Tag: inspiration

I Do

We just arrived home from the wedding which we had attended last night. I’m tired, but happily so. There are few experiences in this world that are more beautiful, hopeful, earnest, and comforting than weddings. How lovely it is to see two people commit to be there for each other, in full support of each other throughout their shared journeys throughout their lifetimes. Many wedding traditions have changed throughout the ages, and it is true that not all marriages last, but during the celebration of the uniting of two people, the whole space around them is elevated. We attendees to the wedding are all delighted to witness a couple of our fellow human beings bare their souls to each other, and also to say to all of us who care about them and to Creation, “I’m going to take care of this human. I’m going to be there for this human through it all. This human is very special to me.” And we all feel happy that there is another twosome in this world that have committed to having each other’s backs in the most intimate, devoted, exhaustive way that it is not possible to do for everyone who we each know and care about. Marriage elevates us. It elevates our world. And you see a microcosm of this in any wedding event. You look over the sea of beaming faces and you see the elderly, and the youth, and everyone in between, and you realize that marriage is a huge part of what has made our humanity what it is today. Our biggest celebrations and traditions in life are always about love. Weddings encapsulate the act of love, not just the feeling of love, but the act of committing to actually being love in one of its most gracious forms, as a caring, dedicated, devoted spouse of another being. Weddings are wonderful.

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:

1863. What song would you say best sums you up?

Pages from a Thought-alog

I have many notebooks full of thoughts that I have jotted down from signs I’ve seen, things that I have read, or insights that have come to me. In these notebooks I have pasted poems and artwork that inspire me, special cards that I have received, and feathers that I have found. I decided to flip through my current “Thought-alog” and share some of the goodies that I have in there, here on the blog today:

+ “Cycles end when you refuse to participate in them.” – SayItValencia, X When you raise a family, and then grow into becoming the elders of a large and growing brood, i.e. the matriarch and/or the patriarch of any family, and you are truly intentional about these roles that you have taken on, you inevitably become a cycle breaker. There are many things that you experience with your family of origin that you like and that you appreciate, and so you choose to deliberately continue these ways and traditions with your own family, but there are also things that you wish to stop. You want certain patterns of behavior and toxicity to end with you. You see how long certain cycles have continued on and on within your family line, and you decide that you will be where this negativity stops. You become a cycle breaker. This is not easy. People are resistant to change. You have to be continually aware and intentional to stop cycles from perpetuating. Generational cycles are highly ingrained. Sometimes as a cycle breaker, you even go a little too far in the opposite direction, and so your descendants may work to swing the pendulum a little bit closer to center. Regardless, I read somewhere that if you are an effective cycle breaker in a family or in an organization, you have likely changed the direction and the toxic patterns in this entity for at least seven generations to come. Being a cycle breaker is a worthy purpose and endeavor, in my book.

+ Major personal decisions should not be made by asking, “Will this make me happy?” but, “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” – James Hollis

Eating cookies for breakfast will make me happy in the short term, and this practice will certainly enlarge my physical presence, but overall, this choice only diminishes me. Of course, I am not sure that choosing to eat a cookie is a major personal decision, but unfortunately, these little decisions add up, too. Sigh.

+ “If you ignore it and it doesn’t go away, it’s reality.” – I’m sorry but I don’t know who to credit for this one, but I do think that it is an excellent litmus test. We tend to grow stories in our head that veer far from reality. That little bump on your skin becomes malignant cancer as fast as you can say, “Web MD.” Still, there are things that we know deep down that we have to address. They are the things that don’t go away and they keep pinging you and pinging you harder and harder to address them. I always tell my kids to always take heed of the first lesson that the Universe hands to you because if you ignore that lesson, you will most definitely get bigger, and more dramatic lessons headed your way. Face reality when it is manageable to do something about it.

+ “Our true nature is peace and joy if only we don’t disturb it.” – Swami Satchidananda Remember, the true and real and timeless essence of you, and of me, and of your dog, and of every other living being in this world, is that peaceful, calm, tranquil, unbiased observer and experiencer, in all of us. The observer of your thoughts and your feelings is the real you. The creator of your thoughts is just your ego and your ego has quite the imagination. Your ego likes to stir things up. Whenever you need peace, just take three deep breaths and sit back in the rocking chair of your true self – the unbiased, unfearful experiencer and observer of what’s going on around you and within you. When you are in that space, you can laugh at the drama queen that your ego tends to be.

