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Dear Easter
It didn’t turn out at all as I thought it would. Some days were actually crushing, bludgeoning my spirit with grief, sadness and even despair.
Still, here we are and Easter’s promise is as it always has been… spring time and the promise of rebirth. The promise of hope that happiness returns, it may never be what it was before, but our hearts need not lay low because the past will never return to us. We can embrace the new hope, the new spring time as it brings forth the fresh lush growth of colored flowers and green trees and fields.
The spring demands that we keep our heart open to new possibilities, possibilities that at first may not be recognizable. We are creatures of habit and may not see or recognize the new love, the new life that springs forth to embrace us. We must open our heart, our arms and let the new growth seduce us and then embrace us. We must do this in order to keep the promise of spring alive in our hearts.
Then, when we know love, we must give it and be the instrument of love for others. We must be the spring that others need to open their souls again to the sun.
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Unrelenting Punishment
When your feelings are hurt every single day, eventually your strength will sag. When people come at you angry, condescending, lecturing and otherwise telling you that they are so much smarter than you are, your spirit will become low.I do not think people realize that this unrelenting punishment of others will not gain anything for them. At first they may think that they are reforming the other person into someone that they like more, but in the end, all that happens is that the person finds a way to escape from the Punisher.
The heart hurts, the spirit is low and so the punished will find a way to run away. Sometimes, these situations do not change and in those cases the relationship requires a complete divorce. It is a sad thing to witness. Every single time that I am witness to this situation, or when I experience this situation, I always wonder about intention.
What is your intention in this relationship? Do you want to continue the relationship? If you want to continue the relationship why do you make the other person feel bad, by constantly telling them that they are wrong? When you lecture another, you are telling them that they are not smart enough on their own. Your crusade of “rightness” leaves them feeling hurt and angry.
Do you understand support? Do you understand that support is the action of giving? Giving means the relinquishment of what you desire in order to care for another. Giving is the most effective means of maintaining a relationship. Giving does not equate to material comfort (although it can). Giving equates to a smiling face, an answering grace, a soft touch of the shoulder, a promise kept – in spite of negative odds against it. Find your intention among all of your feelings and decide if you want to maintain the relationship and then decide how you can do that.
You cannot maintain a relationship with relentless punishment, you cannot.
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Amazing
We love our own children and grandchildren so much! They are cute, they are smart, they are fantastic and they don’t have to be biologic, as long as they are our own, we are crazy about them. So funny… -
My Own Vision of Perfection is a Relentless Taskmaster
I want everything to be perfect, not only for myself, but for everyone that I love. It haunts me when I am trying to take a nap, it dogs me when I am trying to complete a task. It has been a challenge to stop multi-tasking, really, it is not more efficient to do two things at one time. Usually it takes twice as long and one or the other is screwed up.For many, many years, I have had to do everything at once. Efficiency was the most important talent because I could not afford to make a second trip, or pay for something twice, everything had to go smoothly the first time. Inefficiency and waste have never been an option in my world.
And now, I cannot let go, like a fighter suffering from PTSD, I cannot give up the good fight. I don’t want to waste a trip to Publix, I don’t want to drive one centimeter further or longer than I need to. I yearn for, work for and dream of efficient perfection and it’s killing me…
Besides the fact that I am certain that efficiency is not as important as I once thought, there is horrible preoccupation. I am learning how to live right here right now. Preoccupation is not congruent with living right here right now. I cannot be preoccupied with perfection and efficiency when I am living in the moment, the moment won’t allow it.
I have to let go of my relentless taskmaster and it is me.
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Happy Anniversary David Parker! 5 Years So FAR and at Least 15 Years More…
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Sometimes I Feel Like…
I can never get ahead. I do everything right and still, I can’t get what I want. I work hard, I have a college degree, I put in long hours and I try, so hard, do I try. I pay things when they are due, I pay things off before the expiration date and still I can’t seem to get a foot in edgewise on the stairs to financial prosperity.After I get a good moment, I mean things are paid off and I think I can buy something; life always throws me a curve ball. Why? I don’t know. I am there at financial glamour and BAM, all the cash is taken from my hands, my pocketbook, my wallet and boom, the cash is gone.
