Tag: inspiration

Wednesday’s Whimsies

Here are a few more new exhibits in the thought museum of the blog:

“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.” – Gertrude Stein

“Here is the test of your relationship with what you own: Is it your servant, or your master?” – Alan Cohen

“Giraffes are the long-stemmed flowers of Africa.” – Angela Sheldrick

“As you pray, move your feet.” – African proverb

“Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart.” – Winnie the Pooh

+ Benadryl is trending on Twitter because many people give it to their dogs on the Fourth of July, due to all of the fireworks being let off all over neighborhoods. Our male dogs, Ralphie, the Labrador retriever, and Trip, the Boykin spaniel have never been particularly fond of each other. They have had some heady squabbles over the years. However, last night, those two were cuddling on the same bed like I have never seen them do before. In the end, they wanted each other on the same team for comfort. Silver linings . . . .

+ Some of the best things arise from the absolute worst situations. Sometimes families, neighborhoods, businesses, countries – basically any particular entity can be so corrupt, so toxic, so negative, that the only healthy template you can get from them is to do everything opposite of what is currently being done. But it is with that kind of consideration, deliberation and dedication to change, that a person or an entity often sprouts and arises from the ashes and becomes the absolute best of whatever existed before it. If you are in a low place, you can pivot yourself in the direction opposite of what got you there. Take some poor decisions which you have made, and do the opposite of those decisions. Dedicate yourself to “opposite day”, day in and day out, and be amazed at what comes from it. You don’t need a positive example of what you want. Just notice what isn’t positive in your life, and take steps to move in the opposite direction of its negativity. Some of the best people and places and organizations in the world arose out of escaping situations that were no longer tenable to overall well-being. Our own country was founded on principles like religious freedom and no monarchies, from people who were escaping persecution and wanted something better for themselves. Change arises from awareness of what isn’t healthy and moving towards what is healthy instead.

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.

Monday – Funday

Credit: @woofknight, Twitter

I’m baaaaack! After spending the weekend at a college friends’ reunion (after three years of not seeing each other), when my one friend got home, she texted that she feels so “rejuvenated”. That really stuck with me. I feel rejuvenated, too, and I didn’t even realize how badly I needed to be rejuvenated. Sometimes you don’t realize how stale you have gotten in certain areas of your life until you get reminded by fresh perspectives – new places, interesting recommendations by trusted friends, and even reminders of facets of your own self, which you had forgotten about until you see them reflected back to you in a good friend’s eyes. Rejuvenation is revitalizing.

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

Seven Rocks

picture credit: CNN

Later this evening I will be travelling up to Virginia to reconnect with my seven best friends from college. We used to be really good about having a yearly reunion, but the last time we have had this reunion (or GW as we call it, “Girls Weekend”) was January 2020, when the coronavirus was just this weird virus happening over in China, that none of us knew anything about.

So more than three years later, all eight of us will finally reconvene, in person, again. And I am so excited. I have known these wonderful women for 34 years, since I was 18 years old. Imagine it – eight, 18-year-old ladies, just coming into early adulthood, connecting in college, and sharing funny, crazy college-age adventures together. (and yes, there were other friends along the way, but none of them seem to have “the sticking power” over the three decades that the eight of us magnets seem to have held on to, despite all odds) It is not lost on me, that as I am early entering into this next stage of my adulthood, I will be with seven of the women who helped me to enter into my first stage of adulthood, and who were there to support me, and to moor and anchor me, and to remind me who I am at my core, as I waded into the murky waters of becoming the adult woman, wife, mother, friend, and the overall person who I am today.

As anyone who has lived a life knows, none of us ladies knew what was in store for us, when we launched each other into the first halves of our adulthood. We had inklings. We had dreams. And all eight of us have experienced amazing, wonderful experiences, and also devastating events in our individual lives. This is just the way of life. But what isn’t always the way, is that not everyone has seven constants on their shores. Not everyone has seven giant rocks and pillars of support who have witnessed all of your milestones throughout your entire adulthood. Not everyone has seven people who know you intimately, and have decided to stick with you, and to focus on your lovely qualities and to mostly ignore your flaws. Such kind mirrors, long-time friends can be! Something in our friendship experience feels divine. Something about reconvening with these ladies right at this early empty nest period of my life, feels divine. Why wouldn’t anyone cling to the people and the experiences in your life which feel divine? There are seven strong pillars waiting for me to unite with them. We have survived storms and waves and calm and sunshine and even some battering among ourselves, and no doubt, we will continue to do so. Our shared friendship has withstood the test of time, and I believe that this combined friendship will help to see me (and us) through all of the next set of adventures in this next stage of adulting, and all the way through to the end of our journeys.

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

Journal Prompts

I have quite a few errands to do in the next couple of days, so my writing is likely to be sparse. Maybe I will just throw out various thoughts that I have pondered this week, and you may use them as your own journal prompts, if you are so inclined.

“How you start your day is how you live your day. How you live your day is how you live your life.” – Louise Hay (This is why I start my every day, communing with you all, writing on the blog. It’s good for me and it is good for my life. Thank you for enhancing my life. Ty. Ty. Ty.)

“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”– Barbara Kingsolver I have witnessed this fact in my own life, and in so many other people’s lives, too. Where are you feeling a constant agitation or resistance in your own life? Are there changes that need to be made? Are you in the way of your own salvation?

