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.
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:
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good morning, friends!! It has been quite a morning here. Unfortunately my website crashed, and I am out-of-town visiting a family member who is very ill, and I am currently in a different time zone than where I live. I am sorry for this delay on what is usually the best day of the week! Happy Friday!!
On Fridays, I try to keep things light. On Fridays, I discuss “the stuff” in life that makes my own life more interesting and enthralling. On Fridays, I share one of my favorites, whether it be a product, a book, a TV show, a website, whatever. Today’s favorite of mine is actually an email newsletter. It is called 1440 and it is the best, most unbiased source of news stories which I have encountered in a long, long time. Just the facts, ma’am! It is one of the only sources where I get my news information these days. I trust my own mind to make up my own opinions. I prefer to get my influence and my sway from myself, and the people whom I intimately love and trust. You can join 1440 for free, here (and fun fact: there are 1440 minutes in a day)
Friends, we have had some truly deep, tough, rough, yet also miraculous experiences as of late with older extended family members and their health concerns. My relationships with my family and with my friends are vitally important to me and I do my best to protect people’s privacy. That will always be my priority. My stories are my stories to tell, and my loved ones can decide if they want to share their own stories. Their stories are their stories to tell. That being said, I have had some really eye-opening moments of truth recently, realizing that it is truly our souls, our “essence”, which makes us alive, and makes us “us.” No matter what happens to our bodies, our deepest selves can, and do shine through. I trust the wisdom of the Universe more than ever now. When I am pushing against something, and my will is being overtaken by the greater powers that be, I understand that I am being lead to important lessons and evolutions of my own soul. As stubborn as I can be, surrendering to what is, brings a present peace, and eventually a future understanding and wisdom to me like no other experience does. Giving up the struggle (when the world is showing you a powerful “no”) usually leads to a confident quietude that is probably what is supposed to be our true, natural state of being all of the time. We often are our own worst enemies.
Sorry to get so deep on the lightest day of the week! I hope that this finds you all well and excited for the weekend. See you tomorrow, hopefully a little earlier!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I went to my annual OB/GYN appointment yesterday. That was fun. Ha! My gynecologist is a lovely young woman with a three-year-old child who is already ready to sit on Santa’s lap this year with his wish list. I wonder if my doctor tries to get clues about what menopause will look/feel like for herself, when she examines us middle-agers both physically, then also emotionally, by asking pointed questions like, “No really, how ARE you? Do we need to up your hormones?”
My examination went well. Apparently, I’m “normal.” (I’ll leave it at that.) As I was leaving the doctor’s office, a young man was leaving the office as well. He appeared to be a pharmaceutical salesperson. We were both walking behind an elderly couple who were holding hands as they slowly, and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y meandered down the long hallway towards the elevators. “I’m going to need you to be the rude one first, and swing wide around them,” the salesperson playfully said to me with raised eyebrows. “Sorry guy,” I said. “You didn’t realize that I’m not a bitch.” And so we all made peace with slowly making our way to the elevators at a drunken (possibly passed out) snail’s pace.
When we got into the elevator, the elderly couple were still holding hands. “I love that you are still in love,” I said to them, and then the young man and I both smiled at them in admiration and appreciation. “Married sixty-three years!” the woman exclaimed. “And we courted for four years before that,” the elderly man boasted.
“That’s incredible and rare,” I said. “I hope to get to that anniversary with my husband.”
“At this point in my life, I just feel astonished and lucky to wake up and to get to live another day,” the woman said, honestly and profoundly.
And that’s when the young man chimed in and said, “I think that we all should feel that way, no matter what our age. I mean none of us are guaranteed anything, right?” And that’s when we all smiled and nodded appreciatively at the wisest being in the elevator. And for some really heartwarming reason, at that moment in an otherwise ordinary day, I felt so good and so connected with every generation in our world (both young and old and those like me, the “in-betweeners”). I had an extra spring in my step as I got off of the elevator. I turned around. I smiled brightly. And I genuinely and warmly wished them all a wonderful afternoon, and then I happily headed to my car, feeling like all was right in our world.
It’s the little things that make us feel alright. The little things count a lot (if we remember to count them). As it is said, the little things are the big things.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
On the way to see our children at their university last weekend, my husband and I stopped at a Dunkin Doughnuts. We had to use the restroom (of course we did – we are in our fifties) and then we bought some coffee and then we decided to treat ourselves to some doughnuts, because, why not? When I was paying, the young lady who was waiting on me, mumbled something to me that sounded like, “You’re so pretty.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, because honestly I was a little bit surprised and confused. She said it a little bit louder, yet still shyly, “You’re so pretty.” I was shocked, pleased, embarrassed, grateful, flattered and glowing all at once. You see, I’m almost 52. I’ve been considered attractive back in the day, but I’m 52. I have pudges and wrinkles and everything on my body is a little worn because I’ve lived my life enthusiastically. This now rare compliment couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was embarking on a weekend filled with beautiful young faces and perfect, scantily clad bodies, and boundless youthful energy that was impossible to keep up with for more than a day, tops.
The compliment has stayed with me since. I’m probably a little flushed as I write this. As I have said many times on this blog, it is good to offer compliments often and magnanimously because they change a person’s whole vibe, for a long while. A compliment is a beautiful gift to give to someone, and it costs you nothing but a penny of your thoughtfulness and kindness.
My friend texted me an instagram page this morning that she thought I would like. She was right. I love it. The page is of Denise Boomkens, and she is the author of TheArt of Aging Unapologetically. (which I just ordered this morning from Amazon) The latest post on Denise Boomkens’ Instagram page is a picture of a lovely, elegant 66-year-old French woman named Petra, who now lives in Belgium. Petra is quoted as saying this:
“I don’t find aging very easy and sometimes a confrontational process. The emphasis shifts from your outer self to your inner self; I sometimes ask myself, “who am I when nobody glances at me anymore.” This is not a negative development; I try to make the best of it in my own way.”
There is a wonderful, relief-filled part about shifting the focus to your inner self as you age, but there is also some grief in the understanding and the accepting of the changes that inevitably come to your aging outer shell. Still, there is some real, true wisdom to the saying that beauty comes from within. Sometimes, we think that this saying is just a nice thing to say, to make us feel better if we don’t feel attractive, but honestly, it really is the truth. I think that the girl at the Dunkin Doughnuts sensed my excitement, and my loving yearning to be with my children. I think she felt my happy, relaxed flirtiness with my husband as we embarked on our adventure. I felt pretty on the inside and it overflowed to my outside. True beauty is pure and timeless and has nothing to do with how we look.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
