I, for one, am very happy to say goodbye to one of the worst months of my life. Hit the road, Jack and don’t you come back, no more, no more, no more, no more. Bye, bye, September 2021. Don’t let the door hitcha on the way out!!
Happy goodbyes are full of relief. Happy goodbyes feel resolute. Lessons learned. Resilience gained. Brighter days ahead . . . . .
See you next month! I can’t wait!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I’m excited for this afternoon because I get to meet with one of my long-time mentees “in person” for the first time in well over a year. Granted, we will be masked and there will be plexiglass between us, but it will be so good to share each other’s energy and expressions in physical form, versus Zoom. We are both pretty animated people. My mentee is a fifth grader, so this year, she is officially one of the “big dawgs” at her elementary school. She and her mom opted for us to meet in person this school year because my mentee decided that this was best. “No offense, but your dogs are kinda loud on Zoom,” she said. I am not offended. I can’t wait to see her. Isn’t it just so crazy about how much we once took for granted, before this pandemic came around and changed the world?
In other news, I downloaded a book recently which I have not yet read, but I think that the title is incredibly intriguing. (I always have several downloaded books on my Kindle, in queue. I like feeling excitement and anticipation for what to read next.) The book is called The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul. In reading a little blurb about the book by the author, Dr. Connie Zweig, she mentions that she thinks that people should stop counting age after 55. She suggests that around that age, you shift from all of your “roles” in life, into becoming a wise “Elder” which Zweig describes this way: “to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are.”
Reflecting on this thought, most of our adulthood is full of roles, isn’t it?
Wife/Husband/Mother/Father/Writer/Teacher/Doctor/PTA Parent/Committee Person/Banker/Executive/Supervisor/Entertainer/Mentor/Sister/Brother/Best Friend/Lover/Listener/Consumer etc. etc.
Dr. Zweig believes that “This identification with ego and self-image is a key obstacle to overcome in aging from the inside out. The ego’s goals are not the real tasks of late life. Our tasks now require us to move our attention from the exterior world to the interior one, from the ego’s role in society to the soul’s deeper purpose.”
I recently finished reading No Cure for Being Human, which is a heart-wrenching, brutally honest account of a young woman living with Stage 4 colon cancer. The author is Kate Bowler, a 40-year-old religion professor at Duke University, happily married to her high school sweetheart, and a mother of a young son. After her diagnosis, she decided to keep teaching and writing after conferring with one of her colleagues. Bowler was questioning whether continuing these activities, was “good” use of her quite possibly limited time left on Earth. Her colleague said, “I guess that depends if this is a career or a calling.”
That’s one of the blessings which we can find in aging. We can really start to hone in on our callings. We can start to shed everything that isn’t calling us, from our deepest, most intuitive self. We can stop identifying with our “doing selves” and our “roles”, and we can start to become lovingly intimate with our “being” selves. And we can choose to do this at any time in our lives. We don’t have to wait until we are 55. The older we get (not necessarily in age, but in wisdom), it becomes clearer that the only certainty in life is uncertainty. We can choose to stop fighting against that truth and just explore with profound curiosity, what it really is, that calls to each of us.
I once watched an interview with RuPaul, the famous American drag queen. RuPaul said this, “My therapist said to me once, ‘You know Ru, the power you have in drag is available to you out of drag.’ ”
Maybe wisdom is coming to the realization that our power does not come from “our drag” – our roles and our identifications and our achievements and our appearances. Perhaps our real power is the fathomless summons of our souls. And that enduring power, deep inside of us, is timeless and has been with us from the beginning of time. Today, let’s quiet down and take some time to remove all of the heaviness of “our drag” and just sit still and listen. What is calling to us from our hearts? What feels most authentic? How can we shed what no longer resonates? What is true? What is real? What is beautiful to us? What really matters?
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I’ve had a lot of fun with this Tweet this morning. I personally love Triscuits, but as my husband and eldest son commented almost simultaneously, this tweet is “oddly true.” My daughter said that eating Triscuits, are like eating a basket. My middle son texted, “Wheat Thins > Triscuits.” I don’t agree with that formula. Wheat Thins are razor sharp. If you don’t chew them up properly, Wheat Thins are hazardous. Wheat Thins will cut you. And they’re too sweet. I prefer salty crackers. Salty>Sweet, most of the time.
On a more serious note, I like this quote from Alan Cohen:
“When you do what you are here to do, you help others do what they are here to do.”
Sometimes we ignore our own purposes, when we get over-involved in other people’s lives. (a lot of us “mom-types” have a tendency to do this) We think that we are being “helpful”, but sometimes our “helpfulness” is just used as a distraction from dealing with what we, ourselves, are meant to do, with our own one precious life. Our own life is the only life in which we are truly and fully in charge of living. And when we live our own life’s purposes, and we are fulfilling what we are meant to do, we feel the most alive and connected to the Whole. This is the best thing that we can do for ourselves, and for everyone else.
The writer Anne Lamott posted this good reminder over the weekend on Twitter:
“If you [think] you can rescue [your nearest and dearest] with your good ideas and your checkbook, or get them to choose a healthy, realistic way of life, that mistake will make both of you much worse than you already are.”
Do what you are here to do. This will inspire others on their journeys. You are not here to control/live/experience other people’s lives. You are here to experience the totally unique and precious life that has been exquisitely and generously entrusted to you. Live your gift. Live your life. Trust the process.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
i i i i i i
i i i ii
i I i i i
ii i i
i i iii i i i
About a week ago, I was reading magazines by my pool. Ralphie, our swimming-obsessed yellow Labrador was thrilled to have me out there with him. He jumped out of the pool to greet me, and he shook all of the water off of his 100-pound self, which landed all over my magazines. This has happened before. I know the drill, but this time, I had barely even begun to read my magazines. I almost considered it a loss, and tossed them unread, into the recycling bin, but something made me hold on to my Spirituality and Health magazine. I let it dry off, and I am so glad that I did. This weekend, I got to read (albeit on extremely wavy, wrinkly pages) an article by Kevin Anderson, who is a regular contributor to the magazine. And it turns out that this particular article is just what I needed to read, right at this very time in my life. Isn’t that how the Universe works?
Kevin Anderson explains the visual, which I rudimentarily created above. When you are in the middle of a sh*tstorm in your life (for lack of a better term), and everything seems chaotic and overwhelming, it is best to stay in the “I” of the storm. If the above visual represents one of life’s hurricanes which we all go through from time to time, we must be like birds. We must learn to stop fighting against the storm and to stay in the “I” of it, in order to be safe and to be centered. Kevin describes each version of the letter I/i’s this way:
i/i = “The small-i version of us is quite expert at generating fearful, stressed-out, depressing thoughts. The small-i self becomes part of the swirling storm in which we are caught when life feels like too much.”
I = “The large-I version of us is the eye of the storm. That self is capable of observing the storm swirling all about us both in the outer events of life and in our small self’s stressed-out approach to them. The large Self is the only version of us that knows how to return over and over to “I accept that this is here now.” But the large-I does not stop with noticing our judgments that life should be other than it is. It has the wisdom to act on whatever needs to be acted on from a centered, non-reactive place.”
Kevin then goes on to talk about birds who are migrating in the winter and inadvertently get caught up in big storms. Birds are wise and intuitive enough to stay in the eye of a hurricane, versus trying to desperately fly against it, or out of it. Even if the hurricane takes the birds a little off track from where they were originally planning to go, the birds know that they will eventually, safely reach landfall. He suggests that when our fear thoughts are swirling like a storm, we need to think of these thoughts as “a bell calling us to a brief meditation practice. When we notice fearful thoughts, we can breathe as if we have a direct connection to the highest virtues available.”
