November 2021 - Page 2 of 3 - Adulting: Second- Half

Rest Your Wings

Today my eldest son is flying in, to be with us for the week. I’m so excited. He is a successful 25 year-old, living in a big city, doing work that he loves. (I have to stop right here, to state that I accidently typed “doing love that he works”. Freudian slip, perhaps? It got me to thinking that when you are living your passions, that is what you are doing. You are doing love. You are working love.)

Anyway, I have this giddy excitement about seeing my son and I thought about how funny it is, that roles often reverse, in our lives. When our children are little, they are so excited about Mommy and Daddy coming home. Whether coming home from work, or an evening out, or to pick them up at preschool, they are so excited to have Mommy and Daddy home with them. And now, that’s how I now feel about my grown kids. I am so excited to have everyone home for this holiday.

I don’t have too much in common with the real housewife, Kathy Hilton (mother of Paris Hilton and three other adult children), but what we do have in common is that we are both mothers of four children, and we both love the amazing, comforting feeling when all of our children are sleeping under one roof with us. I recently read an interview with Kathy Hilton, and she stated this shared experience, that most of us mothers feel. No matter what our circumstances, living styles, home sizes, etc., we mothers feel our calmest and best when all of our babies are in our nest. Simple nests, gilded nests, every kind of nest feels best when it is filled and feathered with all of our babies.

Inspiration CAN be found EVERYWHERE! | Empty nest quotes, College quotes, Empty nest syndrome

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Subtle Art of Friday

Happy Friday, readers! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! What a great Friday we have here, with anticipating Thanksgiving right around the corner. Fortunately, our two older sons will be coming home, so all six of us will be enjoying our holiday together. This makes me feel extremely grateful. In other good news, Ralphie, our Labrador-who-is-quite-unhappily-and-totally-against-his-will-on-a-diet lost 11 pounds in two months. (much better than I did) His diet is clearly working! Ralphie still has about 10 pounds to go, and he still tries sneaking the other fur babies’ food every chance that he gets, but he is looking healthier and trimmer every single day. We are so proud of our Ralphie! While not trimming much off of any of my own body fat, I did trim 17,000 emails out of my inbox yesterday (and that is honestly, an understatement). I never bothered to delete emails for quite some time and then I started getting warnings from Google that I was running out of storage. I hemmed and I hawed but I finally just hit the delete button and I trashed 17,000 emails. Honestly, once I got past my nervousness, it felt incredible liberating and freeing. If only cleaning out my closets and drawers could be this easy!

Yes, I notice that I am quite chatty today. What can I say? It’s my favorite day of the week. Here is what you really came for, my three favorites for this Friday. Please check out more favorites in my previous Friday posts and please share some of your own favorites in my Comments section:

LitezAll COB LED magnifier – I’ve reached the age where magnifiers are easily in my top ten favorite things category, all of the time, and this is the best magnifying glass which I have ever owned. Why is this one so great, you ask? Because it is huge, lightweight, and because it has three bright LED lights that shine on whatever you are trying to see. And what’s even better, it’s cheap. I got mine at Ace Hardware but you can order one from Walmart or Amazon, as well.

n:p beautiful volumizing dry shampoo – Even when my hair is perfectly clean, I use this stuff. I love how full it makes my (honestly, kind of thin and fine) hair seem to be. In the words of my mentee (5th grader), “I want fluffy hair, like yours.” (What can I say? I grew up in the eighties.) Seriously, when you apply this dry shampoo, it sounds like you are taking a blow torch to your head, but the results are terrific (if you like fluffy hair, like mine). And even better, it doesn’t flake, like a lot of dry shampoos have the tendency to do.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson – This book is really good, but it is not for the person who blanches at the f-word. The f-bomb is used in this book, as often as the word “the” is used in my blog. It’s a fun, light read with the key message “to lighten the F%ck up!”. The book was honestly recommended to me by my 17-year-old daughter, who had the book recommended to her, by one of her best friends, who was given the book to read, from her own father. (We love this friend and her family. I think that my daughter’s friend’s father knows that our girls are a tad high-strung and a little over-achieving at times, to the point that it crosses over to slightly unhealthy. At first when my daughter told me about this, I was like, WTF?!?, but after starting to read the book, I was like, “F@ck yeah!”) Here is an excerpt:

“Then, as we grow older and enter middle age, something else begins to change. Our energy level drops. Our identity solidifies. We know who we are and we accept ourselves, including some of the parts we aren’t thrilled about. And in a strange way this is liberating. We no longer need to give a f@ck about everything.”

