Beautiful from the inside out

I haven’t been to a wake in a long time where the body was laid out. I always find that such a disconcerting event. It’s always sort of made me wonder why we take a loved one and dress them up to the nines and lay them out for everyone to see one last time. It’s often the best that person has looked in YEARS. I mean their hair is perfect, their makeup flawless and there is none of the everyday life stuff adding lines of stress to their faces….it’s a beauty that comes from the inside. Total and complete peace. I wonder if that's the reason it freaks me out so much, that complete and total look of peace and contentment? Have I become to cynical about life? Have we all?

I realize this display is usually for the family and friends of the person, the last time they get to be/see their loved one but it’s always sort of freaked me out a bit. I almost always expect them to sit up and say something or to yell at someone for something going on. Today is my dad’s birthday, he would have been 73. He had a hard life, mostly self-imposed, but still, it was a hard life. He wasn't happy. I don't think he was ever happy. He always wanted more, needed more but from what I could tell, always looked for the easy way to get that...which often meant more stress and work in the end.

It wore on him - and it showed. Towards the end of his life, he always wore a pained expression. He always looked as if just being alive was exhausting him to no end. He was in constant pain and I would offer a constant state of confusion because of the multiple medications he was on. He always looked like he was somewhere else - or desperately wanted to be somewhere else. When he died, it was my family who wanted to say one last good bye to him so we laid him out for all to say good bye.

What struck me at that time was the absolute and complete look of peace that he had. No longer were life’s everyday issues/concerns/pressures weighing him down. No longer were all the failures weighing him down, it was a complete and total release of all the baggage and stuff life adds…..gone…in the absence of a single breath….gone.

Recently I attend my friends mothers wake…same thing, her mother was laid out and absolutely beautiful. She was so peaceful looking. None of the last, hard days wearing her soul out showed. She was peacefully laying there for all to say good bye to one last time. Death really is beautiful. The weight of the world gone and nothing drags them down anymore. It’s too bad there isn’t a way to capture that while we are still here.

I wonder if people have the ability to do that? People like the Dalia Lama or Mother Theresa? I mean the really amazing and good people….but their life isn’t without stress and strife. They give up a lot to live the life they’ve chosen. They give up comforts and possessions and lots of things to be able to give back to the greater good but I wonder, as an every day “Joe”, can we do that? Can we live a life of carefree, stresslessness and ultimately happiness? I’d like to think so but it stresses me even more to think that at my advanced age I still don’t have that peace and contentment I thought I’d have.

What will it take? What does a soul need? Is it ever too late?

Clouds in my coffee

The clouds were amazing today. My drive into the office takes me around the lakes, it’s a relaxing way to start my day. The sunrise reflecting off the water, the ducks happily swimming lazily through the cool morning water and the challenge of avoiding the joggers and bicyclists as I make the trek in is both soothing and a way to help me get focused and centered on my day.

The storm last night that came through must have been a little more intense than I thought. I heard the rain hitting my windows but now that I’m half way in the ground (not death-wise, I have a street level apartment now) I was nestled all snug in my cave and didn’t really think much of the story, but my drive around the lakes proved me wrong. There appeared to be some strong winds that came through as the lake path was littered with downed tree branches and chunks of branches and leaves. As I dogged them, the joggers and bike riders, I realized the weather was a little more severe than I thought. Got me thinking….life is like that. When we stay all closed off in our own little bubble we don’t know what’s really going on outside of us until something forces us to see it.

The clouds this morning were interesting too….sort of 2-D. The sky was filled with these amazing white fluffy beautiful clouds scattered blissfully across the sky and seemingly not at all moving – still as night. There was this layer of darker, very fast moving clouds over them, almost racing across the morning sky whisking away all the beauty and sunlight hidden behind. It was rather distracting to see….I sat through one whole light this morning as I stared at the sky trying to figure out if they were rain clouds or just the remnants of last night’s storm moving on…finding another place to settle into.

Much like those moments in our life, the lies the unhappiness….come in and covers the goodness and light and with once you acknowledge it, it’s like they become the fast moving dark clouds, rushing past us trying to find a new place to land.