+ Fun, new words and terms from the Urban Dictionary and other sites like it:

delulu – delusional

solulu – solution

popular loner (also known as background friend) – someone who has a lot of friends, makes a lot of friends easily, but tends to stay on the peripheral

JOMO – Joy of Missing Out. It is a term to remind us to stay in the present moment, instead of constantly checking our phones and/or social media feeds.

+ My favorite quote from a recent, excellent WSJ interview with the actress Natalie Portman:

WSJ: What’s your most prized possession?

Natalie Portman: “I don’t have a prized possession. I have prized humans and prized dogs I love. I am into living beings.”

+ Tape these to your bathroom mirror (good reminders):

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” – Gary Snyder

“You cannot have a happy ending to an unhappy journey.” – Esther Hicks

“All stories have the same finale.” – Daily Stoic

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:

2105. What do you compartmentalize in your life? (Hint: Compartmentalization is a form of psychological defense mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict are kept separated or isolated from each other in the mind. -Wiki)

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. What I love about poetry is the mystery in it. Sometimes I write a poem, and it is still an enigma, even to me, as to what the poem really means. Writing a poem is like going into the deep tombs of yourself, and discovering unusual, foreign writing on the wall, and quickly and excitedly transcribing this strange writing, without fully understanding the meaning behind it. Reading a poem offers this same mercurial experience. Undoubtedly, there is a different meaning and truth that comes from any poem, from every reader of it. Everyone’s own experiences and emotions are what brings the context to the meaning in any collection of words. Here is my poem for the day:

The Universe has a way of getting really bored of my stubborn streak,

While I hem and haw and analyze, and strategize, and collect my allies,

The Universe says, Enough already!

And tends to make the changes that I couldn’t make for myself,

in one fell swoop. And then we Both sigh in utter relief.

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:

2361. Complete this thought: All roads lead to . . . ?

Your Masterpiece

I got back to art class yesterday, after a few weeks off for Christmas break. It was great to be back. I painted the little guy above as sort of a “warm up”. I thought that I would share him with you. He makes me smile.

The best part of getting older is coming to the proven realization that the end product of anything truly doesn’t matter. The real joy always comes in the doing, in the process, in the flow. Yes, a successfully grown family, business, career, marriage, homestead, project, craft etc. can give you a sense of satisfaction and pride and maybe even some accolades, but those feelings are such a small blip of feelings versus the myriad of feelings and experiences that go into the process of forming and building and creating and experiencing all of the works of your life. There’s peace in this realization. Your life is your main product. And it doesn’t end, until you end. And none of us really know what “when you end” means, if we are honest with ourselves. We all have beliefs and hopes, but none of us truly know the mysteries of what happens to us after we die. So, in the meantime, we are living our ongoing creative product – our lives. And this product is a collaboration with the entire world around us. Our main creative product, our individual life, has the support of the whole entire world which only benefits when our creative product brings more individuality and beauty and imagination and our own uniqueness that is unrepeatable, to the whole of it.

I’m a middle-age, empty nester who is attending art class for the fun of it. I’m not graded. My output doesn’t matter. It’s even okay if I don’t particularly enjoy my art class on any given day. If I spill some paint, so what? If I never frame my art, who cares? The joy is in the doing. The joy is in the exploring. The joy is in the accepting. The joy is in the gratefulness for the experience – every bit of it.

Your life is your only creative product. Everything else that you do is part of that product. Be joyful in “doing” your life. Explore. Accept the messiness and the so-called flaws of it all. Mostly, be grateful for having the experience of being able to create your one and only masterpiece, and also be utterly grateful for all of the wonderful beings who are co-creating with you. If our world isn’t a creative masterpiece of miracles, than what is?

