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Are French Movies More Gutsy in Tackling Sensitive Issues?

December 11, 2012 by Sonia Marsh 8 Comments

Passengers are sleeping, coughing and sneezing around me. I’m hoping the plane’s ventilation system isn’t spreading the germs to my area. This is not a time to get sick, not when I’m doing my first book signing in Paris.

I’m writing this blog post at 35,000 feet over Kansas City, traveling at a speed of 699 miles per hour. We have 7:52 hours left until we reach Charles de Gaulle airport and most of the passengers are asleep, after a choice of Moroccan chicken or Boeuf Bourguinon for lunch. The flight takes 11 hours from Los Angles to Paris, and I enjoy flying on Air Tahiti Nui, where the flight attendants wear Tahitian dresses with a flower in their hair.

Sonia on Air Tahiti Nui from LAX to CDG (Paris)

I’m comfortable in my aisle seat watching a French movie, Mince Alors!, with its double entendre title: Becoming Thin, and What a bummer! The theme is about the stigma attached to being overweight in France, (a big no-no) and is tackled in typical, outspoken French style.

I’ve always been fascinated by the cultural differences between the French and the British, and enjoy the posts written by my French blogger friend, Muriel Demarcus, who is so adept at pointing these out with humor. I take it one step further and compare the French way of addressing certain issues with the American way. Even if you don’t understand French, I’m sure you’ll get the gist of the movie trailer below.

Nina, a 30-year-old wife, accepts to enroll in a one-month weight loss program in the French Alps, a gift offered by her French husband. Nina works in a modeling agency alongside her husband and is by French standards overweight. Her suave husband, with an eye for other women, hands her a gift certificate to attend a weight loss farm, while he takes off to Munich with his skinny assistant.

“You’ll have time since we’re not busy at work right now,” he says, handing her the certificate.

When Nina has her first appointment with the doctor at the health clinic, she says, “My husband likes skinny women, make me skinny doctor.”

“I want you to be healthy, and to loose weight for yourself, not for someone else,” the doctor replies.

“I don’t have time; I’m here to get results. I don’t care what you do, but I want results.”

I watched the movie in French to brush up on my conversational skills, and to immerse myself in the French way of life. There were certain scenes that made me squirm, such as when Nina says she has about five kilos to loose, and her mother-in-law says, “more like 20 kilos.”

I’m not a psychologist, just a curious woman who happens to have lived half her life in Europe, and the other half in the U.S. Although France and the U.S. are both multi-cultural, I do believe it’s possible to identify specific traits relevant to each country.

Take for example young children. I noticed immediately how the French tend to dress their young children as mini-adults, with stylish coats, belts and hats, whereas Americans dress their toddlers as toddlers. Who knows, that might be because I live in southern California, which is more casual than perhaps New York.

In her book, Why French Parents Are Superior, author Pamela Druckerman wrote:

“French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There was no shrieking or whining. And there was no debris around their tables.”

Druckerman’s statement hit home when a few weeks ago I was standing in line at Peet’s coffee where I noticed a mom and her twin toddlers sitting at a table sharing a muffin. Chunks of muffin went flying, as the twins practiced tossing them, and when she left, the tile resembled a muffin war zone. Did the mother pick up the mess? No.

Druckerman writes,

“Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I’d clocked at French playgrounds, I’d never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn’t my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn’t their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?”

Yes, I do like comparisons, purely from an interest point of view. Debra Ollivier, another author who spends her time in the U.S and France wrote, What French Women Know. I had an opportunity to meet her and read her book.

So, yes, I do believe that French movies are more gutsy in tackling sensitive issues than American movies, and I think it’s different and refreshing.

DECEMBER IS DIFFERENT.

I shall be posting from Paris this week. I plan to share stories and photos, from Paris and London, where I am doing an event on December 13th.

I am collecting new “My Gutsy Story” submissions for 2013. NOW is the time to submit your own “My Gutsy Story” and get published in our Anthology. Please contact sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

Thanks and don’t forget to VOTE for your favorite November “My Gutsy Story” on the sidebar. The WINNER will be announced on December 13th.

