Tag: love

The Vibration

This is the time of year for commencement speeches. And I’m a sucker for them. I remember years (and years and years) ago, I was on a team of college textbooks salespeople, and we were at a convention with a long schedule of motivational speakers. My boss groaned at the start of every speech. And I pretended to agree, but honestly, I was rapt. I’m always looking for nuggets of wisdom. I’m always looking for the emotional connection of a room full of people resonating with the same ideas and the same values. I love the shared rhythm of nodding heads and hands wiping away tears, sometimes in unison.

My aunt sent me Eric Church’s 2026 commencement speech for UNC and I just finished watching Conan O’Brien’s 2026 commencement for Harvard. They both used their unique talents of music and of comedy to make poignant points in their speeches. They both spoke of the vital need for humility. They both spoke of the reality of how much difference, the other people in any one person’s life make (even the haters), to form anyone’s individual success in life. Two men, from two very different walks of life and probably having many different ideas about life and politics, still spoke mostly of the things that matter the most, to most of us. And it resonated.

Maybe there is a deep universal reason why we so desperately cling to the rituals of life. I just attended the last commencement (at least for a while) of our four children, when our daughter graduated from college this month. I also just attended my eldest son’s wedding. And in both of these situations, I felt the borders of myself getting fuzzy, like I had melted and I was stirred in with everyone else who was attending these events with me. I felt like I melted into a sea of shared pride, hope, awe, and understanding that it is in these stirring moments in life, when we unabashedly let emotion rise to the surface like a wave, that we really all are connected in the ways that are truly crucial to our humanity. People sometimes have a hard time with the concept that everything in this world is really just energy vibrating, and we are all just a small little blip of this vibration. Still, it is in the “big” rituals of our lives that we all seem to naturally step into this same vibration, and that vibration is universally understood. We all feel it. We all know it. It can only be love.

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.

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.

Savoring

Our youngest graduated from college last weekend. Our eldest son gets married next week. This week has been a combination of wrapping up loose ends/taking an exhale/and recharging the batteries. As I have been waking up slowly each morning, I’ve envisioned my bed as a soft, safe charger, much like my iPhone gets charged each night. I’ve insisted on going to bed early and keeping the schedule light this week. The graduation and its celebration went off magically. And I am pleased and I am relieved. I am hoping the same for the upcoming nuptials. I’m honestly relieved that the wedding is finally around the corner. When I’ve mentioned this pining for months now, to anyone in earshot of me, that I really can’t wait for the big events of this year to just be here (we have another son getting married in September), I get a lot of admonishment to not wish my life away, and to just totally savor it all. And this annoys me a lot. This annoys me because I am a savorer. I pride myself in that fact. I savor my life and most of the moments in it, but too much anticipation gets to me every time. And not in a good way. I do not do well with “limbo”. I savored my daughter’s recent graduation AND I am relieved and happy to have it completed successfully. I relish in the surety of a plan that is well executed and is then relegated to being a fond memory. I don’t feel too sad when planned events, vacations, reunions, celebrations, etc. are over because I know that there will always be more (and this is because I am a savorer and I have proof of that in my many, many, many savored memories). Like the quote below says, once you’ve added an experience to your memory bank, it’s yours. It cannot be lost. It’s in your “vault of you.” Your experiences become shapers of you. Maybe that’s why I hate limbo. I keep wanting to pull all of the scattered pieces of myself, past and future, back into myself. It’s like my future self can see ahead and is always yearning to be more and more fully and wholly me.

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

Joy Train

Like so much of the rest of the world, I’m in total awe of our amazing Artemis II astronauts. They are everything you like to see in human beings. I adored watching footage of Victor Glover’s hero’s welcome to his neighborhood. I so admire his unapologetic professions of his Christian faith. I loved seeing the excitement Christina Koch’s pup showed when being reunited with her. And today, I watched the speeches that the Artemis II crew made in Houston. I soaked up everything which they had to say, so full of gratitude and love for their families, for each other, and for everyone at NASA who supported their mission. The words that struck me the most though came from Jeremy Hansen and I had to transcribe them and add them to this thought lab which we have going on here at Adulting – Second Half. Here is some of what astronaut, Jeremy Hansen said:

“Joy . . . . I think you saw a lot of joy up there and there was a lot of joy up there . . .We have a term in our crew that we coined a long time ago, “the joy train.” We’re not always on the joy train, this crew, but we are committed to getting back on the joy train as soon as we can and that is a useful life skill for any team trying to get something done.”

