Tag: inspiration

New Start Friday

Credit: Refinery29

Hi, friends and readers!!! I’m back. I’ve missed you, and writing the Adulting-Second Half blog, so, so much. But I just came back from a wonderful trip to London and other parts of England. (My husband and I just had to check up on our daughter who is studying there this summer. We knew that she missed us. Ha!) I had never been to England before, and I was so utterly pleased with what I experienced. I am not a city dweller. I love nature. I like to call myself “Snow White.” But if I had to live in a city, London is the most liveable city that I have ever travelled to, and I have been fortunate enough to have visited many cities in our own country, and abroad.

But before I bore you to death with my trip details, I do realize that this is Friday and it is a good one!! It’s the New Moon. We are officially, fresh-starting the second half of the year. What do you want for the rest of this year? It’s a perfect time to reflect, get your thoughts down in writing, and start taking steps towards what you want. My first half of the year has been amazing – chock full of adventures, travel, visits with family and friends, weddings, the birthday clump of our family members, holidays etc. etc. Honestly, it’s been delightful, but it’s also been a lot. I like the second half of the year because things don’t get too drummed up for our family, until the holidays at the end of the year. Things in my life never seem as frenzied during the second half of the year. I like spontaneity and the second half of the year seems to allow for more of it. But, I digress. . . . today is Favorite Things Friday on the blog!! Today my favorite is packing cubes. I had never used these before in my travels, but my daughter insisted that they make a huge difference in utilizing space in your luggage. I purchased a soft set of about seven packing cubes for this trip, and while I’ve never been good about rolling up my stuff like little sushi rolls (my husband, being a long-time military brat, is a master at this), I loved how organized these cubes kept my stuff. My tops were with my tops. My bottoms were with my bottoms. My hair stuff was all together and easily found. My suitcase was no longer the jack-in-the-box jumble that it usually is, when I am travelling. If you have never tried packing cubes, I highly recommend giving them a try.

Okay, for those of you who want my reflections on London and other parts of England, here they are, in no particular order:

+ England has excellent food. It is a mistaken thought that the only thing good to eat in England is fish and chips. (although, I had fish and chips and it was yummy) I had incredible food including delicious steak ale pies, delectable sandwiches, fantastic Indian food, superfresh and colorful greens and fruits and desserts from Borough Market . . . now you may think, “Well yes, you were in a major city in the world. There is competition and variety,” but I will tell you that the best food that I had on my trip was in a tiny pub, out in the country, near Salisbury, England. We had “Sunday Roast” there which was like a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. You could choose beef or chicken or steak pie, and then on top of each of these was a huge Yorkshire Pudding. Yorkshire Pudding was maybe my favorite item that I ate the whole time I was in England. Yorkshire Pudding is a delightful, doughy cloud that you dip in gravy. I adore it!

+ I kept describing London as the most “wholesome” city I have ever been to, and we went all over London. My husband and I averaged walking about 20,000 steps a day. (my kids were never a fan of our style of vacationing. “Some people like to relax on vacation,” was something which we often heard muttered by one, or by all four of our children, on our various vacations) London has wide streets, lower buildings, less traffic (the London Underground is safe, easy to navigate, quiet, and reliable – we took it everywhere), and lots of green spaces. The people are reserved, but kind and polite and eager to help you. It’s a wonderful place for “eye candy”: beautiful historic cathedrals and buildings, colorful flowers outside of every pub, gorgeous, multicultural people with smart, dressed-up, intriguing style. In short, London is everything it’s cracked up to be.

+ My husband and I saw King Charles being driven out of Buckingham Palace, quite by chance. We noticed that the gates to the palace had been opened, and a crowd was gathering around the road by the gates. My husband and I were curious, but having it be our first day in London, we instead decided to meander over to the fountain in front of the palace to see it more closely. The next thing we knew, a police officer stopped traffic on the road, just a few feet away from us, and a luxurious black car drove by with the white-haired king sitting in the back, his fingers in front of his body, held in a position, much like when you were a kid and you were playing, “Here is the church, Here is the steeple”. His fingers were in “steeple position.”

