Thrivival Mode

Time.

Clearly central to this whole exercise is time and the passage there of.

Time.

Time being so relative.

How fast the days and weeks and years seem to go.

How slow the healing process takes.

How fleeting and ubiquitous.

All the things that creep up on you during a milestone year.

Listening to lyrics of love songs you belted to at 9 years old when you had absolutely no idea what that experience, that emotion, really was – I mean did Whitney Houston really know the pain of having to leave someone you are truly, madly in love with for their sake?

Watching a movie and identifying with the parents instead of the kids – Goonies, ET, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – damn those kids were all out of control and the parents are desperately trying to connect.

Viewing favorite chic flick shows and realizing the protagonist was really the antagonist- Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls — Carrie was really selfish and Lorilai was so immature. Sorry, I said it, it’s just fact.

Perspective.

Experience.

Sure those are the cloudy windshield wipers we view life through as it speeds by.

And it’s going to change.

And that’s ok.

We grow to accept that. Even embrace it.

But when we assign meaning to it all

When we prescribe value to it all

That’s when we enter dangerous territory.

It occurred to me rather starkly last nite that this countdown to 50 is just that.

I mean, it’s good to process.

It’s healthy to embrace.

It’s important to celebrate.

But come Monday morning when I’m 50 years and one day old, what will have changed?

Nothing.

Nothing will be noticeably different.

Same aches and pains and fading red hair.

Same healthy lungs, heart and spirit.

Same bills and repairs waiting for me at home.

Same comfy couch and bedroom set and all things I’ve worked to purchase and place by myself.

Same empty pillow next to me when I go to sleep and wake up.

Same bustling, wonderfully supportive village of friends and family and connections with old acquaintances and budding successes with new colleagues.

Same fucked up world filled with hate and anger and misplaced priorities.

Same brilliant sunrises and soul quenching sunsets.

Same.

Same person.

Same life.

Same bad, good and otherwise.

Only it’s not.

It’s different

If I say it is

If I think it is

If I own it.

If it claim the passage of time as my own.

If I use it to continue the healing

Continue the growing

Continue the work.

Time maybe swirling down the drain taking all the fluffy bubbles and sweaty grime with it

But that’s my time.

My grime.

My bubbles.

And that is

Quite simply

The gift

Of time.

It’s A lot

Living is a lot.

If you’re doing it right.

Living day by day, week by week, year by year is a lot.

Jammed packed with emotions and experiences and expectations and empathy.

In every single day

It’s been difficult to write sometimes because I have SO much I want to say, to reflect on, to call attention to, that I get overwhelmed and just don’t write at all.

In the last 36 hours alone was a lot of experience with empathy – as a superpower and as my kryptonite.

A lot of experience with frustration- as an adjective and a verb.

A lot of experience with nurturing – also as an adjective and a verb.

There was joy – the rescue of Israeli hostages

There was contentment – snuggling with my 4 yr old nephew and my daughter watching a movie

There was a-ha moments – reading Dr Seuss to my nephew and realizing if everyone would just read and absorb all those lessons we’d be a much kinder, accepting, self-aware society

Other a-ha moments – the slowing down of my own parents and the shifting dynamics that will eventually lead to caring for them as they once cared for me

There was fatigue – physically, mentally, emotionally

There was self-pity – parts of my body hurt and aren’t working and the things I can no longer do and the fear of a limited, painful future plant the seeds of despair

There was pride – in surviving and now thriving and in building a life worth living by the testimony of wonderfulness of those in it

There was excitement- in planning all the times I will spend, adventures I will have, memories I will make with those people

There was chaos and music and toys and noise and take out dinners and swimming and laundry and bedtime stories and temper tantrums ( from the tween not the 4 yr old) and and and

And then there was this, that came across my feed

Living is a lot.

Living is a lot of loving

If your lucky

And I consider myself very lucky

And blessed

To have a lot of life to live, a lot of love in that life and not a lot of time left until I turn the corner on the next big chapter of that life – one week/7 days.

And I’m ready for it!

Shit Just Got Real

I mean we all know it’s coming.

And we joke about.

But for Gen X it’s a legit core memory moment.

People who have AARP cards are wayyyyy old man!

They like get discounts at the movies and Denny’s.

Like, we are sooo not them, man.

It’s like, old school Publishers Clearing House Ed McMahon shit.

We are soooo not that!

Are we?

It’s all a Jedi mind trick

How we “view” ourselves in relation to how we viewed – and currently view – others.

Sure, yes

Times have changed.

Old people are not as old as old people used to be when we were young.

