Tag: life

Fluidity

Everything is fluid. Even how you think about things is fluid. Especially how you think about things is fluid. We have started getting Christmas cards and a couple of them have come from people who were from a time when we lived in a whole different state. I have really fond memories of the people there. We were young families, literally raising our kids as a village. The neighborhood we lived in was mammoth. It was so big that it was essentially our neighborhood kids filling the entire elementary school. But yet, the neighborhood felt small, due to the wonderful circle of people we cavorted with there.

Many of our former inner circle there, like us, have left the neighborhood, for different neighborhoods (upsizing and downsizing) and like us, have even left for different states. We had to leave that neighborhood, and that state, back in 2011, for the necessity of greener pastures to support our large family quickly descending upon college age. So, leaving there, was truly bittersweet. We had poured our heart and souls into re-designing and adding on to the home where we lived there, with the faulty assumption that it would be the home that even our grandchildren would come to visit. And then, almost immediately after we finished the totally draining (both emotionally and financially) years long housing project, the Great Recession housing crash happened. We essentially had to give that home away for pennies on the dollar.

For many years, I had bitter feelings about that home. It had become a financial burden and albatross around our necks. It became “the thing” that made it hard to get “a fresh new start” in our new state. It was amazing that a creation that I had once had been so proud of, and had poured so much of my heart and creative vision into, had quickly turned into one of my biggest nightmares. It was a really humbling, shocking, disillusioning time in the lives of our family. And for years, only thoughts of anger and disbelief and frustration and regret, surrounded any ideas of our former home.

Today, out of curiosity, after receiving the cards that reminded me of our “former life”, I looked up our former home. It had been sold again in 2017 and the owners had added on even more beautiful updates. Interestingly, I noticed that all of my feelings of anger and disgust, had dissipated. I am back to feeling proud of “my former creation.” I am back to feeling deeply proud of the fingerprints, and the heartbeats, and the creative vision that we had for that home. I am mostly proud of the happy history and memories that we added to that place which we called home for a time in the life of our family. I am back to feeling only a full fondness for a lovely time in my life, and the lovely nest which we had created for our family at that time. And at the same time, I have no desire to go back. I am truly fulfilled at where I am in my life right now, and I see how all of the dots in my life have been connected and are being connected, as the picture of my life is being lived.

I have noticed this circling around of feelings and perspectives many times, about many people and situations, in my own life. I have also noticed this in the lives of others. Life has a way of softening the edges, after processing the hard stuff. How many people, having gone through vicious divorces, end up deeply hugging each other at their shared children’s major milestones? How many people have been able to find the gifts of lessons and silver linings, and forgiveness of self and others, in even the worst circumstances of their lives? Oprah Winfrey is credited with saying this: “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it’s accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”

If you are going through a tough time in your life, give yourself the knowing that someday you will likely look at this situation with a different perspective. The worst, sharpest edges causing the gashes, and the bleeding, and the pain, will dull with time. The sharpest edges will stop being able to hurt you anymore. That’s the beauty of true forgiveness. It’s an acceptance of what is, and deciding to only take the “good stuff” from the situation. Forgiveness is finally stopping the continually gashing of yourself with the sharp edges, and allowing yourself to heal the wounds, so that when you come back to viewing the situation, you will see that the now dulled edges, can’t really hurt you anymore. You will find that with time and distance, the healing has created a strong (and sometimes scarred, but often stronger for the scarring) barrier to what was once a truly visceral, seemingly unending pain. Believe this. Stop poking at your pains and let them be. Allow the miracle of the change of perspective to appear when the timing is just right. Believe in impermanence and fluidity because they really are the only constants in life, besides the underlying Love that holds us all afloat.

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

Ingratitude

“Not using your talents is an act of ingratitude.” – Holiday Mathis

My husband was telling me that he read an article that stated that Thanksgiving is quickly becoming America’s favorite holiday. He said that the article suggested this is because Thanksgiving is less commercialized than other holidays, and it is focused on gratitude. It always feels good to feel gratitude. It always feels good to be reminded of all of the plenty and abundance in our lives. When people list what they are grateful for the common lists seem to be: family, friends, home, health, food, pets, savings, etc. That’s why when I read the above quote this morning, it gave me pause. If someone were sitting around the Thanksgiving table and they started spouting how thankful they were for their intelligence, their creativity, their physical prowess, their beautiful singing voice, their gardening skills etc. we might think to ourselves, “How arrogant!”, but yet, we all benefit when people use their talents to the best of their abilities. Our Thanksgiving feasts are delicious because talented cooks came up with the recipes. We are entertained Thanksgiving Day by the talented singers and dancers and musicians and float creators that start with the Macy’s Day parade. We often watch amazing athletes later that day, playing football and other sports. Many of us went to go see Wicked over the weekend (my daughter and I among them) and besides the incredible actors, the talent that went into making that movie from the writers, to the special effects people, to the directors, etc. etc. is a list as long as the credits that are played at the end of each film which we see.

