Category Archives: Women

What’s On Your Wish List?

Posted in Dreams, Life, Psychology, Women by

How many times have you started a sentence with the words “In my lifetime, I want to…”?

Perhaps what you wanted was something grand, like winning a medal for bravery. Maybe it was something modest, even mundane like a wish to clean out your car or to climb a tree.

Maybe you wished for something fantastic like having your own cooking show on HGTV, for example. Or something utterly practical, like making a budget and sticking to it.

Your wish might have taken you to the other side of the world or as far away as the moon, or it might have meant just a walk around the corner. Maybe you wished to do something generous, or something just for you.

What happened to all those wishes? Where did they go? Wishing is good for us. Daydreams, fantasies, castles in the air, and aspirations all drive us forward, impel us to make things happen. They also tell us a lot about ourselves. Our wishes came straight from our core, and they are loaded with vital information about who we are and who we can become.

Keeping track of our wishes helps us tap into the energy that propels us to go after our happiness. That’s what a wish list can do for you. It is to serve as a wellspring of ideas for things to do, have, see, taste, experience, achieve, give, be, learn, do for others, or try just once.

Complete this sentence: “In this lifetime, I want to …” Your collection should range from small, easily realizable goals to grandiose pipe dreams and everything in between. It works for ages 10 to 100. In fact wish lists looks like our own hopes and dreams.

Your wish list is not meant to be solely revelation it is meant to be used as your very personal “to do list for life.” Carry your wish list with you and when your creative daydreaming starts, scribble your own wishes on the blank lines. Check off or underline those wishes you want for yourself.

When you’ve achieved a wish, celebrate the fact by checking it off with a big red X next to it. As years go by and the wish list’s pages become dog-eared and yellow, you will have accumulated a profile of your changing view of happiness, your own evolving values, and your own fulfillment, Not a bad thing to have.

Here is a short list of wishes that might help you start your own list.

  • Try everything that is good once.
  • Witness an event that turns out to be a major historical occurrence.
  • Have a positive effect on people
  • Smell Florida’s night-blooming jasmine.
  • Be surprised by your children.
  • Live in a California beach house with the ocean for your front yard.
  • Attend a vintage motorcycle rally.
  • Coin a phrase.
  • Sing a song that your niece writes.
  • Dance at your grandson’s wedding.
  • Take underwater photographs.
  • Write the lyrics to a passionate love song for your husband / wife.

Summer at a villa in Tuscany. Lean to draw. Skinny-dip under a waterfall. Volunteer at the local soup kitchen. See a mountain gorilla in the wild. Meet your favorite motivational speaker. Work for someone you’ve always admired. Write a love poem.  Start your own blog. Watch the sun set over your favorite locations. Solve a mystery. Take the road less traveled. Your wish list is calling you, now get out there and start living.

Matchmaker- Matchmaker

Posted in Brides, Dreams, family, Letters, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Women by

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Matchmaker, Matchmaker, look through your book, and make me a perfect match. Matchmaker, Matchmaker, I’ll bring the veil, you bring the groom, slender and pale.

Bring me a ring for I’m longing to be the envy of all I see. For Papa make him a scholar. For mama, make him rich as a king. For me, well, I wouldn’t holler if he were as handsome as anything.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a  match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Night after night in the dark, I’m alone so find me a match of my own. I promise you’ll be happy, and even if you’re not, there’s more to life than that…Don’t ask me what?

This matchmaker story is true and is about a man named  Paul and a woman named Karen he lived in New York and she lived in San Francisco, Ca.They met while Paul was attending a family reunion in San Francisco and he asked his cousin Hedy and her fiance’ Jack if they would call some friends who might be willing to go out on a date with him. They went to work, calling various women fortunately, Karen called them back. Hedy’s nick has been  Matchmaker, Matchmaker ever since her  collage years because she matched up more than fifteen couples which she never lets anyone forget about. Hello Dolly has nothing on her that is for sure.

Karen was sitting at the restaurant with Paul’s cousins, and she thought, he’s pretty good-looking. They started talking and Karen noticed Paul was one of the happiest people she had ever come across. And when he would talk about things that he had done and things that you wanted to do, it sounded incredibly appealing, like it would just be a fun life with him.

By the end of the evening  Karen handed him her business card, and He said, he would keep in touch. He called her from his family reunion and asked her if she would allow him to take her to dinner, and then would she take him to the airport? They continued their conversation on the pay phone rather enthusiastically for two hours and Paul’s cousins wondered why Paul wasn’t paying any attention to them or anyone else in  the rest of the family.

They had a great dinner, and then Karen took him to the airport. She saw him off, no peck on the cheek, nothing like that. While Paul was getting on the airplane he was thinking, this could be interesting. He spent the whole time on the plane writing a letter to her and when the plane landed instead of going to pick up his luggage he found a mail box and sent the letter. And come to find out that she had been up all night writing a letter to him and mailed it first thing in the morning. Matchmaker, Matchmaker make me a perfect match!

