RIP – Suzanne Somers I was such a fan of Three’s Company. It always made me laugh and Suzanne’s character, Krissy was probably the funniest. Here are some of Suzanne Somers’ best quotes:
“All my careers had hit walls at various points, but I made sure to reinvent myself and kept going.”
“Creativity is life.”
“What I really need is for people to know that I don’t just do this, I do this and this and this and this. We all have creativity in us and we all are multi-dimensional and we are all interested in a lot of things… and that women are fabulous. We can handle a lot of things.”
“I sell my problems. I’m a woman with problems. I’ve had problems since the day I was born. And I have found a way to turn my problems into assets.”
“Writing is my greatest passion because I can share the things that matter most to me with you.”
“Wisdom is the gift of aging; no young person can have or buy it. My success was and is self-evident. I’m alive. I’ve lived. I’ve thrived and have grown as a person. I’m now healthier than ever. Who can argue with that?”
“I’ve learned to follow the flow that life takes you on. Don’t fight it because you’ll probably end up doing the right thing.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I really enjoy listening to the speeches given by Deion Sanders, the former professional football and baseball player, and now head football coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, college football team. Deion has always been passionate, intense, and inspirational. He’s been an attention-seeking and an attention-getting character since he first started emerging as a big football star at Florida State University. He went on to mostly be known for his years playing in the NFL (while playing major league baseball in the off season), winning two Super Bowls during his career, and once being named “NFL Defensive Player of the Year.” Deion Sanders’ latest gig is being “Coach Prime”, the head football coach for the Buffaloes, for whom two of his sons play on the team. Yesterday, the Buffaloes lost to Stanford, 46-43 in double overtime. This happened despite a 29-0 Buffaloes lead at halftime. Needless to say, Coach Prime was not happy. Needless to say, Coach Prime hates to lose. Before I touch on the part of Coach Prime’s press conference which was held after the game- the part which really got me to thinking, I should mention that five hours ago, Coach Prime tweeted this: “Lord I thank u for everything. I’ve learned to accept the bad with the good because if it weren’t for the bad I wouldn’t know what Good is.” Four hours ago, a member of the Colorado sports press, Brian Howell tweeted this statement: “Side note: Before the season, a lot of people wondered how Deion Sanders would be after losses. I’ll say this: Win or lose, he’s been great with media after games. Clearly upset tonight but told us, “You deserve my best and I’m gonna try my best to give it to you.”
Clearly, at age 56, Deion Sanders seems to have matured a great deal, and he works to be an example for the youth whom he coaches. During the press conference, Deion was visibly disappointed and frustrated with how the game ended. He spoke a lot about complacency and how much he can’t stand complacency. This is how the Oxford Dictionary defines complacency: “a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements.”
Here is the part of his conference that perked my ears up enough to really think about it and to write about it this morning:
“Make up your mind whether you’re in love with this game or you are in like with it. When you like it, that’s just a button you push. That’s what we do on social media. I, without a shadow of a doubt, am 100 percent in love with this game. When you love something you give to it unconditionally. You give it everything you got. Match me with my passion. Match me with my heart. Match me with my love. Match me with my consistency. . . .I love (the game) so much, but the game don’t even occupy the ability to love me back, that’s a strange love isn’t it?”
No, Deion, that’s not strange. That is the actual definition of true, unconditional love. I decided to use Deion’s speech for myself, for use in my own life. Perhaps you would want to join me in this little exercise? I have decided to list (privately) about five activities/occupations/roles in my life that I believe are the most important things to me. I am going to ask myself if I have grown complacent in any of these areas. I want to make sure that the people/places/things/actions which I am in love with, are getting my full passion, my heart, my love and my consistency. I don’t want to just smugly press “the like button” on the things which mean the most to me. That’s not living fully. That’s not living passionately. That’s not living with the unconditional love which is given to us freely, with the gift of life. Thank you, Coach Prime. I got the message. And it’s a beautiful message and not strange at all.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Around a couple of weeks ago, I went for my yearly routine mammogram which I have faithfully done since my early forties. I’ve always been blessed to have it come back normal and I wasn’t expecting anything different this time around. I casually looked up my results in my patient portal, as I was sitting under the dryer at my hair salon. I gulped when I noticed that there were two pages, instead of the usual simple paragraph that essentially stated “all is well.” I then noticed that I had a voicemail waiting in my inbox from my primary care doctor. Ugh. I tried to remain calm and even, but I’ve been going to my hair stylist for years. I consider her to be a friend. She could read the dread on my face in one second, so I told her that my mammogram had come back with some issues, and I needed to set up further testing. My hair stylist tried to reassure me, and she told me that one time she had gotten called back, and even had to have “markers” inserted, so they could watch areas in her breasts more closely, year-to-year.
