Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Today I am sending you a hug. And it is not a quick, little reminder that I love you, like the cute little “o” attached to the “x”, in a fleeting text, unless that is really what you would prefer. This is the kind of hug that is full of acceptance. This hug is a careful recipe full of “I know”, “I understand”, “It’s okay”, “You are not bad”, “You are not lost”, “I can help hold you while you feel your feelings, and then I keep holding you, as you release your feelings and let them pass on by”, “You are stronger than you know”, “You will survive and you will even thrive,” “You are doing great”, “You are more loveable than you could ever fathom”, “I see you”, “We are in this together”, “This too shall pass”, “Just breathe,” and all of this is held together by an extremely strong substance called Love.
One of the great things about being a 50-year-old woman is that my hugs pack a lot of punch. My hugs have a lot of experience and lessons and perspective, and also a curious mix of powerful strength and yet also gentle humility, built right into them. The recipe for my hugs has been simple-d down to the mostly “tried and true.” Did you ever get hugged by an 80-year-old woman? Your grandmother, perhaps? Let me tell you, those hugs are the real magic elixir. Those hugs will heal what ails you, for weeks and weeks to come.
Hugs bring hearts into extremely close proximity. Hugs help to transfer some of the deepest love and wisdom planted in one heart, into the other heart, all of the while reminding the receiving heart that all that it needs to keep on steadily beating, is already readily available and ever-replenishing, from its deepest depths. Hugs are like gentle, natural defibrillators.
Please pass on my hug today. Someone in your life needs one, no doubt. Don’t be afraid to offer a hug to a loved one, a friend, your dog, yourself. Soak it in. It’s good medicine . . . . I know . . . . I understand . . . . It’s okay . . . . I love you.
So here’s your hug: o
Or if you need more, here’s your hug: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
(credit: Rex Masters, Twitter)
Good morning! Happy Monday! (Let’s try not to make that statement an oxymoron in real life.) I hope that you have a lot of good things on your experience menu, for this upcoming week. You are the chief chef. Make it delicious! If all else fails, just add garlic. It’s the cure-all for everything.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Our prayers are with you, Louisiana. You are strong survivors!! You will prevail⚜.
Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Poetry is the song of the heart. Poetry is the line of communication between your heart and your deepest intuition. Despite sometimes being puzzling and relying on your own personal interpretation, you can discover so much about yourself by reading and by writing poetry. Write a poem today. Write a love poem to yourself. I think that you will treasure it. Poetry really helps you to hone in on what truly and deeply resonates with you. And that truly matters. It does matter.
credit: Vicki
Yesterday, my dear friend painted the above lovely picture of the koi. Isn’t it a beautiful watercolor? Do something creative today, whether it be writing, or cooking, or painting, or drawing, or singing or dancing or doodling. Savor the experience. Be in the moment. It will be a wonderful way to end your week, and to start a new one, afresh. Here is my poem for today:
“Inbox”
She opened her inbox,
The emails were piled on top of each other,
Like a giant block of meaningless letters,
All vying for her attention.
Unsolicited, automated, unnecessary distractions.
She checked them all off, except for a precious few,
And she decidedly deleted them,
Out of sight, out of mind.
Plunged them into the file called:
Trash.
She recently read that every single day,
she thinks 50,000 random thoughts.
Perhaps she should remember to sort her thoughts,
like she does her email inbox.
So that her attention can remain on the thoughts that matter.
And that the trash thoughts can be easily deleted,
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Well, good morning. How did you find my fun little blog? IYKYK Do you know what “IYKYK” means? I just found out this morning. I was lying in bed, reading about this funky little swanky seaside town, and the writer of the article casually threw that acronym into the mix. I showed it to my husband and just like we always do, we stared at it, and started guessing at it, like we were competing with each other, trying to figure out the Wheel ofFortune saying, in order to win the prize. Neither of us could figure it out, so my husband looked it up for me. “If You Know, You Know” So now you know, you know? My understanding is that this is a younger, hipper way of saying that you are somehow “in the know.” Adulting – Second Half, IYKYK. I like it.
So friends, if you really want to trip up the younger people in your circle, casually throw that one out, real casually, into a text. That’ll throw ’em for a loop. “How did that party go last night? IYKYK” That could scare them. Just like when I was a little kid and I thought my mom seemed to have eyes in the back of her head, this text could really start some wheels whirling around in their young heads. They would be thinking, “What does she know? How does she know? Oh no!”
