Month: March 2026

The Whisper

“Stay close to anything that makes you feel glad to be alive.” – Hafiz

Before I start with the theme that I am going with on the blog today, I overheard something on a podcast that made me spend some time pondering. The question announced was, “Are you getting older or are you growing older?” Being in the middle of one of those birthday clumps in my own family and also in my extended family, it has become quite apparent to me lately, that we are all getting older. There is no choice in that, but growing older sounds so much more progressive in a healthy way. Growing older puts me in mind of a stately old tree that has weathered many storms and yet still reaches for the sky with young, earnest branches, even with its roots running deep and spread far out. Getting older sounds so much more passive and resigned, like a frumpy old piece of furniture, decaying just by sitting there and doing nothing.

But enough of that . . . . Today I have a few new exhibits for our thought museum here at Adulting – Second Half. Most of these exhibits belong in the same room. They center around the idea of “intuition.” Intuition is less, “What do you think about this?” and more, “What do you feel about this?” Here are the exhibits:

+ “Intuition is the sum of all of the times you’ve ever trusted yourself.” The paradox of this is, the more that you trust yourself, the stronger your intuition.

+ “Your path is more well-lighted than you have been allowing yourself to realize.” – Esther Hicks

+ “Having a fear of things going wrong is totally normal, but it’s not the same as having intuition or information that things will go wrong.” – Jessica Lanyandoo So, in other words, do not confuse fear for intuition. Intuition is generally calmer, quieter, clearer, less mutable and more confident than fear.

+ “Prayer is not asking. It is the longing of the soul. . . . It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” – Mahatma Ghandi

+ “There is a close relationship between truth and trust.” – Mister Rogers

+ “Honesty: When your outer expression matches your inner belief. Truth: When your inner belief matches reality.” – Alan Cohen

+ “Are you listening to yourself or are you listening to the story you told yourself?”

Think of all of the times in your life, when you “just knew.” You didn’t always follow that “just knowing”, but the times that you did follow it, even when it was hard, even when it went against logic or others’ opinions, you were so happy that you listened to yourself. Then there are the times which we all can recall, when we didn’t follow our intuition, and it lead us to some regret. But the beautiful thing is, our intuition never gives up on us. It never gets snide and stubborn, angrily folding its arms, blasting us with, “You never listen to me! So forget it. I’ll never help you again.” Our intuition is always there, with its calm, sweet, all-knowing, quiet, wise demeanor inside of us, like a well-spring, or a candlelight that never gets extinguished, always ready to help lead us, even when we ignored it 14 times in a row. Our intuition will happily lead us to the next right step again and again and again, without admonishing us for disregarding it. What a lovely, unconditional gift implanted inside each one of us! Have you checked in with your intuition today?

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

Blessings

+ Yesterday was our daughter’s birthday and she happens to be visiting us. We had a delightful day together, mixing in shopping, eating and errands. It’s been my favorite Monday of the year so far. We did her birthday “freebie” tour and loaded up on treats from Starbucks, Sephora, Panera and others. When she was a little girl (our daughter turned 22 yesterday, so her “little girl stage” was definitely a little while ago) and I’d be taking her along for chores and errands on her various birthdays, she never failed to chirp out to anyone in earshot that it was her birthday. And she always ended up with a pile of smiles, treats and well-wishes, even before she had a phone full of apps offering birthday surprises. This unabashadley accepting the deserved joy of her birthday, is a long-standing tradition that I hope that my one and only little girl, keeps up for the rest of her life. Joy is free, and it is here for the taking.

+ I know that the blog has been quiet lately. I’m in one of my “soaking it all up” stages in life. With our two sons’ weddings and our daughter’s college graduation quickly approaching, I’ve done everything that I can to internally slow down and to make sure that I am capturing what these “moments before” really look like, feel like, and seem like, to me, both externally and internally. I’ve been trying to capture the entire picture in slow motion, and to sit with it all in gratitude and wonder. Soaking it all up feels like a giant crescendo or wave, filled with emotion, memories, perceptions, hopes, fears, surprise, pride . . . . it’s like taking the biggest swallow of life that you’ve taken in a long time, and trying to just hold it in your mouth for the amazing flavor of it all, before it is just another bite from just another banquet of your life, finished and left to digest as a memory. “Soak it all up” moments are so ripe and poignant, aren’t they? Sometimes they are bigger than the events that mark the turning points. I imagine that these past winter Olympians felt so much more in the awe and the build-up of the opening ceremonies, than even when the medals were given out. I think that we humans inherently know to slow down and to soak up so much when we are babies, and when we are elders, and during all of the times in our lives that clearly demarcate a before/after. We soak up all of “the before”, in order to take in as much of it as we possibly can, so as to better bring it forward and to assimilate it, into the still unknown of the soon-arriving after.

