“If you are stressed out, maybe it’s because your mind is overcrowded with other people’s thoughts and activities. If this is the case, go on a “media fast” for three days- forgo your cell phone, TV, and internet. You will soon be able to listen to your own body and mind and return to a state of good health.” – Haemin Sunim
I gave this gift to myself for the most part this week. I haven’t done a total fast from my phone and internet, (TV is an easy pass for me) but I have drastically reduced my “media calories.” I’ve mostly stayed home. I’ve read two books, enjoyed quiet dinners and long dog walks with my husband, and gone to bed early each night. I’m feeling restored and refreshed after a “go-go” first half of the year.
Now admittedly, this isn’t too hard for me. As a natural introvert, I crave experiences like I’ve had this week. I need alone time like I need food and air. Still, in a particularly tumultuous year like this year’s election year (on top of everything else in this fast-paced, crazy world . . . .), I can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t benefit from this “finest medicine.” It’s a way to get back in touch with yourself. It’s interesting, that just like Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz, and so many spiritual seekers of the world, what you often realize when you stop searching and grasping, and hunting, and you get to that quiet, solitary, special space, just within yourself, is that what you are craving and seeking is something that you’ve had with you all along. Peace is within.
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:
1766. What is your favorite thing about nature? (For me, everything – endless variety, unparalleled resiliency, the constant reminder that miracles abound.)
I was flipping through my emails this morning, and I came across writer/podcaster Kelly Corrigan’s quick summary of her conversation with Aliza Pressman, who is an author and a counselor and a parenting expert. So, I went down the rabbit hole of watching various interviews and videos Aliza Pressman had made on The TodayShow and on her Instagram, filled with excellent parenting tips, and my overall impression was 1.) Aliza makes many practical, useful, sensible, effective suggestions and 2.) Thank heavens that our four kids are grown and I don’t have to frantically try out any of her suggestions! We don’t even have grandchildren yet. Yes, we do have three somewhat unruly, misbehaved dogs. (My daughter kept chiding us, earlier this summer, that we simply weren’t going to believe how extremely well-behaved the darling dogs of London are, running around leashless in Hyde Park only because they listen to every command their owners give to them, every single time. Yes, it seems that even English dogs have better manners than their American counterparts. I have always wholly admitted that we were much better at raising kids, than we were at raising dogs.)
I have reached that early empty nest realization that my younger self (and my husband’s younger self, and my friends’ younger selves) were total badasses. Parenting is hard! I was cleaning out ancient emails the other day and I found an email which I had sent to a family member, trying to schedule some time to get together one weekend. With four kids at home, balancing four crazy schedules of school and sports and activities, the schedule read like something you’d expect from a rock star’s world tour, or a dignitary visiting a foreign land and trying to make the utmost of the short time allotted. And I sounded so calm in my email. Just reading the schedule exhausted me. But my former self seemed to take it all in stride.
I loved raising my family. However, I also love that this mission is completed. Parenting is hard work: physically, mentally, and particularly emotionally. There is no job in the world that you don’t beat yourself up more for not doing it “right.” When you are actively parenting, you are on call 24/7. Even when we were on vacation, when the kids were little, it often seemed like we had just packed up our life of parenting, and unpacked it (and unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked) in a different location.
The thing about parenting is that it always carries a low level of “guilt.” Even now I feel “guilty” writing that I am relieved that my “raising my kids days” are complete. I see many people pining away for the days when the kids were little. I’m not completely sure what that pining is about. Is it loss of our own youth and vitality? Is it stuck in regrets of wishing we had done things differently, or that circumstances had gone differently? Is it losing too much of our identity in our roles as parents, that we feel a loss of who we are currently? Is it feeling a loss of control, and loss of great amounts of time and insight, into the separate lives of our now adult children?
