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Easy Friday

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

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Good morning! You have landed on Friday! What a wonderful place to be! On Fridays, I keep it light and airy and on the surface. On Fridays, here at the blog, I call it “Favorite Thing Friday” and I list a thing or two (songs, books, products, foodstuff, etc.) that has made my life more interesting and fun. Please check out more favorites from previous Friday posts and please share some of your own favorites in my Comments section.

I’m feeling really good and lighter this morning. Last night was the high school tennis banquet, and as the de facto team mom, I was mostly in charge of planning and executing. It went really well. It was a warm, special night for my daughter and her coach and her teammates and their parents and we all enjoyed it a lot, and now, it is off my plate and out of my mind. Phew! One of my most favorite feelings in life is that of satisfaction and relief! And I have been cycling through those feelings a lot lately, as my daughter’s senior year in high school is quickly coming to its close. It’s exhilarating and exhausting. Emotional fatigue is real. Thank you, weekend, for arriving just in time!!!

One of my favorite accounts on Twitter is wise connector (@wiseconnector). Today he asked his followers to list instantly recognizable lines from movies. If you don’t think that writing is all that important nor makes much of an impact, that thought will change when you see some of these iconic lines that have become part of our everyday vernacular. Wouldn’t you love to be the writer who whenever he or she hears one of these lines, smiles knowingly to themselves, and say, “Yep, I wrote that line! That was me.” Here are some of these famous movie lines. I am sure that you can come up with plenty more:

“I’ll be back.”

“I’ll have what she’s having.”

“Show me the money!”

“I’ll be your huckleberry.”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

“You had me at hello.”

“You can’t handle the truth!”

“Life is like a box of chocolates . . . .you’ll never know what you’re going to get.”

“I’ll give you an offer that you can’t refuse.”

“Things you own, end up owning you.”

“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

And here is my favorite material thing of the day. I was in one of my favorite Ace Hardware stores. By the way, I love Ace Hardware stores. They make me feel like I am stepping back in time a little bit. From the people in red jackets that pop out of everywhere and who make you feel like they actually do want to help you, to their beautiful flower selections, and on to their giant, kitschy, impulse item section right by their registers (that area was created for people like me), I just love Ace Hardware stores. Anyway, speaking of the impulse buy section, the other day, they had a whole stand of really adorable, stylish, yet sturdy readers. These readers are made by a company called Optimum Optical. My favorite pair that I purchased (yes, I purchased more than one) is a chunky blue pair of readers that reminds me of the glasses Oprah Winfrey seems to wear a lot. The style of the blue pair is called “Metropolitan.” They also come with a really nice pouch that doubles as a lens cleaner and they were only $16.99 each.

And I’ll end today’s post with this:

” Good Morning, and if I don’t see ya, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Night!” (The Truman Show)

The World Becomes Whole

Are you overwhelmed? Are you feeling engulfed with things going on in your personal life, like your job, your personal relationships, your health, etc.? Are you feeling submerged by all of the emotionally charged world events, seemingly popping out of the news exponentially Every. Single. Day.? Today, it’s time to take all of these things that are overwhelming you, and tidily sweep them into the corner. Don’t worry about the size of the pile. Let it all sit in the corner. Breathe. Just breathe. Tell your Higher Power that you have a big old nasty pile in the corner, and that you don’t feel like you have it in you to handle anything right now. Look outside your window. Listen to the calming sounds around you. The same Higher Intelligence which created the Universe, and everything in it, is connected to you. A small part of this overall force of Love and Eternity and Creativity resides inside of you. You are a droplet of the Ocean of All That Is. If you don’t believe that this Force, which created everything which you see, and feel, and hear, and smell, taste and touch, can’t handle that pile of your frustrations in the corner, than you don’t have the right sense of awe and humility about the sun, and the stars, and the planets, and animals, and grass, and trees, and the oceans, and butterflies and children and the things that children create themselves. I understand that you may not believe in God in a religious sense, but would you ever go into a museum, and look and gaze and gasp at the most incredible painting which you have ever seen, and ask the curator, “Who imagined, and then created and painted this unbelievably beautiful work of art?” And the curator says to you, “Nobody. Nobody created it.” Would you honestly believe that curator???