Happy Friday Friends!! Only give a f@ck about the stuff that matters! Thanksgiving is great time to ponder what really matters to you. See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Walking the Line

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” – Anne Lamott

“The pen is mightier than the sword.“ – Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839

Last night we had an interesting, lively dinner conversation. My son and my daughter were talking about the latest music video/film recently released by Taylor Swift. The video is mostly based on Taylor Swift’s song (with a little bit of acting), “All Too Well”, long believed to be about Taylor Swift’s brief romantic relationship with the movie star, Jake Gyllenhaal. The video/song doesn’t paint “Jake” in the best light (if it is truly about him), yet at the same time, from my mature woman’s eyes, it shows some naivety and immaturity on the girl’s (in the video) part, as well. My daughter is a Taylor Swift fan, and my son often proclaims Jake Gyllenhaal to be possibly the best actor of all time, so it made for fun dinner banter. I honestly admire both Swift and Gyllenhaal. I think that they are both incredibly talented, passionate people, and I can see why they may have fallen for each other, even for a few short months. For his part, Gyllenhaal has remained completely “mum” as far as a response to the recently released short film/video.

After going back and forth as to who is “right” in this situation, I brought up a story I read yesterday, about two writers who were in a Facebook writers’ group together. One of the writers gave her kidney to a stranger, just for the altruistic experience, and she brought this fact up, frequently to her writing group. One of the other writers in this same group, never acknowledged the fact that the other writer had given up one of her kidneys. She never said anything about it at all. Later, it turns out that the silent writer had written a “fictional” short story (that won an award) about a narcissistic woman who had given her kidney to a stranger, purely for “the glory of it all.” She wrote lines in the story, which were almost verbatim to lines that were shared in the writers’ Facebook chat, in which they both belonged. There have since been lawsuits and stalking and all sorts of brouhaha with these writers, and their friends, stemming from this unfortunate situation.

Which brings me to this thought: This is the hard line that we walk as writers and creators, correct? Our stories are our own. Our experiences are our own. We own our perspectives on what has happened in our lives. No one can tell us that our perspectives are wrong or false, because what happens in our own lives, and how we perceive these experiences and relationships, is entirely unique to each of us. Jake Gyllenhaal could produce a video and a song about his relationship with Taylor Swift, and it might look entirely different than what Taylor portrayed, and neither one of them is wrong.

As a writer, I understand the power that I wield with my pen. It’s a responsibility that I don’t take lightly. I’m good with words. I can communicate my perspectives in a way that often resonates with people. I constantly weigh how much I share about my life, in written form, on this blog and in other pieces that I write. My relationships with my loved ones are of utmost importance to me. I want to honor my loved ones’ privacy and feelings, as well as I can, while still honoring myself authentically, and honing my craft. It isn’t easy. I have erred in being an over-sharer, and I have erred in keeping too silent. I constantly worry that people whom I am most intimate with, will become too guarded with me, for fears of becoming my next blog post. And yet, writing is an outpouring of one’s creative soul. As a writer, your readers can feel when you are hiding and holding back, especially when they have read enough of “your stuff” to know your essence and your writing style. Honestly, in weighing in on all of this, I have even considered when and if I should destroy all of my private journals. If I am gone, all that is left, is what the people who are reading my journals, perceive of what I wrote. The people who would be reading my journals, would be the people whom I am closest to in my life. When I am gone, all that I want left from any of my important relationships, is the deep knowing that I love “my people” beyond measure, and I always will. That is all that matters to me. My greatest joy in writing, is the creative act of writing itself. Everything that I write, I want whittled down to the only end result that matters. Love. I love to write. I love “my people.” I love trying to find meaning in my life through creating written words that are interesting to read and mostly, for me to write. That is it. That is all she meant. That’s all she wrote.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

All Good

credit: Think Smarter, Twitter, @WakeupPeople

In the last couple of months, which have been a pretty hairy time for me and my family, because our son’s epileptic seizures had been out of control, I would notice my knee-jerk response to anyone who asked me, “Hi. How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you. How are you?” or even sometimes, “Great! How’s your day going?” were my pat responses, and always said in overly chirpy and in overly zealous, zippy tones. The worst I ever said was, “Pretty good.”

