Tag: hope

Inside You

I was reminded of this proverb shown above, this morning while perusing the internet. What are you letting inside that doesn’t deserve a welcome mat? Another proverb says, “Wherever you go, there you are.” So even if you are Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos or Taylor Swift, and you have homes and planes and yachts all over the place, at your immediate disposal, you can only be in one place, at any one time . . . . your own body, which houses your restless mind.

Dr. Nicole LePera recently posted this on X: “If your home is a place of peace, you’ve broken the cycle.”

Is your home a place of peace? I’m not talking about your bricks and mortar home. I’m talking about inside of you. Your body and your mind is your true home.

What is a peaceful place? A peaceful place is one of security, comfort, acceptance, and easy-going, light flowing energy. In a peaceful place you don’t expect to have to walk on eggshells, nor pretend to be someone or something that you are not. You don’t feel tension or trepidation in peaceful places. You don’t feel judged or condemned in peaceful places. Rarely do you feel the need to escape from peaceful places. Peaceful places tend to be our ultimate sanctuaries. Peaceful places make us feel like everything is alright.

Is your body/mind a peaceful place to be? Because if it isn’t, there’s nowhere else to go. You can try to escape it with mind-numbing activities and addictions, but you are still there. Even if it feels like you’ve escaped it for a moment, you are still there.

What if your soul/spirit/highest form of yourself was the keeper and captain of your mind/body? And all that your soul/spirit/highest form of yourself wanted, was for your mind/body to be a place of peace? What would be needed to keep your mind/body a sanctuary of peace? Who/what would be invited in, and who/what would be kept out? What thoughts and actions would become rituals to keep your mind/body peaceful? What thoughts and actions would be shown the door?

What if you were able to walk through life, shielded by the beautiful energy of your own place of peace, in every single moment, no matter where you happened to be? What if the waves and storms outside of you, try as they may, could not “rock the boat” of peace inside of you?

Ultimately, anything that we want outside of ourselves, is because of the feelings that we believe that these things will bring inside of ourselves. What if that thinking is all backwards? What if those feelings are available to us, right now, inside the quiet, peaceful sanctuaries of our own hearts? What if all of what we have brought in from “the outside” is drowning and overwhelming us, like a ship taking in too much water from the ocean around it? Is it possible that a simple, peaceful sanctuary of observance and curiosity, has been inside of us all along, but it has been overtaken by too many outside influences? Is it time to let “all that stuff” that doesn’t serve, drain out?

Ultimately a ship at sea, leaves for its voyage, with the captain knowing that there will be all sorts of weather, and unforeseen adventures along the way, but the ultimate goal is to arrive at its destination, with all of the cargo and crew, safe and intact. A ship at sea, has a good captain, who follows the inner navigation system closely, so that even when all that can be seen is ocean and sky, the captain of the ship, intimately and deeply understands that the destination will be seen on the horizon one day. In the meantime, the captain’s goal is to keep the ship afloat as a dry, safe sanctuary of peace, as it carries on with its journey through the vastness surrounding it.

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:

2283. Are you a good singer? (It really doesn’t matter. Just sing.)

The Little Blue Heron

I just took the dogs out and the little blue heron was sitting out there waiting for us. He comes to our backyard often, picking various perches to look for food. The little blue heron is never excited to see the dogs. He stubbornly holds his position until the last minute that one of them almost reaches him, and then he flies off, loudly squawking his disapproval and disgust. I smile to myself every time I see him. My husband always says that the little blue heron is his dad paying us a visit.

My husband’s father passed away when my husband had just turned 30. We received one of those awful “middle of the night calls” (the kinds of sickening calls that you wish were only true in movies) with the news that my father-in-law had passed from a sudden heart attack. He was 59.

My father-in-law was a complicated man. My husband had a complicated relationship with him. But my husband was his only son of five children, and I never doubted my father-in-law’s love and pride for his son. When my husband was earning his MBA from a prestigious, challenging university during night school, while supporting our family of me and our two young sons with his day job, my father-in-law sent a regular stream of handwritten letters and newspaper clippings, as a form of pride and cheerleading and support.

My husband and our two middle sons took off from work/school today, to go fishing together. I just waved them off, feeling their excitement and anticipation reverberating in my own heart. My husband often fished with his own father when he was a boy. Maybe when the little blue heron flew off just now, he was heading out to sea. Maybe the little blue heron has “a boy with his own boys” to look after today. Perhaps they need the little blue heron’s pride and cheerleading and support.

