During this month of Thanksgiving, many of my friends in cyber space are participating in an exercise of “30 Days of Thanks” and I am enjoying, every morning when I log on to the internet, reading their stories of their sadnesses and their joys,  but I am particularly enjoying that each day they are all forcing themselves to reflect on what is good in their lives and for what they are grateful.  It is so easy to go through the motions of life; the day in and day out and sameness of living and working and taking care of houses and children and parents and obligations, that we get consumed with our tasks and duties and don’t often stop to ponder any of the good in any of it.

I know some, and know of some, who have so much and don’t seem to appreciate any, and I know some and know of some who have so very little, and appreciate all of it.  I think it is so important to be thankful for all of the good, even if it is minimal, or to some, rather insignificant, because it could, due to weather or misfortune or accidents or bad choices or death, be gone in a wink.

It’s hard sometimes for sure to see your glass as half full when so many you know, or know about, have glasses that are running over.  It only takes a half hour at 6:30 with Brian Williams to be reminded that your glass, compared to much of the rest of the world, is in fact running over and that you even have a glass is a REALLY big deal.  We live in a world of tabloid magazines and reality television shows, that even if we don’t watch them or read them, we know about these people- their big lives are overflowing and examined; their big houses, their big engagement rings, their big weddings, their big parties, their big car collections, their big vacations, their big EVERYthings…that what we have can begin to feel so small…

It’s dark so early this time of the year I’ve started to watch more television than I usually do.  I’ve tried to watch some of what is “popular” and find I can’t handle more than a few minutes at a time…I could not even catch the Kardashian’s let alone keep up with them, I could if I was married BE a real housewife, but there was nothing REAL about any of the ones I saw, regardless of the states in which they lived, I could say Yes to the dress, but it would not be one that cost the same number of dollars that I spend in a year, or two, on my mortgage…I imagine if I were to start watching this kind of television regularly it would be too easy to compare my existence to one that is completely unattainable.

Instead I continue to choose to watch the news each night, and for a half hour I am reminded that I have so much to be thankful for, so much to be grateful for; there is so much that is terrible in this world, that a half hour of news makes even the most simple life seem positively fantastic, and usually the last news segment is one of those “feel good” stories where I learn about a “regular” person who does or did something extraordinary and ALWAYS for somebody else…I’m thankful for everything that is good in my life and I am thankful too for all of the things that have not been very good, as those experiences and upsets and hardships are part of the path that has gotten me this far.  I suppose in the realm of things I am most thankful that I have the good sense to be thankful, and for all of my friends in cyber space who do too, and who are making themselves reflect on all that is wonderful in their worlds, I am thankful to be in your company…even if we are never in the same room…

I had no full length mirror in my house when I was pregnant with my first and only child.  I still had a tanned tummy, smooth & round & magical to look down upon.   About 12 weeks or so before my daughter was born, at a doctor visit, when asked by the nurse how I felt, and I remarked that I felt terrific,  and how excited I was, so close to delivery, that still, not a single stretch mark on what was once a flat as a board and nearly perfect 18 year-old stomach, that I had only gained 5 pounds, that really things were just great!!!

…the nurse, a much older woman than I, with ridiculously fake red hair but with the kindest understanding eyes, touched me motherly on my shoulder, “oh sweetie, you have a road map of them. You just can’t see them. They’re under your belly button, but you are young & I still see your tan line from when you could wear a bikini, so you’ll be okay again, but those stretch marks will probably never go away.”   She surely had no idea the damage she did to my psyche that day, she could not have imagined the downward spiral she was about to send me on, she surely had no idea that it would push me into a zone of self loathing & hopelessness I never expected to feel, or that the ‘blues’ that followed would plunge me into emotional eating & depression that grew me by 53 pounds in those last 3 months of pregnancy…I went from being taught & tan and perhaps likely to be back in my skinny jeans with an infant at my six-week-check-up, to being an overweight sad case who would suffer body issues & roller coaster weight battles from those weeks forward…

I read a short article recently about reasons why it’s good to be naked, why it’s important not to be squeamish if you are full of defects, but rather to “see” that all of those flaws are part of the story your body tells; where you have been, what you have done, to look at your scars, imperfections, and beauty, and accept and love the tale your body reveals.  Reading the article made me think it should be called “Naked Navigation” and that we should all do it, at least once, and SEE ourselves with different eyes…

