Month: June 2025

16 Years Ago

A friend texted me a flashback photo this morning of me with a group of our mutual friends, 16 years ago today. Honestly, I’m going to brag a little. I looked really good in that picture. I was 38-years-old. But what makes me sad, is that the 38-year-old woman in the picture didn’t realize it. She was hypercritical of herself. She was insecure and desperately trying to make everything “stay the same”. It was one of the most stressful times of her life, as she and her husband had just become the “poster kids” for the Great Recession. I wish that I could go back in time and hug my 38-year-old self. I would hug her so hard. I wish that I could sit with her, hold her hand, and tell her that things were going to be tumultuous, and scary, but also amazing and thrilling and that all of the changes ahead of her were actually going to be really fantastic springboards towards her most authentic life. That 38-year-old woman was really worried about the future. She sometimes got panicky thinking about it. She wanted the full-proof plan to be shown to her immediately, as to what the future was going to look like for her and her family. And the crazy thing is, even being a positive, resilient, hopeful, faithful young woman, she still could have never, ever imagined how wondrous the years ahead would be. She could never have imagined that she would successfully make it through all of the ups and downs (some of these being really, really steep ups and downs, as is the way of life) and have so many incredible adventures along the way, bringing her to this moment, now. Here. Now. I can’t go back and hug my 38-year -old self, but I can hug my 54-year-old self. Here. Now. My 54-year-old self is hypercritical about her aging face and body. She is sometimes insecure and feels a little wrecked when things don’t “stay the same.” But I’m guessing that 16 years from now, I will look back at pictures of my 54-year-old self, and I will smile. I will brag a little. She will look good. She will be smiling at the camera, having no idea of all of the events that will happen in the next 16 years of her life, but hopefully, she will sense my hug. She will feel loved by herself. And that will be enough to sustain her, as she carries on down the unknowable winding path of her marvelous life.

“In twenty years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.” – Mary Schmich

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” – Dr. Suess

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

Baby Steps

So, I have told everyone and their grandmothers that my major goal this summer was to clean out our home like we are moving, even though we aren’t. I have done this to keep myself accountable. After a lot of soul-searching and going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, my husband and I decided to keep our current home, instead of downsizing and/or upsizing, for the foreseeable future. We plan to remodel some more areas of our current home to better fit our empty-nester lifestyle. That being said, this is the longest we have lived in any single home (11 years), and the piles of accumulation of stuff that 11 years in one place has generated, are daunting. I feel overwhelmed by the project. Interestingly though, I read something yesterday morning that made a whole lot of sense and then afterwards, I can honestly say I made a nice little dent in cleaning out some of my closet and bathroom cabinets.

Jill Donovan blogged yesterday about once hearing this said: “If you can’t reach your goal, it might be because your first step isn’t small enough.”

Lightbulb moment. I have been telling everyone’s grandmother that I am going to be cleaning out my entire house this summer. And then I feel faint. I remain frozen in overwhelm. And before yesterday, the only real steps that I have taken towards this goal, is to tell even more people, willing to be my audience, that I am going to do it. When I look at my goal from this big picture point of view, I feel snowed under (even in this incredibly hot summer). However, if I break my goal down to cleaning out just one small section of my house each day, or even just one small drawer, in one small section of my house, each day, the goal doesn’t seem so bad. At the very least, by breaking it down to tiny steps, I have moved past the proclamation of the project, into the actual “doing it.”

In her blog, Jill says if you find yourself stuck or frozen on something you want to do, but it seems too formidable to even begin, break the goal down to such tiny steps, that you can’t help but take the first step, and from there, the momentum will begin. She says that if you are wanting to write a book this summer, just start with “the title.” If you are wanting to start exercising more, just start parking your car at the back end of the grocery store parking lot. Every major thing accomplished, is an accumulation of a bunch of little baby steps along the way. And the key to getting even more energy towards achieving any goal, is to start moving towards it, even if it is just putting one little toe slightly outside of the starting gate.

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

Didya Miss Me?

Wow. It’s been a minute. Readers, I miss you. Adulting – Second Half, I miss writing you. My spring has been a complete blur – a wonderful, happy, successful blur, but a blur nonetheless. Too much was packed into one season for my liking. I know that some people flourish from going from one event to the next, to the next, to the next, but that is not me. I need my quiet time. I need my alone time. I need my soul-searching, soul-healing solitude. And this is the first week in months, that I am able to have this experience.

It’s not lost on me that I am having a flare up of cervical radiculopathy. The common name for cervical radiculopathy is “major pain in the neck.” Cervical radiculopathy is intense pain stemming from herniated discs in the neck and the pain radiates throughout the shoulder blade into the arm and hands. (I still have a numb thumb from my first bout with this, a little over two years ago. The first bout, not surprisingly happened after another series of stressful events, one after another. Our bodies DO “keep the score.”) I’m okay. I’m taking steroids and muscle relaxers. I had a massage. I’m taking it easy. My heating pad has become my new best friend. But still, I hate it when my body has to scream at me. When you don’t listen to the whispers of your mind, or your soul, or your body, the whispers turn up the intensity, until you finally can’t help but to hear the screams.

Okay, but let’s change the subject because one of my biggest fears in life is turning into a little old lady who can only talk about her “woe is me” ailments.

I have a close friend whose life experiences are often so similar to mine, it’s almost uncanny. At the beginning of the year, she told be about this daily Touching Peace calendar and so I bought one. And I love it. And the other day (June 9th to be exact) , I liked the page so well that I cut it out and I put it in one of my inspirational notebooks. I told my friend that I had done this, and she said that she had saved the exact same one, too! Here it is:

Yesterday, I was not particularly happy. I was in a lot of pain, so I was snappy with husband, snippy with my dogs and all the way around, lowly and growly. I was not a fun gal to be around. I imagine that while ruminating on my pain, I created a little bit of “suffering” for my housemates last night. Sorry guys!!

It has often occurred to me how we so underestimate the importance of our own happiness and our own peace. We so often look outside ourselves for happiness and peace which is not a good plan. Most things outside of ourselves are not in our control. Still, we often don’t believe that we can have peace and happiness until certain things happen for us, or certain events go the way that we want them to, out in the world. So with carrying this false belief, we only add more discontented energy into the world, and then we blame other people, and whatever events happening, for our misery.

If you are one who really does not want to create suffering in others (and I truly believe that this is a mass majority), then focus on being peaceful and happy just for today. Don’t give your power away by making your peace and happiness contingent on what happens, or what other people are doing. Do what it takes to create peace and happiness within yourself, and know that this lovely energy will emanate from you, out into the world and it will help to dissolve some of the low energy that seems to swirl all around us these days. Sometimes the best thing that you can do for others, is to stop the suffering in yourself.

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