Now, of course, this is what we all do. The clerk at my grocery store does not honestly want a play-by-play of my sh*tshow of a day/week/month/year, and I don’t want to have an emotional collapse, in public, while purchasing some milk, bread and broccoli, in front of a bunch of hungry strangers. But still, at those times, I was honestly feeling really rotten. For the first time in a long time, I noticed my answers to those socially polite questions, and I noticed how false my fake answers rang out to me. I was lying through my teeth. Yet, just like Think Smarter states above, maybe my answers held some truth. “Fake it, ’til you make it.” Who knows how things in our lives on Earth are going to turn out, until the very end? And even then, the collective belief seems to be that after our lives on Earth, most (if not all) of us will all transition to an even better place. How many terrible, rotten, no-good experiences, in retrospect, after bringing you to your knees, brought you to new heights in your life, in ways that you could never have imagined? We all have had our rising-from-the-ashes Phoenix moments, oftentimes more than once.

So, with that in mind, how are things for you?

“It’s all good,” at my corner of the Earth. “It’s all good.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Where You Belong

So, on a random tweet which I read last month, from an account I don’t even follow, a book was recommended as a life-changer. It is an obscure, out-of-print book written back in the early 1990s, but somehow I was able to obtain a used copy from a seller on Amazon. I’ve looked every day on Amazon since I purchased the book (including today), and it is always listed “Currently Unavailable.” I truly believe that this book came to me right at the moment that I needed it. The copy was reserved for me.

I’m not going to even mention the title of the book. How many times have you had a book, or a movie, or a podcast, or a sermon, or a lecture, or a workshop, or a comedy skit, make such a profound difference in your own life that you decide you have to get everyone you love and care about to experience the same depth and download of knowledge and insight and pleasure, and so you enthusiastically recommend such book/movie/podcast/sermon/lecture/workshop/skit, and you are surprised with the lackluster “meh” you get from many of the others to whom you made such recommendation? In fact, those of you who like to read my blog regularly, have probably recommended my blog to others, and you have probably heard “meh” about my blog, and that’s okay. It’s not for everybody.

My bigger point here is that enlightenment is personal. Enlightenment is a journey. Enlightenment is pretty simple, really. It means to embody and to be the light that is in yourself (and is in everybody else, too, even in your awful neighbor). Enlightenment means to notice the light in everything and everyone else (even your awful neighbor). Enlightenment means to stay in the present moment, and to experience life, just as it is, without judgment, but in peace and in serenity and in faith and in gratitude. It’s hard to stay in an enlightened state of being. Most of us just get glimpses of it, here and there, as we trudge along living our lives, and sit angrily and fearfully, in our struggles. That’s why I love the reminders that the Universe sends my way, in the forms of people, and books, and movies and podcasts and sermons and lectures and workshops and comedy skits (when I am willing to notice these reminders). I get my own unique “wake-up” call from the Universe reminding me that everything that I need, is right there for me, right inside of my heart and in my deepest knowing intuition. The reminders are subtle, but they hit deep. Peace and serenity are quiet, tranquil entities. They aren’t forceful nor loud nor controlling nor shaming. Peace and serenity are patient. Peace and serenity wait for us to come calling (We usually do this after a major biggie life event that has brought us exhausted, and to our knees, finally making us willing to surrender completely. We humans are stubborn this way.) and then peace and serenity calmly and sweetly and knowingly say to us, “We’re glad you’re home. Sit with us. Stay a while. In fact, never leave. This is where You belong. In fact, honestly, we never left you, and You never left you.”

Peace And Serenity Quotes & Sayings | Peace And Serenity Picture Quotes

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday-Funday

*******I feel like my regular readers/supporters/friends/prayer team deserve an update on what has been going on in my life, and yet the superstitious part of me is terribly afraid to do so. I am knocking on wood with my other hand and both of my feet, as I write this. My son (the one who has epilepsy) has managed to string along more seizure-free days than he has done, in a long while. My son is currently on five anti-seizure, heavy-duty brain medications, but we, (with his doctor’s instructions) are carefully weaning him off at least two of these medications. This autumn has easily been the worst, most painful, scariest experience of my life, and that of our family’s history. My son has experienced more major seizures in two months, than he has had, all together, in all of the years prior, since he was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2014. My son is home with us, we are “holing up”, keeping life simple, and pleasant, and in-the-moment. It feels good. We continue to take things one day at a time. We are cautiously optimistic. We (my family and I) feel your love, and your support, and your prayers and we appreciate them so much. I didn’t know if I could continue to blog throughout this period, and yet this blog turned out to be a saving grace for me, many days, while I was going through some real darkness. And you, my beloved readers, helped to pull me out of that dark place many times, just by being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You are appreciated and loved, more than you know.

