Tag: inspiration

Again

I am here at the freshman orientation at my daughter’s university. This entire month has been a whirlwind of activity and all of it with emotion attached to it. I am eager for a quieter, more steady month in June.

Since I have four children, I have had the interesting experience of being considered one of the young moms for my eldest son (I had him when I was 25), and one of the older, more seasoned moms with my daughter, our youngest child. All four of my children have (or will have) attended the same university. At this point, I honestly think that I could run this orientation myself. Still, it is new and fresh and exciting to my daughter and I am thrilled for her. I am also thrilled for all of the first-time university parents who will attend today’s events with wide eyes and lumps in their throats. Today, in my older, seasoned mom role, I want to hug all of them and let them know that it will be okay. It’s all going to be okay. In fact, it’s going to be great. This is just another doorway into new and fresh adventures for the entire family. And it will be amazing.

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

The Next Note

Hi friends. It’s been a crazy morning here. I like this quote. Mistakes happen. We all make them. It’s a matter of learning from them. If you learn from your mistakes, they can be some of your greatest strengths and blessings. Mistakes can create the best next notes you have ever played.

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

Monday – Funday

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credit: Murphy’s Law, Twitter

We have a fancy bowl filled with stuff like this. We add to it about weekly. Unfortunately, I can’t write a long post this morning. I have to get my son and his girlfriend to the airport. Sob. So much good happened over this weekend which I haven’t had the time and solitude to process. I have savored every moment (that flew by so fast), but that’s the fun of reflecting on, and processing major moments in your life – you get to savor them all over again.

TOP 25 QUOTES BY ANTONIO DAMASIO (of 70) | A-Z Quotes

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.

Good morning, readers. Today is poetry day on the blog. It’s always fun to play with words and that is what poetry is – just playing with words. When our children are little, and they are trying to communicate, we often say to them, “Use your words.” Today I say, “Play with your words.” Here is what came out of my own word play today (Have a wonderful rest of your weekend!! Stay in the moment and savor it all.):

When you were my baby girl, I fondly gazed at your tiny toes,

And when you were a little girl, I dressed you up in bows.

When you were in middle school, I soothed your highs and lows,

And when you were in high school, we loved shopping for your clothes,

Watching you graduate yesterday, my face glows and my heart grows,

You are a golden girl who will have a wonderful life, this your mother knows.

Ups and Down

It struck me the other day that I have lived long enough to see plenty of the amazing, fresh new things on the market, later become worn and tired relics. In other words, I am old enough to have experienced many whole life cycles of many, many ideas and products. This came to mind out of nowhere. For some reason I started remembering back in the early 1990s, when I was a textbook salesperson. (Yes, that position is a real thing. A textbook salesperson goes into professors’ offices and tries to convince the professor to adopt their publisher’s textbook, so that the 8000 kids taking Introduction to Biology, will have to purchase said textbook. Don’t hate me.) Anyway, back then, “email” was the new thing. Most of my professors whom I called on, still preferred receiving telephone calls and voicemail messages. They did not even look at their “emails.” A few “cutting edge” professors started insisting on emails only. Nowadays, it seems like email is only slightly more of an upgrade to snail mail. We all have a million examples of this. Technology is changing so quickly, even our twenty-something kids have experienced a few product lifecycles of something going from “latest and greatest” to graveyard in the wink of an eye.

In my readings this morning I was reminded that acceptance is not consenting and approving, but more so, an awareness of the way things are in a moment. Acceptance is a detached noticing of what is happening. Acceptance is being fully aware of “what is.” When I find myself getting curmudgeonly about they way things are changing in my lifetime, and I stubbornly start sticking my feet into the sand, I am reminded that nothing remains “the it” thing/person/way of being/way of doing things, for long, especially these days. Having been at a Disney amusement park recently, I was reminded of what it is like to be on their imaginative thrill rides. Entering into the ride car, you realize that the whole ride and experience is really just made-up, creative, imaginative fun, despite how realistic these rides now seem to be. You get on the ride, and you surrender to the experience, trying to soak it all in – the feelings, the sensations, the thrills, the fears, all the while, never taking the ride too seriously. In the end, you know that you will get off of the ride, and everything will be okay. You have the expectation that you will arrive safely back to normal. Perhaps there is an analogy here?

