Tag: inspiration

Paradox

I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon lately when people ask me how I am enjoying my empty nest and I say, “I’m loving it!” Some people almost recoil. I had one woman say, “Well, don’t tell your kids that!” What?! Why?! Would it better for me to plague my kids with unfounded guilt over my own neediness? How can I expect my kids to confidently take up the reins of their own adult lives, if I don’t emulate how it is done?! Wasn’t it my primary job to give my four children the proverbial roots and wings? I have completed the main purpose of my job, as a mother. I know that I will always be a support player in all of their lives, but I have proudly handed them the keys to driving their own lives, into the futures of their own choices. I am excited to witness where their adventures take my darlings, and I am excited to dust off my own neglected keys, and to start driving into this next phase of my life, with a little more focus on myself, and the new destinies of my own choosing, this go around.

My family is a traditional family. Other than me having a few part-time jobs here and there, my husband was/is our family’s primary breadwinner. My main job was to run our household and to be the main caretaker of our three sons and our daughter. Out of the almost 29 years of our marriage, I have had the role of family caretaker for 27 years (the age of my eldest son). It has been quite a lot – a lot of fun, a lot of energy, a lot of money, a lot of adventures, a lot of tears, a lot of food, a lot of decisions, a lot of worry, a lot of excitement, a lot of scheduling. . . . Anyone who has ever been in the swirl of a big family, even for just one meal, thinks to themselves, “Wow, this is a lot.”

And guess what? I loved raising my family a lot. I gave it my everything. My family was always my highest priority, and it always will be that, in my heart. However, I am tired. I am spent. I am ready to keep things simpler, quieter and a little bit more focused on my own interests now. And that doesn’t make me a terrible mother. Nor does it negate all of the wonderfulness I have experienced raising my kids for 27 years. I have an excellent relationship with all four of my adult children. I am thrilled to start getting to know them now, more as interesting contemporaries, on a more level playing field.

When someone retires from a decades long career such as teaching or being a police officer or some business position, everyone is so excited for these people. They get comments like, “You must be so excited! I am so happy for you!” No one assumes that these people who devoted a huge portion of their lives to their vocations are devastated to be retiring, and pining away to still do it. Nor does anyone assume that because the retirees are happily anticipating retirement, that must mean that they detested what they did for a living. So why should it be any different for us parents who decided to make parenting and household management our primary vocation?! I have no regrets about how I chose to spend almost all of my adult life, raising my family. I am proud of the family which I helped to create and to lead and to mold. There is nothing in my life that means more to me. But yes, also, “I am so excited about my retirement!” Yes, I am eager to put more of my primary focus on to “me” now. And yes, it’s also a little disappointing to feel like I have to once again defend my choices as a woman, and as a mother, all of the way into the empty nest, especially when I feel like I am defending myself to other women.

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

Your Majesty

I am in more of a questioning, watching, introspective state of mind today. I not in a “spit it all out” state – those times in which I can’t type fast enough, those words that want to escape from me. Therefore, for today, I will share someone else’s words.

I recently read something interesting from the author Donna Henes. She claims that women don’t jump from the Maiden to the Mother, and then immediately on to the Crone (the traditional Triple Goddess paradigm). Henes says that with the long lives we are living these days, we have a crucial stage in between Mother and Crone called the “Queen stage” This is how Donna Henes describes us Queens:

“The Queen is firm in the Defense of Her time, Her space, Her boundaries, Her priorities, Her preferences, Her ethics, Her needs, Her desires, Her safety and Her sense of well-being. She acts not from the feeble uncertainty of a victim, but from the steady and stable center of Her acceptance and ownership of Her own thoughts and feelings, beliefs and actions. She is sure of Her Self. The Queen allows Herself to feel worthy, entitled, and esteemed based on the success of Her own efforts, accomplishments and growth. Her Intention is to learn and master all of the ways that She can feed, feel, help, heal, hear, change, mend, befriend, embrace, and love Her Self. She takes care of Herself on every level. And She vehemently defends Her right to do so.”

Have a great day, Your Majesties! In fact have a fabulous month of June, and let’s just go all in and make it an incredible summer! Let’s make it a decree.

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

You’ve Got This

Credit: Wise Connector, Twitter

For all of the bravado of our younger years, being young is actually a time of a lot of insecurity. A beautiful part of aging, is having all of the experiences under our belts that we’ve lived through, and enjoyed, or at the very least, conquered. When an incident arises which needs our attention, it is so good to fall back on the self-assurance, “I’ve gotten through worse than this, and I’ve come out better and stronger on the other side. I will figure this out. I always have.”