Karen was really resisting having any feelings of liking him, because she lived in San Francisco and he lived in New York, which was extremely far away. She had never been there. And she had a nice career going, She owned her own home in San Francisco. She had a whole life in California, so why even get into any kind of entanglement with a man who lived so far away? It just seemed crazy. But then, obviously, She really like him.

They wrote each other a lot. They built up a lot of intimacy with all that communicating. It’s was like an essay every single day about a new topic. They wrote about everything. Paul said, a lot happened in those letters and he couldn’t help but be somewhat flirtation, just because it was kind of fun and innocent enough. Karen said, he was plenty flirtatious, but never made a pass at her.

Soon they were spending  hundreds of dollars a month on phone bills, flying back and forth, so they decided to cut to the chase about things. The catalyst for them was when Karen’s mom died in a car accident suddenly and it forced Paul to figure out whether he should be apart of this kind of …sadness. He hadn’t met her family and they were still in a new relationship. Paul thought it over and decided he wanted to be with Karen.

Karen asked her dad if he was up to meeting Paul and he said, yes.  He made a welcoming sign for Paul and made Paul feel welcomed and comfortable.  Karens dad was warm and kind to Paul even though he had just lost his wife and was very, very, very sad. Paul always admired Karens dad for his strength and making that sign for him. It was a tough time, but it built strength between them.

A few months later Karen was at work, and her colleague, said, “Oh, we forgot to tell you: we have to go across campus to see the new dean at the chapel.” So they were kind of jogging across campus, because they were late, and as they walked into the sanctuary she noticed some violin music. It wasn’t until she was pretty far into the church that she realized that it was Paul, and that he was playing the Winter Movement from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. There was an older couple sitting in the front pews, just in rapt attention, listening to him.

Karen didn’t know what was going on: Why was Paul doing this performance in the church? And then Karen kind of got an inkling when Paul finished he went over to her and asked her if she would marry him. She said, yes. It was incredibly romantic and incredibly surprising.

One of things that Karen said to Paul during their vows at the wedding was that she looked forward to seeing his happy face every morning and she still does. Paul still thinks Karen is all he imaged she would be except more of it. She is smart. She is generous and most of all she is just lots of fun to be around. They are very grateful to Hedy and Jack for matching them up.

Stella’s Honeymoon On Hamburgers, Milkshakes And Love

Posted in Brides, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, traditions, Women by

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

After Stella graduated from high school, she couldn’t afford college, so she went to nurse’s training school at the general hospital in her home town.

One day one of her patient’s son told her he was really crazy about her friend Betty, who was working on the ward with her, and asked if she could get him a date.

She said, “I’ll try. Betty said, Okay, but that she would not go out on a single date. “So he asked two guys, and I Stella asked another girl, and they went on a triple date. On the day of the date Stella had spent all afternoon at the beach sun bathing, she was red as a beet, her hair was a mess, and she really didn’t want to go.

At the last-minute Stella managed to pull herself together anyway and as she was walking down the stairs she saw the three guys sitting there, and she said to her friend, “Look at the hick; I’ll bet I get stuck with him.” And she did. She knew that he didn’t have any money. They wanted to stop for a hamburger, french fries and a milkshake, and he just frankly told her. “I can’t afford it.” Somehow or other that seemed honest to her. She said, ” Let’s just sit in the car and talk.” And talk they did. They talked themselves right into love and marriage. The next day she called him, they decided they wanted to see each other again and made plans to have lunch together.

When Dave went to the hospital to pick her up and unfortunately Stella wasn’t there. Dave waited for her longer that day than he had waited for anybody in his life. He wasn’t mad, he was disgusted  and wrote Stella off. After all no one did that to him, so he went back to work. 

Three days later Stella called him and explained to him that she had to attend a nurses luncheon and had left a note for Betty to give to him and Betty forgot to. Dave accepted her apology. Dave and Stella had the next Thursday off. He suggested that they go to Turkey Run State Park, which is about sixty miles from Indianapolis. That day turned out to be one of the most idyllic days of their lives.

Friday he took Stella out to the farm to meet his parents and on Saturday they spent the day with Stella’s parents. That was when her mother said to Dave, “I hope you’re not thinking about marrying my daughter, because you’ll marry her over my dead body!’  

He told her, “If I can find us a minister, we’re getting married tomorrow and no you wouldn’t die and she didn’t die!  He went out and found the same minister that had married his parents twenty-five years earlier. He pulled the minister right out of the revival meeting. His mother was an avid gardener, and had what seemed like thousands of gladiolas in full bloom.  His mother cut practically al of those glads, and the house was absolutely gorgeous with flowers everywhere they looked.

So they were married with their parents, grandparents, two best friends, his brother as his best man, and her four sisters and that was the wedding party. After the wedding ceremony Dave had twenty dollars in his pocket and borrowed forty dollars from his dad for the honeymoon, but in the rush and excitement of the wedding, he forgot to get it. They where half way to Lake Shafer on their honeymoon when they discovered that he only had a twenty in his wallet. 

So they honeymoon on twenty dollars. They found a motel for three dollars a night. They discovered a beautiful garden overlooking Lake Shafer and if they ate at the soda fountain they could order a hamburger, french fries and milkshake for seventy-five cents. So their honeymoon was for three-days and nights and they spent Dave’s twenty dollars. When they returned home Dave gave his father in law the forty dollars back.

Stella and Dave have had fifty-seven years of marriage, and never once regretted their short courtship and honeymoon on hamburgers, milkshakes and love. Stella worked as a nurse for twenty years and Dave became a doctor and they had four children but every Saturday night was hamburger, french fire and milkshake night.

Stella and Dave’s love story carries us from the excitement and anticipation of courtship to the deep connection of lifelong commitment, their story just goes to show that love is found in the most unexpected of places and in the shortest amount of time. And if you’re wondering yes this is a true story love story.

Ways To Tame The Frenzy

Posted in Brain Study, Getting Organized, Life, Psychology, Women, Working Women by

Organize your mind organize your life and train your brain to get more done in less time. Does this sound to good to be true? Have you ever lost your keys, missed an appointment, or been distracted by a frivolous email?

 The key to a less hectic, less stressful life is not in simply organizing your desk, but organizing your mind. The latest neuroscience research studies at Harvard Medical School shows that our brain’s have an extraordinary built-in system of organization that translates the science into solutions.

 You can learn how to use the innate organizational power of your brain to make your life less stressful, more productive and rewarding. According to their findings you can regain control of your frenzy, embrace effective uni-tasking, fluidly shift from one task to another and use your creativity to connect the dots.

How organized are you? 

  A. Very organized. My desk is neat, I never miss an appointment or a deadline, my friends are amazed, my co-workers are jealous and boss loves me.

B. Moderately organized. I manage to stay on top of things pretty well, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed, not sure wha to do first, and I must admit that I’m a little jealous of my colleagues and my boss who seem more organized.

C. Completely disorganized. In fact, I’ll be lucky if I can remember where I parked my car. That’s assuming I  don’t get a text or a phone call in the next two minutes, which will completely throw me off and … what was the question again?

If you answered A, B or C, you will glade to know that there are amazing new insights gleaned about the way our brain works to organize our thoughts, actions, and emotions, through high-tech brain scans, or neuroimaging, we can now “see” the response of the brain to various situations. Affiliates of Havard Medical School have helped tens of thousands of clients through important and positive changes in their health, work and personal lives.

  Subjects in the Harvard study were shown a series of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures while they were attempting the difficult task of keeping in check their emotional reactions. Through the use of high-tech imaging or neuroimageing, researches were able to observe the “thinking” regions of the subjects’ brains(including areas called the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex) managing the “emotion“generating parts of the brain.

It’s an intriguing new study that sheds light into the brain’s own built-in system of organization and regulation-one  that strives for order, one that can “tamp down”(suppress) our emotions when necessary. Here’s the most exciting part the features in the brain’s magnificent self-regulation system come  “preloaded” in every functioning human mind; these features can be accessed, initialized and used to allow you to become better organized and to feel more on top of things. You just have to know how to do it.

Six Tips For Organizing Your Brain and Taming The Frenzy

1. Tame the Frenzy: Organized, efficient people who are able to acknowledge and manage their emotions. Unlike many who let their emotions get the better of them, these folks have the ability to put the frustrations and anger aside, almost literally, and get down to focused work. The sooner the emotional frenzy welling within you is tamed, the sooner the work is done and the better you feel.

2. Sustain Attention: Sustained focus or attention is a fundamental building block of organization, You need to be able to maintain your focus and successfully ignore the many distractions around you, in order to plan and coördinate behaviors, to be organized and to accomplish something.

3. Apply the Brakes: The organized brain must be able to inhibit or stop an action or a thought, just as surely as a good pair of brakes brings your car to a halt at a stoplight or when someone cuts suddenly into your lane. people who don’t do this well will continue to act or think in a certain way despite information to the contrary.

4. Mold information: Your brain has the remarkable ability to hold information it has focused upon, analyze it, process it and use it to guide a future behavior, even after the information is completely out of visual sight. It is capitalizing on working memory, a kind of mental workspace.

5. Shift Sets: The organized brain is ever ready for the news flash; the timely opportunity or last-minute change in plans. You need to be focused but also able to process and with the relative importance of competing stimuli and to be flexible, nimble and ready to move from one task to another, form one thought to another. This cognitive flexibility and adaptability is known as set shifting.

6. Connect the Dots: The organized and efficient individual pulls together the things we’ve already talked about; the ability to quiet the inner frenzy, to develop consistent and sustained focus, to develop cognitive control, to flexibly adapt to new stimuli and to mold information. The organized and efficient individual synthesizes these qualities-much as the various part of the brain are brought together to perform task or help solve problems and brings these abilities to bear on the problem or opportunity at hand.

