Citizens of Paradise

The March issue of Vanity Fair Magazine (with President Obama on the cover) is on newsstands as of last week. I love Vanity Fair. The well-written articles are balanced between our latest politics and the glamour of Hollywood. This has to be my most favorite edition so far! It pairs our President, whose recent victory represents a yearning we all have for goodness and a new beginning, with an unfortunate kiss goodbye to the glamour that was old Hollywood.

I am excited and ready for a wiser America, but as in my personal life, I am sad to kiss the innocence and magic away. Or do I have to? When I discovered that my stepfather had sexually abused my daughter, I was gutted and my dreams seeped out. Then that experience triggered the reality of my own abuse by the same man. As a country we too have been gutted, and now we are feeling an opportunity to dream again.

We have to accept some of the blame. It is not all this President or that one. President Obama just might fail if all this responsibility is placed on him and not on us individually.

Here we stand as a country, children with the wreckage of past abuse to clean up. It isn’t pretty, but now we have a handsome, charming, eloquent president at our helm. Is it enough? I hope so.

I want to believe in him and his administration in the way the images, stories, and films from old Hollywood allowed me to dream at night. In this March issue of Vanity Fair, in the article entitled “Children of Paradise”, Todd S. Purdum writes, “Hollywood kids could grow up in golden normalcy, combining the perks of movie royalty with small town protections……Daddy’s Oscar mattered, but not as much as being cool in school.”

I have a sense that that very energy resides in the White House today. I also have a sense that this new Presidency is giving off the essence of magic and of dreams, much the way old Hollywood seeped out to us all.

In his article, Mr. Purdum interviews many children of glamorous old Hollywood, including my husband Stephen Simon. Stephen was raised in the safe, fun, exciting, glamour of old Hollywood. He worked for years in the movie business and now has branched out of Los Angeles and continues to work in the film business near Portland Oregon.

In the article, Mr. Purdum quotes Stephen, “When you grow up in that kind of ridiculous atmosphere, where you are pampered and have maids and butlers and cooks and drivers, you grow up expecting that. Unless you are a huge-trust fund baby, at some point you become aware that this is your parents’ life, and not yours.”

I think we, as baby boomers, have too just left tinsel town, with a glamorous life in our rear view mirror. Unless we wake up and “snap out of it!”, it will be our children who will say,” this may have been my parents’ life, but not mine, I have much work to do now….” Time will reverse itself. We will burden our children instead of lifting them.

We have much work to do to return to Paradise. But we can dream with our eyes open. That energy moves mountains.

Lauren Simon is a therapist, certified hypnotist, Reiki Master, and the author of the forthcoming book, “Cracked Wide Open, Letting the Light Pour In!” Lauren counsels people internationally. For more information:www.spiritoflivingwell.com. Lauren lives with her husband , Film Producer/Director Stephen Simon, near Portland Oregon with two of their six children, and three beloved pets.