I often think of the correlation between the weather and our own lives. I mean it can be full of rainbows and butterflies and in just the blink of an eye a storm can roll in bringing destruction and chaos before you even have a chance to take cover. Life is always changing, no matter how many times you think you have it figured out, some cloud burst or ray of sunshine forces it’s way in causing us to rethink, redefine and change course.

Guess we need a really, really big umbrella.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Keep Calm and Carry On is a catchphrase that originally appeared on a World War II British public safety poster. It was intended to be used to strengthen morale in the event of a large-scale attack or occupation, which many considered inevitable at the time. The intent was to help reassure the masses and to finish what they started. It’s a mantra I am trying hard to adopt.

A friend gave me a gift that touts this saying…it makes me happy every time I see it. As an added bonus, it came with a postcard of the saying (which I immediately blinged up and hung on my desk at work) and a small sticker which I placed on my car. Mainly it helps me find my car in a sea of cars in a parking lot because I can never seem to remember I have a new car and where the hell I parked it, so this distinguishing mark helps me find it and arrive back home.

Keep calm….that’s not something I’ve ever excelled at. I tend to be very much like Chicken Little – the sky is falling…the sky is falling! I grew up in a big family and I think I have that mentality that if it doesn’t happen right now, it won’t happen. That’s part of the downfall of a large family. You develop this mindset that it has to be RIGHT now or it’s not going to happen. You don’t even realize you are living this way until others point it out. Maybe always meant no, we’ll see always meant not a chance in hell, and go ask your father/mother always, always meant it wasn’t going to happen. Keep Calm and Carry On would have served me well during my younger years for sure.

As an adult however, I find it difficult to shift the learning that I have. I know, I mean in my head, I know the difference but somehow it doesn’t translate into my soul. I know you shouldn’t expect one thing from anyone else. Nothing, nada, zip….but I do…I always do and that’s where I go off course. I expect things in return…common sense to be used but how can you expect that from someone when their definition of common sense may not even come close to your own?

I love the curiosity that young children have. They have no fear, no worries they pretty easily go with the flow….it’s too bad we lose that as we get older. Last weekend we had a family get together up at cabins on Leech Lake. It was a fun family bonding time and I got to spend some uninterrupted time with my 2 year old nephew who was happy as a clam to pee outside, sit in the water with Auntie and pick up rocks and toss them in the water over and over and over. We picked up rocks, filled our bucket and tossed them in the water….marveling at the splash each one made. Somewhere along the line he’d pick up a fairly large stone and barely toss it in with a grunt like he was working sooo hard to toss the rock. That was the extent of our day – tossing rocks. It was so very relaxing to just do nothing…play in the sand, toss rocks and enjoy the sun. As we gathered our rocks to toss, we found that along the dock was where tons of rocks settled….I’m sure they were pushed to the side due to the waves and over time one blocked another and another until they became a pile. It was a nice endless source for us so I didn’t have to dig them out of the sand. Problem was as things sit in the water over time they get slimy…from the algae and various other things….like fish stuff and other lake items. So some of the rocks were kinda gross…but as a good Auntie does, I just powered through the slimeyness and keep filling the bucket. My nephew helped and at one point he turned to me and said…look Auntie, it’s stuck. I look at what he is trying to pull off his finger and it’s of course a leech. I mean we are in LEECH lake so I imagined at some point in time it was named that for a reason. Now I’m NOT the great outdoors woman I pretend to be….I hate bugs and I am not into fishing in anyway other than I do enjoy a boat ride – so I had to be the calm one and pull this leech off him. It was stuck pretty good on his finger and as I tried to grab the slimely little bugger off him it would latch on again, finally I got it off him and me and managed to do so without freaking him out. He was pretty excited to tell everyone he had a leech. Ahh the things we do for children.

I could have totally freaked out like the time I found a tick on the inside of my thigh on the car ride home after traipsing around in the woods like I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood. I was with my sister, her husband and my little niece who was maybe 3 or 4 years old. She was conked out and I literally threw my leg up and out the window as we were speeding down the highway assuming the wind would blow the tick off. It didn’t but you can imagine this sight. I moved like a ninja for sure! But with the leech, I calmly pulled it off and we went back to our rock adventure. Keep Calm and Carry On.

