We all have these don’t we? These stripes of shame, pain, fear; hurts and scars that make us feel different, less than, unlike any others. And that’s the thing. We all have them. They may not look exactly the same, some may have more than others, but we’re more alike than not. If we are to not only survive but thrive, we must remember that and act accordingly. Golden Rule accordingly. Things just might get better.
Peace and Love
It’s been 7 years now…
I went to bed much earlier but awoke just after midnight thinking of my dear mom, who died 4 years ago today. 4 days before she died I wrote the blog post below and each time I reread it the grief that wells up inside of me comes pouring out my eyes and I end up a tearful blubbering mess. Time is supposed to be the great healer but it doesn’t come with a 100% success rate guarantee for a reason. I believe that there are some losses one can never recover from. Oh, we learn to work with them, work around them to varying degrees, but with the death of a loved one our hearts are cracked open permanently and grief takes up residence in that painful crevice like a squatter claiming eminent domain, a squatter we have no power to evict, ever. The grief of losing my mother…
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Early Morning Swim
The entire liquid
blue is mine.
The only human
bobbing on the
glassy surface.
Hungry gulls swoop
and dive.
Lolling waves swell
and rise.
Cotton balls cushion
from above.
In the silence my
electrons bond and
I become part
of the
pulsing wave song.
Cradled from above
and below,
I breathe in the
cosmic energy.
Each exhale
syncing
with the crash
of waves
on shore.
CRR
6-29-18
Worthy of a repost. I wrote this a little over 2 years ago, but felt it today in each dressing room .
“Take a picture of yourself today and look at it 10 years from now and you’ll surely remark about HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU WERE, HOW GOOD YOU LOOKED. That’s’s just one of the “Jenwisdoms” I heard from Jen Pastiloff Taleghany at a Writing and the Body workshop led by her and the equally phenomenal Lidia Yuknavitch (who I think I have a girl crush on, shhhhhh) in beautiful Portland, Oregon this past weekend. As my hubby and I approach our 10th wedding anniversary, I was reminiscing through our wedding photos a week or so ago and did EXACTLY that! I remarked, “If only I still looked like that!” Jen was absolutely right! Ten years from now I’ll be saying the same thing about today. So will you! If we could only see ourselves through the lenses of others who don’t judge us nearly as harshly as we do ourselves, or better yet through the “love lens” worn by those who adore us, my God! Imagine how self confident we’d feel every day! Imagine the ramifications of that confidence, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of others, and out there in the world!
It’s an understatement to say that women are especially prone to physical self criticism. Popular media and cultural expectations can crush a girl before she hits puberty. Jen, along with Lara Heimann are tying to do something to counter that fact with their Girl Power: You Are Enough workshops. For girls 12 and up, the empowering sessions are meant to instill confidence and self-love, reminding them that they are enough, no matter what.
Today, I encourage you, female or male, to remind yourself of that! There might not be anyone else in our lives that does that for us, but that’s okay. We are enough! Perfectly created, one of a kind, each of us.
So surround yourself with reminders like this-
And this-
And promise this-
You are more than enough!
Peace and Love
Things I thought about today.
I woke up feeling guilty because I didn’t have a to-do plan for the day.
I feel guilty just sipping my coffee in pajamas and watching The Today Show.
I should be going and doing and achieving something outside these walls.
I cleaned the sliding glass doors to the patio and the french doors off our master bedroom.
I did the laundry, emptied the dishwasher, made the bed.
I entered all my receipts into Quicken and reconciled all my home financial accounts.
I still feel lazy.
People are being denied rights.
Children are crying for their parents.
People are hungry and hurting.
I signed some petitions. I wrote some politicians.
I tried not to feel despair.
I remember that my brother survived 12 years in prison and I have no right to complain about anything.
I haven’t written in weeks, haven’t submitted anything lately and wonder if I can really keep calling myself a writer?
It’s 105 outside and I don’t want to go outside but I long to swim in the ocean. With a full size tube of SPF 50 and rash guard on of course, because I do have a bunch of pre-cancer that’s being treated on my chest. At least it’s not on my face.
My daughter called me and I smiled.
My husband touched base with me from work and I smiled.
I watched Ellen and I smiled.
I decided I did enough today and I smiled.
My message for you is to smile.
You are enough. You’ve done enough.
I wonder if I should post this.
It will be okay.
Peace and Love
I recently bought a stylish pair of pants at an H&M in Italy. They’re pin-striped with the words “Love is the key of survival”. We know we mustn’t let hate win. Indeed we must start showing more love to our Mother Earth and all of our brothers and sisters if survival of all species and our planet is our goal. Yet the timing of writing this, on the jagged edges of recent reports of two prominent, successful, much-loved and seemingly publicly happy souls committing suicide, clearly illustrates that “love” is not always “all” we need. People can be loved by others and tortured by their own minds. People can be sources of light, joy, inspiration and pleasure for others while battling an unseen charcoal darkness, the soot of which coats the very membrane of each of their moments. What then is it? The thing that we’re not getting or seeing? Can we help a despairing soul detour from suicide as their only destination? There is no one left who can tell us for sure. We know riches, power,and fame don’t suffice. Gutted by grief and disheartened,we may say that even love has failed, or that it is we who’ve failed to love “good enough”. Love may not be the answer, the solution, to the problem of suicide, but it will never fail being the key, the universal one, the propellant with which scientists will unlock the haunting mysteries of the human mind. Until that glorious day, we must not stop reaching out, nor stop giving of ourselves or turning the key of love. For in the end, it’s our only hope.
