In a time period in history, where “service to self” seems to be the common theme, it is an honor to pay our greatest respects to amazing people who give themselves to something bigger than themselves. Is there anything more brave, selfless, honorable than this? Veterans, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
As a mother of three sons, early on, I started considering how I would be a good, kind, interesting mother-in-law so that my adult kids would still want to come around. Our youngest child is our daughter and of course, I want to be a good mother-in-law to her spouse, too, but for many reasons, the stereotype of bad mother-in-laws always seems to be related to mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws.
I read an article that the above Tik Tok went viral recently. And honestly, I believe that the Tik Toker’s advice is good to heed, in order to have excellent relationships with anybody, not just in-laws. “Fill your own damn cup.” If you rely on other people, your relationships, your roles and your “image” for your own happiness, you will be chasing your tail forever, never achieving it. It is our job as humans to fill our own damn cups. And when we fill our own damn cups, we feel happy, and satisfied, and engaged with life. And thus, we are pleasures to be around. We are not eeking dissatisfaction, anger, neediness and resentment that leads to controlling, and guilt-tripping and utilizing aggressive and passive aggressive behavior.
In other words, it is our job in life to be joyful. And joyfulness comes from within. No one else can give us joy, and we should not allow others to steal our joy. We should share our joy, which if we are doing life right, our joy should be bubbling over our filled cups. When we do this, we become delightful, interesting, engaging friends, spouses, parents, in-laws, neighbors, cousins, children, people. Here are some quotes that have struck me in their wisdom for decades and I have shared them on the blog before but they bear repeating:
“No. The most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself. Once you have that, any other relationship becomes a plus and not a must — and, therefore it becomes luxury, and that is important. The relationship should be a plus, not a must.” – Diane Von Furstenberg
“I don’t think the parent and child should be so intimate that it becomes a jail for the child. I’ve tried to help my children to become themselves.” – Paloma Picasso
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” – Kahlil Gibran
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Maybe this is just in my mind, but my experience in going about my daily chores yesterday, is that we women were just a little teeny bit kinder to each other. There was a little more sweetness, a little more understanding and a little more compassion felt for one another. I sensed it. Deeply.
No matter what your politics are, and no matter who you voted for, as women, earlier this week, we were on the brink of something none of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes before – an American woman as president. And I have to believe, that even in the most diehard Republican woman out there, there was at least a teeny, teeny part of her (that teeny part of her that was promised as a little girl that a woman can do anything), who found that idea exciting and hopeful and vindicating. And yet it was not to be . . . .
There is good that comes out of everything. Yesterday, I found a knowing kinship with other women (most of them strangers to me), that I honestly haven’t felt in a long time. And it was good.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I wasn’t going to write today. Today is a big, interesting, emotionally charged day in the history of our country. But then I saw this quote, and I had to make sure that it was kept in the annals of my blog. (I see my blog as my own personal “thought museum”). There are so many times, in the history of my own life, that my life has gotten better and bigger when I finally realized that I had been giving my own power away, and so I stopped doing it. I took control of my own life, and my own destiny. I started trusting my own inner compass, more than the noise and distractions outside of me. When you get these “a-ha” moments, much like Dorothy and her shoes, when she realized that she had the power within her all along to get home (to herself) and away from Oz, these realizations are shocking, upsetting, incredulous but then freeing and energizing and empowering. You are more powerful than you realize. Don’t give your power away. Stop letting your mind be your own enemy. Channel your own mind with the eternal wisdom of the life force within you. You are powerful. Step into it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Wow. I am really at an exhale point. And it feels so good. The extra hour of sleep could not have arrived at a better time. October was a month of distractions of major proportions for me – good ones (enjoyable visits with loved ones, and fun, energizing personal projects) and bad ones (two major hurricanes rolling through my town). And in my life, at least for now, things feel back to a little more even keel (not counting the crazy, suspenseful election and that’s all I will say about this. This is not a political page. There are countless ones of those all over the internet and in your neighborhood and on your TV and in your face – I think that one thing that we all can agree on, is that it will be really, really good for this presidential election to be done and over with.)