I feel kind of fortunate that I don’t feel too sad that my active parenting phase is over. My friend loves to repeat the adage, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Be happy that it happened.” Thankfully, I believe that I am a “moving forward” kind of a person. That is not to say, that I don’t ever get caught up in the grips of nostalgia from time to time, or that I don’t ever look in the mirror and wish that I could bring that 30-something body and energy back into being, but overall, I’ve plunged fully and enthusiastically into each new phase of my life, and I intend to do the same with this empty nest phase that I am just wading into now. Life is a journey forward. I know that someday, in my quiet, elderly years, I’ll look back at what my empty nest emails/texts/communications looked like, and I will be in awe of my empty nest self, and everything that she experienced and completed and learned in that phase of her life. I will think to myself, “She (and her husband and her friends) sure were badasses” and then I’ll keep being my badass elderly self until it really is all over.
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:
1591. Do your goals and dreams energize you – or exhaust you?
+ We have an adorable little plant and bookstore near us that states this mantra: “Support your body. Manage your mind. Expand your spirit.” It’s a great mantra. It’s a good mission statement. It’s a simple and all-inclusive formula to the best way to go about living a life.
+ I read this in one of Haemin Sunim‘s excellent books (it reminds me of two of my favorite axims in life – 1. Tears are our body’s God-made release valves and 2. Our lives are the clear, blue skies. The clouds always, always pass.):
“Clouds release their sadness by crying until they can cry no more. When they have no tears left to cry, they feel a great weight has been lifted, as heavy as all the tears they have shed. We can release our sadness into the sky within us. When we feel sad, it’s okay to cry like the clouds.”
After quite a dry spell, the clouds over us here in Florida have been crying a lot. In fact, they’ve had many stormy tantrums. And afterwards, everything feels so cleansed and refreshed and robust and healthy for it.
+ I have four adult children. I’ve noticed that my kids (particularly my youngest two) seem to believe that I have extra powers in my prayers. When they really want something to happen they often ask for my prayerful intercession with the Powers that Be, my “magic”, my mommy ju-ju. It feeds my ego to be “needed” but I know that their prayers are heard just as loudly and faithfully, and their intuitive guidance is every bit as strong and connected as mine. And so when they ask for my prayers, my prayer is that my children find this strong connection of their own, and that they surrender to it, and it boldly sustains them for the rest of their lives. I often tell my family this: Let Life Love You.
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:
2458. On a scale of 1-10, how funny would you say you are?
There is nothing like the jolt of the first Monday after a long vacation. It’s jarring and disorienting in its own special way. It’s like jumping into your place in a marching band in the middle of a performance. (or at least that’s what I imagine it to be as I have never been in a marching band) It’s amazing how you have to remind yourself of your usual routine.
When I was at the Poetry Pharmacy store, I purchased a wonderful card set, called the Emotional Barometer. Many years ago, I attended a workshop that showed how often we don’t know how to describe our own emotions and what they are telling us. In order to get in touch with our own emotions, and in order to have the ability to have empathy for ourselves and for others, we have to get a better description of the myriad of feelings we humans go through in any given day, and what these emotions may be telling us, and what they could mean for us in the way of direction and insight. This card set has a wheel on the front of it, that states twenty different feelings. Today, I considered that here, at this slightly “dazed and confused” moment, I’m feeling kind of “dreamy.”
The corresponding card to “Dreamy” has this to say:
This is like having wonderful cheap therapy in a box!! This wonderful card set/tool box is offered by THESCHOOLOFLIFE.COM I highly recommend this purchase.
Have a great week, friends!! See you tomorrow.
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:
When I was in London, my friend who is an English teacher and a fellow writer, sent me this Instagram video about the Poetry Pharmacy. The Poetry Pharmacy is located on an upper floor of the flagship LUSH store in London. Of course, right after my friend sent me this video, I was on a mission to go there. And I got there within mere hours of her sending the video!