I often would spout to my children, “Actions speak louder than words.” Gratitude is an action. When we are grateful to be alive, our actions reflect this. When we are grateful to be able to do, and to enjoy the things that come naturally to us, we are giving ourselves (and the world) the gift of gratitude in action. When we squander our gifts and talents, that is like throwing a present away in the face of the Bestower. Don’t be humble. Be thankful. Share your gifts with the world. They are singular. No one does anything like you do it, and no one will ever do things exactly like you do them, again. Don’t cheat yourself. Don’t cheat us. The opposite of today’s quote is: “Using your talents, is an act of gratitude.” Today, be your gratitude.

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

Exquisitely Beautiful

This has been a deeply cathartic, restorative year for me and my immediate family. It has been what we needed. And I didn’t set out for it to be this kind of a year for us. Of course, everyone hopes that every year will be special, and peaceful, and joyful, and exciting and relieving, but that’s not how life works. We know this. Sometimes “cathartic and restorative” comes from all different circumstances, even if others looking in, might not see what we have been through, in that same comforting way. Life is personal. In hindsight (which is usually the clearest vision), I’m delighted with what me and my family were guided to do and to experience in 2024.

I always tell my family, “Let Life love you.” And what I mean by this is, “Surrender.” Surrender to the belief that there is a beautiful plan in place, even when you start mucking it up with your own worries, and your own need for control, and your resentments, and your mistakes, and your actions and your inactions. Life knows what you really need, and is guiding you along every step of the way. You are just going down the beautiful stream of your life, and while you might be getting caught up with what is going on in your own little, fiery red canoe, rowing against the tide furiously, in the meantime, the current of the stream is still guiding you down to exactly where you need to go. And every once in a while, when you get tired of your own foolishness and you take a beat, and you take some life-affirming breaths, and you remind yourself of this fact, your eyes and your heart will be suddenly clearly opened to the beautiful synchronicities that are happening in your own life, and in the lives of all others. You will fully understand that Life does love you. Life does love all of us. Life is love, and the rest is just the games and the tricks that we play on ourselves in our own fiery little red canoes. And the games are okay. They are creative. They are just part of being alive, and being daring enough to spend some time being human.

There is not a more poignant time in life than during big beginnings and big endings. That is why we have created so many major rituals around births, and deaths, marriages, and graduations. We need these rituals to help us to store and to process the “big feels” that come during these major opening and closing times in life. I don’t think there is a time when you ever feel more alive than during these turning points in life and even when they are hard times, they are so exquisitely beautiful. The stream of life is exquisitely beautiful.

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

Wednesday’s Whimsies

+ Yesterday, I texted my husband that I had written a blog post. He told me that he loved that I had given myself permission to just blog on whim. Kelly Corrigan recently interviewed Christy Turlington Burns (supermodel from the 80s) and also the current creator of a series called The Art of Recuperation, on Kelly’s podcast. Christy said this in their conversation, “When movement feels like freedom and not duty, your feet will carry you further.” Do things because you want to do them, not because you “should” do them. And if there are things that you think that you absolutely have to do/should do, find the “want” behind the should. I will go to my annual physicals, because I want to remain healthy. I will go to work, because I want to feel financially secure. There are a lot more things in life that are self-imposed “shoulds” that you really don’t have to do, if you consciously consider everything. (Everything in life is really just a set of actions/energies and the consequences of those actions/energies) And after coming off of a busy time period that now, allows me to catch up on some truly delicious rest and sleep and recuperation, this quote from the conversation makes a lot of sense, too: “Not all that tires depletes. Some exhaustions feed the soul.” My soul has been fed incredibly delicious experiences all year long and now I am really enjoying some contented, deeply experienced, rest. (long, happy sigh)

+ I read this quote by Eckhart Tolle yesterday: “Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “yours”, not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.” Don’t say, “I’m depressed, or I’m angry, or even, I’m happy.” For you are not those things! You are feeling depressed, or you are feeling angry or you are feeling happy and you probably feel these various feelings and many more feelings, every day, throughout each day. YOU are the peaceful, timeless observer inside of yourself who experiences your bodily sensations, who notices your thoughts, who experiences your everyday escapades, who feels your emotions. YOU are a tiny spark of Source/Creation/Life/God/Spirit experiencing being alive as a human being on Earth at this moment. Live fully in all your powerful glory. Experience it all and know that all is well.

