Tag: middle age

Soul Sunday

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

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Robert Frost says it best:

My emotion has found my thought, and my thought has found my words in the poem which I wrote this morning (see below). What are the thoughts and the words of your own emotions today? Write a poem in order to find out. You will most likely be surprised.

WHO ARE YOU?

Who are you?

Are you what your friends say? Which friend?

And does it really matter what they say, in the end?

Who are you? Are you young, or are you old?

That answer is more about the judger’s age, I’m told.

Who are you?

Do you know? Do you rely on others’ to tell you who you may be?

Or do you sit with yourself, and learn about yourself organically?

Who are you?

The answer to this question is only for you to know.

The rest is all conjecture, projection, and changes as the wind does blow.

Who are you?

Who are you?

You are who . . . .

It Bears Repeating

Hi friends. I slept in. I am fatigued. This year has been full of big changes for our own family and for those whom we love, and I think that this is all catching up on me right now. So, in conservation of time and energy, I am going to reprint one of my more popular blog posts which tends to trend at this time of year (which is fitting!). Here it is:

Thank Yourself

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

Friday Smells Great

‘Tis the season!! Happy Black Friday, although this year it seems like it has been Black Friday for weeks on end now. I hope that you are getting lots of good bargains and having fun doing it, on this fabulous Friday (the best day of the week.)

On Fridays, I try to step away from the “f-word”, i.e. “Feelings.” On Fridays on the blog, I discuss the stuff which I like such as products, books, songs, websites, etc. Please check out my previous Friday posts for more good stuff.

My favorite for today is rareESSENCE aromatherapy inhalers. Smell might be my favorite sense that we have, and these inhalers are wonderful. I have been using my rareESSENCE aromatherapy DEFENSE inhaler, since I purchased it in New York City in late October, and I haven’t been sick despite being on a few filled flights, at packed college fraternity parties, crowded bars and restaurants, hospitals, sold out movie theaters, and being around more people in the last 3-4 weeks than I have been around in months. I don’t know if this inhaler has anything to do with my wellness, but it sure smells great! And great smells have always done wonders for my wellness.

I hope that you enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving. May the wonders of the season be more comforting and captivating than ever before, for all of us.

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

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the comfort food of holidays. Thanksgiving is warm slippers, a hot mug of coffee, non-glitzy, down-to-earth, deep sigh of relief, wholesome goodness. Thanksgiving is a cozy, fuzzy blanket, wonderful smells wafting in the air, the fading beautiful colors of a summer well spent. Thanksgiving is easy laughter, easy going energy, a building of anticipation of a fabulous feast and an exciting holiday season ahead. Thanksgiving marks the start of the end of a year. It is the awards show of the year, where the award receivers are looking back at all which the year has brought to them, and thanking everything and everyone who deserves to be thanked for helping to get the award receivers to this point of evolution and elevation in their own lives. Thanksgiving is the joy of a parade, the celebration of man’s best friend, and the communion and camaraderie of fans of the same teams. Thanksgiving is the reminder that there are few feelings better than the overwhelming reassurance of all of our blessings constantly provided to us. Gratefulness is probably the largest ingredient of love, and Thanksgiving makes this fact abundantly clear.

As I say (and I feel deeply) every year, thank you friends and readers for supporting and being a vital part of my blog. I love this blog and so by extension, I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Now go get going on your turkey . . . . . See you tomorrow!

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

Aunties/Allomothers

I haven’t been a wonderful aunt. I love our nieces and our nephews, but I haven’t been a vital part of any of their lives. I’ve sent cards and gifts and loved on them during infrequent visits, but I don’t have a close, intimate relationship with any of them. This wasn’t something that I did, or chose to do consciously. I have my excuses: a large family of my own with a special needs child, geographic distance, sibling rivalries and distant relationships with our siblings, etc. But, whatever. I haven’t gone out of my way to be the kind of aunt whom I would like to be. This is not something that I am proud of, but in the words of my husband, when I confessed this fact to him recently is this: “It’s never too late.” It’s never too late.

And it isn’t too late. It’s only in the last five years or so, that both my husband and I have leaned heavily on the wisdom, and the love, and the strength, and the kindness of our own aunts, while dealing with various health issues and declines of our surviving parents. I am in my fifties and I do not know what I would have done without our aunts, especially in this last decade. Our aunts have allowed us to be children again, in a time when we still (surprisingly) desperately need “the adults” in our lives. They have given us the kind of unconditional love and support and comfort that only maternal, elder figures are intrinsically able to do, and I am forever grateful to all of them. Aunts, I love you and I respect you immensely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Elephant tribes are mostly made of adult female elephants and the babies. Bull elephants are kicked out of the tribe when they reach early adulthood. Elephant mothers can rely on her “sisters” to take care of her babies, when she is not able to do so. Elephant mothers know that “her sisters” will protect her babies fiercely like they are her own. Elephant babies know that the tribe is full of female protectors who are helping their mothers to raise them. The elephant babies know that they have a strong, divine, feminine support surrounding and encircling them, to ensure their safety and well-being. An elephant tribe is mostly focused on protecting and nurturing their young. And elephant babies take a long time to grow up. This system is called “allomothering.” All of the female elephants in a tribe are “allomothers.”