“My Gutsy Story” by Kimberly Brower

October 15, 2012 by Sonia Marsh

The Chicken and Beer Dance

We get to the dance hall at seven o’clock sharp, and already it seems as if half the town is there. The total population of St. Jacob is barely in the hundreds, but some folks have come from as far away as Alhambra, and there’s barely room to stand let alone sit.

In farm country, I have found that each season has its own type of celebration. In summer, it’s homecoming with games and rides and barbequed brats. In autumn, it’s bonfires and hayrides and hot apple cider. In winter, people go into hibernation with the occasional fried fish dinner at the VFW on Friday nights. And in the spring, it’s the chicken and beer dances, where, for a nominal price, you can eat all the chicken and drink all the beer you can hold and then dance the night away.

This particular chicken and beer dance is a fundraiser for Jason, one of my students at the local elementary. He’s a small boy with a hole in his heart, and I can relate with him more than most because I feel like I have a hole in my own heart half the time, though no one could see it. I find myself breathless and dizzy from the thought of living life without my husband, who is still back in Los Angeles where I left him. Though we have not filed for divorce, our union seems as tenuous as a fluttering heart, and sometimes I feel myself turning blue.

I left the rush and pulse of the city in part to escape from a painful marriage and in part to find the hometown I never had growing up. I went to six different elementary schools while my father climbed the corporate ladder. Now, I’ve dragged my three sons away from their own father with vague explanations of how great this is all going to be. The youngest two still trust me enough to give it a chance. My teenager thinks I’m a heartless witch.

My “date” for tonight is my good neighbor, Cindy, whose own husband is working a double shift at the Granite City Steel Mill. We are an unlikely pair. She is country through and through, and I am not. She knows exactly where she is because she’s been here all her life, and I am lost.

From where I sit with Cindy, I can see one of the local boys named Steve standing off by himself, looking dapper and forlorn. Folks say poor Ol’ Steve is suffering from a broken heart ever since his wife rolled his arm up in the car window and “drug” him down the road.

The wife is not present tonight. Divorce in this part of the country is a horrible thing; you are not only separated from your spouse but also from the community that they inhabit. In most divorces, one or the other spouse usually ends up having to move out of town. In Steve’s case, since he’s got the farm, his wife has had to move in with her sister down in Belleville.

I have noticed that these people are not shy about discussing their most intimate lives. In Los Angeles, no matter what, you put on a good front in the never-ending battle to keep up with the Joneses. You might be living in an empty shell of a home, but from the outside everything looks fine. It’s different out here, where everybody knows everybody’s business and there’s no point in trying to “put on airs.”

I wonder, for a moment, what people are saying about me, then decide that it doesn’t really matter. They’re farmers. They understand that sometimes, no matter how well you prepare the soil, no matter how diligently you watch the weather, no matter when you plant, your crops just don’t yield. There’s no shame in failure as long as you’ve given the effort all your heart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jason’s mom drink straight from a bottle of green apple schnapps. It’s her boy going to the hospital tomorrow for open-heart surgery. She catches my glance and blushes, then offers me the bottle. It’s a sin to drink alone in these parts. You can be fall down drunk every Friday night of the year and not be deemed an alcoholic, but drink alone and tongues will wag. It’s equally sinful to allow someone to drink alone, so I take a swig and am immediately warmed by the tangy, sweet liqueur.

Now the music starts up and everyone who can gets out to cut a rug. The wooden floors of the community center are worn from use from where generations of St. Jakies have danced their worries and their fears away. The band plays Bob Seiger and The Boss, and we all stagger out together to twist and shout. My neighbor and I do a mean jitterbug to the earsplitting sounds of “That Old Time Rock and Roll”; and, for a giddy, swirling moment, time stands still.

Crops may fail, dreams may be lost, lives may take a sudden turn for better or for worse, but the heart of this community is strong and good. This half-cocked, hair-brained idea of mine to pull up stakes and move my family away from the only home they’ve ever known has landed us all in a place where everyone belongs. And, whatever else happens, that is enough.

Kimberly Brower Bio:

Kim Brower (K.B. Keilbach) is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Master of Professional Writing Program and author of the award-winning book Global Warming is Good for Business: How Savvy Entrepreneurs, Large Corporations and Others are Making Money While Saving the Planet. Her work has been featured in WomenEntrepreneur.com, FoxBusiness.com and CNN’s AC360. Kim also won Honorable Mention in the 75^th Annual Writer’s Digest Genre Competition for her fiction short story, “Clueless.” In addition to writing, Kim works as an educational program designer with USC’s Marshall School of Business. She lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles with her family, a Jack Russell Terrier and a potbelly pig named Hamlet.

Sonia Marsh Says: In sharing a typical spring-time farm dance, you brought us into the heart of farm culture; a place that is good and strong, something you needed while questioning the city life you left behind. You had me questioning whether life is better in a rural community where everyone knows everyone’s business, or in a city community, where you can remain anonymous.

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Do you have a “My Gutsy Story” you’d like to share?

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

Two October stories are up, both men for a change. So far we have Duke Marsh “My Gutsy Story” and Don Darkes “My Gutsy Story.”

I hope you enjoy the “My Gutsy Story” series and share with others through the links below. Perhaps you’d like to submit your own. Thanks.

“My Gutsy Story” by Kathleen Pooler

May 14, 2012 by Sonia Marsh

Choices and Chances

Sitting by the bay window on that sunny September day in 1989 soon after we moved from Missouri to Cobleskill, New York, I stared out into the afternoon. I was suspended in a state of pain and worry as I dutifully watched and waited for my fourteen-year old son, Brian, hoping that my anxiety was unjustified. Being a single parent of two teenagers heightened my sense of loneliness and helplessness. I recalled the times I spent waiting for Jim at the dining room window when I was pregnant with Brian. The painful memory repeated itself in brazen detail. I wanted to turn the channel and make it go away. The flashback held me hostage as I sat motionless and scared waiting for the movie I didn’t want to watch.

Jolted from my trance by the rattling at the back door, I walked into the kitchen to find Brian opening the door with more caution than seemed necessary.

“Hey, Mom, what’s up?” he said, staring at me through glassy eyes as he swayed on unsteady feet. It was painfully reminiscent of his father’s look thirteen years before which had precipitated my flight from the marriage. Brian was eighteen months old and his older sister, Leigh Ann, was three when I began my life as a single parent.

He stumbled, reeled and fell on the floor at my feet as I looked on in horror and disbelief. His dark eyes, flashing and blazing from some unknown odorless substance, were fixed somewhere beyond me while I was locked in the reality of the moment. A searing pain in its rawest form pierced me, sending my heavy heart crashing down onto my churning stomach. The panic tried to escape as I struggled to find my next breath.

“No, Brian, please no, not this,” I cried, deep, wracking sobs that left me weak and shattered.

My handsome and sensitive young son, developing and growing into manhood, was slipping away.

Those eyes. That moment. Those eyes that drew me in and captured my heart all those years ago.

I flashed back to a happier day when he was four years old. Intense and thoughtful, he was always concerned about the little things in his world, like his little neighborhood playmates. One summer day after giving him a Popsicle, I snapped a picture of him at the end of the driveway sharing it with his three year old playmate, Becky. Two tykes taking turns licking the dripping orange frozen treat became a precious moment in time etched in my mind and heart.

But the scene before me in 1989 would signal the beginning of many episodic nights of terror as I waited and wondered where Brian was; wondered if he was dead or alive for nearly twenty years to come. I hung tightly to the reins of that young stallion on the first ride of spring. I was spiraling out of control as well, hanging on in nerve-wracking, futile attempts to maintain my own control. The lessons came slowly as I opened up in Alanon meetings. Loving veterans of alcohol battles listened and consoled as I spewed out floods of tears and pleas of desperation. They helped me to learn to navigate the mine fields of an alcoholic loved one’s life.

