Tag: empty nest

A Little Break

Stream of thought:

For some strange reason, my childhood mailman came to mind this morning. (that’s sort of an oxymoron, “mailman- maleman”) His name was Joe and despite living in Pittsburgh, PA the man was always deeply suntanned, before tanning beds became a thing. Joe wore his hair in a pompadour like James Dean and he walked up to each of our homes, as our mailboxes were hung right next to our front doors. He smoked long brown cigarettes as he delivered the mail, and Joe was always friendly to us kids, keeping rubber bands around his wrist and giving them to us when we pestered him for them. Do you remember your childhood mailperson? What about your bus drivers? Your school janitors? Particular teachers? Some people just have a way of “sticking out” in our memories, you know? I’m sure that Joe would have no idea the impression that he made on us little kids. I find this sort of comforting and hopeful. Perhaps in our lifetimes, doing nothing except going about, doing our daily business, we make an impression on more people than we realize. It’s such a good reminder to remember the kind of impression which we would like to make, especially for the little ones coming up in this world. The impressions we leave are our little chinks and marks and nicks on the world. Joe didn’t do anything particularly special, other than to smile and to take the time to pass out a few rubber bands, as he reliably delivered the mail each day in his cornflower blue uniform. And yet still, I remember Joe to this day. He’s probably passed on as I am 53, and I bet that Joe was my age when he was delivering our mail. But he left a mark, and it was a good one. . . .

Do you have something that you do everyday that you so look forward to doing? Do you have morning rituals or evening rituals that are your comfort signatures of the day? I have many, but perhaps my favorite habit is writing this blog almost every single day. It fills me with such joy and a sense of purpose. Thank you for being such a vital part of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That being said, I am headed out on an adventure tomorrow and I won’t be back to writing the blog for over a week. I love writing this blog so much, that I used to take my computer along with me, wherever I went. I’ve written this blog from different states and even different countries. But I have learned from this experience, that it is best for me to fully immerse myself in my adventures, by leaving my daily rituals behind me. I’ve often thought that one of the best parts of travel is when you start to miss and yearn for all of the comforts and joys of home. Leaving home (fully) makes you appreciate it more.

Since I won’t be writing for the next couple of Fridays, I did want to leave you a bonus gift – a favorite of mine! The Insight Timer phone app has some of the best sleep meditations I have ever tried on it. There are so many different courses and guided meditations on this app, and so far, it has all been free. The Insight Timer is one of the most quality apps I have ever downloaded on my phone. Check it out!

If you miss me while I’m gone, please go through my archives. I’ve been writing this blog for several years now. It always tickles me when I see in the stats, years-old blog posts that are being viewed. I think there might be some treasures in there . . . .

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:

1921. Do you prefer cats or dogs? (I love most animals and my childhood cat is a legend in my mind, but I’m a dog girl at heart.)

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ Yesterday I received the sweetest text that I have gotten in a long time. It was a really kind, unusual, thoughtful compliment, out of nowhere, from a friend whom I haven’t seen in a while. It made my day! It made me want to do the same for other people. Don’t hesitate. Use this blurb as a nudge from the Universe to reach out and send some love to the first person who comes to mind. You won’t regret it. It’s the little things and kindnesses that keep our humanity afloat. Love makes the world go ’round.

+ I just read a really good interview that the author Cheryl Strayed did with another New York Times best selling author, Steve Almond. It was filled with good excerpts, but here are a few that I found to be interesting and sometimes relatable. Steve Almond’s words are the ones in italics.

 “That’s often how you know a piece of advice is useful: the inconsolable urge to tell the advice-giver to f*ck off.” (This is so true, isn’t it? If there is a thread of truth in a piece of advice that we get, it tends to trigger us. If the advice doesn’t apply, we can easily dismiss it or laugh it off.)

“. . . .becoming less of an a**hole. That’s what therapy did for me. I woke up to the various ways in which I was being inconsiderate to other people—and to myself.” (Therapy can be incredibly useful, when you are in a humble state of really wanting to make changes, instead of just wanting, and hopelessly waiting for everyone else to change.)