+ We toured St. Paul’s Cathedral, The British Museum, Southwark Cathedral, The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. All were interesting. I particularly liked the smaller Southwark Cathedral where Shakespeare is said to have spent a lot of time and I delighted in having the proper English afternoon tea experience (with a three stack tower of treats) at The British Museum while my husband satiated himself in Egyptian history. While all of the buildings and their historical significance were incredible, it struck me that Westminster Abbey was essentially an extremely enormous fancy mausoleum. And having spent most of our time in The British Museum staring at mummies and sarcophaguses from Egyptian tombs, it struck me that it is kind of sad and egotistical that many of the wealthy humans of our past were so fixated on the afterlife, and of being remembered by future people. (other than major historical figures and writers buried in Westminster Abbey, I knew very few of the names nor the significance of the people buried there) I honestly found the experience to be an excellent reminder that life on earth is NOW. And as happens on all of my travels, I was sincerely amazed how many millions of different people I was witnessing every day, all over just one city, on our great big Earth. (and as happens on all of my travels, there were plenty of Americans afoot. You just can’t escape us. There is a line from a song, whose band and name escapes me now, where the singer dejectedly and flatly states, “Oh, you’re all still here.” That line played in my mind a few times on this trip.) Anyway, what I felt deeply reminded of, when I reflected on all of the carefully planned, and elaborately and expensively made “death artifacts” is that our life’s experience is really mostly just consequential to ourselves, and to the few people in our inner circle. This realization is freeing. Stop focusing on making an impression on other people. Just be yourself, and be kind, and live each precious moment of your life fully and consciously. Don’t fear death. Focus on living your life.

+ My favorite part of the trip was being with family whom we don’t get to see often at all. (it’s hard, living across the pond, and all) They live by the sea in England, and we took a train out to see them, and even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, the love flowed fervently. We even met children that we had never met before and by the end of the night, we were all hugging and professing our love for each other. We “saw” each other. There is something so special and uncanny about “the family bond.” We even all went to Stonehenge together and I had honestly expected that to be the most spiritual experience of my trip. But it wasn’t. The most spiritual part of the trip wasn’t the cathedrals, nor the choirs singing in chapels, nor the mysterious giant rocks of Stonehenge. The most spiritual part of my trip was a reminder of just how beautiful and strong the elastic bonds of love, hold us all together. Great, loving arms enfold us all. This I know.

It’s great to be back. I love you. I missed you. See you tomorrow!!

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:

1488. Do you prefer sporty or academic members of the opposite sex? (Lucky for me, my husband is both.)

Monday – Funday

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”  – Anne Lamott

So, I’m not going to be writing the blog for the next week or so. I have some summer adventures planned and I want to put my full attention there.

I love to write. I love to write daily. But sometimes, you even need to take a break from what you love. It gives you fresh exaltation when you get back to it. When you find yourself missing what you love, you get really clear about who and what and where means the most to you. I hope that you will miss reading the blog as much as I will miss writing it, and that we’ll all be back together here in early July.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll take some time to read some stuff in my archives. I’ve written almost daily blog posts since 2018. There are some hidden gems 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:

979. What would be the best exotic pet?

Days

Is there anything more precious than your happiest memories? Don’t take the bad memories out. Leave them in the dusty corners of your mind. Open the treasure box that exists in your mind (and always will, no matter what) and think of your favorite memories. Imagine the scene. What was the weather like? Who was there? What were the sights, smells, tastes? Most importantly, what were you feeling? Feel those feels now as you run your happy memories through the reels, again and again. What does it take to make new happy memories? Your treasure box in your mind will always expand to hold these lovely memories. Make the memories. Let them happen. As I always tell my kids, Let Life love you. Go with the flow.

“Memory is the diary we all carry with us.” – Oscar Wilde

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:

1312. Do you keep a journal? Does it help you?

Thoughts for Thursday

+ I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. Don’t question if something is normal. Instead ask the question, “Is this healthy?” Normal means “typical, standard, usual, expected,” according to the dictionary. Think about a lot of awful things that were once considered “normal.” Slavery. Smoking in airplanes. Women needing men to co-sign for loans. Lawn darts. . . . . The list goes on and on. Familiarity often breeds acceptance. When making decisions, plans, actions, always ask yourself, “Is this a healthy choice for me? Am I supporting something that is healthy?” Let “healthy” be your arbiter. “Normal” changes all of the time.