Keep all of that mess and dirt in that corner, and know that if you, my little droplet, have a part to play in the clean up, you’ll be guided to do it, by your still, small, voice coming from that droplet of the Universe that resides inside of you (“this little light of mine”). Otherwise, the Painter of the Universe has got “this.” You don’t need to concern yourself with “all of the troubles of the world.” The Benevolent Oceanic Force who created the whole damn thing, is immensely more powerful than any of us little droplets could ever imagine (even the little droplets “in suits” and “in power” and “in uniforms” and “in robes” who have stayed small and lost and scared, and have forgotten the bigger picture from where they came from, and where they will return) Stay in the stream, friends. Ride the waves. Today, stay with the almighty part of you that is eternal, peaceful, intelligent, creative Love. When we all do this, the world becomes whole.

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

Sick Day

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credit: Rex Masters, Twitter

I think that I have rabies. No, I’m kidding. I don’t have rabies. (sorry to be insensitive to those who have, or who have had rabies. The shot in the stomach sounds terrifying. Is that stomach shot thing true or is that just an urban myth?) I am just having one of those weeks where it is truly astounding to me that it is only Wednesday morning. I am exhausted. My body is barking at me. My mind is melting, and my spirit is a little spent. Nothing truly bad has happened to me, there’s just a lot happening in my world, all at once, and my overall essence is rebelling. So, friends, today, I am calling in sick from the blog before I become incredibly annoying. See you tomorrow!

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

The Good, Smart, Strong Ones

Like so many others, I was deeply disheartened to hear the news that Naomi Judd, the famous country music singer and other half of The Judds, had taken her own life over the weekend. Naomi took her own life days before The Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Naomi Judd suffered crippling depression and she brought a lot of attention to mental issues and depression and anxiety, by using her fame as a voice to these issues, in the way of writing books and doing interviews on the subject for many years.

Naomi Judd was the mother of Wynonna Judd, her partner in The Judds singing duo, and of Ashley Judd, a movie star, activist (one of the forerunners to bringing Harvey Weinstein to justice), and a person devoted to humanitarian work. Ashley Judd also has a degree from Harvard University.

All three Judd women suffered awful abuse from their childhoods on, but I remember being really interested about the Judds and their lives, when Ashley Judd wrote her memoir All That Is Bitter and Sweet, about a decade ago. With this book, she brought a rarely heard voice of empathy, of kindness, of being understood, of validation, to “strong women”, those women who are “too good”, “too smart”, “too together” to show their pain, their weaknesses, their flaws, or their needs to the world. See this excerpt:

“I needed help,” the 38-year-old actress tells the magazine in its August issue. “I was in so much pain.”

Judd, the daughter of country music star Naomi Judd, says she entered the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap in February for “codependence in my relationships; depression, blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings.”

“But because my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn’t have known to seek treatment. At Shades of Hope, my behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag.”

Judd says she was visiting her sister, singer Wynonna Judd, who was being treated for food addictions.

“When (the counselors) approached me about treatment, they said, `No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you’re too smart and together. But you (and Wynonna) come from the same family – so you come from the same wound.‘ No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound,” she says.

(from an interview Ashley Judd gave to Glamour magazine in 2011)

I don’t mean to alienate my male readers. I see you, too. I see the “good guys” out there who take it all on the chin and keep on going like Energizer bunnies. To all of my strong, good, smart, “have it all together” female and male readers out there, I see you. I understand you. I empathize with you. It’s admirable how you handle your pain, your life, and your hurts. It’s not easy. You may not emote about them, nor act out on them, as much as some others do. But you have them. Your human, living a human life, in vivid, erratic times. Your hurts, your pains, your needs, are every bit as valid and important, as anyone else’s in this world. You don’t have to be steel all of the time. You can cry. You can let it all out. You can let others know that you need to be held, and to be carried sometimes, too. You are lovable as the whole package of you. You aren’t loved just because you are fierce, and capable, and reliable and giving. You may be admired for those traits, but you are wholly loved for all of you – the whole package. Let yourself be vulnerable. Let yourself be authentic. When you do this, you won’t fall apart. In fact, you will never feel stronger in your life, than when you allow yourself to welcome, and to get to know the whole of you (even the parts that you deem to be “negative” or “bad” or “weak” or “flawed”), as you fall into the loving arms of the Universe. You will be caught by the strength of pure Love, that has never, ever let you go in the first place. You are never alone. I hope that today, if you needed to read this, oh strong, amazing, dependable one, that you hear it as if it were a message from God above, and it reverberates all of the way down to the depths of your soul, and it stays there for eternity. Every part of you is loved. You are whole and you are loved. You are amazing, all the way around.

