Pivoting only slightly, I want to talk about various challenges we face with cognitive decline including stigmas and fears.  I’m terrified of cognitive decline including dementia and Alzheimer’s as this is something that has affected both sides of my family and is now affecting my father as well.  Having lived with anxiety, depression, ADD, and OCD most of my life, I feel mental illness is one of the cruelest diseases out there because we have a fully functioning and capable system but our OS is out of whack.  The signals are simply not connecting and witnessing those we love, those who had every bit of intelligence and thrived in this world suddenly not be able to connect their thoughts and actions or even their words and actions is heartbreaking.  The same can be said with a functioning mind and a non-functioning body like Parkinson’s or ALS.  I will never understand such a sick fate.  We can say that these diseases should make us aware of the present and to appreciate what we have but I want to talk about how the lives we live now very much impact what happens to our brains down the road.

First and foremost, there is absolutely a genetic component to these diseases so there is, unfortunately, a roll of the dice that we can’t account for in some cases.  No matter what we do, some of us will simply be dealt the hand of cognitive struggles and decline.  But, as I’m older, and now I’ve witnessed multiple family members experience this decline, I’m aware of the patterns and contributing factors we need to consider to mitigate the illness.  I watched my father undergo his preliminary verbal testing and was shocked.  It had less to do with the things he couldn’t remember but I could see the fear in him as he realized how far this has already progressed.  I could see that he fully understood what he was trying to say but he COULD NOT RESPOND.  At least not in the way he wanted to and he apologized every time.  Right off the bat, strength and intelligence have nothing to do with this disease—it is indiscriminate.  But the habits we have determine what we face.  The doctor mentioned the impact of high cholesterol and diabetes on the vascular flow and how that can lead to cases of vascular dementia.  So we can’t sit here and pretend that the society we live in that pushes for partying hard and working harder and suppressing emotions helps with things like mental function.  We may know about stress and the impact that has on the body but long term abuse whether it’s stress related or what we put in our bodies absolutely can destroy us from the inside out.

Diseases of mental decline are a journey no matter how we look at them.  It forces us to look back because our present is unstable and the future is unknown and for both parties, the past becomes the rock because it is known. When times get hard we tend to look back at the past as if it was somehow better than where we’re at now.  We fail to realize that we are where we are because of all the things we’ve done up to this point, the good and the bad.  The things we could have chosen better or done differently or even the things we would have done more of and the time we could have spent with a different focus, those regrets can become rampant when we get locked in the mind by different forms of decline.  It shows us the fragility and power of the mind.  It doesn’t take much to interrupt what we would consider normal function and once that happens, our entire reality shifts.  All of this is to say that we need to be mindful of the mind and all things that impact it.  We need to care for ourselves and those around us and cherish the present with them as much as we can because the truth is we never know when something will shift.  But it doesn’t have to equate to the rug getting pulled out from under us if we take everything step by step.  The mind may be fragile but the spirit is resilient and we are meant to help carry each other through.   That doesn’t mean it’s easy, it just means that this journey isn’t as straightforward as we thought and we can’t take any of it for granted because, real or not, the mind will show us what we think we have.  Embrace the now.    

“You have as much life left as you let yourself live,” unknown.  We need this reminder to stop being our own limiters.  We live a life of contradiction—dream big but we pursue those dreams in the same old way.  If we have different dreams, we have to acknowledge that thinking we will get those dreams in the exact same way is ridiculous.  Different dreams/goals require different pursuits and energy and focus and effort.  We also tell people they can have it all but then tell them what will and won’t work.  Life is what we make it, and the more we let if flow through us, the more we get to experience it.  A few months back I wrote a piece on living the same year for 90 years and calling it living and that is important again here- just because we are alive doesn’t mean we are living.    

