Tag: middle age

Mutual Appreciation

“I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.” – Jane Goodall

What I like best about being in my 50s and being a woman, is that I feel that I have actually and finally reached that stage of true, grateful, supportive, empathetic, enthusiastic, appreciative appreciation of other women. Today, I was in the grocery store and I stopped at a sample station. The woman who gave me the sample was probably in her 60s. Yes, she had wrinkles and gray hair, but I was noticing her beautiful bone structure, and her surprisingly long eyelashes, and that knowing sparkle in her eyes that only comes from living a lot of life. We were having fun with each other, sharing pleasantries. She said to me, “You are really beautiful. You have wonderful, effervescent energy.” I replied to her that I was just noticing her own beauty. And that was absolutely true. There was no cattiness. There was no competition. There was no jealousy, nor one-upmanship. I’m not a lesbian. I don’t think that she was either. We weren’t flirting. We were just admiring each other, like one might admire an exquisite antiquity, aged well and rare and daring and real. We were valuing each other, and in doing so, we were valuing each other’s exquisite examples of femininity.

It’s sad to me that it takes being older to truly understand the amazingness of women. Men totally get it. They get it right away. That’s why so many weak men, out of fear, have tried to downplay and to harass women into submission and subligation. Men know our power and our worth and our other-worldliness more than we do. And often it takes almost a lifetime for us women (and sadly, not all of us) to finally realize it. I love that I have come to this realization, albeit later than I wish. I have come to a clear understanding that it is we women who have brought all of life that there is, on to this Earth. And that is so powerful. That is true magnificence. I love that we women have been trusted with this greatest of responsibilities by the Universe. I love how multi-faceted and complicated and ever-changing we women are, and we will ever be. We weren’t made to be simpletons. We are beautifully perplexing. I love my sisters dearly. It is now that I fully realize that it is time to help my sisters, of all ages, to love themselves, by showing my own deepest, most loving appreciation and reverence for the women whom I come in contact with, every day of my life, and also showing my own most loving, deepest appreciation and reverence for myself, as I go through my daily life. It is time for me to let my sisters know that I “see” them and to allow myself to also be vulnerably “seen” by them. What could be more powerful?

Sisters, I love you. Sisters, I see you. Sisters, rise in your power and in your beauty and in your strength. Sisters, the world needs us like never before. Let us hold hands and let us be the conduit of the power that is life, that is love, that is truth, that is meaning, that is eternity. We were made to carry it all.

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

Farewell

Yesterday we gave our Ethan Allen dining room set to a worthwhile charity. Next week, my husband and I will be married for 31 years. We bought that dining set a few years into our marriage. It was one of our first “major, significant” purchases of our marriage. And honestly, this set signified so much more than just a table and chairs and a place to eat. It was paid for by one of my husband’s first bonuses from work and it cost almost the entire bonus. It was one of those moments that I knew that my husband’s chips were all in, on me and our children. We were “it” for him.

We took our dining room set to four different houses, in three different states. We hosted on it, countless Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving dinners and other various celebrations along the way. Although the set was made of top quality solid wood and we were generally careful with it, like us, it was definitely showing its age. It had a fair number of scratches (and I could have named most of their occurrences) and as the kids grew up and out, it became more of a “catch all” than any part of a fine dining experience. In our current house, the dining room is a 12 foot square, and so the long rectangular shape of the table, always felt somewhat teetering on its edge, when all of its leaves were in it. (Sometimes, I would worriedly envision the Thanksgiving Dinner plunging to its untimely demise, since our dining room is two steps up from the main floor) And while the dining table was a simple, traditional style, it wasn’t old enough to be considered “mid-century” style. In short, it was hopelessly out of place and outdated.

And so yesterday, we gave away our Ethan Allen dining room set to a worthwhile charity. And today I am reflecting on what it represented to me: love, generosity, quality, celebration, abundance, memories, solidity, constancy, reliability, artistry and craft. Despite contrary belief, sometimes it is the “things” that point you to what matters. If life is nothing else, it is a nuance.