+ We were boating with friends of ours over the weekend and we saw the effects and changes caused by the hurricanes on the beaches and the barrier islands by our town. It was humbling and yes, much of the human created parking lots, and structures and widened beaches have been devastated and need to be repaired, but the natural beauty remains constant. No matter the changes it goes through, nature looks beautiful in every cycle of its life. (as do we – we are part of nature) We saw several dolphins, a pelican decided to fly along beside our boat (similar to that recent car commercial where the bird is flying in unison with the car), and we had the best shelling experience that we have experienced in a long, long time. (The storms sure churned up some beauties!) No experience is ever one-dimensional.

+ I collect potheads and other garden goop. One of my regular readers, Kelly from Cali, recently asked me how Harmonia did through the hurricanes. Harmonia (the muse of my blog, you can read about her on my front blog page) remains solid, still, and beautiful and nonplussed. Here she is today with Celeste, one of my favorite potheads:

This is one of the first potheads that I ever brought home. I never named her. She looks like the masthead of a noble ship:

And here are Bert and Ernie, who are so kind to hold our sunscreen and bug spray. They were discovered in an old barn in my grandfather’s tiny hometown of Windber, Pennsylvania:

And this is Garden Girl. I recently met her maker, a self-proclaimed “yardist”, but that is a story for another day (or check my archives. I have written about him before):

Don’t you just love people who can bring life and whimsy to materials like clay and rock and concrete? They are creators. We are all creators and we are co-creating this world every day. Let’s make it a wonderful one.

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

Kinship

Maybe this is just in my mind, but my experience in going about my daily chores yesterday, is that we women were just a little teeny bit kinder to each other. There was a little more sweetness, a little more understanding and a little more compassion felt for one another. I sensed it. Deeply.

No matter what your politics are, and no matter who you voted for, as women, earlier this week, we were on the brink of something none of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes before – an American woman as president. And I have to believe, that even in the most diehard Republican woman out there, there was at least a teeny, teeny part of her (that teeny part of her that was promised as a little girl that a woman can do anything), who found that idea exciting and hopeful and vindicating. And yet it was not to be . . . .

There is good that comes out of everything. Yesterday, I found a knowing kinship with other women (most of them strangers to me), that I honestly haven’t felt in a long time. And it was good.

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

30 years

Today is my 30th wedding anniversary. I have known my husband since I was 18 years old. We met on my first weekend in college. I have spent my entire adult life with my husband. He is the most important person in my life and he always will be. I’m still very much in love with my husband. I believe that he is still in love with me. I understand that this is special. I understand that this is a rarity. I am totally, totally grateful.

My eldest son just got engaged. My second eldest son has been ring shopping (and I can say this because he and his girlfriend went ring shopping together). What has been my advice to my sons and their significant others for a long and happy marriage? Always, always put your “marriage” first. When you get married, the marriage becomes its own living entity. When you make your marriage the most important thing in your life, and you nurture it, and you believe in it, and you give it your highest attention and your energy, it will give you everything that you gave it, back in spades. (Now I realize that it takes two people who are willing to treat the marriage like a sacred child to raise and to adore and to be committed to in life, but if you do your part, and you believe that your spouse will do the same, then the battle is already won.)

Our married life hasn’t been perfect. Life isn’t perfect. However, my marriage has been the most vital part of 30 years of really good living. My marriage is my sanctuary, my comfort, my joy, my adventures, my framework for how I go about living my life. It’s been perfect for me.

J, thank you for choosing me. Thank you for believing in our sacred marriage as much as I do. Thank you for everything. I love you forever and ever and ever.

Flowers Bloom

So, I am back home and I am bone weary. And I am brain weary. We had a wonderful visit up north, celebrating the wedding engagement of our son and his fiance’, and enjoyed visiting other family members. We did some hiking on the Appalachian Trail. And also, we might as well have been hiking in New York City. (14,000 steps in one day) I was so busy with all of the fun and the action and getting home and getting organized and getting unpacked and getting our groceries replenished, that it is just now, when I have fully and completely realized that my mind and my body and my spirit have yet to process what we have collectively been through in my community. I am tired. I am quiet. I am taking a big exhale.