One snowy March night in 2002 at 2:00 AM a loud tapping at our front door awakened my new husband, Wayne and me from our sleep. We knew from recent phone calls that Brian had relapsed. Looking at each other through foggy eyes, we tried to focus while slowly arising to answer the door as a sense of dread hung over us. Through the glass panel at the side of the door, I saw Brian’s tall, dark outline against the soft, fluffy flakes of snow that were coating the trees behind him.

Slowly opening the door, I looked into his dark eyes. They always told me the story. I watched him trying to act normal, shifting his position in awkward attempts to act sober. His breath was stale, but he was neatly groomed in jeans, a sweater and a navy pea coat. He smelled of Aramis cologne.

“Hey, Mom.” He said, greeting me casually as if he had just run into me in the grocery store. I hadn’t seen him since Christmas.

“Brian,” I asked, shaking my head and closing the door as he stepped inside, “what are you doing here?”

“I just drive to Cobleskill. I stopped to see Coach Collins earlier at the school then just hung out with Justin.” He paused briefly,

“ Mom, I need a place to stay tonight.”

“You drove three hours from Connecticut to Cobleskill at this hour?”

“What’s wrong with that?” he answered with an escalating edgy tone.

“You’re not staying, Brian,” Wayne said, as he stood behind me in the hallway.

Brian bristled in response, looking down at the floor with his hands in his jean pockets. Then he fixed his angry glare on me.

Sitting on the couch, I wrapped my arms together and leaned forward on my lap. I knew Wayne was right but how could I turn my only son back out into that snowy night without a place to stay?

Rocking back and forth in silence, I watched Brian stalling for time in the doorway.

After a few moments that felt endless, I walked over to him. Taking a deep breath, I put my arms around his waist and out came the words I knew I had to say:

“If anyone knows how to get help, B, you do. I love you very much. Now go do what you know you need to do.”

As I watched him walk out into that snowy night to his car, I wondered if I would ever see him alive again.

It was my darkest moment; my only choice and his only chance.

It got worse before it got better but I often think of that night as the time I truly let go. Ten years later, Brian is sober. I believe with all my heart that this decision saved his life.

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Kathleen Pooler’s Bio:

Kathleen Pooler is a writer and a recently retired Family Nurse Practitioner who is working on a memoir about how the power of hope through her faith in God has helped her to transform, heal and transcend life’s obstacles and disappointments: divorce, single parenting, loving and letting go of an alcoholic son, cancer and heart failure to live a life of joy and contentment. She believes that hope matters and that we are all strengthened and enlightened when we share our stories. She lives with her husband, Wayne on the 130-acre farm at the foothills of the Adirondacks in Eastern New York State where his grandfather used to have a dairy farm. Wayne grows organic vegetables on four of those acres and sells them at the local farmer’s market. Their seven grandsons (3-9) are a constant source of joy to them.

She blogs weekly at her Memoir Writer’s Journey blog: http://krpooler.com and can be found on Twitter @kathypooler and on LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ at Kathleen Pooler.

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Sonia Says: Kathleen, what an emotional story of the love a mother has for her son, no matter what. There are many parents who can relate to problem teenagers, even though the severity of the situation varies considerably. You made us realize that “tough love” is often the only approach, and how difficult it is for parents to carry through with this process. Your story reminded me of A Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. I’m sure you read his memoir. I cannot wait to read your memoir when it is published.

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Please Vote for your favorite April “My Gutsy Story” HERE

April’s winner will be announced on May 17th, from Paris, where I shall be landing on May 16th. The winner gets to pick his/her prize from our 14 sponsors.

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To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

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Are French Parents More Gutsy?

February 23, 2012 by Sonia Marsh

After reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about “Why French Parents are Superior” by Pamela Druckerman, it finally hit me that some of my child-rearing methods are actually more French than I care to admit. I’m not French, but I spent a good chunk of my youth growing up in the suburbs of Paris.