I’ve never gotten back to my pre-pregnancy body, but I have gotten back into my pre-pregnancy jeans.  I am not in them now, but I intend to be again.  This body gave birth to the biggest baby in the nursery that bitter, bleak, week in January 1986.  This body has knees that are so scarred, that had been ripped open and bandaged every summer from bicycle crashes from the time she learned to ride a bike without training wheels…and most recently this past summer, the very 1st time she got back on a bike after more than a decade of being pedal free. This body has bad vein valves in the left leg & perfectly operational pumping valves in the right leg, and calves that have been two different sizes ever since a skateboard came flying at her at 14 years-old and hit her left calf so hard that her Levi’s had to be cut off her leg below the knee.   This body has a scar, under her left arm, from a splinter, more like a stick from a ripped 2×4, because on a construction site at 4-years-old, she did not listen to her Dad who told her not to go upstairs, & she tumbled down those unfinished steps & had her first hospital surgery experience & anesthesia to remove said stick from her tiny little arm pit.  This body has scars from two skin cancer surgeries, and still believes the chemicals in sun screen do more damage to the body than what happens naturally from the sun, much to her daughter’s dismay.  This body has dimples in her shoulders; She’s never seen or known another, until after the birth of her 2nd granddaughter, who has one in her little shoulder and one in her little cheek, and was certain for much of her life those were the spots where her wings once were attached…and at times she still believes this to be true…This body had more than 600 stitches when it finally had the money for the breast reduction surgery she wanted since she was in eighth grade. This body was told the recovery time could be as much as 12 weeks, but she was painting a house one month and one week later.  This body has a scar on its left elbow, from a time when she went down the rickety basement steps in her 130 year-old cottage carrying a 50 pound bag of salt for the water softener tank, and slipped.  This body has six symbolic tattoos that she drew & designed herself for the ink artists to interpret, each done by a different studio and each with its own story.

This body has been smaller & also bigger than it is today, this gray and cold November morning…& by the way, a magical number day, 11-12-13, but perhaps at no other time in its life has this body ever felt so loved.  This body has a right thumb that has wiped away the tears of her baby, and a right index finger that has lifted up the chin on her grown daughter. This body has lips that have smooched freshly bathed babies & tenderly kissed boo-boos & whispered ‘goodnight’ to the kind of man she never thought she’d ever meet…but she did, and she loves him, and he loves her back, even with all of her flaws and all of her imperfections…

46 years ago this very morning a 22-year-old wife suffered a rather rough and horrible labor and delivery experience resulting in the birth of a baby girl.  This girl child, before she was an hour old, was found to have no hip sockets; a birth defect most common in girls and interestingly enough, more frequently found in Native American cultures, whose Blackfoot Indian  DNA, while less than 1/4,  this baby girl shared…So the story goes that before this woman’s sister was delighted to find her 25th birthday present to be a baby girl given her name, and before this woman’s husband brought her a candy bar called a Baby Ruth, this girl child was immediately taken from this new mother and put into a full body brace and moved to intensive care.

The doctor who discovered this birth defect was sent a letter, and some photographs 15 years later from the mother, of a teenage girl on a stage in costumes dancing, a teenage girl doing a flying split on a basketball court, a teenage girl jumping and clapping with pom-poms on the sideline of a football field.  This mother wrote how thankful she was that the defect was discovered so early and that by the time the child was a year old, the body brace was removed, and her soft and mailable hip bones had been able to jam their way into her pelvis sufficiently to create enough of a curve in the bone that one could call it a “socket,” and that the girl child grew up into a teen who danced and cheered and laughed and lived and had no understanding really what her life could have been like, would have been like, had that doctor not discovered the problem as quickly, and acted as smartly, as he did.

So this morning, on the morning of my 46th year, I am thinking about the life I have lived, the life I am living, and all the things I still dream to do, and CAN do, and expressing my gratitude to the universe & the doctor, that I’ve not spent a life in pain, or in and out of the hospital in surgeries, or in a wheelchair, I believe that I was given a gift… This doctor, as cosmic clues in my world are very real, was the pediatrician on staff at the hospital the morning my own daughter was born.  When my child was just an hour old, before I was even taken to a recovery room, the doctor learned who I was, and came in and kissed my forehead and said, “your daughter’s hips are perfect, she’s perfect.”

