Last week I received a comment on this blog. Getting a comment is always very exciting, partly because I don’t get all that many and partly because the comments are usually positive and affirming. In this case the comment was neither positive nor affirming.
Although getting critical comments isn’t nearly as fun and ego-boosting as affirming comments, receiving criticism is important to self-examination and growth. The person who commented last Thursday was upset about my “politics.” As many of you know, I’ve occasionally written about Mr. Trump and lamented his behavior. Sometimes, I’ve felt nervous posting critiques of Mr. Trump, worrying that I may have been behaving in ways that were less that professional and worrying that perhaps I shouldn’t openly express my negative opinions about his behavior. However, in the end, I’ve often ended up deciding that my critiques of Mr. Trump aren’t really about politics anyway.
Digesting Thursday’s comment has helped me clarify my position on political commentary. Here’s a version of what I wrote back to my blog commenter.
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Dear Karen,
Thanks for your message.
Many years ago when I interviewed Natalie Rogers, I recall her telling me something very compelling about her father, Carl Rogers. She said, in her family, all feelings were accepted, but not all behaviors.
Although some of my judgments about Mr. Trump have political components, most of my judgments about him focus on his personality and behavior. Politics aside, I wouldn’t care if he was a democrat, an independent, a republican, a corporate mogul, a teacher, a coach, or a rock star. I find his behavior to be an unacceptable example for children. From my perspective it’s clear that Mr. Trump is much more focused on using and abusing power than he is on empowering others. To return to Carl Rogers: Rogers believed the best use of power was to empower others. My perception of Mr. Trump is that he’s invested in accumulating power, and not on empowering others.
I could make a list of video evidence of Mr. Trump mocking disabled people, calling women “fat pigs,” disrespecting war veterans (including John McCain, whom I’ve never written a negative judgmental word about, despite his politics), paying off prostitutes, saying positive and supportive things about dictators and racists, and his continuous flow of lies. If Mr. Trump was my neighbor or a colleague at my University, it would be wrong for me to let his behavior pass without making it clear that I find his behaviors to be a potentially destructive and negative influence on children in the neighborhood or the culture at the University. Not only do I have a responsibility to be non-judgmentally accepting in therapeutic contexts, I also have a responsibility to speak up and speak out against racism and the promotion of violence. I believe there’s ample evidence that Mr. Trump has promoted racism and incited violence. My rejection of those behaviors isn’t particularly political; I simply believe that it’s morally wrong to promote racism and foment violence.
I can see we have different views of Mr. Trump. You may not see the evidence that I see, or you may find his behaviors less offensive and less dangerous. Although it’s challenging for me to understand your perspective, I know you’re not alone, and I know you must have reasons for believing the ways you believe. I can accept that.
But to articulate my perspective further, here’s a therapy example. If I was working with a client who exhibited no empathy or said things to others that were likely to incite violence, as a psychotherapist, I would work toward a greater understanding of the client’s emotions. In addition, I would consider it my professional responsibility to question those behaviors . . . for both the good of the client and the good of people in the client’s world.
Again, thanks for your message. It’s important to hear other perspectives and to have a chance to question myself and my own motives. I appreciate you providing me with that opportunity.
In the Department of Counseling at the University of Montana we offer regular workshops for our students and for counseling, social work, and psychology professionals. This “Spring semester” (even though spring semester starts in January, at the U of MT we still call it spring, probably because we start wishing very hard for spring at some point in January), we’ve got a three-part workshop series. You can sign up for one, or two, or all three sessions.
I’m posting this because I’m doing my workshop completely online in the beautiful spring month of January. That means you can come—even from a very long distance. Although there’s a fee involved (sorry about that; we use the fees to support our departmental operations budget), you can also get 13.0 hours of professional continuing education credit. My plan is to make the workshop as engaging, practical, and fun as humanly possible.
Here are the details (I’m doing Session II, meaning it will be even more “springy” than session I):
Session II: Friday, January 29 – Saturday, January 30, 2021, 9:00am – 5:00pm
Working Effectively with Parents with John Sommers-Flanagan, Ph.D.
