Tag: life

Memories

I got caught in a rabbit hole the other day when I was busy researching a movie I know that I will never choose to see. The movie is the new horror phenom called Backrooms, produced by a young man in his early twenties. I have not seen a true horror film in over a decade (I don’t mind thrillers, but pure horror films are not good for my psyche, nor for anyone who has to be around me (for weeks and weeks and weeks) after I have viewed one) What intrigued me the most during my exploration of my crazy little, pointless rabbit hole, was a comment made by someone underneath the movie trailer. The comment was this:

“They say when you remember something you aren’t recalling the original event, you’re just recalling the last time you remembered it. So it’s always going to be a little different every time.”

I don’t know if this statement is true or not. My husband detests when I start any conversation with “They say . . .” He is one who quickly asks, “Who’s “they”?” However, I have a hunch that the above statement does have a lot of truth to it. My youngest son was recently on a jury, and he stated that the most muddling part in the jury’s deliberations, was just how much the recollection of the details of the story of the event, had changed over the years.

Wouldn’t your current emotional state of being and your current state of affairs have a large effect on how you perceive not only what is happening now (and what you hope to have happen in the future), but also have a large effect on any memories which you currently bring to the forefront of your mind? When I am remembering past happenings, it always strikes me as unusual as to what actually has stuck out for me in any particular memory. Sometimes seemingly meaningless objects or statements are what sticks in my memory bank, the most. I’ve noticed as I’ve aged that my short term memory (which has never been my strong point to begin with) seems to worsen, yet I often surprise myself with what my long term memory is able to recall.

“They say” (ha!) when you’re focused on your past, you tend to live either in regret or in fantasy of a romanticized past, and when you are focused on the future, you are swarming yourself in anxiety. In today’s fast-paced, technologically focused world, mental health practitioners continually preach the power of staying present. We all know the wisdom of presence, but practicing it regularly, for some reason, is not an easy task for most of us. Maybe we don’t love our peaceful states of being, as much as we pretend that we do. Maybe being “peaceful” bores us. Perhaps we like to embellish our memories or freak out about our futures, because we like the the thrill of intense emotion more than we like to admit. Maybe being the narrator of our stories makes us feel like we have more control of ourselves and our lives than we really do? I don’t really know. I bet “they” know . . . . .

“We don’t remember days, we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese

“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” – Oscar Wilde

“What am I? … The sum of my past experiences, tied up together in a bundle with the string we call memory.” – H. G. Wells

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

Formula for a Great Life

“winning = knowing the most love. I know you just threw up a little bit in your mouth but I have to tell you the truth and that is it. If you know how to love people with abandon and you know how to let people love you back, you will have a great life. That’s not my opinion. That’s not fake news. That’s what the research tells us.” – from Kelly Corrigan’s commencement address

I think this is why people love weddings. Love wins at weddings. People are so open about their joy and their happiness and their love for each other at weddings. People more easily put away their differences, their insecurities, their inhibitions and their self-consciousness while celebrating a marriage. People show their love for each other with great abandon at weddings and everyone feels the celebration and the connection. Kelly Corrigan makes a great point, though. Sometimes it is really easy to love others, but it is harder to let other people love you back. But that’s not the meaning and fullness of love. When you don’t let others love you, you are robbing them of sharing their lovingness. Love is not a one-way street. Love is. Love has created everything. Love is all that there really is, and when you live your life, knowing that formula, not just at weddings or other celebratory events, but in every conscious moment of your daily living, you can’t help but have a great life. There is no better feeling, no better way of being than to throw caution to the wind, and to inhabit and to become love, with wild abandon, every single day of your life. If you don’t think that your life is going so great, try adding some love to the mix. Try narrowing down your everyday life to what makes you feel loved, loving and in the essence of love. The formula works and it is available to all of us. It is the natural core of our very being.

