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All is Well

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Happy Thanksgiving, my wonderful faithful friends and readers! You are appreciated and loved, more than you could ever understand. Thank you so very much for being part of the moment that I get so excited to experience every single morning. I love sitting down to pour out my heart and my inspirations and my ideas and my silliness and my reflections and my confusions. And you hear me! And you support me! And you nod along with me! And you shake your head at me! What a blessing and a gift that you give to me, by acknowledging my blog. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This blog is not a chore for me. It is a big part of my heart. It is my blossoming of a part of me that was dormant for so long and is coming into the light, and everyone who has supported this blog has been such a crucial part of that process for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

You are kind. You are caring. You are interesting and connected to life. I am blessed to have you come into my life. I am blessed to feel a sacred connection to each and every one of you.

Okay enough mushy mush! Go enjoy a wonderful day of family and friends and parades, and dog shows, and feasting (and the wonderful anticipatory smells that come before the feasting) and napping and more feasting! I have overheard it said, at least a dozen times this season, from various people who I have interacted with, that Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday. It IS such a wonderful holiday. Thanksgiving is quiet, peaceful, warm, unassuming, mindful, simple, cozy, comforting, loving, unpretentious, humble, virtuous, awe-striking . . . . what’s not to love about this holiday, and yet Thanksgiving does not beg us to love it or to even acknowledge it. It just soothingly invites us in, with arms wide open. In a world which sometimes seems increasingly faster, noisier, attention grabbing, glitzier, angrier, more isolated and divisive than ever before, Thanksgiving is the reminder that at the core of everything, there is a simple, grateful peace that remains steady. Thanksgiving is a reminder that life is abundant and flowing and pulsing, like a regular, soothing, calming heartbeat, enclosed in a warm, clean, soft blanket of the deep intuitive knowing, that in every moment of stillness, at the quiet center of everyone and everything, All is Well.

Mitakuye Oyasin

I read this gorgeous prayer this morning, recited by the Lakota Native American Tribe. It is called “Mitakuye Oyasin”, which means “we are all related”. I think that it is just perfect, especially at this reflective time of the year. This is Mitakuye Oyasin:

The Prayer

Aho, Mitakuye Oyasin … All my relations, I honor you in this circle of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge you in this prayer….

To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.

To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience, I thank you.

To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you.

To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.

To the human nation that shares my
paths as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you.

To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages, I thank you.

To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.

You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other, and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.

Thank you for this Life.

The Toenail Dialogs

If you ever want to find out what the real priorities are, on your to-do list during the holiday season, give yourself about 30 minutes less time than everything will actually take to do, and don’t figure in the unexpecteds, such as a daughter having to go to the doctor to get a strep throat swab (it was negative, thank goodness), and eldest son’s flight arriving 20 minutes early. Let’s just say, pedicure was one of the first items crossed off the list. It was interesting to watch my mind, trying to spin how to handle the chipped, grown out, faded sparkly blue polish now only about half on, my nasty toenails:

Pollyanna voice in my head – Hmmm, well, you could do your own pedicure really quick. Saves time and money! 🙂

Bitchyanna other voice in my head – Are you kidding?!? That will look even worse than how trashy it looks right now, you slobby fool. Why don’t you french braid your hair while you’re at it – ha!

Pollyanna voice in my head – Well, you can just make it a point to only wear boots, clogs and sneakers for the entire Thanksgiving break, therefore no one will know, that you aren’t so perfectly coiffed.

Bitchyanna – Sure, the kids won’t think that it is strange (and secretly start worrying about your mental health) when you are donning boots with your robe, at breakfast, and what are going to do, wear cowboy boots to the beach? You live in Florida, for goodness sake! You used to make fun of the Floridians who wear Uggs. Now YOU look like an Alaskan Inuit any time the thermometer drops below 63 degrees. Ridiculous!!

Pollyanna – Well, your priorities are in the right place. It’s good to show the kids that it is not necessary to be the picture of perfection. Love, family, turkey (and definitely stuffing) – that’s what matters.

Bitchyanna – You know dumbass, you are almost 50 right now. Learn to manage your time better. Maybe start by spending less time in your head, having a wacky dialog between two fake personas, about your damn toenails. Just a thought . . . .

Me (with my personalities, all integrated back into the reality of the moment) – OMG! I have to get to the airport now. Stat. What’s the next, non-necessity thing that I can take off of the list?!? Can I cover up the mildew smell with Febreeze on the damp clothes in the washer if I don’t put them into the dryer until I get back?!

Pollyanna and Bitchyanna – Well, here we go again . . . .