I’ve noticed that a life lesson that is really being drummed into me at this time in my life, is just how much I value accountability. Reliability, accountability, doing what you say you are going to do, no excuses, etc., etc. is really, really important to me. I’d much prefer “under promising and over-delivering” to anything else. I value kind, direct and honest communication. Thankfully, my closest family and friends are those people. My family and my friends are my rocks. Rarely am I disappointed by any of them. I have chosen wisely. I also try to be the same dependable and reliable person for the people in my life. If I say that I am going to do something, I do everything I can to stand by my word.
People who aren’t reliable often don’t have bad intentions. They are usually good people with good intentions, but are often not organized nor realistic. They tend to be people pleasers, who promise the moon, and think that they’ll figure out a solution to getting you the moon, later . . . . And then, what’s so hard in these situations is that often the disappointed party, ends up feeling like “the bad guy” for calling the unaccountable party out. Often times the person who gets let down feels badly for feeling disappointed and angry and frustrated. People who are manipulative snakes know what they are doing, and they don’t feel badly about leaving you in a lurch. (but the true, evil snakes of the world, are few and far between. Call me Pollyanna, if you will, but this has been my experience in my almost 54 years of life) So, the usual situation which I have experienced is a transaction between two good people who want a satisfactory experience, but one person is not good at living up to their word, and the other person has to keep lowering and lowering their expectations. And then it becomes sad and squirmy and an overall negative experience for all of the parties concerned.
I just had to get this out. Thank you for witnessing me, friends.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Today is my 30th wedding anniversary. I have known my husband since I was 18 years old. We met on my first weekend in college. I have spent my entire adult life with my husband. He is the most important person in my life and he always will be. I’m still very much in love with my husband. I believe that he is still in love with me. I understand that this is special. I understand that this is a rarity. I am totally, totally grateful.
My eldest son just got engaged. My second eldest son has been ring shopping (and I can say this because he and his girlfriend went ring shopping together). What has been my advice to my sons and their significant others for a long and happy marriage? Always, always put your “marriage” first. When you get married, the marriage becomes its own living entity. When you make your marriage the most important thing in your life, and you nurture it, and you believe in it, and you give it your highest attention and your energy, it will give you everything that you gave it, back in spades. (Now I realize that it takes two people who are willing to treat the marriage like a sacred child to raise and to adore and to be committed to in life, but if you do your part, and you believe that your spouse will do the same, then the battle is already won.)
Our married life hasn’t been perfect. Life isn’t perfect. However, my marriage has been the most vital part of 30 years of really good living. My marriage is my sanctuary, my comfort, my joy, my adventures, my framework for how I go about living my life. It’s been perfect for me.
J, thank you for choosing me. Thank you for believing in our sacred marriage as much as I do. Thank you for everything. I love you forever and ever and ever.
When I was shopping with my future daughter-in-law last week, she pointed out a poster of Hocus Pocus with a smile on her face. She told me that she loves that movie. I smiled to myself for a different reason. I immediately thought of my three aunts.
Now, I mean no disrespect to my aunts. My aunts are way more attractive, alluring, kind and interesting than the stereotypical, storybook witch. But to me, in my own inner version of what a witch is, my aunts fit the bill: magical, crafty, resilient, mysterious, wise, attuned to nature, assured in themselves, faithful to Life. My aunts have always been a fun, spoiling, soft spot in my life since I was a little girl, but as I have grown older they have also become my inspirations.
My (only) three aunts are all in their 70s, yet they stay fit and active and “with it.” They are adventuresome and confident. I call this year, “The Year of the Aunts”. This is the first year in a long while which I have experienced one-on-one visits with each of my aunts. This is a rarity. We all lead busy lives and we are all spread out in different states. One of my aunts even lives in a different country.
We women need each other (even as awful as we can be to each other), and we need each other in all forms. We need our female friends, sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, grandmothers, mentors, and aunts. Sometimes one of our female cohorts is more than just one of those things to us. We women are that powerful. We can be shapeshifters if need be. There is something unrepeatable in the strength at the core of a woman. We know this fact deeply and intimately, and we inevitably share the wells of this female strength and wisdom when we convene with each other.
