“Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as “Juneteenth,” by the newly freed people in Texas.” – credit, Smithsonian
My husband and my son both have off from work today because Juneteenth finally became a federal holiday just last year. Sometimes it takes a long, long time to do the right thing. But it’s never too late. Shame can only start to be healed by first accepting, admitting, and taking responsibility for wrongs committed.
I like this line from the Smithsonian’s historical explanation of Juneteenth:
“The historical legacy of Juneteenth shows the value of never giving up hope in uncertain times.” – Smithsonian
Sometimes the only thing that gives us the will to go on with strength and resilience is the beautiful, uplifting, beacon-like feeling of hope.
“There’s no other race, to me, that has such a tough history for hundreds and hundreds of years, and only the strong survive, so we were the strongest and the most mentally tough, and I’m really proud to wear this color every single day of my life.”—Serena Williams
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.
Happy Father’s Day!! It was so interesting raising our four children, together with my husband. There are many times when I watched my husband in awe. I would think, (perhaps with a little bit of competitive chagrin) “Oh, wow, he handled that so much better than I did.” There is no doubt in any of our minds that my husband is entirely devoted to our family. We are his purpose and his passion and for that, I am forever grateful.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry speaks in the movement of spirit. In many ways, poetry is otherworldly. It offers portals into other unseen places. My son is taking a Stress Management course this summer (a course required by his university’s business management program. This is good progress.) Yesterday, my son had to color a mandala, as an assignment for the class. Now coloring and art has never been his forte, and so when he showed his finished assignment, he was poking fun at some of his color choices and coloring outside of the lines. I reminded him that coloring the mandala was never about the end result, but more so about the mindfulness of doing the project, and the relaxation that this would bring. This is the same with writing poetry. It requires concentration and diving deep. The end result really isn’t all that important. Poems that speak to me, might not speak to you. But the poets, when writing the poems, spoke to themselves, from the depths of their own souls and from the wilds of their own imaginations, and time stood still for them. Listen to your wild soul today. Write down the poem and hear what it has to say to you. Here is my poem for the day:
You are the best gift which I ever gave to our children
Your steadfastness, your devotion, your selflessness,
Allowed me to build a soft nest on a solid, steady, rock,
That remained unbroken and safe, even in the worst of storms.
Your strong arms held us steadfast through it all,
And I never questioned that they wouldn’t.
I have loved your strong arms, since they first held me.
And I can think of no better arms to hold tight our family.
This is our Ralphie, the day after my daughter’s 1970s party last weekend. Ralphie was the life of the party. Ralphie thought that he had died and gone to Heaven having that many people swimming in the pool with him at one time. He showed off his cannonball and diving skills for anyone who asked him to – which was everyone. When the kids created a dance circle, Ralphie happily took his turn in the middle of the circle, and chased his own tail for at least one minute straight (a natural high). Ralphie then decided to track and to chase down the flashing disco lights, in his usual, seriously focused, hunting dog style. In short, Ralphie knows how to party. I hope that no matter how much fun that you may have gotten around to last night, you are not experiencing Ralphie’s after party burnout this morning. But if you are, it will pass and hopefully, it was worth it!
“Life is short, wear your party pants.” – Loretta LaRoche
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Happy Friday, friends!!! Happy Best Day of the week!! My daughter starts college in a week, as she opted to start her university experience, during a summer session. (I keep telling her, and myself, that she’s really just going away to summer camp. 😉 ) I drive a teeny convertible and we went shopping for dorm stuff yesterday. If I showed you all of the stuff that we were able to cram into said convertible (with the top up, mind up – it’s been crazy hot here the last few days), you would believe that clown cars are real, and not a trick. Seriously. I now believe in clown cars.
On Fridays, here at the blog, I don’t delve deep. I don’t want to think deeply on Fridays. Do you? On Fridays, I stick to the superfluous stuff in life. I list a favorite thing, or place, or book, or website, or movie, or beauty product. Please check out previous Friday posts for more favorites and please share your favorites with us in the Comments section. Sharing is caring.