So...here we are back to life, back to reality and all the things that seem so stressful and out of our control seem really small and insignifigant when you put them in the perspective of "things could always be worse". I could have never found that leech stuck to my little nephews hand, I couldn't not have bravely pulled it off and continued on our path of rock throwing...would my world be any different? Probably not, but now I feel a tiny bit braver and some of the things that were stressing me out before I went away for the weekend don't seem quite as bad a pulling a leech off.  So...Keep Calm and Carry On my friends...keep calm.

Possibilities are endless

I love the word POSSIBLE. It gives me hope. It inspires me. It makes me happy and giddy with the possibility of something new and fun.

Somedays you wake up and everything in life seems possible....other days it feels totally impossible...but yet we keep plugging away and putting one foot in front of the other until it feels possible again.

This weekend is going to be FULL of possible! My father passed away last year - kind of unexpectedly but if anyone knew him, it wasn’t really THAT unexpected. He had been sick on and off for years. Multiple emergency trips to the ER that my sisters endured, often early in the morning or late at night, because they were the closest not only personally but locally. He was often not expected to pull through the latest bought of some sort of medication/heart failure/blood pressure kind of mess….but he always did. With his stubborn, strong as-an-ox pace maker assisted heart, he always pulled through…until the one time he didn’t. But that’s not important now.


Upon his death my siblings and I gathered to clean out his house, to basically erase his existence from this earth with a family pow wow one Sunday afternoon in April. Within several hours, all traces, well almost all traces, of Vic was removed from the apartment he called home. His belongings boxed up to be sold or donated and some claimed by his grandchildren and children, but mostly, within a few hours he was physically and materialistically gone. All that was left to do was to say our good-byes and bury him. We actually cremated him. I don’t recall right now if that was HIS wish or ours…but it made sense. My father was never one to plant his feet anywhere and call it home. He has a few brothers left in Chicago and Nebraska but other than that, just us, his remaining gene pool, to call his world. So we cremated him. We all seemed to be in agreement of it, which is a feat within itself to get a large group of people to agree on anything. I remember all descending upon the funeral home we chose and I often wondered if that funeral director ever had that many people in a room making the last choices of an individual. The room was filled with my sisters, my mom, my nieces and nephews (his grandchildren) and if I really think back, it’s possible a pet was in there too. Anyway, we had him cremated and in a few days we could pick him up and do what we wanted with him.

Ahh…the possibilities!

It was probably the first time that I can ever remember that we, the children, got to make ANY decision regarding him. In one way, it was a little empowering, in another, quite sad for my siblings….as this was their last moments with their father. So there we had him…all neat and tidy in a small box ready to do something with him. We knew he loved fishing, probably was the one thing in his life he actually LOVED. That apparently was where his happy place was…so we decided we would let him fish forever by releasing him into the water he loved so much. So we planned, we made it possible, everyone adjusted their life, their schedules and we went, as a family, to his happy place and we read a poem, sent him away on a boat and sprinkled him into the waters he loved so much. Just like that, Vic was one with the water.

The possibilities for him now were endless. He would become part of something so much bigger than he ever was, he would meld and blend and become one with all that touched that water. There were tears, there were stories, there was drinking….a toast of his favorite greek beverage that tasted like lighter fluid and we all went back to our lives with the solemn vow that once a year, we would gather as a family and spend some time together while we were all here. We agreed upon a weekend in June and we all planned our lives around it. That weekend is coming up…June 8-10. Yes the siblings and their families are gathering and celebrating life and family and all that we are….in tiny cabins nestled along the waters our father cherished so much.