And this:

“Love . . . what you saw was group of people who loved contributing, having meaningful contribution and extracting joy out of that . . . And what we’ve been hearing is that this was something special for you to witness. . . .I would suggest to you, we are a mirror reflecting you and if you like what you see, just look a little deeper. This is you.”

The reason why anything resonates in our deepest selves is because we intuitively know that it is a part of us. These astronauts showed bravery, resiliency, sacrifice, contribution, joy, teamwork, gratitude, awe, faith, hope and love and we all reverberated with it. And this is because, as Jeremy Hansen said, the astronauts mirrored the best parts of our own shared humanity. These astronauts mirrored the best parts of ourselves. They’re not in space anymore, but I imagine the Artemis II crew is definitely on the joy train. Let’s join them and let’s stay there as long as we possibly can.

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

And More for Today

This is my second blog post of today. I’m feeling inspired. I’m giving myself permission to write because writing is one of my most favorite activities in this world. A thought came to me that I immediately wrote on my calendar (as I often do throughout the day, as thoughts of what to write about come to me). It was this thought:

“I can’t love you the way that you want me to love you, but I do love you in my own way.”

Is this statement the truth at the center of so many conflicts and hurts? Is this statement what is needed for true forgiveness of all others, and for one’s self? Sometimes we get so caught up in the ways that we want to be loved, that we forget that in the center of any relationship there is love, quietly and steadfastly beating its heart below all of the noise.

I have felt guilt throughout my life for not wanting to be what others want me to be. Sometimes I have conformed to be what others want me to be, only to later seethe in resentment. Guilt is not love. Resentment is not love.

I have felt frustrated and sad and angry when certain people of certain named roles in my life have not conformed into “being” the love which I expected from those roles. Love does not require others to conform into what I want them to be. Love doesn’t have requirements. Love is. Therefore I believe that forgiveness is coming to this statement:

“You can’t love me in the way that I want you to love me, but I know that you do love me in your own way.”

Now this is not to say that forgiveness means staying in relationships that are disappointing or harmful to you. This is not to say that boundaries should be dissolved nor does it say that you don’t need to work on nurturing and healing your healthy relationships with communication and earnest effort. It’s just taking the idea of “Forgiveness is an acceptance of what is” to a new level. It’s acknowledging an underlying love below all of the layers of damage, and pain, and frustrations, and wanting, and resentments, and sadness and failed expectations. It’s a reminder and a reassurance that at the base of all things in life, there is love. Love is always there. It’s just not a love narrowly defined by you nor by me.

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

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ Today I scanned an opinion piece from the New York Times. I was intrigued because the title was “The Message from Texas Voters: We’re Neighbors, Not Enemies.” The meat of the piece did not interest me, as much as the title. It struck me as a description of the exhaustion I am sensing in the world at this moment. We are tired. We’re tired of running on anger. Of course, anger itself is not bad. Too many of us try to squelch our anger, and we only hurt ourselves when doing it. Anger turned inward can quickly turn into depression. However, anger is best used as that fiery starter spark, to get us going towards a change of direction in our personal lives, and also in the world, as a whole. That said, you can’t run a marathon on anger. Fire burns itself out. Anger takes too much energy to sustain itself for the long haul. Anger is the wake-up call to an injustice, or an unfairness in our lives. Anger is the passionate attention grabber which points us in a new direction, but then we need to shift out of our anger, to the determined stead of a calm, peaceful, faithful, directed vitality, heading ourselves into a better direction of our choosing.

+ Asian cultures give money in red envelopes for special occasions, to their families and friends. The red color signifies happiness, prosperity, and luck and also is used to ward off evil spirits. Every lunar year (2026 is the year of the horse), Chase Bank produces red envelopes, free for their customers to use. I picked mine up yesterday. (see below). I imagine other banks do the same. I hope that it is not cultural appropriation that I have adopted this tradition when I give money to the people I care about. I do it with reverence and excitement and my people seem to feel a little extra giddy when the red envelopes appear. (although they probably like the green inside, even better)

+ “Love is not born of thought. Therefore love has its own intelligence.” – Krishnamurti

You don’t think love. You feel love. You are love. Your thinker is just your brain, the computer of your body. Your organs are the doers of your body. Your essence, your noticer, your presence, your consciousness, your intuition, your spirit, the traveler inside of your body and experience – this is love. This is you. Love is you. You are love. And at their deepest cores, so is everyone else.