Today’s favorite of mine is for the beach. I am one who likes to lie on my towel versus always being propped up in a beach chair. I like to feel the firmness and the heat of the sand underneath my towel, contouring to my body. That being said, I’ve often thought it would be nice to sit supported, while still being able to feel the firmness of the sand underneath the towel. So I was delighted the other day to find a beach pad that folds up for easy carrying ability, but has a rod so that you can sit up, or lie flat on the sand. This product at Kohl’s is similar to what I purchased:
Things I haven’t brought up on the blog: My daughter and I . . . . My son and I . . . The latest drama with . . . . A discussion I had with my husband . . . . Bottom line, it’s really none of anyone’s business except mine. Bottom line again, all of our lives are one big violet circle. Live your circle. Don’t compare your big violet circle to someone else’s tiny pink circle on social media. We all live one big, violet circle, filled with some amazing things, and also filled with some really hard things. How much of your precious living time and mind space are you spending on other people’s tiny pink circles? Live your big, beautiful violet circle and make it glow. Just live. Just breathe. Be real. Experience it all.
“One day you will look back and recall all the time you spent on social media and wonder why you didn’t invest that time someplace else.” ― Germany Kent
“The best sign of a healthy relationship is no sign of it on social media.” — Unknown
“The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” — Steven Furtick
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The other day, I was riding my bike around our neighborhood and I noticed several signs in many yards (similar to the one that we have in our yard) proudly announcing graduates. I naively thought that they were all high school graduates, and I was really surprised that we had that many teenagers living in our neighborhood, whom I didn’t know, but then with closer inspection, I noticed that a lot of the signs were from our local elementary school. So, in reality, there are quite a lot of fifth graders who live in our neighborhood. This makes more sense.
These yard signs for graduates are a relatively new phenomenon in our parts. We didn’t get them from the high school, when our three sons graduated from there. I think that the proliferation of yard signs mostly came about during the pandemic (so that kids could be celebrated, even from afar), and I think that they are wonderful! No doubts, the pandemic has been horrible, terrible, no-good, miserable, sad and unbelievable. Still, there are a few things that have come from the pandemic that I am grateful to have come into my life. I love the celebratory yard signs (I have seen a lot more of them for birthdays, and babies – more than I ever did before the pandemic). I love that my husband works a hybrid model now, spending a couple of days during the week, working from home. My husband is happier, and I like having someone else in the house during the week, sometimes, too. If I am running a lot of errands, I have peace of mind that my husband is home with the dogs, or that he can let in a person, who might be fixing something in our home. It’s definitely been a win-win, and a situation that we never dreamed could have happened before the pandemic. I have a gratefulness now for all of the everyday things that I used to mindlessly take for granted: toilet paper, cleaning supplies, meat. There is something to be said about noticing and appreciating the things that we used to just unconsciously count on being there for the taking. I sigh with relief and happiness that my local grocery store’s paper products and freezer sections are mostly full these days. And truthfully, I’m a little more hygienic than I ever was before. I am more careful in crowds. I use hand sanitizer like I never did before, and I think that these new habits have helped me to stave off a lot of germs, besides just the coronavirus. Even in the bad times, there are always kernels of good that come from these times. It has been proven to me, again and again, in my life’s experiences. No matter what concrete jungle you find yourself in, there is no doubt that you will find some little green, hopeful, resilient plant poking its plucky little leaves out from the teeniest of cracks in the dirty, grey concrete. There is good that defiantly grows out of bad, every time and everywhere.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“For you to understand me, the first thing you should know about me, is that I am not you.” – Mindset For Life, Twitter
This quote is so key. The other day I read something interesting. It said that we all know and understand that we have a tendency to project our own negative qualities on to others, as a way to disown these qualities in ourselves. (That’s where the phrase, “Point one finger at me, and three fingers are pointing back at you” comes from.) When we are feeling particularly critical about something in someone else, there is usually some similar trait in ourselves that we strongly dislike, and we can get that insight about ourselves, if we are humble enough to play detective on our own selves, instead of focusing always on the faults of others. Even more interesting to me was that my reading also said that we also have the tendency to project traits that we do like about ourselves, on to others. We think that parents, or partners, or friends, or teachers, or bosses, should have certain likable, familiar traits, and so we often project these positive traits on to people, whether they actually possess these traits or not. Both projections make us feel safe and in control, but neither are rooted in reality. These projections do not make for authentic, healthy relationships.