I like surprising my kids like this, every once in a while. It keeps them on their toes. Like the other day, I sent out a text to the family chat, reminding my children not to do stupid things like “the milk crate challenge.” This is another one of those dumb internet challenges where people get filmed doing crazy stunts. People are stacking up empty milk crates, like Jenga pieces, and then seeing if they can balance on top of them, at colossal heights. Sadly, it is not out of the realm of possibility, that my two middle sons might find such a challenge interesting to do, or intriguing to instigate one of their friends to do, while they have their phones going, camera ready. But now they know that their Mom has all of her many eyes wide, wide open (imagine Medusa’s head), and she knows all about the milk crate challenge, and therefore they have gotten her warning not to attempt such foolery, before they could even start collecting and piling up some milk crates. IYKYK
Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say. ~ Le Tse
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Welcome to Friday!!! Welcome to the best day of the week, in my opinion. My regular readers know that I try not to go too deep on Fridays. Facts are, we live in a material world. Our lives are all about experiences, and a lot of those experiences involve tactile things. So on Fridays, I typically list three favorite things or products or songs or books that have made my own life a little bit more intriguing and fun. Please check out previous Friday posts for more ideas about pleasurable things to try and to experience. Sometimes, I admittedly feel like I am being a little frivolous with my Friday posts. There’s a lot going on the world right now, and it gets a little overwhelming, doesn’t it?
I like this quote. Today, this is my favorite quote. The world was never hurt by positive people. Remember, you can be realistic and smart, and still be positive. Being positive doesn’t mean wearing blinders, or even wearing rose-colored glasses. Being positive means looking at the world, through your very own eyes, but just making sure that those lovely eyes of yours are connected to the deepest part of your harmonious heart, and to the immeasurable Mariana Trench of your own inner peaceful soul. Be positive. Be kind. It is the difference that you can make in the world, right where you are sitting.
Today, I only have one favorite. (I’ve been in a “less is more” mood lately. Don’t worry, this has happened to me before. It won’t last.) I was in an office this week, and my pretty little eyes spied this adorable koi fish (and koi fish have ALWAYS been a favorite of mine – It’s a good thing that I am not a thief, I was so tempted to snatch it):
This koi fish is an origami wonder, made with just one, one dollar bill. Now if you are crafty and ambitious, you can look up instructions on how to make one for yourself on the internet (supposedly it takes hours and hours), but if you are more of an “instant gratification” kind of a kid, you can buy ready-made dollar bill koi fish, on places like eBay and Etsy. They would make fun, “conversation piece” type gifts!
“Swim!” said the mama. “Swim if you can!” and they swam and they swam, all over the dam. – popular nursery rhyme
Swim, my loves! Your only other choice is to sink. Have a great weekend!! See you tomorrow!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I’m cranky this morning. To me, sleep is probably the most crucial tool in my self-care toolbox. When I have a terrible night’s sleep, I’m just the worst example of my most awful, terrible, dark-sided self. Last night I got creative with dinner and I mixed some ground turkey with tabouli, which I have to say was delicious (and my family agreed). I decided to be generous by sharing some of it with the dogs, by mixing it up in their food. Big mistake. Colossal error in judgment, on my part. Josie, our collie, has a sensitive stomach and my husband and I paid the heavy price for my short-sighted stupidity, last night. Josie woke us up about every two hours to go out. (at least she saved us a mess in the house. She’s tidy like that.) It was like having a newborn again. I read that earlier this year, a 57-year-old woman, in the United States, gave birth naturally to a baby boy. All I can say is, “God bless her.”
Before I started writing today, I decided to check out Holiday Mathis’ horoscope column to see if she thought that there was any hope of me, salvaging the rest of my day. Holiday Mathis often writes in wise riddles. This was my horoscope for today:
“The special fondness between you and your people gets the spotlight as you laugh and share stories, many retold for the 100th time. This is how a legacy gets cemented.” (I’m a Sag, by the way.)
Now, I am not sure how good I will be at telling any stories today, without a level of snark and irritability, stemming from my exhaustion, but we do have our weekly Family Facetime call tonight. And I have noticed that I repeat a lot of the same old stories that I have told at least 100 times, on these family calls, and also to hundreds of other different people. When I was a kid and my elders did that repeating of the same old stories, I always figured that it was a form of aging and memory loss, but now I am wise. As I am telling one of my fond stories, I am fully aware that I have told the same story 543 times previously. As I am telling the same old story, there’s a voice in my head saying, “Oh, come on! Lady! You’ve told this story again and again and again. Look at their eyes glazing over. Stop betraying your age, you old fool!” But I can’t help myself. As an elder who commands some respect, I have my captive audience.
