I devote this Monday to Cycle Breakers. These are the people who stop the continuation of “Hurt People Hurt People.” Cycle breakers alchemize their hurt to change it to good, and to healing, and to hope for others who are walking similar paths. Cycle Breakers change their hurt from “excuses for their behavior” to “motivations for change.” I know many of these people intimately. These are “my people.”
“A cycle breaker is someone who doesn’t perpetuate harmful behavior because it was all they knew. They went searching for other options. They were determined to learn more. They trusted that all they knew wasn’t enough because they wanted a different life.” – Nate Postlethwait
“A cycle breaker is someone who grew up without an example of the life they wanted or needed, and fought like hell to build that life later.” – Nate Postlethwait
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:
562. If you were entering a baking contest, what recipe would you make?
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down and it has made all of the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs
How many of us, in these middle years of our lives, have already been able to connect some of the dots of our past, which help to make sense of the direction we needed, in order to become the person we are now? How many of us are now grateful for some experiences that at the time seemed horrific/unfair/unimaginable to us, but we now realize helped change the trajectory of our lives for good? I have always held the belief that life isn’t happening to us. It is happening for us. It’s not a game of individual stakes. It is a system that we are a part of, that is evolving towards its own perfection.
The end product of any great work of art, architecture, entertainment, scientific discovery, engineering, physical feats etc. rarely shows the mistakes, the mishaps, the sacrifices, the doubts, the do-overs, the anguish, the pain, the hopes, the fears, the wins, the losses, nor the countless hours of dedication that took to achieve it. We sometimes think that greatness just appeared easily, and out of thin air. Many of the ideas of greatness may seem to appear magically out of thin air, but bringing these ideas into fruition, involved a lot of bold individual “dots” before they are fully connected into the pictures of greatness which we witness today.
Trust that one day, what doesn’t make sense to you now, will someday make complete sense, when you are able to zoom out and see the whole picture, and you are able to connect the dots that form the picture of your own life, as a teeny beautiful part of the overall masterpiece of Life and Creation. You certainly don’t have to live in this state of faith and trust (you have free will), but what is a better alternative?
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:
The question is, “What to write about when the world seems like it is a mess?” I started writing this daily blog in 2018. I have written this blog, almost every single day, living through many “messes” already (both globally and personally): the unprecedented pandemic; the leaving of each of my four precious children out from our comfortable, safe nest into their own adult lives; the worst year to date, of the seizures that come with my youngest son’s epilepsy; the long drawn-out, debilitating illness of my mother-in-law which culminated in her death; suicides of loved ones, the craziness of seeing horrific wars erupt, and witnessing multiple divisive elections, multiple hurricanes, multiple societal horrors, etc. etc. . . . . .and yet here I am, sitting in my writing nook, in my peaceful stillness, looking out my large windows at the gorgeous, sunlit nature teeming all around me, my beloved dogs all afoot, dozing quietly and comfortably. Throughout all of the messes, I have experienced so, so many joys: witnessing each of my children thrive into their adulthoods, in both love and in their careers and studies and health; amazing, mind-blowing trips and adventures with my husband, family members and friends; countless delicious meals and vibrant conversations and stimulating walks and fascinating reading, on an everyday basis; and of course, Writing. I write practically every single day and it is one of my greatest joys and sense of being and purpose in my lifetime. Writing is one of my daily doses of joy which I freely give to myself with gratitude for my ability and propensity and enthusiasm to do it.
Messes, big and small, are part of life. Joy is part of life. Just because there are messes does not mean that you should deny yourself your joys. If anything, the bigger the mess, the more we need to double-down on our joys and our sense of purpose and meaning. We might never be able to make sense of the messes (although we often survive the messes, and sometimes even thrive because of them), but we can always find meaning in our own every day experience, even if that meaning is just to focus fully on the sensual, visceral experience of each moment that we are alive and breathing. When we bring ourselves to a deep level of peace, and calm, and awe, we add these beautiful elements into our collective experience, and the more that we do this on an individual basis, the more the joys outweigh the messes, in our own lives and also, in the shared experience of our world. And this is how, the whole world subtly gets lifted out of its painful messes.
“Acceptance is the key to unlocking the door of contentment.” – Celestine Chua
“Acceptance doesn’t mean you agree with, condone, or give up. It simply means you stop fighting reality.” – Dan Millman
“Acceptance does not mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.” – Michael J. Fox
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:
1181. Have you ever built a snowman? (I think snow is a good thing to focus on, during this ridiculously hot summer).
We saw this beautiful rainbow in our backyard yesterday. It was a welcome sight after a tough afternoon of attending a Celebration of Life, for a 54-year-old woman who had recently died of cancer. Her children and our daughter played on the same tennis team, and so my husband and I wanted to pay our respects, especially since our daughter would not be able to attend, since our daughter is currently studying abroad.