Parenting has always been challenging, but now, with ubiquitous social media influences, the global pandemic, and increasing rates of children’s mental health disorders, parenting in the 21st century is more stressful and demanding than ever before. As a consequence, many parents turn to mental health, healthcare, and school professionals for help with their family problems. However, partly because parents can be selective or picky consumers and partly because children’s problems can be complex and overwhelming, many professionals feel ill-prepared to work effectively with parents. This class will teach participants a model for working effectively with parents. The model, which has supporting research, can be used for brief individual consultations or longer-term parent counseling. Practitioners who want to work with parents will learn methods for quick rapport, collaborative problem formulation, initial interventions, and optional follow-up strategies.
Learning Objectives:
Understand a consultation model, with supporting research, for working effectively with parents.
Learn skills for brief individual consultations or longer-term parent counseling.
Utilize methods for quick rapport, collaborative problem formulation, initial interventions, and optional follow-up strategies.
Presenter Bio:
John Sommers-Flanagan is a professor of counseling at the University of Montana, a clinical psychologist, and author or coauthor of over 100 publications, including nine books and numerous professional training videos. His books, co-written with his wife Rita, include Tough Kids, Cool Counseling, How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen, Clinical Interviewing, the forthcoming Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning: A Strengths-Based Approach, and more. John is a sought out keynote speaker and professional workshop trainer in the areas of (a) counseling youth, (b) working with parents, (c) suicide assessment, and (d) happiness. He has published many newspaper columns, Op-Ed pieces, and an article in Slate Magazine. He is also co-host of the Practically Perfect Parenting Podcast and is renowned for his dancing skills (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fippweztcwg) and his performance as Dwight, in the Counseling Department’s parody of The Office (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8-I8_1CqQ&t=19s).
Course Number and Title: COUN 595: Working Effectively with Parents
Instructor: John Sommers-Flanagan, Ph.D.
Meeting Dates and Times: Friday, January 29, 2021 and Saturday, January 30, 2021, from 9:00am to 5:00pm
Instructional Modality: This is a synchronous online course. Attendance, participation, homework, and short quizzes are required for course credit.
Recommended Book: Sommers-Flanagan, J., & Sommers-Flanagan, R. (2011). How to listen so parents will talk and talk so parents will listen. John Wiley & Sons.
We put the following quote into our forthcoming book on Suicide Assessment and Treatment.
The quote is from 20th century Philosopher W. W. Bartley. Bartley took a break from writing about philosophical rationalism, to put the message of Neibuhr’s Serenity Prayer into a Mother Goose nursery rhyme format.
“For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.”
Good advice.
I wish everyone peace and serenity for the weekend and beyond.
Yesterday, for Halloween, I dressed up as agitation. I wasn’t alone. Everywhere I went, everyone I saw, and around every corner, I encountered agitation. Maybe it was herd mentality. But no one developed immunity.
This too shall pass, and it did. Last night I took a deep breath and exhaled, slowly. And then like all the best Yogis, I lingered on the outbreath. My costume, all the layers of agitation, melted away onto the floor, into the carpet, down through the flooring, seeping back to the earth where agitation can rest.
Today is my favorite day; a day to throw myself into the gift of an extra, socially constructed, sacred hour. In stark contrast to all my previous years on the planet, today I plan to stay here—in this sacred hour—all day.
Having fallen back, no matter how long in coming, this particular hour arrives with surprise. What shall I do in this dark hour before dawn? Shall I spend it now, or wait and spend it with Rita on a walk up the river. Which hour of this 24 will be my sacred, extravagant, unexpected hour?
Every year, I’ve rushed into this gift. Anticipating its disappearance even before it appears, I’ve tried squeezing enough productivity into one arbitrary hour to compensate for my perpetual time management problems. But this is a new year, a new day, and a new hour, and, after shedding my agitation costume, I now see peace. It’s a bumpy peace, much like the washboard road to East Rosebud Lake. We may get rattled, but we shall arrive.
What I’d never discerned before is that the sacred hour is an illusion. Like many things, the sacred hour was created out of nothing but time for someone’s convenience and instead of recognizing its nothingness, I’ve tried to grab it, wrestle it to the ground, and suck out its imaginary nutrients. Year after year, I’ve mulled its significance and then experienced angst over how to spend it. As I do with Mary Oliver’s query, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do. With your one wild and precious life?” I’ve demurred. The question is too big. Everything will eventually vanish, and if I choose one thing I’ll be left with only one companion: my own judgmental vengeance.
Peaceful, deep breathing is almost always about the outbreath. Fancy meditators and Yoga practitioners coach us to pace our breathing, and then to extend the outbreath into the place of no-breath. Oddly, the place of no-breath is the place of life and peace, if only for snippets at a time. While being still, without breathing, for a second or three or six before the in-breath comes again, the body’s physiology slows down, nearly halting in parasympathetic bliss. In the sacred space of the outbreath, peace happens in the body, and when peace happens in the body it can—with practice—transfer little seedlings of peace to the mind. The common admonishment, “Remember to breathe” is less profound than its uncommon sister: “Remember to not breathe.” Remember to let yourself extend your peace for a bit longer than usual today. Remember to be with peace tomorrow. Especially, remember to mingle with peace on Tuesday. You know why.
Today’s brief illumination is that there’s nothing special and nothing especially sacred about this extra hour. But also, like all hours, there’s everything special and sacred about this extra hour. It’s just another hour that, along with its pesky minutes and seconds, was simply created for the convenience of counting.
I’ll probably forget all this by Tuesday, but for today, I see every hour is a collaborative creation. Every hour we get to return to the beginning, resetting our intentions, and refocusing on the mystery of what is and what might be.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and beyond will bring as many sacred hours as we can count. How shall we spend those hours? For me, I hope we can collectively linger with our outbreaths on Tuesday as we begin, together and again, to build peace, reclaim justice, embrace empathy, and restore democracy . . . one bumpy and sacred hour at a time.
Let’s say you want to practice reality therapy. Maybe more than any other approach, you’ll need to use reality therapy on yourself to become a reality therapist. Here’s what I mean.
You could consider channeling a little William Glasser, because he’s the developer of reality therapy. Then again, you might not want to channel Glasser, because, as Robert Wubbolding has written, to become a reality therapist, “You need not imitate the style of anyone else.”
The point is that you get to do the choosing . . . and a great start is to choose to use Wubbolding’s summary of the delivery system of reality therapy. Wubbolding used the letters, WDEP to summarize reality therapy, and these letters also happen to appear on Wubbolding’s car license plate. If you’re getting the feeling that Wubbolding is committed to reality therapy principles, you would be absolutely right. WDEP stands for Wants, Doing, Evaluation, and Planning. The following four questions capture WDEP:
What do you want?
What are you doing?
Is what you’re doing working? [Evaluation]
Should you make a new plan?
Before enacting reality therapy, you’ll need to adopt a positive, engaged, courteous, enthusiastic, counselor demeanor. You also need to be ready to use your excellent active listening skills. Avoiding toxic relational strategies like arguing, blaming, and criticizing is crucial. Think of yourself as a mentor or coach, and then practice the following strategies to see if they fit for you.
Begin by helping your client (or role-play partner) identify what he/she/they want. You could use any of the following questions:
If we could work on something that feels important to you, what would that be?
What do you want from our meeting today?
This is a big question, but I’m going to ask it anyway: What do you want from life?
If we have a good session and accomplish something that feels good to you, what will we have accomplished?
After you’ve gotten a sense of what your client is wants, you can move onto an inquiry about how your client is currently trying to get those wants. Questions like the following might help:
How are you currently trying to get what you want?
What have you tried?
I imagine you’ve tried various strategies for getting what you want to happen in your life. Tell me about all those things you’ve tried and how they’ve worked.
You can see from this last question, that asking about what clients are doing naturally leads to what Wubbolding considers to be the most important step in reality therapy: Evaluation. Wubbolding hypothesizes that many clients don’t get taught how to self-evaluate and/or may not have much practice at self-evaluation. He uses questions like the following to prompt client self-evaluation.