I guess that I always knew that my husband and I, and our own babies, had this female tribe encircling us, but they have always given us the grace of space and understanding. Our aunts have always given us the respect and the autonomy to be our own people. Our aunts have given us an uncomplicated love. And I can continue this tradition with my own nieces and nephews. I can surround my own nieces and nephews with a force field of love, no matter how far away. I hope that our nieces and nephews know that no matter what and no matter when, they will always be the babies of my tribe, and I am willing, and I am able, and I am proud to do my duties of protection, nurturing, and support, no matter when that time comes for me to stand tall, with my ears flapping and my feet stomping and my head charging. I’ve had amazing examples to learn from, and so I must continue the tradition. It’s never too late.

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

To Be Home

I am home. I feel so utterly grateful to be home. There is no better feeling in the world than the sanctuary and the familiarity of home. My husband and I just experienced perhaps the most emotionally draining experience of our lives, and now we are home. Dorothy had it right. There is no place like home.

It feels good to get a little bit of comfort and groundedness before the hoopla of the holidays comes into our lives. The holidays can be like your favorite, dramatic, over-the-top friend. This friend is so much fun, offers so much to do, brings so much stuff, and so much activity, and so much glitz and glamor, and so much emotion and nostalgia, so much, so much, so much . . . . . you love the crazy storm that your manic friend brings into your life, but every once in a while you need to duck for cover. You have to just melt into the sanctum of the solidness and the stillness of being home, in your own comfortable spot in the world where your energy fits just right, and gets recharged. At home, your energy gets revved up for yet another event in which your Holiday Homie gets you whisked into, during the season. We all are lucky to have the holidays to celebrate, and we are all equally lucky to have our home places to fall into, in order to rest and to revive and to regain ourselves. There is no place like home for rest, for revitalization and for the ability to find our way back to our true, core selves again.

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.

I am feeling nostalgic. When I was a little girl, we sometimes would take the trolley into downtown Pittsburgh, PA around Christmas time. We would get red pistachios which would dye our fingers red, as my sister and I would try to fit them on our hands so that the shells would look like brightly painted red fingernails. We then would go from window to window to look at the magical, wondrous displays at all of the major department stores as the snow softly fell on our wooly winter coats. It was such a special time . . . .

Soul Sunday

This morning on our way to visit our loved one at the hospital, we passed by something that was the perfect image of an “inside family joke”. If I tried to explain it, you wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t be funny to you at all. But I took a picture of it, and I texted it to our family chat, and I got a lot of feedback and “hahas”. I love inside jokes. I think they are some of the best forms of intimacy. There is nothing like an inside joke that makes you feel like you belong to a group of people, whether they be family or friends.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I decided to scour the internet for a good poem about “inside jokes” and my favorite poem which I found was written by a child and it was published on a website called KidzEraMag.com. Inside jokes are a universal form of love and belonging, no matter what your age.

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

The Final Gift

When you are experiencing someone who is at the ending days of their life, it makes you remember to try not to live your own life focused on the trivial stuff. When you see someone who is closing their life out, you realize all that mattered was the experiences, the passions and the relationships that the person had and shared. The things that we often put a lot of focus on in our lives, such as our worries, our grievances, our stuff, our appearances, our righteousness, etc. really holds so little meaning in the end of it all. As hard as it is to watch someone fade, perhaps the final gift which they give to us, is the reminder to keep our minds, our actions, and our lives, on what really matters – savoring our every moment, and while doing so, staying in the spirit of love and awe and gratefulness for the miracle of life.

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

Elevator Talk

I went to my annual OB/GYN appointment yesterday. That was fun. Ha! My gynecologist is a lovely young woman with a three-year-old child who is already ready to sit on Santa’s lap this year with his wish list. I wonder if my doctor tries to get clues about what menopause will look/feel like for herself, when she examines us middle-agers both physically, then also emotionally, by asking pointed questions like, “No really, how ARE you? Do we need to up your hormones?”

My examination went well. Apparently, I’m “normal.” (I’ll leave it at that.) As I was leaving the doctor’s office, a young man was leaving the office as well. He appeared to be a pharmaceutical salesperson. We were both walking behind an elderly couple who were holding hands as they slowly, and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y meandered down the long hallway towards the elevators. “I’m going to need you to be the rude one first, and swing wide around them,” the salesperson playfully said to me with raised eyebrows. “Sorry guy,” I said. “You didn’t realize that I’m not a bitch.” And so we all made peace with slowly making our way to the elevators at a drunken (possibly passed out) snail’s pace.

When we got into the elevator, the elderly couple were still holding hands. “I love that you are still in love,” I said to them, and then the young man and I both smiled at them in admiration and appreciation. “Married sixty-three years!” the woman exclaimed. “And we courted for four years before that,” the elderly man boasted.

“That’s incredible and rare,” I said. “I hope to get to that anniversary with my husband.”

“At this point in my life, I just feel astonished and lucky to wake up and to get to live another day,” the woman said, honestly and profoundly.

And that’s when the young man chimed in and said, “I think that we all should feel that way, no matter what our age. I mean none of us are guaranteed anything, right?” And that’s when we all smiled and nodded appreciatively at the wisest being in the elevator. And for some really heartwarming reason, at that moment in an otherwise ordinary day, I felt so good and so connected with every generation in our world (both young and old and those like me, the “in-betweeners”). I had an extra spring in my step as I got off of the elevator. I turned around. I smiled brightly. And I genuinely and warmly wished them all a wonderful afternoon, and then I happily headed to my car, feeling like all was right in our world.

It’s the little things that make us feel alright. The little things count a lot (if we remember to count them). As it is said, the little things are the big things.

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