Just the reminder that the “I” part of us is always with us, and always available to us, in the steady, deepest center of each and every one of us, is such a comfort. The “I” part is the only part of us which is eternal, peaceful, non-judgmental, wise, and clear. The small-i versions of us are ego-based, and they are constantly changing with the winds of our outside circumstances, and the different people and the unique situations in our lives. The small-i versions of us are not eternal. They change with the winds. The bottom line of the article is the reminder to always stay with the “I” when you are feeling off track. Notice your small-i “freak outs” and gently move back to the “I” as often as needed. “I” will never steer you wrong.
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.
A few years ago, I was vacationing in Yosemite National Park with my family. We were about to embark on a big, long, steep hiking trail to see one of the most incredible waterfalls which I have ever witnessed, Vernal Falls. (and I am fortunate enough to have visited a lot of beautiful waterfalls in my lifetime) Now, my four children at that time, were all teenagers and young adults, but there was a family slightly ahead of us on the trail whose children were a good bit younger than ours. Not far from the trailhead, basically just a little bit past the heavily trafficked paved part of the trail, one of the little boys from the family ahead of us, threw himself dramatically upon a boulder, totally exasperated, completely spent, and he started sobbing and wailing, “Is it over yet?!? Are we almost done?!” I never forgot that moment. It was cute and amusing, but I felt sorry for the parents. They were in for a long day, and I was thinking to myself that they probably wouldn’t get to the falls on that particular trip. I only bring this story up, because this is how I have been feeling about this particular September. “Is it over yet?!? Are we almost done?!?” And the funny thing is, at least it makes me giggle inside. I am wailing on my own proverbial boulder. As Sanhita Baruah says, “Every day is a gift, but some days are packaged better.”
I am little off-track today, with the telling of my Yosemite story. As my regular readers know, Sundays are not a day for prose on the blog. Sundays are devoted to the waterfall of words which we call poetry. I either write a poem, or a share a poem from another writer that has intrigued me. Today is a day when I share another’s poem. Please write a poem today (it’ll do you good) and if so inclined, please share your poem in my Comments section. Today’s poem was written by one of the “Astro Poets”, Alex Dimitrov:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
When we dropped off my middle son at medical school earlier this year, there was a beautiful fountain on the medical campus, with this inscription engraved around the circumference:
“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”
It felt so fitting to see that lovely quote, as we were watching our son embarking on his dream of going to medical school which he had worked so hard towards, for so many years. It turns out that the quote is by Christopher Reeve, the incredibly inspiring actor and activist, whose birthday would have been today. Christopher Reeve also said this:
“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” Always choose hope. When you look back at your life, you see so many things which have worked themselves out, in the most amazing, unexpected ways than you could have ever imagined, right? Hop on the hope train, and never get off. Always keep hope in your back pocket, as you journey through your life adventures. Hope’s compass always points north.
On a less serious note, I passed a store window the other day, and I saw this:
As my long time readers know, back in 2020, during quarantine, I temporarily lost my mind (didn’t we all?) and I decided that our family needed to get on the pandemic puppy bandwagon. My husband was not on board, mostly because we already have two other young, large, energy-filled dogs, Ralphie, the Labrador (the one who is currently on a diet, firmly against his will) and Josie, the elegant, yet noisy collie. Still, in the end, we “compromised” and we got Trip:
Now, honestly, I can’t pretend that having a three dog family is necessarily an ideal situation. I fully admit that there is often quite a bit of chaos, involved with living with three energetic, young dogs. That being said, all of us, in our family, have fallen quite hard for our crazy little Trippy. Interestingly, Trip has chosen my husband as “his person” and although he won’t ever admit it, I think that my husband is just a little bit smitten with our little brown dog.
“Dogs are like potato chips. You can’t have just one.”
“The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.”
“When an 85 pound mammal licks your tears away, and then tries to sit on your lap, it’s hard to feel sad.” — Kristan Higgins
“This home is filled with love and dog hair.”