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:

583. Do you prefer blue or black inked pens?

Storms Pass

Yesterday we had a line of extreme storms roll through our area. We got continual warnings and alerts, via news sources, social media, texts, calls and emails. There were school and business closings, and my wind chimes got chimier and chimier as the day went on. Living in Florida, storm alerts are nothing new. I used the day to stay inside, in order to get caught up on laundry, bills and to put away the last of our Christmas decorations. For about 15 minutes in the late afternoon, the sky was black, the wind was howling, and the rain was torrential. And then as quickly as it came, the storm was past us. We even took the dogs for their nightly walk about an hour or so later, and it was lovely outside. The air was still, and everything around us glistened with cleansing rain. It smelled so nice and clean and fresh. This morning the sun is shining. It is a beautiful day.

That’s how it goes with life, right? I often tell my kids and my friends and myself, “Remember, the clouds always, always pass. Your life is the steadiness of the blue sky that is always there behind it all. The clouds ALWAYS pass.” And honestly, we typically spend a lot more time preparing for storms, and worrying about storms, and anticipating storms, than the length of time, any storm ever lasts. And usually once a storm in life is over, things look brighter and clearer than ever. Most storms are extremely cleansing. This bright clarity after the storm, is the gift that storms leave behind, almost as an apology for the fear, and the destruction, and the chaos that they brought into our lives for a short period of time. There are good reasons for storms if you look for them. There are blessings for storms if you look for them. And if nothing else, remember, storms and clouds ALWAYS pass.

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:

1811. What aroma or smell makes you feel alive?

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+

(although I actually do have the best dogs – wink, wink)

+ We were watching the college football championship last night and one of the quarterbacks says that in order to create new neural pathways in his brain, he brushes his teeth with his left hand, even though he is right-handed. I tried this last night and this morning. It is surprisingly easy to brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. I figure that even if I don’t get new neural pathways out of this deal, it is probably helping all of my teeth get a fair and even cleaning.

+ “Let’s start this year with a game I like to call fast-forward.
Go with me to December 31, 2024.
358 days from now.
What ONE thing could you accomplish by that day that would have the most profound impact on your life?” – Jill Donovan

This is how a blog post starts that I read yesterday, by Jill Donovan. She then goes on to talk about how when Michelangelo carved the David, he said that when he looked at the stone, he just chiseled away everything that wasn’t “the David.” She says that we should do the same thing this year with how we answered the question above. Carve time wasters out of our lives that aren’t part of our major goals and focuses. She believes that we should keep our keen focus on our own individual “Davids.” I think that having one major goal that is truly life-changing is interesting and invigorating and ideally, should be our priority, but life is multi-faceted. When deciding what I wanted for 2024, I broke out my desires into eight categories suggested by a New Years Resolution article that I had read:

  1. health
  2. finances
  3. personal development
  4. career
  5. relationships
  6. self-care
  7. home life
  8. free time

Wouldn’t it be interesting to pick a “David” to complete for each of these categories in 2024 by answering Jill Donovan’s question above? After doing this exercise, put a giant star by the one David that really and truly is the major focus and desire and plan to accomplish by the end of this year. Usually I tuck my desires for the new year into an envelope and I put it in a cabinet only to look at it on New Year’s Eve to see how I did. But this year, I plan to keep my “David list” handy, so that when I find myself a little bit bored, or distracted, or off-track, I can come back to my simple David list, in order to remember not to spend too much time in the rubble, but to put my focus back on working on the major masterpiece(s) of my year.

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:

2948. Do you eat leftovers? (I picked an easy question today because we have a lot of “sculpting the David” homework to work on. We do eat leftovers in this house. My husband is still kindly and appreciatively working through the pork and sauerkraut that I made for New Year’s Day.)

Monday – Funday

credit: @woofknight, X

Yesterday, we took our dogs on their daily walk. Dogs are the perfect example of how “energy” is truly catching. We have three dogs. When one of them gets riled up, all three of them get churned up, almost immediately. A neighbor’s dog lives behind a fence by the sidewalk of our daily walk. Every time we walk by his fence, the neighbor’s dog goes nuts at the fence, and our dogs go from chill and calm to equally nuts as he is, in seconds flat. Ralphie, our Labrador retriever loves to swim in our pool. He is obsessed with swimming. He almost becomes OCD about running around the pool and jumping into the pool, again and again and again. This puts the herding (and thus barking and nipping) instinct of our collie, Josie, on full/high alert, which trips Trip (the Boykin spaniel) into his own special blend of spazzy bossiness. It doesn’t make for a pleasant, peaceful pool experience, at all. We have learned that if we keep Ralphie inside when we want calm around the pool, the other two dogs’ energy stays even keel and chill. Our dogs are a perfect example of how energy/moods/countenance is catching. The next time you feel yourself in an extreme “state of being”, take a pause, and see what is causing your mood. Is it your own thoughts and experiences, or have you “caught” someone else’s mood around you? Do not take what is not yours.

