Tag Archives: happiness

Oct24

Impossible?

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It always seems impossible … 
until it’s done.


Nelson Mandela

This week I began step one in the plan to launch the nonprofit I’ve been working on. I suppose it’s not really step one because I’ve been doing many things, including mountains of paper work and putting a board together, but this week began a more public launch.  I made the first steps to teach in a community development organization.  It’s important for me to partner with other local nonprofits in order to make mine successful, so this feels like the beginning. My NPO will have a workplace literacy component, so getting back to teaching adult ESL courses is something I’ve been looking forward to. The students are all recent immigrants and, as always, there are a few students that really knock me out. This time it was a couple from a small African country that had been in the U.S. a mere two months and were already a month in to an English language class. Their lives, and that of their two children, have been difficult, yet there was no trace of self-pity. They have been through things that would have crushed most people, yet they are optimistic. They have lost every material possession, yet they are grateful. There is a mix of pain and beauty in their eyes as they struggle with the language.  It moves my heart in ways I can’t describe and makes me so sure that I am moving in the right direction. I am so honored to have the chance to touch their lives.  People, my own age, starting over with nothing but their spirit and determination for something better.  It is humbling, and it should be.

It made me wonder about people I know. People with every opportunity, yet they continue to be angry for all that isn’t handed to them. Instead of working harder, they continue to find fault with everything around them rarely looking at their own hand in the way their lives have turned out. Is it easier to place blame? Well, maybe in the short run.  Is it narcissism that causes some people to blame everyone around them for their own circumstances?  Is it having so very little that causes others to just work that much harder when life is unfair?

It didn’t take long but I’ve learned more than I taught, and I’m sure that nothing is impossible unless you decide it is.

When I let go of what I am, 
I become what I might be.


Lao Tzu

Aug7

Seven Things About Me Award

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Well, I’m a sucker for an award!  Honestly. I am very grateful that anyone wants to read what I have to say, much less award me with anything.

Okay please humor me and play along.

1.  Thank the blogger who nominated you.

Thank you, http://forcingmyselfhappy.com/ I just recently started to follow her journey to a happier self and I have to say you’re not only brave but very sweet and interesting. I’m rooting for you!

2.  Share seven things about you. See list below if you are in need of a sedative. : )

3.  Nominate other bloggers you think deserve the award and post on their blog to let them know they’ve been nominated.

 This is difficult. I will spare the several bloggers I adore and who I think deserve every award out there because they are so incredible, because they’ve already received most of the awards and because they will wish a pox upon me for giving them one more thing to do. You know who you are and they know where I live. Enough said.
Instead I will offer you two new blogs I’ve been following in hope that you will take a look and possibly follow:
Wonderull, smart and funny. Enjoy!

7 Things about Me (you’ve been warned)

  1. I talk about them all of the time, but the most important thing about me is that I am the mother of four children ranging in age from 28-16. Everyone is about to move up an age which clearly meant I desperately needed to get a winter hobby in my childbearing years. I adore them all.
  2. I am a pescaterian (vegetarian who occasionally indulges in fish) and a vegan wannabee. I’ve eliminated almost all meat and diary since April. Oh, and wine is made of grapes and vodka from potatoes for those you who wondered. : )
  3. My second biggest fear is getting sick. Not just a flu, but incapacitated and reliant on others. I’m fine being there for others and have done it many times, but I am terribly afraid of ever being on the receiving end.
  4. What is my biggest fear, you ask? The inability to correctly punctuate even though I was an English teacher? Noooooo. It’s that something will happen to one of my kids. Whenever I would hear sirens my heart did a double beat until my youngest finally said, “for crying out loud Mom, they don’t put the sirens on to tell you bad news.” He is so much smarter than I am, although now I just shake when I see any emergency vehicle.
  5. I will turn 50 on December 10. I’ve tried to get it declared a national holiday but so far no luck except for one friend who agrees, or thinks I’m nuts and pretends to agree. I really never considered making it to 50, so I am incredibly pleased. I’m planning on redefining middle age and also living well past 100. The child with the worst record of being consistently nice gets “Depends” duty eventually. It’s my oldest son right now. He is praying for my continued continence.
  6. I just quit my job, started a new business and a nonprofit. When I tell people this they smile and say, “*That’s wonderful.” I suspect they also think I’m nuts, but that’s’ what they say about most people that live extraordinary lives. I’m so full of surprises I usually don’t know what I’m going to do until it’s done. Sometimes it’s great and sometimes it’s a hellish disaster. It’s been quite a ride.
  7. I always like to be learning something new. I just learned how to make pasta and made it with my son this week. That gave me more joy than I can possibly explain.

I have been very fortunate to not only spew my thoughts on to these pages almost daily, but also have some of you like them. Thank you all for reading and bless you all for taking the time to comment.

Aug5

Wanderlust or travel as therapy?

