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Favorite Things Friday

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Good morning, friends and readers. Welcome to the best day of the week!! My regular readers know that I typically keep it light and fun on Fridays. On Fridays, I list three favorite things, or songs, or websites or books, or life hacks that make my life more interesting and engaging. You, my readers, really like Fridays, at the blog. Interestingly, usually the most popular days on the blog are on Fridays, and on Sundays (the day that I devote to poetry. You never knew that one of your favorite things is poetry, did you? I caught you. ;)) So this tells me that you, my readers, are my favorite kind of people, a delicious mix of fun and frivolous, yet deep and soulful. It’s good to be well-rounded. Bravo!

As many of you know, we suffered another setback with my son’s epilepsy, this week. His new medications aren’t working out, which is deeply disappointing because the side effects of these medications were much more tolerable, than his last medications. We coaxed our baby to come home for the weekend, so I had the best sleep of my week last night, knowing that he was home safe with me, in my safely feathered nest. (I love sleep. It’s definitely one of my favorites.) My youngest son (the son with epilepsy) is obviously one of my favorite people in the world, and it is not just because he is my son. It is also because my son is funny, and smart, and ethical – almost to a fault; he is insightfully (and sometimes brutally) truthful – like no other person I have ever met, and so, so resilient. I admire him greatly. I love him beyond reason.

I’m drained, friends. These setbacks with epilepsy are hard on our family. These disappointments bring all of our fears and uncertainties, back up to the surface. People who live with serious disorders, know better than anyone, just how fragile life is, and how quickly it can be taken. After experiencing a major health setback, and once you calm down from the anxiety, and you let your shoulders drop, you can sometimes find the gift that comes from these painful realities of living with a disease, or a disability that can take your life, at any moment. It brings clarity and beauty and gratefulness for every simple moment of living a life. I can’t tell you how much my heart sang last night, to listen to my husband and my son yell, in unison, at the football game last night, as they have done so many times in the past. I savored that sound like it came from Heaven above. Because it did. Heaven is all around us, if we open up our eyes and connect our watchful eyes to our hearts.

I’m sorry to get so deep on a Friday. You readers don’t like that, I know. You might be thinking, “Lighten up, lady!”, but it’s my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to . . . .

Please always remember that when you are considering your favorite things in life, it’s never really “the thing”. It’s always the feeling that you get from “the thing.” If you think of one of your favorite things, or people, or places right now, you will get those wonderful feelings that those things give to you, seeping into your consciousness right away. Try it. Do it often. Your favorites are really your favorite feelings, and you are capable of dosing yourself with your favorite feelings regularly. They are just a thought away. Stay aware. That’s the only way to live.

Happy weekend, my favorite readers of my favorite blog! See you tomorrow.

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

Every Day

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Thank you to everyone whose work makes a meaningful difference in my own life, every single day. Thank you to the people working at the electric company, and the water plant, and the cell phone towers. Thank you for the police, and the paramedics, and the fire department. I slept well last night, knowing that you are always at your jobs. Thank you teachers who have taught my children so well. Thank you farmers for providing our sustenance and thank you wonderful chefs for making the food even more delicious. (especially the cook at my son’s fraternity house. I know what it takes to feed three sons, I can’t imagine making meals for 300 young men every day.) Thank you medical professionals. You are working on fumes, these days, we know. Thank you airline professionals. The anticipation of my trips and adventures is one of the best feelings in life, ever. Thank you to all of the constructions workers who have helped to make our house what we want it to be. Thank you to the people who reliably take our garbage and recyclables away, every week. You are saints! Thank you to every repair person who has fixed our cars or our appliances, much to our relief. Thank you to my husband and other bankers who help to gather the funds where they are needed, in order to make people’s dreams able to be realized. Thank you entertainers and musicians for being the source of a hearty laugh or a deep cry, whenever we need it. Thank you maintenance crews for making our roads so driveable, even in the craziest of weather. Thank you manufacturers. I love my stuff! And I’m always looking for more stuff to delight in. Thank you, technology professionals and engineers and scientists. I can’t even pretend to understand how you do what you do, but I do know that what you do, has brought us to a whole new world, in the span of just a couple of decades. Thank you retail workers, who always make everything sitting right on the shelf where I need it, look so easy. Thank you Amazon delivery people. Sometimes I wonder if we have one of you assigned just to our house. You are a dream come true! Thank you fellow writers. Reading is one of my greatest passions in life, and you have given to me so much wonderful material! Thank you to everyone that didn’t come to mind in the first ten minutes of me scrambling to get this blog post out. I appreciate you. Know this. It’s amazing to me, in just one day of my life, how much other people’s work goes into making my every single day, what it is to me. Nobody does anything alone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