In considering the above, I got to thinking about lessons which really sunk in for me from 2023 that I want to bring into 2024. A lot of times we only talk about things we want to get rid of in the new year (excess weight, excess stuff, etc.) but there were some valuable lessons that really hit home for me last year, that I hope to keep utilizing for the rest of my life going forward. Along with being sure that I am not taking on negative energy that is not mine (explained above), there were other key lessons that I used throughout the year, like mantras, that helped to keep me on track. One was: “Worry does not equal love.” I am not doing anything of value for you, or for me, if I worry about you. I am showing lack of confidence in myself, and/or in you and others, and/or in God/Universe, if I am worried. Worry truly is worthless. I think for a long time in my life, I believed that worry showed that I care, but seeing it stated this way: “Worry does not equal love”, woke me up. I am loving you when I feel confident in your abilities and in Life’s lovingness to take care of you, not matter what you face. Care is offering support and confidence, not worry.

Another lesson that hit home for me was using the mantra, “Let Life love you.” When I fully relax and trust in God/Universe, instead of trying to micromanage and control every situation of my life, it is amazing how everything comes together in the most perfect of ways. When I get out of my own way, and I use the mantra “I Let Life Love Me”, I am often astounded at the miracles that I witness on almost a daily basis. Acceptance and faith is the only way to live a peaceful life.

Finally, I have learned that not doing what someone else wants me to do, does not make be a bad, toxic, selfish person. “Be what you want to be, not what others want to see.” We don’t like disappointing others, but it is impossible to fulfill everyone’s needs, and it is not our responsibility to do so. Bad, toxic, selfish people are mean, cruel to others, and do and say bad things to other people. They try to get their needs fulfilled from other people, or despite of other people. Taking care of your own needs and creating your own boundaries, does not make you a bad person. See and remember the chart below and it will really help your 2024 and beyond, be fulfilling, healthy and calm:

How’s that for a Monday-Funday post??? Can you tell that this is the first “official Monday”/start of the new year for me? I suspect that my following Monday-Funday posts may be a little shorter and less thought out going forward, but we shall see . . . . I’m taking advantage of my starter gate energy. 🙂

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:

2049. How good are you at giving directions?

Boss Up

Image above credited to Redbubble

I was shopping with my daughter and my son’s girlfriend earlier this week. Neither of them have sisters, so it is fun to vicariously watch a sister-like relationship forming between the two of them. They both have been saying “Girlboss” and “boss lady” a lot to each other when talking about their lives and what they want for themselves in the new year. I told them that I would like to be part of the “Girlboss” club, too. (You’re never too old to keep honing your Girlboss skills.) Armoire.style says this about boss ladies: “our definition of boss lady is a woman who gets life done, whether that be at work, at home, in an office, with their coworkers, family, dog, cat, friends, etc. Boss ladies are those who enthusiastically embrace new opportunities and lift each other up.” When I read this definition, I thought to myself, this defines practically every single woman I have ever known in my life, from family members of all ages, to my sorority sisters, to my closest friends, to my various doctors and practitioners, and women whom I have worked for over the years. The funny thing is, we see boss lady attributes in all of the women in our lives, and they probably see these attributes in us, and yet, we don’t always give our own selves credit for being Girlbosses. This lack of recognition is what makes us have to come up with these labels and definitions in the first place. We women often don’t take credit for everything that we are, and everything that we do. When we “boss” ourselves, we are often terrible, nitpicky critics and stingy with appreciation. We shame ourselves for not doing, and being more, more, more . . . . We can be terrible, cruel bosses of ourselves.