“A couple of years ago, I was taking a walk with my teenage daughter. It was winter. Beside us, the Mystic River was sheathed in a plain of gray ice. I don’t remember what we were discussing, only that, at some point, she turned to me and said, “Dad, you’re like this guy who’s always walking on thin ice. But underneath that ice is a lake of rage.”

It was the single most devastating, and precise, assessment of my personality ever rendered. I wanted to drop to my knees—in awe and gratitude. And I’ve spent every day since thinking about what I can do to drain that lake of rage, which can be properly understood as a lake of poison.

Mostly, that’s consisted of me trying to shift from reaction to reflection. That is: to recognize when I feel the lake start bubbling and to ask myself: What’s going on here? Why am I being triggered? What pain or doubt or fear am I concealing?

I’m not suggesting that I’m walking around in some state of grace. Far from it. But I am in the process of trying to identify when and why I feel wronged. There are moments when I need to speak up (to stop walking on thin ice). But there are far more moments when my contempt is simply a way of hiding my vulnerabilities behind grievance.“

(Personally, I think by middle age, it is quite common to encounter many people walking on thin ice, and underneath them, lakes of rage. I think by middle age, many people realize that they haven’t lived a life true to themselves and the waters underneath them churn with anger and resentment and regret. The remedy is to thicken the ice, by being more true and authentic to yourself, going forward. When you love and trust yourself to tend to your own best care, it’s much easier to extend your kindness and grace to others.)

“Our job in life is to esteem who we are and what we’re doing. I don’t mean by this that we should just give ourselves a big hug and pretend that solves all our problems. But I do think that people tend to be too hard on themselves, and that this self-loathing inevitably gets inflicted on the folks around us.

I see this as a writing teacher, too. It’s the reason my new book has such an awkwardly aphoristic title. Over and over, I find myself encountering students who are, in one way or another, blocked when it comes to telling the truth—about their own experiences, and that of their fictional characters. The reason they’re blocked is because they felt guilty about breaking a long-held silence, fearful of the reaction they might receive, ambivalent about all the emotional disruption that comes with writing into deep truth. I tell them that the only path forward is through mercy. If they write with the intention of understanding, and forgiving, everyone involved, they’re going to travel further into the truth.

So I stand by that advice, especially for writers.“

Steve Almond’s latest book is Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.

+“We want to be present to the beauty of our life, not the story of it.” – Ashwini Narayanan

This is an important quote. We tend to start telling ourselves stories about what is happening right in the moment. We start with the labels and the judgments and the categorization and comparisons (I wish I had a dollar for everytime I said, “This reminds me of” . . . . ugh!), and instead of just feeling our feelings, we start telling ourselves more stories about why we are feeling what we are currently feeling. The next time that you are having a beautiful moment, and you catch yourself narrating it, in that very moment, tell the inner narrator to “hush”. You will best be able to vividly remember the moments and then later tell stories about them, only if you allow yourself to fully be present for the instantaneous “beauty” of living your life, in each and every moment.

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:

896. What is the coolest nickname you’ve ever heard for someone?

Monday – Funday

This is a rare day. Are any of you going to be able to fully witness it? According to NASA, the next total solar eclipse won’t be until August 23, 2044 and its full effect will only be able to be seen in three states in the United States. It’s a special day today!

This weekend I was reminded that the combination of our two water loving dogs, Ralphie, the Labrador retriever and Trip, the Boykin spaniel, together in our pool area, does not make for a relaxing evening. Inevitably, in order to have peace and less frenzied energy, we end up having to banish one of the boys to another part of the house. This weekend it was Trip’s turn for banishment. Josie, our rough collie, does fine herding one canine swimmer, but “having” to keep an eye on two “furmaids”, just puts her over the top.