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

NYE

Happy New Year’s Eve! I had to get my last words in for the year of 2025. I honestly really liked a lot of my 2025 experience and I almost feel guilty writing it. It seems that it is almost a universal thing to say and to read and to hear that “It’s just wonderful that this ‘god-awful’ year is over.” And yes, the political drama has been exhausting. And everyday life seems to have grown exponentially expensive. And it has been so painful to witness the wars and atrocities that are taking place all over the world. And it is frustrating that we can never seem to get on the same page to focus on solving the world’s biggest problems. And many, many people have suffered terrible personal tragedies and grief in their own private lives in 2025. AND ALSO – people got married in 2025, people had babies in 2025, people found the loves of their lives in 2025, people healed from dire sicknesses in 2025, and if you need more positive examples, there are outlets to read about everyday kindnesses, every single day. And I clicked on one of those “stories about kindness” just now. The article talks about a city in Texas that is running a “Grandma Stand”, where three grandmas rotate being at the stand, in order to offer free comfort, love, hugs and advice for anyone who comes up to the stand asking for it. One Grandma, whose daughter volunteered her for the job, had this to say, “Grandmas are nonjudgmental and loving people. Sometimes it’s nice to talk to someone who’s basically a stranger, but you still feel a connection with.”

Maybe we all could work on being better “Grandmas” in the coming year. No matter our ages, our sexes, our family situations, we could all work to be better examples of kindness, lovingness, compassion, and connection. If we woke up every day with the idea that our job and our purpose was to work the “Grandma stand”, wouldn’t the world be a better place? We all have an “inner grandma” and she’s just itching to come out and to offer up some sweet love to a world that we all seem to universally agree, needs more of it. If we honestly believe that 2025 was the worst (or perhaps feel a little “survivor’s guilt” because we don’t think that 2025 was all that bad, at least in our own personal lives), what would our inner grandma say to do? I imagine her advice would be something along the lines of doing and being more of the simple things we often universally associate with good grandmas – softness, kindness, wisdom, sharing treats, support, cheer, reassurance, warmth, unconditional love. Our inner grandma is essentially love wrapped up in the most comforting of packages. We just have to remember to give that package away. Our inner grandmas are strong in the softest of ways, wise in the most reassuring of ways, and beautiful in the simplest of ways.

I wish for you in 2026, to become more intimately involved with your own inner grandma and to accept her love, and her comfort, and her reassurance, and her wisdom. I wish for you in 2026, to share more of your own inner grandma with everyone whom you come in contact with, every single day, so that when we roll around to this time again next year, the universal judgment of the year we just experienced together won’t seem so harsh. It won’t seem so negative and hopeless and full of division. It won’t seem so desolate, frustrated, and hardened. I hope that at this time next year we will be reflecting on our past year, with our inner grandma’s lens and heart. And we will be focused on all of the everyday experiences we had throughout the year, and feel nothing but overwhelmingly grateful for this experiment of living “a one and only lifetime.” Maybe, just maybe, on this last night of 2025, we could connect with our inner grandma, and look at this past year through her lens and her heart and feel just a little bit better, as we enter a whole new year of our precious lives.

“If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.” — Italian Proverb

“Grandmothers are short on criticism and long on love.” — Janet Lanese 

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

And Hello Again

^^^^^ This is my latest excuse for my various messes, a.k.a. “ideas”, lying around my house.

***** Happy 25th Birthday, my blue-eyed baby! I am proud to be your fellow Sag and Yenta of the family. Mostly I am super proud to be your mama. I love you.

One time, one of my friends asked me what my love language was, as she was really into reading and understanding Gary Chapman’s famous book, The Five Love Languages. Honestly, I didn’t have an answer because I really never got into the book and the question started my internal critic reeling, wondering if I wasn’t showing my friends I care, because I didn’t know my “official” love language. According to Chapman, people show love in five major categories and most people have a predominant way that they show love. The categories are: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Receiving Gifts, and Acts of Service. Apparently people give and show love in the ways that they would like to receive it. And so the theory is, if you want to better understand and appreciate your partner and how to love them, you notice how they show you their love.