The above quote also got me thinking about an interesting conversation that I had with a friend the other day. She works for her church, and she mentioned that her church’s denomination is having a lot of controversy within its membership about certain key issues. She mentioned that she, herself, was struggling with where she stood on some of these issues. We both talked about how difficult it is to get a consensus on anything, in any group. Even in my marriage, my husband and I don’t agree on every single thing. Trying to find just the right place to eat, or where to go on vacation was often tricky among our family of six, until my husband and I finally, out of frustration, used our executive privilege. (Raising four kids got me really familiar with the term, “herding cats.”)
That’s the hard thing about joining various groups, and thus being labelled as a member of that group. Do you honestly believe in every single platform of your own political party, or your own religious affiliation, or your own workplace’s stance on everything?? Are your beliefs so solid that they could never be changed, even as you grow and change, and as the world around you changes?
My weekly horoscope by Holiday Mathis said this: “Your beliefs, which are based on the best information you have in a given moment, will inevitably change as the world does. There’s no shame in this. Values, on the other hand, withstand the tests of time. Love, tenderness, beauty, harmony and teamwork are values represented in your week.”
Beliefs are different than values. With whom, and where, and doing what, do you spend most of your time and your energy and your resources? Whether you like it or not, these people and these things are what you value more than anything else. You may scoff, and say to yourself, “Well, I can’t stand my job, but I have to feed my kids.” That’s fair. You value supporting your family and their well-being. Is that a bad value?? It seems pretty virtuous to me. However, your belief may be, “I have to do this particular job, and I have to work these amount of hours to feed my kids.” Is that the truth? Is this particular vocation the only way to feed your family? Would it be possible to work at a different job, or to work less hours? Beliefs are flexible. They can be changed. Do your beliefs support your values? This is what is most important. Be honest with yourself about your beliefs, and see if they honestly support your highest values. If you value inclusiveness, do your affiliations support this value? If you value family time, do your career and your hobbies support this value? If you value health and fitness, do your habits support this value? Where can you alter your beliefs to better support what you truly value? And remember, this is a private project. Go back to the first quote, I used in today’s post. What I most value in life is probably different than what you most value, and that is okay. That is what gives us such amazing variety and contrast and unique experiences in this life on Earth, which we are living right now. Just make sure that you are living the values and the beliefs that are true to you, so that you don’t cheat yourself, nor cheat the world, of all of the variety and mélange that is deserved to be experienced by all of us, right here and right now!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Yesterday, my daughter had a graduation/going away party (she’s starting college at summer session in a couple of weeks) here with her friends. She insisted on a 1970s theme. The kids went all out. Their outfits were amazing. So was my husband’s. He got all decked out as John McEnroe. Unfortunately though, most of the kids didn’t get his costume. Most of the kids didn’t know who John McEnroe was – not even the tennis team kids. John McEnroe is 63 years old. Sigh.
One of my daughter’s friends bought her a compass bracelet. It was wrapped around a card that said this:
The Adventure Begins
Behind you, all of your memories.
Before you, all of your dreams.
Around you, all who love you.
Within you, all you need.
Friends, we are starting new adventures all of the time, whether we are 18 or we are 63. Stay in tuned with your compass. It will never steer you wrong.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. Please use today to soothe your soul, to reset your batteries, to clean the windows to your perspectives, and to fill your heart with gratitude. That’s what Sundays are really good for – the “re-words” such as rejuvenation, reinvigoration, renewal, revitalization, refreshment, and restoration. All of these words suggest “making new”. Use Sunday to make new of what is old and tired and clouded and fading in you. ReSunday yourself. It will be a lovely way to start the week.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry is mysterious, intimate, clever and open. Write some poetry today to help ReSunday yourself. You won’t regret it. Here is my poem for today:
“I Am A Witness“
I am old enough to have been a witness to a lot of things.
Perhaps this is the truest gift which our aging brings.
I am a witness to so much triumph over hurt and loss.
I am a witness to the intricate, such as a large rock covered in moss.
I am a witness to breathtaking natural beauty, day after day.
When I allow myself the time to watch the miraculous display.
I am witness to all of my own sensations,
I am witness to my feelings and frustrations.