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

Anesthesia

My daughter-in-law hired a “day of wedding coordinator” named Anastasia for the wedding last week. My daughter-in-law’s mother’s Autocorrect feature on her cellphone, constantly changed the name “Anastasia” to “Anesthesia”, which while amusing, was actually quite apropos. I don’t know if I have ever met a more calm, soothing, serene woman than Anastasia in my entire life, particularly at a wedding. Anastasia was like an eight-armed goddess as she sewed, handed out flowers, took instant photos, steamed dresses, and calmly reminded everyone where they should be at any given time, all at once, and all of the while, maintaining the aura of pure peace and serenity. Whenever we had a question or concern, we would joke with each other that Anastasia would magically, and instantly appear, sometimes out of the fireplace, or the floorboards, to answer the question or to solve the problem, calmly and confidently. It reminded me of a long time ago, when we were on the Disney Cruise with our four young children. It was at that time that I started truly believing that Disney magic was actually the real deal, when again, the beyond cheerful crew and smiling staff appeared almost miraculously and instantly, in order to solve any issues or upsets, with just a wave of Tinkerbell’s wand. Throughout the day and night, my daughter-in-law kept repeating that Anastasia was easily the best money spent on the wedding.

It was at one point during the evening, right before the wedding was to start, that I blurted out, for no particular reason, “I WANT an Anastasia in my life.” Then, a second later, in a lightbulb moment, I blurted out, to no one in particular, but to anyone in earshot, “I think that I am my family’s Anastasia.”

My middle son, about to take a bite out of a piece of the pre-wedding pizza, matter-of-factly stated, “You are, Mom.” Then he continued to joke around with the other groomsmen.

This was one of those personal a-ha moments that came out of left field for me. It occurred to me, just in that very moment, that our family always did have a live-in Anastasia. It was me. We moms are our families’ “Anastasia/Anesthesia”. Now I’m not going to pretend that I ever pulled it off with such placid and tranquil vibes that the real Anastasia imbued. I’m not go to pretend that I never had a meltdown in a crisis. But overall, I fully understood that it was my job to make sure that our family’s schedule/celebrations/sporting events/ceremonies/appointments/feeding times/surprise emergencies, etc. etc. were all handled, and executed in a timely manner, day after day. I was the one who made sure that the Venn Diagram schedule of each member of our family, happened and flowed, in the best way possible. And all of my other fellow moms did the exact same thing for their families. And sometimes, we even pulled it off, with totally unruffled energy, making it look simple and seamless. Damn, we were good. Damn. We are good.

When our four kids were little, it was never the physical work that made me totally exhausted (although it certainly added to the mix), it was the mental exhaustion that got to me every time. I would often wish that someone would just hand me a timed schedule, and a to-do list, and a recipe and a plan for what to make for dinner, all which I could accomplish in a tranced-out robotic state and still have time and energy for my own interests and hobbies. (My husband will be forever scarred by the one time that he called me at a McDonalds to ask me what exactly he should order for each of the four kids, on a rare Mommy’s Night Out. Let’s just say that I didn’t have a serene response.)

I’m not writing this in “victim-mode.” This choice to be the matriarch of my family is the best decision that I have ever made in my entire life. I would make the exact same decision again and again. Being the female head of my family, is my honor, privilege and my greatest pride. However, lately, I am starting to get a better understanding and a closer-up glimpse, that it really is time for me to start pulling way back, scaling down my self-described duties, in order to just really put my focus on being a lighter-duty Anastasia – a concierge, mostly for myself. This is a strange adjustment. This transition doesn’t happen instantly. It starts slowly when one kid moves out, and then another. It becomes more obvious, when the kids graduate and find loving, responsible adult partners who are looking out for them, too. It’s the realization that the grocery cart doesn’t need to be nearly as full anymore. It’s the mental and emotional shift of being an active creator of the life of your family unit, to becoming the more passive experiencer/observer of the expanding lives of your family. It’s the realization that your family has now become plural. There are multiple sprouts growing in the family garden now. Your family is becoming “families.”

As a mom, I will always be an Anastasia/Anesthesia in some form or other. It comes with the territory. It’s a hard habit to break. Something tells me, I’ll pull off a serene Anastasia a little bit better with my future grandchildren. I certainly hope that I have the opportunity to try.

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

Last Week It Happened

It happened. The first of our four children, our eldest son, got married last week. It was the first marriage of any of our children. If you think that your own wedding was lovely and magical, you can’t even imagine how incredibly magical the marriages of your own children will be! I’m still floating on a cloud. I am still thanking the Powers That Be, for the pure foundation of love our son has found and created with his beautiful bride. I am still thanking the Powers That Be that our whole family has been a witness to their beautiful love and the divine ceremony and celebration that cemented their wonderful union. We are so very blessed and I feel it tingling in every cell of my body.