As cliché as it sounds, it isn’t always the number of years we have, it’s the life we put in those years.  No one can determine or put a value on what something means to us so we assign that meaning ourselves.  If we live in the shadows and limits of what’s possible, we are living a partial existence.  It’s our job to define what we want and eliminate the should’s and must’s that we put on ourselves because those expectations in themselves limit what could be and blind us to what we’re really feeling.  We get stuck in the idea that we are meant to live as someone else—or for someone else.  I know that’s the trap I put myself in.  I thought it was my job to make others happy doing what they wanted me to.  It was only ever my job to connect and find what I wanted to do. 

Life is a bold adventure and it’s meant to be unique for everyone.  Eliminate the power plays and the things we convince ourselves are important and suddenly what’s actually important reveals itself.  We see what matters.  I’ve witnessed multiple lifetimes/generations of people lament how they weren’t allowed to live/do certain things and I know to them that was a very real experience.  I also know that it’s a total crock.  They lived that way because they were too afraid to do what they wanted for fear of what people thought of them. To this very day they would miss out on what precious time they have and claim victim rather than partake in what they want to do.  The mind can convince us of some incredible things—don’t let it convince us that we’ve had enough when we’re just getting started or that what we really want is someone too far fetched.  Live loud, often, and completely and don’t worry what others say or feel about it.    

Today I am grateful for answers.  The limbo of waiting for confirmation of something you know in your gut but don’t have an official pulse on is maddening.  It’s terrifying ground knowing you’re heading toward something without knowing.  The feeling of needing to prepare for something, seeing the inevitable unfold all while having to function as if all is normal.  Learning a new normal after finally adjusting to the old throws us all for a loop and mourning the loss of the old (or the potential of it) carries a specific kind of pain as well.  The memory of what was and trying to make it easy to let go and the realization of how severe the what IS creates an odd disorientation.  There’s an acceptance because we’ve been preparing for this reality for a while but there’s still denial because there’s constant and consistent glimpses of what we knew.  The truth is I fear some of what I see because I fear the same fate for myself if truth be told.  But there is relief because I know I can start adjusting habits for myself now and I can shift my focus to what needs to be done in my life rather than trying to recapture what is gone.  What’s broken can’t be repaired but we can all learn to work with it.

Today I am grateful for persistence.  I’m not going to lie, I’m tired as all hell.  I’m exhausted more often than not because of the mental gymnastics of trying to figure out what I want to do and how to go about it and how to do ALL of it.  My husband told me the other day that he doesn’t understand how one person can have so many thoughts going through their head and I confirmed it’s not easy.  But I’ve also realized that a lot of it comes down to ambition.  It’s a gift to see so many different paths but it’s hard to decide at times because there are wonderful options everywhere.  But to get through on more than one path means challenges on all sides.  I haven’t always been clear—and I’m still not always clear—on what I want to do or what the ultimate goal is, but I keep pushing forward.  I might try to keep things alive longer than I should but that’s only because I see so many different options but once I know something is gone, I let it go.  I have an acute sense of what it means to keep going and the need to keep pivoting.  There are somethings I wish I had stuck with longer than others and there are things I wish I had tried but I do not regret pushing forward on the things that matter to me, even if there is a degree of madness to it.  Sometimes we have to keep going until we get to the clearing and I know I’ve taken the long way around multiple times.  But I’m here and I’m still able to keep going.

Today I am grateful for a reality check.  I needed some emotional detachment from the things I’ve accumulated in my life.  It’s been a slow process of defining where we are going as a couple and what I need to do as an individual to get there.  I’ve held onto so much for fear of what I “might” need or for if we decide to use it someday—and the lesson is not new, I’ve see things wither away over and over again from lack of use and for the idea that I should just hold onto it.  As I mentioned with persistence above, I can see a lot of different paths but that doesn’t mean I can live all of them.  So there are simply things that need to go.  I never thought it would take that many cycles to purge all the things I need to let go of but it has.  Truthfully I di feel a bit of shame around it because I felt like I could let go of specific times and faces I portrayed as I embraced different parts of my life.  It was also hard to accept it because there are things from my past I’ve held onto that I picked up again and fell right into stride because NOW was the right time for it.  But the reality is I’m tired of clinging and holding and fighting and moving in circles carrying all of this crap.  The reality check is certain things are falling into place and they won’t be cleared away like some game of tetris.  So it’s time to clear what I can now.  I clung to things trying to remember and so I could help others remember as well and all it did was create an unbearable burden that I couldn’t lift on my own regardless.  The thing doesn’t have the memory even if that’s the last remnant or connection I may have to it.  There is a reality that can’t change no matter what we do so holding onto anything is irrelevant.  It’s holding onto pieces of things that simply will never go back to what they were.  That’s too great a burden for anyone to bear and I’ve filled an entire home with multiple lifetimes had and multiple possibilities for lifetimes to come.  It’s time to settle fully into what this lifetime is for me now.   

