Tag: inspiration

Ageless Soul

“To me, age is really just a number, some kind of label. I feel more like an ageless soul in an aging body. And it’s all okay.” – Hilde, age 58 from the book, And Bloom: The Art of Aging Unapologetically by Denise Boomkens

Our souls are ageless, but our bodies aren’t. Our ageless souls are housed in our bodies. Lately I’ve been letting situations which are out of my control, eat at me. And I feel it in my body. It is time to reel it all in. I want my ageless soul to experience a long, interesting life in this body that houses it. Thus I must take time to nurture my body, so that my ageless soul exists in a nurturing space. I must reel in my mind from continuing with obsessive, negative thoughts that do not add to the health of my body, nor to the quality of my life. My ageless soul deserves a sound mind and a healthy body, in order to experience an amazing quality of life. These things that I can do, in order to care for my body (rest, exercise, nutrition), and these things that I can do for my mind (mindfulness, prayer, meditation), are things that I do have control of, and so for the sake of my beautiful, ageless soul, I will put my focus on these things in which I do have control, and I will trust that the rest will take care of itself. And it’s all okay.

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

Be An Outsider

“Boundaries aren’t only for what people do to you, what about what you do to yourself? What about behaviors you have that keep harming you, what about habits that destroy your mental health and well-being? Sometimes it’s you that you gotta stop. Remember to place self-boundaries. That includes stopping yourself from going back to who keeps hurting you. Place limits with yourself.” – @SayItValencia, Twitter

This quote is a good one. The topic of boundaries is an important one to explore, and to revisit during the holiday season. Boundaries aren’t about controlling what other people do. Boundaries are putting limits on what is acceptable to you, and what you are exposed to, at any given time. As it is said, “Boundaries say ‘no.’ Standards say ‘yes.’ ”

The holidays tend to be a time of excess: excess of emotion, excess of stuff, excess of nostalgia, excess of invitations, excess of eating and drinking, excess of expectations, excess noise and commotion, excess of spending, excess of lights, excess of sensations. Sometimes you need to be William, that guy from my favorite commercial of the season. It’s L.L. Bean’s “Be An Outsider” advertisement, where William takes a break from all of the holiday hubbub and walks outside, into the cool crisp air, walking on the snow with his dog, and he gazes at the natural, beautiful, cleansing light of the moon. William ends the commercial with “And this is everything.” William obviously has a love and a fondness for the people and the camaraderie and the tradition and the excitement going on in the house, but he is wise enough to know when he needs a break, and perspective. William knows his boundaries, and he puts them in place.

Recently, I was going through one of my old journals and I found a daily mantra that I was utilizing at the time. I think that it is a good one to bring back: “I will go through this one day harmlessly. I will hurt no one in my thoughts or actions, including myself.” Be an outsider. Be true to yourself this holiday season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJTO2WCiekc

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

Monday – Funday

credit: @Leon_Cooper, Twitter

My favorite story from the weekend was of the Japanese World Cup soccer fans keeping up their tradition of cleaning up garbage in the stands. They have traditional blue garbage bags that they take out and use to clean up garbage as a sign of respect for taking care of others’ property. The Japanese team members left their locker room absolutely spotless as well, including leaving origami figures and a thank you note to the host country, Qatar. Apparently, this wonderful quality is catching on, and many other teams are following suit. What a wonderful example of courtesy, respect and connection to others! Apparently the worldwide attention that this has brought, has made many Japanese people amused, proud, but also a little embarrassed. This trait of tidiness and respect is something that is so “normalized” in their culture, that they are finding themselves a bit self-conscious to having it be brought to light. I love this. Sometimes wonderful traits of people need to be noticed and emulated, especially when these traits are just part of a person’s being, and not part of an attention grabbing “show.”

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

Soul Sunday

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

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Robert Frost says it best:

My emotion has found my thought, and my thought has found my words in the poem which I wrote this morning (see below). What are the thoughts and the words of your own emotions today? Write a poem in order to find out. You will most likely be surprised.

WHO ARE YOU?

Who are you?

Are you what your friends say? Which friend?

And does it really matter what they say, in the end?

Who are you? Are you young, or are you old?

That answer is more about the judger’s age, I’m told.

Who are you?

Do you know? Do you rely on others’ to tell you who you may be?

Or do you sit with yourself, and learn about yourself organically?

Who are you?

The answer to this question is only for you to know.

The rest is all conjecture, projection, and changes as the wind does blow.

Who are you?

Who are you?

You are who . . . .

