Tag: love

I’m Baaaaack!

I’ve missed you, my dear friends and readers! I am writing this in an entirely zombie-fied state (we got in at 3 a.m. last night), and I probably shouldn’t be writing this at all, and yet I must. I have been yearning to put down in words, so much of what I have experienced in the last ten days or so. And I have desperately missed writing the blog (and you) so very much! I will tell you now that my husband and I are back home, and we are safe and satiated. My husband and I just did a whirlwind “second honeymoon/damn, we raised four amazing kids and we still really dig each other/congratulations, and now, here’s a gift to us and for only us” trip to Italy. We had both been to Italy when we were small children, but never until now, had we experienced Italy as adults. So for all intents and purposes, it was our first trip to Italy. And Italy is everything that it is cracked up to be. And more. And more and more and more. It goes without saying that the Italian food and wine are unbeatable. (one of the first things we did when we got home was to throw away all of our atrocious, plastic bottled BOGO grocery store olive oil. The real thing arrived today from Pruneti in Florence!) The Italian people are kind, upbeat, gorgeously nose-up proud and defiant, and yet hilariously self-deprecating all at once, and hospitable, and charming and beyond accommodating. The Italians are lovely, intoxicating people. The antiquities of Italy are exhaustingly marvelous (Europe is easily the capital of sensory overload). The gelato is addicting (my effort to repeat my nightly gelato with last night’s 3 a.m. Drumstick out of box, with freezer burn, was sadly disappointing and pathetic). The Tuscan countryside seems too beautiful to be real, and when we were at the coastal area in Cinque Terre, I truly had become convinced that I had fallen into a gorgeous painting hanging on a museum wall. There were many times that I had to pinch myself, and I questioned whether I had somehow been hit by one of the many zippy Vespas that had buzzed around us like flies, and that I had somehow easily and quickly died, and luckily, I had skipped the morose parts, and suddenly, I had arrived in a charming, indulgent version of Heaven, full of beauty, pasta, gelato, bread, and wine. (yes, I do think that I deserve to go to Heaven . . . for the most part)

I have so much to digest. I have so much to recount. I have so much to be grateful for having experienced. But, I was also admittedly eager to get home to my precious, grown-up, stateside, busy with their own lives, babies. And home to my devoted fur babies. And home to my plant babies and to my own comfortable bed. And to free flowing water, and to free flowing boring American coffee, and to easily accessible restrooms of a generous size. And I was so eager to open up my precious blog, and to reconnect to the blog’s treasured, loyal readers. Thank you for allowing me my pause. Thank you for allowing me to recalibrate, and to disappear for a little bit into one of my life’s adventures. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for staying with me. I believe that it will be worth it.

I missed you. I’m back. I’ll see you tomorrow! Ciao!

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

Soul Sunday

Good morning. I hope that you have a nice warm cup of coffee (or whatever your favorite morning beverage is) right near you, as you read this post. Sundays are for poetry on the blog. I also hope that you have a neat little notebook and a pen that you particularly love to write with, right next to your neat little notebook. I hope that you plan to write yourself a poem this quiet, beautiful morning. Poems are love notes to yourself.

Years ago I wrote a blog post that people seemed to really like and relate to, as it pops up as being read again and again, throughout the years. Here it is, if you are interested: https://kellyfoota.com/?s=thank+yourself or you can just search “Thank Yourself” on my blog search function.

I found this poem yesterday by a writer on Twitter, that has that same tone of my blog post. I love it, and as April begins, it’s a good poem to start the month out with, for sure (credit: @ronwritings, Twitter):

Another post I noticed on Twitter yesterday, was a post by Dr. Nicole LaPera. She asked her followers: “When was your first memory of feeling loved?” It hurt my heart, to read so many posts by readers that stated that it took well into their early adulthoods to feel loved. Some people posted that they have never felt loved. After reading a few of these tweets, I went right to our family chat, sent my family a picture of that tweet, and I wrote to my four children: “I don’t know how you guys would answer this, but I hope that you know how much your Dad and I love you, from the very start. Where you’d you get your start?” and then I added six heart emojis. And that last question is an inside family joke. Of course, this text message then turned into a family lovefest, but it honestly wasn’t a fishing expedition of mine. I wanted to be sure that my children feel loved. People need to know they are loved.

People need love. People need to feel love, and to feel loved. Why would we ever be stingy about sharing the most abundant and renewable force of energy that exists in our world? Today, love yourself. Show love to people. Be love. Feel love. It’s everywhere and it’s everything.