“No man is an island, entire of itself. . . . ” – John Donne

Quotes about All in this together (99 quotes)

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

Sun-Baked Dog Fur

The other day, when I took my dogs out, the two older ones sat down decidedly in the grass, their noses twitching to the scents in the wind. They were making it clear to me that they weren’t going anywhere else, anytime soon. My dogs instinctively knew that they needed a restful sunbath. So they took it. And I followed suit. And it felt wonderful to sit out in the pleasant sunshine, on the soft grass, smelling the earthiness all around us. I buried my nose in the soft, luxurious fur of my collie, Josie. There may be no better scent nor feel in the world, than sun-baked dog fur. This is a type of the easy, simple therapeutic experiences that can make all of the difference in a day, but we often forget to take the time to do them, nor at the very least, to notice that we are doing them. In this way, animals are often wiser than we are, because they are so attuned to their senses, and allowing themselves to bask in their senses.

What are the little things that perk you up? What are the little things that make you excited to anticipate doing them? Really taste and savor your coffee, or the various flavors of your lunch. Really bask in the warm water of your shower. Be really deliberate about what scent of perfume that you want to apply today, and make a point to sniff your own wrist often and delight in the scent mixing and changing with your own skin’s essence. Follow your intuition. Take the time to savor the sensualities of the day.

“Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses” – Milan Kundera

“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” – James Baldwin

12 Inspirational Sexy Woman Quotes For Strong, Confident Women | Michele Brookhaus | YourTango

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

The Most Popular Posts

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

Earlier this week I was perusing my Nextdoor website for recommendations for some housework that we need to have done. I believe that this was the original intention of Nextdoor, as it focuses on one particular community, usually within a 20 mile radius. Unfortunately, though, like almost all social media websites, our Nextdoor has also become a political fight, “mask vs. anti-mask”, “vax vs. anti-vax” nesting ground, among other heated, controversial topics, both local and national. I usually avoid these posts, as if they were the most contagious variant of the coronavirus out there, but I somehow got curious about a particular post written by a neighbor named John Guidi, that was noted as the day’s most popular post. It turned out to be a well-written, hilarious, sarcastic post, starting with this line:

“Political posts: If you feel you must make controversial posts on this board, please adhere to the following guidelines:”

Here were some of the guidelines:

5. Make sure to condemn somebody in every post.

8. Try to offend as many people as possible.

11. Always attempt to be very defensive.

15. No matter what someone else posts, always try to find fault with it.

17. State and restate the obvious.

I honestly read the post with glee and apparently so did many others in our neck of the woods, as it had over 200 likes and “thank yous” and smiley faces attached to the post, and 177 comments, comments which turned out to be a lot more of the usual back-and-forth, righteous, “rule” additions, posturing at the podium, etc.

I then took a look at the second most popular post of the day, which turned out to be a mother sincerely asking for recommendations for a local therapist for her adolescent son, who is suffering from depression. Her post showed earnest concern and desperation. Her name and her picture and her neighborhood, were all published on the post. And the beautiful thing is that the people who answered and commented on her post, were so kind and loving and honest about their own struggles and situations. She got dozens of recommendations and many tender and hopeful and caring posts, sending love and prayers for her comfort and for her son’s recovery. I got a lump in my throat thinking about how courageous it was for this mother to publicly admit that she needed some help. And the people of my neighborhood and surrounding areas could not have been more kind and understanding, and thoughtful and compassionate with the posts that they wrote to answer her plea. She wrote a sincere “thank you” post more than once throughout the Comments section.

