Tag: hope

Good Story

The other day, I was riding my bike around our neighborhood and I noticed several signs in many yards (similar to the one that we have in our yard) proudly announcing graduates. I naively thought that they were all high school graduates, and I was really surprised that we had that many teenagers living in our neighborhood, whom I didn’t know, but then with closer inspection, I noticed that a lot of the signs were from our local elementary school. So, in reality, there are quite a lot of fifth graders who live in our neighborhood. This makes more sense.

These yard signs for graduates are a relatively new phenomenon in our parts. We didn’t get them from the high school, when our three sons graduated from there. I think that the proliferation of yard signs mostly came about during the pandemic (so that kids could be celebrated, even from afar), and I think that they are wonderful! No doubts, the pandemic has been horrible, terrible, no-good, miserable, sad and unbelievable. Still, there are a few things that have come from the pandemic that I am grateful to have come into my life. I love the celebratory yard signs (I have seen a lot more of them for birthdays, and babies – more than I ever did before the pandemic). I love that my husband works a hybrid model now, spending a couple of days during the week, working from home. My husband is happier, and I like having someone else in the house during the week, sometimes, too. If I am running a lot of errands, I have peace of mind that my husband is home with the dogs, or that he can let in a person, who might be fixing something in our home. It’s definitely been a win-win, and a situation that we never dreamed could have happened before the pandemic. I have a gratefulness now for all of the everyday things that I used to mindlessly take for granted: toilet paper, cleaning supplies, meat. There is something to be said about noticing and appreciating the things that we used to just unconsciously count on being there for the taking. I sigh with relief and happiness that my local grocery store’s paper products and freezer sections are mostly full these days. And truthfully, I’m a little more hygienic than I ever was before. I am more careful in crowds. I use hand sanitizer like I never did before, and I think that these new habits have helped me to stave off a lot of germs, besides just the coronavirus. Even in the bad times, there are always kernels of good that come from these times. It has been proven to me, again and again, in my life’s experiences. No matter what concrete jungle you find yourself in, there is no doubt that you will find some little green, hopeful, resilient plant poking its plucky little leaves out from the teeniest of cracks in the dirty, grey concrete. There is good that defiantly grows out of bad, every time and everywhere.

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.

Favorite Gestures Friday

I was watching a video showing Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, being asked about how she would inspire children of our nation to reach the great heights that she has reached in her career and in her overall life. She choked up when she answered the senator’s question. Ketanji Brown Jackson made a point that sometimes it is the smallest gestures that make a huge difference in people’s lives. She relayed the story of being a black young lady from Miami, with a public school background, being at Harvard University for the first time, during her first semester freshman year. She was not used to the cold weather of Boston, nor the abundance of prep school kids who grew up with an entirely different background that she had, and she was terribly homesick. She was questioning whether she really belonged there. Jackson said that as she was walking dejectedly on the campus, an anonymous black woman came up to her, out of nowhere, looked her straight in the eye and said to her, “Persevere.” Obviously, she never forgot that moment. Ketanji Brown Jackson was relaying this very story about a stranger, as she was choked up with emotion, to a senator during the hearings to see if she will become the newest justice of The United States Supreme Court, and to be the first black woman ever to achieve this role.

Today, I don’t want to talk about favorite things like I usually do on Fridays. Physical things are great. They make life fun and interesting and creative and tactile and sensory. They evoke happy feelings when we are experiencing using and admiring the things that we love. There is nothing wrong with physical things, particularly our favorite things. But today, I pose this question. What are three of your favorite things that people have done for you that have left a lasting impression on you, and possibly even changed your life??

This morning my friend shared a text of a beautiful jar, created for her, by her daughter for her birthday. It is filled with little pieces of paper saying different things that she loves about her mother. It reminded me of my third grade teacher, who every week, would make a poster with one of us students’ individual names at the top. All week long, the other students would go up and write what was uniquely special and interesting about that particular student. At the end of the week, each student went home with their poster, filled with pride and happiness that their unique qualities were noticed and admired and appreciated. I never forgot that experience. I loved my poster and I was so happy for every “student of the week”, in anticipation of their feelings of joy and connectedness.

Sometimes it is the littlest gestures that mean the most. When my husband and I were first married, we were visiting people, and we ended up having a difficult, tumultuous, emotional time with these people. I was dejected as I got into the shower, anticipating an even more upsetting evening as we were all heading out to dinner. My husband had just showered before me, and as I reached for the soap, I saw that he had carved, “It’s okay. I love you,” into the soap. It is these small, kind gestures that make me fall in love with him again and again.