“A bride is the most beautiful poem ever written…” – Oscar Wilde

“To get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” – Mark Twain

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” – Nat King Cole

I have often told myself, in these most recent years in which our children have grown up into adulthood, that my job now is narrowed down to just love my family. Love them. Love them. Love them. I have already birthed them, fed them, guided them, taught them, scolded them, protected them, prayed for them (this will be ceaseless), sheltered them, prodded them, cheered them, advised them, comforted them, fought for them, and occasionally even apologized to them for my shortcomings, and now, our four amazing adult children are capable to do all of these things for themselves and for each other. I just need to narrow my motherly duties down to Love now. And this is the easiest thing for me to do. It comes naturally. Love them. Love them. Love them. I love my family ceaselessly and I am so grateful for the outward celebration of our love that was experienced, happily and beautifully, just a few short days ago.

“I think that enduring, committed love… is the most noble act anyone can aspire to.” – Nicholas Sparks

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

Soul Sunday

“The Safe Box”

Soon, I will be handing you the safe box of your life,

Similar to the ones I gave to your brothers when they embarked fully

into the horizon of their own adult lives.

The safe box will hold your birth certificate,

A paper token of the most intimate moment, you and I ever shared.

The safe box will hold your passport,

A stamped pamphlet of epic family adventures,

And brave escapades of your study abroad experience,

that you ventured out on your own, sending apprehension to the wind.

(I am so proud of your courage and your unapologetic lust for life.)

It will hold the aquamarine I purchased for you when you were a toddler,

A gem, for a gem of a girl who has turned into a dazzling, sparkler of a woman,

as I knew you would.

The safe box will later hold signs and tokens of major moments in your life to come:

Marriage certificate, deeds to homes, birth certificates of my grandchildren yet to be.

I now pass the safe box of your life fully unto you, for your own good keeping.

The time is now.

You are ready. (And I am trying to be ready, too.)

Please hold tightly to the safe box of your life. Keep it secure.

It holds important things and tools to lead your life fully and freely.

But most importantly, it holds a piece of my heart that will never, ever leave you.

No, that’s not really true.

That little, vital piece of my heart was never really ever kept in the safe box.

That ferociously beating little piece of my heart always was,

And it will ever and always be,

with you, my precious baby girl.

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

What Makes It Work

“Shared values are far more important than shared interests.” – Nancy Caciola

The above quote is true of any relationship, romantic or platonic. You trust and respect people who share your same values and you get inspired by, or at the very least, curious about the many varied interests and passions and hobbies that different people have, which occupy their time and minds. Having different interests keeps things intriguing and vital, but having different values, keeps things guarded and suspicious and often disappointing. You usually can tell people who share your same values because people put most of their time and energy and resources into what matters to them most. You usually just feel intuitively more natural and comfortable when in the company of people who share your same values. You typically feel drained or on edge or even defensive, with people who don’t share the same values as you. However, the worst you ever feel with someone who has different interests than you, is perhaps nothing more than a little bored.

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

Navigation Tools

This was a big weekend for the world. Disclaimer: I will never turn this into a political blog. If anything, I want this space to be a break from all things turbulent and divisive out in the big, bad world. That being said, just a couple of months in, this year is already proving to be a year full of provocations. In the end, all provocations tend to stoke two big, big fires, sometimes at the same time. These fires are Love and Fear.

I read a really good reminder over the weekend. It said: “Let your emotions inform you, not control you.” When you say, “I am angry”, that is not correct. You are the person feeling the emotion of anger. You are feeling anger. What is that anger telling you? What is that anger informing you of? What direction do you want your anger to take you in? Do not give Anger the reigns. Anger is just a feeling. Do not let Anger or Fear or even positive emotions like Joy and Elation take the lead or stoke them to the point of being overwhelmed or overtaken by them. Use your emotions as informants. Use your emotions as navigation tools. Invite your emotions to the table, along with reason, and reliable factual information and the ability to explore other perspectives. And most importantly, give this meeting of all of your emotions, your reason, the facts, and respected viewpoints, the gift of time in order to process any situation. In short, play the long game.