Sometimes when I see quotes like this, I think to myself, “Yes. I know. I trust myself, and my strength, and my faith to see me through, but do you know what? I’m a little tired of figuring sh*t out.” It turns out that life is often a big, long series of figuring stuff out – even the good stuff, like where to eat and what movie to watch. But as you age and you’ve proven to yourself that you are pretty good at figuring stuff out, this self assurance sure helps lighten the load.

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

Summer Intentions

Are you spending some time this week thinking about (and feeling around) your intentions for this summer? I am. I am thinking about my summer intentions probably more than I ever have done in my life. And it feels so good.

Last summer was an emotional doozy for me. Last summer my mother-in-law became quite ill, so ill, that her illness ultimately ended with her death this past December, after months of suffering. Also last summer, our youngest child and our only daughter decided to start college by going to campus and taking summer classes. And so my husband and I entered the rocky road of the beginning of our empty nest, already feeling rattled, unsettled and stressed. Reading over my journal from last summer, one word seems to come to mind that encapsulates it all: “turbulent.”

Lately, when I am with my family or my friends, I notice that we have already started to kind of “reminisce” about the beginning of the pandemic. The worst part of the pandemic seems far enough in the past that we can actually start to process the experience, and what it did to evolve us individually, and as a whole. We talk about how scary and isolating and disappointing the beginning of the pandemic was in so many ways, but we also surprisingly, have some fond memories, too. Last night at dinner, my daughter and I were both saying how much we loved our weekly family movie nights, especially when my daughter took it up a notch, with themed food and decorations. It seems, for many of us, enough time has passed that we can really start to examine our emotions, and our changes that have come from experiencing such a devastating event in our collective lives. This summer may be a start to some serious healing around this pandemic experience, for many of us.

My intention for this summer is to relax. Relax. Relax. I plan to do everything that I can to keep “my waters” still. I think still, quiet time is needed for me to absorb and to process everything that we have been through (good and bad), over the last few years. Luckily for me, I am a person who loves solitude. I actually crave it. Our youngest son moves to his own apartment and starts his first “real” job out of college this coming weekend. Our daughter is living at home this summer with us, but her schedule is filled with work, a couple of online classes, and catching up with local friends, so I actually see some actual, nice-sized blocks of peaceful solitude forming on my calendar. I am grateful for this fact. I’m fully aware of the old Yiddish platitude, “Man plans, God laughs.” But it is always in my solitude where I find God, so I like to think that God is as excited about my plans for big chunks of peaceful, calm, solitude, as I am.

Spend some time with your own summer intentions this week. If you don’t, your time will become unintentionally filled, and you’ll find yourself in a state in which you have no time to yourself, and for yourself. Intentionally block off some completely unscheduled time that is available for you to spontaneously do whatever you feel like doing in that particular moment. (no have-tos, just “want-tos”) Make an easily accessible, summer bucket list of local haunts where you like to go to: a cozy bookstore, an artsy jewelry store, the best ice cream place in town, a beautiful local park, and when you find yourself wondering what to do with some of your unscheduled time, you’ll have a list to jog your memory. Make these dates with yourself, every bit as important, if not more so, than other plans and commitments you have made, involving other people. Make yourself feel as obligated to yourself, and as embarrassed to cancel on yourself, as you would be for anybody else who you’ve made plans with this summer.

There is no better way to get back to your most steady, centered self than to luxuriate and savor being just with yourself. Summer often feels like the most heady, hazy, luxurious time of the year. It is the perfect time of the year to soak-in yourself, “take yourself in”, in order to revitalize and to restore yourself to your most vital state of being. Spend at least a few minutes meditating on your own summer intentions this week. You will be so grateful that you did this for yourself. Look forward to getting to know your deepest, most peaceful, undistracted self again.

“We need solitude, because when we’re alone, we’re free from obligations, we don’t need to put on a show, and we can hear our own thoughts.” – Tamim Ansary

“Spending time alone in your own company reinforces your self-worth and is often the number-one way to replenish your resilience reserves.” – Sam Owen

“It is hard to love yourself if you never spend time with yourself. ‘Alone Time’ is Necessary.” – Izey Victoria Odiase

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

Monday – Funday

On a day that so many celebrate with picnics, I decided to look up the most popular picnic foods here in America. Besides the obvious hotdogs and hamburgers, I noticed that there were foods listed from every ethnicity. Empanadas, muffaletta sandwiches, chick pea hummus, caprese salad . . . . . This kind of “filled me up” a little. Our country is so great because so many cultures have created it. Interestingly, the most popular picnic food in our country is supposedly potato salad, and the reasoning for this is that you can make so many different varieties of it, that appeal to all different people. (French, Korean, German, Southern Style, Greek etc.) Our country is quite literally a melting pot.