Growing up, I liked to ask my mom to tell me about the day I was born.  I have heard the story many times.  My child, and now her children, also love to hear about the story of the days they were welcomed to the world.  This afternoon I am having a lunch date with three of my favorite women:  my Mother, my Aunt, and my Daughter.  We don’t always get along, we seldom agree on social issues, we all roll our eyes at each other at times, we are sometimes blissfully happy together and sometimes unbearably annoyed together, but we four women are connected by blood, and a story 46 years young…

There is something about turning the page in my wall calendars and ripping the old month off of my desk calendar that makes me feel so bold…Like I can do anything I set my mind to do.  It’s just a day, the first day of any month, but there is something in me, on the start of a new month that makes me believe all things are possible.  To be clear, I have in my adult life made some very bad decisions and choices and acted wrongly in a variety of ways…but, I have also made some wonderful decisions and fabulous choices and acted rightly more times than not…Today, on the first of the month, a raw, fall, windy, gusty, and gray day, I feel good about the next 30 days in front of me.  I feel in control.  I feel like I can make things happen.  I feel ready for action.

Driving home from work late yesterday afternoon, I was reminded why fall is my favorite time of year…the trees on my street are several shades of orange and when I looked to the west, the sunset made the sky a glorious shade of lilac.  Purple and orange are my two favorite colors, in that order, and silver is number three, just in case you care…anyway I digress.  I often jot down goals or thoughts in my journals or notebooks regarding changes I would like to make, in my life or with myself, or just ideas in general about decisions, but I seldom tell anybody what they are, as my fear of failure is strong.  I used to keep journals and spiral notebooks and pencils always in my purse or vehicle at all times because when a thought comes into my head, I often simply feel compelled to write it down.  Now with a smartphone, I have an entire “notebook” available to me at all times, AND I don’t even need to search for a pencil!  I looked at the beautiful shades of fall all around me yesterday and had to pull over to the shoulder and make notes…what I want to be different in this most beautifully colored time of year…changes I want to make while the world around me excites me, and while the colors take my breath away…before the landscape is dry and dead and brown and empty and colorless…

I slept poorly last night, which is not unusual given my age and frequently unbalanced hormone level, but I realized I was thinking and over thinking about the same things throughout the tossing and turning.  When I finally raised my white flag in surrender early this morning and got out of bed, I thought that perhaps my sleeplessness is or was a sign, more than a symptom of age…I do love signs…that it is time to do something rather than my more common behavior which is to write something…I woke up this morning knowing that there are things I have to change and I have ordered them in my mind by level of importance, but the fact of the matter, is that they all matter.  I have to make decisions and choices that reflect those changes and goals, or they simply won’t be achieved.  Saying them and doing them are two different things…I am a woman who loves words, but I need more than words to accomplish these changes.  I must do, not say…today I feel verb…I feel like I can do anything, and I have 30 days to prove it to myself…when you grew up loving School-House Rock, you know what it means to wake up and feel this way, it’s more than words indeed…Just in case you forgot, here is how the VERB song starts…it’s a good way to start a new month… anything can happen…

I get my thing in action  (Verb!)
To be, to sing, to feel, to live  (Verb!)
That’s what’s happening

I put my heart in action (Verb!)
To run, to go, to get, to give (Verb!)
(You’re what’s happening)

That’s where I find satisfaction, yeah! (Yeah!)
To search, to find, to have, to hold
(Verb! To be bold)
When I use my imagination (Verb!)
I think, I plot, I plan, I dream – Turning words into creation

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Work is simply defined as the effort or activity directed at accomplishing or producing something.  We have to work to be able to pay for where we live.  We then have to work to -keep up- with where we live; we have to work to keep our pantries organized, our towels folded, our dishes washed and put away, our floors vacuumed, our toilet bowls sparkling, we have to maintain our yards/gardens/landscaping, we have to maintain our heaters/air conditioners/water lines.  It all takes energy to do all of these things and so if you live alone, and have no one who you have to love or care for, well, that’s great!, you’ve used up all of your energy trying to maintain your way of living that it does not matter that you have no strength or time left to maintain your relationships.  Presently I not only now share my space with someone I care about, but the bulk of my heart lives only right next door to me.  I have many people to care for and care about within my acres of town, and working to maintain those relationships is hard work.

