relationships

Loves,
We all know those negative people that suck all the oxygen out of the room – turn the tables – take their breath away!
Have a positive Monday,
xoxJ

I’m writing this as a self reminder, although I’m sure you could use one too.
Let this salvage your week or at least your Saturday.

I cannot control the traffic or the way other people (idiots) drive.

I cannot control the cable guy, the electrician, the handyman, the trash picker-uppers, the tree trimmers, the guy who’s making my latte, or the air conditioning repair guy. I cannot control the time they will arrive (which is NEVER inside the promised window) how well they will perform their task, or what personality traits they posses, (too chatty, too pissy, too flirty, too…)

I cannot control anyone, or anything about the DMV. Period. End of story.

I cannot control the weather. I can have every app, and alert, but it will seldom cooperate when I hold an event outdoors; and I NEVER have an umbrella or sweater when I need one.

I cannot control my dogs or any animal for that matter. I can guide them and train them, and make suggestions, but they all have minds of their own and there will be slobber on my white walls, water and/or muddy footprints all over my wood floors, and fossilized vomit next to the bed. It’s inevitable despite my best intentions. This goes for children as well.

I cannot control my spouse, or my family. (See above).

I cannot control the government, the postal system, the medical system or the educational system. But I can vote.

I cannot control bad grammar. Their-there-they’re. Its-it’s. I could care less, It’s a mute point, ugh
Dear God, make it stop.

I cannot control the speed or dependability of my WiFi connection, although I still think if I yell obscenities loud enough, it will be shamed into complying.

I cannot control my hair. Where it grows, what color it wants to be, and it’s texture. It’s time to give up the good fight.
While I’m at it, I cannot control eye wrinkles, cellulite, lip lines or dark under eye circles, so I’m done letting Madison Avenue sell me the snake oil.

I cannot control how my garden grows. I can fertilize, weed and trim, but it has plans of its own to which I am not privy.

I cannot control aging. It has a superpower called gravity, and the combination are unbeatable. I surrender…you bitches.

I cannot control what others think of me. It is impossible.
I can carefully cultivate my image; but one false move, one bad outfit, snarky comment, or piece of spinach in my teeth and all that hard work is shot to hell.

I cannot control the manners of others. When a man lets a heavy door slam in my face, as I exit a building right behind him; instead of jumping on his back like a crazed spider monkey…I send him love.

I cannot control what’s happening on the planet. Too many moving parts. (Which is true for all of it – everything in life.)

What I’ve discovered is this: ALL of my suffering comes from thinking that I can control things. I (we) cannot.

But here’s the one thing I CAN control – my perception and attitude. That’s it.

I can control ONLY my own energy and what I bring to the day, to the table, to every situation I encounter – even to the mirror, and THAT can change it all.

As my mom used to say when we were fighting with each other, as kids, “You just pay attention to yourself – watch where YOU’RE going.

Enjoy your weekend!
Xox

I talk an awful lot about forgiveness on this blog – please forgive me. (wink)
I do that because I love you, and I want you to be free of the toxicity of hate, hurt, anger and grudge holding.

Read on. Liz wrote an amazing essay about the ultimate in forgiveness.
It’s a good one, it’s gonna make you cry.
-you’re welcome.

XoxJ

Take it away Liz-

ULTIMATE FORGIVENESS

Dear Ones –

This weekend’s Oprah’s The Life You Want Tour in Houston was incredible. THANK YOU to all who were there, for your energy, your passion, your open hearts.

As usual, I was in the front seat during the all the talks and workshops, leaning in hard to catch all the wisdom I could.

And as usual, it was Iyanla Vanzant who got to me — as in: She made me weep.

This is a photo of me clutching a scarp of paper upon which I wrote something she said — something that, if I can put it into practice, could truly change my life.

Yesterday, Iyanla was telling the story about how her husband of 40 years recently left her for another woman — for a friend of hers actually. She was talking about the anger, the indignation, the grief, the shame, the humiliation of this event. All completely understandable, of course, for such a large-scale betrayal.

Then she spoke in detail about all the steps she took to try to work her way out of her anger and back into grace — because she knew that if she held onto her rage forever it would only burn a hole of bitterness through her soul.

In the end — after all the crying and fighting and suffering, and after working hard to arrive at some model of forgiveness for both her ex-husband and the other woman — she had a revelation of love. She decided to love them. She decided to actually BE IN LOVE WITH THEM. Not just to forgive them, but to LOVE THEM — for their humanity, for their weakness, for their own strange grace, for their intimate role in her destiny.

She said that at first she thought she was going crazy, with this idea of loving them. (“Are you out of your mind, Iyanla? You’re in love with the woman who took your husband?”) But she knew in her heart that love was the only way out of this emotional hell for herself. Huge, holy, magnificent love, And then she said this, about her husband and the other woman, which I wrote down (through tear-filled eyes) on this scrap of paper:

“My love of you — it’s got nothing to do with you. I’m trying to save myself. So I love them. I get to choose my relationship with them. Doesn’t mean I will invite them for Thanksgiving. But I can love them from my altar and from my prayer table IF IT MEANS MY FREEDOM.”

