family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and clients.

In my coaching, I have never had anyone come to me and boast that he or she is "sitting pretty."

No surprise, more of my clients are already officially retired. But, that won't be long. Along with downsizing expenses more, they also scramble for additional income. If the Dow plunges further, that pattern will dominate. Sadly, with sinking portfolios, what becomes the reality is that very old adage: Humans plan, the gods laugh. Currently, that laughter sounds quite cruel.

Coaching and Thought Leadership Ghostwriting about Issues Associated with Careers.

Complimentary consultation, sliding scale fees. Please contact Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

FIRE & Lawyers - It's a Mindset

Careers in the 21st century get played out in dog years.

That's especially in the already-demanding field of practicing law.

So, no surprise, as 2018 ends and resolutions for 2019 are being put together, some lawyers are looking at FIRE - Financial Independence, Retire Early. 

Essentially, FIRE is a mindset. Your values shift from pursuing a career to working, if you choose to continue with earning income, in a less intense, ego-driven manner. 

In FIRE, you made enough money. It doesn't have to be a lot. Just enough. 

You can leave practicing law behind totally.

Or you can downshift to leveraging your experience and skills in ways which won't suck out your soul - and perhaps preoccupy you with suicidal ideation.

The leveraging can be within law per se or toward something very different. For example, you can become certified to counsel recovering addicts. In that you have the edge since you know the legalities substance abusers encounter.

Ironically, you might be more successful, on many levels, post-FIRE. That's how the zen of detachment frequently operates. The less you care too much the more you might achieve. 

Here, free to download, is a guide for finding the ramp out of your comfort zone. We humans seem wired to be stuck.

Coaching and Thought Leadership Ghostwriting about Issues Associated with Careers.

Complimentary consultation, sliding scale fees. Please contact Jane Genova at janegenova374@gamil.com.

 

 

Addiction and Lawyers - Taking a Look Inside

Father David and son Nic Sheff teamed up to tell a true story of addiction. 

David is a professional writer.

Nic knows he has the gift. But he is unable to leverage it until he travels a long road of being hooked on just about every drug, multiple recoveries and relapses, and finally putting together eight years clean.

The result is the amazing film "Beautiful Boy."

SPOILER ALERT

Over and over again, the message hammered throughout the film is that the actual addictive behavior is simply a symptom. What has to be uncovered before a recovery can take hold is the feeling that the addiction feeds on.

In the film, Nic describe it as a hole inside himself.

When I was 25 years old I told a therapist I assumed that I was invisible. That is, there was no me. At the time the addiction playing out was excessive consumption of alcohol. Later it was compulsive working. 

Addicts have to identify the feeling, embrace it as theirs, then search for what will magically transform it into a positive field force. The suffering doesn't have to continue.

Some just can't or won't do that feeling work. They're among the ones dying of overdoses or more active forms of suicide. They included members of my family.

At the intake in rehabs, the counselor should mandate: We're going to look inside.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

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Lawyers - The Tragedy of Answered Prayers (like making partner)

"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." - Saint Teresa of Avila

So universal is that phenomenon that author Truman Capote used the concept of answered prayers for his last (unfinished) novel.

And, according a recent article in Abovethelaw by Jordan Rothman, being made partner can be included in those tragedies generated by answered prayers.

According to Rothman, partnership in a law firm is not the BigPrize law students and junior lawyers envision. The reality is that all the sacrifices involved in that achievement might not have an adequate pay-off. 

To begin with, the money probably is not enough for the good life. Aside from BigLaw, partnership could pay less than an associate receives in a Cravath. 

But even in BigLaw, the money may be disappointing. Non-equity partners don't have the access to the compensation which equity partners do. Also the status, power, and influence will probably be much less than the equity folks have, hold, and flaunt. 

But making it into the equity circle is not without its burdens. 

Equity partners first have to invest their own money in the law firm. For that they may have to borrow. In addition, as happened when Dewey LeBoeuf collapsed, equity partners are responsible for debt. 