I think that maybe I didn’t repeat my stories so much when I was younger because I didn’t have as many stories. Or I was taking it for granted that I still had a whole lifetime to make stories. Or maybe I didn’t have the wisdom to glean anything from my stories to make them worth sharing. Or perhaps when I was younger, I was more self-conscious, and thus more afraid of being called “boring.” I honestly don’t know. All that I do know, is that as I age, I repeat a lot of my same old stories and it’s not a memory thing. I am fully aware that I do it.
I do like Holiday’s positive spin on it, though. My husband and I have been watching the Vikings series on TV. The Vikings did not have a written language. Their history is all based on legend and lore. Many times during the show, we witness Viking mothers telling stories of their rich history and ancestors to their children before they fall asleep. In the words of Holiday, “This is how legacy gets cemented.”
Most of the stories that I tell again and again, have a degree of fondness and intimacy and hope and humor interlaced in them. Many times I am repeating these stories to the very people whom I made the stories with. Maybe this is a way to try to capture and to keep the wonderful feelings that the experience brought about for all of us. Maybe repeating stories is about holding on to the very essence of all of the players involved. So that when these loved ones are no longer physically with us, we have captured the very spirit that will make them more real to those people who will never meet them physically, but will learn about their heritage, through legacy and lore. People and experiences that are important to us, we want to keep. We want to cement these people and experiences into posterity. Our stories are our lives. Our stories are our way to remain alive forever. Our stories are just a way of transferring the energy of the love and the life that exists in our hearts, on to those who go after us for generations to come, in this adventure that we call Life.
I always say that the things that I worry about rarely happen. I tend to get blindsided by the things that I never even imagined could happen. I have to admit that I never saw a worldwide pandemic coming. I never did.
I also have to admit that I have never fully imagined all of the amazing things that have happened in my life either. True story: At age 40, I was at a time in my life that I assumed I would feel like my husband and I had “made it”, for all of the effort that we had put into our shared lives, by growing my husband’s career, and by focusing on raising our happy family. Instead, our lives got “blown up” by the Great Recession. We checked every box: lost job and income (banking industry), large, expensive home now worth half of what we owed on it (with no buyers in sight), quickly emptying savings and quickly rising debt, and four young children left to raise, and to educate. Instead of feeling like I was at my pinnacle, I felt like I had been thrown into a pit. I was shell-shocked. I was scared out of my mind and I was angry. I felt cheated and wronged. I had lived “the formula” that I had assumed would bring me “overall success” and it had tanked, miserably.
Thankfully, I have always been a faithful, spiritual person (not necessarily a religious person), but I am one who believes that there are much higher powers in play. I have always believed in the overall goodness of the Universe. And so I leaned heavily on my spiritual side, at that time. I also leaned heavily on my love for my husband, and for our children. I realized that we had lost a lot of material, physical things, but I was not going to let the horrible recession take what was most dear to me: my marriage, our loving family situation, and our physical and emotional health. So, during that time, I prayed a lot, I leaned a lot on our loving family and friends, and I lived every single day in faith. I just took my life ODAT (one day at a time). I am not going to go into “the ins and outs” of it all (nor into the ways that situations often seemed to almost miraculously turn out for the best), but let’s just say at age 50, I now have the life that I always dreamed of, and more. Everything that we lost, has been replaced with something “more and better.” And because I went through that experience, I appreciate everything more than I ever did. Life is deeper and clearer to me. Life resonates like it never did before. I am so much more attuned to what truly matters to me. It’s a cliché, but I can honestly say that I am grateful for the changes that the Great Recession brought around for me, and for my family. The Universe knows what it is doing.
Now this is not to say that my life is “perfect”. There have been a lot of heartaches, and losses, and growing pains, and grieving of many people and things, throughout this past decade, but I understand that this is just part of living and experiencing a worldly life. I do believe that the life that I am living is “perfect for me”, flaws and all. I just tell my Higher Power to take over the wheel every single day, and I live in faith that the journey that I am on is wonderful (even on the days that it doesn’t feel like it). In its own way, my own little path is a vital part of every other journey on Earth that has ever happened, or will ever be. When I look in the rear-view mirror of my life’s journey, it makes sense to me, for the most part, and I am grateful to be experiencing my journey. My journey is a gift. And I can’t wait to see what’s on the path ahead of me now.