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

SB

I inadvertently read a really good blog post the other day, from a website that sells jewelry. The writer was talking about the fact that her mother always repeated the same old saying, with drama and sadness, “You are only as happy as your least happy child.” The writer came from a huge family who went on to have huge families, so invariably her mother would have at least one child, or grandchild, who was going through a hard time, and so her mother was always a bit down. Until she wasn’t . . . .

The writer (Jill Donovan) said that her mother came to a peace one day, realizing that ultimately her children and her grandchildren were not hers first. They came from Source/God/Spirit/Universe, and this same Source that had always gotten her through her rough spots, would get them through theirs, too. And so while the matriarch of this huge family felt empathy for her loved ones, and helped to support them, she came to a greater peace of holding on to the faith that these trials would just bring them all closer to the deeper meanings and purposes of their own individual lives.

This is a truth that we all “know”, but it is sometimes hard to live, isn’t it? We have these fantasy-filled visions of our children living problem-less, seamless lives, with no difficulties to deal with, yet in our own lives, if we are honest with ourselves, it was during the harder times that our most authentic selves rose from the ashes. It was when we successfully navigated through our tough times, that we realized how steely, strong, determined and capable we really were to handle anything. And we didn’t do it alone. The Source within us helped us rise to the challenge. And the people who loved us, were kind and validated our feelings, but because they also believed that we would overcome our adversities, that belief in us, and that belief in our ultimate triumph, was more helpful than pity and tears.

I’m in my fifties now and it’s been really fun witnessing the growth of my friends and peers. Most of us have grown children now, and so I am now seeing my friends taking the time to unabashedly explore all different interests, and parts, and relatively unexplored avenues of themselves. Many of my longtime friends are showing up with talents and interests which I never knew that they had before. (honestly, I don’t think some of my friends even knew about these aspects about themselves either.) It’s really inspiring. By the time you get to our deep middle age, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t experienced any rough spots in their lives. But it is true, time and experience, flowing through the craggy rocks of our lives, usually polishes sharp, rough stones into beautiful gems. It is so gratifying to witness women who have had to go through deaths of loved ones, and divorces, and heartaches with their children, and financial breakdowns, and struggles to succeed and grow in their careers, to triumph over all their adversity, and now delight in exploring parts of themselves that they had long ago buried, under the self-imposed burden of believing that it was their job to keep everyone else happy.

Whatever your beliefs are, just know that Something Bigger (SB) from where we all came has got us. SB has you. SB has me. SB has our kids, and our loved ones, and our friends, and our pets, and our world. So be as happy and as curious and as exploratory as you want to be, in any given moment. That happiness inspires us, and lifts us, and frees us to deeply explore our own selves, and our world with less fear and trepidation, and more openness and hope for all.

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

Reunited

Happy Birthday to the daughter of my dreams. Dreams do come true!! I love you infinitely.

This weekend my husband and I are visiting with, and reconnecting with a couple who were part of the “neighborhood gang”, when we were raising young families. Our family, and this couple and their family, lived in the same lovely locale in North Carolina, where we all raised our children, for the span of about a decade, over a decade ago. There were probably about ten families, or so, who were part of this core group and we did play groups, and book clubs, and happy hours, and we spent endless hours together at the neighborhood pool. We took trips together – camping with the kids (or more specifically, girls weekends without the kids, while the dads went camping with the kids – there were always lots of ‘interesting’ stories and photos after these events. Thankfully everyone came out of it all, alive and well, in order to relay the stories). There was also a couples’ getaway to the Caribbean, and an annual families’ trip to the mountains to cut down our Christmas trees – a favorite tradition for all of us, despite the creepy Santa, in the cabin at the foot of the mountains, who made everyone, kids and parents alike, more than a little leary. (My adult kids, to this day, can still perfectly mimic this Santa’s high-pitched, eerie whiny voice, “And what do youuuuuu want for Christmas, little one?”) Our children all attended the same, sweet, close-by elementary school, and we parents all had the peace of mind of knowing that on any given day, there was likely at least one extra set of eyes and ears and a loving, caring heart around our children, at any point in time, as many of us volunteered there at the school, throughout the years. It was honestly an idyllic place, and almost a “tribal” way to raise young children, and not too far off from the Norman Rockwell version of my softened memories and descriptions.

But as life inevitably rolls out and goes on, there were moves, and divorces, and squabbles, and aging kids scattering in all different directions, wherever their individual interests and activities and educations were taking them. Bye and bye, this group of young, energetic, hopeful parents of many, many beautiful, quickly growing and expanding offspring, mostly dispersed and moved on. Most of these relationships, at least for my husband and I, are now not much more than an annual Christmas card exchange. (I am not much one for Facebook and Instagram. I am a look forward person. Sometimes the past holds too many knots of nostalgia, that keep me all tangled up. . . I have learned that it is better for me, to stay clear of those knots.)

