great recession Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Fluidity

Everything is fluid. Even how you think about things is fluid. Especially how you think about things is fluid. We have started getting Christmas cards and a couple of them have come from people who were from a time when we lived in a whole different state. I have really fond memories of the people there. We were young families, literally raising our kids as a village. The neighborhood we lived in was mammoth. It was so big that it was essentially our neighborhood kids filling the entire elementary school. But yet, the neighborhood felt small, due to the wonderful circle of people we cavorted with there.

Many of our former inner circle there, like us, have left the neighborhood, for different neighborhoods (upsizing and downsizing) and like us, have even left for different states. We had to leave that neighborhood, and that state, back in 2011, for the necessity of greener pastures to support our large family quickly descending upon college age. So, leaving there, was truly bittersweet. We had poured our heart and souls into re-designing and adding on to the home where we lived there, with the faulty assumption that it would be the home that even our grandchildren would come to visit. And then, almost immediately after we finished the totally draining (both emotionally and financially) years long housing project, the Great Recession housing crash happened. We essentially had to give that home away for pennies on the dollar.

For many years, I had bitter feelings about that home. It had become a financial burden and albatross around our necks. It became “the thing” that made it hard to get “a fresh new start” in our new state. It was amazing that a creation that I had once had been so proud of, and had poured so much of my heart and creative vision into, had quickly turned into one of my biggest nightmares. It was a really humbling, shocking, disillusioning time in the lives of our family. And for years, only thoughts of anger and disbelief and frustration and regret, surrounded any ideas of our former home.

Today, out of curiosity, after receiving the cards that reminded me of our “former life”, I looked up our former home. It had been sold again in 2017 and the owners had added on even more beautiful updates. Interestingly, I noticed that all of my feelings of anger and disgust, had dissipated. I am back to feeling proud of “my former creation.” I am back to feeling deeply proud of the fingerprints, and the heartbeats, and the creative vision that we had for that home. I am mostly proud of the happy history and memories that we added to that place which we called home for a time in the life of our family. I am back to feeling only a full fondness for a lovely time in my life, and the lovely nest which we had created for our family at that time. And at the same time, I have no desire to go back. I am truly fulfilled at where I am in my life right now, and I see how all of the dots in my life have been connected and are being connected, as the picture of my life is being lived.

I have noticed this circling around of feelings and perspectives many times, about many people and situations, in my own life. I have also noticed this in the lives of others. Life has a way of softening the edges, after processing the hard stuff. How many people, having gone through vicious divorces, end up deeply hugging each other at their shared children’s major milestones? How many people have been able to find the gifts of lessons and silver linings, and forgiveness of self and others, in even the worst circumstances of their lives? Oprah Winfrey is credited with saying this: “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it’s accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”

If you are going through a tough time in your life, give yourself the knowing that someday you will likely look at this situation with a different perspective. The worst, sharpest edges causing the gashes, and the bleeding, and the pain, will dull with time. The sharpest edges will stop being able to hurt you anymore. That’s the beauty of true forgiveness. It’s an acceptance of what is, and deciding to only take the “good stuff” from the situation. Forgiveness is finally stopping the continually gashing of yourself with the sharp edges, and allowing yourself to heal the wounds, so that when you come back to viewing the situation, you will see that the now dulled edges, can’t really hurt you anymore. You will find that with time and distance, the healing has created a strong (and sometimes scarred, but often stronger for the scarring) barrier to what was once a truly visceral, seemingly unending pain. Believe this. Stop poking at your pains and let them be. Allow the miracle of the change of perspective to appear when the timing is just right. Believe in impermanence and fluidity because they really are the only constants in life, besides the underlying Love that holds us all afloat.

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

The Best

I always say that the things that I worry about rarely happen. I tend to get blindsided by the things that I never even imagined could happen. I have to admit that I never saw a worldwide pandemic coming. I never did.

I also have to admit that I have never fully imagined all of the amazing things that have happened in my life either. True story: At age 40, I was at a time in my life that I assumed I would feel like my husband and I had “made it”, for all of the effort that we had put into our shared lives, by growing my husband’s career, and by focusing on raising our happy family. Instead, our lives got “blown up” by the Great Recession. We checked every box: lost job and income (banking industry), large, expensive home now worth half of what we owed on it (with no buyers in sight), quickly emptying savings and quickly rising debt, and four young children left to raise, and to educate. Instead of feeling like I was at my pinnacle, I felt like I had been thrown into a pit. I was shell-shocked. I was scared out of my mind and I was angry. I felt cheated and wronged. I had lived “the formula” that I had assumed would bring me “overall success” and it had tanked, miserably.