Always, always believe that the best is yet to come, because it is. It might not arrive in the package that you expect it to arrive in, but that’s good. I have been blindsided by happy surprises in my life, far more often than by pains. And if I am honest with myself, the pains have very often turned out to be “blessings in disguise.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
This past weekend, my husband and I took a short flight (versus a 5.5 hour drive) to celebrate with our son as he got his “white jacket” from his medical school. In my experience, the airports are indeed crowded, the flights are full, and quite honestly, no one was being a jerk. Everyone wore their masks. Everyone was polite and patient and aware of keeping as much social distance as possible. Even when we were all boarded on to a plane headed home, and then after a stuffy, 45-minute wait on the airplane, when we were told that we would need to exit the plane because there were engine issues due to a bird strike from the previous flight, everyone, on this totally full flight, quietly took it on the chin. No one complained, not even the woman whom I overheard telling her children that their connecting flight got changed to the next day, and that they might have to spend the night in the airport. “It is what it is,” I heard her say to them.
Now luckily, they found us a new airplane almost immediately. My husband and I were just flying home, so instead of getting home mid-afternoon, we were going to arrive home in the late afternoon. No big deal. My husband and I weren’t too worked up, but there were plenty of people who were going to be missing events and connections, from conversations that I overheard. Yet, people seemed genuinely patient and understanding and “rolling with the punches.” This struck me as a new and unusual experience. When I have experienced these types of scenarios in the past, I can remember hot-headed, angry, red, vein-bursting faces screaming at the gate agents, impervious yelling, tears, and overall, just a much higher level of entitlement and “woe is me” from the crowds (maybe even sometimes from myself?!). It was noticeably different this time. Could this be a good thing that has come from this pandemic? I suppose that I could have just been flying with a particularly peaceful group of people, but part of me thinks that there is something more to my experience. Perhaps like many terrible events, this pandemic has brought to us much horror, but yet also, it has given to many of us, the gift of perspective and camaraderie. We are all in this together. We are doing our best. Despite all of the pain and hardship and negativity, we are making it through, and the things that we used to take for granted (such as flying), we are just so grateful to still be able to experience them again, even when there are blips involved. I felt quite hopeful about humanity after this experience.
And now this:
Moms, I also had a touching and heartwarming experience on this very same flight that will show you that perhaps what this child really means, in the above tweet, is that Mommy is her favorite “everything parent.” As my regular readers know, I am an ashamed, yet admitted eavesdropper. ( I think that most of us writers are – it’s part of observing life.) On the flight mentioned above, seated ahead of me, across the aisle from each other, were two attractive twenty-somethings, one male and one female, casually chatting with each other, for the first time, from what I could gather. They young man had a large scar on his arm and he told the story that he had been in a horrible car accident, that had put him into the ICU for eleven days. He had gotten the scar from the accident. People had told him to put a tattoo over it, but he said that he liked the scar. It reminded him about how fragile life really is, and how important it is to treasure life. The young woman had a similar story related to an inoperable problem with her foot that made it impossible for her to play the sport that she dearly loved. (I didn’t hear what the sport was, but it wasn’t volleyball, because he asked her if it was “volleyball” and she laughed and she said that people always ask her that because she is so tall. I was about to ask her, “Well, what sport was “taken” from you?” but then I bit my tongue, because of course, I couldn’t ask that, due to the fact that I was eavesdropping. That’s rude to interject like that, especially when you are eavesdropping.) Overall, these two young people had amazing attitudes and I was more than impressed with both of them and their lovely conversation. (and I was kind of hoping for a romantic charge between them, like in the movies, but that was not to be.) Instead, the young woman thanked the young man for a wonderful conversation and she told him how inspired she was by his story. He said, “Thank you. I really owe it all to my mom. She has given me so much encouragement and insight, all of my life.” The young woman decidedly replied, “Yes, my mom is the same way! I don’t know what I’d do without her.” And then she smiled at him, and then turned to her book, and their beautiful conversation ended.