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

Empty to Full

Empty nest is often portrayed as a grieving process. Empty nest is often a time that one is expected to feel a little lost and afloat at sea. Even the thought of an actual empty nest is such a sad, mental picture – a lifeless little blob of browning grass, slowly turning to dust. But my experience with empty nest (and what I am witnessing my friends’ experiencing) is while definitely being a time of transition and of BIG feelings, entering into the empty nest is anything but lifeless and empty. Empty nest is a time of refilling the empty spots with the rediscovery of yourself and the latent interests that you had long buried. Empty nest is a time of celebrating the family which you created, and successfully delivered to the starting line of their own adult lives, by leaving behind all of the daily duties and worries and time juggling that raising a family entails. Empty nest is the end of a lot of the “make do”. When we are raising our families, we parents often “make do”. Our priorities are our children’s needs. We live in neighborhoods close to good schools, sports facilities and other families. We buy enormous family cars, (which quickly fill with random petrified French fries, food wrappers and stinky cleats) and these battered tanks of cars, often go in opposite directions on the weekends, as we move our broods around to their events and birthday parties and games. We take “family vacations”, with the idea of getting away, but still being able to keep the kids entertained and on a reasonable sleep/food schedule. We typically spend any leftover money (ha!) on ourselves, only after we are sure that our children have all of their needs met. We try to sneak little bits of time for ourselves, only after we have supported everyone else’s needs and activities. And we don’t regret doing any and all of this. Our families are the greatest loves of our lives. Our families are our most enduring creations. Our families are our hearts and our stories, walking around on legs.

My husband and I spent this past weekend with our youngest son and his girlfriend. A couple of weekends ago, we spent the weekend with our middle son. A month ago we hung around NYC with our eldest and his fiancée, after having spent a fun week with our daughter. When you are raising four kids, one-on-one time with any of them is a rarity. You do your best, but time and space is a commodity in a big family. One of the biggest joys I have experienced as an empty nester is getting to experience more focused one-on-one time with each of our children. Getting to know our children better as individuals, instead of just a part of the blob of “the kids”, has been one of my biggest surprise blessings of the empty nest. And of course, getting them all together at times like the holidays, or witnessing our children getting together with each other, makes my heart glow with comfort that they will always have each other to lean on, even when my husband and I are long gone. Remnants of “our family” will always remain in family lore, which I hope will go on and on for generations.

Currently, our kitchen remodel is getting close to being finished. Our home is being transitioned from “make do” to “make a wish come true.” When we bought our home, we were renting it first. It needed a lot of work, but it was big enough and it was in the right zip code, for the right schools. We eventually decided to buy it, mostly so we didn’t have to move again. We filled our home with a hodgepodge of “make do” furniture that we collected along the way of living in three different states. Our home is filled with furniture that shows the wear and tear of teenage boys and their sweaty friends, making good use of it, always with a couple of dogs trying to get in on the action. (with dogs, it’s always “the smellier the better”) I recently tried to donate a couple of our old leather couches to a thrift store. They didn’t want them. Sigh.

Our home always felt “temporary” to me. We moved a few times when the kids were young, so it occurred to me that we may easily move again. We rented our home first. And truthfully, despite its lovely views of a teeming nature preserve, I never felt like I gave my heart fully to our house. In my mind, our home was a “stop gap” until we got the kids all launched. But then suddenly, the kids were launching like rockets. They were plunging off the diving board towards the pool of their own lives, in rapid succession. In the last few years, my husband and I have had to have real conversations, about our own real next steps. And this felt awkward. When you have lived “the family formula” since 1996, it’s hard to fathom coming to the end of the formula. It’s hard to start a new equation that seems simple, 1 + 1 = 2, but is really filled with so many more possibilities than we were ever afforded before (it’s so overwhelming that sometimes the formula seems more like 1 + 1 = infinity). And yet, we eventually came to the conclusion that we weren’t ready to sell our home. We were just ready to give it a refresh and a makeover. We decided to take our home along on the journey, of our own transition into this new stage in life.