I find myself being short-tempered with all the people I love when I find myself short on time to get done the things I want to get done…I want to be able to play & visit  with my grandchildren and not be annoyed that they are making a mess and still have not organized all their Monster High dolls, I want to be able to relax & talk  with my boyfriend and not be annoyed that I still have four loads of wash to be done and he still has not put up new shelves in the garage.  The fact of the matter- I can do all of these things myself.  I can do anything that needs to be done inside or outside of this house and anything I don’t know how to do, I can find out how to do it from my Dad and if he can’t help me do it, I would have to hire someone to help me…but in general, everything I need done I can do myself, and therein lies the conundrum…perhaps being like I am, a bit OCD and a bit quirky, and way to insistent that it’s “my way or the highway” means that I spend all of my energy doing what needs to be done the way I want it to be done, that my effort to maintain what really truly matters most, my relationships, gets pushed to the bottom of my “to-do” list over and over and over.

I can’t begin to recall the last time I chatted with my daughter about how her school classes were going, or what was happening at her job, we talk about how little time she has to get her homework done because she still has five loads of wash to put away, and why is her dining room ceiling filling with nail pops, and why does her electric bill keep going up when she’s been so careful about everybody turning off the light switch when they leave the room…we don’t talk too much about what actually matters…her marriage, her health, the happiness and development of her children.  In the “old” days,  work was defined differently in that the MAN worked to bring in the money to get the house and the car and afford the food that fed the children, and the WOMAN worked to keep the house neat and cooked the food and kept everybody’s clothes clean…but that is all mixed up and jumbled up in this modern world, the separate domains are different…the feminist in me thinks is just terrific that I do what used to be defined as a “man’s job” climbing ladders, banging nails, repairing sheetrock and painting houses, and the 1940’s housewife in me positively adores cleaning her walnut floors with vinegar and a rag, and folding linens, and cleaning bathrooms, and cooking for as many people as I can get around my table on a Sunday afternoon.  For me, the problem is that I do do all of those things, I am both man and woman in my world, as many women are today, and the definition of ‘work’ in modern households is not the same as it was in my Mimom’s time, so it’s no surprise really that we women, well this woman, I,  feel we are failing at maintaining our relationships too, how much can we do, are we supposed to do, before we cry uncle??!!

I suppose if I was better at delegating, like a good manager would, the tasks that need to be done and who needs to do them, and could release the level of control I feel I need over everything, there would be more effort available for the work needed to maintain my relationships.  I feel with a new month soon upon me, and Mercury shortly thereafter to go direct, and all of this ‘Mercury in retrograde’ miscommunication hubbub should be over, it should be at the top of my “to do” lists to better maintain my relationships, or at the very least to work as hard at making them good as I do at keeping my towels perfectly folded, to tell people I care about them, and more importantly show it, and to ‘work’ on what actually matters, to put the energy into producing and creating and accomplishing healthy loving relationships…there will always be laundry to do, there will always be houses to clean and driveways to weed, but I must remember that I have to make the effort to make good relationships or there won’t always be a handsome boyfriend to talk to while we cook dinner, or a daughter next door to talk to about that loud noise we heard last night, or two little girls who call me Nana and think I am just super just as I am…I read a quote yesterday in Oprah magazine, “sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.'”  and I was thinking that is work I can live with…do what I can with today and if I don’t do so well, try again tomorrow…

Last night as I shuffled around television channels that showed me, yet again, I really have no need for cable, I found a fascinating program on PBS about animal odd couples.  An hour of the emotional relationships and connections between non-related and non human animals.  It was amazing; a lion and a coyote that grew up together from pups and act like loving brothers rather than an eater and an eat-ee, a goat that befriended a blind horse and led him around as a seeing eye goat for 16 years, a dog that mothered an abandoned baby deer and maintains a “friendship,” and a goose that fell in “love” with a giant tortoise and has made her his mate for life.

