Tag: hope

Crying Game

“Embrace crying as a spa day for your eyes.” – Chani Nicholas

“Whenever I’m struggling I think of this: what’s going to make the most positive difference to MY life right now? Then, I go do that one thing and I almost always feel better.” – Karen Nimmo

My daughter was talking to me the other day, and she was obviously holding back tears. I reminded her to let her tears flow. Crying and tears were designed to be our bodies’ release valves. My daughter was holding back her tears back because she didn’t feel like she “should” be upset. (the modern day shame – to be upset about anything “trivial” implies that you are privileged. Remember my favorite mantra -“Just because someone is dying of a heart attack, doesn’t mean that your broken toe doesn’t hurt.”) Nothing terrible has happened recently. My daughter has just had one of those seasons “on the grind.” She is finishing up two difficult, time consuming online college accounting courses. She’s worked a ton. Her boyfriend is away, taking summer courses at his college. This summer just hasn’t been a typical, laidback, full of ease and fun season, like it has been in the past for her. She feels overwhelmed and stressed during a time that is often perceived to be the most easy-going time of the year.

I’ve been feeling grumpy lately. There are a lot of little aggravations in my life that feel as “stuck” as the sickenly hot summer air in Florida has been for months. There has been virtually no movement on situations such as car repairs (my husband’s car has been in the shop since the beginning of June due to a shortage of parts) and a few other long-standing, seemingly never-ending red-tape issues going on in our lives. These things are out of my control. I know that things could be far, far worse. I also know that I shouldn’t let things that are out of my control bother me, but I can feel the frustration cooking under my surface, and scolding and shaming myself for feeling frustrated only adds to “the boil.”

I love Karen Nimmo’s (well-known author and psychologist from New Zealand) question that she says she asks herself, and she also reflects upon, any time a client comes to her with their problems: What’s going to make the most positive difference in my life right now? She says when tackling any problem, you have to take it one-step-at-a-time. You have to prioritize what needs urgent attention before getting down to the brass tacks of the overall issue. If a patient comes into the ER with an infection that is full of puss and blood on their arm, this wound must be attended to first, before you can start exploring what caused the infection in the first place.

So mostly, my daughter needed a good cry. I hugged her, and the release made her feel a little better. She also made plans to do some line-dancing with friends this weekend, which is new and intriguing to her. I got my hair done and my eyebrows waxed this week. These things are within my control, and they always give me a lift when they are completed. I’m signaling to the Universe that I am ready for the new season (a season in which hopefully some of these longstanding irritations will come to completion). What’s going to make the most positive difference in your life right now? You’re not going to solve all of your problems and issues and irritations, in one fell swoop, but you can take small steps towards positive resolution. And you will feel, at the very least, a little bit better.

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

You’re Not Sunk

“Your fear that leaving this relationship will be a waste of the time you’ve invested in it over these past five years is a psychological trap called a sunk cost fallacy. It’s when you make the irrational decision to stay in a relationship based on your past investment of time, love, work, and energy, rather than on what’s in your best interest going forward. Sunk cost fallacies keep us stuck in the bad thing rather than allowing us to move forward in the direction of something better.” – Cheryl Strayed (from Dear Sugar)

I’ve written about sunk cost fallacies before, but I think this thought bears repeating. Today, is the first day of August and almost the last day of summer. (My husband keeps reminding me that this is not technically true, but the kids from our area go back to school next week and my daughter heads back to college the following week, so in my mind, which has been conditioned to the school calendar for a long, long time, summer is practically over. Remember, much like northerners are usually happy to see the winter end, most of us Floridians feel the same way about summer.) Not only is it the first day of August, but it is also a Full Moon day. Historically, full moons have been thought to be a time of reaping the harvest, and letting all things go that no longer serve us. Full moons have been thought to be times of culmination and of release.