Last week, I had a conversation with my daughter about something that she was upset about and like so many mothers, I became as upset as she had been, because as mothers, we don’t like to see our babies upset. We tend to swallow up their emotions into the storm of our own emotions and then Heaven help anyone who is in the vicinity of Hurricane Mama Bear. But the truth is, my daughter had already stewed on the situation for a few days, and her emotions were already dissipating. Reason and Perspective had made inroads into the conversation. She was already at Step 5, when she introduced me to her upset. I, just learning about her situation, was immediately blown in the storm of Step 1, where emotion is so turbulent and so overwhelming, that you tend to forget that you aren’t actually the storm, you are just feeling the effects of the storm. Today, after a few days of exploring what my feelings were trying to tell me, I am also at a final stage of processing the situation. I am feeling calm. (Notice that I didn’t write “I am calm.” Calm is a feeling, not an identity.) I understand the nuances and the complexity of the situation. The initial “sting” has worn off and I see a path forward for my daughter and for myself, that includes adjusted expectations, grace, a focus on the long game, and a reminder of the importance of healthy boundaries and direct communication.

“You can’t control the waves, but you can learn to surf.” – Unknown

“When awareness is brought to an emotion, power is brought to your life.” – Tara Meyer Robson

“Don’t make permanent decisions off of temporary emotions.” – Unknown

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

Alignment

Recently I put the final period on a decision, that if I am honest with myself, I started making a long time ago. And it was an incredibly difficult, painful decision for me to make. It hurt me. It hurt others. But it was the right decision for me to make for myself, and in a way, I’m grateful that my hand was forced. I kept trying to buy time, in hopes that I would see things in a different way, but my “inner self knowing”, stayed steady. It could not be swayed. And I am sad, but I am not sad with regret. I’m just sad with the understanding that nothing is black and white, there is good and bad in everything, and a lot of things in life don’t come with the perfect tied bow of “happy conclusion.” I’m sad for the happy parts that I will truly miss, and I am grateful for the lovely memories that I will always keep with me. So many times in life we want to do what is “right”, but as we get older we realize that “right” is often a muddy picture, and often what is right for one person, is not right for another, and we have to come to acceptance of this fact. And getting ourselves to this acceptance is the hardest part. But with this acceptance, we finally give ourselves respect and complete permission to do what is right for ourselves. And we give others respect and complete permission to do the same. And having this full acceptance will always be closer to peace, than trying to contort your own square peg self into round holes, or else trying to force others to do the same type of thing, solely for your own comfort.

“Living in alignment” seems to be a common phrase thrown around these days, but what does it really mean? When I asked AI this question this morning, this was the summary:

“Living in alignment means consciously ensuring your daily actions, thoughts, and decisions consistently reflect your core values, passions, and authentic self. It is the practice of living truthfully rather than for external validation, fostering a sense of inner harmony, purpose, and flow, rather than just striving for success. 

Key Aspects of Living in Alignment:

  • Congruence: Your outer life—actions and relationships—mirrors your inner world, beliefs, and values.
  • Authenticity: Making choices that feel true to your soul, even if they are unpopular.
  • Values-Driven: Prioritizing what truly matters, such as health, joy, or purpose, over societal expectations.
  • Emotional Resonance: A feeling of lightness and ease, which often contrasts with the exhaustion of trying to be someone else. “

In researching living an aligned life, I came across an excellent blog post written by Dr. Shea, a chiropractor in San Diego. In his article, he outlines five principles of living an aligned life. I’ll put a link to the article below (it’s a good read), but he writes that the essential five principles of living an aligned life are this: 1.) Know yourself. 2.) Take full responsibility for everything in your life. 3.) Maintain a long-term focus. 4.) Listen to your body and act upon what it is telling you. 5.) Prioritize self-care.

The second principle is sometimes a hard pill for us to swallow. It’s hard to take responsibility, especially when you’ve been victimized. This is how Dr. Shea puts it this way, and I couldn’t explain it better than he does:

“The good things include actually taking time to celebrate your wins when things go well.   The bad things mean owning up when things don’t go according to plan.  And the ugly things- these are the things we don’t talk about, the things that were done to us, or the things that we only share with a few close individuals.  These are the things that we really have to take full responsibility for because until we do, these things rule our lives.  To take control back from these people or events, taking full responsibility for them is essential.   Even if you have had terrible things happen to you in your life, you are the only person who has control of how you think about it and what you will do about it.  Without this first step, the concept of finding balance will never stick.  Taking responsibility, despite the initial physical and emotional pain, is the only way to take control.”

It’s not lost on me that unless our spine is in alignment, we can’t reach our highest physical potential. When we are off balance, we can’t walk the paths of our individual lives with a steady gait. Living in alignment is not an easy task in this fast paced, “always vying for our attention in every which direction” kind of a world. However, the moments when we truly feel that our outside lives are most aligned and reflective of our inner selves, these are our most peaceful, resonant, honest, authentic, ripe, accepting, connected to something higher, purposeful moments which we can ever hope to experience.