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I’ve been away from home for a little over a month. It has been wonderful and mind clearing. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking abut what I wanted the life I live every day to look like in places I’ve never been to before and may never see again. For me, that is when I do my best thinking. In my own home I see the past, the things I should be doing, and all the future events on the horizon. In another space all of the good, the bad, and the ugly is cleared away and I can focus on decisions and directions. So, the first thing I learned is that I know myself.  I feel much clearer and my priorities are in order. I have a plan and I’m a person that loves a plan. I’m never happier than when I know where I want to go and I have mapped out my options and am on the brink of starting something new. In June I was overwhelmed and confused. In August I’m a force to be reckoned with. Travel as therapy. Do you think I could get my insurance carrier to pay for that?

“It’s a funny thing about comin’ home.  Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same.  You’ll realize what’s changed is you.”

-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button-

Jul29

Other people’s Sundays

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Sunday has always been the loneliest day of the week for me.

When I was a child it always seemed as though everyone had something else to do. I pictured big family gatherings with laughing and talking and plenty of food. No one was every unhappy or lonely in the other world of Sundays that I was some how not a part of.

When my kids were younger I always tried to plan something on a Sunday. I would have friends over and make dinner or go to the park or the zoo with them. I’d look around to see someone like me but found only the lovely family of four. Two children, Mom, and Dad all smiling and feeding ducks (fill in the your version of family bliss) and on their way to Grandma’s for Sunday dinner. Being a single parent, I was again shut out of this scenario.

I’m not sure why it never occurred to me that things might not have always been what they seemed. That not everyone in my imaginary scenario I used to torture myself was actually happy. Or if they were why that made any less of what happiness I had myself. Thier Sunday always seemed to be better and fuller for some reason. But I suppose that comparisons and imaginations do that to us sometimes.

So, on this Sunday morning, I’m spending a moment to be grateful for what I do have and I’m going to cherish the day that I have been given.

Happy Sunday.

Jul26

Don’t be a baby? Why not?

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I think it’s time for me to be more child-like. I’m tired of being adult about everything.

I was on the beach yesterday watching a family with small children. One curly-haired, blue-eyed, cherub of a girl complete with a yellow bikini making a sand cake for her mother and her slightly older, more serious looking, brother in his boxer bathing suit with small blue whales on them eating a juicy peach and singing a song I don’t recognize. They are adorable, sweet, angelic…oh wait he’s ripping the shovel out of her hand and screaming, “MINE”, she has her mouth open but no sound is coming out, she’s standing up, still no sound…wait for it, wait for it…WOW. She lets out one blood- curdling scream and falls backwards into the sand. Her brother looks on, unfazed, and then continues digging the hole he had been neglecting while eating his lunch. She screams some more and her parents, clearly embarrassed but not unfamiliar with the theatrics, try to quiet her. “Don’t be a baby”, Dad says, while her brother is completely absorbed in digging and singing.

Oh please, let her scream I want to say. How I wish I could do that. Just once. Like say when the guy stole my parking spot or when the woman on the cell phone cut in front of me in line like I wasn’t even there.

Right down on the ground screaming. Can you imagine?

I think we could learn a thing or two about feeling our emotions without apologizing or holding them in from children. How do we get so repressed? Of course throwing yourself down and wailing isn’t the answer but maybe more honesty in our emotions is still an option.

“Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn’t make you nice, it just makes you a liar.”― Jenny O’Connell, The Book of Luke

Jul25

Soul Mates

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“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”
— Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love
Jul25

Boys

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Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.  ~Elizabeth Stone

Occasionally, I’m sure all parents think what it would be like to be free of responsibility. To be able to do as you please, eat without seeing if anyone else is hungry, turn ‘your’ music up loud and dance around the room without embarrassing anyone, or just be quiet and not answer a question for ten minutes. I’m sure all of that can’t compare to the feeling of your huge almost 17 year-old son walking up from behind you and in front of his friends, giving you a hug and saying, “love you Mom.” Then I remember why I spent all those years sleepless and changing diapers.

It was worth it. 

Jul19

Becoming me

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Starting today I am intent on spending as long as it takes re-evaluating the many ways I define myself. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I am mother, partner, teacher, friend, and neighbor. Then of course I am my strengths and weaknesses, my hopes, fears, triumphs and disappointments. I’m sure there are more. I want to weed out all of the labels that don’t work anymore.

As a single parent of four children I have spent most of my adult life defining myself as a provider. I did whatever I needed to do to support my family in any and all ways. The last of my four is finishing high school and the rest are making their own way. I know from experience that they don’t stop needing when they turn 18 but it certainly changes.

Who am I without all of those definitions? Who might I be if I could be empty of all preconceived ideas and recreate myself? What will I keep and what will I find doesn’t serve me anymore?

I’d love to know if anyone has travelled a similar path.  I’ll let you know what I find.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu