Tag: inspiration

Good Times

There’s a stand-up comedian, Dusty Slay, whose catch phrase is “We’re having a good time.” He says that most comedians leave the overall atmosphere up to chance, or up to the critical opinions of others, by asking their audiences, “Are you having a good time?” Dusty decides just to manifest it. Throughout his set, he makes a point of throwing in the decisive statement, “We’re having a good time.” The way that Dusty says it sounds so reassuring and light, and it comes across like, “Chill out, man, we’re just having fun.” You can’t help but agree with him.

I’ve decided to keep Dusty’s friendly voice, with its catchy, southern twang, in the back of my mind, for times when things seem just too serious (or for when I make times too serious in my own mind, which is an unfortunate tendency of mine). I repeat to myself, “We’re having a good time.” I figure that even if it isn’t a particularly good time, I’ll at least get a giggle out of it. Like yesterday, when I was driving home from helping my youngest son move some of his stuff to a new apartment at his university, and then having to drive back home through the pouring rain, with a huge load of some of my son’s other stuff rolling around in the car, while the usual crazies on the slick highway, were weaving through 18 wheelers and oversized loads, as if it were an Olympic sport. I just repeated to myself, “We’re having a good time.” “Good times, we’re going for gold!” The statement makes me smile to myself, every time I think about it. I am sure that Dusty would be happy to let you use the phrase liberally, in your own life, too. “We’re having a good time.”

It’s Thursday. It’s summer. It’s late July. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s bright. We’re alive. “We’re having a good time.”

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

Important to Repeat

Friends, I woke up this morning with a bad cold, which is utterly shocking. With all of this mask wearing and social distancing, I can’t tell you the last time that I have had a cold. I almost forgot what it feels like to be sick. For reminder’s sake, it’s yucky.

Also, this morning I woke up to the sad news that one of my favorite people/pups on Twitter, Rex Masters, lost his beloved sister to her death this morning. My heart aches for him, and I have never met, nor conversed with the man, in my life. I feel like Rex might be out there on my blog space, or a fellow fan of his might be out there because I wrote a blog post about him one time, over a year ago, and today somebody looked at it. Rex, I am so, so sorry for your loss. Here is the post that I wrote about Rex Masters, a while ago:

Me and Dog Named Rex
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. Sundays are devoted to poetry. Today I am devoted to being quiet and within myself. I hope that you find some time today, to listen to, and to be with just yourself. Sunday is the perfect day to commune with, and to connect to the deepest part of you. Here is my poem for today:

“The Safe”

I handed you your life back yesterday.

All in a tidy little safe.

It has your birth certificate.

It holds your baptism certificate.

It also contains your passport, your SSN card, and your draft card.

I decided to add the addresses of all those who have loved you,

since the day that you were born, maybe even before.

It has a two dollar bill from your late grandfather.

He thought that it would be neat for you to have it.

And some savings bonds from my late grandmother.

She thought that it would be wise for you to have them.

Oh, and the space in between all of the paper stuff,

that space holds the mighty force of my love,

so anytime that you open the tidy, little safe,

you will be instantly surrounded and shielded,

By the strongest, most powerful, wisest, most faithful and loyal,

Part of me. My love will surround you then, and forever.

As it always has, and it always will. My love surrounds you.

You are safe to be free.

Heart-Ached Flavored Gelato

Later today, I will board an airplane and I will head back to my own well-established, mature, and sometimes even a tad staid, “adult life.” I will be leaving our middle son at the starting gate of his own adult life. He will be living right in the heart of a major city, on the 27th floor of a skyscraper. This is something that I have never done in my life. My children are usually pretty adventurous and independent. They know themselves really well. This makes me swell with happiness and pride and even with some relief.

My husband didn’t sleep well in our hotel room last night. I slept like a log. I tend to process a lot of my feelings during an event, and even before a major rite of passage. I am good at anticipating how I will feel, and then marinating in my feelings, soaking in all of the feelings, – the good, the bad and the ugly. I think about my feelings. I talk about my feelings. I write about my feelings. I watch movies that relate to my feelings. I know, and I name each of my emotions, intimately and easily. I release my feelings openly and freely. It is how I better understand myself and my life.

On the other hand, my husband has more of a delayed reaction to even noticing that change is happening, but then I think that it “hits” him suddenly, and with force. I sense that all of his mixed feelings (pride, nostalgia, excitement, melancholy, his own sense of age and mortality, curiosity, loss, hope) are all hitting him now with a direct blunt force. He doesn’t admit that to me. My husband blames his restlessness and lower energy and inability to sleep deeply, on the gelato which we had for dessert last night.