Many of us who follow legal media and the cases taken on by David Sanford are aware of the growing number of enraged partners, particularly women. They are filing lawsuits for alleged injustices. The poster child for that had been Kerrie Campbell. During the litigation she was pushed out of the law firm. Eventually that lawsuit had been settled. She went on to set up her own shop.

Beyond the profession of law, we bear witness to myriad other instances of answered prayers delivering heartache. The classic play-outs are the stars who can't handle their celebrity status. 

Many spiritual programs and religions recommend praying for guidance, not imploring the universe or a deity for something specific. 

A new year's resolution might be to be open to possibility instead of committing to a concrete goal.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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Chuck Colson - Role Model for Michael Cohen

Both were a U.S. president's lawyers.

Both were the first of those presidents' men to wind up with a prison sentence.

They were Chuck Colson back in Watergate Days and, more recently, Michael Cohen.

Colson found redemption. In the darkness he turned toward evangelical Christianity, eventually becoming a selfless - and brandname - minister. His obituaries hailed him as a hero. 

Can Cohen also find salvation? The media positioned and packaged the three-year sentence as a long time. But, in reality, three years is short time, especially for a middle-aged man.

The world knows what Cohen stated in public about his crimes against the people. But those of us who inspect our own inner lives wonder what Cohen is saying to himself. If he is telling himself that he really did wrong, then the only way to take that leap into peace is to tell himself that he can and will change. 

A best-selling novel, published last May, chronicles a ruthless wildly successful businessman's walk 0f repentance. At the time, Charles James begins that walk along Route 66 from Illinois to California he is unaware he needs to repent.

But that was what it turns out to be. The psychic change is from aiming to screw over people to lightening their burden in life. The book is "The Forgotten Road" by Richard Paul Evans. 

On the other hand, Cohen can take on the mindset of Shakespeare's King Lear on the heath. He can look at the pickle he is in and conclude he has been more sinned against than sinning.

Those of us who have suffered so much emotional and spiritual torment probably wish upon Cohen the willingness to seek out salvation. Otherwise, as we know from experience, the inner unease can harden into despair. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

Heaven: If It Exists, Will Lawyers Be Allowed In? (George H.W. Bush Wasn't a Lawyer)

A Christian, George H.W. Bush had a firm belief in an afterlife.

What seemed to ease his transition from living to the dying process was his conviction that he would join his wife Barbara in heaven. It worked. According to close friends, he had a peaceful death. 

But that was Bush. That's not the majority of us who have veered off from formal religions and are left to sort through old-line myths about the Next.

Also, there is antipathy about the character of lawyers. If heaven exists, they have to be wondering if they will get passed the gatekeepers, on the first try. Or will they have to file motion after motion?

So, there's the book "Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia." The author is Michael Schermer, columnist for Scientific American. Here the book can be ordered from Amazon.

From the get-go, Shermer shows he doesn't buy Christian mythology. For example, he observes that no one has returned from the dead to tip us off about the Next. Obviously, he rules out Jesus Christ's. According to religious ideology, Jesus came back to life post his death on the cross. 

However, Shermer does point out that 74 percent of Americans believe in heaven (Source: Pew Forum). The rub, of course, is that no one will have this confirmed until death. So, both during this best time of the year and more routine days and nights, we have to live on with no proven-out answer - only our little individual mindset.

Oh, there have been scientific studies. But, science has lost our allegiance. Remember what "they" said about taking antidepressants forever if we had had one clinical depression. Smirk smirk. And what about the firm faith in psychoanalysis? Analysts such as David W. Harder were positioned and packaged for the so-called sophisticated as the Secular Shamans. 

Consequently, what's Next remains a mystery. The upside of that is that we can unleash our imaginations to play out the kind of existence we can enjoy after how difficult life has become on earth.

I envision being in a field surrounded by all my pet children who have died.

We have no time commitments. We just are, together.

There is no more clinical depression. No more earnest therapists like David W. Harder. 

No former college classmates who caused us so much pain.

No more disappointments about client assignments we anticipated which didn't come through.

And, no more regrets.

Those, in my realm of make-believe, are days of heaven. I have much to look forward to. That hope will keep me going. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com