I wept when I heard this.

Your forgiveness of people who have harmed you has nothing to do with THEM.

Your forgiveness is about YOU trying to achieve liberty from the prison of your own suffering, your own anger, you own grief, your own darkness, your own obsessive thoughts, your own indignation.

Love is the only way out of that prison. Radical, outrageous, nearly impossible, superhuman LOVE.

Please understand that — even as I write these words — I do not entirely understand how to get there.

But I really want to get there.

Because I want and need this kind of love and forgiveness in my life so desperately, I can’t even tell you.

And I believe in it, even if I don’t always know how to do it.

I’m gong to cling to this scrap of paper for a long, long time.

(Actually, I’m going to more than cling to a scrap of paper. I should tell you that I just signed up already for an e-course that Iyanla Vanzant is teaching on forgiveness. Because I really need that shit — and there’s something about the way this woman speaks and teaches that goes right through the spine of me and really works for me. I don’t even know what an e-course is, actually, but I signed up for it, anyhow. Because all I know is that her e-course is called HOW TO FORGIVE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING, and that’s exactly what I need to learn how to do in this lifetime. What we all need, maybe. Here’s a link to the course, if anyone wants to do it with me: http://bit.ly/1wdp8mf)

I just want to be free.

If anyone out there has had this experience — working through your anger and into forgiveness…and then even further into LOVE — please share it here. I want to learn all I can about it.

ONWARD EVER…INTO GREATER AND GREATER LOVE,
LG

“When are you going to start a family?”
The ink wasn’t even dry on the marriage license, I still had rice in my hair, for cryin’ out loud. Really?

How the hell did I know? I was barely twenty, my husband twenty-three. WE were the babies in the room.

It’s the rare individual who is introspective enough to ask him or herself at a young age: What kind of life do I see for myself? Will I have children?

Some people just KNOW. The rest of us, we just go with the proverbial flow.
We date, fall in love, have the wedding, the picket fence and….screech! (sound of a needle being dragged across a record) hey, not so fast.

Your early twenties are times of impetuous, risk taking behavior – not the picket fence and most definitely not parenthood – at least not for me.
I could back it up with SCIENCE:
There have been recent studies and in fact, research from the National Institutes of Health has shown, the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with inhibition of risky behavior, and decision-making, doesn’t get fully developed until age 25.
Being a late bloomer, I think my prefrontal cortex finally matured at around thirty-five, sadly, it still wasn’t screaming “make a baby!”

What was wrong with me? All my friends were doing it. Even my little sister.
Hello?! Where was my maternal gene?
At the time it felt like it had been replaced by the much more irresponsible (red hair dye, wine drinking, spend every dime on shoes, travel around Europe) gene.

It wasn’t a calling for me. I know a calling. I move heaven and earth when something calls me. Motherhood? Meh, not so much. It’s not that I don’t love kids, I do. Just never enough to make my own.

There was also the fact that the stars just never aligned.
It didn’t occur to me to start a family when I was married, it always felt like a decision for another day; and when it finally did cross my mind I was epically, tragically, single. Not a man in sight, let alone “father material.” By the time I married my second husband, as fate would have it, my eggs were all dried up.

Sooooo, I gave single motherhood some serious thought, only to be discouraged by a very wise, older woman friend, a “crone” who asked me, “the maiden”, why I wanted to have a child?
I stammered on for a good five minutes, never coming up with anything better than
“Everyone’s doing it.”

“It’s the MOST important job, being a mama. Come talk to me when you have a better reason.” This maiden could never come up with one.

“To make the decision to have a child – is momentous.
It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body”
~Elizabeth Stone

By my mid thirties, when I answered “no” to the kid inquiry, a sad, concerned look would wash over women’s faces; until I assured them that I was biologically able – it was a conscious choice of mine not to.

UNLEASH THE KRAKEN! 

Many women got angry, really angry; especially at baby showers. You know the ones where you bring your babies? THOSE were the worst.
There was even some name calling.

Selfish.
I’ve been called that many times in my life.
It’s code for: why aren’t you doing what I’m doing?
It’s been hurled my way in anger, hitting me like a dagger in the back.
It’s happened so many times, I have a callouses there – these days the dagger just bounces off.

Is it selfish not to have children? Probably. Can selfish be a good thing? Yes, yes it can.

Call it what you want. I just knew I wasn’t wired for that level of self-sacrifice, and my unborn children are better off because of that.

Up until then, my life had seemed like a series of accidents, not premeditated in any way.
But soon I recognized that I had made a choice, that I had decided “my supreme and risky fate” and that I didn’t need to hide in a cave; then, and only then, did the name calling stop.
Isn’t that always the way?

Now I’m over fifty, and the question is: How many grandchildren?

What I know for sure is this: I’m so incredibly grateful to be born at a time in history when we’re not put in stockades in the town square, with villagers throwing eggs at our childless faces.
We decided it wasn’t for us…and that’s okay.
Luckily, times have changed, women are so much more accepting and supportive of different life choices. These days I feel anything but ostracized, some woman actually applaud my decision.