I wish that I could chalk up all of my emotions that I am experiencing right now, to gelato. “Oh, this unleashing of yet another one of my most precious children, fully and freely into the pastures of the wild, wild world, without me trotting alongside, is almost complete. Why is it that my stomach is churning, my mind is buzzing, my eyes are all blurry, and my heart is aching? Oh, silly me! It must be the Dulce de Leche gelato that I ate last night. “Gelato” can be really, really hard and difficult to digest. It takes time.”

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

An Important Project

My husband and I were at an REO Speedwagon concert last night. It was awesome. I have to laugh, though. Lately, my concert experiences have been a little shocking. I look around at my fellow concert goers/band fans, and I am reminded of the story about when my husband’s grandmother moved into an assisted living facility. “Oh my, everyone’s so old here!” she said.

The band itself was ALIVE. They were rocking it, like nobody’s business. I think that if music people get past that crazy, drug-fueled, self-destructive stage that a lot them seem to go through, then musicians tend to age better than anyone I know. I am pretty certain that this probably has something to do with deeply loving what you do, and fully surrendering to, and engaging with your passions, as if your life depended on it.

On the subject of deep love, the last few weeks have been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster, for me. Big highs and big lows have been my experience, as of late. This week gets capped off with another baby “officially” leaving the nest for adulthood, when tomorrow, we take him to the city where he will be attending medical school. I told myself, at the beginning of this week, that my full focus was going to be on my own self-nurturing and care, just for this week. I made calls and I got all of my annual health appointments on the calendar. I received a wonderful and much-needed massage. And most importantly, I told myself that my thoughts were only going to be centered on myself, and my needs – just for this week.

Try that some time. (especially you mothering, nurturing types) If you watch your thoughts, you’d be shocked at how often your thoughts veer into lanes where they weren’t needed, nor invited to, and how these thoughts love to create problems that don’t even exist. I wish I had a dollar for every single time I had to shift my thoughts back to myself this week. I’d be able to book a ride on one of the billionaires’ space adventures, with all of that money.

Sometimes it is easier to distract ourselves with thinking about everyone else’s lives. We love our partners and our children and our extended family and our friends, so of course we think about everybody we love, a lot of the time. But a big part of loving everyone in our lives, is to love them with confidence and respect. It is knowing that they are capable of, and deserving of taking care of their own unique needs. One of the best ways to give our loved ones this magnanimous love, is to demonstrate it. I challenge you to steer your thoughts back to yourself and your self-care needs, just for today. Anytime that your mind wanders into worrying about, or looks to find ways to fix, or to control, or to change, or to “help” the important others in your life, decide to love them with a deep faith, and then quickly steer your thoughts back to yourself and your needs. Today, make your own self, your project of passion, and the object of your most loving nurturance and compassion.

She Believed She Could So She Did Bracelet -Women's Rose Gold Bangle | Positive quotes, Inspirational quotes, Words quotes

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

Shared Loves

I saw this on Think Smarter (Twitter) today. I smiled. It reminded me of a conversation I had with my husband just the other day. We were sitting on the couch with our daughter, and of course, all three dogs decided that they should be close by, too. So there was the three of us, and all three of our canines, all squished together in one small space, of an entire house. We liked our shared energy, I guess.

Looking over at our daughter, and Trip, our spaniel, all cuddled up to my husband, I said to my husband that I think that a big part of every love story is your shared loves. A huge part of any close relationship (family, friends, lovers, etc.) is that you share a deep love and appreciation, for a lot of the same people, places, pets, homes, plants, neighborhood spots, schools, spiritual houses, restaurants, teams, vacation spots, activities etc. You share a profound love for a lot of the same memories. And it’s these two individual loves that are co-mingled to form this very strong and protective cloud of love, over you, and over the object(s) of your shared love.

When we were on vacation, all four of our mostly grown children were blessedly with us. Sometimes they would get into “teasing mode” and they would start laughing about little bedtime songs which I had sung to them when they were young, or goofy things that my husband and I said to get them “into line.” Not in a morose way (moreso in a reassured, peaceful way), when they were doing this, I thought to myself, “When I pass on, these are the things that they will laugh about together, when they are old and grey. These are the memories that will keep them intimately connected.” The great truth is that all four of my children all love, and yet, are also deeply, deeply loved, by the same mother. We all share a big, big love. And that love is extended with their father, and with each other, and with our shared family and friends, and with the houses we have lived in together, and with the pets who have shared our lives, and with the adventures we have shared together. This is how Love connects everything.

I love the Earth and creation. I know that you love the Earth and creation. This is how I know that we are all covered by a beautiful protective cloud of love, together, all around this Earth. We share a fathomless love for the miracle of life, and we are all loved by that same immeasurable force of Love. Sometimes I sit with this thought for a few minutes, and I just sigh into the peace of that thought, and I try to keep that wise, knowing peacefulness with me, all day long. Love’s got us covered.