When something is empty, it is natural to want to fill it. Empty to full to empty to full to empty to full, is just another cycle of the endless cycles which we experience in life. We experience the mixed feelings of loneliness, quietness, peacefulness, simplicity, that empty brings, and we start filling it again, until the fullness feels too brimming, too cluttered, too overwhelming, too claustrophobic, and so we start the process of emptying again, so we have some space to fill our lives with something new. And this process comes with a lot of feels. It comes with a lot of conflicting feels. As you age, you better understand that “happy/sad” is a real feeling. In fact, in life, “happy/sad” is often the prevailing feeling as you go through the many cycles of filling up the empty spots, and emptying out what is no longer needed. And no matter where you are in the empty/full cycle, you realize that there is always room for feelings. In fact, it is these feelings that are the true guides to the next steps you are meant to take in this journey of the cycles of your life.

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

Monday’s Musings

+ “An important fact of life is that it’s often difficult to know what will make you happy, but quite easy to identify what will make you miserable.” – Morgan Housel

I took this quote from an excellent article (excerpt from a book) which I read this morning. The article is so good, I sent it unsolicited to my four adult children this morning. The quote is from Morgan Housel’s latest book, The Art of Spending Money. These are listed as the key takeaways of the article:


“Happiness in life can be elusive, but misery often follows clear patterns. 
Chasing status, wealth, or others’ approval with your money almost always undermines independence and contentment. 
Treating money as your identity or a social scorecard also leads to regret, while using it as a tool to create freedom has the opposite effect.”

The author argues that it is much easier to eliminate what is bad for you, or what makes you sick, or what is unhealthy for you (i.e. certain toxic relationships, your detrimental habits, what you eat and drink and consume, etc.) than to come up with a perfect formula of what to do in your every day that will make you happy. In other words, happiness can sometimes more easily come from a process of elimination. See the entire article here (it is well worth the read):

https://bigthink.com/books/how-to-spend-your-money-to-be-miserable/?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter&user_id=66c4c2a3600ae15075906bd3

****On an aside, I am a huge proponent of gratitude lists. I do believe that basking in gratitude on a daily basis, is one of the best vehicles to take you towards what makes you happy and peaceful and contented and filled with awe.

+ Like so many people, my breath was taken away a little bit when I heard that the actress Diane Keaton had passed. She was so unique and iconic and it wasn’t a forced, rehearsed pretense to be so. Diane Keaton was just one of those rare birds, who was absolutely authentic, comfortable in her own skin, and true to herself (Brian Philips of The Ringer called her “effortlessly original“) and we all recognized and resonated with that fact. As Ingrid Bergman said, “The world worships an original.” In Diane Keaton’s own words:

“Memories are simply moments that refuse to be ordinary.”

“What is perfection, anyway? It’s the death of creativity, that’s what I think, while change on the other hand, is the cornerstone of new ideas. God knows I want new ideas and new experiences.”

“I never understood the idea that you’re supposed to mellow as you get older. Slowing down isn’t something I relate to at all. The goal is to continue in good and bad, all of it. To continue to express myself, particularly. To feel the world. To explore. To be with people. To take things far. To risk. To love. I just want to know more and see more.”

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

Erase, Repeat, Deny

One of my least favorite things in life is just “sweeping everything under the rug.” People love to say, almost righteously in their “kindness”: “I just hate confrontation.” And I think to myself, “Of course you hate confrontation. Almost every healthy person whom I know, with any level of kindness and empathy, hates confrontation. Nobody likes confrontation. It’s uncomfortable. It sparks defensiveness. It’s painful to think someone finds something that’s going on is ‘less than perfect.’ It rouses our own meanest inner critic and insecurities.” But here’s the rub, the relationship starts breaking down, as people try to walk on eggshells, on a bumpy rug, covering a floor of unhealed resentments. When we don’t address situations, the relationship starts being based on our own one-sided idea and thoughts of what is going on, without any earnest communication about what the other person is feeling and thinking. And in the worst situations, toxic controllers use this very human “I just hate confrontation” against us. They can keep the “erase/repeat/deny” cycle going, because we have shown that we are continually willing to just throw things under the rug, again and again.