That’s a sentence that should not make sense – but it does and you know it.

Older people in the 20th century wore one piece skirt bathing suits and complained about the weather and they retired earlier and sat around all day until it was time to go to an early dinner and then have a wild night playing canasta.

They didn’t play pickle ball.

Or take around the world vacations.

Or take on second or even third careers.

Or ( insert any of the myriad of things me parents do daily that keeps their mind, body and soul active)

Those people, the Golden Girls of the hood, they had AARP cards.

We are not them.

We are not them.

See Jedi mind trick.

Because “old” and “what does old look like” is all relative.

We will never view ourselves as “them” because they were the older, the other.

Just like the Zellenials ( I mean seriously what generation are we on now I can’t keep track) just like they view us.

In their perception, in their dimension, we are the attributes they assign to “old”.

And to them, we are not them.

And we’re not.

We are not the young – as they see themselves.

We are not the old, as they see themselves.

We just are.

We just ARE.

We just AAR(P)

Our place in this world

I’m not talking about big, grandiose “what is my place/role/contribution to this world” shit

I’m going very basic

Our place within our group

Our place within our friends group

Our place within our family group

Our place within our coworker group

How that “place” changes and how we navigate that change takes so much of our emotional energy it leaves little room for anything else, especially logic

Where is this coming from?

Well, after a particularly difficult day of elevated levels of FOMO and self-confidence crushers I came home to a call from my crying tween daughter who feels her best friend is leaving her out of group chats on purpose ( let’s not get into the group chats and group text snake pit right now – or that these are 11/12 year olds with highly unregulated emotions mixed with hormones and a penchant for drama) — and I spent a considerable about of time talking about giving someone space and empathy and not reading into choices or situations and to extend oneself grace and not judge themselves too harshly or always jump to the worst instead of waiting patiently for the truth to reveal itself or the situation to self correct.

Whew.

It was a lot.

And some of it helped.

Most of it fell on deaf ears.

And I’ll say it again – and again – and again.

Cause these feelings, these shitty murky situations will happen again – and again – and again.

Until she’s 50!

And it breaks my heart.

As it does with every parent navigating their child through the rough waters of relations and relationships.

But

And this is a big but

Unlike me at her age, and to some extent even at my current age since I didn’t take a lick of what I told her to my own heart, yet unlike me at her age she is so honestly self aware.

“ I don’t like the way this makes me feel and I want it to stop.”

She said that.

And I feel that- for her, for me, for all of us.

How raw and wonderful is that statement

“ I don’t like the way this makes me feel.”

In my eyes, she’s the strongest, wisest, bravest soul I know.

And I told her that.

And I meant it.

And I’m proud.

I’m really proud.

Though she inherited my pool of pervasive self-doubt and my ocean of crippling empathy — she’s been raised to acknowledge her feelings, express her feelings and move through her feelings towards acceptance and solutions.

She’s not repressing them.

She’s not ignoring them.

And she’s not apologizing for them.

All things I can teach someone, raise in someone, and yet still struggle with myself – daily.

She is not only finding her place in this world, she’s defining it.

Something I’m only just now doing, and owning.

Owning my place in this world – and all its fucked up groupings.

I’m Back & On a Mission

Nothing to make you feel like an old lady than a colonoscopy.

Nothing to make you feel like a broken, good for nothing old lady than another colonoscopy the next day.

Because my system is such a MF’er it wouldn’t cooperate – again.

Putting aside any of the details, the moral of the story is old people testing on an often complicated, uncooperative old body equals days of misery and discomfort and deep, dark, life crisis soul searching depression.

The D word.

Depression.

So here I am.

14 days until the big day and I return to journaling my journey.

And I realize that shit is about to get real.

( pun intended)

For me, the only way to keep the D word at bay is to dig.

It’s time to dig in and dig deep.

It’s time to do what I set out to.

What I’ve needed to do.

Share.

Explore a little.

But mostly share and get this shit out and in the rear view mirror once and for all.

Good and bad.

Wise and foolish.

Funny and sad.

Dig my way out of five decades of self loathing.

Dig my way out of a half a century of insecurity.

Dig my way out of years of crushing fatigue from apathy and fear.

Dig my way out.

And dig my way toward the light.

Dig my way to my acceptance.

Dig my way to my appreciation.

Dig my way to my authentic self!!

Dig

To the mission: to live my life authentically.

To the vision: my authentic life will be peaceful and content and contribute to happier lives for all I love or encounter.

The the value: living my authentic life means being true to who I am, owning my faults and my gifts, channeling them towards good things and embracing the impact I have with both on my family, my friends, my colleagues and my community.