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

Soul Sunday

Welcome to the quietest, most introspective day on the blog. Welcome to our poetry workshop. What is the song of your soul? Write a poem. You’ll find out.

Yesterday, my husband and I were making newspaper bricks which he uses as firestarters for his very simple, old-school grill. My husband loves to read the WSJ in paper form, but I think that he has an Earth Mother guilt complex about this. (We had compost piles long before compost piles became a hipster status symbol.) Therefore, to alleviate his conscience, my husband bought this cool contraption on Amazon that condenses wet newspapers into paper bricks. Our back porch is a currently a brick drying platform, and our hands have a not so attractive grayish tinge to them. (And these are the things that make me love him, and “us”, like I do.) As we were placing the papers into the water bucket, my husband stopped what he was doing and handed a sheet of the newspaper to me. He and I both knew that it had to be one of Soul Sunday’s poems. This one is by the great writer, Walt Whitman:

I have a poem of my own to share today, too. Here it is:

Confession to My Children

My dearest children,

For years I have fervently prayed for your strength, and your health, and your safety, and your vitality, and your happiness, and your sense of purpose, and your creativity, and your faith, but I often left out one crucial element in my prayers.

I often forgot to pray for myself.

I often forgot to surrender.

I forgot to pray for guidance on how to help you with your strength, and your health, and your safety, and your vitality, and your happiness, and your sense of purpose, and your creativity and your faith.

I often forgot to ask God for my own strength, and health, and safety, and vitality and happiness, and sense of purpose, and creativity and faith, so that God could work through me, to best mother you. And to best be a model for you.

In my prayers, I often acted as if I had to make a choice. I always chose you, arrogantly forgetting that God has no hierarchies. Love is all.

By hinging all of my abundance on your abundance, I erased me. And I burdened you. And I disrespected God.

Luckily, God doesn’t wait for permission to work through our lives. God never leaves. God works quietly. My prayers are always for you, my deepest loves, but they are also for me, too. We are all God’s children. And now, I often just pray for my eyes to be opened to the all-encompassing Love which gently and evenly holds All of us, dear beyond measure.

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

Highly Functional

Years ago, a friend of mine told me that the difference between functional families and dysfunctional families, is that functional families had mostly good times, with a few bad times sprinkled in, whereas dysfunctional families had mostly bad times with a few good times sprinkled in. I thought that was a reasonable definition.

I have thought about her definition many times throughout the years. (This is one of those times in life, where someone told me something that has stayed with me my entire life, and my friend probably doesn’t even remember saying it. Don’t you love the idea of how often you may have touched someone’s life, ever so casually yet profoundly, and never even realized that you did it? This is one my favorite ways in which the Universe works its magic.) I think that functional/dysfunctional definition can be expanded to so many situations in our own lives . . . jobs, health habits, friendships, romantic relationships, money habits, personal moods, etc. In general, this definition can be applied to your own personal life. Is your life mostly functional or is your life pretty dysfunctional? Nobody’s perfect, and nothing is ever “all good” or “all bad”, but a lot of times we cling to people, and situations, and habits in our lives, out of inertia or by forgetting that we have more power to change things for the good, than we think we do. Sometimes we stay stuck due to the hope that those few good times sprinkled in, will magically turn the whole circumstance around.

I read that designers and inventors usually don’t try to reinvent and change the wheel. They just break the wheel down to its smallest parts, and work on how each of those parts could be better. In the end, after working on each of the individual parts, and then putting the wheel back together, you end up with a more functional, better designed wheel. Here’s a good example of an individual’s life wheel (credit: Maestro Performance):

Life Coaching

If you consider each pie piece in this wheel, which of these is the most functional areas in your own life? Which pie piece could use some new energy and design? Which pie piece might be so dysfunctional that it is impinging on the overall health and well-being and operation of the entire wheel of your own life? Summer, with its typically slowed-down pace, is a wonderful time to sit in reflection of how well your wheel is turning in the directions that you want it to go. Usually, it’s only one or two pie pieces that could use a little work and focus, and once those pie piece are cleaned up, it is truly amazing how much better your whole life seems to flow.

Your business is designed to function quotes This quote of mine is being shared around the world what an | Dogtrainingobedienceschool.com

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

I Could Never

Image

What I am writing about today, has nothing to do with the above quote. I just really liked the quote because I adore books. This one tickled me, too:

But here’s what is really on my mind today:

“I could never handle that . . . . I could never go through that.”

Yes, you could because you don’t have a choice. You would handle it. You would go through it. You would do your best and you would survive and maybe even thrive.