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

Amen!

I have always thought that everyone is an artist (despite so many people proclaiming not to be) and each individual life is a unique mark on our world. Our routines, how we dress, how we decorate our homes, how we socialize, how we process our thoughts and emotions, etc. is our own unique signature on this shared canvas/mural of life here on Earth. Unique is the key word here. Life isn’t meant to be performed. It is meant to be lived. Life is meant to be lived authentically and completely true to the deepest depths of our own individual souls. That’s when our lives get transformed into breathtaking art.

I used to write this blog every single day of my life, for years, because I felt compelled to do it. For years and years, writing this blog daily felt as necessary to me as food and water. I think that this is because writing is how I best process my experiences and my thoughts and my emotions which evolve from all of my experiences. And, believe me, I had a lot of “backlog” to process. But then, somewhere down the line, writing the blog on a daily basis slowly morphed into becoming more of a required chore, an expectation of myself that I projected onto others, whom I didn’t want to let down. Writing the blog on a daily basis started to feel like a pressure, and something that I forced, no matter what. (For good or bad, stubborness is enormous part of my own individual “art.”) Writing the blog on a daily basis became part of a rigid, cage-like structure that I had created for myself. And in my experience, structure inhibits flow. And that’s sad, because the real magic is ALWAYS found in the flow.

If you are reading this and you are feeling “stuck” in some part of your life, give yourself permission to switch it up. As Peta Kelly says, “Get up and live.” Your material is from living. Your creation is your life. And our shared canvas, needs your unique stamp. It’s not the same without it.

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

Happy Women’s Day!

This excerpt is from an email from Larissa Loden jewelry. It is too good to not be placed in the archives here:

“Let’s celebrate things women did this year (and continue to do) that didn’t make the headlines.

Started businesses from kitchen tables and spare bedrooms. Ran for school board to protect libraries and classrooms. Left toxic relationships and rebuilt their lives from scratch. Raised kids, worked jobs and held entire families together, sometimes all in the same day.

Started therapy. Set boundaries. Chose themselves. Remembered everyone’s birthday and planned the entire group trip. Showed up for friends going through hard things. Advocated for themselves at work when it would’ve been easier to stay quiet.

Made career changes after years of feeling stuck. Kept households running while also building careers. Supported other women without keeping score. Did the invisible labor that makes everything else possible.

The world runs on women doing things no one notices, but know that we see you.“

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

You, When You’re 90

I’m writing in the middle of the day which I rarely do. Typically I choose to write, right after my first cup of coffee. I like to do what I like to do best, first thing. Still, I just had to come right away to my Thought Museum a.k.a. Adulting – Second Half, in order to add a link to the best article which I have read in a long, long time. I’ll put the link at the end of this blog post. This article reminded me a little bit of an experience that I had last week, on a four hour plane ride. When I was on the airplane, I sat next to a lovely, elegant, regal woman who turned out be in her late seventies, although you would never have guessed that she was even close to that age. This lady first caught my attention when she and her husband (who so clearly adored her) arrived at my row. Since we were sitting in a roomier exit row, I lazily tried to just swing my legs to the side so that they could get through, and she looked at me and she said, “Aren’t you going to get up?”

