Saturday, April 15, 2017

It's More than a feeling...

Happy Saturday!  Yup, it's going to be....you know why?  Because I'm choosing to make it so!  Enough of these crappy 2017 vibes already, I'm over it.  What appeared to begin as the best year of my life has gone horribly wrong.  I've fought upstream for the last 4 months trying to figure it all out.  The hows and the whys and the when is it going to get better....I've pasted a smile on my face and gone through the motions and tried to fake it until I make it.  I forgot how much I friggin HATE that.  I have done it most of my life and I promised myself I'd never go back.  Well, I slipped....I'm human.  But no more!  I've been allowing what I don't have to be the focus of my life the last 4 months instead of focusing on what I DO have.  Which is pretty incredible!  I have once again given my life over to God in action not just in word and it makes all the difference.  I will no longer fret about things that I don't have and things that are out of my control.  I've done my best to fix them and that's all a person can do.  It's time to focus on all the blessings in my life, and there are many!

First of all I woke up this morning, so that's a good start. I am healthy and so is my family.  I will never EVER take that for granted.  I have friends and family and former classmates that cannot say that.  Some of them live with debilitating illnesses and special needs children and sick spouses....I admire them.  And I'm gonna throw a pity party?  No way, not any more!  I have an amazing job, truly heaven sent, along with that job comes bosses who are like family to me--that alone is enough for me to be grateful every day.  I have friends all around the world who get me!  Truly get me.  I can reach out to any one of them at any time and they are there.  #blessed.   I have a family that loves me (most of the time 😏), my dad will be 87 in a few weeks and he is healthy and self sufficient, still working and traveling. My kids, well I've written enough about my kids so I don't need to go any further with that.  I have an extremely cordial relationship with my ex and had the easiest divorce on the planet.   I'm a lucky girl!  Spring has sprung and so has my positive attitude.

I realized that the first half of every year is usually a struggle for me.  I don't know much about numerology but I did have a reading recently about life cycles and some number for the year and what it means.  Apparently you have 52 days after your birthday each year to tie up the lose ends for the cycle the year before, who knew?  Well, that lands in March for me.  Makes sense why I usually start feeling better in April.  I also realized that I'm a problem solver.  I don't like having yuck feelings in my life, I don't like negative stuff.  So.  I do whatever it takes to get rid of it.  But what about the stuff that's out of my control?  I find that I hold onto that shit like a life preserver.  Only what it does is make me sink.  When I've done everything I can do and I still can't fix the problem I need to learn to let it go.  Sometimes it hurts more than anything else, because ....well just because.  But I've come to realize that hanging on to that focus of what I can't have just makes the rest of my life seem bleak.  That's not how I want to live. If it's meant to fix itself it will, it's out of my hands and I need to accept that and focus on the good.

I listen to Abraham Hicks a lot on and off.  I struggle with the concept of the Law of Attraction because I do believe in Destiny and Fate and Meant to Be occurrences in life and I go back and forth with how that works.  I also believe in Divine Timing and that conflicts with Abraham's teachings. What I have figured out though is it's all about the feeling.  If you find the things in life to feel good about you will have more good things come to you.  And when negative things come you just have to address them and then do your best to not focus on them.  You have to trust that better days are coming and they will.  We were discussing our annual Easter Egg hunt the other morning and my son said "Well, next year I probably won't be here, so...." and I said "So, we'll do it the week before or the week after" problem solved.  Now, could I focus on the fact that this year will be the end of an era?  The end of not having to share holidays with their significant other's families?  Could I get sad thinking about all the years when I dressed them up on Easter and stuffed 200 plastic eggs for the family egg hunt?  No.  I won't do that.  It's just a bend in the road, not the end.  Just a change in direction.  There are still plenty of memories to be made, and good times to celebrate.  Because after all......it's just a day in the life <3

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Siblings are the gift you're not sure you ever asked for.....but it keeps on giving

Yesterday was apparently National Sibling Day.  Who knew?  I swear I want to meet the person who invents these days.  National Puppy Day, Siblings day, people with a larger second toe than big toe day....c'mon!  However, I do love my siblings and yesterday did make me realize some things.