One of my wonderful, loyal, longtime readers (Thank you, Gail!) left the comment on a previous post that I had written about this particular event, that she always leaves funerals/Life Celebrations with a little bit of awe, and a wish that she had known the deceased person better. After listening to friends and family talk so fondly of this woman who had passed, and viewing many lovely pictures of all different times and events in her life, I understood what Gail was saying. I did not know this woman well. I only conversed with her at our children’s tennis matches, but yesterday I got a fuller picture of who she was, and how loved she was, by so many people. There is a winsomeness in not being able to know many people, so intimately. It’s impossible. But there is such beauty in intimate relationships – the emotion felt, the idiosyncrasies that are so fondly noticed and appreciated, the shared memories between people which later become legends and lore . . . . It’s beautiful how we connect to each other in multiple different ways. We each have a few, deep intimate relationships, and then we have many more casual community relationships, but in the end, they all add up to shared life and shared experiences, which give meaning, reference and reverence to our own individual lives.
On a positive note, we actually ran into a couple we hadn’t seen since we moved from North Carolina in 2011, at yesterday’s Celebration of Life. Our sons had played competitive soccer together, and it turns out that they had moved to our area in 2017. We look forward to catching up with them over dinner in the next month or so. After asking myself the squeamish, uncomfortable question, “Oh no, am I starting to reach the age where funerals become reunions?”, I settled into the happier thought that the world is smaller than we think. Our relationships are really just webs which connect us all. We truly are all interconnected, in one way or another.
I am going to end today’s post with a picture of Harmonia, who is the muse of my blog. (You can read more about her on the Homepage of the blog https://kellyfoota.com/ ). No garden is the same every year. Last year, we thought we had ripped out all of the wild flowers from our back garden (which my husband had grown from seeds), but wildflowers are tenacious and strong and willful. A couple of days ago, I took this picture of a slightly muddied and crowded-in Harmonia, who seems to be sniffing one of the flowers. She seems to be reminding us to “take time to smell the roses.” It’s a good reminder. We never know when we will no longer have to opportunity to do so.
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:
Nothing is more lush than the beginning of summer. The start of summer is full of sun, and colors in their most full and vibrant varieties, and long, lingering, “hesitant to go to sleep” daytimes. No one rushes in summer. There is a feeling in the air, that there is time enough to get everything done, even if “everything” includes a whole lot of nothing. No one makes any excuses in summer. You don’t have to make excuses when languid is the expected pace of anyone and anything. Summer is the excuse. I read an article today that suggested that depending on the person or the situation, the beginning of summer is either a time of hope, or a time of dread. I reflected on this idea. When I was a child, the beginning of summer was bursting with hope and excitement. School was off, pools were open, trips were planned, new adventures were as ready as one’s imagination, on a daily basis. When I was a mother of young children, I felt pretty much the same way. It was a relief to get off the hamster wheel of the school and sports schedules that pulled us in exponential directions. It was okay to sleep in, because the daylight would last seemingly forever. Now I am an empty nester. And I live in Florida. Florida is notorious for hot and humid summers. And we are only at the starting gate of “Hot and Humid.” I don’t dread summer. I enjoy the buttoned down casualness that seems to overtake even the most “buttoned up” of any of us (myself included). But any beginning “hope” of the summer season, quickly turns to “I really, really hope summer’s over soon” as the sun turns itself to the Broil setting, and the hopeful blooms of lush quickly turn into dry, shriveled patches of parched surrender, and hurricane season swoops in with its dramatic, unpredictable flourish. I get it now. The beginning of summer can be a time of hope and yet also, a time of dread. And Summer, with her optimistic, light-filled, bright disposition, boldly bouncing in, donning her hard-to-miss ANYTHING GOES colorful t-shirt, laughs at the idea that anyone could dread her coming into town. “Is there really such thing as too much of a good thing?” she boldly asks, as she heralds in the only season which we collectively dare to answer that question.
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:
In my morning readings today, two ideas really stuck out for me. The first idea is about “embracing the contradictions.” It is quite possible to feel opposite feelings about the same experience, all at the same time. This is particularly true during the major transition times in our lives which mark endings and new beginnings, such as graduations, weddings, births, moving houses, divorces, funerals, retirements, etc. We often stamp, “This is how I’m supposed to feel,” onto certain situations and then we sometimes feel shame if we feel some “relief” when we think we should only be “sad”, or we feel shame if we feel “fear”, when we think we should be “happy.” Contradictory feelings are messy. They bring about things like “happy tears” or “pride and melancholy.” Contradictory feelings are hard to sort, because perhaps, they are not really supposed to be sorted and ordered. We have a lot of volume available in our emotional bodies. We can feel all sorts of feelings all at once, and in no particular order. When we accept the normalcy of messy, contradictory feelings, we can remain the calm center of the storm. And we can let our experiences wash over us in every color and sensation which they are supposed to happen to us. We can experience what happens in our lives both fully and open-heartedly, knowing that we will be better and more evolved for doing so.