So, I am entering this weekend with anxious trepidation and overall excitement. I mentioned this to my local friends and to my hair stylist, and to my son’s girlfriend, and everyone had the same response: “Oh you’ll probably just start right where you left off! It will seem like you have never been apart.”

I hope so. I believe so. But no matter what happens this weekend, I’ll never forget what we all shared together in times past. My stomach is in knots already. But these knots of nostalgia and excitement and connection, I’ll hold on to for now. Sometimes glimpsing a little bit into your past, reminds you of all of the qualities of strength, and love, and hope, and the ability to connect with others, that you have always possessed in yourself – qualities that you have to bring with you, as you create your own broad, unseen, unknown future. Looking over the treasure of what you shared in the past, reminds you that fond memories are treasures that never go away.

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

30 Bags

There is this movement called the “30 Days of 30 Bags Challenge” where you get rid of thirty bags of stuff, in the spanse a month. I have been attempting this challenge, with admitted fits and starts, since the beginning of this year. Yesterday, I decided to make up for lost time. My daughter, who is our youngest child of four kids, is home from college for spring break, so I decided to take on the family board game cupboard, and the kids’ books cupboard, with her help and input.

We ended packing up at least 5-6 big bags of stuff. We donated these bags to our local community library. Despite over the years of my pertinent insisting that our kids look in the cupboard for a required reading book, before ordering it on Amazon, it turned out that we had four copies of The Scarlet Letter and five copies of Othello. Hmmm. Someone must have “lost” their copy of Othello. Still, the library was pleased with the donation of “good” books, and my helpful daughter got the prize of a delicious slice of coconut cream pie, which the library was offering up, in celebration of Pi Day (3/14), yesterday.

Cleaning out cupboards is ordinarily an exciting, satisfactory feeling and overall, yesterday was indeed purifying and cleansing, but this cleansing happened with a big ol’ dollop of Bittersweet soap. Invariably, among the books and games were old notebooks with my children’s handwriting, and a whole shelf worth of yearbooks (which still remain here at home.) The above picture is one which I found in one of my own notebooks, that it appears my daughter had “swiped” (she had written a confession in it – “This is my mom’s notebook.”) My daughter had drawn the picture above in the notebook, which was a self-portrait of when she was a little girl in a quirky T-shirt, that had been one of her all-time favorites. The t-shirt had an alligator on it, and the words, “Careful, I bite.” My daughter wasn’t actually a biter, but we both got a kick out of that shirt, and in some weird way, I thought that it made my precious little girl, safer from would-be predators. (My eldest son was the only biter of our four children, and he only once bit another child, other than his siblings. Unfortunately that one time, the victim happened to be the preacher’s kid at Vacation Bible School. My son’s explanation, while rolling his eyes in exasperation of having to explain himself, again and again: “I already told you, I was pretending to be a lion!”)

So yesterday, after completing the chore and getting caught up on the bag challenge, I sighed a sigh of happiness, satisfaction, and also a little heartache for an era of my life, which has now passed on. I tossed out my old notebook, after tearing out one important page of a cute little girl’s doodle. That page is now posted on my blog, and it also has a special spot of its own, on the side of our refrigerator. This picture won’t be in any of my “30 bags” any time soon. We have room.

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

The Only Thing

Happy Valentine’s Day. Today is the day to celebrate love. Acts made with love, and acts made with the absence of love, are what have created all of history. Thankfully, love still prevails. Most of the actions taken in our homes, and in our communities, and in our cities, and in our countries, and in our world, still have the basis of the energy of love. Love is what sustains us. Love is the only thing that will sustain us.

Today, let’s all of us plant seeds of love wherever we go. Focus on the good. Focus on what we love about our family, our friends, our neighbors, our everyday lives and ourselves. Show love to our family, to our friends, to our neighbors, and to ourselves. Appreciate the good in our everyday routines and in the lives we have created for ourselves. Be in awe of these people and creatures and things and vocations that make up the days of our lives. Feel love for our family, for our friends, for our neighbors, for our coworkers, and for ourselves. Allow our family, our friends, our neighbors and ourselves to love us. Let love in. Keep the doors of our hearts open. It’s a gift to feel and to show love for someone or something, and to also feel the joy of them receiving this love gratefully. Celebrate the love that we have for the lives which we have created for ourselves, and for the voracious, abundant life teeming all around us. Love is overflowing and robust. Love teems. Today, on this day in which we publically celebrate love, let’s all plant some more seeds of love, to keep this Garden of Life teeming and growing and blooming and blessing all creatures who are sustained by the everlasting energy of Love. Love is the only thing that will sustain us forevermore.

(And I can’t let this Valentine’s Day pass without saying how much I love to write this daily blog, and how much it means to me, for you, my readers and witnesses, to be part of it. I love my blog. And I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.)

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

Inhale/Exhale

“. . .Just start to feel the natural rhythm of the breath. Notice the shift between the inhale and the exhale. And start to notice that point where the inhale pauses and makes way for the exhale – and the exhale fully releases and makes way for the inhale. Notice that moment in between one and the other. This change is happening all day long. And it is a necessary one. As we shift back and forth from inhale to exhale, we’re given what we need and we get to release what we don’t. . . . you might even use these words as a little affirmation. On the inhale, just hearing in your mind: “I’m receiving what I need.” And on the exhale: “I’m releasing what I don’t.” ” – Chani Nicholas, meditation on Change

This is a wonderful meditation that you can go to any time that you take a pause, and you focus on your breath. When we get anxious and upset we tend to breathe shallowly and we almost kind of hold our breath. We are afraid to let go, but if we think of letting go as releasing everything that we don’t need, it’s such a freeing, peaceful thought. Everything that we need is provided for us when we just breathe. We take what we need from our inhales, and then we exhale and release what don’t need. This constant process of change which happens in our lives is just moving towards what we need, and releasing what we don’t need, in order to live a happy, peaceful, fulfilling life.

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

Monday – Funday

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

With respect to keeping the privacy of loved ones, this is a list of some lessons I learned, or at least was reminded of this past weekend:

+ You don’t have to go it alone. People are mostly kind and merciful and want to help you. Let them in. Let love in.

+ Don’t be quick to judge the crazy lady, in the pikachu hat, who repeats herself constantly in your local eatery. She may just be a beautiful, creative person who has early dementia and is worried about her spouse, who is the love of her life. She has people who care about her and animals whom she deeply loves. And she’s not homeless. She’s probably wealthier than you. She actually has three homes, and is a multimillionaire.

+ Your body is like Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree. It will do everything that it can to keep giving and giving and giving to you, no matter how you treat it, but eventually it will have nothing left to give. Treat your body with respect and care. Don’t treat it with disregard. It is the vehicle that allows you to live life. Without it, nothing else really matters. You will not be able to live a full, free life without a healthy body. All of your accolades, all of your accomplishments, all of your dreams, all of your wealth and possessions mean nothing without a healthy body. Health is your ultimate wealth.

+ People in the medical fields are an astonishing mix of deep compassion and scientifical stoicism. They are a special breed and they are doing their best every single day. And their “best” is typically a lot better than the rest of our “best.” Treat them with gratitude and appreciation. It goes a long way.

+ You never regret being there for people. But you must also show up for yourself. It’s an airline mask cliche (put your mask on first) but it is so true, you cannot take care of others, unless you take care of yourself first. Caretaking is strenuous, stressful, emotional and physical work and it will break you down, if you aren’t careful. Make sure that when you consider how to take care of others, you put yourself into that equation.

+ Never, ever give up hope. Losing is going to hurt whether you hoped or not. So keep hoping. When there is life, there is hope.

The Gift of Song

I read this quote the other day and I thought that it was one of the most beautiful, “true” quotes which I have read in a long time. (and you know that I love quotes) How many beautiful songs have you sung to for decades of your life, and you have never even considered the lyrics? There are some songs which I love to sing along to, even though I am fully aware of their unfortunate lyrics. Honestly I’m embarrassed that I like some of these songs, but I do.

Today, I clicked on a video of Elton John singing “Yellow Brick Road”. I’ve loved this song since I first heard it, but today is the first day that I read through the lyrics and considered their meaning. I found out that Elton John wrote this song as an “FU” to music industry executives. I like the song even more now.

I’ve always loved Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide” but it isn’t until reaching my middle age that I’ve started sobbing/singing along with the tune any time that I hear it (It’s really hard to sing with a huge lump in your throat). The beauty of music is that it is always there for you, for whatever mood you are in, and it connects all of us, whether we are just humming along, or we are soulfully and personally experiencing the lyrics. Music is such a beautiful form of love in motion.

“Landslide” lyrics

I took my love, I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older too

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older too
Oh! I’m getting older too

Oh-oh, take my love, take it down
Oh-oh, climb a mountain and you turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide bring it down
Oh-ohh, the landslide bring it down

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