Today I am grateful for a reality check again.  I fully understand I’m dealing with a hormonal shift in my body again.  Just as I got used to managing what I thought were symptoms related to an overproduction of certain hormones, I see now that my body is coming down.  I also see how that impacted me mentally over the last few months and I know I can’t let that derail the progress I’ve made.  There are things that can help dealing with hormonal changes in the body but this is where my body is at.  I haven’t gotten much help from my physicians as we are all aware of what’s happening but the problem is that my ranges are all “normal” and we know if something is normal on paper then it must be right.  I know my body is far from the norm and I feel the impact of all these things ravaging out of control in my system but I also know that for the last two years I’ve felt better.  I’ve managed to get through some of the hardest times of my life simply with the persistence mentioned above and the clearing.  I can’t let my emotions derail me because it’s when I’m derailed that I let myself crash completely.  So I need to enforce the discipline I had before and simply stick with it.  I do not have the luxury to let myself wallow in anything because I’ve seen and felt what it does to me mentally and physically.  So take control.  DO what I’m supposed to do and all is well.    

Today I am grateful for facing fears.  We received confirmation of what we suspected in regards to a condition with my father as I started to reference in the opening of this piece.  You never know when the last time something is going to feel as it did or when it will be the last time we experience something, period.  The last Christmas we had at my grandmother’s or even the last Thanksgiving we had.  Was this the last time I was able to have a normal conversation with my father?  Is this the last time we’ll be in that house as it was?  But the truth is we were all there together when we found out and it doesn’t feel all that different right now.  There are things we all know are coming and we won’t be able to stop them.  But we’ve already faced what we thought was the worst and we are all still here.  Sometimes it isn’t the thing we’re afraid of—it’s what happens after we deal with it.  It’s the fear we don’t think we CAN deal with it.  Yet often times we see when we look back that we already faced the worst of our fears.  We survived.  Nothing looks the same but we’ve somehow walked through.  Even if we are a bit bruised and battered and tired—we’ve walked through and the fear is long behind us.  We don’t need to carry the weight of the fear because we’ve already done the thing.  All we have to do is keep going.   

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

I’ve always openly shared my struggles with anxiety and I’ve recently found a tool that works for me.  It’s a deceptively simple game where you have to identify the pattern of eliminating the shape to clear the board.  For my chaotic brain, it’s incredibly soothing.  The board itself is pure chaos and it’s so satisfying to bring it back to order.  Yet, like with most things, that simplicity made me realize something greater.  It literally only takes ONE arrow freed to unlock the rest.  Seriously, the board can look like one big tangle with no clear start/end but you find the one piece and they all come undone.  There’s a life lesson there.  We spend so much time looking and searching for answers, trying different things, trying to force different things because we are so set on an outcome that we try to do all the things.  We try to do everything everywhere all at once so to speak.  All we need is that one thing.  The ONE change, the one phone call, the one leap, the one video, the one email, the one dinner, the one shift in perspective to unlock the entire secret/key to our lives.