I am the witness who feverishly writes it all down,
As my hair is graying, from its once rich brown.
It’s the witnesses who bring clarity to what has gone on,
Facts and perspectives, mixed and weighed upon.
So much time we play at being judge, jury and litigators,
When in truth, we are mostly natural witnesses and mitigators.
I am a watcher. I am a witness. I hear. I feel. I see.
Please share what you witness with yourself, and with me.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Yesterday, I drove my youngest son to an urban area about 45 minutes away from our home, for his summer internship. He had to be there before 7 a.m. Since, this isn’t something that I do often at all, it was an interesting, eye-opening adventure. Before 11 a.m., I had hung out at a coffee shop, I had breakfast and then later a snack, and I had shopped in four different stores, in three different locations, including doing a bagful of returns. I literally texted my friends that I wish that I could become a morning person for this very reason. The efficiency was unreal because there were no lines in the stores, and no crowded streets, nor were there overrun parking lots. But alas, the downside of this was that I was exhausted by 6 p.m. on my beloved Friday. And truthfully, sleeping in this morning was 110 times more delicious than yesterday’s efficiency rating. Bummer.
Speaking of coffee, yesterday, the only coffee shop which was open that early, near to where I dropped my son off, was also a Kava bar. I initially strolled up to the bar and asked for my usual: black coffee and some water. I sat down at the bar next to several people, all at least half of my age. They all seemed to know each other, being locals from the neighborhood. Let’s just say that me, a 51 year old, who is not at all used to way early mornings, bleary eyed, who could easily be mistaken for a touchy “Karen” woman (on a bad day), in my coastal grandma style clothes, did not necessarily blend in with my youthful, energized, tattooed, pierced, urban chic, clearly from the local neighborhood cohorts at the counter. Not long into guzzling my first cup of coffee, someone rang a bell, and all of the people in the shop, picked up these little silver shells, sucked down the drink inside of these shells, and yelled, “Bula!” (which is a Fijian word offering good tidings) And that’s when my FOMO set in deeply. “I want one of those. I want to do that,” I said to the nice girl behind the counter named Scarlett, who had earlier told me that she was also a nursing student besides working in the coffee bar, and to whom I had already given a motherly lecture about not spreading herself too thin and keeping her stress levels to a minimum because nursing school is hard!!
And that’s when I noticed it happening, a phenomenon that is starting to happen to me more and more these days. I’ve become that cute, novelty, older, suburban lady who amuses her youngers by trying out “their stuff, on their turf”. “Okay,” sweet Scarlett said, with a kind, patient, nurse-type demeanor already. “We’re going to start you out with a low-tide (half a cup). Your tongue might get a little numb and you will probably feel a little relaxed. The Kava is going to taste a little bitter.”
“Omg!” I turned to the artistic looking young man on the side of me, who was wearing large gauges in his ears and donning fluorescent orange eye glasses. “Am I still going to be able to drive?” The locals all got some chuckles about that question. “You’ll be fine. It’s not a glass of wine,” he stated, drinking down his second full-tide of Kava. “But ma’am, please make sure that you drink a lot of water today, okay?” he said with a hint of protectiveness that warmed my heart.
The only effect that my little half-shell of Kava had on me was a diuretic one. Thankfully, none of the bathrooms in any of the stores which I perused after leaving the coffee shop were crowded either. But honestly, that’s a lie about the Kava experience, and it having little effect on me. I used to feel a little indignant, when I first realized that I wasn’t exactly blending in, with the younger crowds anymore. For decades of my adult life, I honestly felt like I had just graduated from college. When my own kids started towering over me, I started to get the clues that I had graduated from my own youthfulness. The indignance that I felt at first, is starting to morph into more of an acceptance, and at times when I feel a younger person’s respect for me, and amusement of me, and a protectiveness surrounding me, I even feel grateful. I realize that I have reached an age, when my younger counterparts have a lot to show me and to teach me, too, if I am willing to come at things with open mindedness. I am invested in hopefulness for the future of our young people. I am a mother of four of them. I believe that if we try to understand each other, instead of trying to dominate each other, there is an ability for all of us to grow together, and to create an amazing society, the likes which we have never seen before.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