I have always loved my aunts, but I didn’t realize until this past decade, how much I need them. I didn’t realize how much they teach me, just by being themselves. I didn’t realize the depth of the nourishment I get from each of them, and the familial care and concern they have always held for me, even when we are not with each other. I hope and pray, that I can be the same source of solidity and comfort for my nieces and nephews, in different stages of our lives. My own aunts have treated me, as if this was their sacred duty. Perhaps it is . . . .
Aunts, I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
So, I am back home and I am bone weary. And I am brain weary. We had a wonderful visit up north, celebrating the wedding engagement of our son and his fiance’, and enjoyed visiting other family members. We did some hiking on the Appalachian Trail. And also, we might as well have been hiking in New York City. (14,000 steps in one day) I was so busy with all of the fun and the action and getting home and getting organized and getting unpacked and getting our groceries replenished, that it is just now, when I have fully and completely realized that my mind and my body and my spirit have yet to process what we have collectively been through in my community. I am tired. I am quiet. I am taking a big exhale.
We moved to Florida for my husband’s job in 2011. We have been through many hurricanes since then, but only one other time did we decide to evacuate. (that was for Irma in 2017) People who aren’t Floridians watch the hysterical, oversized, 24/7 news stories about hurricanes and wonder why we all don’t just flee the state, and also wonder why we ever go back. It’s not that simple. Nothing ever is. People don’t evacuate their homes for hurricanes for many reasons: finances, pets, stubbornness, a perhaps false sense of security from past experiences, horrific traffic and gas shortages, the uncertainty of where a hurricane is going to hit despite the gigantic “cone of certainty” ominously pasted over the entire state of Florida, for every storm (there are many, many recounted stories of people evacuating to places that end up getting the worst of the storms. For instance, one acquaintance told us that she tried to escape Hurricane Helene by going to her dad’s cabin in Lake Lure, which is in the mountains of North Carolina, with her elderly grandmother and young child. You can imagine the rest of that story, a story that she will likely tell for the rest of her life. Sigh.)
Since living here since the summer of 2011, this is the worst that I have ever seen our own local communities hit by hurricanes. It is sad. It is horrific. The pictures that you are seeing on the news are not exaggerated. Helene flooded most of our coastal communities. People have piled their ruined belongings, furniture, carpeting, mattresses, drywall at the end of each driveway, or have dumped them on specified empty lots, where the piles of debris are growing up like instant, ugly little mountains. Right after Hurricane Helene, in less than two weeks, Hurricane Milton decided to stir the pot with ferocious winds and rains and tornadoes. The devastation is immense. Trees, and street lights, and billboards, fences, and people’s roofs have been tossed around like Milton was an angry three-year old, throwing around his legos.
And yet, the facts are, most of us are relatively unscathed. Most of us (in our county alone there is over a million people who live here) survived with our lives, and our homes mostly intact. Most of us had some small, inexpensive clean-ups and repairs to do, and maybe some raking up of some sticks and leaves in our yards. And so most of us, walk around with that sickly feeling of great relief which is mixed with some sad and empathetic survivor’s guilt, when we see what the hurricanes brought on to others less fortunate than us.
So why do we live in Florida? Why is my one small county densely packed with a million people? Why do we live with the fear of hurricanes every year, and why are we willing to pay four times the average cost of homeowners’ insurance compared to the rest of the country? You tell me. Why do you come to Florida for vacation? I bet almost everyone of you has been to Florida at least once. We have gorgeous beaches. We have amazing wildlife. We are surrounded by water everywhere. (and water is from whence we came) We get to experience beautiful sunshine almost every single day of our lives. We have something for everybody here. Florida is one of the few true melting pots, of the bigger melting pot of our own great country. You cannot feel out of place in Florida. Anything goes. We embrace “Florida Man” and everybody else.
Please don’t feel sorry for us Floridians. We get the hurricanes. We call them “the price we pay to live in paradise.” We understand, and we take on the risks. We are processing right now. We are licking our wounds. Some of us will decide that the price is no longer worth it, and will leave. And that is okay. In the end, we will all be okay. The sun still shines upon us, the land of flowers. Flowers bloom.