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

Soul Sunday

This quote below is poetic enough for Soul Sunday (a day that we devote to poetry on the blog.) When worded just right, the shortest of statements can hold a volume of poignancy and emotion that would otherwise get leaked and lost in unnecessary ramblings. “Unknown” is perhaps one of the greatest wordsmiths of our time.

None of us truly knows who/what we would die for (no matter what we think, or what we casually and dramatically declare), until we are actually faced with the ultimate, dire choice. Thank you, fallen soldiers. Thank you for your last breaths. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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

Happy With Myself

My greatest beauty secret is being happy with myself. – Tina Turner

RIP – Tina Turner. That voice, those legs, the hair, that huge, gorgeous, light-up-the-room smile . . . what a loss. We were lucky to have her, and her resilience and the inspiration that we all got from her ability to spring back, and own her worth, and share her glorious talent.

I honestly read Tina Turner’s quote above, just a couple of weeks ago, before she passed yesterday, and when I read it, I thought to myself, “That’s the absolute truth.” Whenever I have gotten compliments about how I look, it’s never about my hair being just right, or the outfit being perfect, or my body being in excellent shape. No. It’s always at a time when I feel completely radiant and excited about life. The light of happiness always shines through, and it attracts others like moths to a flame.

I believe that we are all attracted to the light of happiness in other people because happiness is what everyone wants. Everything that you do, or you achieve, or you buy, or you strive for, is because you believe that “whatever it is” will give you the end product of the feeling of “happiness.” We all so easily forget that happiness is a choice. We can choose to be happy no matter what. Yes, is happiness harder to achieve when loved ones are sick, or we are injured, or “times are tough” or “finances are tight”? Sure, of course it’s harder to feel happy during these times in our lives. These times in life bring up a lot of turbulent emotions, but you can work through these emotions. You can always get back to your baseline of “happy with myself”, as Tina Turner puts it, when you compassionately accept your own feelings, work through them, and look in gratitude at your own life, and your own experiences, and your own resilience, and then just bask in the awe of the very experience of being alive, as the one and only you, in a world teeming with beauty and astonishments, everywhere you look. If you work through what’s bothering you, and you come to an acceptance of “what is”, wondrously notice that even if “what is” hasn’t changed and maybe even will never change (a chronic illness, an annoying boss, a tummy bulge, a loved one with an addiction, etc.), you can come to an unbothered, detached state about it. You can still find your base level happiness in any situation . You can deliberately clean off the lens of fear, and uncertainty, and of anger, and of pain, and your own light can brightly shine through it all.

There are people in this world who are physically “perfect” specimens in this world, and yet they are not beautiful, because when a person is unhappy, they are dim. Their energy is dark and cold. The people in this world, who other people are most jealous of, are the people whom others perceive to have things that we believe would make us feel happy . . . fame, beauty, wealth, love relationships, etc. But the truth is, happiness is an inside job. Nothing outside of you can make you happy. Nothing. You can get fleeting feelings of satisfaction and joy, but think about how many times that you have achieved one of your goals, and how surprised you are in the end, that it didn’t quite fill the hole like you were expecting “it” to, and how quickly you move on to a new goal or aspiration.

If you want to be one of the most beautiful, rare, exquisite people in this world, make it your highest goal to be “happy with yourself.” Make it a daily project to find your inner peace, satisfaction, and happiness. Make it your daily practice to constantly bring your mind around to thinking thoughts of gratitude, curiosity, authenticity, acceptance, kindness, hope and light. When you are in that state of happiness, notice it. Feel it. Describe to yourself what it feels like in every molecule of your body. Give your happiness “muscle memory.” Know that this constant light of peace, acceptance, knowingness and happiness resides in all of us, and make it your main goal to let your own light shine. Let your own light shine so bright that others remember that they have that same light inside of their own selves, too. Happiness is everyone’s greatest beauty secret, available to all.

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

Wingmen

I don’t exaggerate. I just remember big. 

~ Chi Chi Rodriguez

I love this quote. My editor (aka my husband) will read one of my blog posts about something that we both experienced, and he’ll say, “Wow, I didn’t see the story in that, but you did.” And sometimes he’ll try to correct little details to my stories because his memory is different than mine. (And then I’ll get mad, and I’ll insist that my storyteller persona deserves a little creative license) I digress. My overall point is, I do believe that most of us writers, remember a lot of seemingly inconsequential happenings, and we do “remember big.”