My daughter posted a snap chat dedicated to her brothers.  What a way to start my day!  My daughter is not the mushy, sentimental type.  It meant a lot that she did that.  If any of my kids were to do that I would have thought it would have been my Creme Filling son.  He's my mushy one, outwardly.  I've been spending a lot of time with my kids one on one lately, mostly because they all have different schedules and there is usually someone awake at any hour of the day.  We have been having more family dinners because the schedules have been matching up.  It's so much nicer than when they were little and they would fight for voice time and attention.  Now it's usually either a deep topic or it's someone being goofy and someone running from the table choking from laughter. It's so nice to watch them become friends.  My boys went out the other night at 1:00am to Waffle House together and sat outside talking until the early hours of the morning.  Such a happy discovery for me the next morning.  My creme filling son made his sister a virgin pina colada and himself a real one and they played board games the other night.  All without me having to be part of it.(they invited me, of course, but I really wasn't in the mood) It was oddly comforting. I want them to have relationships with each other that have nothing to do with me. There was a time when that would have sent me into a sheer panic to think about life without my kids needing me every second.  Now?  It is welcome.  I'm ready for the next stage of life! My oldest and youngest have a tumultuous relationship.  It will pass. There was a time when they were thick as thieves and my middle son was at odds with one or both of them.  It's the nature of siblings and growing pains.   It still happens with my siblings and me.

Since I was a little girl this is what I wanted.  This family that I have built.  They would rather spend time with each other than anyone else in the world.  My son and I had a conversation about it the other night during one of our famous talks.  (Both of us are in long distance relationships at the moment so we have a lot of time to talk.  That will change soon, as the long distance comes to an end for him, so I am enjoying every moment.)  We were talking about the fact that we are all very happy just having each other (and for him and me our significant others) and we don't need a lot of outside people in our lives.  We do everything together.  I think if we had stayed on Long Island things would have been different, but I don't think we would be as happy or peaceful as we are now.  We lived in Arizona for 12 years and although we made important friendships it never overshadowed the closeness we have with each other.  We were on the topic of reincarnation and what we believe.  He said he thinks this is all of our last times on earth.  When I asked him why he said, "because I think we've all learned what we needed to, experienced what we needed to.  I don't want another mom or siblings or another love of my life.  The ones I have are perfect for me, so why would I have to reincarnate?"  Good point.  How lucky are we?  It's just a day in the life....



Saturday, April 8, 2017

I can open your eyes....take you wonder by wonder....

Yesterday my daughter and I went to Disney...not a shock we're there at least twice a week.  I wanted to see the Nemo musical because, well I hadn't yet, and I like to experience every attraction.  I didn't like the movie, not sure WHY I insisted we see this, but I did.  Well, it was awful, but very eye opening in so many aspects of life.  Follow me on this one, I'm all over the place but hopefully I will tie it up in a neat little bow 🙆.

Within the first two minutes of the show they show Nemo's mom disappear.  There was a little girl behind us that just screamed "NO!!!!!" and started sobbing.  She was screaming on and off for the first 5 minutes she was so upset.  My heart absolutely broke for her....I just couldn't stop wanting to make it better for her.  I was brought back to when I saw Dumbo in the movie theater.  I have never remembered this before yesterday.  When Dumbo is taken from his mother and they are touching trunks I remember just being devastated!  Of course I was raised to shove those feelings inside and God Forbid don't show them in public.  I remember looking over at my sister (who was 8 years older) and she looked perfectly fine.  I think my mom was there too (which is weird because I never remember going to the movies as a family except to the drive in once to see Peter Pan) and she grimaced a little.  It stayed with me for a long time after but I don't think I ever spoke about it until now.  I thought about Bambi and when his mother was shot...there is a part of the Frozen musical at Disney where the guy says "They DIED?????  What is this Bambi?  Or Finding Nemo?  or Cinderella?  or Tarzan?  Or EVERY SINGLE Disney movie ever?"  That gets a huge chuckle from the audience every time.  But after this it got me to thinking.  Why?  Why did Walt find it necessary to make children's movies that have the most horrific thing that could happen to a child happen and we, as society eat it up with a spoon?  What's wrong with us lol?  Than I realized that there were a thousand other people in that theatre watching Nemo and that little girl was the only one I heard having such a hard time with it.  Why?  Are people so desensitized to it?  Is it because everyone knew it was going to happen?  Than we went to see It's Tough to be a bug.  My daughter and I were screaming, no joke screaming the first time we went.  Ducking down, covering our heads when the spiders came down.  Now, we are prepared and assume the position before they release the spiders.  Well....there was a little kid behind us yesterday that obviously didn't get the memo.  He was SCREAMING and crying and I swear I never saw a dad move so fast in my life to get him out of there.  Again....I had to wonder, what the HELL is wrong with Walt Disney?  Why does he enjoy traumatizing children? Than I realized that some people ENJOY that....and that perception is reality.