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

Monday – Funday

Friendship checklist list:

– values you

– accepts you

– includes you

– protects you

– respects you

– supports you

– believes in you

– encourages you

– understands you

credit: @Mindset4_Life (Twitter)

I sent this to a few of my great friends last night. I’m extremely lucky to have some amazingly good friends in my life who hit all of these marks. Do you have good friends? Are you a good friend? Looking at the list, I thought to myself, no wonder why we love our dogs so much. No wonder why the dog is called “man’s best friend.”

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

Soul Sunday

Good morning! Happy May Day! Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit (represents good luck on the first day of any month for superstitious people like me) We have had an eventful weekend. My daughter truly enjoyed herself at her senior prom last night, and today we are bringing home our youngest son from his university for the summer. I haven’t had too much time to focus my mind on writing poetry. My brain seems stuck on “to-do” lists lately. My regular readers know that my blog is all about poetry on Sundays. Poetry is the language of the soul. Poetry is each of our own personal languages. Write yourself a poem today. You won’t regret it. I’ll probably doodle a poem on the way home from the university later this evening. But since I must get on the road soon, here is a poem I found on the internet that marks the merry month of May. May is a special, gentle, kind, warm month, isn’t it? It lovingly marks so many beautiful endings like graduations, and the end of spring, but also exciting, happy beginnings like the delicious, anticipatory start of summer. Here is today’s poem:

May And The Poets - May And The Poets Poem by James Henry Leigh Hunt

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

The Nail Lady

Yesterday, I got a pedicure. And the technician was someone I have seen in the shop, but she had never done my nails before. As she was working on my feet, my nail technician got to telling me her life story. It turns out that she was one of the Vietnamese boat people who came over to the United States in the 1970s. She was nine-years-old. Her parents put her on the boat with a young woman she barely knew, who was to marry the nail technician’s brother. Her parents had eleven children and they wanted something better for them, than the communists had to offer in Vietnam at the time. My nail technician said it took three months to cross the ocean. She started out in Beaumont, Texas. She said that at the time, there were very few Asians in Texas, so they formed a tight community there, with other Vietnamese immigrants. Her brother and his wife took care of her until she married a man who had also come over from her village and they moved to Florida. My nail technician and her husband had five children during their marriage, but unfortunately, her husband died of a sudden heart attack tens years ago. She told me that he was the love of her life, and for the first year after his death, she wouldn’t even let herself accept that he was gone. But she said, she always keeps busy. She has five children to raise as a single mother! And she told me her children are all doing well. Two are in college, one is in medical school, and two are still at home. I told her that she might be one of the bravest people I have ever met. She just giggled softly. She told me that she is feisty, but she just feels lucky. She feels so lucky to live in the United States.

I am one of those people in life who other people have the tendency to tell me their life stories. I think this is because I am a curious person. I’m interested. I have learned that everyone has a story. And honestly everyone’s story is fascinating and intriguing in its own way. I have also learned that it is often the people who do the everyday behind the scenes/service jobs who have the most incredible stories of all that I have ever heard. I have learned in life that it is often the royalty of the world who are serving meals, cleaning houses, and tending gardens for the rest of us paupers. These people are typically more courageous, more hopeful, more determined and yet, more grateful than almost anybody would or could imagine, or even hope to be themselves. I feel so lucky to understand this about people. Listening to people’s stories is humbling and awestriking, all at the same time.

Maya Norton on Twitter: ""Do you know a foreign accent is? It's a sign of # bravery." Exactly! Via @TuttleSinger #Refugees #Immigrants #Quotes https://t.co/BnyO4CZWNo" / Twitter
LIRS | Quotes About Immigrants and Refugees | From Presidents to Poets