+ Joan Didion once said, “A writer is always selling somebody out.” I think this is the biggest struggle in writing. Even if you’re a novelist, you are still getting your ideas from observations and experiences from your real life. And your perception of things is your reality, even if others have a completely different perception. I never want to “sell anybody out.” Writing is my peace, not my weapon. It’s a fine line we writers walk. And now that there are so many forms of social media, I think that Joan Didion’s statement also applies. Kids can’t give their permission to air funny, embarrassing videos and antics. It’s a conundrum, for sure.

+ This is from a sign that I saw recently (it’s a good reminder. My grandmother used to always say “tend to your own knitting”): “Better worry about your own sins, ’cause God ain’t going to ask you about mine.”

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:

1714. Would you ever live in a treehouse?

Boundaries 101

Boundaries got brought up in a recent discussion with friends. “Boundaries” is a hot word/hot topic these days, but there is often a lot of confusion around what boundaries are, what they mean, and also how to enforce them, and also how to respect others’ boundaries. I didn’t get completely clear on my own boundaries, around a lot of things, until I was middle-aged. I think this is the case for a lot of people, particularly women. We are conditioned to be the “pleasers”, the soothers, the facilitators, the mediators, the givers. So, with all of that conditioning, creating boundaries seems “mean” to us, and impossible to erect.

What is a boundary? A boundary is a rule that you make for yourself about what you will and will not accept in your life. People often get confused that boundaries are about making strict rules for other people to follow, for their own comfort. For example, “You will not yell at me.” “You will eat all of your vegetables.” “You will not call me after 8 pm.”, etc. Those rules are fine, but people are people. People don’t always follow rules. It’s hard enough to control our own selves, let alone trying to control others. Instead of stating your boundaries as rules for other people to follow, you restate your boundaries as what you will and will not accept, in your own life’s experience. So, the above statements, stated not as rules, but as boundaries become: “I will not allow myself to be yelled at by anyone. I will physically leave any situation where I am being yelled at . . . ” “If you are my child, I expect you to eat all of your vegetables, and if you don’t, here are the consequences . . . .” “I will not accept calls after 8 pm and I will mute my phone.” (Notice the difference. Boundaries start with “I” statements. Rules start with “You”.)

Boundaries aren’t just with other people. You can have boundaries around food. “I don’t eat meat.” “I don’t eat dairy.” “I only eat desserts on special occasions.” You can have boundaries around everything that you do: what and how much you drink, how much TV/social media you consume, how and how much you exercise, what kinds of movies you will watch, how late you work, what time you go to bed regularly, etc. etc. Again, boundaries are rules that you that you make for yourself about what you will accept in your own life and what you will not accept in your own life.

On top of making your rules for yourself, you also get to decide to change these rules if you like. And you also get to decide how rigid or permeable your boundaries are in every facet of your life. All of this is in your control. It is your right (and one might argue, your necessity) as a living, breathing human being, to create and to enforce your boundaries. Sounds simple, right? Then why is it seemingly so hard for people to create and to enforce boundaries?

Simply put, we have a need to be liked and accepted. We have a need to be understood. We have been conditioned to be “polite and congenial.” We fear being perceived as “mean” or “selfish.” We fear losing people and relationships if we erect boundaries. We dread conflict. And thus, people who do not respect boundaries, will run roughshod all over our boundaries. We give our power away to people who don’t want us to have boundaries. These people will test us and manipulate us to change our boundaries, and unless we enforce them, our boundaries are decidedly pointless. We all dread this process, but it’s a good process. Once you get good at protecting and enforcing your own boundaries, you earn self-respect. You learn to trust yourself. You become your own best friend. Your need to be liked and agreed with, becomes a lot less important than your desire to be respected. If you lose someone because you protected your own boundaries, is this a person that is healthy to have in your life, anyway?