Similar to this thought, I read about the difference between the emotion generated by delusions versus emotions created by true perceptions. How many times have you gotten yourself into a angsty tangle because you believed a story that you created in your head about a person, or a situation, or an experience, which you later found out to be untrue? We do this all of the time. We have very good imaginations. “Our neighbor doesn’t like us.” “The house down the street is haunted.” “Someone stole my scissors.” And if we aren’t feeling all that imaginative, there are all sorts of “news sources” which can help us out, to spur on delusional thinking. And then we feel the same horrible emotions we would feel, as if the situations were actually true. Emotions require a great deal of energy. Emotions also have a tendency to spur on our minds to create more fearsome, troublesome stories, in order to support their ongoing turbulence. Emotions love to run hot and strong. Emotions love to be felt. Emotions love it when they even start to affect our physical bodies, with stomach aches and headaches, and other other aches and pains and chills. Bottom line, there is nothing wrong with feeling emotion. Just make sure that you are honest with yourself, by noticing if you are expending your emotional energy on the truth versus on falsehoods. Be as mindful where you put your thoughts and your emotions, as to where you put your other resources, such as your money and your time. Pay attention. Be in the moment. All of these things are what makes up the experience of daily life, which ultimately is the whole of your life.
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:
1429. What is standing between you and one of your biggest dreams?
I read about a good technique yesterday attributed to a writer and psychotherapist named Deb Dana. She says that the opposite of our “triggers”, are our “glimmers”, and it is equally important to know both. We all know our triggers pretty well: “Oh ugh, there’s that annoying neighbor . . . . let me run back into the house or dive into a different grocery aisle. Oh, Negative Nancy is calling . . . . I’ll let that one go to voicemail. Oh, this is a really sad movie that reminds me of a really sad time in my life. Time to turn it off.”
When we know our triggers, we can devise ways to avoid them or to remove them from our lives, but sometimes the negative feelings from the triggers remain. What’s the remedy for the feelings that come from “triggers”? The remedy is to switch to our “glimmers” which are thoughts that make us happy. “Glimmers” can be vacation memories, or thoughts of our children or our pets, or a scene from a show or a movie that makes us laugh out loud. Unfortunately our brains our biased towards negativity (in primitive times, this kept us safe), so it is vitally important to know what our “glimmers” are, when we need to switch out of our triggered state.
List your current glimmers and make it a purpose to find some new ones today. When you find yourself triggered, have your glimmer list handy.
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:
2298. Do you think crying is a sign of weakness, or strength?
+ I watched an Oprah special recently where she mentioned that an expert told her that when we enter the empty nest, we go from the role of “manager” to the role of “consultant”. It’s a tough transition, sometimes. When we were managers, our children had to take our direction, or face the “dire” (tongue-in-cheek) consequences. As their consultants, they can choose to follow our directions or not. As I have been transformed into a “consultant” for a while now (our eldest son is 28), I am often pleasantly surprised to see two things: My adult children actually seem to (sometimes) want my advice, and sometimes they even actually follow it. And even better: My children sometimes don’t follow my advice, and as the results show, their own decisions were the right ones to make. It’s good to see that my babies have good minds of their own.
+ I love this quote that I read yesterday. I think that it describes the idea of “free will” better than any other way I have seen it written or explained. “Somewhere inside we hear a voice. It leads us into the direction of the person we wish to become. But it is up to us whether or not to follow.” – Pat Tillman (who left the NFL to serve in Afghanistan, where he died in 2004)
+ “Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Today’s a seriously serious Full Moon. It’s in Scorpio which is a sign that goes deep and gets real. It’s never afraid to look into the dark shadows. The ancients believed that full moons were times of deep transformation and letting go of what no longer serves you. Scorpio is associated with the phoenix rising from the ashes. This is a perfect day to figure out what needs to be let go of, or transformed in your own life. What activities and experiences (people, places and things) in your own life give you inspiring, loving life energy, and which of these things deplete your life energy and make you feel small? Perhaps making a list of your energy givers, versus your energy depleters will help you to get real with where transformation and change is needed, in order to fill your life with more that “fills” you. Listen deeply for that voice inside of you to shed light on the shadows. Then make small changes in the direction towards the person you wish to become.
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:
948. Do you spend too much time pleasing others to your own detriment?
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.)
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?”