Thankfully, I have always been a faithful, spiritual person (not necessarily a religious person), but I am one who believes that there are much higher powers in play. I have always believed in the overall goodness of the Universe. And so I leaned heavily on my spiritual side, at that time. I also leaned heavily on my love for my husband, and for our children. I realized that we had lost a lot of material, physical things, but I was not going to let the horrible recession take what was most dear to me: my marriage, our loving family situation, and our physical and emotional health. So, during that time, I prayed a lot, I leaned a lot on our loving family and friends, and I lived every single day in faith. I just took my life ODAT (one day at a time). I am not going to go into “the ins and outs” of it all (nor into the ways that situations often seemed to almost miraculously turn out for the best), but let’s just say at age 50, I now have the life that I always dreamed of, and more. Everything that we lost, has been replaced with something “more and better.” And because I went through that experience, I appreciate everything more than I ever did. Life is deeper and clearer to me. Life resonates like it never did before. I am so much more attuned to what truly matters to me. It’s a cliché, but I can honestly say that I am grateful for the changes that the Great Recession brought around for me, and for my family. The Universe knows what it is doing.

Now this is not to say that my life is “perfect”. There have been a lot of heartaches, and losses, and growing pains, and grieving of many people and things, throughout this past decade, but I understand that this is just part of living and experiencing a worldly life. I do believe that the life that I am living is “perfect for me”, flaws and all. I just tell my Higher Power to take over the wheel every single day, and I live in faith that the journey that I am on is wonderful (even on the days that it doesn’t feel like it). In its own way, my own little path is a vital part of every other journey on Earth that has ever happened, or will ever be. When I look in the rear-view mirror of my life’s journey, it makes sense to me, for the most part, and I am grateful to be experiencing my journey. My journey is a gift. And I can’t wait to see what’s on the path ahead of me now.

Always, always believe that the best is yet to come, because it is. It might not arrive in the package that you expect it to arrive in, but that’s good. I have been blindsided by happy surprises in my life, far more often than by pains. And if I am honest with myself, the pains have very often turned out to be “blessings in disguise.”

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

Wide Open Canvas

This whole coronavirus situation has really stripped our lives down to the simple necessities and essentials, hasn’t it? With the idea of things starting to open back up, albeit slowly and carefully, I’ve been reflecting on what I really want to add back into my life. There are things which I truly, truly miss and I can’t wait to add back in, such as regular hair appointments and pedicures, but there are other things that I was spending a lot of time on before the coronavirus, that maybe don’t need to be added back into the mix. I had a fair amount of time-wasters and impulsive hole-fillers, that I can do without. This coronavirus quarantine has kind of given us all more of an empty canvas again and that is scary and exciting and freeing and overwhelming, all at the same time. It’s a real swirl of emotion, isn’t it?

I’ve mentioned before, on the blog, that the last recession was the perfect storm for my family. We basically checked every recession box including job loss, savings loss, upside down house, etc. . . . I used to only half-jokingly say that we were “the poster kids” for the recession. I reached a point in that very frightening storm, in the life of our family, where I knew that I just had to keep a focus on what was truly the most important to me. I had to decide what were the things that I was not going to allow the recession to take, and that was the physical health and loving stability of our family (individually and collectively), my marriage, my sanity and my faith. If I held on to these most vital things, then I knew we could build back up. And we did. And my life is healthier and more gratifying and more authentically lived, than I ever lived it before.

These times are scary, no doubt about it. The unknowns are daunting and some of our pots have already been so emptied that we’re scraping the bottom of the pot, with our nails, desperately trying to just hang on. But sooner than we expect, things are going to open up for all of us, and there will be some nuggets, filling up our containers again, and filling it quickly. If we stay in panic mode and mindlessly just grab at any nugget coming our way, especially the old familiar things, without giving any thought and consideration to what we want to put back into our pots, then what have we really gleaned from this pandemic? Anything? Don’t we at least deserve to get some really amazing, life changing insights and direction changes, from one of the biggest crises of our lifetime? It is said that climbing the highest mountains, affords us the most amazing views. We’re climbing this damn pandemic mountain, and it’s tough. We should definitely bask in the major glimpses and the panoramic views and perspectives, when we are finished climbing.

Don’t be afraid to have an empty pot or a wide open canvas for a little while. Don’t be too quick to mindlessly fill that canvas with your old, familiar lifestyle. Don’t be afraid to leave some empty space for a while, until things that really resonate with you, come along to make the picture more vividly you. An empty pot doesn’t feel like a gift most of the time, but it is lighter, and it does have space to hope for things once thought not possible, in a pot that was already overfilling. Let that space be filled with light for a while, until what truly reverberates and feels most meaningful to the deepest center of your own heart and soul, appears and asks to be invited into your life. If we all do this with our now streamlined lives, imagine what the world will look like after this whole virus crisis is past us. If we do this, anyone and anything that we have lost through this time, will not have been lost in vain. We will have given all of this pain and this fear and this sickness and this sadness, some meaning. We all have the power to do it. We all have the power to bring deep meaning and awe-inspiring redemption, from this chaos. We are much more powerful than we know.