And, it is always necessary, it is always necessary for me to spend the money on something other than me. Sometimes I even get angry, in 2003 I was late on a student loan payment and my creditors punished me for it for at least 10 years!!! Yep, you bet I was pissed off, it seems as if, one frustrating thing follows another frustrating thing.
Ack, and then I think, ha-ha, have a lovely pity party for precisely 15 minutes. I revel in it. I roll around in the self pity: “woe is me.” I am a martyr, one who gives and gives… and then SNAP out of it! 15 minutes are up, done, finished, over.
You are not getting more than 15 minutes for a pity party, I tell myself. I don’t care if you spend every last dime on others! No one holds a gun to your head, you choose! You choose based on who you think you are. What I think about myself is that there are people that I love so deeply, who are so gratifying to my being, that I do not care what price I pay to be near them. I will pay lots of money (hence brokedom), I will also pay steep personal prices, I will do what it takes to make these various people smile and be happy.
Literally and really, I am one of the luckiest people that I know or have ever met. There are lots of people around that I love and who love me. On top of that, almost every one of them is healthy! They are also beautiful, handsome, smart, talented, caring and sensitive individuals.
How crazy is that? Who is surrounded by beautiful, caring and sensitive individuals, who they love and who love them back? Who? Me, that’s who.
I am not saying that the acquisition of money is not a lofty goal, I think it is! I just don’t want money to get in the way of my love fest. If it takes a dollar to take care of my loved ones, to hell with the bills, to hell with getting a new dress. It is what it is…
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I don’t see how you think you can evaluate and judge things that are completely outside of your experience?
If you don’t know it – why do you judge it? -
Experiencing Reality
Here I am once again and I must write. We listened to Deepak Chopra Sunday night and it was quite good. Reality and how you experience reality is a choice. Last night, as we discussed this concept I told Bruce the story of a woman that I know who pretended that she had a great and wonderful family. She would lie and contrive and even take fantastically staged photographs of her fantastic family. The truth of her family is that her husband had sex with their daughter when she was a teen and then decades later he had sex with his granddaughter. This woman would never admit to such atrocities and in this situation, these were the worst of the bad things. Every single day was a challenge into the truth, this woman faithfully pretended that her drug addicted son was just going through a rough patch (of 24 years until he died) and that her sons who were fathers, were very good fathers and look at these pictures of how good they were to their children! The unsuspecting by-stander who looked at her photo album would be lulled into a sense that this is a happy family who took care of their own. Lies, lies, lies, and yet all her reality. The new gurus tell us to make our own reality, and I am just not sure about this.I think we need to sort things out first. I think we need to talk about denial and wishful thinking and all kinds of concepts like this. Reality and how you experience reality must include genuineness and authenticity, and these are conversations. When I talk about the woman I know, who denied the reality of her family, there is much deceit and secrecy abounding in those relationships. I think this is the key to genuineness and authenticity: they are part of the conversation that we all must have to define our common reality. The key concept is conversation, because, the truth should not be a secret that lives in the dark. When reality is practiced in secret and in the dark, it can become a pack of lies.
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Oh Despair: We Age
The body – It’s not the sagging so much as it is the misappropriation of fat. The shape is changing, and not the way that I want it to. It also has different energy levels. I honestly don’t need as much food as I used to, and I am sensitive to everything.When I was young and I looked at older people, I saw androgyny and asexuality. I had no idea! Whether or not we look or feel “hot”, we are still sexual creatures. That’s amazing. I’m sure my kids are thinking or saying, “ugh, please mom, don’t talk about sex!”
But, I am not (talking about sex that is) I am talking about aging. Older people have all of the feelings, thoughts, wishes and desires that everyone else does. They want to be close to their offspring, their family and their friends. They want to have a successful life and they want to feel as if they have been successful in their endeavors.
The majority of our culture dismisses and disrespects aging. I don’t understand this and now that I am here I do not like this. Why did I believe that I was exempt from aging? Why did I think that I would never be the shape of my mother?
Well here I am and here it is. I sure hope that I can do this gracefully.