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:

379. Who knows you better than anyone else?

On the Cusp

“You can be on the cusp of something. Appreciate the cusp, not the something. Appreciate this moment now.” – Ernest Holmes

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and I could not get back to sleep. I’ve had this weird, excited, jittery, giddy feeling for a while now and it is growing stronger. I feel like either I, or the world in general, are sitting on the cusp of something really special and exciting. Is anyone else feeling this way? I suppose we are always on the cusp of something new. It just feels strange to have the feeling of anticipation and yet not really knowing exactly what is you are anticipating.

“What I’m suggesting to you is that this could be a renaissance. We may be on the cusp of a future which could provide a tremendous leap forward for humanity.” – Jeremy Rifkin

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:

428. Too much is never enough of . . . .?

Memory Jogs

Sometimes I come to the blog having no idea about what I am going to write about and other times I have hundreds of ideas that have come to mind from things that I have heard, or read, or seen, throughout my week, and so, I sloppily write reminders (sometimes readable, sometimes not) on my calendar, so that I have writing prompts. Here is an accumulation of my hastily written memory jogs for this week:

+ Are you in charge of your day or is your day in charge of you? Who’s in charge here? Do you allow distractions and interruptions and other people’s problems take over your day? Do you have a general outline for your day or do you just allow whim and fancy and spontaneity and intuition to take over the day’s plot? Are you so “in charge” that your days have become rigid and banal and monotonous? (To be clear, there are no “right” answers here, but a little self awareness by answering these questions can help you to fine tune your days, because after all, it is our days that make up our weeks, our months, our years, our lives . . . .)

+ There was a comedian who was joking that the only reason why mindfulness (staying in the moment) has only become a really popular concept in the last decade or so, is because before that, we didn’t really have a choice not to be mindful. Without the internet, cell phones, 800 TV channels, etc. we were mindful, whether we realized it or not. I was reminded of this when I drove up the street for my eyebrow waxing appointment, earlier this week. I realized that I had forgotten my phone on the way to my appointment (only ten minutes up the road) and then I was horrified when I had to wait, because my technician had another customer ahead of me who was still there. The low level anxiety and fidgetiness which I felt throughout the whole experience (and I was back home, all waxed up, in less than an hour) was eye-opening and a little disappointing to me, for sure. For perspective, on this day in 1981, MTV was launched. It was 43 years ago, in which seeing music played on television was considered unbelievably cutting edge. I was 10. And ten-year-old me was mindfully mesmerized by the amazing new phenomena of music and graphics all mixed together on a TV screen. Imagine.

+ The popular inspirational speaker, Og Mandino once said this,“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” I love this. I think that this thought is so much better than pretending that this is the last day of your own life. Whenever that sentiment is said, about pretending that it’s your own last day on Earth, I think to myself, “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing laundry, or washing dishes, or going to the grocery store, and I would want all of my favorite people around me, all day long (and I would want them to be sobbing – kidding, sort of).” Let’s face it, pretending every day is your last day on Earth, is just not a practical, or do-able sentiment. It’s an uncomfortable, annoying sentiment that serves to remind you that you really can’t just do what you really want to do, all day long, every day of your life. You may die on the biggest chore day of your life. Facts. But Og Mandino’s statement is doable, and it helps us to grow our own compassion levels, exponentially. So when we do come to our own last day on Earth, we’ll have a lot less regrets and then, we can rest in peace.

+ I’ve noticed a form of speech being used a lot more than I had ever heard it before and I really like it. It reminds us of the nuances of life and it helps us to steer away from black and white thinking. This is the use of “and, also”. So I can say, “I like the thrill of big summer storms, and also, I sometimes find them terrifying.” “I enjoyed the visual effects of that movie, and also, I found the movie to be disturbing.” “And also” is a lot better than a “but”. A “but” is negating. It sucks all of the positivity and truth, out of our first statement, like a vacuum. “And also” is inclusive, and it says that two seemingly opposite experiences, can and often do, happen at the same time. Using “and also” in our communication is truer to our messy, organic human experience.