I’m not proud to admit that everything which I espouse on this blog, went out the window that night. After I scheduled my follow-up testing appointment, I stewed in my emotional abyss. My emotions were turbulent. I was admonishing myself for letting the last few stressful years, literally eat me alive. My imagination kept driving me to the worst case scenario, and it was demonically parking me there.
However, I am not one who likes to stay in the land of “Feel Bad” for long. I tend to feel my emotions immediately and robustly and fully, and then I try to move on. I reached out to family and friends for support and for prayers. Dr. Google states that about 10 percent of women are called back for more testing after their routine mammograms. From my informal survey, it seemed that around 60-70 percent of my friends had been called back at least once, and thankfully, not one of them has ever been diagnosed with breast cancer. We all seem to belong to the Dense Breast Club, which makes us more likely to need more testing. I knew that the hardest part of this ordeal was going to be the limbo time before I could get into the imaging center for further testing. At first, that time period was looking to be about three weeks, as the closest appointment which the imaging center had available, was closer to the end of this month. As I tried to steel my nerves, my youngest son texted me this: “Okay, I know you are probably a bit anxious right now, so you know, follow all of the advice you would typically give to me and know that is going to be okay.” Our youngest son lives with epilepsy, so I knew that I had to be brave, if not for me, then for my family, and for trying to live the peaceful philosophies that I have delved into, and I so deeply believe in. I had to “walk the talk.”
And so, for the most part, I did walk my talk. And then, amazingly, I lucked into a cancellation spot and so I was able to have my follow-up testing yesterday. The specialists did a more advanced mammogram on me, and they were still unclear about what they were seeing, so they performed an ultrasound next. My husband was with me. He is my rock. I was scared. I was nervous, but I also knew that whatever came of it, I would be able to handle it. I am blessed with faith, and loving relationships, and I know that society and medicine have come so far in the early detection of breast cancer and viable treatments. I knew, like my son reminded me, that no matter what, I was going to be okay.
Thankfully, it turns out that the areas of concern on my mammograms turned out to be two cysts and a lymph node, and they told me these results, a few minutes after the test. The radiologist stated that I did not need to come back for another year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (I’m on my knees.)
There is a naughty, foolish part of me, that sometimes would prefer to keep my head stuck in the sand. “What I don’t know, can’t hurt me.” I sometimes trick my brain into playing Jedi mind tricks on myself. “Total health and wellness, you are,” my inner Yoda likes to say. And truthfully, I think that the Jedi mind tricks are a good medicine to keep taking, as long as I keep taking them, with the prudent steps available to me from modern medicine. Mind and body and spirit are all interwoven, and they have a lot of influence on each other.
Before I got my final results yesterday, a calmness came over me. I feel a deep purpose in being the matriarch of my family. I feel a deep purpose in sharing wisdoms which I have learned, to be cataloged on this blog for myself and anyone else who cares to read them. I feel a deep purpose for following my innate curiosities about learning more about all of the fascinating people and things and experiences to be had in this world. I had an innate sense yesterday, that my purpose is not completed yet. My mission is still going strong. A sense of purpose may very well be the true pulse of life. One of the slogans used during Breast Cancer Awareness month is this: “Hope unleashes your superpower”. There is no doubt in my mind that hope and purpose are indeed, superpowers.
Ladies, if you haven’t already, schedule your yearly mammogram. Do it now.
“Breast friends get screened together”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I have some early morning appointments so I won’t be writing much on the blog today. I do have a plan, though. Today, let’s all of us, let our souls come out of their hiding places, in a big, big way. Clearly, the the world needs a whole lot more love to flow, in order to let the light of our souls shine through all of the darkness. Give some love to whomever you come across today. Let your soul meet their soul. You both will be so much better off for it. This is often a tough world to comprehend for our timeless, peaceful, light-filled souls. But all souls, even the most hidden, “locked up, and chained up, and stuck in a dark basement” kinds of souls, all have the power to recognize the deep and powerful energy of love. Love is kind. Love has empathy. Love notices and focuses on what we have in common, not our differences. Love has mercy. Love is generous. Love is peaceful and harmonious. Love delights in the miracles of our natural world. As Zora Neale Hurston stated, love is the force that brings your beautiful soul to the surface. Let your soul shine today. The world needs your light. The world needs more light.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Isn’t the cooler weather wonderful?! After such a hot summer, it’s like diving into a cool, refreshing, clear pool of water.