Wow. That’s when I got my own personal “a-ha” moment. As well written as the first post was, it really wasn’t any different in tone, than so many of the biased political posts that we are besieged with, on social media today. Reading the first post and agreeing with it, I realized that right at that moment, I, myself, was in my own high-and-mighty, judgmental, “I am smarter/wiser than”, smirky, condescending ego mindset. It felt “good” and yet not good, all at the same time. Reading the second post, I was humbled. Being a mother, I felt so much empathy for the fear that we mothers feel when we can’t protect and heal our own children, all by ourselves. I felt so much admiration for that mother and equally, I felt so much gratefulness that my community responded like it did, with concern and support and hopefulness. I suspect that the people who answered her, came from many different backgrounds, political and otherwise. Reading her post and the responses to it, was affirming to me. I felt good. Just good. I felt connected to everybody in my neighborhood, not just the people who share my beliefs.

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Heart to Heart

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

Today I am sending you a hug. And it is not a quick, little reminder that I love you, like the cute little “o” attached to the “x”, in a fleeting text, unless that is really what you would prefer. This is the kind of hug that is full of acceptance. This hug is a careful recipe full of “I know”, “I understand”, “It’s okay”, “You are not bad”, “You are not lost”, “I can help hold you while you feel your feelings, and then I keep holding you, as you release your feelings and let them pass on by”, “You are stronger than you know”, “You will survive and you will even thrive,” “You are doing great”, “You are more loveable than you could ever fathom”, “I see you”, “We are in this together”, “This too shall pass”, “Just breathe,” and all of this is held together by an extremely strong substance called Love.

One of the great things about being a 50-year-old woman is that my hugs pack a lot of punch. My hugs have a lot of experience and lessons and perspective, and also a curious mix of powerful strength and yet also gentle humility, built right into them. The recipe for my hugs has been simple-d down to the mostly “tried and true.” Did you ever get hugged by an 80-year-old woman? Your grandmother, perhaps? Let me tell you, those hugs are the real magic elixir. Those hugs will heal what ails you, for weeks and weeks to come.

Hugs bring hearts into extremely close proximity. Hugs help to transfer some of the deepest love and wisdom planted in one heart, into the other heart, all of the while reminding the receiving heart that all that it needs to keep on steadily beating, is already readily available and ever-replenishing, from its deepest depths. Hugs are like gentle, natural defibrillators.

Please pass on my hug today. Someone in your life needs one, no doubt. Don’t be afraid to offer a hug to a loved one, a friend, your dog, yourself. Soak it in. It’s good medicine . . . . I know . . . . I understand . . . . It’s okay . . . . I love you.

So here’s your hug: o

Or if you need more, here’s your hug: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Pass it on.

Coy Koi Friday

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

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Welcome to Friday!!! Welcome to the best day of the week, in my opinion. My regular readers know that I try not to go too deep on Fridays. Facts are, we live in a material world. Our lives are all about experiences, and a lot of those experiences involve tactile things. So on Fridays, I typically list three favorite things or products or songs or books that have made my own life a little bit more intriguing and fun. Please check out previous Friday posts for more ideas about pleasurable things to try and to experience. Sometimes, I admittedly feel like I am being a little frivolous with my Friday posts. There’s a lot going on the world right now, and it gets a little overwhelming, doesn’t it?

40 Quotes for Coping with Things You Can't Control

I like this quote. Today, this is my favorite quote. The world was never hurt by positive people. Remember, you can be realistic and smart, and still be positive. Being positive doesn’t mean wearing blinders, or even wearing rose-colored glasses. Being positive means looking at the world, through your very own eyes, but just making sure that those lovely eyes of yours are connected to the deepest part of your harmonious heart, and to the immeasurable Mariana Trench of your own inner peaceful soul. Be positive. Be kind. It is the difference that you can make in the world, right where you are sitting.

Today, I only have one favorite. (I’ve been in a “less is more” mood lately. Don’t worry, this has happened to me before. It won’t last.) I was in an office this week, and my pretty little eyes spied this adorable koi fish (and koi fish have ALWAYS been a favorite of mine – It’s a good thing that I am not a thief, I was so tempted to snatch it):

This koi fish is an origami wonder, made with just one, one dollar bill. Now if you are crafty and ambitious, you can look up instructions on how to make one for yourself on the internet (supposedly it takes hours and hours), but if you are more of an “instant gratification” kind of a kid, you can buy ready-made dollar bill koi fish, on places like eBay and Etsy. They would make fun, “conversation piece” type gifts!

