Tag: hope

Charlie and Milo

Image

This is a picture of Charlie and Milo, twins with Down Syndrome, who are viral on TikTok. This picture gave to me my first, biggest smile of the day. In my experience, people who have Down Syndrome have that ability to make others smile. It seems like the extra chromosome that comes with Down Syndrome, also includes an extra dose of pure joy and happiness. Many, many years ago, I sold college textbooks for a living. One of my professors told me the story about how upset his family was when they learned that their fifth and youngest child had Down Syndrome. At the time, he said, the whole family believed that having a Down Syndrome child was the worst thing that had ever happened to their family. But, as the professor regaled me with many love-filled stories about his family’s adventures with his wonderful youngest son, and the close relationship which the two of them shared, the professor told me emphatically, that their Down Syndrome son was the BEST thing that ever “happened” to his family. (It’s funny how these are the kinds of stories which you never forget in your life. I forget a lot of stuff these days, but stories like these, I never, ever forget.) Here are some facts about Down Syndrome, taking verbatim from DoSomething.org:

Down syndrome (DS) is a genetic condition where a person is born with an extra copy of chromosome 21. This additional genetic material changes the course of development and causes the characteristics we have associated with Down Syndrome.[1]

The exact cause of the extra chromosome that triggers Down syndrome is unknown.[2]

One in every 691 babies in the U.S. is born with Down syndrome, making it the most common chromosomal condition.[3]

There are more than 400,000 people living with Down syndrome in the U.S.[4]

In 1983, the average life expectancy of a person with Down syndrome was a mere 25-years-old. Today, it’s 60.[5]

Children and adults with Down syndrome share some common features, but naturally the individuals will more closely resemble their immediate family members.[6]

Since the 1970s, public schools are required by law to provide a free and appropriate education to children with Down syndrome.[7]

The likelihood of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome increases with maternal age, however, 80% of babies with Down syndrome are born to women under 35 years of age because this age group gives birth most frequently.[9]

Roughly 25% of families in the U.S. are affected by Down syndrome.[10]

While behavior, mental ability, and physical development varies from person to person, many individuals with Down syndrome grow up to hold jobs, live independently, and enjoy normal recreational activities.[11]

Let’s be like Charlie and Milo today and let our inner joy take the lead with whatever we are doing. Who’s to say that people with Down Syndrome aren’t the wisest people on Earth? What’s wiser than to live in every moment with pure, unadulterated jubilation???

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

Hidden Gifts

My friend mentioned the “hierarchy of pain” the other day. For instance, if you have a major toothache, your chronic sciatica all of the sudden goes into the background. I think this is true of crises, too. Everything that seemed of utmost importance to me about a month ago, are all things that are easily now on the backburner, as we work to get my son settled on some epilepsy medicines that will keep his seizures at bay. When you are in the middle of focusing on an acute crisis, you realize that all of the stuff that you usually gripe over, really doesn’t matter. Nothing is nearly as important as your health and your sanity, and the health and sanity of those whom you love. Everything else is just a plus, but not a must. When things in life are relatively copacetic, that’s when our pesky human nature starts to look for little issues and gripes and annoyances and dramas to stir us up. But when real emergencies are happening, that’s when we realize just how much we complain and worry about so many meaningless trivialities in our lives. Every experience in life, even our worst experiences, have their hidden gifts. The worst experiences force perspective like no other experience can do for us.

Sad Quotes and Quotations: What is Happiness

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

Soul Sunday

As you may have guessed, the complications with our youngest son’s epilepsy continues. We spent the last three days at the hospital, thus I have not been writing my daily blog. We are all okay. Our son is back home with us now. (just where a college junior wants to be – back home with Mom and Dad – ha!) This frustrating and mysterious experience of finding just the right drug for stopping epileptic seizures is really beyond a tricky thing. What works for one person, destroys another person. What once worked for years for a person with epilepsy, all of the sudden stops working, with no sensible explanation nor apology.