Hello. It’s a been a minute . . . but I’m feeling the need to write an update . . . . for me. My cousin was recently laid off from a high-powered job. She has started writing a blog about this experience. She has expressed to me, that me and my blog inspired her to start writing her own story. She says that she is surprised as to how cathartic it is to write about what happens in your life, and how it makes you so much better understand how you are processing everything which you are experiencing in your own one, precious life. Friends, write about your own life (even if it is in a private journal, just for yourself, for your eyes only). Learn about yourself. Be surprised. I am beginning to believe that this act of writing is practically an imperative, in order to fully experience the entire scopes of our lives. Your story is an important thread of it all. Write it. Read it. Embrace it. Begin to understand . . . .
I am writing to you from a hotel room in New York City. New York City has been a part of my history since I was young child. We would visit relatives in New York City almost every Thanksgiving when I was a kid, experiencing the Macy’s Day Parade, Broadway, and all of the visceral sights and sounds which are entirely New York City’s alone. The pace of NYC is insane. I was walking along city blocks tonight, all by myself, laughing at how out of breath I was, trying to keep up with the rush hour walkers. I usually pride myself in my unusually fast pace of doing anything and everything. Yet, on this evening, New York seemed to say to me, “Move to the side, Floridian . . . . we’ve got places to go and your slow-ass is in the way!”
Recently, I paused writing this blog, because I felt that I was in a turning point time for me. It was one of those times of false security. It was one of those times that I falsely believed that I had it all figured out. I honestly felt like, “You’ve made it, girl. You got all of your four children to adulthood, all in good stead. You got through the pandemic years, and the worst years of your son’s epilepsy, and the deeply depressing years of your mother-in-law’s slow decline and eventual death. And now, Voila! You got to a good year- a really good year -2024. And honestly, 2024 has been a year of amazing adventures, and new excitements, and pride and relief, and a rekindling of the focus on just me and my husband, since the two of us were barely adults. And it’s been great! And it’s been revitalizing! And then, in just the last couple of weeks, the community which I have called home for more than a decade has experienced two horrific hurricanes in the span of about ten days. And also, at the same time our eldest son and his wonderful longtime girlfriend, got engaged to be married. And I was soberly reminded that I will never be at the “all settled” point in my life while I am still living it. I got reminded that there will always be good in my life, and there will always be less than good in my life. Life is messy. Life is wonderful. Life is hard. Life is simple. Life is complicated. Life is confusing. Life is beautiful. And all of this swirl of life, usually happens all at once. And so you have to be brave to accept it all, and to deeply know that you are up to the challenge of feeling it all, experiencing it all, handling it all.
In my life, I am most grateful for my ability to connect. As Garth Brooks sings, “I have friends in low places” but I also have friends in palaces. Tonight, in my wanderings in NYC, I chatted with homeless people, and investment bankers in swanky bars. I chatted with bellhops, and a priest in a world-famous cathedral. I connected with all of them, all because of my deep intuitive knowing that we are all so imperatively and intrinsically connected to each other. I don’t think that this wisdom fully comes about until you are willing to surrender to the idea that you honestly don’t know shit. Your primary job is to experience it all, and then, to write it all down.
******Dear Friends and Readers, I have an announcement to make. I am no longer going to be blogging on a daily basis. I have some fun, new personal projects going on, which are currently taking up a lot of my time and my attention. I made a vow when I embarked on our empty nest, to never have, nor make any relationships based on fear, obligation or guilt. And lately, bloggling on a daily basis has felt more like an obligation, and that has never been the spirit of the blog. I always want my writing to be done out of feelings: as an urgent need, or a deep joy, or an enticing pulling. At this time, I still plan to keep the blog open, so that I can make an occasional post here or there. I want to thank you all for your dedication to reading Adulting Second-Half and for your precious time and for your attention. Thank you for taking this journey with me, from the very beginning (summer of 2018!), or somewhere along the way. Thank you for your kindness and your validation and your thoughtful comments. Thank you from the deepest wells of my heart. Thank you for helping me to grow and for being a witness to my growth. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sundays are devoted to poetry. Today’s poem by Mary Oliver is one of the best poems I have ever read:
Wild Geese | Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
2996. What do you think people undervalue today?