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I got three “prescriptions” from the PoetryPharmacy in London. Let’s see what “medicine” they have to offer all of us today:
From the Be Original pill bottle which has only one hot pink pill in a sea of white pills, the hot pink pill held this:
“Let it hurt. Let it bleed. Let it heal. And let it go.” – Nikita Gill
From the For Mothers pill bottle which is filled with red, pink and white pills, today’s pill had this to offer:
“This is a fifty-year-old love. It’s heavy, so I fold in moonlight, the sound/ of water spattered on leaves. Dim stars, bright moon-/our lives. The cake imperfect, but finished.” – Eva Saulitis
The pill from a pile of brightly colored pile of “pills” from the Happy Pills bottle offers us this:
“Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.” – James Wright
Words are like anything else. They can be used for good or they can be made into weapons of evil. Words can certainly make for good medicine. Poetry is the formula for making words, the ethereal agents of our own healing.
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:
“Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.” – Edith Wharton
(****On an aside, I first started today’s blog post with “I think that the most important thing . . . ” and then I stopped and I deleted “I think“. Of course I think what I am writing. That is why I am writing it. When I add “I think” it is unnecessary, and makes it seem apologetic and less full of conviction. I remember getting blasted by an English teacher once, for starting every sentence with “I feel”. First of all, feelings are sensations. They are not thoughts. Feelings are a direct result of our thoughts and our actions. Secondly, if I write something, I should be able to stand by it, with conviction. Thank you to all of my wonderful English teachers throughout my schooling. Your lessons were not lost on me. <3 And yes, we writers do feela lot about what we think. I feel. I definitely feel.)
The most important thing about taking breaks from your normal everyday life, whether it be on a trip or even a “staycation” is that you stop digging the rut of your everyday life. A rut is literally “a long, deep track made by the repeated passage of the wheels of vehicles” (Oxford dictionary). Vehicles often get stuck in ruts. So do people. Doing anything differently for a day, or a week, or a month, always changes your perspective to some degree. It gives you insight you didn’t have before. Taking the trail off of the rutted road helps you grow in new directions.
One of the meanings of vacation is this “a respite or a time of respite from something”. Is there something you need to take a respite from in your own life, so you can consider it more carefully? Look at the normal routine of your every day and ask yourself, “Why?” about everything. Be your own annoying five-year-old kid. Why? Why? Why? Why do I make my bed this way? Why do I eat these things? Why do I go to bed when I do? Why do I watch what I watch? Why do I belong to this club or organization? Why do I part my hair this way? Do these “whys” still make sense for me?
When I am on vacation, being the curious person that I am, I am a huge observer. I observe how other people do things. And then I observe my own reactions to my observations. I often start a few new trails in my own life, based on my new observations and my reactions to these observations.
Vacations do not have to be exotic trips abroad. Vacations are just movements away from our own rutted roads. Vacations are respite from our ruts. Give yourself a vacation from just one “everyday thing” in your life today. Journey off the rutted road.
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:
Hi, friends and readers!!! I’m back. I’ve missed you, and writing the Adulting-SecondHalf blog, so, so much. But I just came back from a wonderful trip to London and other parts of England. (My husband and I just had to check up on our daughter who is studying there this summer. We knew that she missed us. Ha!) I had never been to England before, and I was so utterly pleased with what I experienced. I am not a city dweller. I love nature. I like to call myself “Snow White.” But if I had to live in a city, London is the most liveable city that I have ever travelled to, and I have been fortunate enough to have visited many cities in our own country, and abroad.