Thank you for your love and for your prayers. I feel them. I was praying and I was sobbing in the hospital chapel this morning, and then all of the sudden I was washed over with the most calming, beautiful sense of peace. This feeling was lovely and comforting and overwhelmingly awesome, all at the same time. I felt everyone’s presence besides my own, alone in the quiet, solemn chapel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As you can imagine, I have prayed since the day that my son was diagnosed with epilepsy, for this disorder in him, to be healed forevermore. I have tried bargaining with God. I have tried doing good and charitable deeds to be “worthy” of his healing, despite my strong belief in God’s non-judgmental grace. Honestly, I have tried Jedi mind tricks. I am embarrassed by some of the avenues which I have desperately explored, to make this nightmare go away for my son, and for our family. My angel box is filled with little pieces of paper with the same prayer, “Please heal my baby.” Some of these papers are now aged and faded. I have been praying for this miracle, for seven years, since we first got my son’s epilepsy diagnosis. Still, for reasons that I don’t comprehend, my son’s stubborn affliction remains. But yet, at the same time, I remind myself that I have never really questioned why I have been remarkably blessed in so many other aspects of my life. I never question why my family has excellent health coverage which pays for emergency drugs that halts our son’s seizures while they are happening. Many people with epilepsy do not have access to these cutting edge drugs and providers. Without insurance, these drugs cost $1300 per single use. I know how privileged I am. When your heart is exposed to such worry and anxiety and fears about your own child’s well-being, you can’t help but realize how many other parents are going through their own personal agony, dealing with their own children’s afflictions, and on top of all of this pain and fear, they have money worries, and lack of resources to provide their children with the best care available. Many people are experiencing this heartache alone. I have a loving husband whose strong arms I rest in, every night, who shares my pain and yet comforts me with his deep, knowing stares. I have family and friends who support us, and lift us up, with their love and their concern. When my heart bleeds for my son and our family, the bleeding continues to pour out, for all of us parents who are hurting for our children, who sadly, we do not have the power to heal by ourselves. That’s not how mothering (parenting) is supposed to work. I am supposed to be able to kiss every boo-boo away, with a sense of power and ease and nonchalance. I hate every single one of our hospital stays, because every door that I pass as I walk on to our room, holds a room full of pain and fear and yet also a desperate hope, for a family that feels helpless, fearful, dejected and pained. I know their pain intimately, and I wish that I could stop it for every one of us. I wish that I could stop the bleed for all of us, but my heart’s tourniquet is overwhelmed.

Trying to catch my breath and to restore my sense of sanity, I was walking on the medical campus of the renowned hospital where I spent my time this weekend, and there, I spied an incredibly beautiful, old, and glorious tree, reaching out and shading the playground provided for hospitalized children – those young ones, who are still well enough to still go outside and play. I looked at her – the wise and stable tree. I touched her beautiful, cragged bark, knowing that I was touching a vital and living being, older and wiser, than I will ever be. I thought to myself, “There is a poem growing here, perfect for a Soul Sunday on the blog.” And I started to search my mind for the poem. And then I suddenly realized that I didn’t need words for the poem. The splendid, formidable, rooted tree was the poem, just in her being. Her fortitude and her vitality shades and protects her precious fragile charges. She does what she can do, and she takes her job seriously. She stays rooted and strong, and she continues to grow, in order to provide for her charges, with what she has to give. She does what she can, and knows that this enough. Other forces, higher than her tallest, reaching branches, will take care of the rest of what needs to be done. And in the meantime, the tree just does what she can, providing some oxygen to breathe, and some shade and some protection, for those who seek comfort under her solid canopy of restless leaves.

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

Saturday Musings

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

When we dropped off my middle son at medical school earlier this year, there was a beautiful fountain on the medical campus, with this inscription engraved around the circumference:

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

It felt so fitting to see that lovely quote, as we were watching our son embarking on his dream of going to medical school which he had worked so hard towards, for so many years. It turns out that the quote is by Christopher Reeve, the incredibly inspiring actor and activist, whose birthday would have been today. Christopher Reeve also said this:

“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” Always choose hope. When you look back at your life, you see so many things which have worked themselves out, in the most amazing, unexpected ways than you could have ever imagined, right? Hop on the hope train, and never get off. Always keep hope in your back pocket, as you journey through your life adventures. Hope’s compass always points north.

On a less serious note, I passed a store window the other day, and I saw this:

As my long time readers know, back in 2020, during quarantine, I temporarily lost my mind (didn’t we all?) and I decided that our family needed to get on the pandemic puppy bandwagon. My husband was not on board, mostly because we already have two other young, large, energy-filled dogs, Ralphie, the Labrador (the one who is currently on a diet, firmly against his will) and Josie, the elegant, yet noisy collie. Still, in the end, we “compromised” and we got Trip:

Now, honestly, I can’t pretend that having a three dog family is necessarily an ideal situation. I fully admit that there is often quite a bit of chaos, involved with living with three energetic, young dogs. That being said, all of us, in our family, have fallen quite hard for our crazy little Trippy. Interestingly, Trip has chosen my husband as “his person” and although he won’t ever admit it, I think that my husband is just a little bit smitten with our little brown dog.