And I sat there in my own seat, with a big smile on my face, and a glow in my heart (and a couple of tears in my eyes) because I thought to myself, there are two lovely, wise women out there who have raised two incredible, and kind, and positive people, and these moms are getting all of the credit and unabashed glory, and they don’t even know it. Sometimes, throughout the years, motherhood can feel like a “thankless job”. This I know. But moms, I heard your children’s genuine gratefulness for you, on just a random casual weekend. And I, a perfect stranger to you and to your children, felt genuinely grateful for the promising young people that you have raised to share a world with my own dear children. I deeply echo your wonderful children’s words. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” You are my favorite “everything” parent.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“Best first day of school photo ever!!” – Rex Masters (Twitter)
“So long, partner.” – Woody, saying farewell to Andy in Toy Story 3
Don’t you just love how little kids’ backpacks are almost as big as they are? And this sweet little boy has the matching Marvel lunchbox, to boot! He’s ready to go!
I’ll never forget the day that I saw Toy Story 3 in the movie theater with all of my children. Toy Story 3 is about when the main character, Andy, is now all grown up and leaving the nest for college. My eldest son was 14 at the time, and this was honestly the first time that it really, completely hit me, in an deeply emotional sense, that all of my four children were going to leave our house, for their own adult lives, someday, too. (It certainly didn’t help that on that very day, I had also found out that close friends of ours were moving several states away. Little did I know at that time, that our family also would be moving away to a different state, soon after. Isn’t it funny how life works?) Anyway, the loss and the melancholy that I was feeling while watching Andy say good-bye to his Mom and to his beloved toys, was a tad overwhelming. I remember burying my face in the popcorn bucket, praying that my kids wouldn’t notice my tears and choked sobs. That buttered movie theater popcorn, probably tasted extra wet and salty that day. And hopefully, extra delicious. (It was coated in love.)
I have sort of gotten used to the good-byes, and the new starts, these days. (as much as a mother can) Last week, I helped to move our youngest son, who is a college student, into his fraternity house (It was easily the cleanest that I’ll ever see that place.) He’ll live there all year. It was also my daughter’s first full week of her senior year in high school, and this past weekend, we celebrated the start of my middle son’s medical school experience with his “white coat ceremony”, where he got his “official” white coat with his name embroidered on it. My eldest son, who is a grown adult living on his own with his great job in the technology sector, graciously helped to cheer on his younger siblings, as he always has done. Our eldest son has always been an amazing “lead dog.” So this was my long winded way of saying that our family is finally settled into our fall routine. And that feels really good to me. As a woman who has been a mother for twenty-five years, I’ve learned to live by the school calendar. I like to feel settled into a routine. I feel like I can breathe more soundly now, knowing that each of my children has “a place, and a plan.” Fall always feels more secure and organized than summer. I welcome the change that fall brings to me and to our family, after experiencing hot, adventurous, lazy, and sometimes even erratic summers. Summer can be scattering. Fall is formulated. I welcome the sense of order and structure that Autumn brings back into our lives. I wonder when all of our children are completely on their own, if I will still experience the change of seasons, and how it affects my daily routine, as profoundly as I do now? It will be interesting to see.
“But the thing that makes Woody special, is he’ll never give up on you … ever. He’ll be there for you, no matter what.” – Andy, sharing with his mother about Woody’s importance in his life.
Hello, my loveys. Welcome to Sunday. Aren’t Sundays wonderful? They are such a reprieve from the craziness of the week. Even people who work on Sundays, don’t typically seem to have to work as hard as they normally do. The hours are lighter, as are the expectations set. (except if you are a church leader, I suppose, but I have to believe that religious leaders are living their passion and purpose, rendering the word “work” pointless, in a way). I think that Sundays are our weekly “reset button.”
My regular readers know that I devote Sundays to poetry here at the blog. I consider it a “poetry workshop” day, where I play around with writing a poem, or sometimes I share a poem, written by another poet, that has moved me or piqued my curiosity. Spend some time with poetry today. Read it. Write it. Or perhaps, just for this Sunday, make your own life to be a little bit of poetry in motion.
I recently found this poet, Rebecca Elson, and I think that her poetry is amazing. I particularly like this poem that I have shared below. I was recently reminded that we walk in the sky. We walk in the atmosphere. I remember when I was a little kid and I would draw the blue space of the sky way above my stick figure family’s head. My art teacher reminded me that the sky starts right on the ground which we walk on. So, I suppose, in a way, we walk among the stars of the sky, every day and night of our lives.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