Now how this woman said this to me was not said in a bitchy nor angry nor indignant tone at all. It was more a calm, assured statement of her own self-worth and dignity. I felt embarrassed and also impressed at the same time. (This situation put me in mind of a marketing professor whom I had as an instructor in college, who also happened to be one of the first black women to graduate with an MBA from Harvard University. She would peer out over us sloppy, hungover students in out stained sweatshirts with disgust, and then the professor would proclaim that she refused to lecture slouches, so we were to sit up straight and attentive in our chairs before she would begin.) Of course, I got up. The woman was right. Thankfully, my row partner held no ill-will towards me and we soon got into a long conversation. Interestingly, this woman had lived a fascinating life, with homes on both coasts. She showed me pictures of her two children (her son happened to be a basketball coach at a major university) and her two grandchildren whom she adored. This woman talked about her long career in hospital administration and how her friends from work still flew out to visit her, and to enjoy some hijinks at her west coast home in Las Vegas. She repeated many times that all of her many friends tended to be a good deal younger than her, as the younger ones were the only ones who could match her energy. The woman bragged about having eight Christmas trees which she happily decorated every single year. But then, my fascinating travel companion’s face turned dark and ashen, as she turned the conversation to her current crisis. It turns out, this energy-filled dynamo of a woman was terrified to die. Coming from a large family, three of her siblings had recently died in rapid succession (one died in a terrible traffic accident), and it filled her with panic and dread. She told me that she loved living so much, that she couldn’t bear the thought of death. This was starting to cause problems, as she couldn’t sleep for fear of dying in her sleep. She stayed upright on her couch every night versus lying on her bed. She even started attending therapy because she (and her loved ones) realized that she was falling into a pit of anxiety, stress and depression, all for the fear of death. I tried to just listen with empathy but also I assured her that I had probably never met such an alive person in my entire life, and with all of that energy and vitality, I believed that she still had a long life yet to come. I gently reminded her that we were all going to die, but she was one of the smart ones who really put her “all” into living, so perhaps when her time came to pass, she wouldn’t feel many regrets. The lady seemed to consider these thoughts and then we moved on, to looking at pictures of her many casino payouts. She claimed to be a particularly lucky gambler.

This was the long way around to the part where I share the link to the inspiring article I mentioned, by Karen Salmansohn, in which the 65-year-old author has a coffee meeting with her 90-year-old self. (One quote from the article that I wrote in my inspirational notebook: “Inspiration is what you call anger after you’ve made it socially acceptable.”) You can read the article here (even if you don’t choose to read it, the premise of having a conversation with your elderly self is certainly worth some time and consideration, don’t you think?):

https://notsalmon.substack.com/p/my-90-year-old-self-stopped-by-with?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

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

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This was a big weekend for the world. Disclaimer: I will never turn this into a political blog. If anything, I want this space to be a break from all things turbulent and divisive out in the big, bad world. That being said, just a couple of months in, this year is already proving to be a year full of provocations. In the end, all provocations tend to stoke two big, big fires, sometimes at the same time. These fires are Love and Fear.

I read a really good reminder over the weekend. It said: “Let your emotions inform you, not control you.” When you say, “I am angry”, that is not correct. You are the person feeling the emotion of anger. You are feeling anger. What is that anger telling you? What is that anger informing you of? What direction do you want your anger to take you in? Do not give Anger the reigns. Anger is just a feeling. Do not let Anger or Fear or even positive emotions like Joy and Elation take the lead or stoke them to the point of being overwhelmed or overtaken by them. Use your emotions as informants. Use your emotions as navigation tools. Invite your emotions to the table, along with reason, and reliable factual information and the ability to explore other perspectives. And most importantly, give this meeting of all of your emotions, your reason, the facts, and respected viewpoints, the gift of time in order to process any situation. In short, play the long game.

Last week, I had a conversation with my daughter about something that she was upset about and like so many mothers, I became as upset as she had been, because as mothers, we don’t like to see our babies upset. We tend to swallow up their emotions into the storm of our own emotions and then Heaven help anyone who is in the vicinity of Hurricane Mama Bear. But the truth is, my daughter had already stewed on the situation for a few days, and her emotions were already dissipating. Reason and Perspective had made inroads into the conversation. She was already at Step 5, when she introduced me to her upset. I, just learning about her situation, was immediately blown in the storm of Step 1, where emotion is so turbulent and so overwhelming, that you tend to forget that you aren’t actually the storm, you are just feeling the effects of the storm. Today, after a few days of exploring what my feelings were trying to tell me, I am also at a final stage of processing the situation. I am feeling calm. (Notice that I didn’t write “I am calm.” Calm is a feeling, not an identity.) I understand the nuances and the complexity of the situation. The initial “sting” has worn off and I see a path forward for my daughter and for myself, that includes adjusted expectations, grace, a focus on the long game, and a reminder of the importance of healthy boundaries and direct communication.

“You can’t control the waves, but you can learn to surf.” – Unknown

“When awareness is brought to an emotion, power is brought to your life.” – Tara Meyer Robson

“Don’t make permanent decisions off of temporary emotions.” – Unknown

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