“Dogs are like potato chips. You can’t have just one.”

“The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.”

“When an 85 pound mammal licks your tears away, and then tries to sit on your lap, it’s hard to feel sad.” — Kristan Higgins

“This home is filled with love and dog hair.”

Night Seasons

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

There’s a few good things that are interesting to note, when you are going through one of your “night seasons”, as my aunt calls it. First of all, it’s the numbness. My mom used to call this “God’s anesthesia”. Yesterday, after my son’s seizure, while I had a few periods of crying jags and deep sadness, mostly, I was numb. I felt mostly calm and numb, and this was not caused by any kind of chemical outside of my body. When you go through a trauma, usually your merciful body numbs you right up, so that you can handle whatever you need to do. I think that this is a really nice standard feature of our bodies. I deeply appreciate the initial numbness.

Another thing that your night seasons show you, is that there are so many people who love you and who you can lean on. When you have several people in your life who you can call and/or you can text, and you can feel their deep care and empathy, it means the world. I think that I have friends of every religion praying for us right now, and this feels so great. Yesterday, one of my friends told me that her entire Baptist Church’s prayer warriors were “on it”, and another one of my more “new age” friends told me that she believes that people with epilepsy are getting downloads from God which the rest of us just can’t handle. She told me that my son is probably one of the most enlightened people on Earth. I don’t know if this is true, but all of the prayers and the insights brought me comfort. All of them did. God has many channels. Don’t ever be afraid of saying “the wrong thing” to someone who is hurting. I can always tell true care, over indifferent judgment and arrogance, and that’s never in the words being said. Ignorance being delivered with love, can be cleansed down to just the “love” part. Always err on the side of reaching out. I appreciate all of the love and the prayers from everyone, including my beloved readers of this blog. It sustains me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The final insight about your night seasons, is that you get the reminder that people are mostly kind. Most people don’t want to witness other people’s pain. We had so much kindness bestowed on us yesterday, by perfect strangers, as we often do, when my son has a seizure in public. People want to help. People want to show you that they care. It’s traumatizing to witness a seizure, but people seem to overcome their fears, to act with deep concern and warmth and tenderness. Did I ever mention that EMT people are some of my favorite people on this Earth? They always make my son feel so good, and just like he is one of the “regular guys.” Yesterday, the EMTs got a good laugh with my son, when they reminded him that when my son was first coming out of his seizure, and they asked him who is president, in his hazy confusion, he said, “Lamar Jackson” (who is the quarterback for the Ravens). They all, including my son, got a big giggle out of that one. The EMTs made my son feel like he is a real stud (because he’s a big gym rat, who also attends a prestigious university), just when my son needed it most. These simple, empathic kindnesses are noticed by me, always. Always.

When you are in your night seasons, numbness, your own spirituality (and a big helping of others’ spirituality), and the overall kindness of strangers is what gets you through to the sunshine right around the bend. God has many channels. Yourself, your loved ones, and often perfect strangers, are the passageways, which God uses to get you safely to where the sun rises again. We are in good hands – our own hands, the loving hands of our friends and family, and the kind, empathic hands of strangers, which all come together to form the biggest hands of all. And these Big Hands are firmly and securely holding all of us with Love. This I know.

Heart to Heart

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

Today I am sending you a hug. And it is not a quick, little reminder that I love you, like the cute little “o” attached to the “x”, in a fleeting text, unless that is really what you would prefer. This is the kind of hug that is full of acceptance. This hug is a careful recipe full of “I know”, “I understand”, “It’s okay”, “You are not bad”, “You are not lost”, “I can help hold you while you feel your feelings, and then I keep holding you, as you release your feelings and let them pass on by”, “You are stronger than you know”, “You will survive and you will even thrive,” “You are doing great”, “You are more loveable than you could ever fathom”, “I see you”, “We are in this together”, “This too shall pass”, “Just breathe,” and all of this is held together by an extremely strong substance called Love.

One of the great things about being a 50-year-old woman is that my hugs pack a lot of punch. My hugs have a lot of experience and lessons and perspective, and also a curious mix of powerful strength and yet also gentle humility, built right into them. The recipe for my hugs has been simple-d down to the mostly “tried and true.” Did you ever get hugged by an 80-year-old woman? Your grandmother, perhaps? Let me tell you, those hugs are the real magic elixir. Those hugs will heal what ails you, for weeks and weeks to come.