How’s everyone doing? This was a tough weekend. I’m feeling that universal, low-lying, but seeping in kind of stress in the air, like we had when the pandemic first started. And when you have that kind of permeance of uneasiness, swirling all around you, it sort of punctuates your own individual stresses, doesn’t it? Whatever helps you with stress and concern in your mind and in your body and in your spirit, is your own “toolbox.” Don’t forget to open your toolbox, and to use and to utilize your own helpful “tools.” (exercise, prayer, meditation, music, friendships, nature, healthy, wholesome meals, crying, release, easy chores, funny shows etc.) Also, use this as a time to find and to test new, healthy tools to help ease your stress during eventful times.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” – Carl Sagan
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” – Mother Teresa
“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”– bell hooks
“Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken, but humanity is good. I believe that.” – Hank Green
“We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.” – Albert Einstein
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” – Mahatma Ghandi
“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.” – Maya Angelou
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The beauty of getting older is being able to look back at decades of being “yourself.” You become more curious about yourself. You become your own mystery to solve. You have experienced enough time at being alive that you start to notice patterns about yourself. What interests, intrigues, and attractions have been a part of you, in one form or another, since you were a child? Why do you have these inherent passions? Is this something that is in your heritage? I find myself getting more and more curious about my ancestors, not necessarily about the relations that are just a couple of generations away, but my lineage from hundreds of years ago. I have the sense that my ancestors are wanting me to explore these connections more fully, now that I am older and less distracted. Do you ever get this sense? The ultimate question and mystery to solve in our lives, for any of us, just may be “Why are you, “you”?” Follow your inclinations, intuitions, and your proclivities. Notice what has remained in your life, in one form or another, throughout your decades of living. Get interested in yourself. You are a fascinating enigma. With a puzzle like yourself to try and solve, you can never be bored.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
As a person who has a marketing degree from college (which was way before the internet and social media marketing – I might as well say that I have a degree in Latin which would probably be more useful at this point), I should have known all about the word “puffery”, but the official legal term, “puffery” is honestly something that I just learned about last week. I suppose that most of marketing is puffery, so a marketing degree might as well be a degree in puffery. I have a B.B.A. in puffery.
Puffery is what advertisers/salespeople do to play on our emotions to get us really excited about something. Puffery walks delicately upon the fine line of truth and fiction. Puffery is the largest amount of vague (usually subjective) exaggeration which marketers can get away with, before they are dragged into court under accusations of fraud. Puffery uses words like best, better, always. Here’s my favorite example of puffery:
Examples of puffery in slogans:
“Open a Coke, open happiness.”
“Nothing outlasts an Eveready battery.”
“Made from the best stuff on Earth – Snapple.”
“Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – They’re Grrreat!”
Another example of puffery is the giant, perfectly curated burger on the enormous billboard that looks nothing like the flattened, smashed, much smaller version which we get from our local fast food chain. Or the car or alcohol commercials and advertisements, where the implication seems to be that only stunningly beautiful and wealthy, healthy looking people, with a gazillion friends and family surrounding them, who are seemingly as equally amazing and cool, are seen to be utilizing these particular products happily together. But this is nothing new. We all know this. The Federal Trade Commission is very generous in what it allows to be legally stated. Unless you can prove that there is an out-and-out lie in a statement, the puffery stands. In other words, I can say, “Extremely accomplished and talented people like Taylor Swift read my blog.” I just can’t say, “Taylor Swift reads my blog.”
Since we all know that we live in a pile of puffery, coming at us from everywhere that we look, now more than ever – from our phones, our TVs, our computers, our radios, billboards, magazine and newspaper ads, paid reviews on websites, politicians, social media influencers, etc. no wonder why we feel so much collective anxiety and mistrust. If there was one thing that was drilled into us as marketing majors in college that I will never forget, it was this statement: “Perception is reality.” The marketing game is to figure out what people want as their own reality, and then to imply the perception that if you use this particular product, it will get you to your desired reality.
