Month: December 2025

NYE

Happy New Year’s Eve! I had to get my last words in for the year of 2025. I honestly really liked a lot of my 2025 experience and I almost feel guilty writing it. It seems that it is almost a universal thing to say and to read and to hear that “It’s just wonderful that this ‘god-awful’ year is over.” And yes, the political drama has been exhausting. And everyday life seems to have grown exponentially expensive. And it has been so painful to witness the wars and atrocities that are taking place all over the world. And it is frustrating that we can never seem to get on the same page to focus on solving the world’s biggest problems. And many, many people have suffered terrible personal tragedies and grief in their own private lives in 2025. AND ALSO – people got married in 2025, people had babies in 2025, people found the loves of their lives in 2025, people healed from dire sicknesses in 2025, and if you need more positive examples, there are outlets to read about everyday kindnesses, every single day. And I clicked on one of those “stories about kindness” just now. The article talks about a city in Texas that is running a “Grandma Stand”, where three grandmas rotate being at the stand, in order to offer free comfort, love, hugs and advice for anyone who comes up to the stand asking for it. One Grandma, whose daughter volunteered her for the job, had this to say, “Grandmas are nonjudgmental and loving people. Sometimes it’s nice to talk to someone who’s basically a stranger, but you still feel a connection with.”

Maybe we all could work on being better “Grandmas” in the coming year. No matter our ages, our sexes, our family situations, we could all work to be better examples of kindness, lovingness, compassion, and connection. If we woke up every day with the idea that our job and our purpose was to work the “Grandma stand”, wouldn’t the world be a better place? We all have an “inner grandma” and she’s just itching to come out and to offer up some sweet love to a world that we all seem to universally agree, needs more of it. If we honestly believe that 2025 was the worst (or perhaps feel a little “survivor’s guilt” because we don’t think that 2025 was all that bad, at least in our own personal lives), what would our inner grandma say to do? I imagine her advice would be something along the lines of doing and being more of the simple things we often universally associate with good grandmas – softness, kindness, wisdom, sharing treats, support, cheer, reassurance, warmth, unconditional love. Our inner grandma is essentially love wrapped up in the most comforting of packages. We just have to remember to give that package away. Our inner grandmas are strong in the softest of ways, wise in the most reassuring of ways, and beautiful in the simplest of ways.

I wish for you in 2026, to become more intimately involved with your own inner grandma and to accept her love, and her comfort, and her reassurance, and her wisdom. I wish for you in 2026, to share more of your own inner grandma with everyone whom you come in contact with, every single day, so that when we roll around to this time again next year, the universal judgment of the year we just experienced together won’t seem so harsh. It won’t seem so negative and hopeless and full of division. It won’t seem so desolate, frustrated, and hardened. I hope that at this time next year we will be reflecting on our past year, with our inner grandma’s lens and heart. And we will be focused on all of the everyday experiences we had throughout the year, and feel nothing but overwhelmingly grateful for this experiment of living “a one and only lifetime.” Maybe, just maybe, on this last night of 2025, we could connect with our inner grandma, and look at this past year through her lens and her heart and feel just a little bit better, as we enter a whole new year of our precious lives.

“If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.” — Italian Proverb

“Grandmothers are short on criticism and long on love.” — Janet Lanese 

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

4 Questions

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.” – Pearl Buck

I hope that everyone enjoyed and is continuing to enjoy a wonderful holiday season. Today is a little “respite” into what has become to be, what I call the Venn diagram of Christmas. We have four adult kids, with their own careers, and who all have serious significant others with careers and their own extended families, so our Christmas is a lot of comings and goings. We still plan to have our biggest celebration, when all of our crew can finally be at the same place at the same time, in a few days. This has been a transition that started happening a few years back and it is still evolving as our youngest is graduating from college in the spring. I’ve learned to embrace it, and to surrender to the gifts and to the surprises and to the metamorphoses that each new Christmas season brings. I have learned to savor the small joys that have a way of turning into “the big happiness.” Our daughter said that someone asked her recently how her parents were doing with all of the big transformations which we have been experiencing in our lives lately and my husband and I looked at each other and smiled. I think we are doing just fine. Change is the only constant and so you have a choice to embrace it and look for the growth and the blessings, or to fruitlessly try to fight it, and end up despondent and frustrated by your own futile resistance. I choose to focus on the joys.