The truth is, I am also the mother of three young men in their twenties who are just starting out their adult lives and their careers, and I see that they put tremendous pressure on themselves, too. If only I could gift all of my children (male and female) the amazing gift of hindsight – hindsight being that realization that nothing was as big, or as bad, or as insurmountable, as I had built it up to be, as I have lived through several decades of the experience of being an adult. If I could, I would wrap the wisdom and the comfort which comes from hindsight, up for them, in an instant, and it would be the best present that I could ever give to them. But as we all know, the best presents are the ones that long last in our deepest cores indefinitely. These invaluable gifts in life come only from our own experiences and our own reflections of these experiences.

I have written in the blog before that the most important job we have in our lives is to be our own best life manager. How’s your life manager doing? How would you rate your boss (you being the boss of your life?) Is your life manager kind? Appreciative? Supportive? Encouraging? Inspiring? If you have a great boss, it tends to lead to a wonderful work/life environment around you. How you treat yourself, is often how you end up treating others. Are you giving yourself enough appreciation, support, and vision, if for no other reason than for the ability to give these things back to others? Boss up this year. As Winnie the Pooh, one of the greatest bosses that ever existed has to say:

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

Today’s random question/prompt from 3000 Questions About Me:

246. If you started a business tomorrow, what would it be?

Here’s a Nudge

What’s your theme of 2024? Yesterday a friend texted a Washington Post article to a lot of us that had a little tool in it, to find “your nudge word.” The article can be found here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2023/nudge-word-new-year-resolutions/

Do you have a nudge word that makes sense to you? Since our family is still visiting here all week, I haven’t had enough quiet, by-myself reflection time to figure out my “nudge word” for 2024 just yet, but I do love the concept. Interestingly, at this time last year, I had chosen the word “Resipiscence” to be my word for 2023. (I didn’t know it as a “nudge word” back then. The word “resipiscence” is a word that came to me at a workshop that I had attended early last year.) The dictionary describes resipiscence as this: “a return to a sane, sound, or correct view or position“. After experiencing the pandemic in 2020, the absolute worst year of seizures for our epileptic son in 2021, and the long, painful, drawn-out illness and eventual death of my mother-in-law of 2022, I wanted a word that I could repeat like a mantra, which represented to me, the getting back on track to a certain level of “normalcy” and peace and calm and stability in my life, and in the experience of our family. Despite a few unfortunate blips here and there, thankfully, 2023 proved to be a year of resipiscence for both me and my immediate family. I think that the idea of picking a nudge word or a theme for your year (or maybe even for individual experiences/vacations/pursuits, etc.) has great merit and can be quite powerful. It is the uncomplicated reminder of what you really want for yourself, and for the moments in life that you experience this year and beyond. So, nudge, nudge . . . . and if you are so inclined, please tell us about your own nudge word that you chose for 2024, and also why you chose it.

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

OOOOPS! Much like trying to remember to date things “2024”, I already forgot my new feature. The Question Prompt of the Day from 3000 Questions About Me:

5. What is your current state of mind?

It’s Worth It

When our four kids were little and I would start to complain about everything that had to be done, especially around busy times like the holidays, my husband would say to me, “I’m happy to help. Just give me a to-do list.” My husband was always extremely helpful. His generation was the beginning of the generations of dads who are “all in” – changing diapers, carrying around the diaper bag, taking turns waking up with the kids in the middle of the night. Still, it was me who was the one dedicated to coming up with “the plan/to-do list/what needs to be done”. My exhaustion was never from doing the tasks of raising kids. It was more of a mental exhaustion. “How’s this all going to work?” “How are we going to get everyone to where they need to be and then pick them up on time?” “What should we make for dinner (every single night)?” “How do we handle each child’s individual crises, triumphs and challenges?”

This holiday season is so delightful because we have several “adult heads” taking the wheel. These young adult brains are great, not only at executing plans, but strategically thinking the plans up, too. They have energy, foresight and enough experience now, to know what will work, and what won’t work for our big clan. Sometimes I have even been handed “to do” tasks and this suits me just fine. It is really relaxing to not always have to be the lead dog. Every stage of raising a family is different. But each stage is absolutely wonderful in its own way. Raising a family is the most interesting, challenging, satisfying, humbling, self-discovering experience of my lifetime.

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