The funny thing is, while different people want many different types of physical realities, the reason why anyone wants any particular reality, is all the same. They believe that if they get their desired reality, this reality will give them the feelings that people universally seem to want: love, happiness, peace, excitement, prestige, comfort, respect, etc. But if we rely on the things outside of us that we buy and that we use, in order to try to get us to the feelings that we want to possess, doesn’t that put us in a vulnerable position? When we do this, we put our own feelings in the control of products outside of ourselves, and the salespeople who liberally use puffery to sell us these products, and get away with it all of the time. And to make matters worse, marketers love when we feel vulnerability and fear. They’ve got all sorts of products that you can buy to help relieve you of those terrible feelings: insurance, alarm systems, drugs, doorbell cameras, bear spray, self-help systems, etc.
This is why it is so important to be able to study ourselves and our own emotional reactions to things and to people, in a rational, detached, observant sort of way. This is why it is so important to be able to question and to differentiate as to what is factual and what is actually puffery in our own lives? When we get emotional, we often play the puffery game on our own selves, using extreme absolutes when we talk to ourselves: “I always break my diets. She never listens to me. No one cares about me. I’m doomed. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket.” We say that we can’t stand drama queens, but the queeniest one, is usually smugly propped on a golden throne, inside of our own heads.
The answer to being teflon to puffery is to learn to trust yourself. Get to know yourself and what your core values are, and put strong boundaries around your core values. Learn to hear your intuition (time alone with mediation, prayer, breathing exercises, journaling, etc. helps immensely with this) and put more faith into your own inner voice than any outside influences. Know how resilient you are, and that no matter what happens, you will be able to deal with consequences of any situation. (if you are middle-aged, you’ve got a lot of factual proof of this already, from your many life experiences) Learn to notice and to laugh at all of the puffery all around you. Like a little bird who puffs up its feathers in order to scare off its predators, or to impress would-be mates, in the end, puffery is just a little harmless bird that you can control in the palm of your hand. Don’t let a puffy little bird, nest up in your head, perched on the shoulder of your inner drama queen. Let the puffy little bird fly free, as you calmly, steadily, and faithfully continue to walk your one, unique path.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“I think we’re losing something. One hundred years ago, everybody wrote. Everybody wrote letters. Lots of people kept journals. People wrote down the events of the day. Today if you say to somebody you meet, “That’s an interesting story. You should write it down,” their first response is, “I’m not a writer” — and by that they mean that writing now belongs to those of us who do it for a living. I think that’s wrong. I think writing should belong to everybody and I think everybody should write because it’s good for our history and it’s good for our psyche.” – Anna Quindlen
“Being a reporter taught me how to write even when I didn’t feel like writing. People ask me all the time about writer’s block. Can you imagine saying to the city editor, “I’m blocked today”? Being in a newsroom also taught me to write tight, look for telling details, and write dialogue that sounds the way real people talk.” – Anna Quindlen
I didn’t realize that Anna Quindlen wrote a book called Write For Your Life in 2022. I haven’t read it yet, but I will now. Anna Quindlen has always been one of my favorite writers. The quotes above are from an interview that she did last summer, with the The Saturday Evening Post, about the book.
Write. You have a story. It’s a good one. Writing will help you make sense of your story and it will help your friends and your family make sense of you (maybe even after you are long gone). Make yourself write every single day. Sometimes I come to this computer with that ho/hum feeling that I truly have nothing to write about it, but I make myself do it, because I am committed to writing a daily blog, for myself, and for you, my dear readers. It is important to me to strive to be a person of my word. In this way, you help me stay accountable and I am forever grateful for your presence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Everyone has a story. And it’s a better story than you want to believe. Yesterday, right before dinner, I decided to get a quick nail polish change on my toenails (not a full pedicure, I didn’t want to spend the time or the money – just a quick polish change). The manager of the nail salon sat down and she took only about ten minutes to do my polish change. In this time, she matter-of-factly told me that she had just returned to work after her father-in-law’s funeral. He was of Laotian descent, and he was a Buddhist and she said that Buddhists tend to have long drawn out funeral ceremonies, so she had been to different parts of the service for four and a half days. “I’ve been doing a lot of eating and sitting,” she said. Her father-in-law was a sweet, quiet man, who wanted to please those he loved so when he was diagnosed with cancer, he agreed to do the chemotherapy process, even though he didn’t want to do it. Late this summer, he finally told his family he that was done with partaking in chemo. He wanted to enjoy his last days. Her father-in-law died peacefully about a week ago, after small stay in hospice after refusing a feeding tube. During his funeral planning and service, the manager told me that it was so interesting to see what grief brought out in the different people in her family. The so-called “most responsible” eldest daughter fell apart and wasn’t able to do much of anything. At times they couldn’t even locate her. On the other hand, one of the granddaughters, a busy woman in her early 20s, who hasn’t had much to do with her family at all, became everyone’s rock, particularly for her grandmother, the heartsick wife. The salon manager’s son is in middle school. He considered his grandfather to be “his best friend.” In their Buddhist tradition, as a sign of mourning, the men in the family shave their heads. The manager’s son has a big head with big ears which makes him feel self conscious. Her son is in that emotionally volatile and often mired in insecurities, middle school stage. He was torn as to what to do. Thankfully, the elders in his family, and the elders in his tradition decided that enough men had shaved their heads to honor his grandfather, and they reassured the young man that his job was to honor his grandfather/best friend, in his heart.