Karen Nimmo wrote an excellent article about the four best questions to answer, in order to reflect on your past year, in order to help you do any course corrections for the new year. My birthday happens to fall in December, so I find this time of year to be particularly reflective for me, and I really enjoyed the structure of her questions. My husband and I answered these questions with two of our kids the other night, and it really gave us insight into what we are all feeling and doing. Here are the questions:

What did you do this year? (when you start listing everything that you did, I think you will be amazed!)

What delighted you? (perhaps bring more of this answer into the new year?)

How did you improve?

What demanded courage?

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

The Big Game

Happy Holidays, my dear friends and readers. I have felt a crazy, needful urge to write all day. I am currently in a hotel lobby in Oregon, on a public computer. I live in Florida. I have just travelled, relatively impromptu, all of the way across the country, smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, because my husband, my true love, never, ever knows what he wants for Christmas. He never asks for anything. He gives us, his family, everything. But this year, he absolutely knew what he wanted for Christmas. My husband wanted to see our college alma mater football team (a team, which he, himself, played for) play in their first ever college play-offs. And so here we are, in rainy, but beautiful and lovely and honestly, gracious and accommodating Eugene, Oregon.

My husband and I met at James Madison University in the quietly gorgeous Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg, VA. I met my husband my first weekend at JMU. We just recently celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary in October of this year. Up until lately, James Madison University was relatively/vaguely known/unknown to anyone whom I mentioned that I graduated from there. It is one of those wholesome, best kept secrets in the valley, and for those of us who enjoy living under the radar, we have been happy as clams, to keep it that way. The regional people in the DC/Richmond/Maryland/eastern PA areas are, of course, familiar with JMU and all of its charms and advantages, but it is clearly not one of those “University of . . . . Name the State” whom everyone and their grandmother is familiar with. And that never bothered me. Never. Even when professors at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, whom I sold college textbooks to, would smugly proclaim that I would have gotten a much better education had I stayed home to go to school there, I would equally as smugly think in my mind, “Perhaps, but I would not have had the overall, all-together amazing, gentle, kind, prodding but safe cocooning experience into the final phase of my turning into an adult. And even more importantly, I would never have met the love of my life.” James Madison University has something special that’s hard to put into words. It is a protective cottagey greenhouse that lets you bloom in your own way, and in your own time. It’s like having a sweet nanny/fairy godmother who knows your potential but allows you to reach it, just on your own and only when you are ready, planting the seeds, keeping you nourished and nurtured, and slowly filling you with the faith and the confidence which she already has in spades for you. And when the time is right, she gently, and optimistically, sets you free. At least JMU was that way when I was a student there. It’s something in the mountain air there. It’s a secret emanating from its sacred Bluestones that just makes you know how blessed you are to ease into final adulthood there. I once heard someone say that they had never met more people with higher E.Q.s than people who had gone to James Madison University. James Madison is good at making sure that every graduate, graduates as a “whole” person. And is there any better way to go at life than when you are filled with a sense of your own wholeness? Is there any better protective cloak in life than being whole?

Obviously, it goes without saying that I love James Madison University, but we aren’t known for our football team. It’s only in the last five years or so, that JMU has ever made national news, regarding its football team. And that is a huge contrast to the team which we are playing tomorrow. The University of Oregon’s football team has a long legacy of NFL players, Heisman trophy winners and 37 Bowl games under its duckbills. Some football elites are angered that this playoff scenario has even happened. They believe that this “David versus Goliath” experience should not even be allowed, and NCAA rules have already recently been changed to ensure that this won’t likely happen again.