I’m intrigued with the idea of all of this, but I don’t think love or relationships are ever this simple and easy. I’m also uneasy with the idea of “transactional” love. I do believe that love is an action and so it follows that spending quality time, affirming your people, giving and receiving hugs and kisses, etc., giving and receiving gifts and doing kind deeds for people, are all beautiful ways to express your love and affection, but the concept implies to me, an expectation, “If you do this, then I’ll do that . . . ” (transactional and performative and obligatory)

In my life’s experience, I have sadly come to better understand and appreciate my loved ones’ unique love languages when they are no longer a part of my life, for various reasons, usually death or growing apart. It’s the unique, nuanced love language of any individual that makes you realize that there really is no one else who can fill those exact same shoes. No one else can share with you that same exact love communication. It’s what “I miss” about a person that makes me realize I was understanding that person’s unique and special fit into the puzzle of my life. I was “hearing” their love language which sometimes I could only fully decipher when they were gone.

Who in your life listens to you intently with the biggest desire to understand? Who in your life rallies you to live it more fully than you ever realized you could? Who in your life shares the same sense of humor, so that you are both cry-laughing in unison until your sides ache? Who in your life makes you feel like you have hung the moon just for existing? Who in your life has pushed you to be the best version of you? Who in your life has been an example and inspiration of strength and resiliency? Who in your life lights up the minute you walk into the room? Who in your life introduced you to things and concepts and experiences that opened up whole new worlds to you? Who in your life seems to know that exact right time to reach out with just the right words? Who in your life makes you feel more “alive” just being with them? Who in your life just “gets you” and loves you for it?

What will people miss about you when you are gone? What void will be left in their lives because you are no longer in it? I don’t necessarily think it will be what you did for them. I don’t think it will be anything about your looks, or your personality, or your money or your talents. I believe that it will be the unique, interesting, vulnerable giving of yourself that beautifully and intrinsically connected to something deeper in them. And I think that when this connection is electric and happening, we don’t realize it, until we don’t have it anymore. I believe that we share a unique love language in every significant relationship in our lives, kind of like those fake, secret languages that we would make up, in our childhood, with our siblings and best friends.

Maybe one of life’s biggest ironies, is that we don’t clearly hear or understand someone’s love language, until it is no longer spoken to us. And then that beautiful language is clear as a bell. It sometimes plays in our heads, like a tune we can’t stop thinking about. It’s that one note in the symphonies of our lives that no one else could hit, but that one person. Thankfully, we shared a special language at one time, and so it lives on in us, carved like engravings in our hearts, even when it is an ancient language, no longer spoken.

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

Love Letters

Happy Anniversary, J! Words really cannot convey how I feel about you. You are my greatest gift. I love you, always and forever.

“I wish I could explain “the secret formula” to having a long, successful, happy marriage.  Just like all the centenarians who give conflicting advice on the secret of having a long life, I’m not really sure that there is just one answer, or just one way.  I just feel incredibly blessed and lucky and thankful that the formula my husband and I have created, works for us.  I’m totally in love with my husband.  I love the life we have created together and I’m so grateful for the many life adventures we have shared.  I cherish our family.” – from Adulting Second Half, 10/29/2018

“This story is still playing out, but I think the moral of the story will remain the same. Believe in love. Live love as an action. Be in awestruck gratitude when you find someone who is willing to give to you every part of their very self, for the rest of their lives. Know that there is no greater gift that they could give to you. Honor and respect and reciprocate that gift. The gift of Love grows and grows when it is nurtured, and that blooming of Love is where the greatest treasure, out of all of Life’s wonderful treasures, is truly found.” – from Adulting Second Half, 10/29/2019

“This union is a safe haven for them and for their children, to always be able to come home to, and to rest and to renew in its kind, empowering nourishment. Nothing was more important to the man or to the woman than what they had created together. They understood that about each other and thus, the man and the woman both felt fiercely loved and treasured and honored and cared for, and there is no better feeling in the world, than that feeling. It is everything that these two lovers want for their children and their grandchildren and for the generations to follow them.” – from Adulting Second Half, 10/29/2020

“I share a passionate, loyal, understanding, caring, dedicated love with my husband, the love of my life. . . . . and we will always be each other’s yin and yang. We fit together really well. “ – from Adulting Second Half, 10/29/2021

“When picking a life partner, always go with solid, not glittery. Solid withstands storms, whereas glitter flies away in the wind. . . . I have always been eternally grateful for my husband’s steadfast, lifelong commitment to me and to our family. He gave me his life to share with me. This is the greatest gift anyone has ever given to me.”– Adulting Second Half 10/29/2022

(We were on a trip in 2023 – I wasn’t mad at you, J. wink wink We were having fun.)

“My marriage is my sanctuary, my comfort, my joy, my adventures, my framework for how I go about living my life.” – Adulting Second Half 10/29/24

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