There will be stories, there will be drinking and I’m guessing there will be tears - but the possibilities of this gathering are infinite. The weather looks to be beautiful and both my brother and brother-in-law have boats so among the large gathering, we may be able to score a boat ride or two. There will be kids, adults, my mom, multiple nieces and nephews and their significant others and of course pets. There will be pets. Now picture this….we have reserved three 2-bedroom cabins that each accommodate possibly 6 people. Each cabin has the same things – bedroom 1 sports a queen size (or double?) bed, the other has 2 twins and each cabin has a futon that folds out. So…..potentially 6 people could sleep there……moderately comfortably I would say but as usual….with this group, we are an exception to the rule. In my cabin there will be 8 – possibly 9 adults and a dog. In cabin 2, my brother and his family I believe are at the count of 9 plus two dogs and finally in cabin 3, I think they are at 9 as well, a 2 year old and an 8 year old but pet free….so yes….the weather MUST cooperate for us.

Oh the possibilities of this weekend! I am giddy with a touch of apprehension. This is going to go one of two ways, it’s either going to be insanely fun-filled, laugh packed and silliness abound or it’s going to be a chaotic nightmare that seems like there is no escape from….50/50 shot. I know last year we had more space and less people in a room and yet we all gathered in my sisters cabin at night and laughed until my sides hurt and told stories and had an absolutely delightful time and I was in a knee brace having blown out my ACL. I was in a moderate amount of pain (no pain pills) and I still had a rocking good time….so I’m led to believe that this year, the possibilities of the same are pretty high.

I imagine we will be outdoors all day Saturday playing, boating, building family memories….it will just be the night time when the possibilities change. I’m driving all by myself…mostly because I want to have an escape option if I need it and also, I am really feeling like with that many people crammed together, I might really enjoy the 3 ½ hour car ride alone. Details of the weekend will follow.

I wonder, if my father had not died….what possibly would have made us gather together as a family and share some time in our lives like this? I mean we do this at Christmas but it's usually only a few hours and then we all go back to our lives, touching base here and there but rarely as a whole group. We get so busy trying to create our own lives, our own purpose, raising kids, taking care of pets, working or looking for our life partner that we forget about the family connection. It seems only in times of tragedy do we pull together to remember the possibilities that family offers – the fun, the chaos, the madness that makes us.....us. The people that unconditionally love us despite every single fault or mistake we’ve ever made.

So here's to the possibilies life offers us. May you find some possible in your own life and not wait for life to force it upon you.

Actions speak louder than words

I'm the queen of the eye roll. I have it mastered. I can even do it without actually physically doing it - sometimes it's more of an internal thing. As a kid I used to get in trouble all the time for rolling my eyes in response. Sometimes though, a good eye roll is all a girl has.

Some say it’s a form of self-expression, or a way to hide what you are really feeling. I have what you would call a lot of "tells". When I get nervous my tummy makes excruciating loud gurgly sounds that I cannot control. It's rather embarrassing and rather loud…but it happens. My therapist always knows when she’s hit a nerve when it speaks loud in the silence her question or challenge to me goes unanswered. Also, when I’m upset beside the classic eye roll, I tend to shake my foot like it’s full of electricity. It makes trying to hide these feelings a bit hard to do but I still choose the classic eye roll as my best example of actions not matching my word.

An eye roll can mean multiple things. It can be sarcastic such as my mom telling me “you are not going anywhere until your room is clean” *insert sarcastic eye roll here* or it can be a very intense way of thinking “did you turn the dryer on before you left today?” *insert thinking eye roll here* or even the you have got to be freaking kidding me eye roll such as when your boss asks you something completely absurd at the very last minute – for example literally 2 minutes before a meeting starts “now you’ve got the video ready to go right” and he never told you there was a video nor gave you a video *insert wide eyed I am going to kill you eye roll here*. So a good eye roll can really cover multiple circumstances.

All this coming back to the point of making our actions match our words. For me, New Year’s resolutions are my nemeses. I hate them. I despise this time of year where we are forced to spew out some fault or trait we hate about ourselves in an attempt to meet the social norm of “making New Year’s Resolutions.” Out with the old…in with the new! Well if that were indeed the truth my wardrobe did not incorporate any new trends and unfortunately a gym membership did not happen and forget about finding my soul mate. Though I probably would have greatly benefited from any one of these plans, I have difficulty with their simplicity. Things that are meant to unfold in normal logical sequences usually become complicated and exhausting really quickly. I tend to easily lose focus of small steps and shoot straight for overarching and end-of-the-world themes or as my friend calls it - the end of the rainbow. As much as I despise the whole black and white thinking…things sometime really are. You either love me or you don’t. You either want to make me dinner or you don’t. You either want to keep a job or you don’t. Black and white….actions match deeds.

