Shine (18 page)

Question yourself and answer the questions. Of course, you can make up your own questions that best reveal your evidence, but here were mine:

• Where have I been this week?
  Write down every single place. Are you happy with where you have gone? Could you have gone to more productive, interesting places? Like what? Be specific!
  
• With whom have I hung out?
  Name every single person. Are they a jury of your peers?
  
• What were my impressions of those people, those places?
  Did they change you for the better? For the worse? How? Be specific!
  
• What restaurants have I visited?
  Have you eaten with respect for your body—or scarfed down just anything?
  
• What movies or shows have I seen?
  How have they informed your thinking?
  
• What books or magazines have I read?
  How have they informed your thinking?
  
• What activities or sports have I played?
  Have they made you feel physically fit?
  
• With what man (men) have I been even a little intimate?
  Happy with yourself?
  
• With whom have I argued?
  Was it worth it?
  
• To whom did I lie?
  Are you glad or sorry you lied?
  
• With whom have I felt safe and inspired?
  Is he or she a regular in your life? Why not?
  
• Has there been a single person or act during this week that made me change my life for the better?
  How does that make you feel?
  
• What has made me frustrated—or ashamed of myself?
  (Name as many things as are true.)
  
• What has made me proud or satisfied with myself?
  (Name as many things as are true.)
  
• What did I thank God for, and what did I pray for?
  Be specific.
  
• Finally, taking your journal beyond seven days,
  how many relationship failures in the last year or so have I noticed?
  Why have they failed—his fault or partly yours?
  

When the seven days are over, check out your diary. Do you see places where you have to make changes? Are you happy and proud with how your case in chief, the case for yourself, is shaping up?

I recently looked back in my Palm Pilot to remember what I did the week I met Al, and I was proud. I traveled to South Carolina for
The View,
attended two charity events, played poker with Whoopi, and exercised four times that week. I met Al on a night when I was happy, healthy, and apparently ready for love. Looking back now, two years later, the week still looks good on paper.

If your case in chief doesn’t look good on paper, Kendra, it’s probably worse in reality.

D. The Rebuttal Case: Where Are the Weaknesses of
Your Case? How Can You Overcome Those Weaknesses?

If you’re really thinking like a lawyer, you’ll put on a rebuttal case. That’s the time to cross-examine and make objections to your case in chief. That’s the
time to see how many red flags in your life have been raised—flags that have been shouting,
Caution! Not Good! Don’t Go There! Oh God, I Went There and It’s Such a Drag!
And that’s the time to make objections and corrections to your actions, if necessary. Were those red flags there because of something you yourself did or didn’t do—or were they truly someone else’s fault? Now ask yourself the toughest question:

How many of my relationship failures are not really because he did me wrong, but because I shouldn’t have chosen that person in the first place?

If your answer is that he really did you wrong, and you made no false judgments in choosing him, and your life is praiseworthy and happy, you have no rebuttal case. But if you cross-examine yourself and see that it was you who was mostly responsible for the failures, you are doing yourself some real good by this candid self-assessment, this personal rebuttal.

Let me be honest. Every time I was in a relationship before I met my husband, a shrill bell went off pretty early—and I ignored it. I should have listened to the bell and walked away.

That bell ringing should have led me to a powerful rebuttal case. For example, one relationship failed because of my overwhelming desire to be nurturing—even though I was getting no nurturing back: this man had a mother, so I didn’t need to nurture him. Another poor relationship failed because I thought I could fix what was wrong about him—and you all know that can never happen: grown people are what they are, they’re not ever changing, you take ’em as you get ’em.

Another happened because I didn’t want to be alone and I settled for less than what I deserved. I didn’t realize that being alone should not be the same as
being lonely. I had to find other activities that made me happy. A friend of mine had low self-esteem, so she committed to the first wrong guy she met. She didn’t think she was worthy of anyone better than the guy in her life. Another friend found herself in an abusive relationship and didn’t know how to get out, so she stayed. What rebuttal cases they made.

Do you see yourself in one of those situations? Be discerning, be truthful, so the next time they occur, you’ll hear that shrill bell. We tell our kids that when a strange man or woman comes up to them and gives them that uh-oh feeling, they should turn on their heels and run. If you see your boyfriend’s (or even your own) behavior in a relationship that’s giving you an uh-oh feeling,
run.
That’s the best rebuttal.

E. The Witnesses: Who’s Testifying for You, Child?

Your case is really only as good as your witnesses. Your witnesses are the people who know the facts about you—they are your intimates, your friends, acquaintances, and associates—and they will testify to what they have seen or heard about you. They’re different from a jury, which, only after having seen and heard the witnesses (your evidence), decides where the truth lies. When you’re preparing your rebuttal case, know that the other side will look at your witnesses: your girlfriends and male friends tell an awful lot of truth about you. Whom have you chosen to spend time with, and why? Believe me, you will be judged by your witnesses.

But, remember, we’re still dealing with a rebuttal case here. When you meet someone, you must also think, Who are
his
witnesses? That was a big, big deal for me. Thinking like a lawyer, I knew I would be able to tell so much about a guy by the people in his life.

So, when I met Al, I knew I should look at his witnesses. His friends and family, I soon found out, were the salt of the earth. I would be with a jury of my peers in his group, because like me, he came from a small Southern town. His family had been public and social servants of their communities—his mom was an ed
ucator, his father had been in the military, and all five siblings were college graduates. Sounded good. He also told me he’d been looking for someone he’d be proud to bring to his witnesses, his own family.