A big mistake a lot of us do when stating our boundaries is that we JADE. JADE is an acronym for justify, argue, defend and explain. Our boundaries are what is right for us. When we start JADE-ing, we weaken our boundaries. We are needing others to agree with our boundaries, in order to enforce them. No one on this Earth is going to like and agree with all of the boundaries that we make for ourselves. Let’s be honest, you don’t like or understand a lot of other people’s boundaries, and that’s okay. You don’t have to like other people’s boundaries, but you do have to respect them, because if a person is good at protecting their own boundaries, you will suffer consequences for crossing their boundaries. “This is what is right for me.” “This is what works for me.” “This is what I have to ability to offer at this time.” This is all the JADE-ing anyone of us ever has to state about our own boundaries. You came up with your boundaries for a good reason for yourself. (You already did a lot of JADE-ing with yourself, in order to decide your boundary in the first place. Trust that fact. No one knows what it is you need, and what is best for you, more than you. No one.) When you JADE, you start showing weakness in the belief of your own needs and protecting your own needs, and the people who don’t like your boundaries, will try to chip away at them, by arguing with you and employing tactics like guilt-trips and persuasion. Don’t open the door to this with JADE-ing in the first place.

The best thing you will ever do for yourself and your boundaries is to lose the need to be liked. If you respect and honor and protect your own boundaries, you will like yourself a lot. You will attract healthy people into your life, who respect your boundaries and respect their own boundaries. (People who have healthy boundaries, are trustworthy, direct and upfront, and are usually good about respecting other people’s boundaries.) You will trust yourself with your own boundaries, and thus you won’t feel as fearful or untrusting of others, because ultimately you know that you can trust yourself to take care of yourself, in a predictable, reliable, nurturing, protective manner. If you are consistent with your boundaries, you may not be liked by some (who would rather you didn’t have any boundaries, for their own sakes), but instead, you will be admired by many. By practicing the protection of your own boundaries, you will become stronger and calmer than you ever knew was possible. There is no better feeling than being able to love and trust yourself. When you get to this level of self-respect, you get really picky about who gets access to you anyway. The need to be “liked” by everybody falls way down the ladder, naturally.

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:

2426. Have you ever bought anything after an infomercial? If so, what?

Forgetfulness

I saw this poem the other day and I had the idea to keep it until Sunday (poetry day on the blog), but I feel like writing about this today. So I will. As I have entered into my fifties, I am more cognizant of everything that I forget. I’m actually pretty good with birthdays and anniversaries and taking out the trash days, mostly because I am obsessive about writing things down. I scare myself with the things that I do forget though. I instantly forget names of movies and books and the characters in them. I stumble with the words that I want to use when I am relaying a story in conversation, I forget the names of towns I have visited, I couldn’t tell you what cars my friends drive, and I often mix-up our kids’ and our dogs’ names when I am talking to them. But honestly, I think that I have always been that way. I really don’t believe that I am headed towards early dementia.

The things that I do recall clearly, are like they happened yesterday. I’ll recall a story someone had relayed to me years ago, and their mouths drop open. “I can’t believe you remembered that,” they’ll say. I remember the oddest things. I remember a lot of random moments, I guess because for some reason that moment struck me as emotional, or unusual, or important in some nuanced way. Most of us writers are curious. We are always looking to understand, to see the deeper meaning in things and experiences. Most of us writers are observers and “sensers” (not censors). We are always looking for the right words to describe the way things feel. We are a little possessed with the question, “Why?”

I wish that I could remember names and numbers and historical facts better than I do. But I’m grateful that I can remember how a moment felt, what was really being said behind what was being said, tiny trinkets and plants and artwork that marked both sets of my grandparents’ homes, and trivial stories told to me by strangers that turned out to have a lot more meaning to them, when I was willing to explore the plot twists.

My memory is fickle, but it is deeply entrenched in what is really important to me- the heartfelt connection we have with each other and with the Life Experience in general. My heart remembers better than my aging computer of a brain ever did, or ever will. And honestly, that’s all that really matters to me.

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:

1394. What sound relaxes you?

Soul Sunday

Happy Father’s Day!! Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Write your dad or your husband a poem today. They’ll get a charge out of it. You’ll get a charge out of it, too.

“Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song.” – Pam Brown

“Superman”

When she called you “Superman”, she saw what I already knew

Not just to the broad shoulders and the handsome face, she was drew,

She saw the big heart beneath it all, the part that really makes you, you!

When it comes to devotion, rock solid reliability, and to your word being true,

Not many can even dare to compare, I imagine that there are very few.

You are my greatest love. My love for you will forever ensue.

For all the gifts you’ve given me, I am most grateful for our “crew.”

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love you.

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:

174. If you could be a bird, which would you be?

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?