But before I bore you to death with my trip details, I do realize that this is Friday and it is a good one!! It’s the New Moon. We are officially, fresh-starting the second half of the year. What do you want for the rest of this year? It’s a perfect time to reflect, get your thoughts down in writing, and start taking steps towards what you want. My first half of the year has been amazing – chock full of adventures, travel, visits with family and friends, weddings, the birthday clump of our family members, holidays etc. etc. Honestly, it’s been delightful, but it’s also been a lot. I like the second half of the year because things don’t get too drummed up for our family, until the holidays at the end of the year. Things in my life never seem as frenzied during the second half of the year. I like spontaneity and the second half of the year seems to allow for more of it. But, I digress. . . . today is Favorite Things Friday on the blog!! Today my favorite is packing cubes. I had never used these before in my travels, but my daughter insisted that they make a huge difference in utilizing space in your luggage. I purchased a soft set of about seven packing cubes for this trip, and while I’ve never been good about rolling up my stuff like little sushi rolls (my husband, being a long-time military brat, is a master at this), I loved how organized these cubes kept my stuff. My tops were with my tops. My bottoms were with my bottoms. My hair stuff was all together and easily found. My suitcase was no longer the jack-in-the-box jumble that it usually is, when I am travelling. If you have never tried packing cubes, I highly recommend giving them a try.
Okay, for those of you who want my reflections on London and other parts of England, here they are, in no particular order:
+ England has excellent food. It is a mistaken thought that the only thing good to eat in England is fish and chips. (although, I had fish and chips and it was yummy) I had incredible food including delicious steak ale pies, delectable sandwiches, fantastic Indian food, superfresh and colorful greens and fruits and desserts from Borough Market . . . now you may think, “Well yes, you were in a major city in the world. There is competition and variety,” but I will tell you that the best food that I had on my trip was in a tiny pub, out in the country, near Salisbury, England. We had “Sunday Roast” there which was like a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. You could choose beef or chicken or steak pie, and then on top of each of these was a huge Yorkshire Pudding. Yorkshire Pudding was maybe my favorite item that I ate the whole time I was in England. Yorkshire Pudding is a delightful, doughy cloud that you dip in gravy. I adore it!
+ I kept describing London as the most “wholesome” city I have ever been to, and we went all over London. My husband and I averaged walking about 20,000 steps a day. (my kids were never a fan of our style of vacationing. “Some people like to relax on vacation,” was something which we often heard muttered by one, or by all four of our children, on our various vacations) London has wide streets, lower buildings, less traffic (the London Underground is safe, easy to navigate, quiet, and reliable – we took it everywhere), and lots of green spaces. The people are reserved, but kind and polite and eager to help you. It’s a wonderful place for “eye candy”: beautiful historic cathedrals and buildings, colorful flowers outside of every pub, gorgeous, multicultural people with smart, dressed-up, intriguing style. In short, London is everything it’s cracked up to be.
+ My husband and I saw King Charles being driven out of Buckingham Palace, quite by chance. We noticed that the gates to the palace had been opened, and a crowd was gathering around the road by the gates. My husband and I were curious, but having it be our first day in London, we instead decided to meander over to the fountain in front of the palace to see it more closely. The next thing we knew, a police officer stopped traffic on the road, just a few feet away from us, and a luxurious black car drove by with the white-haired king sitting in the back, his fingers in front of his body, held in a position, much like when you were a kid and you were playing, “Here is the church, Here is the steeple”. His fingers were in “steeple position.”
+ We toured St. Paul’s Cathedral, The British Museum, Southwark Cathedral, The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. All were interesting. I particularly liked the smaller Southwark Cathedral where Shakespeare is said to have spent a lot of time and I delighted in having the proper English afternoon tea experience (with a three stack tower of treats) at The British Museum while my husband satiated himself in Egyptian history. While all of the buildings and their historical significance were incredible, it struck me that Westminster Abbey was essentially an extremely enormous fancy mausoleum. And having spent most of our time in The British Museum staring at mummies and sarcophaguses from Egyptian tombs, it struck me that it is kind of sad and egotistical that many of the wealthy humans of our past were so fixated on the afterlife, and of being remembered by future people. (other than major historical figures and writers buried in Westminster Abbey, I knew very few of the names nor the significance of the people buried there) I honestly found the experience to be an excellent reminder that life on earth is NOW. And as happens on all of my travels, I was sincerely amazed how many millions of different people I was witnessing every day, all over just one city, on our great big Earth. (and as happens on all of my travels, there were plenty of Americans afoot. You just can’t escape us. There is a line from a song, whose band and name escapes me now, where the singer dejectedly and flatly states, “Oh, you’re all still here.” That line played in my mind a few times on this trip.) Anyway, what I felt deeply reminded of, when I reflected on all of the carefully planned, and elaborately and expensively made “death artifacts” is that our life’s experience is really mostly just consequential to ourselves, and to the few people in our inner circle. This realization is freeing. Stop focusing on making an impression on other people. Just be yourself, and be kind, and live each precious moment of your life fully and consciously. Don’t fear death. Focus on living your life.