But thinking like a lawyer and looking closely, I also saw what could be problems for me in this relationship. I saw how funny he was with his mom and aunts: how they idolized him and interacted with him as their center could make them a hard act to follow. I also noticed that he was spoiled and babied beyond belief by these women. His witnesses were telling me he’d require major babying and spoiling. Hmmm. Could I do it? I saw all that in a month, and he saw me clearly too in that month through my own family. Saw my ultra strength and my ultra bossiness. Hmmm. Could he deal with it?

I met his best buddies, his work colleagues; I went to his business Christmas party. I watched him help one friend move out of his apartment, and I thought, “Good—a giving person.” I went to his church, and he came to mine because we were both interested in meeting each other’s spiritual leaders. I watched him interact with his brothers and sisters. I saw who he was and who he always would be (guys don’t change, Vanda). Then, second in significance only to my meeting his parents, I wanted to meet some of his female friends—not girls he dated, his girl
friends.
These witnesses, unconsciously, would tell me a lot about the man. They’d be very telling witnesses.

All his girls, Tamara, Lauren, Tamika, and Karen, were smart, capable, and gorgeous; they cared about him and wanted to make sure I wasn’t a flake. They were, thank goodness, not hostile witnesses, but they would have turned hostile (baby, I felt it) if I was not worthy of their friend. I heard them say to him variations of “You better not hurt her.” I also heard said to me, “You better not hurt him.” It was important to hear all of it.

If the person you’re interested in doesn’t have a good relationship with his family and with friends who vouch for him and his character, then his witnesses just don’t add up. The evidence, the exhibits are all there.

I was a tiny bit concerned about one thing, something basic in our characters—the different way we approached people. I approach life presuming people are good and honest and trustworthy. Maybe it’s my legal training—the presumption of innocence stuff—but I do give everyone the benefit of the
doubt. Instead of walling off or closing down, as many people in the public eye do, I am very welcoming.

This means what? It means I often end up disappointed.

Al, on the other hand, lives his life presuming you’re going to screw him. He’s sure that people aren’t always on the up and up, and he deals with them accordingly.

This means what? It means he often ends up being pleasantly surprised. At the end of the day, I’m disappointed and he’s pleasantly surprised. It’s a big difference in outlook. Could we live with it—or would we drive each other nuts?

When I spoke to my pastor, he helped. He suggested that even when I was disappointed in the way people treated me, “the Bible says no weapon formed against you shall prosper. That doesn’t mean, Star,” he said, “that no weapon will be formed against you. There always will be people who hurt and disappoint you. It only means that, in the end, no weapon held against you will
prosper.
In the long run, the weapons of mean-spirited people will not work.”

I could live with that, just as any Buddhist who is a good person with excellent karma mustn’t believe that no one will ever hurt him again. He will be hurt again, but his enemies’ weapons would not
prosper.

And I could learn a little caution from my new husband-to-be. And maybe, he could learn to give
some
people the benefit of the doubt.

Al was a keeper.

F. The Summation: Assess Your Case and Sell It to the Jury

The lawyer’s final job in presenting a case is the summation.

When you sum up, you must do a real assessment. Summation is the time when a person, thinking like a lawyer, does an evaluation of her case and blends it all together for the jury. You tie up your evidence, the other side’s evidence, the witnesses’ statements, you apply the law—and then you use your skill and talent to convince the jury that your side is the better side.

My pastor recently said something that truly touched my spirit.

It’s very difficult for people in summarizing their lives, he said, not to be concerned with how people perceive them. And if you’re in the public eye, as I am, it’s even more difficult: we sit there every weekday, millions of people watch us on television, and our livelihoods and reputations all do rest on how others perceive us. But they don’t really see our character. Our character doesn’t depend on others’ peripheral perceptions. On this day, my pastor gave a sermon in which he told us that it’s far more important to be concerned with your character than with your reputation—far more important because we truly live in our characters, not in our reputations.

I believe that with all my heart.

Back to summing up: only you can sum up, only you can assess your case—I can’t do it for you. I don’t know you. Only you really know you. And only you know the state of your character.

Look—when I did a summation on myself, I clearly saw some of my flaws. I’m
bossy. I’m extremely controlling. I find it easier to do things myself rather than share in the doing. I’ve been working by myself for so long as an independent person, being part of a marital team would be difficult for me. That’s who I am. I either had to do an honest evaluation of myself and have a desire to soften the elements that might rub a husband the wrong way—or recognize that whomever I was with had to be able to deal with those elements.

Al also had to do his own summing up. He was not a guy who was going to play second fiddle to me. If I wanted someone who would carry my bags through life, it wasn’t going to be Al. About that bossiness part:

Today, quite often, Al says to me when I apologize for my overkill, “You’re never
not
going to be controlling, Star, and I knew that when we were dating. I figured that I couldn’t get freaked out every time you pulled that because that’s who you are and I couldn’t change you.”

He was right. You can never change another person, but if you’re convinced that something in your character is not good, you
can
change yourself. You can either recognize that the not-good stuff will be a grave impediment in your relationship, or at least try to soften the effect of the bad junk—even if you can’t erase it completely.

So, here’s the deal. When you meet a man who looks very wonderful and promising, you both need to think like lawyers. Sum up. Each of you make lists—what’s the good stuff about yourself, what’s the bad? Deal with your own bad junk before the other side deals with it—that’s what lawyers do. Deal with the stuff that doesn’t make your case look good. And deal with it actively. When you see the weakness in your case, try to minimize it. If you’re in bad shape physically, make every effort to get healthy. If you’re the kind of person who’s nasty to others, try to soften it or fix it. Highlight the good stuff, and try to diminish the bad stuff by explaining to the other what it all means—that’s where communication comes in.