Life Archives - Page 5 of 6

Sisterhood

I am the oldest of four girls, I guess with this “oldest” title came the automatic assignment of always being the one responsible for the others. I was capable, more than capable so when my mom left when I was nine and requested that I parent my little sisters I was flattered that she would see that I was capable.

I am not my story

Over the past month I have written each week about some of my experiences growing up, I did so because these experiences have come up frequently in my Writing Wisdom practice and I wanted to share not just the experience and the details of those moments from so long ago but I wanted to share what I see, feel and experience in them now from this safer, perhaps more comfortable place of looking at them as an outside observer far into the future.

A mother’s lesson in resilience

When I was small, I saw my mother as bigger than life, I put her up on a pedestal. I lifted her up there because she showed up for activities at school, diving right in and raising money for the annual school fundraiser. I lifted her up there because she pushed my sisters and I, to build a big Gingerbread House for the annual school Christmas Festival. I lifted her up there because she would put her makeup on and put make up on me sometimes too.

This is the best I can do today.

I am making this statement to myself often these days. I rise each morning, make coffee, meditate, journal and then review my to do list. There are days when I feel like my very ability to show up at all depends on that to do list. It gives me a place to go, something to strive toward, it gives me something to focus on, especially on days when all else feels difficult.

Nothing to say…

I have written three blogs in the last three days and yet I can’t seem to get any of them to the point where I feel good about posting them.

Choices

All of my life I have been too busy. Too busy to notice that I had a choice in my busyness. I had instead gotten on a conveyor belt of “I have to’s” and “I should do’s,” showing up at the airport each week fully packed out of a rote set of tasks that I no longer had to even think about, I just did.

Surrounded by Angels

Let me be honest, this quarantine thing has sucked! With a husband awaiting triple cervical fusion surgery, in constant pain, being forced to quit smoking and obviously not in the happiest of moods facing a surgery imposed quarantine of sorts, the needs of client work, writing and classes there have been days that I have wanted to do way more than scream “Calgon Take Me Away” (for those old enough to remember that commercial)!

Hard work and asking for help!

The call came Friday, my husband’s doctor’s nurse, I got excited, I thought she was calling with a surgery date, finally, we could get on the road to healing. Instead she said, “so what was his quit date?” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, his last day smoking, I said that he had smoked the day before so I guess it will be today if it has to be. She explained that in order to get his surgery authorized there needed to be 6 weeks of no smoking.

Lessons from nails and gray hair

I think this pandemic is starting to work some kind of voodoo magic on me. First it grounded me, no more weekly flights, then it seemingly caged me, in my house, no more tidy hotel rooms and in my year dedicated to Freedom according to my vision board, that is what I call irony!