My three sons are adults now, and grew up in the U.S., however, Druckerman brought up one main difference between French parenting and American parenting that struck a chord. She said, “Who’s the boss?” She then gave the French answer:

French parents say, “It’s me who decides.”

Who’s the boss, you or your kids?

Right after my husband, Duke and I, made the decision to uproot our family from Orange County, California, to Belize, Central America, I remember being asked the following question, almost daily: “So what do your kids think about your decision to move to Belize?”

At the time, I thought this was a stupid question. Now I realize why.

BEACH VIEW BELIZE — Belize, Ambergris Caye, near our house.

Below is an excerpt from a chapter in my book: Freeways to Flip-Flops: Our Year of Living Like the Swiss family Robinson.

I’d become obsessed with Belize.

I’d tell anyone who cared to listen–including complete strangers in supermarket lines or at the gym—about how we were uprooting our family to live in Belize. Sometimes I imagined a glimpse of envy on a stranger’s face. That’s when I shifted into salesperson mode, trying to push them into doing the same. Duke warned me, “Don’t tell everyone about Belize; we don’t want people flocking there.”

Some people thought we were crazy. Others were skeptical. “Yeah, sure,” they said. “Let’s see if you really go ahead with it.” The second group always asked, “So what do your kids think?” to which I snapped back, “Who makes the decisions in your family, you or your kids?” Many looked shocked, but my European accent helped. It allowed people to classify me as an alien, despite my U.S. citizenship.

There are many times in life when you are faced with tough choices, and you need to make a decision. As parents, we cannot always cave in to what are kids want; we have to decide what’s best for the entire family. We need to guide and lead, and my experience with French parents, is that they are more strict, and perhaps more “old-fashioned” when it comes to child-rearing.

I could go on about so many aspects that Druckerman covers in her article: “Why French Parents Are Superior.” For example: teaching your kids polite manners, family eating habits, and disciplining your children, because I’ve seen it done the French way and the American way.

Since I’ve lived in both France and the U.S., as well as the U.K., Denmark and Belize, I can pick and choose what’s right for my family. That’s what I love about travel, and the expat life, you get exposed to different ways of looking at the decisions you make in your life.

What about you? Who’s the boss, you or your kids?

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“My Gutsy Story” by Jill Fales

November 21, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Remember the feeling of a field trip day at school? A diversion from the routine in the classroom. A palpable excitement exuding from the students wiggling in line to board the broad steps of the school bus.

The permission slip was the linchpin to any field trip. I remember carefully placing the detached bottom portion with my mom’s signature in my backpack. I did not want to be one of the poor misfortunates that the teachers warned us about – kids who did not have permission would be left behind to do school work in a class the grade below us.

In a sense, the adventure I am on right now – The Great American Field Trip began with the same first step.

Permission.

This year, the time had come. The kids were old enough. I signed on the proverbial dotted line and gave myself permission to toss aside the map society provides and instead follow my heart.

I began planning our departure for what I named The Great American Field Trip. Driving across America roadschooling our four kids.

This semester, I am the principal, the teacher, the librarian, the learner, the travel agent, the parent and the bus, err…minivan driver.

Think one room school house meets Around the World in 80 Days. OK, not literally the world, but 26 states. We have an eighth grader, fifth grader, fourth grader and first grader. Two girls, two boys. The Class Clown, the Organized Germaphobe, the Smashed Penny Collector, and the Teenager.

School on the Road is a bit different. There is no front office. No school cafeteria, desks, textbooks, P.E. uniforms, tardy slips, grades, or bells. Also absent – a safety net of predetermined standards and curriculum.

Every day is field trip day.

We left on August 26, 2011. As we pulled out of our driveway, in Costa Mesa, CA, and joined the drivers on the road I could not help think that many no doubt were headed to do some back to school shopping.

I felt like I was beginning a back to life spree.

More than halfway through our trip now, our GPA’s are soaring. But just like many things on the road we have created our own definition of the now obsolete Grade Point Average. In its stead, a Growth Perspective Achievement.