Use some time of this glorious Friday in your life, to reflect on all of the small but meaningful kindnesses bestowed on to you, and also reflect on kindnesses which you felt compelled to bestow on to others. This is love in action. What are some of your most favorite memories of kindness and inspiration and hope in your life? This will flood you with wonderful, hopeful feelings in this time, in the history of the world, which we so desperately need more of these feelings of lovingness to abound.

(And if you are so inclined, I would love if you, my readers, would share some of your stories about these kindnesses in my Comments section.)

Have a great weekend!!!

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

The Lifeboat

270 Abet ideas | inspirational quotes, me quotes, words

Last night, before falling asleep, I was scrolling through Twitter and I came across a story that gave me pause. A woman had posted that she had spent the last forty-eight hours wondering if her addict was even still alive. Luckily, he was found unharmed. She posted a picture of herself crying, and she asked her followers this:

Can someone please tell me it’s going to be okay . . .

In a matter of just a few hours, over four hundred people wrote back to her, with kindness, love, deep empathy, and for the most part, the same message, just written in different words. The gist was this:

It’s going to be okay, but you can’t fix this for him. You have the power to save yourself, and no one else.

Many of us who love alcoholics/addicts have had to let this message really sink in. Many people who answered the woman’s question suggested Alanon. Alanon is a great organization. It is geared towards focusing on the loved ones of alcoholics/addicts, and most of us go to our first Alanon meeting hoping that we will get a written, step-by-step guidebook on how to “fix” our addicts. It’s shocking, and at first, somewhat deeply deflating to hear the truth: You can’t do anything to help someone in denial, or who really doesn’t want to change. You MUST take care of yourself. You must take all of the energy that you have been putting towards your addict, and you must refocus it on to yourself.

This is a short article that explains an addict’s thought process better than most I have ever read (and I have read a lot):

https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-an-addict-21927#toc-experiencing-consequences

All of the tools in the world, i.e. therapists, ministers, self-help books, rehab, 12-step programs, yoga, family interventions, affirmations etc. won’t do a lick of good for the person who is not deeply invested in using these various tools in order to help themselves. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but sometimes alcoholics and addicts don’t want to be “helped.” And being overly invested in “fixing/helping/changing” someone else and their lives, is its own form of addiction called codependency.

When you wake up to the realization that someone you love is deeply entrenched in alcoholism or addiction, I liken it to realizing that you and your loved ones are on this scorched earth, burning island. You, in your newly awoken state, realize that you can no longer live in denial of the destruction and the damaging fires. You realize that there’s a lifeboat, and you jump on it and you desperately try to get your loved one to get on to that lifeboat with you. But, unfortunately, your addict may not want to get on to the lifeboat. They may try to pull you into the water, where you both will drown. They sometimes want and choose to stay on the burning island, and they are angry that you longer want to be there, pretending that all is well. It’s heartbreaking to get on the lifeboat by yourself, but it is the only choice available, that at the very least, saves one life. It is the only choice that leaves a glimmer of hope for anyone involved that there is a way off of the burning island. And as the example I read last night, with hundreds of responses in a matter of just a few hours, you are not alone, floating on your lifeboat. There are many, many of us, floating in these wavy waters with you, willing to give a helping hand, and full of understanding, from our knowing, pained hearts.

****Readers, I choose to keep the identities of the addicts in my life private. I assure you that everyone in my immediate family is healthy and well, at this time. Thank you for your love, understanding and concern.

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

Soul Sunday

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

Short Addiction & Recovery Poems - Digital Poet

Good morning. It feels like a particularly soulful, hopeful Sunday. My friend sent a video of the most adorable little bird creating a nest in her tree this morning. Nature is hope. Nature continues no matter what. Nature keeps doing its natural thing, oblivious to wars and politics and disasters. Nature is truly the physical manifestation of hope.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I hope that you write a poem today. As Hemingway states, writing is clearing. Here is my poem for today:

I worked so hard on the raft.

I found directions to make it,

And guidelines on how to make the journey,

To get away. I made room for all of us.

And I begged you to come aboard.

But you obstinately refused.

You wanted to stay on the Isle of Anger and Pain.

And I wanted to leave,

You are outraged that I floated away,

And I am disappointed that you stayed.

And the distance between us now,

is full of turbulent waves,

and scary, dark unknown things,

swimming and circling below the surface.

I won’t go back, and you won’t start a raft.

And so, here we are, so far away.

Love Is An Action

In the matter of less than six months, three members of our combined extended families have lost their spouses to sudden deaths. All three of these people who died were in their fifties and younger. This has been a lot to consider and to digest and to process. It has been a stark reminder to me of just how short life really is, and how important it is to savor all of it. In times of sorrow and of pain and of uncertainty, which since the pandemic started, seems to be more of the norm than it ever was before (at least in my own life), it really helps to be reminded of all of the good and the love and the wonder that still surrounds us. These two recent news stories filled me with hope for humanity.