Creatives

I saw this beautiful passage the other day. It’s all over the internet but unfortunately, I do not know whom to attribute it to – maybe the artist/writer did that on purpose??? The other day, I purchased a fabric/textile piece of art on eBay. I haggled with the seller because as much as I was intrigued by the item, I did not recognize the artist’s name. The eBay seller had a lot of flea market, vintage type items and I assumed that this piece was something which they had picked up at a yard sale or such. The seller sold it to me at a lower price, but when I received the gorgeous, one-of-a-kind item, I got a note from the artist. This is an excerpt from the note: “Dear K, I just wanted to say thank you. These are my creations and not massed produced. I go by a pseudonym to keep my identity private. I have been creating art in various forms for many years. Fiber arts is my newest medium. My work has been featured in Time Magazine and other international publications. I’ve sold to clients around the world, but it was time for a change . . . . .Blessed be (and it was signed with the pseudonym in parentheses) P.S. – You can reach me through my friends on eBay for now.”

My fellow creatives (and that includes just about everybody, in one way or another), don’t dim your light. Don’t be your own harshest critic. Hone your own beautiful, unrepeatable, “unique brand of magic.” If this is too daunting for the self-recriminating, self-conscious part of you, create a pseudonym. Get an alter-ego. Have a pen name. Do whatever you need to do to release that part of you that is dying to connect with the Creative Intelligence which is energizing and teeming, all over this world. We are all part of it, and we all need the fullest version of your part of it. I saw another quote that goes along with this theme and once again, I can’t find its source:

“Applaud creativity, even when its results bother you.”

Creativity is 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:

2330. Have you ever played the bongos?

This Mom

I’m going to a Celebration of Life on Friday, celebrating the life of the mother of a good friend of my daughter. My daughter’s friend and his sister played on the high school tennis team together, and he and my daughter have always traveled in the same social circles since high school and beyond. My heart is bleeding for this family.

I did not know this woman very well. We only saw each other at tennis matches, but she was always kind and easy to talk to, and she clearly enjoyed watching her children play tennis. She was one of “us” – moms doing our best to support our children in their activities and interests. Her life clearly centered around her family.

At Christmastime, my daughter told us that this family was so excited that this mom was going to make it to Christmas. She had incurable cancer and by all accounts, it was a miracle that she was going to make it to the end of the year. Her family was thrilled to get to celebrate the holidays with her.

Frequently throughout this year, I would ask my daughter if she had any news on this woman’s health, and the report always seemed to be that she was holding steady. She made it to her daughter’s high school graduation, and then sadly, a few weeks ago, she started rapidly declining. This mom died a little more than a week ago.

It did not surprise me that this mom found the strength to hold on until her youngest child’s graduation from high school. It’s what all of us moms want at the very least, right? We want to make sure that we have successfully “launched” all of our children into being capable adults. We want to see it to the end. It’s our purpose. It’s our duty. It’s our innate instinct. It’s honestly primal. I remember feeling the biggest sense of relief, when our youngest child, our daughter turned 18, and then graduated from high school. Of course, I also felt so much pride and love and all of the mixed-bag feelings that come with big events like these in life, but the “relief” was personal. It wasn’t relief in the sense that I didn’t really have to actively parent on a daily basis any longer (although that is its own special kind of exhalation), but it was more a sense of relief that I had achieved my duties. I had honored my commitments. That me, my husband and the divine forces that be, had gotten a new generation of our family to the starting gate of adulthood. I had completed the mission. I had finished the race.

When I have talked to friends about death, no woman I know seems to fear death. We do fear the death of our children. We do fear missing out on all of the vicarious joys our children will experience in their own lifetimes. My heart aches that this dear woman doesn’t get to go to the victory parties of her children’s weddings, witnessing the births of her grandchildren, growing old with her husband. She got the shaft. Her life got cut short from getting to enjoy the more relaxing “golden” years. Her family misses her and they will miss her for the rest of their lives. That hurts. But she still shines. She found the vital, unearthly strength inside of herself (which I think all of us mothers have been shocked to discover inside of our own selves, from time to time), to hold on for the final lap. She saw her daughter to the finish line. Now, she can rest in peace.

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:

1535. How are you different from most people? (Let me the count the ways! wink wink)