Hi friends! Welcome to the best day of the week. Fridays are awesome!! Fridays are hopeful, full of anticipation and relaxation. On Fridays, I typically list three favorite things, or songs, or websites, or books that have captured my attention. This has been a rough week for me. My singular focus, all week, has been on my son’s health and well-being. (he has epilepsy) So, I’m just catching my breath on this lovely Friday. I don’t have my typical list of three favorite things. What I do have, is some incredible quotes from a recent article in Adweek, from an interview with Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer Lopez is almost other-worldly in her beauty, and in her abilities, and in her talents and ambitions, but her quotes, from this interview are such good reminders for all of us to remember that we are all “scarce assets“, which Jennifer describes this way:
“For me, what I realize is … no, there’s only one me. There’s only one that person. There’s only one that person. There’s only one that person. And what they each have to offer is uniquely different than everybody else.“
“I have a small circle and I like it that way. I’m not the person who gets a hundred texts a day or whose phone rings constantly. That’s not who I am. I have a very small group of very close people I trust and that I love who I know have my best interests at heart and who understand me as a public person but also as a private person.“
“I don’t think you start thinking about a personal brand. You become it because of what you create, what you do, how you live and who you are. Ultimately, I think it’s about what you reflect and what people see because in the end, you represent something. I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my life, and I live out loud through my artistry and my creativity and try to stay as authentic to myself as I can. I’m real. That was important to me—to stay connected to my roots and not ever change or make what people said or thought about me influence who I really was inside. It’s about being limitless and never allowing anybody to put me—and limit me—within a box.“
Remember that you are a precious, scarce asset in this world. Treat yourself as such. Have a great weekend.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Dear Beloved Readers,
I’m okay. My family is okay. We are just going through a particularly dark season with my son’s epilepsy. I never mean to scare you, nor to disappoint you.
The hardest thing about writing a daily blog is that it becomes an expected “everyday thing.” And honestly, writing this blog is one of my most favorite parts, of every single one of my days. I usually can’t wait to write one of my blog posts. I write on my vacations. I write on days filled with appointments and responsibilities. I don’t write lies. I don’t tell you every single detail of my life, but I don’t lie to you about the details that I do tell you. What you see, is what you get. I have a hard time doing this blog any other way. It’s just not in my nature to not be “authentic”. Ask anyone who knows me in real life. Sometimes I know that my loved ones wish that I wouldn’t be so honest/candid/blunt/outpouring. I have been told more times than I care to admit, that I live my life to “the beat of my own drummer”. So it is. So I am.
I am in awe of people who write daily columns in which “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” (U.S. Postal Service) But honestly, these columns are typically distanced from the writers’ individual lives. These columns are usually cultural interest stories, or political rants, or horoscopes, or weather predictions. I write about my life. I write about my experience. And you guys are actually interested. I appreciate this so much. My beloved readers, you will never know what you mean to me. I can’t write this feeling into words, as hard as I try.
I am, quite honestly, going through a really, really tough time, trying to keep it together for my family, and for myself. Lately, I have felt really angry with God/Universe/Spirit. But I have not lost my faith. It is always in my toughest hours that I am completely in awe about how kind other people are, to those of us who are hurting. It’s always in my hardest moments, that I deeply understand just how much strength has been imbedded into each and everyone of us. It’s always in my most difficult challenges, that I understand and I appreciate all of my abundant blessings. I have come to realize that a big part of openly and fully loving just about everyone, and everything in this world, and being willing to be completely awestruck by this incredible experience, which we call Life, also includes feeling and experiencing pain more deeply than anyone would ever wish to experience pain. It’s a package deal. But I am carried by Bigger Hands through it all. We all are . . . .
I’m okay. The people whom I love are okay. I’m not going anywhere.