I remember having a friend who had twins shortly after having her first child. She said that people always told her that they could never handle her situation and she would laugh and then she would always answer them the same way, “Yes, you could, because you must.”

We always think that we couldn’t handle other people’s problems and difficult situations, because we are attached to our own problems. There is a parable that talks about throwing everybody’s problems into one big pile, and then the Universe telling us to go back to the pile and pick the same number of difficulties to take back, to deal with in our daily lives. It is said that we would be amazed by how quickly we would all run towards the pile, and take our own problems back. We know and understand our own problems. We are intimate with our own troubles. Sometimes we are even attached to them.

Dealing with, and grappling with my son’s epilepsy is probably the most difficult thing which I have ever dealt with in my life. People tell me the, “I could never handle that . . . ” line, all of the time. I know that this is their kind way to try to show sympathy and support and to compliment me on my “strength”. But I always answer it the same way that my friend with twins does, “Yes, you could, because you don’t have any other choice. You would do your best.”

I would rather not have to prove my strength through my problems. Wouldn’t we all? But that’s just not life. I have never met an adult person who has never had any problems or worries. Still, the blessings that come from our complications, are the reminders to ourselves, that we do have it in us, to manage and to cope and to persevere and to often overcome and triumph over the hardships in our lives. We can reflect on the many times that we have muddled through the tough times in our lives and made it through to the other side, maybe not perfectly intact, and probably not exactly in the same form that we started out in, but maybe that was the purpose for the problem, in the first place? Growth is hard but necessary. Growth from our adversities usually brings us to a whole new level of understanding and faith and compassion and respect for the sheer awesomeness and yet fragility of our own living experience.

“I could never, ever go through a world-wide pandemic and have to deal with all of the fears, and uncertainties, and grief, and ugliness, and pain, and difficult decision making that would come from that kind of a situation.”

“Yes, you could. You are in the middle of doing it. And you are doing great. And you have proved to yourself just how incredibly strong and vital and capable and resilient you really are, when it comes to having to go through really tough situations. And you will have this serene wisdom about yourself, to fall back on for the rest of your life. This wisdom will help to sustain you, during any calamity that comes your way. There is a hidden blessing in every curse.”

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

Throwback Thursday (if you still feel like reading, these are links to previous, popular posts of mine). This particular post was actually published:

Awkward Stage

Bounceback Brew

This is the fifth day since after my vacation, and my bounceback game is terrible. I could easily be an actress in a Zombie movie without even trying. If I had one complaint about getting older, it’s knowing that if I choose to do anything “extra”, the payback is going to be really, really, really hard and tough and miserable. Staying up extra late, having one extra drink, one extra candy bar on Halloween night, one extra mile of walking, one extra sit-up, one extra half inch on my high heels, pizza with extra cheese – girl, you’re gonna pay, extra, extra exponentially!

Last night, I decided to mix up my own concoction of “Bounceback Brew.” (Those who know me well, know my tendencies to become my own sort of “self-taught” intuitive chemist. I take about 8000 supplements a day. I mix up all of my face creams that I bought on impulse, to create, what is in my own mind, a SUPER fabulous, miraculous, all-inclusive, one-step anti-aging cure cream, until I break out in a strange and intensely itchy rash. I love to “layer” my perfumes and lipsticks, until no one can breathe around me, and my lips stick out an extra half-inch from my face. My dear friends and family, thank you for loving kooky little me, just as I am. It means the world.) Bounceback Brew consisted of taking my biggest mug (the one that says “Queen Bee”) and filling it with boiling water. I then took four different tea bags (two sleepy-times, one detox and one Honey Lavender Stress Relief, all made by different tea companies) and I allowed these bags to simmer in the Queen Bee Mug for a good 30 minutes. I then slurped Bounceback Brew down quickly and purposefully. Bounceback Brew did not make me tired. At all. Bounceback Brew did not even help me in the powder room department, but for some strange reason, Bounceback Brew gave me the giggles. (this is all OTC grocery store bought stuff, trust me on this) After imbibing in Bounceback Brew, I thought that the dumbest things were the most hysterical things I had ever seen or read or thought about. And then I got incredibly annoyed with my husband because he was seemingly confused, irritated, and he didn’t see the humor in any of it, at all. So, I was laughing playfully and yet, angrily scolding my husband, all at the same time. This lasted for a good half hour and then, poof, I was back to my current state of “post-vacation clawback to life.”

Try “Bounceback Brew” if you like. There were no nasty side-effects and they do say that laughter is the best medicine, for just about anything. In the meantime, if you have a better recipe for Bounceback Brew, please put it in my Comments section. I am always game to try something new, even if it takes me extra time to recoup from my mixology “gamble”.

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