“Everyone’s a poet – no exceptions.” – Jack Hirschman, prolific American poet
Welcome to Soul Sunday. My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry. And believe it or not, Sundays are quite a popular day on the blog. The secret’s out of the bag. You really like poetry. You really do. Today is the perfect day for you to write a poem. You are a poet. You are an artist. Just do it. Create. Here is my poem for the day:
“The Invested Rescuers”
When you are in a scary, deep, dark pit,
And beautiful angels help to pull you out,
With their lovely golden corded rope,
Because the angels are so loving and concerned,
about you, they forget that they have pulled you out.
And so they continue to call down to you,
desperately looking for you, at the bottom of the ugly pit,
not realizing that you are now standing calmly behind them,
on the firm, solid ground, relieved to feel the hope
of the sun’s brightest rays, and feeling so warm and thankful for
the angels who cared enough to lovingly pull you out of the dark.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
This morning we are all dispersing. My husband and I are taking our eldest son to the airport (sniff, sniff). My middle sons are going to play a soccer game, and my daughter is headed to her job at a local bank. This is the way of families. We each head out in all different directions, and these different directions get more wild and longer and more disseminated, as our kids grow and move on to their own nuclear lives. Which is why the weeks like we just experienced, all cozied up together (including our beloved family dogs), without any real distractions, to just soak up each other’s stories, and energy, and laughter, and inside jokes, are more precious than gold. It’s like our shared familial love just got a little re-charging. We all got the boost we needed. We all got the reminder that each of us is deeply loved and each of us has a cheering squad, along our own individual paths in life. Today, I am feeling a little melancholy, but mostly deeply blessed. If I am honest, I sometimes get irritated when I see people wearing shirts or necklaces that state, “Blessed.” I think to myself, “You’re not special. Don’t be smug. We are all blessed.” But today, in the warmth of my freshly love-bathed heart, I get it. Those shirts and necklaces are meant to be a reminder to each of us, that we are all deeply blessed. Our lives are filled with blessings. And in the times like this morning, when I am most acutely aware of my greatest blessings, I am humbled and I am in awe, at just how good life can feel and it can be. And I know that this hopeful, beautiful feeling will sustain me, even in the times when my life’s blessings are a little more subtle and hiding behind some of life’s great challenges. But for today, I feel like wearing “Blessed” boldy and proudly. Today, my blessings are glowing to me. And it feels really good and I want this same feeling for everyone.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
One of the astrology websites that I like to read (Astrotwins), posed this question yesterday:
“If you could accomplish three things by the end of 2022, what would they be?” A true running marathon will not be on my list. Not in 2022. Not ever. A Netflix marathon is likely to just organically happen, without any intentions involved, especially if a series grabs my attention and my rabid impulsion “to see what happens next” gets to the best of me. Regardless of any kind of marathon, the above question in bold, is a good question to marinate on, at this end time of the year. Our youngest child will be graduating from high school and starting college in 2022. It’s going to be a brand new blank slate for me. I would like to accomplish a healthy, assured beginning, out of the starting gate of The Empty Nest arena. Here’s another good marinater that I read over this weekend:
“To remember who you are, you need to forget who they told you to be.” – Native American
Of course, Mondays aren’t necessarily great deep thought, marination days. The only thing that any of us really need to marinate this week, are our turkeys. Have a magnificent Monday! See you tomorrow.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The first time I saw a bougainvillea flowering bush, I was visiting Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. My husband had just finished a grueling MBA program, which he worked on obtaining, at night, for three years, after working all day at his regular job. We were celebrating his graduation, and our growing family. We had our two-year-old son with us, and I was very pregnant with our second son. Our eldest son has curly, red hair and the older Mexican women were convinced that his rare hair meant good luck. They made a point of coming over to us to pat his head for the transfer of good luck, wherever we went – the beach, the stores, the restaurants, the pool, the bus. My son loved the attention, and we found it amusing and endearing. I’ll never forget it.