When you organize your mind you organize your Life making it possible to stay mindful of your self-care priorities while navigating the challenging stresses of everyday life this can be helpful to any one who wants to tame their frenzy.

Start Where You Are

Posted in Dreams, Life, Love, Quotes, relationships, Women by

 Start where you are when you have been blind-sided by a sudden crises, tragedy, or an unwanted break up. Unplug the TV, put away the to-do lists, turn off the computer playing in your mind, and find some quiet time alone and meditate about how you are going to start where you are now. 

You may be wondering what does daffodils have to do with starting where you are? Look at this photo of daffodils field do you realize it started with just one bulb? “Start Where You Are ” one bulb at a time!

This is a lovely story about a woman who planted one of the most beautiful displays of daffodils ever seen, high up on a mountain peak surrounding her small A-frame home.

There were five acres of flowers planted in “majestic”, swirling patterns with great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow.”

A poster on her patio of her home read: “Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking.”  The first was “50,000 bulbs.” The second answer was, “Began in 1958 planting one bulb at a time, year after year for more than forty years, this woman had created something of indescribable magnificence, beauty and inspiration.

Sometimes we find ourselves at cross roads, no longer willing to do things the same old way. It may arise out of a need, an answer to a problem, or a deep soul desire felt within. You find yourself bewildered and wondering where do I start?  You’ve been so devastated that you could hardly breathe and at moments you felt crushed? 

Maybe you were broken-hearted because the man you thought you were going ot marry, your soul mate ended your relationship or maybe you married him and it didn’t work out. And to make matters worse,you worked for him.

 A few years ago my friend Linda was in that exact situation her fiancé broke up with her and she worked with him. Needles say she was feeling devastated so she called a dear friend and asked her, Where do I start?

This was the advice her friend gave her. First, if she was going to survive, the most important thing was to go to bed every night before 10:00.

She knew from her study of health that every hour of sleep we get before midnight is worth two hours after that time. She also knew that staying rested was far the most effective way to deal with stress. Anyone who’s ever gotten up in the morning without having had enough sleep knows how hard life can be when we’re tired. When challenges are accompanied by fatigue, we can feel hopeless. Linda knew she needed to be alert in order to cope with the humiliation she experienced and the demands of her work schedule. 

Linda’s friend suggested that the second thing she should do was to focus on the things she had to be grateful for. Every night before falling asleep, she started writing down at least five good things that had happened to her each day and as time went by the grew and grew.

Linda’s friend also explained this simple principle to her: When we focus on darkness, we usually allow ourselves to be taken into deeper darkness. When we focus on light meaning all that is good in our lives we attract more and more light. It’s a powerful truth: Whatever you put your attention on grows stronger in your life.

 It’s no surprise that when we focus on the negative, that’s all we can see. How often have you had five great things happen to you in your day, but when a friend asked you how it’s going, you immediately told her about the one thing that didn’t go so well?  As Linda’s dear friend said to her, “The more you believe somethings matters, the more solid and tangible they become.”

Sometimes we get so involved thinking about the past or the future that we simply forget what’s going on right in front of us. At times like these, I find it valuable to remember the advice my friend Linda applied to her situation when her life was turned up side down. She didn’t know what was going to happen down the road, but she knew she had to breathe, eat and go to work everyday. The first thing Linda did was post a sign on her refrigerator that said, Start Where You Are” one bulb at a time.

As a result Linda resigned from her job and became an owner of a flower shop where she met and married a terrific guy who is a publisher. And Linda’s list of good things that happened to her everyday grew to 365 good things that happened today and her husband published it. Linda still keeps a sign on their refrigerator that says, “Start Where You Are” one bulb at a time.

   

 


 

A Relationship Isn’t Like Grandma’s Silver

Posted in Life, Love, relationships, The Work Force, Women, Working Women by

A relationship isn’t like Grandma’s silver that you can take out of its box once a year to polish. It’s something that needs constant spiffying up.

How you and your partner cope with these statements: I had a hard day or I have bad news to tell you can set the stage for how the two of you spend the rest of your evening together. Depending on how and when the two of you talk about the hard day you had or the bad news it can rob you of your joy. Learning relationship skills can help you and your partner return to joy faster and that is better than remaining angry and up set for the rest of the evening isn’t it?

Your home is your castle but sometimes coming home after a hard day at the office or a hard day traveling or it’s just a hard commute. The kids may have acted up, the washing machine may have broken down or the loneliness was too much.

Up or down, down or up, what ever the cause, sometimes opening the front door, the tensions can be cut with a knife. Coming home should be a time of relief. A man or woman’s home is his or her castle. When that front door close behind you, there’s an expectation of calm and getting off the rat’s treadmill for a little while.

So when that open door presents you with an out-of- control maelström of anger, crying or tension, you’re left with no place to go and the bell sounds “round one” the moment one partner enters the house, then no one should be surprised if he or she comes in swinging with words.

There’s no question that the problems at home must be dealt with, but there needs to be a moment or two of transition before they are handed over on a red-hot cookie sheet. So let the person coming home take a deep breath, change out of their work clothes, and maybe have a snack. Then give him or her the bad news or whatever else it is and they will be better equipped to help deal with it.

Here is a suggestion while you may want to give partners coming home a few minutes to gather themselves, you also might want to let them know there’s’ a storm on the horizon. Set up some sort of signal it can be a verbal or a little sign such as an actual red flag so that they’ll know to expect something. Remember a relationship isn’t like Grandma’s silver that you take out of its box once a year to polish it’s something that needs constant spiffying up with red flags and snacks.

The Sweet Knowings Of Love

Posted in Brides, family, generational changes, Life, Love, Parenting, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

The journey of love is a journey of many sweet knowings. It is the sweet bliss, in first love, of discovering all your love’s little secrets, her favorite flower and fragrance, the color that sets off her eyes so; his plaid flannel shirts, the way he laces up his boots, his shaving brush, and that one wild hair in his eyebrow; the scent of her skin, the feel of her hair, the drawer she keeps her lingerie in.

It is later the being together and love becomes the sound of the key as he locks up the house, the sound of the rain in the shower each morning as she is singing and shampoos her hair. It is how she rolls over at night in bed, how he sleeps like a saint, with his hands folded over his chest; it is what he can fix; what she can mend. And it is the changing, this way and that way.

Sometimes there are unkind words spoken the anger and love in the mist; making love, holding hands. And the children, wanting, not being sure about wanting them; being scared, and so overjoyed and seeing them sleeping and carried at night in his arms; how he is so tender, how she is so easy, so strong with them.

It is watching the years go by they come and go and come and go and then they just seem to Go and Go. Autumn and spring and winter and summer. So slowly and endlessly beautifully folding, unfolding so quickly go. And how we have done every year, so many things and so few. Each day, and the meals and the work and the talk.

Each day a small town with a map and the trip they have taken in it. And the walks and the light and the changing of the light and how they have traveled. And how they have given the gifts. At Christmas, birthdays, wedding  anniversaries and just because. They want to remember all the words they have written on cards. The things they have said and the things they have whispered to each other. I love you, good night and I adore you. You are my one and only.

And how time has passed He has grown old and he has white in his hair and the fine thin lines of his life and sun are remaking his eyes. He notices that her eyes softer now but still blue and even after so many years and the fading he still loves her. He still loves the scent of her perfume after all these years. 

She still loves how he after all these years he still sleeps with his hands folded over his chest and the scent of his after shave lotion. They love remembering now and not forgetting why they love each other. He said for them it’s been like a long love song that tells the story of how they have melted, woven themselves, befriended, ensouled one another.

 Now that they are here at the end of their lives that they know one another so well, like the bird knows the air like the snowdrift knows the snow; and how he said long a go, until we know each other like the seasons; and now it is spring; and now it is summer now it is autumn now it is winter; and we know we know, that love is endless and we will know each other in eternity too.

Love Letters Speak Of Secret Wishes

Posted in Dreams, generational changes, Keepsakes, Letters, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

A love letter is a declaration that speaks of secret wishes, shared joy, or lasting A love letter is the most intimate correspondence a person can receive.

 With in its lines promises given, and fond memories recalled. Within its lines secret desires are made known through divine inspiration.

Written in elegant scrip on scented stationary or scrawled haphazardly on a scrap of paper, mailed from across the seas, hidden in a bouquet of roses, or tucked between the pages of an album, a love letter is to be cherished always. Love letters are precious reminders of heart-felt sentiments. They may bring encouragement and reassurance to the pining heart. It’s a reminder that says, “We’ll be together soon.” Or they may be simple reminders that say “I’m thinking about you. You make me smile.”

Whatever their purpose, love letters are received with joy and anticipation. Then saved in special places. Maybe in a dresser drawer, under mattress, ribbon-tied in a hope chest, or secreted away n a quiet corner. They are kept to be lovingly revisited for many years to comes. Over time, letters may become worn and tear-stained, but the meaning of their words remain as true as the day they were written.

Every day, thousands of people visit web sites seeking advice and suggestions about love and romance. Today I read that  hand written ” love letters” are still holding their place in the hearts of lovers. Men and women are happy to receive a love letter by Email. However receiving a love letter through the postal service still ranks number one, in the hearts of women everywhere. 

Writing Is A Process Like Aging

Posted in generational changes, Life, relationships, Women by

If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening. When I was in my twenties I belonged to a writers group. We would meet every other Wednesday and share our short stories, plays, mysteries and memoirs. Needless to say we did a lot of talking and listening. As with any group of women, our conversations ranged from what our children were doing to what was going on in the White House.

Every word spoken was important to us. One day, the conversation centered on their litany of complaints over getting older. One woman described her hot flashes in great detail and told us how in the middle of night she got out of bed and took a cold shower to calm her night sweats.

 I was a new mother and all I could think about was how many dirty diapers I had changed and was suffering from all those sleepless nights. Needless to say, I remained silent, while sipping a cup of tea as the rest of the women shared their complaints about aging. I started to wonder if I was in a writers group or having lunch with my mother and her girlfriends.

Finally the group returned to the business at hand which was to decide if we should start to critique each others writings. A few of us decided that it would be helpful to have someone critique our latest writings. After that there were frequent red marks all over our pages. To make the process easier to take, we started each critique with what was good about the piece. Then with the writer basking in the glow of hearing how skillful her writing was, the not so positive stuff could be discussed. Many of the women went on to become succesful published authors.

 The good stuff doesn’t just apply to critiquing writers it also applies to aging. Now many years later most of my friends are helping take care of their parents. They are dealing with problems about aging, fading memories, fatal illnesses, scams to cheat the trusting. At times they become overwhelmed. 

It’s time to start thinking about what we gain from getting older, not what we lose. When we start to appreciate all the good stuff that we have and can do, we become happier people. Like a new sense of time. Like times when we were perusing an education or a career or raising our kids, we always looked ahead to each new stage.

 It may have been when our babies would crawl, talk, walk, feed themselves, get out of diapers, get into school. Maybe it was when you finished collage and received your collage degree or when you were in pursuit of fulfilling your career goals.

 All of those situations require looking ahead to the good stuff. Getting older doesn’t have to mean that you can’t look forward to having good stuff in your life. It means you have to think out of the box and move out of a few comfort zones. You can do it!

Now we know how fast the chipmunk-cheeked face of the nursing baby sharpens into the schoolgirls’ studious look. Don’t we? And we realize that, with each change, how special our time is and how fast it all disappears, too. Writing, like life, is not a goal but a process. And, as in life, it is easy to give up.

 The excuses are legion. It’s too difficult to write; the storyline isn’t working; I don’t know where it’s taking me. But if we don’t trust the possibility that it will all work out, we’ll never get it written. And if those who read our work don’t look for possibilities, their doubts can discourage us from finishing it. So, we look for the possibilities of each idea, each piece of work.

Growing older in our society isn’t easy. The emphasis on staying young no matter what it takes or costs is strong. It’s sometimes hard to find the up side of getting old. But as mature women we have endless possibilities, from the sublime to the silly: never wearing panty hose again; wearing big, dangling rhinestone earings with jeans; eating dessert first or eating dessert only; going back to graduate school for the sheer joy of learning; taking up glass blowing or skydiving.

We can do what we want. It’s all possible. The process of writing is like aging they are both full of possibilities. The longer we live, the more we know about hurts and sadness in our own lives and in the world. But we know more too, with a recounting of what went right in our lives. As we have aged we have learned that each time we leave those we care about, we can leave them a positive word, a gift of good stuff, until we see them again. Life and writing are full of possibilities aren’t they?

The Notion Of Love As Service

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Most of the time we think of love in terms of what love can do for us, imagining that when we “fall in love,” all our dreams will come true.

We want so badly to have our own feelings recognized, our own needs met, our own insecurities handled, and our own desires fulfilled that the notion of love as service is almost inconceivable to us. We can get so caught up (or bogged down) in the notion of love as a what will I get out of the experience that the idea of serving another is extremely distasteful.  At a deeper level, we’re afraid that by serving we might lose the sense of our selves we’ve worked so hard to attain.  But in its purest state, love is service,  a wholehearted offering so satisfying that it doesn’t feel like service at all, but rather self-fulfilment of the highest order.

Most of us still need practice for this particular outreach of love. We’re not sure how to serve or what our true service might be, and we haven’t  practiced serving  to such a degree that it feels second nature, graceful, or effortless to us.  The truth is that we’re all already serving in one form or another. If you’re a parent, you’re serving your children.  If you’ve cared for an invalid neighbor or an aging parent, you have also served in love. If you’ve bandaged the wing of a wounded bird, given a homeless person a dollar, saved a stranger from drowning, given up your set on the bus, then you too have served in love. These are the seedings of service , the places where our hearts have started to open, but should you choose to have your service grow into a huge and sheltering tree, you will be given many opportunities to mature your gift  of true service.

Begin by asking yourself the following questions: What does it mean to serve? What would my true service be? How can I develop my service so it can truly become a gift of love?  Service in love is temporarily sitting aside your own needs, wants, and priorities and allowing the needs, want and priorities and allowing the needs of another human being to become radiant, so vivid, and so pertinent that, for a moment, your own are dissolved. This gracious moment is love, and the more we live in the practice of service, the more we create this love. For when we serve one another, we also serve the great cause of Love with grace.