Hugs bring hearts into extremely close proximity. Hugs help to transfer some of the deepest love and wisdom planted in one heart, into the other heart, all of the while reminding the receiving heart that all that it needs to keep on steadily beating, is already readily available and ever-replenishing, from its deepest depths. Hugs are like gentle, natural defibrillators.

Please pass on my hug today. Someone in your life needs one, no doubt. Don’t be afraid to offer a hug to a loved one, a friend, your dog, yourself. Soak it in. It’s good medicine . . . . I know . . . . I understand . . . . It’s okay . . . . I love you.

So here’s your hug: o

Or if you need more, here’s your hug: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Pass it on.

Tall Mountains and Starry Nights

When we are taking our evening walks, my husband often talks about how wonderful it would be, to gaze at all of the stars at night, if we didn’t have so much light pollution. Scientists have figured out that there are about as many stars in the sky, as we have grains of sand on all of the Earth’s beaches. That hardly seems possible. But when I saw this picture, the possibility became more real:

Photos of Silk Road on Twitter: "A starry night in Bamyan, Afghanistan, Silk Road. http://t.co/diSn3l6Ozt #silkroad http://t.co/42zppkwZpU"

This is what a typical starry night looks like in Afghanistan. When I stumbled upon this picture, I could hardly believe that it was real, and I was equally aghast at where it was taken. There are thousands of pictures on the internet of Afghanistan’s beautiful, starry nights.

Haiti Travel Guide - Beach Travel Destinations

This is a picture of a beautiful land that was the first land in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, sixty-five years before the United States did the same (which, when you think about it, is equivalent to practically a whole generation of freed people). This is a stunning picture of Haiti.

Where there are people and places on this Earth that are deeply hurting and full of fear, we can pray for these people and places, and we can give to honest charities that are helping the innocent people in these places, but we must also hold these innocent people and these places in high esteem, so that they remember how truly amazing and beautiful and strong and unique and needed, they are in this world. In order for anybody, or anything, to rise from the rubble, to overcome grief and pain and fear, they must have hope. Hope comes from an intrinsic belief in oneself, and our individual and our community abilities to rise from any challenge. Hope is a beacon of light that we must keep as bright as the starry nights of the darkest night in Afghanistan. Hope gives the overreaching views from the summit of the tallest mountain in Haiti, Pic la Selle (the third tallest mountain in all of the Caribbean islands), by showing the country in a whole different perspective – a God’s eye view, perhaps.

Hurt people hurt people. Many times hurting people have lost the innate knowledge which hope gives to the rest of us. Hope is knowing that we are so much more than what our little, naked eyes see, and what our computer-like, analyzing minds like to process in roundabout, insolvable puzzles. When we look and we gaze upon others, as if they have the power of the greatest Love inside of them (because they do, we all do), they are reminded of just how truly amazing and powerful they actually are, when they take off the shackles and the shrouds of their own warped perspectives of fears, and of isolation, and of helplessness. We must help the hurting peoples and lands of our world, with acts of kindness and charity and compassion, but we must also gaze upon them with a knowingness that helps them to remember of just how incredible they really are, and what amazing feats they are capable of, and that their intrinsic worth is their birthrights, from the moment that they took their first breaths as innocent newborn babies. We must remind them with our wise knowingness, that when the Love inside of them is made the only leader in all that they do, they are eternally invincible and full of hope. In the meantime, to hone our own skills, we can practice this wisdom on ourselves and on those right around us. Let’s let Love lead the way in all of our lives. Love has all of the answers. Usually it’s easier to remember this fact, when gazing at the stars, or looking all around at all of the magnificent views from the tops of sturdy mountains. That’s because when we gaze at the wonder of the stars and of the mountains, we are looking at them through the lens of our deepest Love. Let’s try using that lens on everyone and everything. Imagine the beauty to behold!

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

How Do You Spell It?

A friend of mine’s son just graduated from boot camp. In her pictures, my friend and her son look so full of relief. I think that relief is one of the most underrated emotions in the world. Relief feels almost as good as love and peace and happiness. Relief marks the end of suffering. Relief is when you finally get an answer to a question. Relief is finishing and crossing off all of the stuff that you have written on your to-do list. Relief is looking in the rear window of an event you had been anticipating and working towards for a long, long time, and then having completed it successfully. TUMS made “relief” their major selling point and marketing campaign. We love the feeling of relief.