It Bears Repeating

Hi friends. I slept in. I am fatigued. This year has been full of big changes for our own family and for those whom we love, and I think that this is all catching up on me right now. So, in conservation of time and energy, I am going to reprint one of my more popular blog posts which tends to trend at this time of year (which is fitting!). Here it is:

Thank Yourself

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

Friday Smells Great

‘Tis the season!! Happy Black Friday, although this year it seems like it has been Black Friday for weeks on end now. I hope that you are getting lots of good bargains and having fun doing it, on this fabulous Friday (the best day of the week.)

On Fridays, I try to step away from the “f-word”, i.e. “Feelings.” On Fridays on the blog, I discuss the stuff which I like such as products, books, songs, websites, etc. Please check out my previous Friday posts for more good stuff.

My favorite for today is rareESSENCE aromatherapy inhalers. Smell might be my favorite sense that we have, and these inhalers are wonderful. I have been using my rareESSENCE aromatherapy DEFENSE inhaler, since I purchased it in New York City in late October, and I haven’t been sick despite being on a few filled flights, at packed college fraternity parties, crowded bars and restaurants, hospitals, sold out movie theaters, and being around more people in the last 3-4 weeks than I have been around in months. I don’t know if this inhaler has anything to do with my wellness, but it sure smells great! And great smells have always done wonders for my wellness.

I hope that you enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving. May the wonders of the season be more comforting and captivating than ever before, for all of us.

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

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the comfort food of holidays. Thanksgiving is warm slippers, a hot mug of coffee, non-glitzy, down-to-earth, deep sigh of relief, wholesome goodness. Thanksgiving is a cozy, fuzzy blanket, wonderful smells wafting in the air, the fading beautiful colors of a summer well spent. Thanksgiving is easy laughter, easy going energy, a building of anticipation of a fabulous feast and an exciting holiday season ahead. Thanksgiving marks the start of the end of a year. It is the awards show of the year, where the award receivers are looking back at all which the year has brought to them, and thanking everything and everyone who deserves to be thanked for helping to get the award receivers to this point of evolution and elevation in their own lives. Thanksgiving is the joy of a parade, the celebration of man’s best friend, and the communion and camaraderie of fans of the same teams. Thanksgiving is the reminder that there are few feelings better than the overwhelming reassurance of all of our blessings constantly provided to us. Gratefulness is probably the largest ingredient of love, and Thanksgiving makes this fact abundantly clear.

As I say (and I feel deeply) every year, thank you friends and readers for supporting and being a vital part of my blog. I love this blog and so by extension, I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Now go get going on your turkey . . . . . See you tomorrow!

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

To Be Home

I am home. I feel so utterly grateful to be home. There is no better feeling in the world than the sanctuary and the familiarity of home. My husband and I just experienced perhaps the most emotionally draining experience of our lives, and now we are home. Dorothy had it right. There is no place like home.

It feels good to get a little bit of comfort and groundedness before the hoopla of the holidays comes into our lives. The holidays can be like your favorite, dramatic, over-the-top friend. This friend is so much fun, offers so much to do, brings so much stuff, and so much activity, and so much glitz and glamor, and so much emotion and nostalgia, so much, so much, so much . . . . . you love the crazy storm that your manic friend brings into your life, but every once in a while you need to duck for cover. You have to just melt into the sanctum of the solidness and the stillness of being home, in your own comfortable spot in the world where your energy fits just right, and gets recharged. At home, your energy gets revved up for yet another event in which your Holiday Homie gets you whisked into, during the season. We all are lucky to have the holidays to celebrate, and we are all equally lucky to have our home places to fall into, in order to rest and to revive and to regain ourselves. There is no place like home for rest, for revitalization and for the ability to find our way back to our true, core selves again.

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

Soul Sunday

This morning on our way to visit our loved one at the hospital, we passed by something that was the perfect image of an “inside family joke”. If I tried to explain it, you wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t be funny to you at all. But I took a picture of it, and I texted it to our family chat, and I got a lot of feedback and “hahas”. I love inside jokes. I think they are some of the best forms of intimacy. There is nothing like an inside joke that makes you feel like you belong to a group of people, whether they be family or friends.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I decided to scour the internet for a good poem about “inside jokes” and my favorite poem which I found was written by a child and it was published on a website called KidzEraMag.com. Inside jokes are a universal form of love and belonging, no matter what your age.

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

The Final Gift

When you are experiencing someone who is at the ending days of their life, it makes you remember to try not to live your own life focused on the trivial stuff. When you see someone who is closing their life out, you realize all that mattered was the experiences, the passions and the relationships that the person had and shared. The things that we often put a lot of focus on in our lives, such as our worries, our grievances, our stuff, our appearances, our righteousness, etc. really holds so little meaning in the end of it all. As hard as it is to watch someone fade, perhaps the final gift which they give to us, is the reminder to keep our minds, our actions, and our lives, on what really matters – savoring our every moment, and while doing so, staying in the spirit of love and awe and gratefulness for the miracle of life.

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