This got me to thinking that often people and things that are wonderful individually can often make dangerous combinations. Our eldest son and our youngest son are funny and gregarious. They have us rolling with laughter all of the time. However, I have known not to sit them together at restaurants and certainly not in church pews during serious ceremonies such as funerals, since they were little boys. Funny and gregarious can become obnoxious, loud and over-the-top combustible, with the shared antics of these two young men, in seconds flat.

I looked up on the internet “some of the worst combinations”. Reddit users had some good and funny answers: “toothpaste and orange juice”, “rubbing alcohol and paper cuts”, “wasabi on your fingers and rubbing your eyes”, “milk and pickles”, “using your cell phone and driving” . . . . Some things are just better experienced on an individual basis.

Of course, some things are best experienced together. Sodium and chloride are poisonous substances until they are combined to make table salt. Two shoes is always better than one shoe. And I do love hearing all three dogs snoring in unison, in their beds, at the foot of our own bed, when we go to sleep at night. That chorus is comforting music to my ears.

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:

2013. If you got lost in the woods, what would you do?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. My friend, who is an English teacher, texted this poem (shown below) to a group of us who have been friends since we were eighteen years old. It is one of the most lovely poems I have read in a long time. Enjoy.

BENEATH THE SWEATER AND THE SKIN

by Jeannette Encinias

How many years of beauty do I have left?

she asks me.

How many more do you want?

Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old

and your beauty rises in ways

your cells cannot even imagine now

and your wild bones grow luminous and

ripe, having carried the weight

of a passionate life.

When your hair is aflame

with winter

and you have decades of

learning and leaving and loving

sewn into

the corners of your eyes

and your children come home

to find their own history

in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail

ferociously

and have gained the

capacity

to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea

on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon

and still have a song in your heart

Queen owl wings beating

beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there

beneath the sweater and the skin,

remember?

This is when I will take you

into my arms and coo

YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING

you’ve come so far.

I see you.

Your beauty is breathtaking.

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:

2899. Have you ever wished upon a star?

Bad Ideas

Do you remember these shoes? They were called “jellies.” They were the best blister creators you could ever imagine wearing. Sometimes even the worst of ideas start taking on a life of their own. In fact, often times the worst ideas explode like they were the best things since sliced bread. I’ll leave it to you to create your own list of popular people/places/things that are absolutely ridiculous.

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:

903. Name something you had a close call with.

Friday’s Tea

*****Happy Birthday, Big Red!! You were the one who made us want to keep on going!! You are one of the most self-actualized people I have ever known. I love you.*****

My friend recently came back from a business trip in the midwest and she said that she had tried the most fabulous tea she ever had tasted while she was out there. Naturally, I had to order some for myself. Today’s favorite is Fraser Tea, their Hot Spicy Cinnamon tea, in particular. It is delightfully flavorful tea that tastes slightly sweet despite having no added sugar or sweetener. When my order arrived, someone from the Fraser family wrote a lovely handwritten thank you note welcoming me to the Fraser Tea family. It was a delightful surprise!! You can order some Fraser Tea here, at their well-done website: https://frasertea.com/

It is also our spicy little brown dog’s birthday today (Trip is a Boykin spaniel). Trip turns four today and our eldest son said that means, that today, they are both turning 28! Have a fun and fabulous Friday, friends. See you tomorrow!!

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:

861. Are you a lover or a fighter?

The Part that Isn’t Shown

****Happy Birthday to the love of my life!!! There is no one else I would rather share these amazing memories with, and future incredible adventures with, than you!! You are my greatest gift in my life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. xoxo*****

Based on the stats, and a few texts that I got from some readers of the blog in my personal life, yesterday’s blog hit a nerve. Wakeup People on X posted this meme below today, that sort of continues on yesterday’s theme. Most of the good which we witness in people’s lives has been hard won, treasured, valued, prioritized, worked for . . . . yes, some people do get “lucky breaks”, but even the “lucky breaks” must be cherished, preserved and appreciated in order for them to continue to be a blessing in someone’s life. It is important to know, and to respect and honor, how hard most people have worked to get, and to keep, their good jobs, their robust savings, their lovely homes, their happy families, their healthy marriages, their vast knowledge, their honed talents, their vital bodies, their strong faiths, their loving relationships, their peace of mind. Most people who have, and who hold on to these things which we say that we universally want, do not take these greatest of things in life, for granted. They work at all of this with the underlying fuel of gratefulness that they have the ability to create, and to experience, and to continue to nourish, all of the best that life has to offer them.