In the beginning of the summer, I was feeling a lot of relief about the coronavirus. It seemed like it was really going to be behind us. All of my family and friends got vaccinated. We were even able to go on a nice family vacation, and out of the country, to boot. But now this damn Delta variant is ripping through my state. I personally know two vaccinated people who have tested positive for Covid. I believe that they are going to be okay, but it is so frustrating and disappointing and upsetting to be dealing with this virus, all over again, just when we were feeling so much relief.

I just read The Gift by Edith Eger, who survived the Auschwitz camp during the Holocaust. Edith said that a main reason why she survived the camp (she was found by the Allied troops, starving, on top of a pile of dead bodies) was that she was able to hold on to hope. She said that the definition of hope is knowing that suffering is temporary, and staying curious about what comes next. It is best to focus on how much relief we will feel when this coronavirus really dwindles down to not even being newsworthy. The hope and the anticipation of the wonderful feeling of relief (because all suffering is temporary) is what will sustain us through whatever else this pandemic brings our way.

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

The Definition of Beauty

I watched a snippet of an interview Oprah Winfrey was having with Sharon Stone. Sharon Stone has written a recently released memoir. In the snippet, Sharon Stone was saying that after having a stroke, and being told that she was pretty much “over” in Hollywood, she realized that she had lost her “beauty.” Oprah asked her to clarify this, “What do you mean you lost your “beauty”? Sharon Stone told Oprah that it was not so much that she had lost her physical beauty, as she had lost her “radiance”, her “magnetism”, her “presence” and her “vibrancy.” Both women concluded that it is these attributes which really make a person attractive. And they both agreed that radiance, magnetism, presence and vibrancy all come from health, well-being and confidence from within.

Yesterday, I had a good day. I saw a glimmer of confidence and hope and excitement, everywhere I went. People are really starting to believe that there is an end in sight to all of the limits that have come with the pandemic. I could feel it. Nothing in my physical world was different. Everyone was still wearing masks, but the energy had subtle changes. There was a lightness, an optimism in the air. Maybe I was feeling this way, and so this is how my outside world appeared to me. I’m not sure, but for whatever reason, yesterday, the world seemed more beautiful to me, than it had seemed in a long, long while. And when I say beautiful, what I really mean is radiant and magnetic and vibrant. Life is coming back to life. I feel it inside of me, and I feel it outside of me. We are well on the way to healing from this past unfathomable year, my friends. And this healing is radiating, and vibrating, and bringing all of our lives out into full, mesmerizing color, once again.

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

And Then, My Response

“We can be good at approaching life with perspective. My husband says that ninety percent of what is beautiful, meaningful, and useful in the world is visible in a ten-minute walk. I love this, but it does not always ring true with my PhD in morbid reflection.” – Anne Lamott

I think that I may actually be Anne Lamott, and her husband, all wrapped up in one.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus

In Florida, winter is actually the easier, more temperate weather season. Summers can be brutal. It really does all come down to perspective, doesn’t it?

“At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.” – Toni Morrison

My photographs, artwork and short-term memory are all sorely lacking. This is an easy sell for me, Toni.

“Mom, Thank you for always being there for me whenever I need support or guidance. As I am about to leave the nest, it is nice to know that I can always count on you. (That particular period, ending the previous sentence is heavily bolded and accentuated. The phrase “for advice” follows this period, but the “for advice” part was decidedly and emphatically crossed out.) I feel very lucky to have you as my mother! Thanks for giving me my wings.” – my eldest son

I found the above quote, while cleaning out our office closet this past weekend. Needless to say, it was the highlight of the weekend, for me!! This quote was found in the middle of an old, used up notebook that belonged to my eldest son, filled with college graduation to-do lists, and trainee notes from his new job. My guess is that my son had been practicing writing me a card or a note?! I may have even gotten “said card” a few years ago, when my eldest son first left home for his new adult life, but it fully touched my heart to find his words, and to read the note again (and again and again and again). The Universe sends us exactly what we need, all of the time, if we really pay attention. Look for the signs. They are all around us, all of the time.

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

I’m doing my best to pass on love. Passing on my pain, isn’t very pretty. It usually involves yelling, spewing nasty words, and doing these terrible actions while sitting firmly in my Imperial Victim Chair.