Now one of my other least favorite things in life is pettiness. If we hold on to every little aggravation and every little annoyance and we make everyone around us miserable and we make their behavior accountable for our own happiness, that just turns us into being one of the toxic controllers. It is best to confront the truly unacceptable things that happen in a relationship or in a situation (the things that if we are honest with ourselves, we know will definitely turn into major bumps under the rug). The other minor things are our own responsibility to work through and to let go. (It’s often occurred to me that all of us would like to have magic wands to turn everyone in our lives into exactly whom we want them to be, without realizing that they too, want to use their own magic wands on us!) It’s not an easy dance. However, if we value truly authentic, real relationships, then healthy, compassionate confrontation is the only way to go. Otherwise, the monsters who have been swept under the rug will have nowhere else to go, and so they will eventually come out with great, indomitable force. And sometimes, these monster resentments have grown so large and so angry and so full of indignation and emotion, that they can cause a final rupture that is irreparable. And these terrible kinds of ruptures make a normal, healthy confrontation look like a sweet little kitten. These ruptures are hurricanes, in comparison to a small storm of confrontation that will pass on by, without any real damage, once it is cleared.

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

A Fire is a Fire

I just recently had to have a complicated root canal that involved several dental visits and two hardcore antibiotics. So when I mentioned to my husband that I was now feeling soreness on my bottom left line of molars, he said to me, “Don’t wait until a 5 alarm fire to make the appointment. A fire is a fire, but smaller fires are easier to put out.”

I like to think of myself as the wise, deep thinker of our relationship, but the facts are, my husband is every bit as wise and deep as I am, probably more so. (he just doesn’t pontificate as much as I do) And this fire analogy is one that certainly deserves to be in this thought museum that we call Adulting – Second Half.

We do this to ourselves all of the time, don’t we? (at least I do) We often, deep down know that things are beginning to smolder somewhere – in our bodies, in our relationships, in our homes, in our jobs, in our daily habits, in our finances, etc. but we don’t really want to deal with the little fires. They are annoying. They’re not that big of a deal. Anyway, we don’t have time (nor desire) to deal with them right now. We think that if we just ignore these little bothers and issues, they might just disappear.

When raising my kids and something relatively minor happened with one of them, say a parking ticket, or a bad grade, or sleeping in late, etc., I would always admonish them to take the lesson early. There are small consequences for small mistakes, but if you don’t learn the lesson, the Universe is sure to send you a bigger version of the teaching, until you finally learn the lesson and change direction. I would say, “Consider yourself lucky that the Universe usually sends small hints and experiences to learn from, unless you don’t heed the lesson and you are finally hit over the head with a big ol’ hammer of a lesson for not heeding the breadcrumbs which were being sent to you, all along the way.”

So I heeded my husband’s good reminder about degrees of fires, and I went back to my dentist yesterday. “You again?” the entire office staff teased me, with mixed looks of pity, concern, and empathy. I sat down (once again) in my dentist’s chair and I told him what my husband said about fires. “Well, let’s take a look,” he said kindly. And what the x-ray showed was not decay. My teeth were all healthy. It appeared that my back molars were sore because my bite was “off” from my recently replaced crown. He shaved down a little bit of my back molar, charged me nothing to do it, and sent me on my way – happy, relieved and smiling. Another fire put out!

And now on to a plumbing issue, although this one doesn’t really fit the fire analogy quite as well . . . .

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

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ Today is the last day of September in 2025. Tomorrow marks the last and final quarter of the year. It’s not lost on me that I woke up this morning recalling a strange and terrible dream. In my dream, a serious looking, bearded young man, dressed in black, was standing at our glass doors holding a large gun and a precious baby. I let him in and he sat on the couch and started an unknown conversation with my husband. I proceeded to call 911, but the dispatchers were distracted in their own conversation. They were laughing with each other and they were not taking me seriously. I was watching this young man cautiously, not sure what his next move would be. And then I woke up.

I haven’t sorted out what this dream means to me personally, but I do believe that it speaks to choice. And our choices are ultimately what makes us who we are, right? We can choose destruction or we can choose innocence. We can choose darkness and hate, or we can choose new life. We can choose the hope of new beginnings, or we can choose the despair of a dark ending. And sometimes these are the consequential decisions which we make, even sitting in the living rooms of our own homes.