The first was the story of the Polish women who left their strollers waiting for the Ukrainian refugee mothers who were coming into Poland, at the train station platforms. I am sure seeing those strollers meant so much more to these refugee mothers, than just the use of much needed baby strollers. It was a message of hope, and of love, and of empathy, and of unity, like nothing that we could ever convey in words:

https://www.today.com/parents/parents/strollers-refugees-viral-photo-rcna19020

The second inspiring news story is about a hotline created by a couple of teachers and their elementary students to uplift people who need to feel some hope and some joy. It is called “Peptoc.” I called the number this morning and I picked the option to hear children’s laughter. Is there a more beautiful sound in this world? I think not. The number is here: 707-998-8410 I may keep it on speed dial. Here is the article:

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/06/1084800784/peptoc-hotline-kindergarteners

Love is an action. What does your love action look like for today?

Love quote - Love is a verb. | Love is a verb, Love quotes with images, Love quotes

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

It’s Your Thing

I don’t believe that there is any decent writer who isn’t also an avid reader. Most days before I start writing, I do a fair amount of reading. Interestingly, no matter how randomly I seem to choose my reading materials in the morning: news stories, essays, book chapters, tweets, horoscopes, old journal entries of my own, text exchanges, magazine articles etc., a common theme often seems to evolve. Today, from my various readings, I jotted down these ideas that seemed to be “the message” which my most intuitive self was trying to bring to the forefront of my mind and into the guidance of my everyday life:

Don’t fixate on the negative.

Enjoy and fully appreciate the everyday modest delights in life.

Keep it simple.

One of my readings this morning included this quote:

“A multitude of small delights constitutes happiness.” – Charles Baudelaire

This morning, not long after I jotted the French poet’s astute quote down into another one of my almost full leather bound notebooks (On an aside, I consider these notebooks of mine to be some of my greatest treasures in life. These ever-evolving notebooks contain thoughts and wisdoms that provoke my own thinking, and they guide me and inspire me to my own innate wisdom and peace. These personal treasure boxes are available for anyone who can read and who can think and who can feel, to create and to accumulate and to savor. If you don’t have a “thought museum” journal/notebook/scrapbook, start one today. They are like potato chips. You won’t be able to stop at just one.), I started reading another excellent article by the New Zealander, Karen Nimmo. Karen Nimmo is a psychologist and a prolific writer and this particular excerpt from her article stood out to me, and enforced and validated this one main message that seems to be the theme of my reading today:

“Life is challenging, that’s the deal we all sign on for. But if you find one thing — one thing — that gets you excited even in small doses, one thing that makes you come alive, preserve it. Nurture it. Build it. Sneak back to it. Invest in it. Because it’ll be there for you all the days of your life.” – Karen Nimmo

I have often thought that if I am fortunate enough to grow old and feeble, I hope that I will always have the ability to read, and hopefully, even to write. (More than once, I have even pictured little old lady me, perched in her comfy bed, in the nursing home, reading to her heart’s content, all day long until it’s time for dinner, and then I even hope to be able to read, while I am eating my dinner.) Reading gets me excited, even in small doses. So does writing. Writing makes me come alive. And so every morning, as Nimmo suggests, I preserve these activities. I nurture them. I prioritize them. I sneak back throughout the day to look at my blog, and to read any comments, and to read other various written communications that have caught my fancy. I invest in these activities on a daily basis, because they are an investment in my own happiness and fulfillment and feeling of purpose. My happiness and excitement and contentment is positive energy that spills out to my home environment, and to my family, and to my pets, and to my friends, and to my community and to my world. My investment in my deepest, truest self (even in small doses) ends up being my gift of joy to the world. Win-win. What is “that thing”, that “one thing” that makes you come alive? What’s that “one thing” that brings out your most beautiful, positive, alive and happy energy, so that when you do “that thing”, it only adds to the bank of positive energy that our world so desperately needs right now? Whatever that activity is for you, doing “that thing” is your gift to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to your community and to your world. You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to all of the rest of us, to do that thing that makes you feel the most alive, even if it is only in small doses. In a world where we are facing a horrific crisis that has absolutely no winners, we need loads and loads more of the magnificent, light-filled, uplifting, excited, loving, positive energy that is a “win-win” for all of us. As Nimmo says, find “your thing”. “Preserve it. Nurture it. Build it. Sneak back to it. Invest in it.” Do it for yourself. Do it for all of us.