We moved to Florida for my husband’s job in 2011. We have been through many hurricanes since then, but only one other time did we decide to evacuate. (that was for Irma in 2017) People who aren’t Floridians watch the hysterical, oversized, 24/7 news stories about hurricanes and wonder why we all don’t just flee the state, and also wonder why we ever go back. It’s not that simple. Nothing ever is. People don’t evacuate their homes for hurricanes for many reasons: finances, pets, stubbornness, a perhaps false sense of security from past experiences, horrific traffic and gas shortages, the uncertainty of where a hurricane is going to hit despite the gigantic “cone of certainty” ominously pasted over the entire state of Florida, for every storm (there are many, many recounted stories of people evacuating to places that end up getting the worst of the storms. For instance, one acquaintance told us that she tried to escape Hurricane Helene by going to her dad’s cabin in Lake Lure, which is in the mountains of North Carolina, with her elderly grandmother and young child. You can imagine the rest of that story, a story that she will likely tell for the rest of her life. Sigh.)

Since living here since the summer of 2011, this is the worst that I have ever seen our own local communities hit by hurricanes. It is sad. It is horrific. The pictures that you are seeing on the news are not exaggerated. Helene flooded most of our coastal communities. People have piled their ruined belongings, furniture, carpeting, mattresses, drywall at the end of each driveway, or have dumped them on specified empty lots, where the piles of debris are growing up like instant, ugly little mountains. Right after Hurricane Helene, in less than two weeks, Hurricane Milton decided to stir the pot with ferocious winds and rains and tornadoes. The devastation is immense. Trees, and street lights, and billboards, fences, and people’s roofs have been tossed around like Milton was an angry three-year old, throwing around his legos.

And yet, the facts are, most of us are relatively unscathed. Most of us (in our county alone there is over a million people who live here) survived with our lives, and our homes mostly intact. Most of us had some small, inexpensive clean-ups and repairs to do, and maybe some raking up of some sticks and leaves in our yards. And so most of us, walk around with that sickly feeling of great relief which is mixed with some sad and empathetic survivor’s guilt, when we see what the hurricanes brought on to others less fortunate than us.

So why do we live in Florida? Why is my one small county densely packed with a million people? Why do we live with the fear of hurricanes every year, and why are we willing to pay four times the average cost of homeowners’ insurance compared to the rest of the country? You tell me. Why do you come to Florida for vacation? I bet almost everyone of you has been to Florida at least once. We have gorgeous beaches. We have amazing wildlife. We are surrounded by water everywhere. (and water is from whence we came) We get to experience beautiful sunshine almost every single day of our lives. We have something for everybody here. Florida is one of the few true melting pots, of the bigger melting pot of our own great country. You cannot feel out of place in Florida. Anything goes. We embrace “Florida Man” and everybody else.

Please don’t feel sorry for us Floridians. We get the hurricanes. We call them “the price we pay to live in paradise.” We understand, and we take on the risks. We are processing right now. We are licking our wounds. Some of us will decide that the price is no longer worth it, and will leave. And that is okay. In the end, we will all be okay. The sun still shines upon us, the land of flowers. Flowers bloom.

Sneaky Bits

Hello. It’s a been a minute . . . but I’m feeling the need to write an update . . . . for me. My cousin was recently laid off from a high-powered job. She has started writing a blog about this experience. She has expressed to me, that me and my blog inspired her to start writing her own story. She says that she is surprised as to how cathartic it is to write about what happens in your life, and how it makes you so much better understand how you are processing everything which you are experiencing in your own one, precious life. Friends, write about your own life (even if it is in a private journal, just for yourself, for your eyes only). Learn about yourself. Be surprised. I am beginning to believe that this act of writing is practically an imperative, in order to fully experience the entire scopes of our lives. Your story is an important thread of it all. Write it. Read it. Embrace it. Begin to understand . . . .

I am writing to you from a hotel room in New York City. New York City has been a part of my history since I was young child. We would visit relatives in New York City almost every Thanksgiving when I was a kid, experiencing the Macy’s Day Parade, Broadway, and all of the visceral sights and sounds which are entirely New York City’s alone. The pace of NYC is insane. I was walking along city blocks tonight, all by myself, laughing at how out of breath I was, trying to keep up with the rush hour walkers. I usually pride myself in my unusually fast pace of doing anything and everything. Yet, on this evening, New York seemed to say to me, “Move to the side, Floridian . . . . we’ve got places to go and your slow-ass is in the way!”