Surround yourself with positive people who will support you when... | Picture Quotes

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good morning. Good. Morning. It’s a good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry here at the blog. Poetry is a form of writing that makes you notice. It’s not obvious. It’s subtle. It’s nuanced. It’s beauty. Write a poem today. Write a love poem to yourself. The poem (and probably mostly, the act of writing it) will make you feel good. I promise. Here’s my poem for today:

And then suddenly you flew over the lake, effortlessly.

One after the other, full of energy and lightness and carefree dignity.

I usually see just one of you. A delicate white bird,

Sitting all by yourself, in the frightfully large forest.

You stand out in the crowd of trees, a small white pocket of light,

In the thick, dark overgrowth of towering, teeming life.

I am happy to see you today with your flock of friends.

How did I not see? How did I not know?

You were never alone.

No Offense

“Not to be a bitch.”

~ Me, about to be a bitch. – @WetMascara – Twitter

My sister used to always say, if you are about to start a conversation with “No offense, but . . . .” that’s your cue to shut your mouth right there. It’s like you are giving yourself your own pause and warning and finger shaking, that this conversation is not headed anywhere good, but sometimes, you just can’t help yourself, right? You keep blabbering on. And you naively believe that by saying “not to be a bitch”, or “no offense but”, or perhaps if you are a guy, the guy version is “not to be a dick”, that this is somehow going to negate every offensive word coming out of your mouth. It’s like we believe that the person who is about to get our verbal assault, appreciates the warning, and puts on their “sticks and stones – words don’t hurt me” invisible cloak of calloused thick skin. It’s like we believe that the person about to get a tongue lashing from us, is now going to sit in an aura of “open-mindedness” and gratefulness for our opinions, because we gave them a forewarning of our verbal punch, about to hit them in the face. It’s like we think that “not to be a bitch” is some kind of free pass or a “get out of jail free card”. It never turns out that way. It never does.

Instead what happens is that the person about to get insulted, has their hackles up. They’re pulling out their own verbal guns, and they are getting ready to aim them right back at you. You are about ready to experience a hard lashing from their prepared defense. Or worse, you are about to distance an important relationship that you have, because that person is about to retreat with some hurt feelings, and some deep resentment held against you.

It struck me, when nodding at this tweet, with unfortunate recognition and chagrin, that the people with whom we start conversations with “no offense but”, are usually people whom we genuinely care about. People who truly deserve our tongue lashings and unsolicited advice, are people whom we would never dream of giving them a warning, as to what is about to come. And when we know that these people, who got our verbal assault without any warning, deserved to be put in their place, we aren’t usually that concerned whether these people are offended or not. These are not the people whom we typically care to keep a relationship with in our lives.

The other day, I was blathering on about a decision that I was trying to make, out loud, on the phone with my aunt. She listened and when a pause in my dramatic soliloquy came, she calmly asked me, “Are you asking for my opinion? Do you want my opinion?”

I actually paused again, to think about it. Yes, I did want her opinion, but I was so honored (and honestly, kind of shocked) that she asked me first. I felt deeply respected by that question. It’s a question that I hope to incorporate more into my own conversations going forward. It made me feel valued and heard. People who ask questions are the best kind of listeners.

If I’m honest with myself my “no offense but” usually comes out of me when I am exhausted from listening to the “same old/same old” complaints and problems, from people who seem to like to complain, but do not take any fruitful action to change the situation which they are complaining about. But who is to blame for my exhaustion and frustration with these types of conversations? (I am the one who is exhausted and frustrated, right?) I am offering a free audience to someone who likes to complain. I am volunteering a free audience to someone who perhaps genuinely enjoys complaining, and has no intention to change the situation which they are complaining about. Ever. The remedy here is not to snap out my nasty, high and mighty, “Not to be a bitch, but this situation is never going to change, and you aren’t doing anything about it”. Instead, I have other choices. I can change the subject, or I can politely ask, “Are you asking for my opinion? Do you want my opinion?” Or, I can realize that this person just wants a listening ear, and I can decide whether I want to be the listening ear for this particular situation. (because after all, they are my ears, right?)

