Spring is right around the corner. Living in Florida, this statement brings up mixed emotions. When I lived up north, I couldn’t wait for spring. In Florida, spring brings in a big old influx of people who don’t know where they are going on the roads, and the reminder that a hot, hot summer is just around the bend. Still, I love spring. I love the natural change of seasons. Each new season brings a fresh new start to whatever in your life needs a fresh new start.
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” — Leo Tolstoy
“Spring adds new life and new beauty to all that is.” — Jessica Harrelson
“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
“An optimist is the human personification of spring.” — Susan J. Bissonette
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. I read an article yesterday about the actress Sally Field. One time, one of her sons was going through a bout of anxiety, when he was constantly worried that she wouldn’t be there to pick him up from school, or she wouldn’t be there at night when he was falling asleep. Sally Field reassured him, “Sammy, I will always be there to pick you up, even when I’m not there.”
I thought to myself, “Isn’t that the truth? My own four grown children are all over the place, living their adult lives, and even though I am not physically there with any of them, I am there. I am always there. As I often say, my children are pieces of my heart walking around on eight legs.”
I hope that you have a wonderful start of the week. My husband is off for the holiday. I have to say that this late, leisurely start is the right way to do a Monday.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
That’s a pretty good rendition of my face right now. I’ve never understood why they decided to do the Super Bowl on Sundays. I had to get up and get dressed quickly this morning because exterminators are coming to make sure that they chased out the raccoon in our attic, before sealing everything back up. The other night, we (me, my husband and our three ‘fearsome’ dogs) were in bed in our master bedroom, when I heard what sounded like a SWAT team running on top of our roof. My husband snored, and all three of our dogs, who during the day, sound the alarm for anything that barely moves grass in our yard, were soundly snoring, as well. I woke up my husband. “Did you not hear that sound? I think that zombies are invading, for real!” I got persuaded to let it go, and to go back to sleep and for some crazy reason, I felt reassured by the fact that our dogs did not react to what I thought was alarming, thunderous sounds. Perhaps it was just a dream, despite the fact I hadn’t even fallen asleep yet . . . .
At least we got answers to our mystery the next day, when my husband noticed that something had viciously ripped out the metal gutters underneath our roof and made a hole to get into our attic right above our bedroom. We called an “animal control service” who told us it is likely a mama raccoon who needed to find a safe place to have her kits. How do you humanely evict of a protective, savage mama raccoon and her babies from your attic? It turns out that you spray male raccoon pee all over the area. Male raccoons will eat kits in order to mate again (they are not patient guys). Therefore when the mama raccoon smells the pee, she grabs her kits and she makes like a tree and gets out of there. (Back to the Future reference for those old enough and keen enough to remember) Thankfully, humans cannot smell raccoon pee because the animal control people were quite liberal in spreading that stuff around. Apparently, raccoon pee does not deter squirrels, however, as I saw a few curious little guys entering the hole to check out the newly vacated rental spot. It should make for an interesting Monday morning here.
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.
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.
I have a couple of these types of friends in my life – dangerously fun. I also learned early on to never, ever seat our eldest son and our youngest son next to one another anywhere, at any time. It’s a recipe for hilarity and disaster. I think it is a really special thing to have some people in your life whom you can anticipate the fun and mischievousness which comes with them and who brings it out in you.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
In these parts where I live, our large population of part-timers have come back to town. My superpower is in its glory these days. Sigh.
At the company Christmas party over the weekend, I was speaking for a while to a young man who works for my husband. This young man is in his mid-twenties and he is a superstar. His parents are immigrants from Columbia. They have worked blue collar jobs their whole lives, and this young man worked to pay (and earned several scholarships) to put himself through college. He is one of the most reliable, smart, hardworking people who have ever worked for my husband. He is one of the most upbeat, happy people I have ever met. At the party, after him telling me that his rent had not gone up at all, and also about some winnings that he had won recently, out in Vegas, I said to him, “C, you seem like a really lucky person. Do you consider yourself to be a lucky person?”
He said, “Wow, I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday. I think that I am very lucky, because bad things don’t happen to me.”
