When your little girls have gone

I was on the road that day, somewhere in Iowa, on my way to a five day intensive writing workshop with Margie Lawson, having a "deluxe continental breakfast." Not really sure what continent it might be from, but the coffee is fabulous.
But the topic of conversation on the TODAY show overhead was whether mothers and daughters can be best friends. They interview a set who are, at the same time the experts are horrified and gasping "no! No!"

This is a subject I've been thinking about for awhile. Not about being best friends with my daughters, but my relationship with them. As I've said before, most of my girls packed up and bailed for parts unknown. M picked the Navy, traveled the world, met The One, has a lovely family now living in Florida and soon to take off for foreign parts, if she has her way. B lives 2500 miles away in Nevada. K moved to North Carolina. (D is still in town, but she's so busy we hardly see each other!) It's hard to stay close from that distance.  They have their own lives. Mother isn't part of it.
I asked M recently if she'd done it on purpose, moved away to exclude me. She laughed and called me a "silly mom" and assured me it wasn't like that.
So many people I know in our small town live here forever. As do their parents. Children. Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. Even the ones once removed. Big family parties, cookouts, so on.  I see B doing this with her new family, and I'm glad she has the support.
So am I wishing they were too frightened of the "big world outside" to leave to stay home near me? Of course not. Maybe I've just done my job and sent them out, free and secure, to fly on their own, like any good mother bird.
At the same time, I resent only seeing them once every year or two. I wish they were close so we could do things together, so I wouldn't worry when they had hard times, so I could pop over with a pot roast when I knew they needed it.
Mary Quigley quotes Jonas Salk like this:
Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. — Jonas Salk
She makes some good points in her piece on adult children. It's certainly not my intention to become a helicopter parent. I hate flying, for one. But I have grandchildren I hardly know, and all three of these girls are just slipping away in the passage of time. None of us knows how much time might be allotted to us. We might say, "Oh, someday we'll..." but we don't know whether we'll ever get that chance.
Meantime, I suppose, I should be grateful they're flying so successfully. If they don't need me then I've done my job, right? It makes sense. But sometimes it just doesn't satisfy my heart.

Social Media and Polite Society, The Connection You May Have Missed

Social media is a return to a simpler age.

I can see the skepticism on your faces from here, but bear with me. I think you’ll see the connection.

First, I’d like to invite you to remind yourselves of the standards I, and most of you, were taught growing up. We were raised by certain ideas about how to treat others. My mother and grandmother had a name for it—polite society. Here are some of the basics, in case you’ve forgotten: 

• If someone says something nice about you, thank them.
• When someone does something nice for you, do something nice for them.
• Always put others before yourself.
• If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

It was a Do unto others as you would have the do unto you world.

These rules guided my behavior in almost all circumstances. And they made the world I lived in pretty easy to navigate. We all operated from a common basis, and everyone knew what was expected from everyone else.

These same basic rules are once again enjoying a resurgence—on the Internet. Stay with me and consider our interaction on social media, specifically Facebook and Twitter.

• If someone mentions you (which is a nice thing in this new, platform-building paradigm) you thank them.
• When others do something nice for you online, like telling people you have a great blog post, you tell your friends about their blogs.
• To keep from becoming a self-centered sounding boor, promote others online more than yourself. I know it’s counterintuitive, but it works every time. Those who promote others are always more popular and have more friends than those who are self-serving and self-promoting.
• And most important of all, when almost everything ever said online can still be found somewhere online—NEVER share an update that puts someone else down. 

It’s once again a golden-rule governed world.

When I realized the relationship between how I was raised and this new frontier, I also saw that I have a lot of experience I can share with the younger, sometimes more digitally-familiar generation. And this gave me the confidence to embrace this new culture. Because let’s face it, there truly is nothing new under the sun.

Edie Melson is a freelance writer and editor with years of experience in the publishing industry. She’s a prolific writer, and has a popular writing blog, The WriteConversation. In keeping up with the leading edge of al things digital, Edie has become known as one of the go-to experts on social media for writers wanting to learn how to plug in. Her first book, Social Media Marketing for Writers took less than a month to move into the best-seller category on Amazon.

As a sought after writing instructor, her heart to help others define and reach their dreams has connected her with writers all over the country. She’s the co-director of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference, as well as a popular faculty member at numerous others. Edie is also the Social Media Coach for My Book Therapy.

Fighting Fear, Winning the War at Home, is Edie’s latest project. This devotional book for those with family members in the military debuted on Veterans Day, 2011. www.winningthewarathome.com.

She’s a member of numerous professional writing organizations, including the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, The Christian Pen, The Christian Writer’s View I and American Christian Fiction Writers. She’s also a regular contributor on NovelRocket.com, a Writers Digest top 101 websites for writers, as well as a regular columnist in Southern Writers Magazine.

Married 30+ years to her high school sweetheart, Kirk, they have raised three sons.