Tag Archives: joy

May1

The Magical Look of Love

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I wonder if Frida believed that look would last forever or if it was good enough to have seen it briefly. Apparently Frida saw that look often, although not necessarily in the eyes of her husband. It was never enough to make her happy for long.

Is it possible to hold on to that memory to renew your feelings when you look over at him, doing that “thing” he does, and resist the urge to question your own sanity? What is the elusive quality that holds some people together while others seem to drift?

Love is merely a madness: and, I tell you, deserves as
as well a dark house and a whip, as madmen do: and the
reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that
the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too.
(As You Like It, 3.2)

Jul12

Grief

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There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.
Aeschylus

It’s been a year. In the day leading up to the year I told myself “he was alive this time last year.” Or “ He saw the fire works, even if it was just out of his window, this time last year” and worst of all “I could have called and heard his laugh this time last year but I didn’t”

But the year has now passed.

He always told me I’d bounce back, forget all about him, He was wrong and he hated to be wrong and I miss that I can’t rub it in.

When he left this world he took some part of me with him and left a hole I plug with memories, but there is still an ache that hasn’t dulled even though it’s been more than a year.

I saw a woman on the side of the street carrying a case of beer and a stuffed pony. I wanted to call and ask him where he thought she was going.

You were wrong Bobby. There is no forgetting you.

Grief can’t be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Jun19

Eating your problems?

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When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.

Elayne Boosler

I eat my problems.

I never had this problem when I was younger, or maybe I didn’t notice, but as I get older I can clearly ‘see’ that I do this.

Okay, what do I mean by this you may, or may not, ask?

I eat when I’m depressed. I swallow my words too. I stuff down my emotions. I ingest the pain I’m in and hold it all inside and then I have a sundae. It then appears on my hips. Voila! Just like magic; but not.

I never knew this about myself because it never showed up on the outside until lately.

Friggin’ 50!

So, is the answer to go to the gym more or is it to tell everyone to fuck off? Make myself happy instead of making myself ice cream? Take a break from making everyone else feel good and regurgitate all this negativity; shed the burdens; lose the weight of everyone else and have a salad instead?

Definitely time for a change.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

Peter De Vries

Jun11

Take that chance…go ahead, I dare you!

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Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Mark Twain

It’s true. You can’t go home again. I tried and it didn’t work. I am not the same person and the house didn’t fit me anymore. I actually wonder what contortions of personality I had subjected myself to in order to make it fit the first time. Well, I obviously didn’t like it or I wouldn’t have left in the first place, right? 

Have you ever romanticized your past? Thought longingly that, given the chance, you’d do it all so differently. You’d be kinder, patient, more appreciative with the known and familiar.

Think again, my friends. The unknown, as scary as it might seem, is ripe with possibility. The past, while comfortable, lacks potential. That well-worn path leads you in the same direction each time you follow it.

To the house that didn’t fit, that you discarded, or that discarded you.

Forge a new path. Build a new home. Be brave. Take a chance.

Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.

Mary Tyler Moore

 

Jun9

And the lesson is never give up…

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When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

 

Well hello! I’ve missed you all. I know; I disappeared. It was a temporary hiatus, but I always knew I was coming back. I started to read what I was writing and I found I was bored with myself. There was too much talking and not enough doing. So I’ve been doing. Clearing my mind, getting the business REALLY off the ground and reconnecting with friends and most importantly not giving up. I’ve learned from watching others with much heavier burdens than my own.

So many lesson in the last six months too.

Here in Boston the world came apart briefly in April and I watched as people rose to meet the horror and fought back with love for each other. It was pretty amazing.

I’ve watched two wonderful, inspirational people fight their own battles with cancer and they are kicking it’s ass every day.

I’ve watched from afar while another incredibly inspirational person reinvented herself and is now doing her best to spread joy in the world. Her latest feat is raising money for cancer research; the terrorist that took her husband.

She is kicking some ass there too. Excuse my French (why do people say that?).

So it seemed like a good time to resurface and pass on a little encouragement for my friend Jacque. Fight the good fight, my friend. She doesn’t believe in giving up.

If you’d like to check her out and perhaps donate: http://www.joyfulonpurpose.com/giving/

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