But we are Americans. And we love a Cinderella story. And in my mind, America could really use a Cinderella story right now. I have been to the awe-striking Pacific Northwest previously, but I have never been to Oregon. And it is lovely. It is gorgeous and green and filled with tall, lush, ancient trees. The people here are kind, open-minded, colorful, friendly, and robust. So far, they are treating the many of us East Coast JMU people (many more than I expected to make the trip!), warm-heartedly and with curiosity and consideration. They make me proud to be part of this immensely large and diverse country. I am doing my own best to be a good ambassador of my beloved alma mater, and my own east coast roots and traditions. I want them to feel the same pride and communion which I feel now, even in our competitive spirit tomorrow.

I felt desperate to write this blog post before I came back home, before the game happened even, because it really doesn’t matter the outcome tomorrow. The winning has already happened. The winning has happened for a sweet, not largely known university to make it to the primetime, with guts, grit, brotherhood and a huge belief in themselves. It has happened for a patient, and jubilant fanbase, who excitedly made impromptu plans in the middle of the holidays to make the college football playoffs, at least some part of the plans which were already in place. The winning has happened for a young man and a young woman who met each other one weekend in Harrisonburg, VA and found a love like no other. Sometimes winning is just understanding how is to live in the pure wholeness of your one sweet life and appreciating all the supporting players and systems which have helped you live it, all along the way.

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

And Hello Again

^^^^^ This is my latest excuse for my various messes, a.k.a. “ideas”, lying around my house.

***** Happy 25th Birthday, my blue-eyed baby! I am proud to be your fellow Sag and Yenta of the family. Mostly I am super proud to be your mama. I love you.

One time, one of my friends asked me what my love language was, as she was really into reading and understanding Gary Chapman’s famous book, The Five Love Languages. Honestly, I didn’t have an answer because I really never got into the book and the question started my internal critic reeling, wondering if I wasn’t showing my friends I care, because I didn’t know my “official” love language. According to Chapman, people show love in five major categories and most people have a predominant way that they show love. The categories are: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Receiving Gifts, and Acts of Service. Apparently people give and show love in the ways that they would like to receive it. And so the theory is, if you want to better understand and appreciate your partner and how to love them, you notice how they show you their love.

I’m intrigued with the idea of all of this, but I don’t think love or relationships are ever this simple and easy. I’m also uneasy with the idea of “transactional” love. I do believe that love is an action and so it follows that spending quality time, affirming your people, giving and receiving hugs and kisses, etc., giving and receiving gifts and doing kind deeds for people, are all beautiful ways to express your love and affection, but the concept implies to me, an expectation, “If you do this, then I’ll do that . . . ” (transactional and performative and obligatory)

In my life’s experience, I have sadly come to better understand and appreciate my loved ones’ unique love languages when they are no longer a part of my life, for various reasons, usually death or growing apart. It’s the unique, nuanced love language of any individual that makes you realize that there really is no one else who can fill those exact same shoes. No one else can share with you that same exact love communication. It’s what “I miss” about a person that makes me realize I was understanding that person’s unique and special fit into the puzzle of my life. I was “hearing” their love language which sometimes I could only fully decipher when they were gone.

Who in your life listens to you intently with the biggest desire to understand? Who in your life rallies you to live it more fully than you ever realized you could? Who in your life shares the same sense of humor, so that you are both cry-laughing in unison until your sides ache? Who in your life makes you feel like you have hung the moon just for existing? Who in your life has pushed you to be the best version of you? Who in your life has been an example and inspiration of strength and resiliency? Who in your life lights up the minute you walk into the room? Who in your life introduced you to things and concepts and experiences that opened up whole new worlds to you? Who in your life seems to know that exact right time to reach out with just the right words? Who in your life makes you feel more “alive” just being with them? Who in your life just “gets you” and loves you for it?