People who know me as opposed to those who only read me know that I often, depending on my mood or present circumstance, sometimes cry over airline commercials or Hallmark card commercials.  Almost five nights a week I get choked up or tear up watching Brian Williams’ last segment of the night on NBC.  I am a very emotional person most of the time…I have passion and I have empathy in spades…and this PBS program last night got me thinking really deep thoughts, about what I am, what I want, what I need…It reminded me that I am simply an evolved monkey, just a human animal, and the desire to form relationships and friendships is present in all the animal kingdom and one does not have to necessarily find one of their kind, only one that provides some value…I admit I got a bit teary eyed with each relationship shown…it was beautiful.

What does one “get” out of a relationship?  I don’t use the word get as a spoiled child or over indulged woman would, I don’t mean material things, and I don’t mean that she gets her way, and I don’t mean gets as in she never has to compromise or go without,  I mean get as in some sort of value that can’t be measured…Clearly, this PBS program showed me that it is not only to mate and spread one’s DNA that animals would couple-up…I must be honest and write that I had no idea animals had the kind of emotional connections and desire for friendships that I witnessed in the program…I thought that animals just were animals, and we humans were the only animals who forged bonds with no ‘value’ other than emotional.

Sure, we humans connect with non human animals, and I have a sister who is a true animal lover, and I have seen the way her dogs look at her, I mean, they look like they LOVE her, and her horses used to come see her even when she didn’t have an apple in her hand or hay in her arms, and her goats jumped up and down with “joy” when she walked into the backyard, so yes, I know that relationships can be made that have value, but in those cases, the animal values that the human is generally going to do something for it, or touch it, or play with it,  or give it food, and I suppose the human values the interaction, because it feels good to feel loved, it feels good to feel liked or needed or wanted in some way, any way.  I’ve never been an animal lover, it’s always been and still is, my sister’s domain, but watching this show made me realize that it’s okay to want to be wanted or needed or to find one that we feel fits us, even when on the surface, it seems not right…

I have, for as long as I can remember, felt like I was looking for those who were more my “kind.”  I love my family dearly and had what can only be described as an idyllic childhood, yet I always felt like the other, the outsider, the odd duck if you will.  In my attempts to couple I have consistently tried to find qualities that I value in another human that seem to fit me and in most cases were not recognized as valuable at all to those in my family.  Quirky is a word that they’ve used to describe me…I have sought out traits in others that I value but on the surface or to others have no value at all.  It is no surprise to me really then I guess that I am perpetually single, that I only got to have one child, that I never “got” the hard-working 9-5 husband who adored me or treated me like a queen, the 2.5 kids, the white picket fence, and all the “life” I thought I wanted or dreamed to have…I guess I continue to find value in people that maybe others don’t…I felt last night, watching that program, that I am just an evolved monkey.  I felt like it’s okay to go back to basics, just trying to make my way in the world, continuing to find more of my kind, or other animals who seem to fit me, it’s okay to find my inner monkey…I liked seeing the “love” between the goat and the horse, the goose and the tortoise: they can’t make the kind of bond they instinctually “should,” they can’t mate and reproduce, they can only have the kind of relationship that they create on their terms…it must be meaningful to them or they would not do it…they are like us, simply animals.  It strangely made me feel better about the choices I have made in my life that seemed questionable to others…value that can’t be measured…I can’t always get what I think I want but maybe I am getting exactly what I need…

When I left my corporate job for the unknown of self employment I had to move my retirement account.  I did a lot of research; asked my BigDad for tips, who was very good with understanding the stock market, and I read a lot of Suze Orman, but when I had to make the final decision about where to put my money within the 60 day window in order to avoid any fees, I went with my gut.  I found a mutual fund called the “Star” fund and despite all my reading and all my searching for information, I went with the one that spoke to me…Over all these years I have been very pleased with the rate of return.  I’ve added to it in the years when I’ve been able and I’ve moved things around when there have been changes in the tax laws and it was beneficial to my future to do so.  But as a single woman I’ve had neither the good fortune nor the ability to put money in an IRA every year, I’ve not been able to save 10% of my income, or eight months worth of living expenses as a cushion.  I read plenty to know what I ought to be doing, but I can’t do any of it, so I simply do the best with what I’ve got.

