Tag: selfcare

Time & Love: Gifts to Myself

61?! I spent yesterday crying on and off about how little I had accomplished in these six-plus decades. However, in the middle of the night, I began to receive birthday greetings from friends across the globe, and I decided to stop beating myself up with my own expectations and sense of failure. Good thing because what a waste of an extra hour as we set the clocks back! I’d like to attribute that extra hour on MY DAY as divine intervention and a dire reminder.

The greatest gift ever given to me has been time. My mom was the ultimate purveyor, especially to her family. So, it was bittersweet that as she neared death, she shared with me something that weighed on her –neither a resentment nor a regret-but rather a missed opportunity. As we discussed every little and big meaningful moment in her life, she admitted that she wished she had been kinder to herself. She wished she had taken time to love herself.

“Don’t always put yourself last,” she warned. “If you always show others that they come first and that what they need or want matters more, then in the end, you will be put last and come last.  You will take a back seat in your own life.” I remember how my heart sank and how I hoped that I had made my mother feel important and loved. I always saw my mom as the driver and the conductor in her (our) family until that moment. I thought then and still ruminate to this day about how I treated my mother, my best friend, and my confidante. And now, more than a decade after her passing, I realize what she was trying to tell me: Don’t seek validation from others. It was not until she stared death in the face that she realized she wanted to live –not for everyone else for she had ‘willingly’ put herself last – but for herself.  She had waited to show others that she was important and that she valued herself first. And alas, how she chose to experience her death– the where, the how long, and in whose presence and absence- that was her way of saying, “This last chapter of life is about me. I come first now.”

So, as my birthday comes to a close, I’m gifting myself time and love. After all, isn’t that all we ever have? One is running out, and one is finally growing.

❤

The Inner Voice

I talk. I talk a lot. To strangers. To friends and loved ones. To service workers. To children. To the older and the wiser. To the naive and unlearned. To the refined and educated. To men and women from around the globe. To people of all races, creeds, colors, religions, and sexual identities. To those who are powerful and those who need empowering. To those who use their voices freely. To those who have just begun to find their voices. Most of all, I talk to myself. Listening all the while.

The voices – all of them at times creating a cacophony in desperate need of silencing – provide depth, meaning, love, and laughter; they are the essence of life’s purpose. And then…

I write.

“I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.”
~Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

The Storyteller

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Such a Challenge

One of my favorite people in the world is another Scorpio sister; she and I met nearly two decades ago when I was teaching middle school English at a small private school. I had the pleasure of having her son, a quick-witted and vibrant young man who has since made his way in the world fearlessly and whom I am proud  to call friend. Both my soul sister and her son –actually, the entire family including her husband (the “punniest” man I know), their fur baby Lua, as well as their eclectic and completely welcoming groups of friends – have expanded my world in myriad ways, but no way greater than sharing their deeply-seated love of exploration and their zest for living and loving fully.

While my friend and her husband have been in Europe on another adventure, they graciously offered me their home in the Pacific northwest  (dog, plants, and roses galore). “Work” never feels like work when I’m on an adventure of sorts.  From learning to use an electric mower to visiting Williamette wine country to outings where food, beverage, and above all else laughter were abundant, the months of September and October to this point have been full. My soul is lighter. My heart is fuller. My mind is clearer. And for more times lately than I can remember, I have felt like I – just me – am enough. If truth be told, I might even be too much in the very best ways. 

I’m making memories, satisfying curiosities, and challenging myself most days. Those days,  these days,  are indeed sublime. Life itself has been challenging most of the past six decades.  I’m going to  challenge it back!

Going solo, I’ve learned to enjoy my own company.

From the Mountaintop

No matter where I am, I AM the mountain. Although sometimes cloud-covered, the mountain endures. I abide. I hold on through life changes, always ready for the sun to poke through timidly or shine brazenly, each time rendering a different perspective. That optimistic anticipation? That unrelenting readiness? That’s called hope.
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“These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence, my optimism.”

(~Virginia Woolf)

“The Mountain is You”
by Chance Peña

Remembering My Wings

All day yesterday, I thought about my father and the unexpected nature of life. As he declined cognitively due to Alzheimer’s, my days seemed to pass too quickly, and there was never enough time with him. As I became more conscious of the limitations and deadlines imposed by his illness and by what it means to live this one mortal life, moments grew longer and more meaningful. Just a moment. A split second. A smile. A laugh. A tear. A memory. My recall now of those moments tends to be in slow motion. Thankfully. I’ve learned that when I become acutely aware of how fleeting life is, I have the power to slow down and take in the present moment.

Not all experiences are meant to  become deeply embedded in the memory, but those times when I’m happiest – and right now that means the days, hours, and minutes when I want nothing but peace and I find it and feel it simply – become the salve I need to soothe my soul. The anticipation of meeting up with a new “old” friend (and the resulting pep in my step). Heading out for coffee in a newly discovered café. Sitting and swinging in an unknown spot. All in slow motion the past few days. I remember all of it vividly…today. And maybe, just maybe, that’s all there is, but it is enough.