The other day, my friend sent to our group chat, a picture of her poor sick baby, all nestled, under warm blankets on the couch. Her baby is now home from college, and immediately came down with some nasty virus going around. Nestled right next to her baby, was my friend’s family’s fur baby, an adorable Yorkie named Skipper, who has been the longtime, perfect family dog, for a family who consists of three beautiful, vivacious daughters. When I texted how cute it was to see Skipper, being right there, comforting one of the beautiful daughters, my friend said that Skipper has always been the family comforter. She then texted a picture of Skipper nestled up, right next to my friend’s father-in-law who had been in hospice care in their home, a few years ago, before he died. “They’re always our wingmen,” I replied. And everyone on the chat agreed. We all love our dogs.

When we visited our son, who attends medical school in a different city, over this past weekend, I noticed a trio of pictures, placed above his computer in his apartment – a place where I imagine that our son spends a great deal of time. The left side picture was one of he and his two brothers, confident and arm-in-arm, on one of our family trips to the great outdoors, the right side picture was of he and his longtime girlfriend, laughing together on the beach, but the middle picture was a giant blow-up of our Labrador retriever’s face. Ralphie, our lab, does have a beautiful, soulful, expressive face. I believe that the picture reminds our son that he has a big, yellow, loyal, goofy, but brilliant wingman, who loves him immensely and unconditionally, and this wingman doesn’t even understand nor give a hoot about medical school. My son’s soulful wingman only cares to be there (even if only in picture form) to be a devoted, supportive form of comfort. How beautiful it is that our furry wingmen feel their own highest form of love and comfort, by just being it.

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

Argle-Bargle (AKA Tuesday’s Tidbits)

+ My Word-of-the-Day daily email taught me “argle-bargle”, today. This is what the meaning is of argle-bargle: “Copious but meaningless talk or writing; nonsense.” It’s a great word. I’ve honestly never seen the word, “argle-bargle”, nor heard the word, “argle-bargle” other than today (honestly, sometimes the Word-of-the-Day tends to get a little “out there” and obscure when it comes to their word choices, in my opinion, but I’m hooked. I read the words daily and I even sometimes try to incorporate some of these words into my own argle-bargle, as I am doing so today.) Admit it. Argle-bargle is a fun word. Try saying it three times fast: Argle-bargle. Argle-bargle. Argle-bargle.

+ The best quote I have read this week (and you know that I love me some great quotes) is this one: “The future has an ancient heart.” – Carlo Levi (Incidentally one of my most kind and loyal, longtime readers, Gail, recommended a book in my Comments recently, and I immediately downloaded it. It is an excellent book and this is where I read the quote. The book is called Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, who also wrote Wild, which was made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon) Anyway, “The future has an ancient heart” speaks to me. It is so true and so comforting. It suggests that whatever we are meant to do, and to learn, and to become, is already imprinted in our most primal, wisest DNA. It will find its way out, through many channels, in our lifetimes, individually and collectively. If you ever need to just “let go”, use this quote as your mantra. It’s now going to become one of my own regular mantras. Thank you, Gail, for your most excellent recommendation. This line from the book, alone, is life-changing.

+ I had an experience over the weekend that I’m sure could have probably made a viral Tik-Tok (although I’m honestly not a Tik-Tok fan, so I don’t really know. I’ve always preferred words over video.) We were visiting our son in a major city in our country, and while he was doing his schoolwork, my husband and I visited a swanky section of town for some lunch and some shopping. I found a delightful boutique full of unusual artsy stuff (my favorite kind of shopping) and I decided to purchase a bracelet in the shop. My husband was doing his own thing outside (small artsy boutiques are not his favorite kind of shopping. I’m not sure that my husband actually has a favorite kind of shopping.) The cashier was perhaps a few years older than me (probably in her late 50s) and she mentioned that this boutique was not actually her store, but it was her daughter’s store, and she was just trying to help her daughter out for the afternoon. What ensued next became two technologically challenged middle-aged women trying to figure out how to pay for my item, with the daughter on a Facetime call, trying to guide us through the whole process (“I think that we press this button” . . . “No! No! No! Don’t press that button!” . . . .”The green one!! Green!!”) and then for the cherry on top, add-in the shop-owner’s father, also a technologically challenged middle-ager, who did not have his readers on, and thus promptly pressed a “7” instead of a “1” which almost made me pay seven times what I was supposed to pay, if we hadn’t been saved by hearing his daughter screaming through the phone: “Abort! Cancel the transaction! RED button! RED!!” In the end we got “the system” to work correctly, and I paid the fair price for my lovely bracelet. And the whole time I was thinking, if my kids had been in the shop and had gotten this on video, I might be Tik-Tok famous right now.

+Congratulations, you made it to the end of today’s argle-bargle.

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

Monday – Funday

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

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