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

Return If Possible

“Sadness is the soul’s way of saying this mattered.” – (from the video above), Jane’s “Ted Talk from Bed Talk”

I, like so many others, was a little bit soul-shattered to hear of Jane’s (Nightbirde) passing over this past weekend. I thought that Jane was incredible – the epitome of beauty, inside and outside. Her voice and her music were amazing, but her writing and her wisdom is what touched the depths of my being. I read recently that we all want to live a long life and to have a short death, and Jane didn’t get either of these. Still, Nightbirde persevered and she inspired millions all around the world, to do the same, and to remain in awe of the beauty in life, all around us. Jane often used the hashtag phrase, #SeeJaneWin. She did win. She won at life by living life fully, and honestly, and earnestly, and faithfully, and hopefully and authentically. She didn’t cheat herself from experiencing “the all of it All.” And she inspired so many others to do the same.

I’ve read a lot of the comments, outpouring on Nightbirde’s Instagram in these past hours after the announcement of her passing. Jane energized many people to keep on going, during their own trials, and health failings, and dark moments in their own lives. So many people testified to this fact. So many people consider Jane to be “an angel on Earth.” One person wrote R.I.P., RETURN IF POSSIBLE. I like that version of R.I.P. We need more Janes in this world. Jamal Edwards, a young, influential rapper, and writer from the United Kingdom recently passed in the last couple of days, as well. He is credited with this thought: “The goal is not to live forever, the goal is to make something that will.”

Our bodies will eventually turn to dust, and our things will be sold in estate auctions. Our only real, everlasting legacies are what and who we affected in this world. These actions are what create the ripples that move all across the waters that cover this entire world, and these collective actions form what we now call “history”. What we create, what we experience, and what we bring into fruition into this world are our gifts, and our endowments to the banks of inspiration, hope, wisdom, experience, strength, faith, beauty- all of the elements of life that others can draw off of, when needed. Our daily being is our one precious gift to this Tapestry of Life that is being created by all of us. We all have the ability to give the highest and fullest and truest forms of ourselves back to the banks of Life. That is our only goal: to give back to the world the only part of us that will last forever – Love.

Thank you, Jane. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bless you, you beautiful soul.

nightbirde - Twitter Search / Twitter

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

The Passing of Storms

Image

Honestly, these past few weeks, I have been feeling really good. But one of my good friends from college is having one of those weeks in which everything that could go wrong, is going wrong. It’s at the point where I can tell that she’s almost embarrassed to tell us, her friends, what else has gone wrong, because it’s almost become unbelievable, to have that many things go wrong in a short span of just a few days. I texted her a mantra which I’ve used to get myself through my rough spots, my entire adult life, “Just hang on. One Day at a Time. The clouds always pass.”

As my regular readers know, last fall, I may have experienced the worst time of my life, to date. Our youngest son’s epileptic seizures were not being controlled by medication, and he was having major seizures, at least once a week (after experiencing many seizure free years). Our son had to come home from his university, and stay with us. Ask a 21-year-old man what it feels like to be “babysat” by his parents. Ask a 51-year-old woman what it feels like to fear for her child’s life on a daily basis. Both answers would be nothing short of “pure hell.”

However, as scared as the superstitious part of me is to write this, our clouds have passed on, from that dark period of this past fall. Our son’s new cocktail of medication has kept him seizure free for a couple of months now. He is back at his university. And I am starting to let myself exhale. I am also reflecting on how different I feel right now, in this moment, than how I felt back then. I clearly understand now, that I was pretty depressed last fall. I was just surviving to get to the next day. The contrast in my optimism, my energy levels, and my overall excitement for future goals and plans, from where I was this past fall, is night and day. I have gone through some harrowing, dark periods before in my lifetime, but going through last fall, desperately worrying about the well-being of my baby, was probably the darkest that I have ever felt, in my entire life. At the very least, it is the “freshest” dark period, in my mind’s eye.

Those of you who are suffering from depression, I want you to know that I empathize with you. It is such a draining, harrowing, soul injuring, exhausting, frustrating experience. And honestly, I was never diagnosed or medicated for depression, during this past fall’s upsetting events. So if it gets even darker than how I felt (such as a clinical depression), my heart bleeds for you. Know this: You are strong. You are brave. This is not your fault. You deserve better. Do whatever you need to do, to get help to feel better. And please know that “The clouds always pass”. I’m experiencing the blue skies right now, after the storm of my lifetime has passed. I am not so naïve to believe that I won’t have more storms roll through, but I have proven to myself, once again, that I have the faith and the fortitude to get to the other side of storms. And so do you. Believe it. Hang on. One Day at a Time. The storms always, always pass. They always do. And even through all of the destruction that the storms wreak, they do leave tiny, little unexpected lessons and gifts in their wake. If nothing else, the storms leave you with the gift of the realization that you are stronger than you ever believed yourself to be, and the joy in savoring the feelings of relief, and peace, and even some happiness, as you bask in your blue sky moments, with your face tilted towards the sunshine.