My Apology

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Listen to “My Apology” here

These are my opening comments from my radio program today:

I talk every day about doing the right thing.  And yesterday, I did the wrong thing. 

I didn’t intend to hurt people, but I did.  And that makes it the wrong thing to have done.

I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the “n” word all the way out - more than one time.  And that was wrong.  I’ll say it again - that was wrong.

I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word.  I, myself, realized I had made a horrible mistake, and was so upset I could not finish the show.  I pulled myself off the air at the end of the hour.  I had to finish the hour, because 20 minutes of dead air doesn’t work.  I am very sorry.  And it just won’t happen again.

I received some letters, and what touched me is that, even though many of you were upset, you still showed friendship for all the years we’ve been together on the air, and for that, trust me, I am very grateful.  Here’s an example:

I’d like to thank this woman for sending me this letter.  I was so very touched, and truthfully, it helped me make it through the night.  So I’m going to read this letter:

Dear Dr. Laura:

I have been a listener for at least 20 years.  I have bought and read several of your books.  I have always held you in high regard, and have encouraged others to listen to you as well.  I have to say, after today’s call with the African-American woman with the Caucasian husband who called seeking how to handle “racist” comments, I am a bit dismayed.  I believe that African-Americans using the n-word is disdainful, as well as Caucasians or any other race for that matter.  I agree that the argument some African-Americans use that it is ok for them to use it and not others, is ridiculous.  But, I have to say, when I heard you saying the word repeatedly, it struck a negative chord with me.

I don’t believe you are a racist, and I don’t believe, as an African-American woman, that I am hypersensitive.  I have to say after the call, I found it difficult to continue to listen to the rest of the show.  I have not made the decision to stop listening to your show, but I felt compelled to respond because I found it offensive.

Sincerely {and she gives her name}

One last note -
The caller in question (her name is Jade), called for help from me, and didn’t get it, because we got embroiled in the “n” word, and I’m really sorry about that, because I’m here for only one reason and that’s to be helpful, so I hope Jade or somebody who knows her is listening, and hope she will call me back and I will try my best to be helpful, which is what she wanted from me in the first place and what she did not get.

I Apologize

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I always tell my listeners when they mess up, they need to follow the four R’s:  take responsibility, have true remorse, try to repair it, and don’t repeat it.  Yesterday, I messed up.  I used the “n” word on-air, and I regretted it as soon as the call was over.  While it was in the context of making a point about the unfortunate use of that term by others who deem it acceptable or funny, it is a word that is hateful, hurtful and I should not have used it even to prove a point.  After the call, I was terribly upset about it and after that hour of the program concluded, pulled myself off the air for the rest of the show.  Today, at the top of my program, I will apologize to my listeners.

You’ll Never Believe What He Did Now…

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When the girls get together, here’s what happens…

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

Friendship Should Not Be Unconditional

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I don’t subscribe to unconditional relationships, whether they are by blood, geography, gender, race, religion, or friendship.

Recently, I had a situation in my personal life that brought this concept to the fore.  I (and others) had gotten deeply involved with a lovely person who was in a destructive relationship.  When it broke up…again…we were all asked to be supportive, and we were (with phone calls, visits, dinner, etc.).  The relationships all deepened and then this person slipped way backward…again…into a morass of misery.  I communicated I was sad this had happened, and I was willing to resume our friendship after some time had passed, when the drama was no longer part of the equation.

I heard from this person again, and was informed the drama was indeed over…finally (one last burp, I guess).  This individual did communicate to me about being hurt that my friendship seemed conditional, when it was expected I would be there through stupid and smart behavior. 

I responded all relationships should be conditional - not “hair-trigger” conditional, but conditional nonetheless. I don’t want to be Mel Gibson’s friend, for example.  I am certainly willing to be supportive and helpful, but I don’t want to take up time in my life with yo-yo drama.  I consider the other individual has the responsibility to do the work to make themselves healthy and my support is there lovingly when that is, indeed, the case.  Getting one’s life on a healthy track is difficult, and I am certainly there to support my friends during that journey.  I am not there, however, when intentional, self-defeating steps are taken to get back into the problems.

This is the philosophy I espouse on the air.  Otherwise, giving support unconditionally is making oneself a patsy and/or a contributor to the ongoing drama and filling one’s life with unnecessary turmoil.

Relationships require the honor, integrity and effort of both individuals.  That should be the condition.