This statement jarred my mommy heart and I started panicking thinking about the fact that unfortunately bad things eventually happen to everyone. “C, do you feel equipped to handle bad things when they will happen?” I asked him with sincere concern.
“I don’t think that I will recognize bad things, because bad things often turn out to be good things, you know,” is what C said to me. Wow. C is a naturally lucky person. He has learned to have a fabulous attitude at just the starting gate of his adult life.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I saw a more explicit version of this on Twitter today and I decided to replace it with the tamer version above (although the other one was funnier as it replaced evil with a-hole. I do try to keep it funny on Mondays. We have to get our smiles on Monday from somewhere, right?)
It’s such a hard lesson to fully grasp, but not everyone will like us. Why is that hard to comprehend? We, ourselves, don’t like everybody we meet, and often the reasons why we don’t like someone aren’t even fully understandable to us, ourselves. Sometimes we don’t like people for truly irrational reasons. We don’t like someone because they remind us of someone else whom we had a negative experience with previously in our lives, or perhaps, we have already made up our minds that the person doesn’t like us, so we don’t like them back. So there!
We often make up our minds about people before we get to know them, and so we like or dislike a person based on our personal perceptions without ever having the full experience of getting to know the person on a more intimate level. Our human nature isn’t always the best about giving people “fair chances.” And so, that works the other way, too. If someone doesn’t like you without ever really getting to know you, whom they actually don’t like is someone based on their own perceptions and prejudices. Therefore “that someone” whom the person doesn’t like, isn’t even really you.
I read once that most of the most evil characters in soap operas and long running series are actually some of the nicest people whom you would ever want to meet. They get all of their negativity, anger, disappointment and resentment out by playing truly nasty characters. If we accept the fact that we are playing the evil character in someone’s story, we can maybe get an evil laugh out of it all. Mwahahaha. And we know that actually, in real life, we are much sweeter than the evil character whom we play in someone’s imagination.
I have always told my kids that when it comes to friends, four quarters is always better than 100 pennies. Instead of collecting adoring fans, and hundreds of “likes”, be thrilled if you have four people in your life, who truly “get you”, flaws and all, and love you deeply. The rest is all just about “live and let live”, and hope that everyone in life has their own four quarters, jingling in their back pockets to be there for them, when some random pennies have misunderstood them as evil chumps.
I have read that true wealth is freedom and the older I get, the more evident it is to me that this is absolutely true. A wonderful way to give yourself freedom, is to fully accept that not everyone likes you. In fact, some people really can’t stand you. And that doesn’t make you a bad person. Their perceptions really have nothing to do with you. You also have at least four quarters who think that you are absolutely wonderful. Whose right? It doesn’t matter. You be you. If you love and trust and respect yourself, everyone else is just a plus, and not a must. Be your own best friend and carry on with your story. The only story that really matters in your own life is your own story.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Happy Halloween!! May we all get more adorable, giddy trick-or-treaters than any of us are expecting to get at our doors, so that we have lots of vicarious joy to feed on, and not too much leftover candy to devour!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Dear friends, please do not be concerned if you don’t get my usual daily blog post every day this week. The price which you pay for living in a land near the beach, with 90 percent sunshine, is an occasional, “I am going to scare the living daylights out of you” storm warning. (It’s not as bad as it seems. The last time we had to take a hurricane this seriously, in our part of Florida, was five years ago.) The truth is, I have been a Floridian long enough now, to be more annoyed than anything, about this hurricane. Don’t worry. We are safe. We have a plan. We would never leave our fur friends behind. I went to the grocery store on Saturday, and I was still miraculously able to snag some water, and some toilet paper, despite the emptying shelves. This too shall pass. (but thank you for the prayers and good juju coming our way – we’ll take ’em!)
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I’m in one of those “Would you rather be right or be happy?” moments. This is a lesson that comes up to me a lot in my life. I guess that I am sort of a righteous person. (ugh) One day, this lesson will sink in, and this lesson will stop landing at my front door. What lessons come to you all of the time? Look at regular patterns in your life which frustrate you. The failed lessons will keep coming back and around again, until you get it “right.” Then, you’ll be happy. Imagine that, being in a state of “right” and happy. Ha! Honestly, it’s probably best to just breathe. Just breathe.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