It made me see that we get anxious BECAUSE we are so set on finding that answer and we feel we are under some sort of time clock that if we don’t figure it out RIGHT NOW we are somehow behind or that we’ve done something wrong.  Some solutions are easy but many of them take time.  We won’t know it works until it works and sometimes the door opens immediately and others it stays closed.  There are even the times the door opens but there’s another door just inside.  We all have a path and there is something to be said for the fact that whatever is meant to cross our path will, if it was meant to happen it will happen.  But there is also something to be said for clarity, patience, and persistence.  Knowing when to keep going, knowing when to rest, knowing when movement is just wasted energy is key.  That key alone can open doors as well.  But I want to encourage everyone to remember that just because things look or feel overly complicated, there is always that one thing that can resolve it.  Don’t give up.  Sit in the overwhelm for a minute, breathe, and look around.  The answer will come, sometimes when we least expect it—and the world opens from there.      

We learn presence when we learn to be happy where we are.  When we are content where we are, creating growth from who we are, we find the that secret sauce that keeps the moment extending on forever.  It’s an infinite now.  We forget what that feels like in a world that is accessible 24/7.  Sure, there are amazing benefits to being able to get what we want when we want it, virtually on demand.  But we have to remember the world isn’t designed to be awake 24/7.  It has an inherent rhythm requiring sleep as much as it requires activity.  Connection spans across that time which is amazing but we aren’t designed to be everything to everyone all the time.  It is enough to be ourselves and to give the energy we can where we can—that minimizes NOTHING of our time here.  It isn’t only the huge actions that have impact.   it doesn’t have to be Earth shattering revolutionary things, it can be as simple as where we are creating growth within ourselves.  Our purpose here is to create growth and evolve so it’s ok to be ok with who we are.  Flowers, animals, nature don’t try to be anything other than what they are.  You’ve never heard a butterfly ask to be a ladybug—no, it goes on its butterfly way and lives its life and it’s beautiful.  We don’t ask it to be anything else, we don’t expect it to be anything else.  It’s ok to be who we are.

We can’t be anything other than who we are anyway and we can’t be anywhere but where we are either.  Sure, we can get to other places but even in that process, we are still with ourselves the whole way and all that time moving from place to place doesn’t disappear.  It doesn’t become insignificant because we weren’t at the end destination.  Living is enough reason to live.  It’s a romantic idea to influence the world and have people see us but it isn’t necessary to create value.  Getting centered and being happy where we are isn’t just some fanciful talk about self-acceptance.  The truth is it’s incredibly empowering when we operate from that level of self-awareness.  That’s when we find our power.  The ability to do what we love is a gift and the ability to share what we love is an even greater privilege.  We only know what that is when we sit with it and learn to develop it.  We can’t be everywhere all at once no matter how many possibilities there are.  If we try to do everything we end up doing nothing.  It used to scare me because that felt like signing up to miss out on life.  But the truth is we live the most when we are familiar with what we are good at and when we take the time to connect with our gifts. 

Learning presence IS learning contentment.  Do not mistake contentment for complacent because there’s a huge difference.  Complacent means taking the dregs of what’s around us and settling into a routine with no direction.  Contentment means understanding the value of where we are and honing and shaping what we have.  It’s when we are content that we see opportunities for growth and how to put them into action.  Contentment is appreciating what we have but creating or making use of the possibilities.  Accepting where we are is the fastest way to see where we can (or where we want) to go.  We can’t live 1,000 paces ahead—we have to take each one of those steps to get to the place where things grow.  There is security and self-assuredness in calling in the energy we expend trying to be a million and one things and saying, “This is who I am and it’s enough.  This is what I can do with who I am and this is what I WANT to do.”  There are still more lessons from our friend the butterfly.  Not only does it fully accept itself and its purpose, it has a greater impact than it can ever know—hence, the Butterfly Effect.  It’s the small things that change the world.  So detach from who we are supposed to be and become who we are.  Find peace with who we are and let the growth begin.     

I have a small follow up to yesterday’s piece regarding life and death.  My grandfather passed away 31 years ago and that moment has stuck with me for so long.  From being told he was sick, to being told he passed, to the experience of seeing his body and the dream after in which he told me he was alright now, that loss impacted nearly everything in my life after.  One moment I rarely talk about associated with it was my grandmother’s reaction.  She told the story herself multiple times, probably more times than I knew of, but I didn’t realize it bothered me until I spoke with my family regarding this most recent loss we know is coming.  I don’t deny that my grandfather’s death hit my grandmother really hard—we didn’t anticipate losing him, truly.  But after he passed, we sat in her kitche, the rest of us collectively mourning and grieving and crying and, in her own way of looking for support, she said to the group, “I saw him on the table, gave him a kiss and took his hand and said, ‘what a waste, Joe’.”  Even at 11 years old, I knew she was referencing the waste of a life they could have had together.  As I got older, I realized she was more specifically referencing the waste of a life she wanted them to have together.  In some ways I can understand that—relationships are never easy and we build resentments for the things we want but can’t have, the things we feel we are denied out of control, the loss of a dream we had at one point.  And when my grandparents married, it was a different time so the expectations couples held for each other were entirely different than today.

The part I’m growing to understand is that she didn’t just mourn a vision she had for her life, she resented the life she created with my grandfather.  She got herself in such a tizzy over the years wanting things to be a certain way, demanding her children behave according to her expectations (under the guise of upsetting my grandfather), controlling how everything appeared because she thought that was what she was supposed to do.  She felt alone in creating that image because my grandfather loved life.  I can’t say he was an easy man but he certainly wasn’t difficult either.  He took care of his family, he ensured no one went without, he provided a source of emotional support as well.  My grandfather was also  very direct in his help—he’d be there but he wouldn’t let anyone take advantage so if you made a mistake that affected or hurt him, once he could forgive, twice was pushing it, and there was rarely a third time.  But with that being said, he was also loving and logical and tried to show her the world.  I think it was his faith that bothered her the most.  He lived and believed how he truly felt while she acted as she was told a good Catholic should.  She acted out of fear—fear of what people would think, fear of disappointing her family, fear of losing her family, fear that if she didn’t do what she was “supposed to” she would be punished.  And she saw a man living his life, loving as he knew how, fulfilling his bargain in a way she didn’t understand, in a way she expected him to know without her ever talking about it.

To my knowledge, my family member didn’t know that story—they weren’t around in that moment but who is to say that my grandmother didn’t repeat it to them.  We were in a long conversation about what death meant and how this death we’re dealing with is sad more than anything—not for the loss of the life, but for the loss of the life that could have been.  This person just said, “it’s a waste.”  And it hit me differently.  While the context and meaning were the same, after learning more information about what had happened in this family, it made more sense. We waste so much time trying to make life what we think it should be and trying to manipulate others to fit into some mold of how we think they should be living and trying to elicit the feelings and behaviors that work for us and suddenly there are other feelings compiled.  We get angry when people don’t act how we think they should.  We get sad and we ignore and we yell all because we aren’t living up to someone’s expectations or vice versa.  And instead of talking it out and seeing if there’s some sort of resolution, we allow it to fester and we fixate and suddenly we aren’t living at all.  Staying stuck in the ruins of the idea instead of living with what is, THAT is the waste.  Speaking from this experience, don’t waste our time on regret and anger and pain, especially when those things are caused by some unmet expectation that was never expressed or explained in the first place.  Live openly, honestly, authentically, because, while there may still be some moments that hurt or are uncomfortable, it passes in the long run and we can move on.  The point is to keep moving on.  The point is to not be stuck.  The point is to live while we are here—don’t mourn a life while we’re still living it.  Just go out and live and there will be no question on whether or not it was worth it in the end.

We’re facing a death in the family right now and it’s a complicated situation—well as complicated as humans and emotions make things.  There are entire lives lived that we knew nothing about because of how things were portrayed in the family—and that was their prerogative to present that front.  We never know what goes on behind closed doors.  But when those doors can’t stay closed anymore, the truth starts to come out.  There is no hiding the secrets we so desperately wanted to keep from other people’s view.  Like we can bury it but the truth always comes out.  It’s amazing how simply sharing the truth puts everything into perspective.  We see the person for who they were, we see all sides and suddenly it makes sense.  Humans are truly complex creatures and we’ve all lost our way at times, thinking we know the answers or what’s best, prioritizing different things from other people and it makes it painful to feel the separation in life and it always makes you wish that we could go back.  Hindsight is 20/20 after all.  Death seems to bring out total panic or total peace in people.  There’s no control in death, not of where we go, not of knowing what really happens, not of what people think of us after and there is no stopping it.  There is no defending any type of legacy once that voice is silenced. 

At the same time, witnessing death also makes you think of life and what it means. Life is funny (albeit confusing and perhaps annoying in its ambiguity) with all of the inherent polarizing things that come with it.  Consistently inconsistent.  Beautifully imperfect.  So much good filled with bad and so much bad that’s truly good.  It’s hard to know what’s right, what the point is, where the truth is.  There are no easy answers and frankly it’s hard to not question whether or not it’s a game for something else at times, like some version of the marbles we see the aliens playing at the end of Men In Black. I find it hard to accept that we simply live and die but, like most people, I’m tired of asking what the point is.  I’m tired of trying to figure it out, feeling the stress like if I don’t find “the answer” I’ve somehow failed.  There isn’t a single answer other than for whatever reason we are meant to experience the entire spectrum of what life has to offer, the good and the bad.  We are supposed to find the parallel of that good and bad in ourselves and understand that is simply part of being human.    

I don’t understand the battles some people face or why they chose them but I know we all have our own brand of demons to face.  That is one certainty in life–We are constantly faced with what we don’t want to see and we see the same issues repeatedly until we are willing to face it head on.  Even death can’t stop that.  I see what the family is going through now and I truly wish I could fix it but there are things that no amount of words, wishing, wanting, or willing will correct.  For as much as we know the truth always comes out, we also know that we will have to deal with the consequences.  Those are things we can’t sweep under the rug.  I’ve learned first hand that we are not responsible for making people pay for what they did/holding them accountable for their actions or perceived slights/transgressions.  I’ve wanted to fight my fair share of things but I see how that was merely wasted energy.  I feel like the whole point of life is to find satisfaction.  To arrive at the end content with what happened.  I can’t say “live with no regrets” because, again, we’re human but I can say that living a life we are at peace with is the goal.  The last thing I want is to face my demons when I’m trying to find rest.  So it’s best to make that peace while we’re still alive and able.        

“Personality can open doors but only character can keep them open,” Lily Collins.  I know someone from childhood who has always walked through life like nothing bothers her.  I mean, I’ve been with her through some truly painful and challenging moments and I know things do get to her but the world would never know it.  When we were kids my mom used to say, “That girl could step in a pile of shit and come out smelling like roses.”  It may sound crass or hurtful, but it was meant as a compliment to the sort of resilience and/or skill to slide through any situation and not let it stick.  That doesn’t mean this person doesn’t have her share of scars, but she certainly learned how to navigate situations with a certain degree of ease.  Now, I share this because I was always incredibly jealous of her because she always seemed to get her way.  She could somehow aim at the entirely wrong pocket and still end up where she needed to be, like she could do no wrong.  I thought of this person when I read that quote because I realized I’d been living my life in comparison to her (perhaps in competition with her) for ages.  She’d flit through life, finding great opportunities only to move on to the next one and then the next one after that and she amassed huge success doing that.  I stayed working for the same company that was supposed to be a temporary job for over 20 years hoping it would move me up through the ranks.  Was this a matter of personality or character?  Her personality carried her through multiple rooms while mine carried me up the ladder and who is to say one is better than the other? 