Back to the bougainvillea – I became as entranced with the plant, as the women were with my son’s silky red curls. The bougainvillea was everywhere I looked. It was so robust and beautiful and apologetically flowing. I had never seen such a bright, vibrant, cascading waterfall of flowers. I honestly fell in love with a plant, for the first time in my life.
Now I grew up in Pennsylvania, and that is where we were living at the time. We had a townhouse with a large window on the second floor, directly above our front door. Despite the fact, that Pennsylvania does not at all have a climate that suits a bougainvillea, I decided, against all odds, that we would have one. I found a lovely wrought iron window box and somehow, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I was able to obtain a small, hopeful twig of a bougainvillea plant. I proudly planted it, in that showy window box, as an homage to all of the gorgeous window boxes, filled with bougainvilleas, everywhere I looked in Mexico. I couldn’t wait for the window box to overflow with flowers.
My bougainvillea plant did okay. It half-heartedly made it through the summer, with a couple of sparse blooms. It tried its best. The bougainvillea inherently knew that it’s a naturally, hardy plant, so it soldiered on, but honestly, the plant just wasn’t “at home”, at all, in the northern state. It’s a tropical plant. Before the first snow, the bougainvillea was nothing more than a few leafless sticks, sitting like a plant cemetery, unwelcomingly on top of our front door. Here was another lesson in life, learned by me, the hard way.
In retrospect, this was one of the many times in my life, when I didn’t let what was coming to me, come at its own accord, and in its own divine timing. I impatiently tried to push my own agenda, before it was time. It’s a lesson in which I have had to repeat again and again and again, many, many times in my life. It sometimes seems impossible for me, to learn to surrender to the higher forces in my life. I am still trying to learn to trust that what is meant for me, will arrive for me, when the timing is right, and it will be even more wonderful than I ever imagined. (I should trust this fact. It has been proven to me, again and again and again.) If I am honest with myself, at the ripe old age of 50, I am still learning to trust the process of Life. I am still learning to trust God/Universe to provide for me in all of the ways in which I have imagined. The Higher Forces do so much better for me, than I do for myself, but alas, I’m a stubborn fool (again and again and again).
Today, we live in Florida. When we purchased our home, one of the first things we did, was to go to the local nursery, which is filled with inexpensive, overpowering, over-flowering bougainvilleas. Bougainvilleas are so common here, that I think that some people may consider them to be giant, overbearing weeds. We purchased two small potted bougainvilleas, and we planted them on either side of an arch, which leads to our front door. In less than a year, the two small potted plants, furiously grew and came together at the top of the arch, becoming one with each other. The plant has flourished ever since. Our bougainvillea is so healthy and happy, that it has survived over-zealous tree trimmers, being split in two during a hurricane, and being roughly pushed around by painters and plaster repair people. In fact, we have to give our gorgeous bougainvillea “a haircut” more often than we get our own haircuts. This plant is the bougainvillea that I always dreamed about since the minute I laid eyes on bougainvilleas in Mexico. It is perfect. I knew that I would have this beautiful bougainvillea to gaze upon whenever I need a shot of inspirational vigor and exuberance. I just had to wait for my bougainvillea to arrive in the perfect way, at the perfect time, just as my deepest self knew that it always would. When will I learn?
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
So, in my family, it isn’t just me who gained some unwanted weight from the pandemic experience. It turns out that our Labrador retriever, Ralphie, desperately needs to go on a diet, according to our veterinarian. She decided to make that very clear to me, by printing out and showing me his weight gain graph chart, over the years. When I showed it to my husband, he said, “Well, if that was one of our stocks, I would be ecstatic.”
Ralphie, currently 100 pounds, needs to lose 20-25 pounds. We bought the diet food, the diet treats, and we got the “official” plastic Dixie cup to measure out the measly morsels of diet food. Ralphie is a world champion eater. Ralphie is a world champion beggar. Ralphie is our second Roomba. This experience is going to be interesting and challenging, to the say the least. And just like Weight Watchers, we have to take Ralphie into the vet’s office, for regular “weigh ins.”