Is what you’re doing helping or hurting?
Is want you want realistic and attainable?
Does your self-talk help or hinder you in your efforts to get what you want?
Wubbolding has many additional questions about how to help clients self-evaluate in his book, Reality Therapy for the 21st Century. Check it out.
This brings us to the final question: Should you make a new plan? I think one of the most important insights that reality therapy brings to the counseling table is its emphasis on active and smart planning. Although SMART plans originated in the business world, Wubbolding has an extensive guide for how to help clients make effective plans. In my experiences doing counseling and psychotherapy, I’ve been astonished at how often clients go off in search of goals with either no plans or bad plans. For Wubbolding, client plans should be: Simple, Attainable, Measurable, Immediate, Involved, Controlled, Committed, and Continuous (Wubbolding’s acronym for planning is SAMI2C3). For more information on how to create SAMI2C3 plans, see Wubbolding’s book or the chapter in our Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice textbook.
All planning that happens in counseling should be collaborative planning. Your job, as you engage in this important planning step, is to come alongside clients, brainstorm small tweaks or big changes in how clients might attain their goals, and to give them constructive feedback about whether their plan is a smart plan while providing encouragement and collaboratively evaluating the plan’s effectiveness. I have no doubt that reality therapy can be effective, partly because the first three reality therapy questions are so central to human functioning, but also because a good plan is a beautiful thing.
Note: the content of this blog is primarily adapted from the section that Robert Wubbolding wrote for our theories textbook.
Yesterday, in anticipation of my 63rd trip around the sun, I started feeling a slow creep of melancholia. At my age, because all movements are slower than frozen molasses, I now have the luxury of spotting doom early on, as its ambling my way. Last night’s gloominess was mostly about aging, but amplified by my nightly dose of watching the evening news. As usual, the news inevitably featured Donald J. Trump being Donald J. Trump, and saying things that can’t—without the aid of a delusional disorder—be framed as anything other than mean, nasty, and dangerous. After yet again witnessing Mr. Trump’s malevolence, I turned to Rita and murmured, “I think he might be evil.”
As soon as the word evil escaped my mouth, I immediately thought of Carl Rogers. Rogers was an amazing American psychologist who, from the 1930s to the 1960s, developed a profoundly empathic way of working with people. Rogers was raised in a rigid fundamental conservative Christian family. He wasn’t allowed to dance or play cards. During college, at age 20 (the year was 1922), Rogers took a sharp ideological left turn while on a slow boat to China. He stepped away from his fundamentalist roots, and began embracing a broad and encompassing belief in the goodness of all people. Rogers stepped so far away from judgmentalism, and believed so deeply and persistently in the innate goodness of all humans, that many philosophers and psychologists in the 1950s and 1960s (like Rollo May and Martin Buber), viewed Rogers as dangerously naïve.
After realizing back in the 20th century that I would never be “Like Mike” (Michael Jordan), I started fancying myself as being like Carl Rogers instead. The match seemed perfect. Just like Rogers, I believe in everyone’s positive potential. Also like Rogers, I don’t really believe in evil. However, after four years of listening to someone with immense power mock the disabled, disparage the military, demean women, remorselessly lock migrant children in cages, stoke hate, division, and conspiracies, and threaten to blow up our democratic process . . . I’ve begun reconsidering my naïve Rogerian perspective on evil. Last night’s news snippet included Mr. Trump’s continued attack on the Michigan governor. As far as I can tell, the only times Mr. Trump manages to use his words to show empathy is when he’s reading—rather haltingly—off of a teleprompter.
Rogers might blanch at my judgment of Trump, but I think not. He wrote a book “On Personal Power” and his bottom line was that you should give it away. And when I interviewed his daughter, Natalie Rogers, in 2006, she made it clear that her dad was in favor of accepting and prizing all human feelings, but that he could be quite firm when people (and his children) behaved in unacceptable ways. I’m pretty sure that Carl Rogers, one of the most profoundly influential psychologists of all time, would be horrified by Mr. Trump’s behavior, and he would use his power to bring back civility, decency, and empathy.