+ I was introduced this morning to this wonderful new musical “band.” Various musicians play parts of a beautiful song, from all different places in the world. They call it “Playing for Change.” The link above is Playing for Change performing “Soulshine.” The link below is Playing for Change performing “Waiting for the World to Change.”

I am a huge mix of utterly grateful and completely envious of those of you musicians (unfortunately no musical bones appear in my body, sigh.) and all of your wonderful talent. There is no greater connection to the divine on Earth than music. Music is the universal language of the world. Music is how the divine communicates to all of us on Earth, because we all can understand it and we can all feel it and we can all vibrate with it and we all can connect with each other through music. I absolutely adore watching musicians perform, whether on big stages or on street corners. It’s witnessing someone plugged into our universal soul. And it is beautiful. Musicians, thank you for sharing your gifts. Thank you for dedication, passion and vulnerability in sharing. Your gift is our gift. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

+ We were boating over the weekend with our son and one of his friends. His friend was talking about seeing some old family friends in the town that we were in. He said something profound. My son’s friend said, “It’s good to know people who knew me before I knew me.” I thought that was a beautiful thought. It takes a while to “know ourselves” and the people in our lives are often the mirrors to ourselves. They are often the way-showers. Their perceptions of us, and their reactions to us help us to discover and “find ourselves”. The people in our lives help us down the path as to what actually resonates and aligns with whom we really are, deep in our cores. Recently, along these lines, a dear friend asked me to pray for her to get “unstuck.” I told her that instead I would pray that she sees herself, the clear way that I see her, “Beautiful. Kind. Authentic. Accomplished. And not stuck at all.”

+ Finally, here are some new exhibits, in this thought museum which we call, Adulting-Second Half:

“Y’all ever wonder what life would be like if you didn’t overthink everything? I think about it all the time.”

“Anger is an emotion of justice.”

“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.” – Sherrie Campbell

“Your feelings are always valid, but your behavior is not.”

“Blood isn’t always thicker than water, though it is often stickier.”

“You have to be odd to be number one.” – Dr. Seuss

Let’s all meditate a little bit today, before we walk into the final quarter of the year. Let’s meditate on our choices going forward. Let’s feel grateful for musicians and the people who knew us before we knew us. Let’s meditate on what makes our own souls shine and let’s let them shine – brightly. That is how the world will change.

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

Flashback to Favorite Things Friday

Good morning!! Happy Friday!! A lot of times I get complaints that I no longer do my “favorite things Friday” posts. I still LOVE Fridays. I still LOVE my many things, but I’m a one-woman show. As much as an enthusiastic, avid consumer that I am, it is surprisingly hard to come up with new favorites for every single week. Still, I do have a favorite thing to mention this Friday, once I relay to you my favorite story of the week. My favorite story comes from our middle son, who is a first-year resident doctor at a large, local hospital. He said that every day as he was doing his rounds in the hospital, he was constantly hearing this beautiful, piano like chime going off, every once in a while, throughout the day and evening. Our son’s curiosity got to the best of him and he asked one of the nurses what the chime indicated. She looked at him, smiled and said, “Oh, that’s when a new baby is born!” Beautiful! Hopeful! What could be better music to our ears?!

Okay, my favorite for today comes from my acupuncturist. Her music speaker in her office was broken, so when I was getting treated the other day, she pulled out a little gadget (Dr. T loves her gadgets. I like to give people nicknames. I call her “Gadget Girl.”) She said, “I normally use this for kids, but I think you’ll like it.” She was right. (I’m a huge kid at heart) The gadget is a white noise speaker (with all different sounds available) that also projects aurora borealis like colors and lights up on the ceiling. I promptly ordered one from Amazon when I got home. If you want to experience having what it feels like to have your own planetarium, in your very own bedroom, buy one of these little gems. There are all types to chose from on Amazon ranging from $20-$30. It’s the little things that bring us our daily joys!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends and readers. Shoot for the stars and listen for the tinkling chimes!