Mistakes?  Temporary stupidity?  All understandable.

Betrayal of support by giving into weakness?  Not so understandable.

You owe those who support you not to give into temptation or weakness, or you will lose the best of them.

Going on a Shopping Diet

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How many times have you gone into your closet to choose something to wear, and even though your closet is stuffed with things (some still with the tags on them), you’ve stood there frustrated and yelled:  “But I don’t have anything to wear!!”

Imagine this:  you go to your closet to choose what to wear for the day, and you find only six items.  Does that make it easier?

That’s the premise behind a recent Web challenge at sixitemsorless.com - participants were to go an entire month wearing only six items already found in their closet (not counting underwear or accessories).  Nearly 100 people around the country and in Dubai and Bangalore, India took part in this experiment, with a variety of motives, including it being a way to cut back on unnecessary spending, a way to reject fashion trends, and an opportunity to show concern that the mass production and global transportation of increasingly cheap clothing was damaging the environment.

This experiment was billed as a kind of “shopping diet.”

Women, in particular, spend inordinate amounts of money each month on trendy (not classic), poorly made, cheap clothes, which are mostly made in Asia.  They’re disposable wardrobes paid for with precious income.

Check out your closet.  I’ll bet you have things you haven’t worn in years, or you have 10 pairs of jeans, when you only wear four of them regularly.

I used to be one of those women.  I gave away about a third of my clothes, saving jeweled jeans and leather jackets, because I wear those at public events.  I spend most of my time in T-shirts and stretch yoga pants, and when I go out, it’s usually in cowboy boots and a denim skirt.  “Dressing up” means I choose a blinged-out shirt over a plain one.  I will admit, however, to owning way too many Harley T-shirts and jackets, but that’s my one permitted weakness.

I don’t own trendy stuff at all.  For several years, those blousy tops that are made to look like maternity tops have been popular, but I’ve avoided them.  I don’t like being manipulated by an industry which is there to make billions off a pathetic desire to be “in fashion.”  Give me a Chanel suit any day - now that’s eternal class - although I don’t own one of those, either.

I suggest you rearrange your closet with ten pieces - shirts, pants, skirt, top, shorts - and check yourself out for a month.  Does anyone even notice?  Do you spend less time struggling with what to wear?  Do you find yourself more comfortable than you imagined?  Or has way too much of your being and identity been dependent upon how you think you look?  It’s an interesting self-examination.

I find myself more comfortable when I’m not wasting time and money on frequent trips to clothing stores.

Lately, since I’ve been scouring thrift stores for items to use for the purses I make (check out www.topdogcoffeebar.com), I found two denim skirts that, after figuring out how to transform them into purses) I decided to keep to wear myself.  One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure, and by buying at most thrift shops, you support charities as well.

Disregard for Hands-On Parenting

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There appears to be a growing disregard for actual eyeball-to-eyeball hands-on parenting.

Christine, a new stay-at-home parent to a two-month-old daughter, emailed me immediately when she saw an article from Parenting magazine by Melissa Balmain posted on CNN.com about the deaths of infants forgotten in cars. I read the article and share her disgust.

The main story is about two people, married, with a comfortable house in Virginia, and two well-paying full-time jobs.  On top of that, they decided to adopt two babies from Guatemala.  According to this report, “..the end of August and start of September, 2007 had been stressful.  Twenty-three-month old Juan and his four-year-old brother had been sick on and off.  The mother’s days and been blurs of work, day care, doctors, business trips, visits with relatives and anxiety.”

The story then goes on that the older boy was home with the dad and the mother was supposed to drop an ill younger child off in day care.  She went to work, had a “normal day,” talked with her supervisor, ate lunch at her desk, drove to the supermarket and shopped for dinner and continued on to the day care center to pick the younger boy up.  That’s when the child was found dead in the back seat, having literally cooked to death in the heat of the locked car. 

Now, I don’t have sympathy for the parents.  I just don’t.  I don’t agree with the article that whitewashes these incidents by saying it is normal to forget things when you’re in your habit rhythm - a lapse in memory that you’re a parent only occurs when being a parent is an accessory rather than the main deal.  Let’s look at her stressful month of September:  business trips, day care, work, visits with relatives and anxiety.  How many of those factors would have been eliminated if she was a stay-at-home mom?  Answer:  ALL OF THEM,  and the child would likely be alive.