I said to my veterinarian, “I don’t understand. Ralphie exercises a lot. He swims all of the time. We take him on long walks daily.”
She answered, “He’s like me. I exercise all of the time, too. When I am not here at the office, you’ll find me at the gym. There’s only one thing that I like more than exercise, and that is food.” And then she patted her cute little tummy for emphasis.
I guess the good thing is that Ralphie is at the mercy of what we feed him. I thought to myself, if I can control what Ralphie eats, I should be able to do the same thing for myself. (in theory) Honestly, I plan (or at least I am giving it serious consideration) to be Ralphie’s “Diet Buddy.” Ralphie and I are typically “happy go lucky” family members, but with both of us watching what we are eating, things could get ugly, really quick. I’ll just ask for your forgiveness in advance, if things get a bit stingy on the blog.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
There’s a few good things that are interesting to note, when you are going through one of your “night seasons”, as my aunt calls it. First of all, it’s the numbness. My mom used to call this “God’s anesthesia”. Yesterday, after my son’s seizure, while I had a few periods of crying jags and deep sadness, mostly, I was numb. I felt mostly calm and numb, and this was not caused by any kind of chemical outside of my body. When you go through a trauma, usually your merciful body numbs you right up, so that you can handle whatever you need to do. I think that this is a really nice standard feature of our bodies. I deeply appreciate the initial numbness.
Another thing that your night seasons show you, is that there are so many people who love you and who you can lean on. When you have several people in your life who you can call and/or you can text, and you can feel their deep care and empathy, it means the world. I think that I have friends of every religion praying for us right now, and this feels so great. Yesterday, one of my friends told me that her entire Baptist Church’s prayer warriors were “on it”, and another one of my more “new age” friends told me that she believes that people with epilepsy are getting downloads from God which the rest of us just can’t handle. She told me that my son is probably one of the most enlightened people on Earth. I don’t know if this is true, but all of the prayers and the insights brought me comfort. All of them did. God has many channels. Don’t ever be afraid of saying “the wrong thing” to someone who is hurting. I can always tell true care, over indifferent judgment and arrogance, and that’s never in the words being said. Ignorance being delivered with love, can be cleansed down to just the “love” part. Always err on the side of reaching out. I appreciate all of the love and the prayers from everyone, including my beloved readers of this blog. It sustains me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The final insight about your night seasons, is that you get the reminder that people are mostly kind. Most people don’t want to witness other people’s pain. We had so much kindness bestowed on us yesterday, by perfect strangers, as we often do, when my son has a seizure in public. People want to help. People want to show you that they care. It’s traumatizing to witness a seizure, but people seem to overcome their fears, to act with deep concern and warmth and tenderness. Did I ever mention that EMT people are some of my favorite people on this Earth? They always make my son feel so good, and just like he is one of the “regular guys.” Yesterday, the EMTs got a good laugh with my son, when they reminded him that when my son was first coming out of his seizure, and they asked him who is president, in his hazy confusion, he said, “Lamar Jackson” (who is the quarterback for the Ravens). They all, including my son, got a big giggle out of that one. The EMTs made my son feel like he is a real stud (because he’s a big gym rat, who also attends a prestigious university), just when my son needed it most. These simple, empathic kindnesses are noticed by me, always. Always.