What will people miss about you when you are gone? What void will be left in their lives because you are no longer in it? I don’t necessarily think it will be what you did for them. I don’t think it will be anything about your looks, or your personality, or your money or your talents. I believe that it will be the unique, interesting, vulnerable giving of yourself that beautifully and intrinsically connected to something deeper in them. And I think that when this connection is electric and happening, we don’t realize it, until we don’t have it anymore. I believe that we share a unique love language in every significant relationship in our lives, kind of like those fake, secret languages that we would make up, in our childhood, with our siblings and best friends.

Maybe one of life’s biggest ironies, is that we don’t clearly hear or understand someone’s love language, until it is no longer spoken to us. And then that beautiful language is clear as a bell. It sometimes plays in our heads, like a tune we can’t stop thinking about. It’s that one note in the symphonies of our lives that no one else could hit, but that one person. Thankfully, we shared a special language at one time, and so it lives on in us, carved like engravings in our hearts, even when it is an ancient language, no longer spoken.

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

Hello Again

First, I am going to trinkle these new “gems” I found onto this pile of life’s thoughts/reflections/wisdoms which is called Adulting – Second Half:

“A lot of things broke my heart, but fixed my vision.”

Marriage argument motto: “I have nothing to win, everything to gain and everything to lose.”

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin

“Those mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” -Najwa Zebian

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Buddha

And from a really good movie, Jay Kelly:

“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.” – Sylvia Plath

“Italy. What is it’s fatal charm? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places lost long ago.”

I’m sorry for a longer than usual absence, readers. The latest flu really got me. (and no, I didn’t get the flu shot, so maybe something to consider. . . .) I just finished one of those wonderfully cheesy, fill-my-eyes-up, 2025-year-in-review videos. It was honestly pretty compelling. These videos always remind me of just how much happens in one year.

Lately, I’ve been observing our human nature to sweep entire years as “good” or “bad.” We often take one monumental event that happened in any particular year, either to us personally (tragedies such as deaths, job loss, or happy things like new homes, graduations or babies being born), or out in the world (think politics, wars or ends of wars, natural disasters or major scientific discoveries) and we make one or two of those major events, the basis for our entire judgment, of an entire year: Good or bad. Then we pronounce blanket statements like, “I just can’t wait for this awful year to be over!” or “I’ll never have a year as good as this one.”

And yet, the video I just watched featured unbelievable Cinderella stories in all different sports, political shockers from both major parties, wildfires and floods and the rebuilding of communities, cultural phenoms, medical achievements and so, so, so much more that collectively happened in just one year, in our lives on this Earth. A year is not entirely “good” or “bad.” Isn’t it often the case that we sometimes look back at our “bad” years and we actually feel thankful for them? In retrospect, they were “good” years because they forced our hands. They brought more of ourselves and our own individual needs and desires and insights, to the forefront of our awareness. We experienced more, and thus we, in turn, became more complex, more interesting, more human.

Years are made up of our moments. There are a lot of moments in our years. One time one of my friends asked me this common phrase when I was being a bit tragically dramatic: “Did you really have a bad day, or was it a bad five minutes you milked out all day long?” Even our worst days, have sweet moments. Even our worst years, have lovely days.

The beauty of keeping a daily journal, is that you have a record of the moments – the “good” moments, the “bad” moments and a record of the days – the “good” days and the “bad” days. As a person who has consistently kept a daily journal since 2013 and has saved my calendars since 2008, I can tell you that most days are just a conglomeration of mostly banal, routine moments, with a few notably “bad” moments and a few strikingly “good” moments sprinkled on top – even on vacation days, even on tax-filing days, even on mammogram days, even on birthdays.