Perhaps it’s because I have tricked myself into believing I am OK with the chaos that has become my life, that I work best amongst the mess, and constant need from others that keeps me going. The very reason I get up every day is so I can do something for someone else, my very being is dependent on me doing something for someone else…writing, editing, answering phones, renting apartments, giving presentations…it’s always for someone else. Someone else is always the driving force behind my very existence. After all, it is in these situations where I thrive (or at least I say I do).

My self-expression seems to illustrate this perfectly. Over time I’ve developed a guts first process of communication – I say what’s on my mind. I grew up in a house where we never really said what we felt, we held it in until it appeared in angry outbursts at something simple like dropping a spoon. I often have a hard time NOT saying things out loud and sometimes force others to use their words out loud. My verbal rants can be laced with snarky outbursts, laser beam stares, and far more cuss words than a lady should say out loud.

Although I’m all for acceptance of owning your feelings, it probably wouldn’t be all that bad if I learned to be a bit more…shall we say thoughtful----considerate-----sympathetic to maybe not say all those things out loud? So….how so I manage to make my actions match my words if I am going to “filter” myself?

Sometimes I am confused as to who I have become. My projection of who I think I am and who I actually am are not matching up - my actions don't seem to match my words - seems an appropriate place to insert an eye roll of some type here.

Oblivious happiness

I once saw this picture that horrified me and made me giggle like a school girl at the same time. It was this picture of a kid’s baseball team posing for a team picture. Everyone was standing on the bleachers after what appears to be a BIG win and the kids were all facing the camera in three layers….smiling broadly….except for the one kid in the back row. It’s at the exact moment the picture was taken that this poor child in the back row projectile vomited on the first two rows of obvious happy children. The picture is snapped literally seconds before this unexpected barrage of puke douses the first two rows of children. Oblivious happiness.

Now I can only imagine what followed in those few seconds after. I imagine lots of screaming and possibly some sympathy puking by others, but for those first few seconds, no one cared. All they knew was to stand still, smile and be happy for just two seconds. It’s amazing how life changes in a blink of an eye. How many of us live life in a stupor of what we’ve convinced ourselves is happiness. How many of us have convinced ourselves that our job, our partner, our boss, our lifestyle is making us happy? It’s when one tiny thing shifts that we begin to refocus our eyes and see things - well to see them differently. To see them as they really are.

My parents were married for 20 some years. To most people who knew them, they appeared happy - well as happy as anyone with 7 kids to raise could be. They both had jobs, they appeared to have friends both socially and professionally and occasionally, we as a family appeared to be happy going on family vacations or trips to visit relatives. To most people we appeared status quo - that is until one day we weren't. At some point within that life, my father decided he no longer wanted to live this life.
Somewhere along the way he decided he was no longer going to get up, go to work, come home and do it all over again. He went on a fishing trip with friends and something compelled him to quit his life just like that. Apparently you can throw the baby out with the bath water. With no warning or explanation he simply  called my mother and told her “I never loved you, I’m not coming home.” And just like that, the life we had all known, the oblivious happiness we convinced ourselves was happening was done.

Like a band-aide being torn off, the gross underbelly of our lives were exposed for all to see. We were a broken family. It would take years and a few episodes of my father coming back deciding to “try one more time to make things work” before my parents finally and totally called it quits. It was confusing to us because we had never really seen that side of my parents. We had never really known the issues between them, the years of unhappiness, the times they had to bite their tongues and stay together "for the sake of the kids." It never occurred to us - until it did - that they were not happy. They were not in love and certainly did not want to spend another minute pretending otherwise.

To them, it was an obvious choice...and looking back, it probably was. It’s always in the looking back we are able to see things more clearly. We all became used to the way things were, oblivious to what we thought WAS happiness. How many of those situations do we each have now? Looking back over the last year – are there things you need to change? I'm fairly certain I could make a list.