“Life is made of two dots and a dash. Make the most of the dash.” – Anonymous

Dash away, dash away, dash away all!!!! See you tomorrow. Please leave your answers to the journal prompts in my Comments, if you are so inclined.

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

Pawns in the Game

Did you ever feel like you were a pawn in someone else’s game? Did you ever look way up into the sky expecting to see the puppet strings and the puppeteer? What if you are that pawn, though? What if you are a pawn in the enormous, strong, beautiful hands of a brilliant, kind, masterful, omniscient player? Is it possible that in those times that you feel deep, intuitive impulses to do something for someone else, or for yourself, or to do something about a situation in your own life or in your community, it might actually be “the player” using your individual talents and your particular position on the board to elevate the overall masterpiece of the game? Is it possible that you are a major part of the game that is constantly leveling up?

I am a believer that we are a mixture of our own free will, and the overall will of the point of the game – love, creation, joy. We can be stubborn little pawns and we can say, “You know what? Nope. I’m not moving. In fact, I’m going to take a big step backwards, so there.” And the player says, “That’s okay. You do you. I have other moves that I can make with other pawns. The game will go on . . . . And by the way, I love you and I am happy that you are part of the game. When you are ready to take a step forward again, I’ll be here to lift you up.”

Picture credit: Dicebreaker

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

Monday – Funday

I love our dogs. I mean, I adore our dogs. But Josie, our collie causes more fur-formed tumbleweeds than a major storm in the Mojave Desert. And our dogs can’t look out our glass sliders (which form most of the back of our house) without making absolutely sure to having their sloppy wet noses touch the glass. (And of course, our dogs are all three different heights: small, medium, and large) The bottom half of our sliders are translucent to opaque, on a regular basis.

My youngest son questions everything in life. (I wonder where he gets that from. Hmmm.) He once said, “I love our dogs as much as any of us do, but don’t you think it is kind of weird that humankind has evolved to have animals living with us, in our houses? I mean, does it seem a little strange?” (Despite agreeing with him, we all kissed the dogs and ignored our son the rest of the day. 😉 )

Bottom line is, I love my dogs and I love Oreos. They are worth the never-ending cycle of cleaning up after them. Have a great week!

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

This is the Beginning

“– what would you be doing differently in your life if we were approaching the end of the year, rather than the middle of it? Well for one, you’d probably be celebrating! Two, you’d also be doing all those things making sure all the loose ends of the year are tied up and setting intentions for the next year.” – Cassandra Tyndall

Happy Summer Solstice! It’s that halfway point in the year. It’s a great time to hit pause and use the light from the longest day of sunlight, to shine the light on where you’ve “been” in 2023 already, and to reflect on how you would like to close 2023 out. My husband loves to listen to the Gerry Cinnamon song below, when we are relaxing by our pool during warm summer evenings. Sometimes I think that he overplays it, but I will say these last few days I have woken up to the start of the song, playing on repeat in my mind. And it stirs me. Deeply. I hope that it stirs you, too. “This is the beginning of the rest of your life.”

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

Hangin’ Around Friday

Happy Friday!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!!! Before I get to my favorite for today (hint: see above), I wanted to share two interesting things. One, I just read that the reason why Redwood trees are the tallest living thing on Earth is because they intertwine their roots and they share their water. Isn’t that beautiful? What’s your “water”? (i.e. special gift or talent that was meant to be shared to make our world a more beautiful place) Share your water today, and stand taller for doing it.

And two, I had a really interesting, kind of hilarious conversation yesterday. I was doing quite a few returns at a local department store. I was being waited on by quite the colorful lady. She and I both agreed that we especially enjoy the thrill of getting quality items, at discounted prices. The lady, a quirky, jumpy, constantly smiling, slim, elfin type of a person told me, “My talents aren’t limited to bargain hunting. I’m just the kind of person who knows people. I get what a want.”

“What are you, a mobster?” her coworker quipped and we all three nervously giggled.

“No,” the confident lady replied. “For example, I get reservations where no one can get reservations. I get to the best seats at games, and I get backstage passes when I want them.”

My curiosity overcame me. “Okay, so how do you do that? What’s your trick?” I said, half-believing her.

“I just call ’em up, or I show up and I say I’m with Senator So and So’s party and then I march right to wherever I want to go.”

“Do you ever get called out?” I asked.

“Only one or two times, but then they still let me go on through, and I think it’s because they admired my pluck. The key is to have total confidence. Know that you belong in the place where you want to be, and act on it. Never show doubt.” And then she smiled like a self-pleased Cheshire cat, who was already dreaming about her next stunt to pull off.

Okay, back to the moment that you have been waiting for: today’s favorite. (See above) Another Studio’s plant animals are like jewelry for your plant babies. They are adorable and light and rest easily on even the lightest of leaves. They come in many different varieties (I personally purchased the bee and the gecko). They run around $7-$8 a piece. I got mine at a local store but you can go to their website and purchase them from there. For those plain plants of yours who don’t naturally flower, why not give them a cute little bling of their own with an A-S plant animal?

Have a great weekend, friends. Find the small things/experiences that bring a smile to your face, and buy them, and relish them and act on them (and share your water). See you tomorrow!

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