When you are in your night seasons, numbness, your own spirituality (and a big helping of others’ spirituality), and the overall kindness of strangers is what gets you through to the sunshine right around the bend. God has many channels. Yourself, your loved ones, and often perfect strangers, are the passageways, which God uses to get you safely to where the sun rises again. We are in good hands – our own hands, the loving hands of our friends and family, and the kind, empathic hands of strangers, which all come together to form the biggest hands of all. And these Big Hands are firmly and securely holding all of us with Love. This I know.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I hope that my husband doesn’t take this post personally. My poor husband threw his back out on Friday, and he was understandably quite cranky throughout the weekend. He’s typically a very busy, energetic person. His weekends usually contain a lot of yard work, pool cleaning, long biking excursions, fishing, boating, gym workouts, grilling etc. My husband is a “do-er” personality. Sadly, this weekend, his back muscles put all of that on hold, and he was not a happy camper. Luckily, my husband seems to getting a little bit better each day. Isn’t that the way with every trauma? Every day you just get a little teeny, tiny bit better. It certainly is a lesson in patience, though.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller
“One of the most healing things you can do is recognize where in your life you are yourown poison.” – Steve Maraboli
“Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love. Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy.” – Sai Baba
Good morning, friends and readers. Welcome to the best day of the week!! My regular readers know that I typically keep it light and fun on Fridays. On Fridays, I list three favorite things, or songs, or websites or books, or life hacks that make my life more interesting and engaging. You, my readers, really like Fridays, at the blog. Interestingly, usually the most popular days on the blog are on Fridays, and on Sundays (the day that I devote to poetry. You never knew that one of your favorite things is poetry, did you? I caught you. ;)) So this tells me that you, my readers, are my favorite kind of people, a delicious mix of fun and frivolous, yet deep and soulful. It’s good to be well-rounded. Bravo!
As many of you know, we suffered another setback with my son’s epilepsy, this week. His new medications aren’t working out, which is deeply disappointing because the side effects of these medications were much more tolerable, than his last medications. We coaxed our baby to come home for the weekend, so I had the best sleep of my week last night, knowing that he was home safe with me, in my safely feathered nest. (I love sleep. It’s definitely one of my favorites.) My youngest son (the son with epilepsy) is obviously one of my favorite people in the world, and it is not just because he is my son. It is also because my son is funny, and smart, and ethical – almost to a fault; he is insightfully (and sometimes brutally) truthful – like no other person I have ever met, and so, so resilient. I admire him greatly. I love him beyond reason.
I’m drained, friends. These setbacks with epilepsy are hard on our family. These disappointments bring all of our fears and uncertainties, back up to the surface. People who live with serious disorders, know better than anyone, just how fragile life is, and how quickly it can be taken. After experiencing a major health setback, and once you calm down from the anxiety, and you let your shoulders drop, you can sometimes find the gift that comes from these painful realities of living with a disease, or a disability that can take your life, at any moment. It brings clarity and beauty and gratefulness for every simple moment of living a life. I can’t tell you how much my heart sang last night, to listen to my husband and my son yell, in unison, at the football game last night, as they have done so many times in the past. I savored that sound like it came from Heaven above. Because it did. Heaven is all around us, if we open up our eyes and connect our watchful eyes to our hearts.
I’m sorry to get so deep on a Friday. You readers don’t like that, I know. You might be thinking, “Lighten up, lady!”, but it’s my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to . . . .
Please always remember that when you are considering your favorite things in life, it’s never really “the thing”. It’s always the feeling that you get from “the thing.” If you think of one of your favorite things, or people, or places right now, you will get those wonderful feelings that those things give to you, seeping into your consciousness right away. Try it. Do it often. Your favorites are really your favorite feelings, and you are capable of dosing yourself with your favorite feelings regularly. They are just a thought away. Stay aware. That’s the only way to live.
Happy weekend, my favorite readers of my favorite blog! See you tomorrow.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Unfortunately, my youngest son suffered another major seizure last night. He is okay. We are okay. But today is a day for me to be quiet with myself, and with my son, and with my family. We’ll take your prayers and loving thoughts, in buckets. Thank you for your support. xo
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
This provoking Tweet took up a lot of my thoughts yesterday. Looking at its stats, it really hit home for a lot of people. I read a lot of the comments underneath the tweet. The author of the tweet is a black woman, and a lot of the people who commented, said that they were tired of “struggle” being the “badge of honor” for people of color. Many commenters said that they are tired of “strong” being the trait that overshadows everything else that any individual mother is, both in the lives of her children, and also in her own life.