As the Mother Goes

“I hope this year has a good ending.” – FofF (Twitter)

Me, too. On a side note, I love the author’s pen name, “FofF”. Our wonderful lawn maintenance guy is named Ed. His business is called Ed’s. Whenever we need him to do something extra in our yard, I love to say out loud, “I need to call Ed of Ed’s!” It just cracks me up for some reason. I even look for things for Ed to do, so that I can say out loud, “I need to call Ed of Ed’s!”

This weekend I got a little friendly reminder/kick in the pants from a girlfriend on a text chat. We were all ranting about everything that we have to do for the holidays. Now this friend has been mothering for about a decade longer than I have, and she even has a grandchild. She is very wise. She said something to the effect, “Ladies, we only get so many
Thanksgivings and Christmases in our lives . . . . As the mother goes, so does the holiday.”

It’s so true, isn’t it? Who can’t relate to the saying, “When Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? Perhaps focusing a little less on what needs to be done and more so, on who needs to be loved (including ourselves), would make the holidays even more pleasant and memorable for everyone. Of course on that same chat, another friend quoted an article that was discussing a study that showed that socializing with extended family and friends makes the average person long for peace and quiet within 3 hours and 54 minutes.

So while socializing this holiday season, after about 4 hours or so, (a little less or a little more, depending on how introverted or extroverted you may be), here is my prescription for you (and for me). Go to your special place, by yourself, ideally outside in nature, but perhaps you can just conjure it up in your mind. Take some deep breaths and take ” . . .time to step out into a season – something to do with what John Muir called ‘washing your spirit clean.’ ” (Robert Genn) I think that taking the time to “washing your spirit clean” would be an excellent gift to give to ourselves and thus, it naturally becomes an extended gift, that of being of clean spirit, as we spend time over the holidays, with the people whom we love and cherish.

*****FYI, from Wikipedia:

John Muir also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks”, was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America.

Sunday Soul

This year is different

I’m trying to put a definition on something that has never been.

I am trying to fit the new

into old, worn out, torn boxes.

How do you live outside of a long experienced paradigm

Completely?

Elon Musk and his triangle truck

Inspiration.

Readers, I have decided to turn Sundays into “Sunday Soul” and to play around with poetry on my Sunday posts. It feels strange to me because it is not something I have spent a lot of time doing. Trying to write poetry, when you never really have, is kind of like going to your first pottery or painting classes. I don’t have my footing. I don’t really know what I am doing, but I am enjoying the experience. It feels lonely up here in the blogspot. I sure wish you guys would play around with some poetry in the Comments section. It can be our own neat little virtual coffee house poetry reading, every Sunday.

So, I hope you don’t mind the format change. Unless I have something truly pressing on my mind that must come out in prose form, Sundays here are Adulting – Second Half are dedicated to poetry. I hope the rest of your day flows rhythmically, and softly, peacefully and profoundly and poetically . . . . .

Open, Honest and Real

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In this day and age, the above principle is a tough ship to navigate. I feel like I know three camps of people: people who epitomize the acronym “TMI” and let it all hang out, to just about everyone they see, meet or greet in real life and on-line, and then they are utterly shattered when they are used or taken advantage of; then there are the people who are so private, so completely protected by a wafting sense of mystery and secrecy, leaving everyone who meets them totally frustrated, always yearning to find the hole to scratch and find the actual beating heart and true, open, flowing emotions, under the veneer of steely, calculated collectedness; and finally, there are a vast amount of people who work desperately to keep up and preserve a cheerful, carefree image for everyone, online and offline to see, but in person, seem to be staving off a loneliness and a yearning for connection, underneath the flimsy, cardboard, surface-y, semblance of it all. I think that I have vacillated in between all three of these camps, for most of my life.

People who read my blog often comment on the fact that I don’t mention my family members’ names. People who know some of the major crises I have experienced in my life (by this middle time in life, we all have gone through at least one or two “major biggies”), are sometimes curious why I don’t choose to write about these events. The reality is, I’m still navigating my ship of disclosure, trying to find the waters that are comfortable to me. At the same time, I am not a pirate. I respect the other ships on the sea, and I steer clear of their own private, personal journeys. Their journeys are not mine, and their ships are made to sail along different waters, than where I am headed. Even if we do find ourselves in the same pool of calm or stormy seas, I can only speak for my part of the adventure. How I am experiencing the waves and the turbulence, and even the calm, still waters, may be different than the other ships, because they are built differently that I am, and they carry different cargo and baggage than I do.