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

Foundations to Mountains

“Firm up your foundations, and then you can return to moving mountains in the outer world.” -Daily Horoscope

The line above is from my horoscope today. I believe that this line is not just meant for today, but it is an allegory for my life (and probably anyone else’s life). Right now, as we are renovating our kitchen and I am getting needed minor health appointments taken care of, and my family and I are all back to our regular places and our regular schedules, I am “firming up my foundations.” In the earlier part of this year, mixed with a lot of travel, celebrations, reunions, revelations etc. I was moving the mountains, and exploring different horizons, going through “the peaks and valleys” that always come with major endings and beginnings and new adventures. What I love about this constant, reliable cycle in life is how appreciative you are, when the mountain climbing gets exhausting and taxing and you just crave “home” and “comfort” and “routine” and “rest” to crawl into and hole up in. You find yourself basking in your foundations for a little while until you feel centered and aligned and you have taken the time to process everything which you have experienced, and you have integrated all of this into the person who you are, and then you feel healthy and energized and a little antsy and a little curious and a little inspired and then you are ready to excitedly return to the foot of the next mountain which you are eager to explore. Foundations to mountains and back again. It’s a merry-go-round that I like to ride.

“Just like the seasons, life is a continuous cycle of birth, growth, decay, and renewal. Each stage is essential and leads to the next, creating a beautiful and interconnected journey”. – Cess

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

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ My husband read an interesting article the other day about the different stages of retirement. It made a lot of sense. The article said that retirement is actually quite expensive in the beginning (even if your kids have all moved out, and are on their own, and they even have their own cell phone plans). The first stage of retirement is “go-go”, where you are still young and healthy enough to make up for lost time and freedom. This is the stage that people spend a lot of money on travel and hobbies and renovations and going out, etc. People are then often shocked about how expensive this first stage of retirement can be. It can make them panic and wonder if they have saved enough for retirement. The next stage is “slow go” where you have aged some more, and have experienced some more, and now the novelty of “everything that you can do in retirement” is wearing off and you find a more moderate routine in your every day retired life. The final stage of retirement is “no go”, but that’s also the stage that healthcare costs and nursing care costs are at their highest. I found this all to be really interesting because as a 54-year-old woman whose youngest of four children is graduating from college next year, I have found I feel a bit of relief from a lot of the expenses that raising a big family entails. But my husband is not retired yet. We are not living on a fixed income. And in talking to retired family and friends, many have discussed that they find retirement to be more expensive than they thought it would be. I like to think that my husband and I are doing a lot of our “go-go” stage right now (we had our children relatively young) while he is still working, so that when it comes to full retirement we can ease into the “slow go” phase relatively quickly. Time will tell . . . . Readers, what have your experiences been? Any wisdom to share? My husband and I have also noticed that a lot of our friends and contemporaries are delaying retirement. I was at my dear dentist’s office yesterday and he told me that he doesn’t want to retire because he still enjoys what he does, and he doesn’t have an alternate plan. Our dentist told me that his office and his practice feels more like “home” to him than anywhere else. I’m certainly not complaining. Our talented dentist treated our family all the way from baby teeth to wisdom teeth removal. The day that he retires (same goes for my hair stylist) will truly be bittersweet days for me.

+ Yesterday, I got myself into a tizzy because I couldn’t reach my husband. His phone went directly into voicemail (10 times). When I got home, I ran inside where he was nonchalantly cutting up some vegetables and watching some football. I hit him and hugged him at the same time. We compared phones and mine showed me calling him (10 times) and his showed no calls coming in. We still don’t know what happened. This is the hard part of today’s world. We expect to be able to reach our loved ones at all times, and our imaginations go into overdrive when we can’t reach them. When one of these rare times happen that I can’t reach someone whom I love, and as I hyper-ventilate, and as I vacillate between worst, most awful case scenario/girl, please calm your crazy a$$ down, I think to myself, “Wow, I truly love and value these wonderful people in my life. I don’t know what I would do without them.” What I can take out of these annoying experiences of occasional tech failure (and also my annoyance at myself for being so phone dependent) is the reminder of the gratefulness that I have for the beautiful people in my life. When you entertain the idea of losing someone you deeply love, the little things that irk you about them, lose their potency real quick.

+ I bought these gems the other day when I was at a cute seaside store with one of my favorite friends. These quotes seem particularly apropos for times like these:

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