I think about life much  like I think about my investment…I put in what I can, whenever I can, and if the rate of return stops proving beneficial to me, I change things around…I’ve made plenty of mistakes too, I imagine whenever we take a risk, be it with our money or our heart, we expose ourselves to the danger of loss.  I’ve ended relationships that perhaps would have proven beneficial to me if I stuck it out a little longer, and I’ve moved money too fast that I should have let sit and grow and would have exploded in value if I had not been in a rush.  I heard on the news the other day that the stock market had a spike after the government finally reopened, and so I looked at the details of my fund, and without making any deposit at all this year, it still grew by a few thousand dollars, and I felt like maybe I’m doing okay…not as well as I wish I were, but okay, and in a way that’s about all one can do right?  Feel okay…

I generally do not do things carelessly.  I generally think very much about my actions and the consequences of the choices I make.  Sure, I regret some things I have done or did not have the balls to do, but in general I play the hand I am dealt and can only try again to do better next time when I’ve folded but should have bet, or bet but should have folded.  When it comes to matters of my heart, I try to behave in a way that gives me the greatest rate of return. I try to love fully and I try to be kind above all and I really do think about the future with every choice I make in how to act or react.  I may not have the kind of money I’d like to buy the kinds of things I’d like, or go the places I’d like to go, or do many of the things I’d like to do, but I have a whole lotta love in my life, and with every smile I get from someone I love, every shared laugh, with every joyful hug, with every wordless grin, I feel the rate of return on my investment grow…

I have a friend who lived in the south for many years and she has an expression, ‘any day you wake up on this side of the dirt is a good day.’  I say it in my head sometimes when I am having a not so good day, as a gentle reminder to find something, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, for which I am thankful. Some days are better than others, no doubt about it, and some days are so bad, it does feel like the bottom’s dropped out, that you wonder why you got out of bed, or why you went to work, or why you even are bothering to drive home and start the cycle again.  We’ve all had them, and for those of you who have not, well, they’ll come, perhaps when you are least expecting it, which is sad, but probably true.

I’ve been, even in just the last couple years, gloriously giddy, amazingly apathetic, somber & sad, joyful & jolly, rolling in the money and empty pocketed…to write that we all have ups and downs is something of a ridiculous understatement is it not???  Sometimes it is very difficult to be happy for your friends or family or simply people you know, when they seem to be having infinitely better days or months or lives than you are, but you must. You must not become so bogged down with thoughts of “why not me?” that you miss out on even the little bits of good, or even tiny slivers of mediocrity…there is good and wonderfulness in every single day if you force yourself to see it or train yourself to notice.

I so believe that we get what we give, I so believe in the cycle of karma and the balance of things.  When I myself have suffered with the “why not me” syndrome, which I hate but with which I am occasionally afflicted, I have found that the only way out of that mire and muck is to remind myself of ALL the good, no matter how insignificant the good may seem at first, if I make myself pay attention to all the positives in my life, there becomes no room whatsoever for the negatives. I know people at this very moment dealing with some very heavy-hearted worrisome stuff, and I know people at this very moment living high on the hog without any worries in the world.  For some, dealing with illness, or job loss, or familial or financial problems, it may seem that things just keep going down, DOWN, D O W N…but they won’t stay that way, they never do, even though it often feels like things will simply never improve.  That expression about everything that goes up must come down also works in reverse…when life feels so low or things feel so bad, there is no place but Up to go…

In the winter of 2007 I got a book from the library and a dvd the same week from Neflix called ‘The Secret’ and I realized this morning, the last month I guess, that it really is no secret at all…the mind is an incredibly powerful tool and our thoughts do become our life…we do create our universe with the thoughts we think.  Anybody who knows me well, or reads what I write, gets the vibe that over several months this last year I was in something of a rut, or slump, or funk.  Any descriptive word will do that expresses the simplicity that I felt blue, not ‘myself’ and that really I was in a sucky place…BUT nothing was different, at all from months before the slump…I was still crazy in love with the most beautiful boy I’d ever laid eyes on, I still lived in my dream house built from scratch, I still lived next door to my gloriously perfect grandchildren, still had a job that I really found fulfilling and never to be boring…the fact of the matter is the ONLY thing that HAD changed was what I thought about.