+ As a segue from my last point, you can say, “I am an authentic person, and also, I am a private person.” Authenticity is the ability to be the truest version of yourself that you can be in any particular circumstance. Authenticity is not creating false selves to impress different people, at different times. However, it is healthy to be discerning about how much of your true life, opinions, experiences, etc. you choose to share with different people in your lives. You can be an authentic employee, without choosing to spout out what you really think about your boss. Inauthentic people create lies and falsehoods and illusions, in order to impress others. They tend to be “different people with different people.” Authentic people are comfortable in their own skin and are typically “what you see is what you get” with everyone they meet, and also, they carefully choose a different level of intimacy and vulnerability with each relationship, which they have in their lives, for their own well-being. In my experience, as you age, you naturally tend to become much more authentic, and this is so refreshing and freeing.

+ In the United Kingdom, when a company goes bankrupt, there is a list of creditors to pay from any of the assets still left. The last creditors in line to get any of their money back are called “residual beneficiaries.” Typically, by the time everyone else is paid, the “residual beneficiaries” get little to nothing back. A speaker on a podcast I was listening to, said that sadly, in today’s busy lives with intense careers, long work hours, and overfilled schedules, we often (unintentionally, of course) turn our most cherished loved ones into being our “residual beneficiaries.” Also, typically, the very last residual beneficiaries on our personal lists, are ourselves. Is your life a healthy company- simplified, streamlined, focused, and on point to its mission statement? Or are you (and your loved ones) getting bankrupted by unhealthy, unwieldy practices? You are your own life manager. Do you have a good one?

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:

2586. What gives you pause?

The Position to Help

Our middle son is finishing up his last year of medical school. Anyone in medical school has to go through rotations of all of the different specialties in medicine. So even if you know for sure, that you want to become a country family doctor or a psychiatrist, you still have to go through surgical rotations and emergency room rotations and rotations in the Intensive Care Unit and in Burn Units. My son’s medical school is part of a hospital system in a major city in the United States. The things that he has witnessed in just a few short years, are overwhelming to just hear about them. (I could never be in the medical fields. I don’t have the temperament for it, but I am so utterly grateful for, and respectful of those of you who do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.) As a mother, I am constantly taking my son’s “temperature” to ensure myself that he isn’t traumatized and distressed, by all that he has seen and experienced. One time my son said something to me, really profound and comforting. He said, “Mom, if I had been a helpless witness to the accident or to the situation that brought the patient to us, that would be far more traumatizing. It is a great feeling to be in the position to help.”

That is what I mean by my tagline. If we can alchemize our pains into healing for ourselves and for others, the pain doesn’t remain in its most dire, useless, self-perpetuating state. It is a great feeling to be in the position to help. Our pain gets to a higher level of healing and empowerment, when we use it to help others instead of using it to hurt others, to bring them down to the level of pain which we are feeling. (Unfortunately, misery loves company.) We get empowered over our pain when we use it as a catalyst to change what created our pain in the first place. Look at all of the people who have turned their own pain for good: civil rights leaders, women’s rights leaders, gay rights leaders, AA sponsors, diet/fitness gurus who were once overweight and unhealthy and now help others to get healthy, gun control advocates who have lost loved ones to violence, research advocates for a myriad of diseases who have lost loved ones to suffering, therapists and grief counselors who have healed their own mental health issues and want to help others to do the same, people who grew up poor and now create opportunities in the impoverished communities that they grew up in, spiritual leaders who once lost all hope, and then found inspiration and faith, and bring that inspiration to others, etc. etc.

We all have pain. Own your pain. Don’t deny it. Don’t let it eat you up inside and destroy you. Don’t remain unaware and project your pain onto someone else. Don’t compare your pain to others’ pain. This is your pain. Allow yourself to feel it. Be angry at who/what caused or contributed to your suffering. Be sad. Be compassionate. Make yourself seek help if you need help to process your pain. When you allow others to help you, you are giving them the great, empowered feeling of being in the position to help, and to continue to alchemize their own pain into uplifting good. When you accept help for your pain, you are letting your helper see that their own pain suffered wasn’t entirely in vain. And then, when you are feeling healed enough to start helping, do it. Do it. It is a great feeling to be in the position to help.

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:

2712. What phrase or quote best describes you?

Monday – Funday

Credit:@Design-Assassin, X

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?

Dots

“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:

1292. Have you ever walked a tightrope?

Acceptance

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).

Beautiful Moments

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:

2379. What’s your outlook on life?

Too Much

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:

1682. What do you consider unforgivable?