That made me think of another movie by Walt.  Snow White.  And I thought about the dwarfs and how they are viewed by people differently.  I always loved Dopey (obviously!) and I thought of Grumpy as the "bad dwarf".  My very own prince Charming changed all that for me. He LOVES Grumpy and identifies with him.  That kinda disturbed me at first, not gonna lie, but than he said Couldn't you tell that Grumpy had a crush on Snow White?  I was like huh?  He pointed out that when Snow White paid attention to Grumpy he blushed and how he was very protective over her.  How the hell did I miss that????  He has an uncanny way of making me see things I've never seen before...he's magical like that.  This was all spinning in my head yesterday as I contemplated whether or not Walt Disney was a mean man 😈

It occurred to me that his movies were meant to touch people in different ways.  To show real life in fantasy, if that makes any sense.  Today most people don't want to see that the bad often brings the good.  That without sadness you can't truly appreciate the joy. Way to go Walt.  Life is not always perfect.  There are hard times along the way but if you stick with it, you get your happy ending.  And in between, it's just a day in the life 💓

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

I will not make the same mistakes that you did....

Divorce.  It's an ugly word for many people.  For me?  It was an oasis.  The beginning of an amazing sense of freedom in my life. The beginning of me becoming me.  I knew my children would be ok because I would make sure of it.  They encouraged me to divorce their father, truth be told.  They knew how unhappy I was.  My daughter was too young to really have an opinion.  She was only 5 when her father started traveling two weeks out of the month for business and she was 8 when we divorced.  I worried that she'd have "daddy issues" but than realized she could have those whether or not I divorced her father.

My sons deal with their father very very differently.  My oldest has completely shut him out.  The only thing they had in common was sports and my oldest isn't really interested in talking about that any more.  If I'm being honest I think he sees things in his father that he doesn't like in himself and it scares him. I think he thinks if he distances himself than it can't penetrate his world. It penetrates my world however, because I find myself dealing with issues that I thought I had rid myself of.  And this is my son....I can't divorce him.  I feel the same frustration and anger grip my insides when these behaviors show themselves.  Lately I have been reduced to tears as I relive a part of my life that I was so very happy to leave behind.  I've worked SO hard to become a different person and not allow negative forces to affect me and not to live in the past.  I find myself shutting down where he is concerned and he isn't having it.  Much like his father he gets in my face and vies for my attention/reaction, good or bad it doesn't matter, he just wants it, although he'd NEVER admit that.  He thinks his siblings are up my ass and he laughs at it.  Even typing this I feel the familiar wrench of my insides.  I've taken to just praying to God to just change it all or take away it's affect on me.  I have no power over it, other than to fight him daily or be insincere...neither of which are in my capabilities.  He can be very thoughtful and giving, it's just that sometimes it's really hard to receive it. He seems to have gotten the worst of his father and me.

My younger son had a time when he did that, shut his father out.  He had a very rough period his Freshman year of high school but that helped him heal and he has a relatively healthy relationship with his father.  Yesterday I realized that my oldest is hell bent on showing me everything I don't want in a man and my younger son is showing me everything that I do!  There is a reason for this I'm sure...I just haven't figured it out yet.  My younger son has done everything in his power to be the kind of man he would have wanted his father to be.  He is the most incredible partner to his long time girlfriend.  Always putting her needs first, thinking of ways to make her smile.  He talks about their future with this light in his eyes, so excited for it, it makes my heart sing for them.  Even with his sister and me, he's so thoughtful.  I got a text from him yesterday asking to take me to lunch this week.  He really is an amazing man.  He seems to have gotten the very best qualities of his father and me, although I know he works at keeping the negative at bay.

My daughter? She is a tough nut.  She doesn't get very close to anyone really.  I used to attribute that to the fact that since she was a year old the people she loves have come and gone in her life since we moved across the country from our entire family.  I've since realized that she has learned to be very selective on who she gives that love to. She has a healthy balance, I hope, of loving people but not relying on their presence in her life.  I wish I had that ability, truth be told.  She is extremely attached to me at this point in life...fiercely protective of me.  We were at Disney yesterday and stopped to have some drinks and a snack and it wound up being a 45 minute heart to heart conversation which ended with her having tears streaming down her face. There is a lot that she notices and doesn't speak of and I was so happy we were able to have that time to talk.  I have felt, at times, that she didn't really need or want to be close to me the way the boys had.  I am realizing that she does and she treasures our relationship in a way I hoped she would.  I think her friends have a lot to do with that.   They are all 13 and hate their moms and their stepdads (yes, most are children of divorce as well) and she realizes that she's pretty lucky.  She sees the stark contrast in the relationship I have with her brothers and she is determined not to go down the path that brings us to discord.  I told her there might come a day when she feels differently and all I ask is when she wants to roll her eyes and say she hates me that she remembers this conversation 😉.  I see so many of my good qualities in her and none of my bad ...well maybe a few 😛I will keep a close eye on her as these teen years progress and do my best to help her not repeat my mistakes.  As far as men in her life as role models? She has a few. Good ones.  Ones that love her tremendously.  Can't ask for more than that.  Or can I? In the end the best I can do is do my best and let God do the rest.  Because after all.....it's just a day in the life.