In the end, as important as authenticity is to me, and as much as I value real, heartfelt connection, I value the relationships at the sacrosanct table of my life, far more than anything. It’s a fine line to cross and to navigate, especially as a writer. Recently, I was telling my husband how frustrated I am by the fact that my life feels so full of little, aggravating interruptions and I often wish that I could disappear for vast amounts of time, to just focus on writing. But then the “aha moment” came to me, that all of my writing comes from my day-to-day experiences and my interactions with the people at “my table” and even the people standing around the table or even with the people, in the far corners of the rooms of my life. These experiences are priceless to my understanding of myself and thus the extension of myself, my sacred practice of writing, which helps me make sense of that deeper understanding of myself.

Today, with this honest, candid inside view of my thought/writing experience, I have invited you, my faithful friends and readers, to some very special seats, at my table. Thank you for taking the seat, and allowing me to share. I hope that you will sit and stay awhile, and I promise to keep your seat empty for you, when you return again. It is then that I will give you the same warm smile that I wear on my face right now, thankful for your place settings, in my life, making me feel worthy, understood and connected and open and honest and real.

It’s Friday, You Turkey!

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Happy Friday, my dear readers!!!! It is not only Friday, it is Favorite Things Friday!!! Can I get a “Gobble, Gobble?!?” Friends, we don’t get into the depths on Friday here at Adulting – Second Half. On Fridays, I typically list three favorite songs, books, products, websites, apps, etc. and I encourage you to add your favorites to the Comments section. This will be particularly helpful, as we all will be doing our Christmas shopping in the next few weeks. Please check out previous Friday posts for more goodies. Without further ado, here are today’s favorites:

mint&lily Remember Who You Are Cuff bracelet – I ordered one of these for my daughter and it arrived over the weekend. She loves it and I love it! It is very nice quality. Inside the cuff are the engraved words: “Whenever you feel overwhelmed . . . remember whose daughter you are and straighten your crown” My daughter wore it yesterday, when she had to take five exams. I like to think that it helped calm her anxiety a bit, and at the very least, she knows that I am with her, always.

Gemmy Industries Animated Baby Goat – Every year I add to our collection of cheesy animated Christmas trinkets. We have a hound dog that sings “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas”, a naughty, flirty, French mistletoe man and a Christmas Tree that shakes and whirls like nobody’s business. This year might be our best addition yet. This little guy wears cute pjs, a Santa hat with a matching scarf, and is a “live” version of the screaming goats that are very popular on social media. He appropriate sings “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire“, while intermittently screaming. My dogs can’t stand him, but I am not even close to being sick of him, yet. I hope that his batteries have lasting power.

Honey app – This app really appeals to the lazy in me. They call it the “smart, shopping assistant.” Honey, when you are shopping on-line, you no longer have to look for promo codes. This app will add every appropriate promo code that it can find, to your order before you check out. It’s already saved me quite a bit of money, honey. (and I have tested it, by looking up promo codes first to see if the app will find it. It has, so far!)

Enjoy a nice weekend!!! I’m so thankful for all of your support!! xo

Extra

Lately, a couple of my friend text chats have been about the love/hate relationship many of us middle aged ladies have with the holiday season. There is so much good about the holidays and then there is a lot, that is well, A LOT. On reflecting on the fact that I know so many women who feel a bit overwhelmed with the “extra” quality (extra food, extra money, extra cleaning, extra cooking, extra parties, extra drinking, extra guilt, extra decorations, extra responsibilities, extra lights, extra emotions, extra grief, extra melancholy, extra anticipation, extra expectations, extra company, extra elf hiding, extra red, extra green, extra sparkles, extra fancy clothes, extra crowds, extra worries, extra shopping, extra returns, extra religious services, extra gained pounds, extra adrenalin, extra glitter, extra packages at the front door, extra patience, extra annoying songs, extra breath-taking music, extra aggravations, extra worries, extra laughs, extra fights, extra joy, extra tears, extra gratefulness, extra exhaustion, extra mess, extra bills, extra cute movies . . . . just, you know, extra) that the holidays bring to this time of year, I decided that I needed to find the lesson in all of this. I think if you can enjoy the holidays, yet also get excited and crave getting back to your normal routine, that says a lot about how you feel about your regular life. If you get to the point of wanting your ordinary, typical life back during the holidays, then what that is saying is that you really, really like your life! That’s a good thing. Because life is mostly life without the extra-ness of the holidays. Perhaps the greatest gift that you receive during the holidays is the reminder of how much you like your regular, ordinary, every day life. It’s kind of like when you go on a wonderful vacation, but find yourself craving getting back to home, towards the end of the trip. You sometimes even say to yourself, “I need a vacation from my vacation.” Perhaps the peace on Earth that the holidays gives to us, is allowing us to contrast the over-the-top quality that our holidays have evolved into, versus the comfort of our average daily life and thus finding ourselves, EXTRA appreciative for the relief and the relaxation that our simple, familiar, orderly everyday lives provide for us, during most of the days, in our lives.