After reading that quote, I understood had been looking at our lives wrong.  Through that comparison lens, I had considered each trait to be better than the other at one point and I was operating from the perception that one was better than the other.  I’d honed skills on the character side, wanting to prove to people I was worthy and she’d honed skills on the personality side creating a network in a variety of ways.  She literally has always had the personality that opens doors and she is amazing at it—and she is truly an amazing, caring, and talented person.  I wanted to create that network but I also wanted to control the narrative around my life and, I will admit, my competitive nature led me to want to be the best (again that came from wanting to prove my worth).  With that being said, the truth is we need to learn to develop both, personality and character.  We need to find ways to connect with people and build a network but we also need to be consistent enough to develop ourselves and others along the way.  It was never a competition to begin with.  It doesn’t necessarily matter how big our network is and it really doesn’t matter how far up the ladder we go.  If we create more bridges than walls, the truth is we don’t need any doors and we can walk as far as we want and that distance is only limited by ourselves.         

The truth is personality and character are two sides of the same coin and that coin is constantly flipping in the air.  Humans are this odd mix of malleability and consistency so the key comes down to recognizing our own signals for what we need to do and when we need to move.  We want to be steady enough to make progress to serve our purpose but we want to be adaptable enough to keep up with the times.  So the reality is it truly comes down to reading the room and reading ourselves.  Looking back at the person I’m talking about, I know part of that secret sauce she lives by is that she just doesn’t get caught up in anything and that in itself keeps her moving forward.  That type of resilience can be developed through practice but I will admit there are some people simply born with that skill.  That is a degree of self-awareness that keeps those individuals seemingly aware of everything but focused on the target.  The thing is we don’t need to create more competition in this world, we need to learn to better navigate through it.  We need to learn to use both sides of that coin and operate with intention as far as if we are creating a network.  That network will start with personality but it will be maintained with our character.  One last thing for consideration is that both will always be revealed.  We can’t hide who we are forever—just embrace those facets of our personality and use them to define our character.            

“What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make,” Jane Goodall. We’ve spent enough time talking about how others make us feel and what they think of us.  Our job isn’t to make people see us a certain way, it’s to leave a mark on the world for something greater than we are just like we spoke about last week with the purpose of life being to add value.  It’s to help people do the same.  We’ve seen plenty of examples of people leaving a less than desirable mark on the world and Lord knows there are plenty of people out there whose sole purpose is to get their name out there.  They just want the lights for the sake of having the lights on them.  The thing with image is it’s fleeting.  People are fickle and whether it’s ourselves who change our image or it’s the people who start to feel differently, our image is based on opinion.  The funny thing about opinion is I’d like to say that no one remembers us based on opinion but that’s not entirely true.  They remember us based on the story that gets told and that story is always biased because it’s from one side and we don’t often get to hear the other side so it’s pretty polarizing.  It may seem like I’m talking about trying to control the narrative, but as we spoke about last week, we don’t get to decide that story—that’s true.  So all we can do is make sure we’re doing our best to do something positive.

The world often discounts the little things that make this a better place.  They ignore the magic that exists right at our fingertips and all around.  We’ve gone way too far to the other extreme in this world when it comes to connection—perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it.  We’ve gone too far to the other extreme of the purpose of connection.  We absolutely need connection and community, we just don’t need to be inundated by every single person every second of the day.  That is way too much for the brain to process.  Compile that with the pressures to survive, thrive, and succeed, and we’ve created a powder keg of tension and suppressed emotion.  And THAT is also the power of connection—to help disperse some of that energy.  So with all that being said, we need to remember that making a difference isn’t all grand gestures and shows—it can literally be something as small as a smile.  It can be making a phone call.  Speaking as someone who has been emotionally saved by a phone call, I will attest to that 100%.  We make our choices in this world and that ripples out to other people.  The truth is all we can do is our best and hope that it matters but if we operate from a place of good intention, that’s enough.  The world knows what’s in our hearts and that’s just vibration.  So elevate and put out our best. 

Today I am grateful for perspective.  Sometimes we really have to get out of our own heads and listen to what someone else has to say on it.  We get too close to the situation and we don’t think right.  Just because we are close to it doesn’t mean we know everything about it.  I brought in a third party for an opinion on a matter and explained the situation as objectively as I could and this person told me the truth.  They told me where I needed to shore up and be stronger and not take things personally and they also let me know where the other side could have improved.  I like to be right but not at the sake of relationships so I don’t mind being told when I need to get in check.  As much as I hate to admit it, I also don’t mind being validated every now and then.  There’s enough craziness in this world that sometimes it’s nice to hear that we’re right or that we weren’t imagining things—it’s not wrong to want some back up every now and then.  Regardless, it helps to get that outside view every now and then to confirm the difference.   