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

Herd It’s Friday

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Good morning! Welcome to the lightest, airiest, “okay, now you can breathe out” day of the week! I LOVE Fridays! On Fridays, I list one, or sometimes even a few, of my favorite things. The things in life are what make life interesting, and material, and a tactile, sensory experience. Before I get to my favorite thing for today, I have a little personal story about sea anemone earrings. A while ago, I purchased perhaps the least expensive thing you could ever buy from Scully & Scully, a longstanding, staid, high-end store in New York City, that’s been around since 1934. I think I purchased probably a small set of coasters, or perhaps maybe even just one coaster, but ever since then, I get their catalogs and their online store pops up on my feed. For instance today, some offerings popped up on my Google, showing me a beautiful Meissen tureen for the bargain price of $125,000. (but does it come with free shipping?) Anyway, it’s a fun store to “window shop.” (If you like Herend figurines, they carry the entire line, and some.) The other day, as I was perusing the internet, and Scully & Scully popped up once again, suggesting that I might be interested in a pair of lovely $12,000 sea anemone earrings. They were gorgeous! And so unique! But sea anemone earrings are not what you call everyday wear, and I have two kids in college, and “good earrings” make me nervous because if I lose one, I’ll be sick about it for months, and I am not Kris Kardashian – I don’t have $12,000 to blow on sea anemone earrings, nor would I ever spend $12,000 on sea anemone earrings, because even if I were filthy rich, my ingrained midwestern sensibilities, practicalities and self judgments would intercede firmly and fiercely. But, man oh man, did I want me a pair of sea anemone earrings!! So guess what? I went to eBay, and Mercari, and the like, and I started feverously scrolling for sea anemone earrings and I found a really cute lime green pair made by Betsey Johnson for around $20, and I love them! And if I only wear them three times in my whole life before I lose one, I can live with that fact. And the point of my long winded story?! Go after what you want. Don’t get fixated on “THE one and only particular solution” to anything in life (i.e. job, person, house, college, vacation spot etc.) There are all sorts of “sea anemone earrings” out there, that will please you, and that will suit your particular needs and wants. Be open to what the Universe has to serve! Explore and enjoy!

On that note, I even have another bonus favorite for today, before I get to my real favorite. This is a favorite household tip. (insert my husband and children guffawing – housekeeping has never been my strong suit). If you have a clothes washer that tends to get smelly (ours is one of those. Years of washing six active, sweaty people’s clothes on a daily basis lends to pure stanky smelliness), pour a bottle of Listerine in it and run a cycle. The Listerine kills the bacteria that makes the washer smelly and the smell goes away instantly and you have a fresh, clean washer. I bought a drugstore brand version of mouthwash for $4, ran it in my washer, and it did the trick, after years of wasting money on “magic formulas” made specifically to clean washers which never worked. I found this household tip on one of my days of getting a little lost in clickbait (instead of doing laundry), and it turns out, the tip is a gamechanger. Enjoy!

Finally, here’s my real favorite of the day. I am fortunate to have a wonderful herd of elephants in my life. Actually, I am fortunate enough to have a few herds whom I rely on, when I lose my way. Do you? This is from the website that describes what these beautiful elephant ornaments really mean:

In the wild, female elephants are known as fierce protectors. They literally form a circle around sisters who are hurting or grieving. And often, they will kick dirt up around her to mask the scent of suffering…in turn, keeping her safe from predators.

And yet, we are the same. This is what we do. This is who we are. And this is who we are meant to be for each other. We all have elephants in our lives. Sometimes we are the ones in the middle, and sometimes we’re on the outside kicking up dirt with fierce, fierce love. But the circle remains.

The ornaments are as lovely as their sentiments. You can buy your herds some here as a way of letting them know how much you love and appreciate them:

Stainless "Friendship/Sisterhood" Elephant Ornament

And that is it for this Friday! Thank you for being one of my herds, dear readers! I hope that I have helped you in times that I have not been hurting and grieving, but feeling strong and positive. You have always surrounded me in times that I need it, and for that I am forever grateful. Have a wonderful weekend!

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

Prisoners

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What has you imprisoned? Now you may scoff and say, “Nothing has me imprisoned. I am a free thinker from a free country.” But, if we are honest with ourselves, we all have the things in our lives that imprison us. And usually, we don’t even realize this fact until usually some life crisis or a big change in our lives happen that makes us do a whole lot more self examination than we typically take the time to do, on a daily basis. (This is the hidden blessing of crises. Crises make us get really real with our own selves, if we want to rise out of our crises, like a phoenix from the fire. Otherwise we just succumb to difficulties and wonder “why me?”)