In ten minutes, I learned so much. I learned about this woman’s family, and things that I didn’t know about Buddhist traditions. I felt connected to this woman who has painted my toenails off and on throughout the years. I could relate to her heartsickness for being the wife and the mother of a grieving family.
It took me about ten minutes to write the paragraph above. Listen to others. Listen to yourself. Write it down. Write it down, because as Anna Quindlen says, “It’s good for our history and it’s good for our psyche.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Where are you spending your money? What do you put your money towards? Most of us would answer that we put our money towards food, clothing, shelter, health, taxes, education, our families, pets, retirement savings, charity (in no particular order) and then if there is any money left over it goes to luxuries like outings, trips and trinkets. We’re all pretty cognizant about where we spend our money and what we want our money to do for us. Most of us already have answers about what we would plan to do with our money if we came into a big windfall such as winning the lottery.
I read an interesting perspective the other day that asked the question: why don’t we put that same kind of consideration that we do about where we are spending our money, into where we are spending our everyday personal emotional energy? If you pretended that every thought of yours was a dollar, are you spending your thoughts in the right places? Are you spending your thoughts and feelings on people/places/things that truly matter to you? Are you wasting your thoughts and feelings? Are you bleeding your thoughts/feelings? I replaced “thoughts and feelings” with where the word money is often used in these common platitudes:
+ Thoughts and feelings don’t grow on trees. (We all only have about 16-18 waking hours in the day when we can consciously notice and change our thoughts and our feelings. And none of us know just how many days we will actually get on this Earth to think and to feel and to experience our perspectives which we create about life.)
+ Time is thoughts and feelings. (We are in a constant stream of thoughts/feelings throughout our time in the day.)
+ Thoughts and feelings can’t buy happiness. (Happiness is usually a by-product of a state of gratefulness and positivity created by the thoughts and feelings we are having about various situations in our lives. Thoughts and feelings mired in negativity will not buy happiness.)
+ Make your thoughts and feelings work for you.
Money is just another form of energy. “One of the ways Webster’s Dictionary defines energy is “the physical or mental strength that allows you to do things.” Money, like gasoline for your vehicle, allows you the ability to do the things you want to do in life.” (oreilly.com) Money is the symbol of the energy it took to earn it, and we trade this energy for some other form of energy (the things and the experiences that we value and we buy).
We tend to put a lot of consideration into where we spend our money and if we don’t do this, we often end up “broke”, with nothing to show for it. Is this any different than our everyday thoughts and feelings? Are you wasting your thoughts and feelings on things that really don’t matter or that are out of your control? Are the places where you are spending the propensity of your thoughts and feelings giving you a good return? Are you getting a lot of bang for your buck?
Just for today, pretend that your thoughts and feelings are your financial allotment for the day. Invest your thoughts and feelings wisely. Spend your thoughts and feelings on things that really matter to you, and on matters that will really make a difference in your own life and in the lives of others. Spiritually wealthy people are conscious and careful with their thoughts and their feelings. They are generous where it pays off to be so, for themselves and for others. They know that their focus of energy (thoughts, feelings, actions) will pay dividends, so they are careful to place this energy where it is best grown. Be good with your “money” and it will be good to you.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I read a good interview with Martha Stewart, age 81, in AARP magazine. These were some good quotes (takeaways) of hers from the article:
“Aging isn’t something I think about. How old I am, slowing down, retiring – I just don’t dwell on that. People talk about aging successfully, but I think of it as living gracefully and living to the absolute fullest.”
“And I continue to think that the most important part of aging well is to stay curious, to try new things every day.”
“In this life, you have to work at staying better. That’s really all you can do. You work at it.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