Growth happens when we expand our horizons, are forced to think in new ways. Growing also includes increased patience and empathy.

Perspective is tied to the realization that how we view our world is shaped by our experiences and environment. Attempting to see the world through other’s lenses has been a corner stone of this trip. As we seek to answer the question, “What is an American?” We realize there are many correct answers.

Achievement encompasses setting goals and achieving them. Taking risks, both small and big.

Unlike the conventional system of grading, there is no quantitative way to measure our GPA. There is no ceiling. At the end of the semester, I will not be able to reduce what we have learned to an average of numbers or scores.

We are learning what learning really is.

One cannot learn alone just as one cannot teach alone. I am a student just as much as my kids are. We have learned so much from the voices of the past. Those, who despite massive challenges, pursued the promise of a better life, a better country. Their innovation, creativity and perseverance have inspired us. We stand on their shoulders. We are visiting the places where they lived, stood, worked or bled. We are reading the words they wrote or spoke.

Some are famous like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Marin Luther King. But most are ordinary people. A soldier on a battlefield who cannot be identified before he is buried. A Lakota woman, who in the face of losing her family, land, and way of life, continues to teach her daughters how to weave baskets.

We have many living teachers who have enriched our GPAs. Wayd, our river rafting guide in Oregon. Matt, the Park Ranger who brought Gettysburg to life. Dwight, the farmer in Iowa who taught us about corn and took us fishing. The herd of bison in Yellowstone National Park, the majestic old growth redwood trees on the Northernmost tip of California. The World War II Veterans we met at the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. Susan, who led us on a bike tour through the Tidewater lands in Maryland where Harriet Tubman was a Slave before escaping.

Books have been as important as fuel on this trip. Hannibal, Missouri was a highlight, boyhood home of Samuel Clemens. My kids’ memories of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will not be of cramming for a test. Instead, I hope they will remember listening to the audio book while driving through beautiful scenery of the Great Plains and Midwest. They will remember pretending to paint Tom Sawyer’s fence in Hannibal and licking an ice cream on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Like the river, Twain runs deep within them now.

Mark Twain once said:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”

He also said:

“Don’t let school interfere with your education”

I think these quotations speak directly to the heart of our adventure. I hope long after The Great American Field Trip is over, my kids have learned among many lessons, one of the most important: have the guts to give yourself permission to throw out conventional maps and trust your inner compass.

*****

The Fales Children on

The Great American Field Trip

Payton Fales

Janey Fales

Sally Fales

Wyatt Fales

Jill Fales may be recognized from one of her two weekly columns Mom’s Voice or as the under cover book reviewer, Paige Turner, in the Newport Beach Independent. Her writing has also appeared in Coast Kids Magazine, The Coastal Real Estate Guide, and The Newport Mesa Daily Voice. Jill is the mother of 4 children (ages 6-14). She earned B.S. degree in Human Development, a Masters degree in Special Education. After leaving formal classroom teaching to stay home with her kids, Jill began writing. She has hosted children’s book clubs for the last 6 years, and teaches Mommy and Me Sign Language classes. She enjoys traveling. Prior trips have included Europe, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Honduras, and Belize. Now she is combining her passions: motherhood, writing, travel, reading, and teaching, as she criss-crosses the country with her four kids on “The Great American Field Trip”. Jill lives with her husband and their children in Costa Mesa, CA.

You can read about her Gutsy adventure on her blog: The Great American Field Trip.

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Thanks Jill for this great adventure which will inspire so many of us to take the plunge. Your children are adorable and I truly believe you are giving a huge “gift” to your children: something they will treasure for life.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page.

Our first poll starts December 1st-December 14th to vote for your favorite “My Gutsy Story” of the month.

Thank you to those who have already submitted your “My Gutsy Story” to Gutsy Living. We are saving them for future posts and have five sponsors for November. We shall be getting more exciting sponsors in the future.

Please leave your comments and questions for Jill Fales below and please share her inspiring story.