To be clear, no offense is intended with this blog post. The gut punch is all my own.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Friday Dance!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good Morning Happy Friday Fun Stuff Pinterest #nLQ3GY - Clipart Suggest

Happy Friday! Happy Best Day of the Week! Happy Favorite Things Friday! On Fridays, I try to “keep it in on the surface.” On Fridays, I try to list three favorite things, or websites, or books, or movies, etc. that have made my life’s experience just a little more enticing. Please add your favorites to my Comments. Especially around the holidays, we are all in need of other people’s favorites to become favorites of our own and favorites to gift to our favorite people. Sharing is caring! Here are my favorites for this week:

Blue Tree boutique – Would you like to go window shopping at a fancy, unique boutique in NYC, right from wherever you are sitting? This is not a meditation experience. Go to Blue Tree’s website and peruse all sorts of interesting and unusual items – the types of things typically only found in big city emporiums. Blue Tree is owned by the movie star, Phoebe Cates (who is also the long-time wife of actor, Kevin Kline). This is how Phoebe describes her shop: “to have it be like a general store but according to me.” 🙂 A surprise around every turn . . . “ I absolutely love shops like these. After looking at the cute and curious items for sale, watch the funny video Phoebe and Kevin made together, in the shop (in the “For Fun” link) The website can be found here: https://bluetreeny.bigcartel.com/

TL;DR – I love this acronym. It means “Too Long, Didn’t Read”. Sometimes we all get a little long-winded and mired in the details, correct? If you write a really long email or another correspondence to people who are pushed for time, add a TL;DR. It means “here’s the bottom line” or “here’s the gist of the story”. It gives people a general idea of what you are saying or requesting, and if they need more details, they can get to the meat of the story, in the paragraphs above. Sometimes it feels good to get out on paper everything that we need to say, for the benefit of ourselves in order to better collect our own thoughts and feelings, but in reality, most everyone else just needs “the point” of the story. TL;DR – an explanation about an acronym that indicates a summary.

ComfortingKeepsakes1 – I had the serious misfortune of having to find a sympathy gift appropriate for two little girls who had suddenly lost their mother (my cousin’s daughters, ages six and nine). ComfortingKeepsakes1, on Etsy, sells a lovely personalized memory box package, so that children have somewhere to put things that remind them of their loved one whom they have lost. It’s like a treasure box for love. The package also includes a book about memory boxes, and stuffed animals, and a special little uplifting card from a special little girl, who also lost her father when she was very young (the owner of the shop’s daughter). If this isn’t an example of making something lovely out of one of the worst pains imaginable, I don’t know what would be. The owner of the shop is incredibly communicative, accommodating, kind, and empathetic.

Bad Situation Quotes: top 66 famous quotes about Bad Situation

TL;DR – “a general blog, but according to ME. A surprise at every turn . . . ” The gist – Love is everywhere, if you look for it.

Have a great weekend!!! Thank you for supporting me and my blog!! Love you!!

Gratitude

Happy Veterans Day! There are a lot of veterans in my family, and I am extremely proud of that fact. Thank you, all veterans, for your service, for your sacrifice and for your courage. #GratitudeMission

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You are respected. You are appreciated. You are loved.

Starting a new subject, I like the Wise Connector’s tweets (@wiseconnector). Many times, the Wise Connector just asks his Twitter followers questions, sort of like a modern day Plato or Socrates on Twitter. This question intrigued me:

“What are the TWO qualities you seek in a friend?” Out of the 175 replies, these were the qualities that were easily the most repeated: honesty, loyalty, humor, understanding, reliability, authenticity

“If you want a friend, be a friend”, the saying goes. Are you honest and loyal and funny and understanding and reliable and authentic in your relationships with others? Are you honest and loyal and amusing and understanding and reliable and authentic with yourself? In other words, are you a good friend to others and to yourself?

“What’s the best thing in your life right now?” was another recent question the Wise Connector asked on Twitter. Out of 273 answers, once again there were constant similarities to the answers. Most of the answers fell into these categories: family, friends, pets, faith, health, peace of mind, creativity.

This is a good time to meditate on the best things in your own life, and to feel a deep and profound gratitude for these “things”.

Best Things In Life Are Not Things – Puff Paper Co

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.