What is imprisoning you? Your financial obligations? Your lifestyle? Your daily habits or even addictions? Your need to please others? Your concern about image and what other people think about you? Your religious/political beliefs that may have been imposed upon you as a child – have you ever really examined these beliefs to see if they really are truly your own beliefs? Your sense of duty? Do your fears about the future, or your regrets about the past imprison you, keeping you frozen and catatonic? Your need to be “right”? Your beliefs about “others” and what they think and do? What about your beliefs about yourself, do they imprison you by making you stay in a certain “mold”, a mold that maybe you never intentionally created, but was fitted for you by someone else, or even by society?

What has you imprisoned? Where do you feel free in your life, and where do you feel stuck? Are the choices which you are making in your life, truly the right ones for you? You are the key, to get out of the prisons of your own making. We all have prisons that we have created for ourselves, and we all have the keys to get out of them. However, it is impossible to escape from a prison that you don’t admit that you are in, in the first place. Don’t be your own jailer. Make the changes in your life, that you need and want to make. These changes are your keys out of prison. Self awareness and courage will bring you to the ability to make changes, which will ultimately bring you to your freedom – your freedom to be the ultimate expression of your own true self.

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

The Much Needed Thread

I’ve been a little down the last couple of weeks. I was involved in a fender bender that seems to be taking on a life of its own, I’m feeling a lot of bittersweetness with all of the endings my youngest child is experiencing at the end of her senior year of high school, and there have been some dark and sad events occurring in our extended family. In short, my normal, everyday cheerfulness has felt a little more forced than it usually does. I’ve even gotten a little cynical, wondering if people are even kind anymore. But then, the Universe worked its magic (as it always does, look for the messages – they are always there):

This morning, after quickly scanning the news headlines, which helped to create an even sicker pit in my stomach, I started scrolling through Twitter and I happened upon a Tweet where a woman remembered and recounted a kindness that had happened to her on the NYC subway. It was late at night, she had just gotten on to the train, realizing that in her haste, she had dropped her keys which were connected to her wallet. A stranger, seeing this happen, quickly grabbed the keys and the wallet and hurled them on to the train, which landed right next to her, just as the doors to the subway were closing. She said that she thinks of this stranger and his quick thinking/acting and kindness often. This post has started an amazing thread that you can check out at the Tweeter’s Twitter handle (@amandamull). Amanda posted her story less than a day ago and already it has over 1000 comments, connected to it, telling similar stories of wonderful kindnesses strangers had done for other people. People talked about people going out of their way to return wallets, men who protected vulnerable young women, people going out of their way to show people directions, while being lost in foreign countries, people helping pregnant women stay steady, people paying for things or giving things away with smiles on their faces, people helping turtles flip over and cross busy roads, etc. One story that really brought a lump in my throat, was of a woman who had just found out that her three-year old child was diagnosed with leukemia. She was sitting on a bench outside of a concert hall crying. A teenager, who was attending the concert, saw her crying, and sat down on the bench with her, and for at least 10 minutes, cried with her. What I gleaned from this thread, is that it doesn’t take much to make a difference in a person’s life – a difference that they never forget. One man, David Lyall, wrote this:

“I grew up in NYC. One day I was walking to school, maybe I was 12, my Dad had died a couple of years before, life was dark and I was depressed, and I looked over my shoulder and saw a young woman smiling an encouraging smile at me from the back of a bus.”

A smile, friends. A smile. How easy it is to give away a smile, and yet how much it can mean to someone! A smile.

Deep into this wonderful Twitter thread, I saw this exchange:

“nothing gets you high like an anonymous act of kindness

Giving and getting”

The people who were recounting their stories were not just on the receiving end of benevolence. People proudly wrote about kind and generous deeds that they had done for others. This reminded me of the time that I’ll never forget, when my late father-in-law framed a thank you letter that he had received from a stranded young woman, whose car tire, he had stopped and changed. He was so proud of his act and the beautiful note which she had written to him. He sheepishly said, “See, I’m not such a bad guy.”

When you go to read this growing thread on Twitter, I’ll forewarn you that there are a few stories of ungratefulness and haughtiness and nastiness, but overwhelmingly, the stories being told and remembered and recounted, are feel-good stories, the kind of stories that make you want to live by the mantra, “Be the reason someone believes in good people.”

I have to say that reading these stories made me remember countless kindnesses shown to me along the way, as well as many times which I can proudly boast of me or one of my family members doing benevolent acts for others. Right now, I am filled with more positive, loving energy than I have felt in weeks. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Luke Bryan: I Believe Most People are Good | Country music quotes, Luke bryan quotes lyrics, Country song quotes

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