Recently, I paused writing this blog, because I felt that I was in a turning point time for me. It was one of those times of false security. It was one of those times that I falsely believed that I had it all figured out. I honestly felt like, “You’ve made it, girl. You got all of your four children to adulthood, all in good stead. You got through the pandemic years, and the worst years of your son’s epilepsy, and the deeply depressing years of your mother-in-law’s slow decline and eventual death. And now, Voila! You got to a good year- a really good year -2024. And honestly, 2024 has been a year of amazing adventures, and new excitements, and pride and relief, and a rekindling of the focus on just me and my husband, since the two of us were barely adults. And it’s been great! And it’s been revitalizing! And then, in just the last couple of weeks, the community which I have called home for more than a decade has experienced two horrific hurricanes in the span of about ten days. And also, at the same time our eldest son and his wonderful longtime girlfriend, got engaged to be married. And I was soberly reminded that I will never be at the “all settled” point in my life while I am still living it. I got reminded that there will always be good in my life, and there will always be less than good in my life. Life is messy. Life is wonderful. Life is hard. Life is simple. Life is complicated. Life is confusing. Life is beautiful. And all of this swirl of life, usually happens all at once. And so you have to be brave to accept it all, and to deeply know that you are up to the challenge of feeling it all, experiencing it all, handling it all.

In my life, I am most grateful for my ability to connect. As Garth Brooks sings, “I have friends in low places” but I also have friends in palaces. Tonight, in my wanderings in NYC, I chatted with homeless people, and investment bankers in swanky bars. I chatted with bellhops, and a priest in a world-famous cathedral. I connected with all of them, all because of my deep intuitive knowing that we are all so imperatively and intrinsically connected to each other. I don’t think that this wisdom fully comes about until you are willing to surrender to the idea that you honestly don’t know shit. Your primary job is to experience it all, and then, to write it all down.

Cycles

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Lin

When you have spent a good portion of your life striving to get ahead, raising a family, doing your best in the societal constructs of our times, and you come to a point of culmination – family grown, savings in the bank, learning from your past achievements and your failures, you give yourself a little timeout time to just breathe, and to bask, and to celebrate, and to reflect. And then . . . . the fear of growing stale and bored starts building up in you, and so you start to explore new things for new times. And these new things feel exciting and scary and uncomfortable and necessary if you want to continue to grow. My husband and I are starting baby steps into some new things, for this new phase of our shared lives.

Recently, my husband and I talked to each other about an older couple who lives across the street from us. Our neighbors are kind, and predictable and reliable. They are a comfort to watch them in their completely regular everyday routines. They are like a wonderful, well worn pair of your favorite slippers. But this couple is older than us – much older. We aren’t ready for “settled in our ways” yet. And so we have started considering new ideas and new interests and this is kind of unsettling. We are brushing the dust off of some of “our old ways”, and we are getting brave to explore parts of ourselves which we may have yet to discover. We are stirring things up to get “unsettled in our ways.”

If I have seemed distant and distracted on the blog lately, it’s because I am. I am propping up my courage to actively explore what I want in the next five years, and beyond. I am trying to get really real and authentic with myself, about what is working, about what isn’t working, and about what needs to change, and about what needs to be brought in, and about what needs to be let go, now that I am at the early stages of a brand new era of my life. I am starting to execute ideas that have been building in my mind, and this is exhilarating and intimidating all at once. I haven’t felt those kinds of feelings, this deeply, for a while, since I was finishing up my last stage of the first half of my adulthood. I understand that these are just the cycles of life, which keep on cycling us forward into our futures. And like all of the beginnings of my past life cycles, I am full of hopefulness and trepidation in equal measures. But the energetic momentum keeps me moving forward into new adventures. I honestly can’t wait to see what is up ahead and around the bend.

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:

1690. Who makes you laugh without even trying?

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. Jane Hirshfield, a famous poet, says this is why we should write poetry: “One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world. Other forms of writing—scientific papers, political analysis, most journalism—attempt to capture and comprehend something known. Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable.” Below is my poem for the day. Write a poem today. I dare you.

“grief crests equally in times of joy and in times of difficulty . . . “ – Chelsea Bieker

Stirrings

Sometimes the ingredients get tossed about

When you had no desire to cook them in your mind

You are left to deal with the churning mess

Of things you thought you had left behind.

I cooked this already. I stewed in it. The meal is done.

Not really, though. It was only half-baked, silly.

In some ways, this recipe has only just begun. . . .

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:

400. What’s your favorite accent?