Choose To Honor The Opposite Sex

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It seems all most strange that we must actually encourage or instruct ourselves to respect the opposite sex. Doesn’t it?  Yet, unfortunately, because for decades we have been so bombarded with attitudes, articles, and books that underline the differences between men and women, we now live in a world where we are surrounded by antagonism between the sexes. For the sake of union in society and in our intimate relationships we really must consciously choose now to honor the opposite sex.

Honoring means remembering to value, cherish, holding dear, celebrating rather than disparaging one another. When we hold dear and celebrate, rather than disparaging the differences between men and woman we are honoring each other. Honoring one another is to remember the beauty, enjoying all the contrasts, and savoring in clarity the blessings of the other. It means not building walls out of differences, but delighting in each beautiful, and amusing counterpart of our opposite gender’s hilarious uniqueness.

It also means moving from the surface to the depths, realizing that beneath the familiar costumes of gender we all embody a similar evolving consciousness, that inside we all carry as great emotional treasure the exquisite array of feelings. A man’s grief over the death of his father is not less real than a woman’s grief over the loss of her mother. A man’s heart will be as poignantly, beautifully touched by a breathtaking sunset, the rustle of cottonwood leaves in Yosemite, or a cool, crystalline autumn morning as a woman’s. At the core we all moved by our sorrows and by the magnificence and miracles that touch us, not  as men or women, but as human beings.

To know this is to relax the wearying focus on our differences, to come graciously into the knowing that what we live and suffer in common, and that real love, love in the soul, is beyond male and female, beyond gender as an issue at all.

I’ll Always Choose You

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I’ll always choose you! When you choose to love one person in a special, committed way, you are unchoosing or giving up your option to choose all others, for a time at least, in that same particular way.

The feeling of “being in love”  is the raving experience that makes us willing, even daredevilishly eager, to make these sacrifices. It’s a joy to choose one above all others, a delight to feel graced and blessed by their uniquely delicious and heartwarming presence.

But this choosing, grand as it is and willing as we are to make it, it is also symbolic of the many choices, little renunciations, and revisions of priority that, for love, we shall come to make as we walk the path of relationship. There’s a great deal we do (or discontinue doing) precisely and only because we love.

 When Jane fell in love with Brand she postponed graduate school to take care of Brands two little girls, whose mother died of cancer. Jane did this with no regrets and a lot of love. Later in life when the girls left home to go to college Jane went back and finished her postponed educational goals.

Jane’s brother Dan moved out of the house he’d built for himself to live in the town where Jen, his new love, lived. She was a tenured professor and couldn’t move to the town where Dan lived. The corporation that Dan works for transferred him to an office in the town that Jen lived in.

Dan excepted the job transfer and proposed to Jen. Hooray! Jen said yes. One year later they had a little girl. Dan has no regrets because he made those compromises out of love. Oh, he still owns the house that he built and hopes that when they retire they will live in it but if not he is willing to compromise because he loves Jen more than the house he built.

Such revisions are only the tip of the iceberg. Each day, in love, you will be faced with decisions and choices, invited to make compromises that represent a willingness to meet the one you love halfway on the playing field of love. Thus, you may find yourself adapting to uncomfortable  schedules or meticulous (or sloppy) housekeeping habits (the proverbial toothpaste folded up wrong or far too perfectly), taking vacations you never imagined ( but ended up loving anyway), preparing food you never even liked. or entering into financial arrangements that stretch your equanimity to the limit.

A compromise for love needs to be just that: a conscious revision of your own preferences. As such, it becomes a creative, imaginative act, and surprisingly beautiful frame. But, above all it shows you the depth of your love. For when we smooth off the corners of our own dogmatic priorities, we reach toward one another. In so doing, we see that love, the deep recognition of the soul of the one we love.

 In the spiritual journey of love it is our soul who choose us for each other. We meet through the eyes of the pulse. we do not choose, but each is chosen for this love, This path, this new green road, this first kiss, the single beating heart, the compromises made for love. This us!

Leave The Kitchen Sink In The Kitchen When You Fight

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When you fight leave the kitchen sink in the kitchen. What that means is don’t just gratuitously throw in things that don’t belong in the current fight. Such as every complaint you’ve ever had since the history of time began something corroded and calcified from ten years ago, or the meanest below-the belt thing that you can possibly think of saying.

Kitchen-sink behavior isn’t profitable. It doesn’t do anything except fan the flames of contention and open an abyss of panic and pain for you partner. Once you’ve gotten the satisfaction of watching the kitchen sink fly by and crash into a wall, you may have a hard time cleaning up afterwards.

So no matter what you’re so furious about try to resist the temptation to let it all out or to let the devil take the hindmost. It’s important to stop and think before you let the other person have it. You might want to stop and ask yourself these questions.

 Do I really need to say this? This is, does this horrible, angry, vituperative, and character-blasting thing really need to be said?  Will it improve the immediate situation? Is there anything useful to be gained from saying extreme statements?  Such as your sex life is awful now and it has been for the past ten years? Will this or similar remarks speed up the other person’s growth and maturity or your own, or is saying it just the indulgence of revved-up emotions that want release?