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:

1942. Do you know how to ride a bike?

It Gets Weird

Sometimes you see something that describes yourself and you think, “Wow, spot on. I never saw it so succinctly written, but this is it. This is me.”

I almost feel exposed, but also relieved and validated at the same time. I am a happy, perky, friendly, upbeat person. I get excited about a lot of little things (and big things, too.) I laugh a lot and heartily. I think sometimes I have been mistaken for clueless, naive, “toxically” positive, sheltered, just “lucky”. Sometimes I almost feel like I need to be apologetic about my happy nature and yet, I have certainly had my fair share of heartaches, much like anyone else who has reached their fifties.

My nature is to experience everything fully and deeply. So when I am experiencing “happy” it’s BIG. It’s BRIGHT and SHINY. It stands out. But I take everything to heart. I mull over everything, the good and the bad – again and again. I tend to carry it all with me and sometimes this adds a lot of weight to my soul.

Does this resonate with any of you? Do you feel misunderstood a lot of the time? I hope this added a little understanding to at least one of you, today, like it did for me. It’s an interesting fact that the sun weighs 330,000 times the weight of the earth. So clearly, even carrying around sunshine can be a heavy load.

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:

2435. What song do you know ALL the words to? (Ummm, “Happy Birthday.”)

Sprinkles

This is all that I have today, friends. It’s been a morning of disruptions and changed plans, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is the sundae. Wishing you a wonderful sundae with a lot of pretty and yummy sprinkles on top!!

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:

1361. In your opinion, what’s “the best thing since sliced bread?”

Monday – Funday

credit, @woofknight, X

Only one April’s Fools day did I play a joke on the blog, and then I felt bad for at least five days after that (and maybe even more because I am still writing about it). So this year, no jokes. Happy April! Happy full swing of spring! Happy start to the 2nd quarter of the year!!

“About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.” – Rita Mae Brown

I’ve been mulling around the concept of radical acceptance for a while now. Before you can make any meaningful changes in your life, you must come to a radical acceptance as to how things exactly are, right in this moment. You accept the reality of where you are, in this moment, and everything that comes with this moment – the emotions, the implications, the situations and the people whom you cannot change, and you come to a peace with these elements. You can also come to a radical acceptance of your past – events that have happened, good relationships and bad relationships throughout the years, the fairness and unfairness of life, etc. In short, with radical acceptance, you don’t mull over the unfairness of what could have happened, or the unfairness of what is. When you just utilize “regular acceptance”, this implies resignation and almost agreeing with “giving up” and this is why we often resist acceptance. Regular acceptance feels hopeless and dejected. Radical acceptance faces truth head on, with the idea of looking at your options going forward, with a practical lens. Radical acceptance allows you to clearly feel and to process your feelings about a situation, but then to move forward and to make decisions for your best interests, based on reality. Radical acceptance gives you power.

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to avoid radical acceptance of people and of situations because we don’t want to face things as they are . . . .we wish that things were different. We hang on to hopes that we can change a person, or change a situation, or change what has happened in the past, but these things are impossible. When we avoid radical acceptance, we live in a constant limbo and we dance with the same cycles of disappointment, again and again. When we avoid radical acceptance, we play a part in our own suffering. As hurtful as it can be, to face the pain of “what is” head on, is what will ultimately gives us relief and direction. Radical acceptance stops the ongoing suffering. It allows us to make boundaries and to change our mindset, instead of staying stuck in the mire of frustration and despair.

I’ve put the circle of control on this blog several times, but it bears repeating. When we allow ourselves to experience radical acceptance, we fully understand and accept what is in our control and what is not in our control.

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:

1011. Name the biggest risk you have ever taken.