My post “Helping Families Have the Most Difficult Conversation” (December 31, 2013) touched a sensitive chord with many people. In that blog I encourageed adult children and their parents to talk openly about the most difficult and challenging of life’s transitions at the end of life. See http://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/helping-families-have-the-most-difficult-conversation/
After reading the first blog, a good friend suggested that I address other difficult conversations as well. I thought he had a good idea, and so in the coming weeks I will address each of these themes below, and where possible, to cite Jewish text and values.
A disclaimer – I am not a psychologist, though working in synagogues over the past 40 years as a student rabbi and then an ordained rabbi I have addressed these issues in one way or another many times.
Here are the issues (to be addressed in no particular order) that I will discuss going forward:
• How to best discuss death, divorce and sex with children
• How to talk about God with children whether we are believers or not
• How to share bad news
• How to tell those who behave unethically and mean-spiritedly the truth about what they do and the impact they have on others
• What to say to those with addiction problems
• How to deal with the person who is always right, never wrong, and resistant to apologizing when wrong
• How to be a friend to those with serious illness
• What to do and say to those who self-reference in every conversation
• What to say when others make racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic comments in a business or social setting, or to you personally
I hope these blogs will stimulate us to address those difficult interpersonal issues and issues that come up among friends and in the workplace that we have avoided or done badly.