A couple years ago I had the honor of meeting Joe Biden, face-to-face. He greeted me with flourish and enthusiasm. He oozed empathy, compassion, kindness, and a commitment to service. He spoke and acted without a whiff of arrogance. I’m convinced that he’s the sort of person who will use his power for good.
Here’s my birthday wish (and request). Instead of sending me all the lavish gifts you had planned to send me, just go out and spread the word that decency, empathy, respect, kindness, and love are making a HUGE comeback. And if you know someone whom you think isn’t voting, consider this: reach out with respect and kindness and ask them to vote for Joe Biden. That would be amazing . . . a little frosting on my birthday wish.
Thanks for reading this and for helping make my birthday wish come true.
A good summary is a beautiful thing. But summaries are always unfair and limited representations of that which is bigger. Nevertheless, below, I’ve tried to summarize the primary listening focus and the primary change mechanisms for each of 13 theoretical orientations included in our textbook, Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice (John Wiley & Sons, 2018). In addition, yesterday I filmed myself using a memory-palace strategy while describing all 13 perspectives below. You can read the summary below and/or watch me try to pull off this 15 minute theories overview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VJFK6cCHCU8
Theory
What to Listen For. . .
Change Mechanisms
PsychoanalyticPsychodynamic
Old maladaptive intrapersonal conflicts and repetitive, unconscious, and dysfunctional interpersonal patterns.
Make unconscious conscious, catharsis, and working through new intra- and interpersonal dynamics.
Adlerian
Basic mistakes imbedded in the style of life, including excess self-interest and inferiority/superiority.
Awareness, insight, and encouragement (courage) to face the tasks of life.
Existential
Anxiety over and avoidance of core existential life dynamics like death, isolation, meaninglessness, and freedom.
Feedback and confrontation to help clients gain awareness and face life’s ultimate existential demands.
Person-Centered
Emotional distress, incongruence (discrepancies between real and ideal selves), and conditions of worth.
A relationship characterized by congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding.
Gestalt
Unfinished emotional and behavioral baggage from the past that blocks awareness or disturbs self-other boundaries.
Guidance on using here-and-now experiments to deal with unfinished emotional and behavioral experiences.
Behavioral
Disturbing emotions (e.g., anxiety), maladaptive behavior patterns, and environmental contingencies.
New learning or re-learning via operant, classical, and social processes.
In a surprising turn of events, this semester, I’ve decided to make a series of unprofessional theories videos to accompany my counseling and psychotherapy theories course (and text). When I say surprising, I mean surprising in that I’m surprised about feeling open to spontaneously video recording myself and making it available via YouTube. Could it be that as I grow older, I care less about how I look and sound, and care more about showing myself openly to others as an imperfect being who’s just trying to offer up something that might be educational? Alternatively, maybe I just caught the narcissistically-leaning, reality television, constantly-make-videos-of-myself, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, virus that’s infecting so many people. We may never know.
And I say unprofessional because I’m filming these all by myself, not using a script, and making side comments and using props that might involve embarrassing myself as I talk about counseling and psychotherapy theories. One form of these unprofessional videos includes me doing “dramatic readings” and commentary from the works of Freud, Adler, and other original theories thinkers and writers. Although I intended these readings to be dramatic, I can see how they also might just be dull.
With my explanations and caveats out of the way, here are the offerings, thus far, for this semester.
Week 1 – An Intro to Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories
Week 4 – Existential Theory and Therapy . . . coming soon!