S A Roller Coaster Life Quotes. QuotesGram

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

The End

An illustration in two panels. The first is labeled, "The strength we're taught to admire" and shows someone getting to the top of a mountain and saying, "I did it!" The second is labeled, "The strength we should also admire" and shows someone pulling themselves out of a dark pit and saying, "I did it."

I love this visual. Honestly, the times that I’ve had to climb myself out of holes were a whole lot more daunting, but ultimately, a whole lot more satisfying and confidence building, than just climbing up a hill. I think that this illustration also reminds us that we aren’t all starting at the same starting lines in life. Some people have to climb up rocky cliffs, just to get to the base of the mountain.

Later this morning, my husband and I will be signing our updated wills, and other end-of-life paperwork. Our attorney assures us that this means that we will live forever. “Look at the news! Did you ever notice that it is only the people without insurance whose houses flood?” she quipped (and then handed us our invoice). We have been meaning to get this paperwork updated for quite some time, but when my mother-in-law became quite ill last summer (she’s much better now, thankfully) and there was a scramble for paperwork, it became evident to us that this chore needed to be moved up a few notches on the to-do list. I only bring up this morbid tidbit because I saw this quote over the weekend which was a real gut puncher to me:

“Everyone in your life will have a last day with you and you don’t even know when it will be.” – Poem Heaven (Twitter)

Wow. What if every time you were with someone, you thought, is this what I would want their lasting impression of me to be? And this doesn’t always imply death. Think of all of the people from your past whom you no longer associate with in your life. They’ve had their last day with you. Did this last day represent your true and earnest self? Was this last day petty or pure? Unfortunately, it is usually our final moments that leave “lasting impressions.”

I realize that I may be coming off as somewhat of a Debbie Downer this morning. I don’t want this to be your impression of me. Ever. I am a seeker. I am always trying to find the meaning in the meaningless. I am always trying to clean up my view on things. I like to clear the brush and dance in the sunshine. Do know this. I appreciate you. I am grateful for you being here for me. I appreciate writing to you, and communing with you, versus just putting my words out into some void. I love you, my readers. Have a fantastic day!

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

Monday – Funday

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I am feeling a little “deep” this Monday. It must be the eclipse or the fact of my youngest child’s looming high school graduation. As Rumi, the wonderful poet said (back in the 1200s, no less), “Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.” Timeless. As Carl Sagan said, “Magic.” I think that Rumi’s quote is the very definition of creating a loving, warm, happy family – finding that just right balance of “holding on and letting go.” It isn’t easy. Balancing anything takes concentration, stamina, and determination and desire.

Another quote I read yesterday that stuck to my heart was this quote from Alex Winter about the recent death of the actor, Fred Ward. “He always elevated the films he was in.” Isn’t that a wonderful thing to notice and to say about someone? Is this perhaps a wonderful goal for anyone to achieve? What if your goal was to be an elevation of whatever situation you are in, at any time? “He or she always elevated the life he or she was living.” Can you imagine what this world would look like if we all just tried to elevate ourselves in any situation which we find ourselves being in, on a daily basis?? I like to believe that if we all tried to do this, we would see a lot less of the pain and horrors that have become a staple of our everyday news.

I’m sorry to turn what is often a silly day on my blog into “Deep Thoughts”. I’ll close with a laugh, how about that? Here is one of Jack Handey’s best deep thoughts:

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a...