W-A-I-T

“There is a thing that I do: W-A-I-T. It stands for “Why Am I Talking?” explains Hanks. “I wrote that down in a notebook that I keep to remind myself that listening, for me anyway, is a disciplinary art. I have to force myself to listen because I love the sound of my own voice and because I’m a movie star I’ve been infantilized by everybody I come across who says I’m wonderful.” – Tom Hanks, being interviewed about his new movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neigborhood, in which he depicts Mr. Rogers

Listening is a disciplinary art for almost everyone, except for a few treasured, gifted, amazing people who everyone is equally intrigued by, and adores, all at the same time. I’m not a great listener. And since I am not a charming movie star, I’m already starting out with two strikes against me.

Despite swearing that I was going to expand my horizons this year, and start volunteering for things that didn’t involve my local school district, (trying to branch out from what I have done for the last two decades or so), I’ve ended up becoming a mentor to a 10th grader and a 3rd grader on a weekly basis. (like many middle-aged women, I am not great at saying “no”, nor was I doing an especially ambitious job of looking for volunteer opportunities, outside of the schools) I had to get special training for this mentor position. I went into the training cocky, presumptuous and overconfident. I’ve raised four almost grown children, who I think are pretty special people, and I’ve volunteered in the schools for 20 years. I could teach this “mentoring class” on the fly with one hand tied behind my back. I’ll put my time in to meet the state requirements, but I will probably be bored out of my mind. HA!

The focus of the mentor training was on LISTENING and what “real listening” is, and what it means to people. If you are good listener, apparently your response to the person you are listening to, will be a good reflection and understanding of what they expressed to you. That’s it. That’s all that they want. They want to feel heard and understood. They want to feel validated and important. They want your confidence that they are capable people who will figure out their own issues, in due time. The worst response apparently is advice, evaluations, and analyzations. Even reassurances can just be experienced as condescending brush-offs.

So right after my training session (after finishing up eating my crow and choking on some feathers), I ended up writing a long apology for my lack of listening skills, throughout the years, to my family (husband and kids) on our family group chat. My dear ones all kindly accepted my apology with not one protestation that I was mistaken about my lack of good listening skills. There was not one “awww, but you are too hard on yourself, you are a GREAT listener” from any single member of my crew. Rightly so. I then sheepishly extended this apology to some of my lifelong friends. They were very gracious in accepting my apology, as well.

I’ve worked harder on focusing on what the other person is saying, instead of using that time to come up with my soliloquy in response. Still, I know that I have some work to do on this listening process, yet. Yesterday, when I rudely interrupted my 10th grade mentee with a question about her story, she patiently but firmly replied, “I didn’t get to that part of the story yet.”

I like Tom Hanks’ W-A-I-T trick. I don’t want to be a walking podcast. I want to be present for my family and friends. I want to be a little more Mr. Rogers and little less “movie star – in my mind”. I think that life probably feels a little bit more in depth and meaningful that way.

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”― Ernest Hemingway

“This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

The Lesson of the Trees

****Above is another great one from Think Smarter, my favorite Twitter feed of all-time.

Every morning, on the drive to school, my daughter and I ride through a street that is canopied by trees. It is like a long, beautiful tree tunnel and I look forward to driving through it, every single day. This tree-lined lane is one of those lovely places that is probably roped off from time to time, so that people can have beautiful, natural wedding processions and celebrations, underneath the comforting shade and protection that these majestic trees so ably provide. It is interesting to me that these trees are firmly rooted, on directly opposite sides of the road. They are big, strong, solid trees that have weathered many Florida storms and even hurricanes, together. And although they sit on complete opposite sides of the road, they look to be almost exactly the same. They all carry the same tree DNA.

By far, the most exquisite part of these lovely trees, is the canopy of delicate, yet sturdy sunlit leaves and branches, that they have created, where they come together in gambrel fashion. It is breathtaking, how desperately these trees seem to want to meet in the center, as the highest part of each of these trees, reach for each other, in a deep yearning stretch. It just seems so natural and correct, for them to want to find each other in the center of the road. And where these awe-inspiring trees finally do meet, their coming together, at the highest place – oh my, their creation looks almost as lovely a rooftop, as does the beautiful, vast, starry night sky.

We have so much to learn from the wise, old, sensible trees.