So today, with it being a full moon on August 1st, it is an excellent day to get real with yourself, and ask yourself if you are currently caught up in any psychological traps of the sunken cost fallacy variety. These traps don’t always just relate to romantic and platonic relationships. We can get caught up in sunken cost fallacies related to almost anything: our jobs, the people we go to for services, such as doctors, hair stylists, dry cleaners, etc., a hobby, a volunteer position, where we live, where we vacation, our daily habits . . . . it can apply to almost anything. Basically, we all have areas in our life where things are a little stale and no longer working for us, even if they worked perfectly for us in the past. Just as a lovely little pot is the perfect place to house and to protect a young growing plant, there comes a time when the plant needs to be transplanted to an area where it can better spread its roots, in order to grow and to thrive.

In my own life’s experience and in observing others’ experiences, I’ve noticed that if we hang on too long to anyone or to anything, for no other reason than we have already spent a lot of time, energy, work, resources and emotion, on that situation, eventually the Universe will do the pruning for us, sometimes in a shocking, sudden, dramatic fashion, since we weren’t heeding its constant, growing louder hints from our own intuition, for a long, long time. And then, after the dust settles, we end up landing in this place of wonder and of amazement, because we suddenly see that the drab, dire story which we had been telling ourselves – “There is no other choice/option here”, is clearly false. We were the ones holding the keys to our own options and to our own freedom, the whole time. And this is when we ask ourselves, “Why did I waste so much time and energy staying put?”

Change is scary, but change, as we all well know, is the only real constant in life. By the time we hit middle age, we all are likely to have stories in our histories that prove that the sunken cost fallacy is truly just a mind trick. (Ask me about a money pit house we owned in the Carolinas sometime, if you want your ears burned off.) We are often susceptible to the sunken cost fallacy because of our honest, good intentions, always looking for the benefit of the doubt, our high hopes, and our misguided loyalty that sometimes veers into obstinate stubbornness. We’re human. However, knowing that we are all susceptible to the sunken cost fallacy but also capable of overcoming it, where does it seem to be sinking its teeth into your life? What, in the cupboard of your one life, has gone well over its expiration date? Where in your life, has your intuition been pinging you to change it up? Remind yourself of other times in your life when you finally made a much needed change (or it was made for you), and how the outcome of that change has improved your life immensely. Remind yourself also, that you brought all of the lessons, understandings, and happy memories that came from that prior situation along with you, even after you made the decision to leave it. All is not lost. The biggest trick of the sunken cost fallacy is the idea that just because something is no longer a fit for you, doesn’t mean that you got absolutely nothing for all of the time, energy, emotion and work, you put into it. The most invaluable, precious things in life are the things which we always have with us, the things which no one else can ever take from us – our memories, our knowledge and our wisdom gained, and our strength from fully experiencing life, and processing what those experiences mean to us, going forward.

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

Seeds

“The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. Be patient and stay the course.” – Fabienne Fredrickson

My youngest son has started a sales job this summer, and this past week he has experienced a lot of frustration, feeling like his efforts aren’t going anywhere. Having been in sales, at his same age, I remember those feelings all too well. A huge part of doing well in sales is keeping the faith and staying the course. In sales, you tend to get disappointed by targets you work your tush off for, and then end up with delicious surprise sales, that almost seem like a gift out of nowhere. The fruits of your labors, often pop out where you least expect them to be.

I remember reading once, that if we instantly got everything that we wanted right when we asked for it, we would quickly become overwhelmed. (Ever arrive home to a pile of Amazon boxes at your front door, full of impulse purchases??) We would soon find out that half the things that we thought we wanted, were things that we really didn’t want, in the long run. Ideas and creations and intentions that have spent some time, hibernating, cocooning, and then even some more time percolating and simmering, usually give us the best refined and blooming results of whatever it is that we are truly and ultimately seeking.