I texted the tweet to some of my close friends. It resonated with them, too. One of my friends is a single mom, and she has been the primary parent for her two sons, for many years now. She noted that she tried hard to show her boys that not only was she strong and resilient, but that she is also responsible for her own happiness. Honestly, this friend of mine goes at life with a gusto. I am sure that her boys would describe her as “so strong”, and yet also happy and full of life. I admitted to my friends, that in reflecting back on being a young mother of four children, I think that I was “hit or miss” in regards to what this text is saying. I was happy raising my family, and we had a lot of fun and love, but I can’t say that I did a great job with “peaceful” all of the time. I worried too much. I took a lot of things too seriously. I tried to control people and experiences outside of myself, way too many times. Another friend agreed with me, that she also worried too much. We both lamented the fact that we sometimes let worry affect our moods too much, and that impacted our families. My friend said that she is now focusing on being that happy, peaceful grandma, filled with fun and love, to her beautiful granddaughter. I thought to myself, “Oh yes, I am going to do that, too. I will be the same way. I will be that wonderful, peaceful, fun-loving grandmother.” And then it struck me, the fact that I said that I also plan to be “that happy, peaceful” grandmother, denotes that there really is a choice involved. Happiness, peacefulness, and resiliency are states that we can choose to strive for, and to achieve, if we make them our highest priority.
Years ago, a friend was telling me about an argument that she had with her mother. Her mother was annoyed that my friend wasn’t doing more for her husband. Her mother claimed that her own generation did a lot more for their husbands, than our generation does for ours. In a fit of anger, my friend snapped back, “Well, maybe that’s because we don’t want to become angry, bitter, resentful, brittle older women, like so many women in the generations who came before us.”
Whether we want to admit this or not, our mood states effect, and are noticed by everybody, and everything around us. Our loved ones, the people who we claim to care about the most in this world, live in the vicinity of our own personal energy, more than anyone else. They absorb, and/or are repelled by the energy which we are constantly “putting out there.” In that sense, if we want to uplift our families, our friends, our communities and the world, we need to find ways to uplift ourselves. It’s our responsibility. Some may say this is our highest responsibility.
Anthony DeMello’s writings are some of my favorites out of all modern philosophy. He says this:
“If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole Earth.”
And this:
“Live your life as you see fit. That’s not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others liveas you see fit.”
And this:
“The reason you suffer from your depression and your anxieties is that you identify with them.
You say, “I’m depressed.” But that is false. You are not your depression.
If you want to be accurate, you might say, “I am experiencing a depression right now.” But you can hardly say, “I am depressed.”
That is but a strange kind of trick of the mind, a strange kind of illusion. You have deluded yourself into thinking—though you are not aware of it—that you are your depression, that you are your anxiety, that you are your the delights and the thrills that you have. “I am delighted!”
You certainly are not delighted. Delight may be your experience right now, but just wait, it will change; it won’t last: it never lasts; it keeps changing. . . . .
It never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be brought into awareness so they can be understood.”
And finally this:
“May the peace of God disturb you always.”
Peacefulness lies deep within each of us, and we will find it, if we are willing to let go of the idea that we have to find peace in the circumstances outside of ourselves. Many people commented on the above tweet, stating that their mothers were strong and capable and resilient, and yet also, kind and loving and peaceful. Being strong doesn’t have to be synonymous with being miserable and full of struggle. What we model for our children and for our grandchildren, teaches volumes to them, more than anything that we say. By giving ourselves the intrinsic right to peacefulness, and happiness, and joy, no matter what our present circumstances are, we are showing our children that they can have the same. And when we are resting in our deepest inner peace, we are able to handle our struggles with grace and courage and strength, no matter what comes our way.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
