Are you well? You doing well? All is well? …such simple, little questions, but “well” is a really complex, big word. If you read this blog regularly then you know that shortly after I turned 50 I took a yoga class and became hooked on the practice, and part of the practice is indeed moving and flowing, breathing, and stretching your body, but another part of the practice involves being mindful of HOW WELL YOU ARE FEELING…for real. Not just “oh fine thank you” or “everything’s great” kinds of responses like if you bump into an old neighbor at Target, or your old teacher in line at TJMaxx. When you are in a warm room, on your mat on your back, with your eyes closed, listening to soft music, with your feet in the air and you are tasked with the task of being MINDFUL you realize, rather quickly, that the word WELL is loaded with meaning.

I am at an age that I now refer to as “closer to 60 than 50” and I say it with a smile and a laugh, but it does make me pause, every time I say it, to contemplate what this means to me. Here is the truth, and it is not one that I like very much, but as we well know, saying that things are one way, because that is how you want them to be, is not the same as what is true…right now I am not well. I do however wish to get there, quickly and mindfully. Firstly, I have been sad for two years. There I got it out of me. BUT…Let me clarify; I am a very positive-minded person, almost always smiling, almost always with a spring in my step and a cheerful disposition, and enthusiastic about pretty much everything, but below all of that surface joy I am, and have been, terribly sad. I don’t like it and it feels like I am constantly wearing a coat that doesn’t fit. When you go through a difficult situation, or event, there is some suffering that lingers after the situation or event is over, even when you try to “not live in the past” or “don’t dwell just move on.” THIS recognition, to me, is at least a start to make, “I am well, thank you” a true statement again when I say it. This is something that I need to do, for me, to feel well and be well. I am going to work on this.

Secondly, I set a goal a year ago to lose the extra weight that has been weighing me down and I got 1/3 of the way and then stalled and then stopped. You can only say that you have been carrying around extra pounds since you were pregnant when you have a baby, or a pre-schooler at the most…you can’t say it when your baby is a mother of teenagers!! The weight is mine and my fault and something that I don’t want to keep carrying around. I said on my birthday last year that my year was going to be Fit Fierce and Fabulous. The truth of the matter is that I make choices and decisions that are spur of the moment pleasures, and NOT choices and decisions that will make me a better version of myself or WELL. Buying sour gummy worms in line at Walgreens because I went in for shampoo, is not all that different than a person in recovery just going into Camden or Atlantic City…because you know where you might very well end up…sugar addiction is not any different than drug addiction, and I don’t want to be in that same kind of category. I am going to work on this.

Lastly, so as not to be a total debbie-downer, there are MANY, SO MANY great things about me and my life that ARE WELL & WONDERFUL…too many to name or list or count really. THAT is big medicine to my spirit. I am aware that there are people who are sad and not achieving their goals and who don’t have a job they love, don’t live next door to their grandchildren, don’t live in a gorgeous house filled with art, don’t get to go to yoga before work most days, don’t have a loving family or friends, and don’t have any assets or good credit scores…so I get it, I understand that my “sadness” is kind of silly if I look at the WHOLE OF MY WELLNESS when compared to others…my life is really pretty perfect in the big picture, but I don’t want to compare myself to anybody…I want to compare myself to ME, MY GOALS, MY DEPTH OF WELLNESS. I am going to work on this.

I suppose now that my next birthday is looming, six weeks or so away from another goal I will make but maybe not achieve, it’s got me thinking about what I wish for, for me, for my next trip around the sun. If I had to summarize it briefly, and lord knows briefly for me is not ever easy, I would say I want to feel well and be well. In the big picture, the whole of it all, every little thing is alright, really, but when I zoom in on the pixels, the little bits that make up the whole, I see the flaws, and I guess those are the details and parts that I need to focus on improving, making better, bringing to wellness…when I am next in a warm room, on my back on my mat, with my eyes closed, listening to soft music, with my feet in the air contemplating my wellness…oh! Which is in less than an hour!! So I am up and out of my office chair and off onto my day gentle reader, I bid you goodbye, and deeply wish you a well day, a well week, a well life…