Plant your seeds. Do what you can for these seeds. Water them, make sure they get some light and heat, fertilize your seeds with excitement and optimism, but don’t hover over them, with wringing hands. Be patient. Believe that before you know it, you will be filling baskets full of the ripe fruits of your own labors.

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

To My Friend

I want to tell you about my friend. She’s beautiful and relatively young. She has so much abundance of everything, and yet she’s also quite generous. She is totally eclectic. Her music, fashion, and food choices are all over the map. She finds God through many different paths. My friend isn’t faultless. She has a lot of inner conflict, she’s self-righteous and she often has a hard time slowing down. She loves technology (even of the weaponry bent) and my friend sometimes gets ahead of herself with her inventiveness, before really considering the ramifications of it all. But she’s a leader. My friend is a beacon to many. She’s brilliant, and at her heart, from my friend’s very inception, there has always been a deep, undying dream for mecca/nirvana/heaven for all who walk the earth. And honestly, at her ultimate best, my friend is the closest thing to the mecca/nirvana/heaven dream the world has ever known. Happy Birthday to my beautiful friend America. May you remember your roots today, America. May today be a rebirth of all of what is the best that is in you, with a clear vision of what direction to go towards, so that the greatest of anything which humankind has ever known is yet to be discovered. There is no doubt, that once that direction is found, my friend America will fearlessly light and lead the way.

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

Stratagem

Do you remember when you were in high school or in college, and you looked around, and you found yourself super stressed by all the people around you who seemed to have their whole lives already mapped out with carefully crafted, detailed precision? Do you remember those times when it felt like everyone around you was walking around with their vital mission plans in their backpacks and they were just chomping at the bits to get to graduation, and to get on with it? And you were thinking to yourself, “Oh my gosh, do I even have a backpack?” Maybe you were one of those people who came out of the womb holding your solid lifetime plan in your hand, but I was not. I was an achiever, yes. I did well in school. When I fell in love with my husband, I knew that I wanted to share my life with him. I knew that I wanted a big family, but all of the rest of it, seemed more like a hazy outline. (and honestly, sometimes it still does) When I was young, I was caught up in “the shoulds” and people pleasing and towing the line and “achieving”. I followed the script.

I bring this up because lately I feel like I am back in that scene with the backpacks, except now it’s all a bunch of middle-aged empty nesters, carrying weathered, higher quality backpacks, and it appears as if they all have been given their next ironclad missions. They can’t get their For Sale signs out fast enough. The moving trucks pull up, right after the graduation parties. And here I am, back to, “Oh my gosh, do I even have a backpack?” I had a text conversation with my sister-in-law the other day that looked something like this (and for context, our youngest child graduated from high school last year, her youngest child graduated last week):

Me (thinking she would need comfort and reassurance): Congratulations!! Don’t worry, empty nest is really nice and simple and peaceful. You do less dishes and less laundry.

SIL: Yay!! We are putting our house up in the spring, moving across the country to our dream town in our favorite state, we’re going to rent first and then we are going to buy. We’ve been dreaming about this very moment for years, and . . . . . . (on and on and on with precision detail and excitement). And then she asked, What are your plans for empty nest?

Me: Well, um, we don’t have our plans quite sewn down just yet. We’re still figuring it out, but we are having fun doing the figuring out part.

SIL: As long as you are having fun, you are doing it right.

My sister-in-law is correct. Having fun with the process is important, but I still feel envious of my fellow empty nesters, purposefully walking around (sometimes running around) with their seemingly long thought-out, highly anticipated master plans. The one thing that I know for sure, during this next stage of my life, is that I won’t be stuck on “the shoulds” nor “the script.” When I reflect back on my life, the decisions that I made when I followed my heart and my intuition, have brought me to my favorite people, and my most memorable places, and my most treasured activities (such as starting this blog). Perhaps, my own master plans are never meant to be in step-by-step form, held in a handy backpack. Perhaps the compass in my heart is really all that I have ever needed, and it will take me everywhere that I need to go. I just need to trust this fact, let go of my comparison anxiety, and let the needle steady and point me in the direction which always seems to lead to my most authentic, deepest self and my most profound experiences, often in the most spontaneous of ways.

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

Monday – Funday

I’ve come to learn that being a mother means that you will regularly have a constant stream of difficult goodbyes, starting when your baby first leaves your womb. And from that excruciating, and yet exhilarating moment, the goodbyes just keep flowing, on and on and on. You say a goodbye, filled with light-sleeping trepidation, when your baby sleeps in the nursery for the first time. You kiss your baby a million times over, and you leave a list of reminders, dozens of pages long, when you leave your baby with a babysitter for the first time. You pry your baby off of your leg the first time you leave your baby at preschool, and then you pry your own fingers off of the door handle of the classroom, and you force yourself to go home. You bravely wave goodbye when your baby steps on to the bus to go to school for the first time. (Usually with sunglasses on, to hide your tears) You go through first dates, graduations, and you help your babies unpack for college, and new apartments, and new adventures, and then when you tell yourself that hopefully you have done everything in your power to help your babies be all set for this particular new adventure in their lives, you let go of your babies, and you say goodbye. Again and again and again. It’s a constant cycle of goodbyes, and the goodbyes never seem to get any easier. It could be that the goodbyes are so hard, because we mothers always carry the background fear that this particular goodbye could be the last goodbye to your baby, and that is about the worst thing any of us mothers can possibly fathom. And yet I know women who have gone through the final goodbyes with their babies, and they are here. And they are still filled with hope, and with life, and with brave, openhearted love to give. I think that there is nothing stronger in this world than a mother’s heart because it has to practice the wrenching process of saying goodbye, again, and again, and again, and yet it constantly replenishes itself with love to share, hope to shine, and strength for the future. A mom constantly extends her heart with a firm hug, a pat on the back, and a “you’ve got this, baby” confident goodbye. And then she turns around, she wipes her tears, and she excitedly anticipates the next “hello.”

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

A Little Magic

We are in yet another city this weekend, visiting our son who is a second year medical student. Our son is more stressed than usual which says a lot when you are in medical school (Medical school is obviously intense and stressful to begin with – the whole family has started to ask for just “the gist” of his experiences, especially when he starts talking about amputations and other emergency room scenarios.) The reason our son is particularly stressed is that he is having to decide on what specialties he wants to hone in on, and so he is going through angsty rounds of “What ifs?”, “Where can I best be utilized?”, “Is work life/balance important?” What if I hate my choice?” . . . . You know the questions. We have all gone through similar handwringing choices throughout our lives.

As a mother, this is when I would love to open my purse and pull out the ever-ready, sparkly, golden magic wand (the proverbial magic wand which we all wish that we had access to). I would show it to my son, with a proud and knowing and able look on my face, and I would bonk it on his head three times, and then I would wiggle my nose and then we would all see a little pink cloud appear with, ta-da, “The One and Only Infallible Perfect Answer!” My son would beam with relief and ease and thank me once again for being such a wonderful, reassuring mother. (and then this is when he would probably ask me which of our four kids would get the magic wand in the will.)

Okay, enough of my stupid fantasy. Of course I don’t have a magic wand and I don’t even have the right un-magic answers to guide my son. We talked about intuition, and prayer, and what just “feels right.” We talked about values, and overall well-being. We talked about practicalities and time. My husband and I talked in circles with our son, trying to ease his stress. At one point, my son mentioned something about reading that you should live your life by thinking about what would be written on your tombstone and what would be said in your eulogy. And that’s when I had, at least to me, a little flicker of a magic wand moment.

Backstory: When we flew down here, my husband insisted that I continue to get out of the dark ages, and he asked me to download yet another airline’s app on to my phone. And so I begrudgingly did it. And in creating my profile I had to answer 542 security questions. (it felt like 542) One question that stood out to me, and was the most easy for me to remember the answer, was the question, “Who was your favorite elementary school teacher?” My favorite elementary school teacher was Mrs. Simmerman, in third grade. She was a tall, elegant Southern woman (in Pittsburgh, PA no less!) and she cared. She oozed care. She wasn’t just teaching little kids facts, she was teaching us to love each other, and to love life. She seemed noble to me. I adored her.

So, as my husband, and our son and I sat at dinner last night, ruminating on his upcoming choices, and my son talk about considering his epitaph in regards to the decision, the whole Mrs. Simmerman security question popped back into my mind. I exclaimed, “G, when you make your decision, remember that when it comes to your life’s end, it doesn’t nearly as much matter WHAT you do, or WHAT YOU ACHIEVED in any field, as it is, HOW you lived you life, HOW you made others feel in your life, and IF YOU MADE A POSITIVE difference doing whatever it is that you end up doing.”

And then much to his chagrin (this reserved young man has never had a mother who embarrasses easily), I asked the two young men who were waiting on us, if they could name right now, in that very instant, their favorite coach or teacher from elementary school. It turns out that the young men were originally from Cuba and they did not speak English well, but when they finally grasped what I was asking them (I gather this is not a regular question which they get from their customers), they both had beautiful, shining expressions on their faces. Their eyes shown. They had instant answers. One young man said, “Mr. Sandoval. He was like a father.” These young men beamed. I beamed. And in some small way, I think that I had a wee little magic wand moment. At least, it felt a little magic to me. And I feel quite confident, that whatever my son decides, he will do just fine.

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

Best Feelings

Two of my favorite feelings in the world are rarely discussed. Happiness, love, joy, glee, pride, excitement, peace, gratitude are all well-known “up” feelings on the feelings wheel/scale, but two of my all-time favorite feelings that I literally bathe in/saturate in/soak fully in and appreciate immensely, beyonds words are: 1) Having my curiosity satisfied (even if something/someone/some happening ends up being terrible, at least I know . . . Wondering is the worst state of limbo and being in limbo is one of my least favorite feelings in the world) and 2) Relief. I had to put a period after the word “Relief” because the feeling of relief is that solidly good. Both of these emotions are “results of results.” Both of these emotions eliminate uncertainty.

Since last summer our family and our extended family has been in what feels like a constant state of having to anticipate, and having to plan for both unusually good and unusually bad life-changing events. There have been graduations, new schools, major illnesses, funerals, dealing with estates, major trips, planning moves to new places, new job offers, etc. etc. etc. There have been so many new decisions to make. Now, I grasp that this is often just the way of life, but sometimes life gets a little clumpy, and since last summer, we’ve been rolling through a big ol’ clump of change that for now, at least, seems to have levelled out a little bit. We can breathe. The storm has passed. The direction ahead seems a little more clear in the windshield. (Now this is the point where I take a pause from writing, and I knock on my wooden desk until my knuckles turn bloody.)

Anyway, for today, I am luxuriating in the feeling of relief, and the gratitude for feeling this sense of relief. The weight feels lifted off of my shoulders. I can feel the grateful pause in my mind, and in my body, and and in my soul. I no longer have a million “What ifs?/How’s this going to go?/What’s next?” swirling around in my mind. I could have lived without the clustered clump of the major highs and the major lows which my family and I just experienced in less than a year, but perhaps the wonderful, cleansing, breathe out moment of relief that I am feeling right now, makes it all worth it.

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

Soul Sunday

credit: @AmadorBatten, Twitter

I thought that the above “card” was better than a poem today. Certain holidays that bring up so much joy, also can bring up an intense amount of pain. Remember, no matter what, today is just a day. And there is no one true definition of love. . . LOVE IS.

And to my children: being your mother is undoubtedly the greatest experience of my life. I love you all, intensely, gently, yet ferociously, forever and ever and ever.

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