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

Scrapbooks and Cherries

I Am Pieces Wall Quotes™ Decal | WallQuotes.com

My daughter and I are headed on a mother/daughter road trip this weekend, starting today. My daughter turned eighteen in March, and she is starting college early this June. We have been planning this getaway for a while, just the two of us. I never believed in raising your kids like they were your friends. My husband and I definitely leaned a little towards the strict side when raising our four children. In retrospect, I think that is why it has been so easy to become friends with them now, as we are all adults. There is a mutual respect. They are all adults whom I really like, and whom I find interesting and fun to be with. And by the excitement which my daughter has shown for this trip, she must feel the same way about me. This feels wonderful. Like Brooke Hampton states in the quote above, I am going to be adding another page in the “scrapbook of me” this weekend. And it could likely end up being one of those pages which I turn to again and again, to relive the fun memories in my mind. And while my daughter and I have a lot of fun destinations we plan to go to, and to explore each day, the entire journey is really made up of all of the little stuff: the songs we will sing along to on the ride, the giddiness we felt while planning and anticipating the trip, and the funny little anecdotes that will happen that we could never have planned on experiencing. I think this is why trips are so great. Trips are really a microcosm of all of our own lives’ adventures. We decide to become mothers, so we get pregnant or we adopt a baby, and mothering is all that we experience on the long and windy road to getting our children securely to their adulthoods. We decide to become our career choices, so we apply to schools, and we learn the lessons and the skills of the trade we want to do, and we take our first jobs, and once again, the real experience is the journey of where our jobs and careers take us. The final destination of anything in life, is always just the small delightful cherry on top of it all. And we savor the cherry. We chew it up, soak up the juices, and then we quickly tend to start all over again, planning a new destination to achieve, because the adventures which take us to our chosen destinations are really what life is all about.

120 Best Quotes About Journey and Destination - Quotesjin

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

What’s Left?

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

Sometimes I come to this blog and I think, what is there left to say? Haven’t I already written it all down? Aren’t I just constantly saying the same thing, just in different ways? And who am I saying it to – myself, my readers, the Universe?? Why do I have such an urgent need to write my thoughts down, constantly and everywhere? Then I look at one of my treasure troves of quotes from my readings, in one of my many inspirational notebooks and I think to myself, “Wow, everything that moves me generally falls into the same themes.” And then the quote that comes to my mind, from “The Boss” himself, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, “I’m just so tired and bored with myself.”

Besides the blog, (Okay here’s an interjection. I had to look up whether it is “beside” or “besides” and The Grammar Guru said this: “People sometimes confuse the correct usage of “beside” and “besides.” “Beside” is a preposition that means “close to” or “next to.” “Besides” is also a preposition that means “in addition to” or “apart from.” It’s can also serve as an adverb that means “furthermore” or “another thing.” I am so grateful for Google and the Internet. I rely on it so much. I think that is why I didn’t seriously start writing a lot until middle age. I needed the instant gratification of Dr. Siri, the English professor, to keep me on track. I also use the online thesaurus a lot, as a writer. Other writers, are there any online tools which I’m missing out on??) I also write a brief daily journal which I have kept for years, and last night I purchased yet another journal. (this is starting to make me seem narcissistic. I just can’t get enough of myself. Puke.) The journal I purchased last night is called Mom’s Bedtime Journal. The daily prompts are this: Today’s Highs and Lows. We used to do this at the dinner table when my kids were younger. We called it High Point/Low Point. Sometimes this exercise was funny and interesting. Sometimes it was boring and long and drawn out. Sometimes it was dramatic and ridiculous. It was always amusing, and we always tried to end on a “High Point.” The next prompt in Mom’s Bedtime Journal is One Thing I Did For Myself Today. That’s a good one. It works as a good reminder. Yesterday, I went on a nice, long, refreshing bike ride. And I wrote it down on the lines after this prompt. Next prompt: Something Funny or Cute My Kids Did/Said. Hmmmm. This is something that I wish I had done when my kids were little. Write the cuteness down! We have a few family favorite cute stories that we recycle and rehash constantly in our family lore, but I wish I could remember all of them. I’ll try to do more of this recording of cuteness when I have grandchildren who do and say cute things, before they grow up and get snarky and less adorable. Final prompt: Today’s Small Wins. I like that focus. A bunch of small wins add up to the big wins in life, right? Somedays, even taking a shower can be a small win. The journal pages end each night with “. . . Sweet Dreams“. Awww. That’s so nice.