By late August I felt tired.  Tired of being blue, tired of being sucky, tired of thinking things that left me feeling  confused, tired of feeling ‘off.”  I learned a LONG time ago that the only way to get to Neverland is to think happy thoughts and last month I made a mindful change to change my mind.

Situations do not change overnight, people do not change overnight, what we think we want from life can’t change overnight, BUT what we think about, and how we think about those situations, people, and wants CAN change in a split second if we wish them to.  I did not need some ethereal music and a psychic on a dvd to tell me this secret.  I did not have to push myself to read through the drivel in a best selling book to understand this secret.  I just had to figure it out on my own, through the help of loving friends and people in my life who are good people and happy people and content people and secure people, who already understood that the thoughts they create become the life they make…purposefully feeling positive, feeling gratitude, feeling fulfilled, even when THEIR lives are perhaps not moving constantly in the direction they hoped or chose, they know the secret…keep thinking happy thoughts.  I learned from Peter Pan as a very little girl, that you can’t fly if you don’t think happy thoughts, and worse, the longer you keep yourself from the happy thoughts, the more impossible it seems to get ‘back.’  J. M. Barrie wrote, “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”   It seems Peter knew ‘the secret’ all along.

If you have never read the book Eat Pray Love, you should.  If you have never seen the film Eat Pray Love, don’t.  When I first read the book in 2006 I was ready for a change, but I did not know what kind of change.  I knew I was unsettled, in too many ways, and a friend told me about this story, that I would enjoy reading about how another woman felt unsettled and what she chose to do about it.  The first chapter, where the author is so despondent that she can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can’t BE, where she sobs onto her bathroom floor, where she suddenly KNOWS she no longer wants to be married, no longer wants to live in her house, is sure she does not want to be a mother…the “scene” she retells is gut-wrenching.  I do not and did not have any scene such as this.  I also have neither the means nor the ability to travel around the world to “find” what I need to be settled.  To be clear, two years later I decided to build this house and move, and things did change and I did find a new way to be settled, nested, rooted.  Reading the book did not change my life, but reading the book helped me achieve a new perspective about what it means for a woman to change her life, and that is a beautiful thing.

I had an hour-long chat with my mother yesterday after we attended grandparent’s day for my daughter’s girls at their elementary school.  I walked my Mom to her car and we chatted about much of nothing and then chatted about much of something, and then she went and did it, as she is prone to do, said the “wrong” thing…Mothers, no matter how much we love them, or in some cases for many woman, loathe them, often say the one thing that gets your goat.  As I am a mother, and as I do this myself, I am well aware that it is neither a deliberate effort to irritate your daughter nor is it a purposeful action to make the enjoyable afternoon chatting end…it is simply a fact of life that for most mother/daughter combinations there is one thing, one subject, one issue, one tone, one little spark that irks the daughter or the mother and starts the fire of ire.

“We are worried about you” was what did it for me yesterday…my Mom’s points were valid, and as a mother, I know and understand EXACTLY what she was talking about, and she made her points and was clear and expressed herself in a way that told me she really only has my well being and happiness in mind, as a good mother should, and I calmed her nerves with a brief conversation, succinctly made my points without being overly agitated,  but the whole time I was trying to speak without being angry, or mad, or irritable over it all, I was thinking about the author of this book I love…THERE was a daughter to be worried about!!!  THERE was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown!!!

I realized last night that I have only to look into the eyes of my granddaughters, spend even a few minutes with those charming delightful humans, and I am rebalanced, and there is nothing to be worried over me about at all…I have love, deep unconditional love in my life, which is something many women never ever get…they eat here, they say prayers here & they love here, they chew, kneel, and kiss, they are the best thing that ever happened to me…sure, I’d love very much to go to Italy, India, and Indonesia to try to find myself, to have new experiences which guide me towards the kind of emotional grounding I do so often crave, but I can’t, so all I’ve got to do is open my door to these little girls, and there is plenty of eating, praying, and loving, to solve any worry in my world…