Just like most people do….we live a life we think we are supposed to until one day we don’t. What makes it happen? Is it one person? Is it a conversation? Is it the feeling that you are constantly living a day in the life of that movie Ground Hog’s Day – where the person keeps reliving a situation over and over and over until they actually learn the lesson? How many moments are we living every day that we are oblivious to? How many times at work do you have to say to yourself “today is going to be a better day”? or in a relationship “I won’ t let them treat me like this anymore! I am going to stand up for what I want!” only to be waking up and experiencing that same day over and over and over to the point you thing that’s what normal is. We convince ourselves that not only are we happy but this is how it's supposed to be.

I say enough with living obliviously. It’s time we become conscious and intentional in our own world. In personal and professional ways it’s time we take the blinders off and face things head on. If they aren’t right, change them. We have the power to do that. We have the ability each and every moment to decide what our NORMAL should be. What is it going to take to for you? What do you need to clear the clutter out of your head to be able to see clearer? If you’re always fighting something, it’s pretty obvious there is a reason…your subconscious knows more that you are letting on.

Go for bold, go for real – life it too short to live life half-way. How about living HAPPILY here and now – now that’s a concept isn’t it.

Pretty in Pink

I like pink. I would say it’s my ”signature” color. It’s funny that I don’t even think about it or how much of it I actually own. I was standing in my morning fog with my coffee in hand waiting to pay for it and the cashier said to me “did you try to match your phone and your wallet to your outfit?” I sort of snapped back into reality and kind of laughed a little…..oh dear, I didn’t even realize I did that. Then someone else chimed in and said You always dress in pink. It kind of caught me off guard. I try to be sure I look decent before I leave my house and match but I didn’t realize how much of what I own IS pink. Hmm….guess I do have a signature.

I thought about trying an experiment…how long could I go before I couldn’t find anything pink to wear in my closet? I mean I have lots of color…and multi-color but the primary color IS pink. Even my favorite Coach purse is pink. I see a pattern here. It’s nice too because my good friends know my pink liking….they buy me things like a pink coffee cozy, a beautiful scarf, a coin purse even a pink sparkle pen…yes…pink AND sparkle are my colors…I feel pretty in pink.

So why is it something makes us feel better about ourselves? What is it about a good pair of shoes or outfit that just help us get to that level of feeling good about us? We don’t change….we aren’t any different but somehow the right outfit can launch us into a powerful, self-assured state of mind that can change the world. I have what I call my “girl dress”. Surprisingly it’s NOT pink…but it’s a lovely mix of coral and black with a beautiful satiny coral bow that normally I wouldn’t wear….who wants to accentuate their waist or hips? But there is something about this dress that transforms me when I magically slip it on. It’s girly and floofly and I feel like a total girl in it. I have random strangers stopping me telling me how wonderful I look, how much they LOVE my dress….and I have to say…I could have a gangly old snagle tooth and severe bed head and I would still totally ROCK that dress. It’s just one of those magical things I can’t explain - but I sure wish I had more outfits like that!

Women especially, are so hard on themselves. We judge ourselves against this preset idea of what beautiful is or more over what we’ve been taught to believe what beauty is. That we have to be this blonde, tall, thin, anorexic type of a person to be “beautiful”. Then there are those - like me - who have some life under their belt and some miles under the hood and some meat on their bones who feel like a total rock star in a dress no matter what anyone says. I remember when I bought this dress I debated spending the $19.99 on it. Yes, $19.99. I hate spending money on clothes....unless I feel like I can multi-use an outfit, like a mix or match item, I hate to spend money on one item. I know I’m totally worth it but it’s something buried deep inside me…I just have a hard time doing it.

I think it all comes down to us feeling like we know who we are. I feel confident and secure and amazing in pink…it makes me feel a little invincible. Is a color supposed to do that? Maybe…but maybe it makes me feel a little braver to go out and do things I didn’t think were possible…to make mistakes and learn. After all, you have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't – right. You take the action, and then the insight follows: you don't think your way into becoming yourself you have to figure it out along the way.

So pick a color and own it!