I’ll just keep using these wings each day.

#lovethelifeyoulive #hereandnow #writeyourstory

A Wildflower

“Like wildflowers, you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people thought you never would.”~E.V. Thompson

“Hello there, my truest friend,”Sylvia says as she looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. She walks away and then turns around quickly to catch another peek. Not satisfied with a quick glimpse, she leans in over the bathroom sink and takes a closer look. “Yep, it’s me, not still me or the same me,” she assures herself, breathing a sigh of relief. She exhales forcefully directly on the mirror, and as it fogs, she embraces the prospect of not knowing who she is becoming and points to her reflection, “Let’s just keep you and everyone else guessing. After all, who doesn’t love a good surprise?!”








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Don’t Count on It

https://overfiftyandfine.com/2024/06/23/dont-count-on-it/

Don’t Count on It

After six decades on this planet, I’ve learned, and I’m still learning. Don’t count on anything. Don’t count on anyone. Don’t count your blessings, your chickens, or sheep. Actually, in all honesty, don’t count.  

I’m not saying this glibly. I’ve given this serious thought for quite some time. Today, this idea of freeing  myself from counting and quantifying is at the forefront, as I sit looking out on a sky vacillating between sunny and foreboding. I’ve been waiting for a very long time for the roosters to come home to roost, the chickens to hatch, my blessings to abound and multiply, and for the sheep to put me to sleep. Alas, none of the aforementioned has happened. Alas? Perhaps, although now I’m thinking that these “failures” may be fortuitous after all.

Lucky may not be exactly what I feel about missing the mark on these fronts; relief may be the more fitting description of how I’m feeling at present. It’s oddly soothing to concede to the notion that nothing is guaranteed. Today, as I look to the sky and wonder, “Will the rain subside and the sun come out again?,” I breathe in and realize that it is better to have no expectations.

I have forever believed that people say what they mean and mean what they say.  I have forever believed that good things come to those who wait. I have forever believed that if I give enough of myself to others, they will see my worth. Now, I know. I cannot count on people meaning what they say.  I cannot count on good things happening if I’m patient. I cannot count on anyone actually seeing my value. I cannot count on anything or anyone to love me into success or worth. I count on nothing. I do have faith, though.  I have faith that I’ll see my worth, learn to value and accept myself, and love myself less critically and with more compassion.

I do hope. I do hope.

Don’t count her out!

Never Comes Later

https://overfiftyandfine.com/2024/03/20/never-comes-later/

Never Comes Later

She would have been 84 today. She would have awakened begrudgingly because Dad would have been rummaging through the top drawer of his tall-boy dresser for a hankie, and rather than hold the brass pulls until he closed the drawer quietly, he would have let the pulls drop and jingle. She would have lifted her head from the pillow, given him the look she had been giving him for more than fifty years –the look of a loving tolerance and incredulity since he never learned that his idea of quiet and hers were two totally different things – and then he would have gone to her side, kissed her, and whispered, “Love you, Don. See you later.”

See you later. We say it all the time. As we walk out the door and go off to work or school, the chorus is always the same. See you later. When we meet up with a friend whom we know (but we really don’t know) we may see soon, the standard farewell rolls off the tongue. See you later. As often as we say it, glibly, matter-of-factly, and without any thought to what comes next, we assume later will definitely be our meeting place. At some point, though, later never comes. Later becomes “what if” and “I should have said” more often than we ever care to imagine. Never is later.

Almost a half of a year into my sixth decade, and now fourteen years without the daily wisdom Mom shared with me in both little and small ways (alternating between an implicit and  purposeful pedagogy of sorts that only a mother masters), I believe that we never learn our lessons. Never. And I definitely do not believe that we will learn this particular lesson later. Time waits for no one as the saying goes; and yet, with reckless disregard for both the passage of time and life’s promise of mortality, we wait for, hope for, and count on later. When do we decide –when do I decide -–not to count on later? Never. The lesson we have all learned after losing anything or anyone who matters to us is that this is all there is. There is no later. There is no do-over. And yet, here we are with unrelenting hubris thinking that we are so special, such good people, that we will be chosen to have that special time we refer to as later. 

Never is the only thing that comes later. I guarantee it.  I know it. I’ve been waiting fourteen years, fourteen years worth of birthdays, holidays, special occasions, sunsets and sunrises, to get back time and say all the things I didn’t say to her.   Later never comes. Later is too late.

Have I learned? Perhaps. Will I remember the lesson? Will I remember the lesson that her birthday, every Mother’s Day, and the anniversary of her death teach me each year? There is no later. Never is later. Say it now.

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Dear Mom,

For fourteen years, I have promised you that I would try to live my best life. I have tried, but I can do better. I promise that I’ll begin. I’ve been putting it off ’til later. Later is not coming; and I fear never is right around the corner.

Love you and miss you. Always.

K.

Forever and Always.