One time a friend of mine said that my blog reminds her of having a daily phone call with a good friend. And if this were a phone call, this is about the time that you have listened enough to my ridiculous, meandering, “where is she going with this?” thoughts. This is the time for you to say, “Oh no! Someone’s at the door! I’m going to have to say good-bye. Why don’t you go take a shower?”

Apologies

“Perhaps the reason you so desperately want an apology and for this person to acknowledge that they’ve wronged you in some way is because it will be just the thing you need to give them another chance to prove to you that they can be the person you believe them to be.” – The Blunt Reader (Twitter)

When I read this the other day, it socked me in the gut. I wasn’t the only one. Over 36,000 people seem to appreciate what this tweet has to say. It is hard to accept the truth that the people in our lives are often times projections of what we want them to be. What I am to you, is entirely different than what I am to my three sons, and I am an entirely different entity to each of my sons. We always bring a part of ourselves and our own needs to each relationship that we have in our lives. And sometimes we blatantly lie to ourselves, in order for relationships to be what we want them to be, in order for these relationships to fit into the lives we want to believe that we live.

If you are in a detrimental relationship with anyone which you have been lying to yourself about, in order to make your life “look like” exactly what you want it to be, sometimes the hurtful, unacceptable things that people do and say, without true remorse and change, can be the biggest favor that they ever did for you. These actions can jar you into reality, and wake you into acceptance of “what is”. These actions can help open up a space for you to find better people and to experience better situations which leads to living a more authentic, joyful, peaceful and fulfilling life. These painful experiences with people who have harmed you, can help you to learn to love yourself, respect yourself and treat yourself better. These terrible, blatant actions and lack of regret on the part of people who have hurt you, ironically may be the kindest, most honest thing that they ever did for you, in your entire relationship.

In my life’s experience, the people who have done and said the things that have hurt me the most deeply, have never been able to make sincere, honest, heartfelt apologies, nor have they been able to show amends for their actions. And for the longest time, I pined for “the apology.” I pined for the “on their knees, begging for forgiveness.” I pined for their true understanding of my pain, and a demonstration of their deepest regret. It took me a long time to understand that it is usually only the most damaged people in our lives who can do, and who can say the most terrible things to us, in the first place. And it isn’t personal. These people tend to leave wreckage in every relationship that they have in their lives. Hurt people hurt people. These people were never the people who I believed and wanted them to be.

It is painful to work on self-awareness. It is painful to accept that we play a part in allowing people to hurt us, by lying to ourselves about our relationships and our situations. But when we do get real with ourselves, and we take steps to protect and to care for ourselves, ironically, the apologies no longer matter nearly as much. If fact, sometimes we realize we might be better off without the apology and the conflict in our heart that the apology would bring. When we are showing ourselves love and respect and care, we no longer feel such a gaping neediness, trying to get love and kindness and protection from others. We get healthy. We make strong boundaries and we protect these boundaries. We grieve our losses, we hope for the best for everyone involved, and we move on. We only allow healthy people into our inner circle, people who love themselves and love others in healthy, confident ways, without utilizing manipulation, neediness and cruelty. When we come into our own authenticity, the pretend world is no longer something that we need nor want. The pretend world doesn’t interest us, because it is shallow, fake, flimsy and hollow. When we assuredly accept things as they are, not as we want them to be, we allow ourselves to take the first steps to create an enthralling, true life experience that we can thrive and grow in, to become the best true version of our own selves.

“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.” – Robert Brault

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