“Swim!” said the mama. “Swim if you can!” and they swam and they swam, all over the dam. – popular nursery rhyme

Swim, my loves! Your only other choice is to sink. Have a great weekend!! See you tomorrow!

The Best

I always say that the things that I worry about rarely happen. I tend to get blindsided by the things that I never even imagined could happen. I have to admit that I never saw a worldwide pandemic coming. I never did.

I also have to admit that I have never fully imagined all of the amazing things that have happened in my life either. True story: At age 40, I was at a time in my life that I assumed I would feel like my husband and I had “made it”, for all of the effort that we had put into our shared lives, by growing my husband’s career, and by focusing on raising our happy family. Instead, our lives got “blown up” by the Great Recession. We checked every box: lost job and income (banking industry), large, expensive home now worth half of what we owed on it (with no buyers in sight), quickly emptying savings and quickly rising debt, and four young children left to raise, and to educate. Instead of feeling like I was at my pinnacle, I felt like I had been thrown into a pit. I was shell-shocked. I was scared out of my mind and I was angry. I felt cheated and wronged. I had lived “the formula” that I had assumed would bring me “overall success” and it had tanked, miserably.

Thankfully, I have always been a faithful, spiritual person (not necessarily a religious person), but I am one who believes that there are much higher powers in play. I have always believed in the overall goodness of the Universe. And so I leaned heavily on my spiritual side, at that time. I also leaned heavily on my love for my husband, and for our children. I realized that we had lost a lot of material, physical things, but I was not going to let the horrible recession take what was most dear to me: my marriage, our loving family situation, and our physical and emotional health. So, during that time, I prayed a lot, I leaned a lot on our loving family and friends, and I lived every single day in faith. I just took my life ODAT (one day at a time). I am not going to go into “the ins and outs” of it all (nor into the ways that situations often seemed to almost miraculously turn out for the best), but let’s just say at age 50, I now have the life that I always dreamed of, and more. Everything that we lost, has been replaced with something “more and better.” And because I went through that experience, I appreciate everything more than I ever did. Life is deeper and clearer to me. Life resonates like it never did before. I am so much more attuned to what truly matters to me. It’s a cliché, but I can honestly say that I am grateful for the changes that the Great Recession brought around for me, and for my family. The Universe knows what it is doing.

Now this is not to say that my life is “perfect”. There have been a lot of heartaches, and losses, and growing pains, and grieving of many people and things, throughout this past decade, but I understand that this is just part of living and experiencing a worldly life. I do believe that the life that I am living is “perfect for me”, flaws and all. I just tell my Higher Power to take over the wheel every single day, and I live in faith that the journey that I am on is wonderful (even on the days that it doesn’t feel like it). In its own way, my own little path is a vital part of every other journey on Earth that has ever happened, or will ever be. When I look in the rear-view mirror of my life’s journey, it makes sense to me, for the most part, and I am grateful to be experiencing my journey. My journey is a gift. And I can’t wait to see what’s on the path ahead of me now.

Always, always believe that the best is yet to come, because it is. It might not arrive in the package that you expect it to arrive in, but that’s good. I have been blindsided by happy surprises in my life, far more often than by pains. And if I am honest with myself, the pains have very often turned out to be “blessings in disguise.”

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

Captains and Beacons

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

This has been a week when me and many of my friends have helped our children move into their college dorms and apartments. Two of my closest friends from college have taken their daughters to the same university that we, ourselves attended. Two of my dear friends officially became “empty nesters” yesterday, when they dropped their youngest children at their college dormitories, and then headed back to their own nests without their babies in tow. My friend sent this text from her social media, that got to me, right in the gut. There is just so much truth in this statement.

“To all my fellow empty nesters – just read this . . . . “For years you were captain of the ship – now you are a beacon of light on the shore.”