Although this post focuses on my unprofessional videos, that doesn’t mean I’ve completely stopped behaving professionally. For example, recently, I was a guest on the podcast, “A New Angle” hosted by Justin Angle and Bryce Ward (both of the University of Montana College of Business). In this podcast, we talk about COVID, suicide in Montana, happiness, and why the College of Business supports the teaching “Essential” interpersonal and psychological skills. It’s a pretty cool (and professional) podcast, even if I do say so myself. You can find “A New Angle” on Apple Podcasts at:
The word suicide, all by itself and regardless of context, can elicit anxiety, grief, anger, and other raw emotions. One of my goals as a mental health professional, is to advocate for open discussions of suicide. Why? Because I want to actively role model how facing, embracing, and discussing suicide directly can shrink the threatening nature of the word—and also shrink the anxiety, grief, and anger that people feel when they hear the word.
Just yesterday, Paula Fontenelle, author of “Understanding Suicide” (see Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Suicide-Living-loss-prevention/dp/1691504831), posted a podcast and video of her and I discussing suicide. As always, when I look at and listen to myself, I feel a bit shy about sharing this. The mirror (or video recording) is never as flattering as I wish it to be. However, I love that Paula is so dedicated to this topic and that she was willing to have me as a guest on the 1st anniversary and 40th episode of her show.
On Monday, August 31, 2020, Paula Ann Sommers passed on to the place where only the kindest and most loving people on the planet go after death. We don’t know the exact location, but she’ll be there, sharing her angelic love and kindness. Paula was 91 years old, living in a small family group home in Woodinville, WA. She was suffering from dementia and had recently tested positive for COVID-19.
Paula was born to Angelo and Lucille Costanzo in Portland, Oregon. She had two older brothers, Robert (Bob) and Lawrence (Larry) Costanzo. Paula loved her parents and her older brothers, often telling stories of their years together growing up on the Oregon coast. Paula’s stories of Seaside and Arch Cape made these locations mystical and magical to the 13 cousins (children of Bob, Larry, and Paula).
After graduating from Seaside High School in 1948, Paula worked at Patty’s Fountain. In the summer of 1948, Max Sommers walked into the restaurant with a mutual friend. The friend, knowing Paula already had a boyfriend (or two), bet Max that Paula wouldn’t accept a ride home with him. Max took the bet. Not long after Paula saw Max—and his new yellow convertible—Max won the bet. In Max’s words, the bigger prize was to be with the love of his life. Last November, 2019, was Paula and Max’s 70th wedding anniversary.
In 1949, with the help of a VA loan, Paula and Max purchased City Shade Company in Vancouver, Washington. She worked at City Shade with Max for over 44 years. Paula regularly confessed to stealing cash from the company’s cash-box. Having absolutely no ability for stealth or deceit, she confessed to her so-called crimes, just as openly as she shared her heart and love with everyone who entered the doors at City Shade. Among her many remarkable gifts, Paula exuded warmth, genuine caring for others, and unmitigated kindness; she created moments in time and space that made people feel loved, accepted, and prized. In the days following her death, we (her children) have heard dozens of stories of how she unselfishly provided comfort to others. Around Christmas, virtually anyone who entered her home received a gift. For several years she gave out gym bags; other years there were shirts, sweaters, and blouses; still other years, games, toys, and fudge. Her kindness and generosity had no bounds.
As the daughter of an Italian American immigrant, Paula experienced discrimination. Then, as a Catholic, she met, fell in love with, and married a Jewish man. These experiences fueled her determination to reject all forms of prejudice and discrimination with an intensity that might have been labeled as hate (but Paula was philosophically opposed to using the word hate for anything). Instead of railing in negativity against racism, sexism, and homophobia, Paula simply lived her values, welcoming everyone into her bubble of love and kindness. The Christian family next door, the Jewish relatives, the Black family up the street, the lesbian daughter of friends, people on the street living in poverty, Muslims she had never met, children at restaurants . . . to be in proximity of Paula put everyone in danger of a hug, a gift, a smile, an empathic ear, and her unwavering love and acceptance.
Children from the neighborhood came to the Sommers home just as much to be with Paula as to see her children. There was only one Black family in the neighborhood. Paula loved that family with all her heart, soul, and spirit. When they were hungry, she fed them. If the boy who was struggling to understand his sexuality needed to talk, he wandered down the street and sought out Paula. Like moths to a flame, children were instantly attracted to “Mrs. Sommers,” because they saw her for what she was, an oasis of love and acceptance in a world of judgment. Despite this, Paula was nearly oblivious of her popularity. As is true with other Catholic saints, Saint Paula walked humbly in the world, never overestimating herself, while quietly living out her deep values of love, acceptance, kindness, and generosity.