Thank you for being my friends. See you tomorrow.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
My youngest son has been home from college for a little while, in order for us to be with him, while he lets his new adjunct epilepsy medicine start settling into his system. (Thank you for your continued prayers.) While the circumstances that brought him home have not been ideal, having our youngest son/big brother back home for a little while, has been a joy for all of us. My husband has his ” armchair quarterback/football buddy” back, I’ve had great company at home during the day (my son is a wonderful conversationalist), and my daughter has had her adoring big brother back home to pal around with. All three of my daughter’s big brothers have always been amazingly loving and supportive and protective of their little sister, but my daughter has always been particularly close with my youngest son because they are the closest in age to each other. When they were little, they would often casually hold hands as we were walking along anywhere, and they went through a period of being avid WWE wrestling devotees, being sure to watch the events together, every single Friday night. Never having a brother myself, I have always delighted in watching my sons with their sister. It makes me insanely happy, and yet also, insanely jealous for at least one brother, all at the same time.
I have always told my husband and my sons, that my daughter will choose the men in her life, and accept their behaviors, based on how they treat her. They have always being kind, and loving, and respectful to her. Thankfully, so far, my daughter has always dated nice, respectful young men, and has a lot of healthy guy friends in her life. She’s one of those girls who manages to have a lot of friends of both sexes. I think girls with brothers are the best at that, but that’s just my opinion.
I would love to give my guys all of the credit for my daughter’s choices in friends and boyfriends, but truthfully, she goes into her relationships with a “good offense.” My daughter likes herself. She is proud of her achievements. She is not afraid to say “no” to someone or something that doesn’t feel right for her. She doesn’t look for her self esteem to be fulfilled by people outside of herself. I pray that this never changes. Part of this has always just seemed to be her own common-sense filled, “innate way”, but another big part of this, I think, is the fact that she has always been well-treated by those who love her. (especially by the men who have influenced her life the most – her father and her brothers)
In engrossing myself in the Gabby Petito story, I’ve been thinking about how important it is for my daughter to have this good “offense” in her life (and for that matter, for my sons, too. Toxic, unhealthy, disordered individuals aren’t just from one gender.) I think that it is extremely important to work on creating a healthy relationship with oneself, in order to ward off being attractive to the controlling, manipulative, treacherous types. As we see in the Gabby Petito tragedy, and in so many other cases, it is extraordinarily difficult and dangerous to try to defensively pry oneself away from a damaged individual, all the while trying to keep one’s own self esteem and healthy perspectives intact. It’s vitally important for us to trust ourselves, and our deepest instincts, and yet we all know how hard that can be sometimes. When teaching our children to be “nice and polite” we must remember to teach them to be the nicest and the most polite to their very own selves. And most importantly, we must all model that self-assured behavior, in order for the world to become the safer, better place that we want it to be, for our children and for our grandchildren going forward.
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.
Good morning. This weekend, while also watching a lot of football, I was a tad obsessive, following the Gabby Petito, case. Sadly, the authorities have found her body. As a mother of a young woman, my heart aches for her parents. Her boyfriend, the man whom she was traveling with, has disappeared, and neither he nor his family, did anything to help law enforcement, in their search for Gabby. By all indications, including bodycam footage from a police stop, Gabby and her boyfriend had an unhealthy, abusive relationship. I think that one of the reasons why this case has gotten the amount of attention that it has, is that almost all of us women, know or have known women, who have experienced relationships with toxic, abusive men. When I was younger, I used to “joke” that the more together a woman was in her job, in her appearance, and in her life, was likely a total inverse to the quality of boyfriend that she had in her life. Now that I am older, I realize that this is no joking matter. We must bring attention to the dangers of domestic violence. We must help our young people grow up healthfully, so that they are comfortable in their own skin, and grow to see all relationships, as “a plus, but not a must” in leading healthy, fulfilling lives. We best do this by modeling healthy relationships and behaviors, in the relationships that we have with our own selves, and in the relationships that we have with others.
“Never let someone who contributes so little to a relationship control so much of it.” ― Unknown
“Each time a woman stands up for herself without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” — Maya Angelou
“Overcoming abuse doesn’t just happen, It takes positive steps everyday. Let today be the day you start to move forward.” ― Assunta Harris