I Saw This

I saw this meme and it stopped me in my tracks

I know where it’s coming from, who it’s aimed toward

And I agree

For my daughter and all the other daughters of this world

This makes sense and is exactly what I want to protect her from

But you see, I

I never could see myself

Truly

For who I am

And this meme, this sentence, doesn’t mean that to me because

That someone who told me was me

And still is

Not all the time

Not even a lot of the time

Anymore

But the whisper is still there

In the wind

Slipping through the cracks in my armor

In the mirror

Peaking out behind shadows and shapes

In the memory

Like a dream left haunting and lingering

In the media and the culture wars and the workplace politics and the intricacies of relationships

It’s there

The doubt

The insecurity

The fear

Of less than

Being less than

Being more of

Being not yet

Being too much

So you see, when you open your eyes and really look at yourself

Sometimes the enemy is staring right back at you.

IF

If I had the words or energy I’d use both to catch up on three days misses, but for now I’ll just leave it to Rudyard Kipling and other wise fools online

Circle of Crisis

I’m midway through these 50 days

I’m midway through my life

Midlife

A crisis right?

At the moment – more like a swirling sledgehammer

Today in the span of a few hours I found out one friend suddenly lost someone very close to them, someone younger than me

And I found out another is pregnant

This is after the first of my baby’s fifth grade graduation celebrations

And watching FB posts of friends’ kids graduating Highschool and I knew all of those kids when they were still in the belly and held them when they were days old

And after going in at the crack of dawn for annual bloodwork with extra tests for arthritis and such

So yeh

Sledgehammer

Or see-saw

Or circle

No beginning, no end, just a ever turning, ever changing, ever flowing middle.

An ever ebbing mid-of-life

Maybe the whole crisis that people encounter around this age

Isn’t the realization that they are half way to death

Cause after all, we’re not

We are always one minute closer to our death and will never know the half way point because we never know when it will happen and the half way point will only ever be calculated after you die and the rest is just wasted time

And thus, the crisis is actually realizing that it’s just this ever moving circle of life, on and on, one life bleeding into the next and so on and such and that, knowing that, is what gives us a crisis, a angst, an unease.

And our brains aren’t fully able to comprehend this concept until they’ve been aged, grown, taught for a certain about of time – 4 or 5 or 6 decades.

Then click.

Your brain is turned on and ready and you got it.

You get it.

And that’s the crisis.

Prophet or Poet

Thirty years ago Green Day came out with “She”

Twenty years ago Green Day came out with “American Idiot”

Ten years ago Green Day came out with “Minority”

Bizarrely enough in the past week I’ve heard all three of those songs.

Sang them at the top of my lungs – with the kids ( well, for American Idiot they were there)

And those words, that sentiment, crafted, sung and mashed to 10,20 and 30 years ago still holds true – and then some – today!

Not a complete phenomenon.

Many, MANY songs have long shelf lives – songs we listen to from the 70’s or 80’s still have meaning – especially as we grow older and our experiences and scars reflect more of the experiences and scars of songwriters.

Actually, I chuckle when I hear an old Pearl Jam or Nirvana song that I’ve sung hundreds of times but for some reason, that day, through the filter of my older age I hear it differently, understand it better.

I was listening to Jane’s Addiction the other day and literally was like – ohhh, I get what he’s saying there. Like Perry had some secret decoder ring and his observation of that detail of living was soooo minute, soooo precise that I just didn’t “get it” til now.

That happens a lot.

And probably because I’m into words.

And songs.

And especially words in songs.

And I recognize as an artist those stories, those images shift and change with the times – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

But they do.

And I get it.

But some songs— American Idiot – are down right prophetic.

2004 social media was just rearing its ugly head and the devil incarnate was Jeb Bush.

Oh sorry, sad, stupid creatures we were to think that was a tough time, that was the world on fire.

But they knew.

They knew in 1994 that by 2024 women would still, STILL, be a talking point to be manipulated and a body to be controlled.

They knew that the minority and the majority are as intertwined as Yin and Yang – each struggling for relevance and power at each other’s expense.

And thus, the poets become the prophets and both, as history had time and time proved, will be ignored – much to our own detriment.

And thus, we still shall sing

In the car

With the windows wide open

For all the world to hear…

The aches & pains of …

Growing up

Growing old

Growing apart

Growing agitated

Growing awareness

Growing acceptance

Growing consensus

Growing consciousness

Growing confusion

Growing sadness

Growing solace

over all the aches & pains

Of growing.