Along with her talents for customer service, listening, and parenting, Paula was also an excellent cook. Every meal was an event that didn’t start until everyone was seated. Special guests got the coveted lace tablecloth, but everyone got food and comfort that would linger in their memories. Paula especially loved desserts. Everyone who knew anything knew that if fresh cookies weren’t on the counter, they could find a cache of snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, pumpkin bread, or lemon poppyseed bread in the third drawer on the south end of kitchen. If you came for dinner, it was advisable to “save room in your stomach” for Paula’s pies of the lemon meringue, pumpkin, pecan, apple, and other varieties. Her cheesecakes were to die for. Paula had a mathematical formula for calculating precisely how many pies (or cheesecakes or cakes) were required for a particular meal. She took the number of guests, and divided by two. If eight people were expected, she made four pies. Despite being teased by her children for constantly overestimating dessert needs, in the end, rarely did any of Paula’s desserts exist after noon the following day. Either Paula sent generous servings away with happy recipients, or her naysayers ate all the leftover desserts for breakfast.
In the Sommers family, there were very few rules, because when everyone feels loved and prized for their unique personalities, very few family rules are needed. She never yelled at her children. She never hit her children (although she did chase one child around with an eggbeater until they both dissolved in laughter). One of Paula’s most famous rules was, “We never use the word hate in our family.” She offered an alternative, “You can say you dislike something very intensely.” The word hate was simply the opposite of everything Paula believed in and stood for. In rare cases, when one sibling insulted another, Paula would counter, “If John’s dumb, you’re dumb too, because you’re both in the same family.” To this day, the Sommers children have no memory of sibling rivalry. The Sommers family was a team; Paula gently guided us away from conflict and toward love. When angry, she vacuumed and cleaned the house until everything was spotless and her anger had diminished. Freudian sublimation was never so complete. No one went to bed angry. Everyone was valued. No one doubted Paula’s love.
For many years, Paula mailed out so many greeting, sympathy, and birthday cards that we believe she single-handedly drove up the stock price of Hallmark Cards. Consistent with her character and values, she signed every card the same way: “Love always, Paula.”
For Valentine’s Day, 2010, Regence BlueShield of Oregon made a video recording of Paula and Max talking about their relationship and marriage. During the recording, Max said “Paula is the most unselfish person you ever saw, and you can’t help but take on some of those traits for fear of looking bad if you don’t.” This was the essence of Paula Ann (Costanzo) Sommers. Whenever she was, through kindness, love, and generosity, she inspired everyone to be better, lest they not keep up.
Paula is survived by her husband, Max (Vancouver, WA), her children Gayle (Vancouver, WA and Surprise, AZ), Peggy (Kirkland, WA), and John (Absarokee/Missoula, MT), and her grandchildren Chelsea Bodnar (Missoula, MT), Jason Lotz (Chino Hills, California), Patrick Klein (Vancouver, WA), Aaron Lotz (Seattle, WA), Rylee Sommers-Flanagan (Helena, MT), and Stephen Klein (Los Angeles, CA). Paula is also survived by eight great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and friends of the family, many of whom who refer to her as their “Favorite Aunt,” or “Quite possibly the kindest person I have ever met.”
Memorial plans for Paula are to be arranged. The family is considering online and face-to-face alternatives. Paula was a staunch supporter of people with limited incomes and resources. Memorial donations can be made in honor of Paula Sommers to whatever charity you believe would fulfill her desire to help those in need. More importantly, she would want all who read this to live in ways to spread happiness, unity, and love. In the spirit of Paula’s life and values, we hope—in her honor—you will take a day, a week, a month, a year, or the rest of your life to intentionally share kindness, acceptance, and generosity with others. And, as Paula would say, “Love always.”
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John Sommers-Flanagan 