  Do I really need to say that now?  The diatribe you wants to indulge in some very valuable points that really need to be expressed stop and think is this the time to make them? Will you set off a furor or engender a useful response?

Before you fire your verbal machine gun it’s important to investigate the maturity of your emotions output.  Just because you feel like saying something doesn’t mean it has to be said in the way or exactly the moment that you feel like saying it. Remember your relationship will last rather than erode or be destroyed it’s all in the words that you speak it’s up to you.

If You Swore To Love For Life Once Why Do It Again

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If you swore to love for life once why do it again? If you had to do it all over again would you could you? A promise is a promise right? If you swore to love for life once why do it again?

Your first response could be why not? What harm could it do? Is it the vow its self that is the question? Ah, there’s the rub.

You walked down the aisle together once and it was a great day; so great that it could never be repeated and the knot you tied that day became a gnarl of attachments: Kids, deeds, photo albums, possessions galore so how could you ever part?

Do you ever ask yourself if you had to do it all over again would you? That’s the question that begs answering when second or third wedding vows are on the horizon. If the answer is yes then sure say “I do, I do, I do.” If the answer is “I don’t know,” then don’t ignore this warning sign your feelings for each other will have changed over the years; that’s only natural. But would you describe those feelings as being love?

Even if you don’t hate each other do you love one another? I’m not saying that if you’re not at a point where you wouldn’t hesitate to renew your wedding vows that you should split apart. Only that maybe you shouldn’t ignore the state of your relationship. You and your partner might want to seek professional help about your relationship so that the next time you’re asked this question, you will both say yes.

A few years ago my Aunt and Uncle went on a Valentine’s Day Cruise along with eight hundred couples to renew their marriage vows.  When the eight hundred couples were asked if they planned on renewing their wedding vows in the future they all said, “Yes.”

 When the youngest couple in the group asked my aunt and uncle if renewing their wedding vows was their secret to their loving relationship?  They said, it makes for a very romantic day but they believed it’s what they do for each other the other 364 days that really renews those vows and keeps the relationship on solid ground. Then they were asked how many years had they been married? My Aunt and Uncle smiled and said, a short sixty years and that they renewed their wedding vows every twenty years.

My Aunt said that my Uncle held her hand and gazed into her eyes and said, he was looking forward to the next time. The other seven hundred and ninety-nine couples tenderly smiled at each other as they realized that when you love your partner renewing your wedding vows is a loving way to express one more time to them that they are the only one for you.

Finding Peace In Relationships

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In the tit-for-tat world of our psychological dramas, we tend to make life adversarial. We take sides. We look at intentions and effects such as she was late just so I’d feel bad; he said that just to hurt me. We seek redress for our insults and wounds; we keep score (you were late more often than I was; you flirted more than I did; you hurt me more than I hurt you; your meaner than I am; well, anyway, you were meaner more times.

It’s as if in trying to find peace in relationships, he thinks, she thinks, keeping score will win the day. Keeping score is like a trash can for misplaced emotions. If he or she looks at you as an enemy they’ll  show you all your crimes, and prove that you’re guilty, thinking they deserve you to make up for it by loving them more because you’ll feel so badly about how you’ve behaved.

 Enemy, crimes, proof of guilt, make up and love them more. This sounds more like the beginnings of a murder mystery and not a loving relationship. Doesn’t it? Unfortunately ( and fortunately, he or she isn’t a corporation that can be sued (and required to make recompense) like a faulty product. People don’t “pay up” in love because they’re shamed or proven guilty. In fact, the stronger inclination is to get away from the heat and head for the hills. Justice doesn’t always prevail. People who keep score and get pay back are like murderers of love. Aren’t they? Taking an adversarial position will only make an adversary of your mate; and adversaries make war, not love.

That’s why, when conflict arises we need to look for common ground. In the midst of the fray, when we seek the kernel of truth that can bridge us to understanding, we can find our way back to union. We all have a dark side; we’ve all hurt one another more than we’d like to admit. But even our misdeeds merit an attempt at understanding, because the truth is that even dastardly acts are born in pain. That doesn’t excuse them, of course, but it’s important to remember that even the difficult, hard, hurtful things we do to each other spring from the woundedness within us.

When I can comprehend your suffering (and, therefore, the crooked behavior you perpetrated on me) and you can comprehend my pain (and, therefore, my wrongdoing to you), we can stand face to face in compassion, unravel the missteps we’ve made, and together start over from a different place.

So if, in your heart of hearts, you seek union, pleasure, companionship, support, and nourishment from your partner, don’t make an adversary out of him or her. Even in the hairiest fray, try curiosity and kindness. “Why were you late?” “Why were you so short with me?” Try it you may find out something surprising. ( I got back a frightening mammogram today”; “The guy right next to you in the gym keeled over and died”), something which instead of turning your partner into the enemy, fill your heart with compassion. Our relationships become sweeter, deeper and more gracious when we are loving and compassionate with our partners.