+ My favorite part of the trip was being with family whom we don’t get to see often at all. (it’s hard, living across the pond, and all) They live by the sea in England, and we took a train out to see them, and even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, the love flowed fervently. We even met children that we had never met before and by the end of the night, we were all hugging and professing our love for each other. We “saw” each other. There is something so special and uncanny about “the family bond.” We even all went to Stonehenge together and I had honestly expected that to be the most spiritual experience of my trip. But it wasn’t. The most spiritual part of the trip wasn’t the cathedrals, nor the choirs singing in chapels, nor the mysterious giant rocks of Stonehenge. The most spiritual part of my trip was a reminder of just how beautiful and strong the elastic bonds of love, hold us all together. Great, loving arms enfold us all. This I know.
It’s great to be back. I love you. I missed you. See you tomorrow!!
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:
1488. Do you prefer sporty or academic members of the opposite sex? (Lucky for me, my husband is both.)
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” – Anne Lamott
So, I’m not going to be writing the blog for the next week or so. I have some summer adventures planned and I want to put my full attention there.
I love to write. I love to write daily. But sometimes, you even need to take a break from what you love. It gives you fresh exaltation when you get back to it. When you find yourself missing what you love, you get really clear about who and what and where means the most to you. I hope that you will miss reading the blog as much as I will miss writing it, and that we’ll all be back together here in early July.
In the meantime, I hope you’ll take some time to read some stuff in my archives. I’ve written almost daily blog posts since 2018. There are some hidden gems in there.
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:
Is there anything more precious than your happiest memories? Don’t take the bad memories out. Leave them in the dusty corners of your mind. Open the treasure box that exists in your mind (and always will, no matter what) and think of your favorite memories. Imagine the scene. What was the weather like? Who was there? What were the sights, smells, tastes? Most importantly, what were you feeling? Feel those feels now as you run your happy memories through the reels, again and again. What does it take to make new happy memories? Your treasure box in your mind will always expand to hold these lovely memories. Make the memories. Let them happen. As I always tell my kids, Let Life love you. Go with the flow.
“Memory is the diary we all carry with us.” – Oscar Wilde
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:
+ I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. Don’t question if something is normal. Instead ask the question, “Is this healthy?” Normal means “typical, standard, usual, expected,” according to the dictionary. Think about a lot of awful things that were once considered “normal.” Slavery. Smoking in airplanes. Women needing men to co-sign for loans. Lawn darts. . . . . The list goes on and on. Familiarity often breeds acceptance. When making decisions, plans, actions, always ask yourself, “Is this a healthy choice for me? Am I supporting something that is healthy?” Let “healthy” be your arbiter. “Normal” changes all of the time.
+ Joan Didion once said, “A writer is always selling somebody out.” I think this is the biggest struggle in writing. Even if you’re a novelist, you are still getting your ideas from observations and experiences from your real life. And your perception of things is your reality, even if others have a completely different perception. I never want to “sell anybody out.” Writing is my peace, not my weapon. It’s a fine line we writers walk. And now that there are so many forms of social media, I think that Joan Didion’s statement also applies. Kids can’t give their permission to air funny, embarrassing videos and antics. It’s a conundrum, for sure.
+ This is from a sign that I saw recently (it’s a good reminder. My grandmother used to always say “tend to your own knitting”): “Better worry about your own sins, ’cause God ain’t going to ask you about mine.”
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:
