+ My husband and I have dubbed Mondays to be “Miss You Monday” because after a weekend of having fun, palling around together, doing whatever we please in the moment, Mondays sometimes feel a little quiet and lonely and too serious, to both of us. We miss each other, especially on Mondays. Of course once my husband fully retires and we are always palling around together, maybe we will both become a little winsome for some more time apart. Mondays in retirement may be dubbed “Miss You, Monday”. Who knows? But for now, it’s still “Miss You Monday”, honey.
+ I read that there is a resurgence of interest in “Grandma Hobbies” such as quilting, baking, knitting, etc. in even the youngest of generations. The article suggested that this current fad is due to examples shared on social media, and then ironically, from a desire to escape all things tech/screens/social media and get back to the very humanistic ability to use our hands to create. Apparently, the more technology grows, the more our desire to explore our humanity amplifies. The pendulum always swings.
+ Over the weekend, I was reading a book by Jaime Zuckerman about “finding your calm.” In the book she suggests doing an exercise which entails listing all of your relationships into these four categories: Family, Work, Friends, Romantic. She then says to take each name, and put them in circles, all surrounding a circle in the center, with your own name in it. Connect a line to your circle from each circle. Zuckerman calls this the Relationship Roadmap. Now, on each of your lines, rate each relationship as (+) Positive, (=) Neutral, or (-) Toxic. This gives you a real visual of your relationships. Is there a way to let go of, or at least put bigger boundaries around your toxic relationships? How could your neutral relationships be improved? Jerry Wise, a pastor and therapist, says to ask yourself, “If this person stays exactly as they are right now, what would my relationship with that person look like?“ (Wise claims that most of the times that people come to him for couples therapy, they are looking for tricks to change the other person, and that is just not possible. You can only change yourself.) When I did this Relationship Roadmap exercise, I was pleased to see that I didn’t have any toxic relationships on my road map. For most of my life, this wasn’t always the case. Jerry Wise says to use this mantra, “I do not need toxic people in my life. I DO need inner peace.” The older I get, the more I understand the value of inner peace. It’s okay to keep your circle small.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.