Sometimes I think we get a little bored with our everyday routine moments, and that’s when the stories play in our heads. That’s when our inner narrator starts turning annoying moments into horrific days. We all say we want “peace”. We all say we want “calm”, but the truth is, we often don’t know what to do with peace and calm. We get restless. So we stir up our inner pot to create drama and intrigue. Our stories of what happened are usually much more interesting than what actually happened. Aren’t we humans annoying?

Maybe the answer is to turn our inner label makers off. Days don’t need to be labelled. Years don’t need to be labelled. All experiences teach us something. We can integrate these experiences without the narrative. Our lives are not performances. Our lives are our moments, our days and our years. And we have the ability to live fully in each one of these moments, if we give ourselves permission and freedom to do so.

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

A Mommy Manifesto

I am about to embark on one of the most monumental years of my life. Two of our “babies” (and the first out of any of our four babies) are getting married. Our youngest “baby” and our only daughter is going to graduate from college and move several states away for a tremendous job opportunity. These are all joyous things in my heart. These are all “emotions all over the map” events. If there was ever a year I need to be there for myself, it is this year. If there was ever a year I need to honor and recognize and balance my own rhythms, my own health needs, my own emotional needs, it is this year, starting now, before I am even at the starting gate.

We women are often conditioned to take care of everyone else’s needs. We often erroneously believe that we can and should manage everyone else’s emotions. And then we get frustrated, drained, and sometimes even resentful, when it seldom works. We often erroneously believe that our emotions are the responsibility of the people outside of ourselves and what they do. We blame being frustrated, emotionally and physically drained, and even resentful, on others (see above). This is what is called codependence. However, mired in exhaustion, and emotional myopathy, we often miss this fact. We righteously believe that our emotions are other people’s fault.

The truth of the matter is, we want to be able to take care of ourselves in the best way that we see fit, but we also want everyone to “like it.” We want our cake and eat it, too. We don’t want others to feel disappointed because that generates a feeling of misguided “guilt” in us. It makes us feel like we are “bad.” Most of us (but especially us women) have been conditioned to believe that when others feel disappointed or angry or frustrated, it is somehow our fault. But do you see how silly that is? Others’ feelings are theirs. You can’t physically feel someone else’s feelings. Try it. You can empathize, of course. When you see someone in pain, you may feel sad and even cry, but you aren’t feeling their sadness. You are feeling your sadness. And you have no way of knowing if their sadness matches your exact same feeling of sadness.

Intentionally doing something cruel or mean or underhanded or malicious to others, is wrong. Being the recipient of such evilness, feels terrible. But most of us aren’t intentionally cruel. Choosing to do what is best for you, even when it disappoints others, is not cruel. Choosing to do what is best for you, even when it disappoints others, is not bad. Others are allowed to feel disappointed. Feelings are just feelings. Others can process their feelings of disappointment. Others can make decisions that are best for them, and this is not cruel. Others can make decisions that are best for them, and this is not bad. You, in turn, are allowed to feel disappointment if these decisions aren’t what you had hoped to happen. You are capable of processing your own feelings of disappointment, and any other feelings that may occur.

I wrote this for myself. But I offer it up to the many women who read my blog, who may veer into the unhealthy dynamic of codependence, during the holidays, which is a time of year, often fraught with higher and mixed emotions. It is a time of year often fraught with expectations – yours and many others. It is a reminder that you are valuable because you are here. You are valuable because you are alive. Your value does not come from what you do for others. On that same note, the others in your life are valuable because they are here. The others in your life are valuable because they are alive. Their value does not come from what they can do for you.

Give yourself the gift of grace this season. Give others the gift of grace this season. Take care of your own needs, physical and emotional and spiritual. Be assured that others can take care of their needs, as well. Do what you believe is best for yourself this season and understand that others are making decisions, not to hurt you, but to do what is inherently best for themselves.

Every year, so many Christmas cards ask for “Peace”. Peace starts from within. If we all take responsibility for our own “peace”, then this is when “peace for all” will truly happen.

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