Tall Mountains and Starry Nights

When we are taking our evening walks, my husband often talks about how wonderful it would be, to gaze at all of the stars at night, if we didn’t have so much light pollution. Scientists have figured out that there are about as many stars in the sky, as we have grains of sand on all of the Earth’s beaches. That hardly seems possible. But when I saw this picture, the possibility became more real:

Photos of Silk Road on Twitter: "A starry night in Bamyan, Afghanistan, Silk Road. http://t.co/diSn3l6Ozt #silkroad http://t.co/42zppkwZpU"

This is what a typical starry night looks like in Afghanistan. When I stumbled upon this picture, I could hardly believe that it was real, and I was equally aghast at where it was taken. There are thousands of pictures on the internet of Afghanistan’s beautiful, starry nights.

Haiti Travel Guide - Beach Travel Destinations

This is a picture of a beautiful land that was the first land in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, sixty-five years before the United States did the same (which, when you think about it, is equivalent to practically a whole generation of freed people). This is a stunning picture of Haiti.

Where there are people and places on this Earth that are deeply hurting and full of fear, we can pray for these people and places, and we can give to honest charities that are helping the innocent people in these places, but we must also hold these innocent people and these places in high esteem, so that they remember how truly amazing and beautiful and strong and unique and needed, they are in this world. In order for anybody, or anything, to rise from the rubble, to overcome grief and pain and fear, they must have hope. Hope comes from an intrinsic belief in oneself, and our individual and our community abilities to rise from any challenge. Hope is a beacon of light that we must keep as bright as the starry nights of the darkest night in Afghanistan. Hope gives the overreaching views from the summit of the tallest mountain in Haiti, Pic la Selle (the third tallest mountain in all of the Caribbean islands), by showing the country in a whole different perspective – a God’s eye view, perhaps.

Hurt people hurt people. Many times hurting people have lost the innate knowledge which hope gives to the rest of us. Hope is knowing that we are so much more than what our little, naked eyes see, and what our computer-like, analyzing minds like to process in roundabout, insolvable puzzles. When we look and we gaze upon others, as if they have the power of the greatest Love inside of them (because they do, we all do), they are reminded of just how truly amazing and powerful they actually are, when they take off the shackles and the shrouds of their own warped perspectives of fears, and of isolation, and of helplessness. We must help the hurting peoples and lands of our world, with acts of kindness and charity and compassion, but we must also gaze upon them with a knowingness that helps them to remember of just how incredible they really are, and what amazing feats they are capable of, and that their intrinsic worth is their birthrights, from the moment that they took their first breaths as innocent newborn babies. We must remind them with our wise knowingness, that when the Love inside of them is made the only leader in all that they do, they are eternally invincible and full of hope. In the meantime, to hone our own skills, we can practice this wisdom on ourselves and on those right around us. Let’s let Love lead the way in all of our lives. Love has all of the answers. Usually it’s easier to remember this fact, when gazing at the stars, or looking all around at all of the magnificent views from the tops of sturdy mountains. That’s because when we gaze at the wonder of the stars and of the mountains, we are looking at them through the lens of our deepest Love. Let’s try using that lens on everyone and everything. Imagine the beauty to behold!

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

A Few Dos and Don’ts

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

In light of working on my self-care, I have yet another routine annual health appointment this morning. (All is going well, and I think that my body appreciates the love and attention. Self care goes beyond just getting your vaccinations, friends.) Therefore, I am borrowing from other writers/creators this morning.

My husband and I were watching Vikings last night and we stopped the show and rewound the scene depicting this quote by the Viking, Ragnar Lothbrok, several times. With all of the turmoil and chaos happening around the world these days, this quote speaks the truth like no other:

“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best . Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up.”

And this is my favorite chapter from the excellent book by Matt Haig, called The Comfort Book:

And I will end today’s post with an amazing truth spoken by an incredibly inspiring woman. Despite getting “the golden buzzer” on America’s Got Talent for singing a beautiful song that she wrote herself, she recently had to drop out of the competition because her body is being ravaged by cancer. Here is a link to her performance of “It’s Okay” by Jane Marczewski, also known as Nightbirde:

“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” – Nightbirde