Today I am grateful for a clean slate.  After getting burned by some tumultuous relationships, I was incredibly hesitant to form friendships again.  Adult friendships are some of the most difficult to form and I’d put in a lot of effort that fizzled out in the end—actually it bit me in the ass repeatedly.  Regardless, as I mentioned a few days ago, I found out that some people in this group are rehashing the incident (kind of like I’m doing here, sorry) to people who weren’t involved, in essence trying to make us look bad to people we didn’t/don’t know yet.  The person who informed me of this told me she understood everything going on and she only replied with, “I can’t imagine how hurt you must feel.”  The weight of the constant pressure to hold my own and to be ready for a fight melted away.  I’m not perfect and I certainly was never trying to give that impression to anyone, but I also didn’t want someone running a smear campaign on me.  So it was nice to hear that someone was willing to see things from both sides and, more importantly, they were willing to get that information from both sides before making a decision on ANYTHING.    

Today I am grateful for family and communication.  There’s a lot going on in the world and we get really freaking tired and exhausted and overwhelmed….or at least it seems the women in my life do.  We take on loads and loads of things and we grin and bear it until we break.  That’s not uncommon, I know. But this weekend I was so grateful to have several different conversations, all with my sisters (by family and by chosen family).  Each one came at the perfect time and we were mutually able to help each other.  Community is a powerful thing and having productive conversations that ranged from emotional resolution to proactive planning and care for others and ourselves felt amazing.  It felt wildly relieving even if the topics we broached were heavy at times.  Dealing with life in itself can be heavy, especially in times of transition but those conversations this weekend demonstrated how simply that, just a call, a chat, a virtual meeting can change things.  It felt wonderful.  Forming that kind of community and reestablishing that connection is so needed and we need to stop taking on so much ourselves—or we need to stop pushing ourselves to the point of breaking before we seek help.  That reminder was needed.

Today I am grateful for emotional truth.  There were a few moments this weekend dealing with emotions being revealed and emotions being manipulated and in both circumstances there were different types of truth revealed.  With the latter situation of emotional manipulation, we saw first hand where our emotional stifling comes from and how we shift what we express based on who we are with (I will talk about that more later this week).  In that moment, within seconds, we saw someone go from tearful and unsure of themselves to confident and empowered as soon as they were in different people’s presence.  I don’t know if we can fully call it manipulation to be fair, but it was certainly masking and shifting based on the people present.  The other moment was a long time coming and I’m so grateful to have seen it.  Anyone who has followed this blog for a while knows I’ve been with my husband going on 25 years now and, like any couple, we’ve naturally had our ups and downs—some more severe than others.  He’s always been afraid of showing his true colors because he has always had that subconscious fear of getting hurt.  This past weekend he had a moment where he completely broke through that barrier and he was completely emotionally vulnerable and honest.  I can say that I wish it had happened sooner in life but I am so incredibly grateful it happened now.      

Today I am grateful for witnessing effort.  I’m not talking about the kind of effort that drives people to exhaustion or the effort that causes pain of any kind.  I’m talking about the kind of effort that shows that someone is on board and really with you.  The knowledge that someone has your back is the most comforting thing we could do for each other.  Actually following through and helping each other lifts the weight of whatever that person is carrying right off their shoulders and, this weekend, knowing that I have people in my corner feels amazing.  It feels like there’s a chance to change things, a chance to focus on what really matters.  And if we can do that, if we can shift our focus together and do what we need to do, then that future we’ve envisioned together just might come to fruition after all.  How amazing is that?  Just with a little effort, seeing the “team” come together, makes it all make sense and makes the work to this point seem completely worth it.  It wasn’t the exact path we chose to take to get here—but here we are.  The goal is on the horizon. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.