I wonder if it is accidental that all the stories I’ve read about babies cooking to death in the back of their parents’ car are the result of parents forgetting to drop them off at day care on the way to work.  Fobbing off one’s sacred responsibility of child-rearing and protecting to hired help tends to make one not have focus on that child.  Just sayin’.

The article talks about the “reptilian” or most ancient part of the brain which directs our habits, and habits dominate over short-term plans which are ordered by the more advanced brain regions.  If that excuse is so, then parents should put their reptilian brain into parenting and not business trips, work, and day care drops and pick ups.

The article ends up giving suggestions so you won’t forget your kid to die in your back seat while you are busy with what is more important.

1. Put something that really matters to you - like your cell phone - in the back seat with the child.  Do you realize that means that your cell phone is more important than your child?

2. Keep a teddy bear in the baby car seat.  When you put your kid in the seat, put the teddy in front, so you’ll see it and remember you have a child.  After all, you’re a “busy employee.”

3. Ask your child’s child-care provider to call you on your cell phone if your kid doesn’t get there.  Oh, so now the day care, minimum-wage worker is more responsible for your kid than you are?

4.  Put visual cues in your office and home reminding you to check the car seat.  Gee, I thought parental love and bonding did that.  Guess not.

My bottom line?  Don’t have ‘em if you won’t raise ‘em.

If I were in charge of adoptions, no one without a spouse at home would be allowed to adopt a child.  Children are not accessories.  They should be the main deal.

Phone Company Blamed for Exposing Affair

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Gabriella Nagy, a married woman with two children, ages 6 and 7, was cheating on her husband with another man.  So that she and the male bimbo could talk for hours behind her husband’s and children’s backs, she got a cell phone under her maiden name.  The monthly bills came to her marital home. 

Her husband decided to use the same Internet company and home phone service.  The company attempted to save the family some money by consolidating the bills and mailing a “global” invoice to the Nagy home that included an itemized bill for Gabriella’s cell phone service.  Her husband discovered several hour-long phone calls to a single phone number, called it, and the guy on the other end confirmed the affair.

The husband, without a discussion, left her.

This cheating woman had the ultimate nerve to sue the company that sent the consolidated bill and exposed her extramarital affair.  She says she was so distraught that she lost her $100,000 per year job and cried uncontrollably.

Listen to what this twerp had to say: “It was a mistake.  But I didn’t deserve to lose my life over it!”

WHAAAT??  What have her children and husband “lost” over this?  “This” is a massive, insensitive, thoughtless, self-centered betrayal!   The deepest part of Hell, according to Dante’s Inferno is reserved for those who betray the ones they’re supposed to love and honor.  That is because the very fabric of humanity is dependent upon trust.  What does she think she deserves for taking her time, affection, attention, and family income and splurging it on a honey instead of her husband and children? What did she expect her husband would do when he found out his wife was naked with a man other than the one who committed his life to her and fathered her children?  What did she expect would happen when everyone found out that she made the company unknowingly collude with her and then complain that their money-saving action opened the curtain on her bad behavior?

She doesn’t think she deserved to lose her lifestyle over this.  Is she kidding?  Talk about being narcissistic.

She’s suing the company for under a million dollars to teach them a lesson?

That’s gall.

‘Fess Up If You Mess Up

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Boy, oh boy, do I have to arm wrestle, pull teeth and stamp my feet sometimes to get callers to simply admit to “my bad.”  You know, the individual desire to never look or be wrong or bad so that people won’t punish you and/or will like you leads people to walk straight into retribution and dislike. 

The absolutely best thing to do when you’ve done wrong is to accept and admit responsibility.  Nothing makes others precipitously drop their rage than the sight and sound of someone owning up to his or her wrongdoing.  After a certain amount of shock and disbelief, people will look at you with some awe, because taking responsibility and demonstrating remorse, and being willing to repair whatever damage has been caused is the most compassionate way to handle having hurt or disappointed someone.

Yes, you might have to deal with repercussions, but just think back to some of the old movies where people finally confess, because they simply can’t stand the burden on their hearts and souls.  It’s true - it takes a lot of energy to hide and pretend.  It’s a relief to everyone if you just say: “Yeah, I did it….sorry.  Here’s how I would like to fix this situation and make it better.”

So, the very next time you “mess up,” just “‘fess up” and see how much better you and the hurt party feel and get along.