Here is the link to Dr. Shea’s full article on living in alignment: https://alignedlifewellness.com/how-to-live-an-aligned-life/

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

Aging

“At this age, I understand something I couldn’t have known earlier: aging is not about decline, it’s about distillation. You lose what doesn’t matter. You keep what does. The noise fades. The truth gets louder. What remains is clarity, gratitude, and a deeper relationship with yourself.

I no longer rush past moments, thinking there will always be more later. I know now that this is later. This is the season to savor—long walks, deep conversations, laughter that comes easily, stillness that feels like wisdom instead of emptiness.

Seventy-two has taught me that the real gift of time is perspective. You stop measuring life by what’s next and start measuring it by what’s meaningful. You ask better questions. You listen more carefully. You love with less fear and more presence.” – Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey turned 72 years old on January 29th. What she wrote about her birthday is quoted above. It was too profound to not include in this thought museum which I call Adulting – Second Half.

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

Hello Again

First, I am going to trinkle these new “gems” I found onto this pile of life’s thoughts/reflections/wisdoms which is called Adulting – Second Half:

“A lot of things broke my heart, but fixed my vision.”

Marriage argument motto: “I have nothing to win, everything to gain and everything to lose.”

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin

“Those mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” -Najwa Zebian

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Buddha

And from a really good movie, Jay Kelly:

“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.” – Sylvia Plath

“Italy. What is it’s fatal charm? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places lost long ago.”

I’m sorry for a longer than usual absence, readers. The latest flu really got me. (and no, I didn’t get the flu shot, so maybe something to consider. . . .) I just finished one of those wonderfully cheesy, fill-my-eyes-up, 2025-year-in-review videos. It was honestly pretty compelling. These videos always remind me of just how much happens in one year.

Lately, I’ve been observing our human nature to sweep entire years as “good” or “bad.” We often take one monumental event that happened in any particular year, either to us personally (tragedies such as deaths, job loss, or happy things like new homes, graduations or babies being born), or out in the world (think politics, wars or ends of wars, natural disasters or major scientific discoveries) and we make one or two of those major events, the basis for our entire judgment, of an entire year: Good or bad. Then we pronounce blanket statements like, “I just can’t wait for this awful year to be over!” or “I’ll never have a year as good as this one.”

And yet, the video I just watched featured unbelievable Cinderella stories in all different sports, political shockers from both major parties, wildfires and floods and the rebuilding of communities, cultural phenoms, medical achievements and so, so, so much more that collectively happened in just one year, in our lives on this Earth. A year is not entirely “good” or “bad.” Isn’t it often the case that we sometimes look back at our “bad” years and we actually feel thankful for them? In retrospect, they were “good” years because they forced our hands. They brought more of ourselves and our own individual needs and desires and insights, to the forefront of our awareness. We experienced more, and thus we, in turn, became more complex, more interesting, more human.

Years are made up of our moments. There are a lot of moments in our years. One time one of my friends asked me this common phrase when I was being a bit tragically dramatic: “Did you really have a bad day, or was it a bad five minutes you milked out all day long?” Even our worst days, have sweet moments. Even our worst years, have lovely days.

The beauty of keeping a daily journal, is that you have a record of the moments – the “good” moments, the “bad” moments and a record of the days – the “good” days and the “bad” days. As a person who has consistently kept a daily journal since 2013 and has saved my calendars since 2008, I can tell you that most days are just a conglomeration of mostly banal, routine moments, with a few notably “bad” moments and a few strikingly “good” moments sprinkled on top – even on vacation days, even on tax-filing days, even on mammogram days, even on birthdays.

Sometimes I think we get a little bored with our everyday routine moments, and that’s when the stories play in our heads. That’s when our inner narrator starts turning annoying moments into horrific days. We all say we want “peace”. We all say we want “calm”, but the truth is, we often don’t know what to do with peace and calm. We get restless. So we stir up our inner pot to create drama and intrigue. Our stories of what happened are usually much more interesting than what actually happened. Aren’t we humans annoying?

Maybe the answer is to turn our inner label makers off. Days don’t need to be labelled. Years don’t need to be labelled. All experiences teach us something. We can integrate these experiences without the narrative. Our lives are not performances. Our lives are our moments, our days and our years. And we have the ability to live fully in each one of these moments, if we give ourselves permission and freedom to do so.

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