Peace and Love
Full Disclosure
I’m not a big selfie person. Never mastered the perfect angle, head tilt, lighting or stance that would make the camera my friend. I get irritated at the hubs when he posts non- approved photos of me. He attempts to lessen my displeasure by calling me ridiculous and asserting his right to post all the pictures he wants to of his beautiful wife. Well played dear, well played. ❤
Full disclosure, just yesterday I deleted a photo I’d posted of myself because I felt I’d gone a little too far with the filters and I not only looked more awful, but was bordering on ridiculous. I’ve long admired all the women who’ve bravely gone makeup free on social media and shown the world their natural selves. I’ve publicly applauded them but never had the courage to join in. It’s not like I never leave the house without makeup, because I frequently do, especially during the summer when I pride myself of the number of days I can go without wearing any. (as well as the number of days I can stay in pajamas) But featuring myself on the worldwide web that way? Uh, no!
Yesterday my IG feed featured Taryn Brumfitt, founder of the Body Image Movement. Then one of my favorite celebs, Drew Barrymore, posted a sans-makeup photo and I was further inspired. Even though I’m fully aware of the preponderance of photoshopping done on our beauty icons, as a woman of a certain age, with certain “situations” occurring with/to my body, I find myself more frequently throwing double eye daggers at myself upon seeing my own reflection in the mirror. And that, my friends, is not healthy.
So. Here I am, au naturel, no pore minimizer, color corrector, highlighter, brow filler, lip liner or lash lengthener, wet hair and all, straight from the shower. I’m truly not compliment fishing, just taking a step forward, towards fully and positively embracing my current physical status as I approach 60.
Even as I type those digits, they don’t seem right. I think I can’t be “that old”, then I follow with “but 60’s really not that old”. If 50 is the new 30, isn’t 60 the new 40 or something like that? We are so much more than the amount of time we’ve witnessed and the skin and bone vessels our spirits abide in. I know this, I do! I write about it, believe it in my heart and try to live it.
To all who read this, I hope I’ve made you think about your own self-image in a more positive light. May we all fully embrace our physical selves as well as our ages, and feel proudly free to be!
Peace and Love
CRR
The 5th month of the calendar year arrives dressed in dichotomy. Individual days ping my memory bank with black hole debits and platinum credits, and create a sandstorm some years, that I can’t find my balance in until June.
Looking back to 1975- I chose the May birthstone, the ruby, for my high school class ring. My parents thought I should choose my own December birthstone, but I had long since done anything because my parents wanted me to. I adored the color but ended up hocking the ring, before leaving school and home, in an untimely manner, for unthought out reasons, with an unsavory sort. I would go on to graduate the following May, right on time, but ruby red ring-less. Debit-credit, two steps forward, one step back. Many years later I’d finalize my first and second divorces in May. I’d give birth to a healthy and beautiful baby girl one rosy May day and face the truth, break someone’s heart and leave a long term relationship on a certain charcoal May day. The following year I would meet the man I was sure didn’t exist, the man I’ve spent the last 15 years with. It was on a radiant May day that I dove heart first into the “getting serious” stage of our relationship and have not regretted one single moment since. My dear mother was born in May and on the 29th day of May, 2011, I knew in my heart that would be the last time I’d see her. She would die 6 weeks later. The magnolias in my yard bloom each May as Mother’s Day arrives wrapped in melancholy. The school year draws to a close on May 23rd this year, with my heartstrings pulled and nerves frayed once again.
May is silky and barbed, honeysuckle and ash.
While this essay was prompted by sadness surrounding missing my mother, May is simply May, and like life, brilliantly shiny some days and years, and thickly tarnished others.
Peace and Love
CRR
5-15-18
Two years have passed, yet I could have written these words today. The drought remains. We need the rain.
Not meant to be a doomsday diatribe, for there is goodness and beauty everywhere but…
It’s an election year here in the USA and the wildfires are burning. To turn on the television or read the day’s news online or in print is to witness a drought of historic proportions. Our country is thirsting for civility, sanity and common sense. And that’s just the beginning of the list. Our world (excluding the likes of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram,the Taliban, etc.) is thirsting for peace and bands of brothers and sisters on every continent cry out in fellowship against the ever present threat of terror and the suffering of so many innocent souls in so many places. Our entire planet thirsts for balance as we contaminate and alter the very molecules that sustain us.
What we desperately need now is a good rain, which my Cherokee ancestors believed, not only offered…
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“In This Language”
Linguistics,
etymology,
semantics,
irrelevant.
More ancient than Tamil,
Sanskrit,
or Greek.
No interpreters
required.
No translators
needed.
Only tongues
to taste
the universal,
antediluvian,
conveyor of love.
CRR
4-22-18
National Poetry Month prompt for April 22nd from J.R. Rogue and Kat Savage #THEWARINUS