Childless women.
As Liz Gilbert and O talked about on Sunday, we get to be the spectacular aunties.
Mamas need the aunties.
We play a very important supporting role, we get to teach selfishness – which is thankfully something most mamas know NOTHING about.

Tell me about you. I’d love to hear YOUR story. When did you decide not to have children?

much love,
xox

When people say “I’m looking for my soulmate” I cringe and light a candle.

Love your friend, not your soulmate,
Xox
.

I love these as a litmus test.
We should be able to stand behind one of those one-way mirrors that they have in police stations and episodes of Law and Order, and put that “special someone who we’re thinking of committing to, through these circumstances.

They don’t have to pass all three – how about two out of three? I’m not a total ass.

I’ve seen men walk with a CLOSED umbrella over their heads. Like its emasculating to try to stay dry. “Real men get wet.” Sorry guys, that’s a fail.
Kinda like not turning on the windshield wipers until you can barely see – so as not to scratch the glass. (One guy’s excuse, as we narrowly missed hitting a pedestrian) Fail.

I once traveled overseas with a guy who had purchased brand new expensive Hartmann luggage.
The whole matching set. They were so new and beautiful they screamed STEAL ME.
Alas, the garment bag didn’t show up for 24 hours.
He didn’t need ANYTHING in that bag that day; it was 2am when we landed. He had his toiletries and two other suitcases of stuff, yet he pitched a fit that came close to starting an International incident, in a room that had one naked little lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and a clerk who I’m positive spoke not one word of English. He just kept nodding, handing us coffee, and paperwork to fill out. Mountains and mountains of paperwork.

Well played airport luggage guy. I didn’t sleep for two days from all the strong coffee, but I found out who I was dealing with the minute I landed on foreign soil.
Fail.

Now, I can snark away at the previous failures because it is I who fail the tangled Christmas light test. EVERY FRICKIN’ YEAR.

I will swear under oath, on my mother’s life, that I put them away neatly wrapped into a tight circle with the ends plugged into each other, yet, when I take them down from the attic every year, they look as if they have been stolen by honey badgers to make a nest, or used to light the Eiffel Tower or to start a yarn ball; and then thrown back in the box as the biggest, tangled mess that ever existed.
Lights are missing; some are broken.
How is that even possible? They obviously live a life from January to December; that I know nothing about.

AND they NEVER light the second year. What’s up with that?

The box guarantees: will light up even if lights are missing.
It’s a mortal sin to lie at Christmas – Christmas Light Company. Don’t BS a Catholic.

Impossibly tangled with only half the strand lit up. I can feel my blood pressure spike.

Now it’s a thing. They do it to mock me.

But I’ve created my own solution:
I have two imaginary twin sons that help me decorate for Christmas, since my husband is related to the Grinch and stays as far way as possible on tree trimming day.
Timmy and Tommy.
They are gay and they are fabulous. They wear Christmas sweater vests and make Martha Stewart look like a hack.
We make cider and put on the carols and then I make them take the lights out of the box. I see them trying to hide the tangled mess from me, behind their backs. I’ve kicked my Christmas tree until it begged for mercy – out of frustration.
Two hours to untangle the fucking lights and then they don’t light? Do you blame me?

So the past few years I’ve just gotten drunk on egg nog or spiked cider, sung my Karen Carpenter carols and let my imaginary boys do it all for me.

So now you know. I have a wicked temper, a vivid imagination and I need to get a life.

Hey, I said two out of three, remember?
Maybe my husband isn’t the Grinch. Maybe he’s just smart.

What are your two out of three?

xox

I really love Kate Northrup. She is a fresh, new voice in the “Spiritual Self Improvement” genre.
I’ve been a devotee of her mom, Dr. Christiane Northrup for years. Her books about navigating menopause have talked me down off the ledge many, many times. More times than I’d like to admit.
I discovered my beloved naturopath, Dr Holly Lucille, through her website, back in the day.

I found this article of Kate’s particularly insightful and we’ve been discussing it in the Wednesday Woman’s Group for two weeks, and again today in my writing Mastermind session.

So here’s the question: What’s the payoff for staying stuck?

When days, months, years or even decades go by, and you haven’t accomplished what you say is your heart’s desire…could you have an even deeper, more subconscious desire that overrides all that?

For instance, you may be able to trace the fact that you never get the time or opportunity to travel, which you say you’re dying to do, back to an even deeper desire for routine and normalcy, the VERY THINGS travel shoots to hell. So those deeper, ingrained desires will cancel out the travel – every time. Get it?

Here, take a minute to read Kate’s article, and start to become aware and make the changes you need to get unstuck.

Happy Friday!

xox

http://www.katenorthrup.com/what-are-you-getting-out-of-staying-right-where-you-are/

http://drhollylucille.com

http://www.drnorthrup.com

“There’s one more thing.”
I was tugging gingerly at a piece of loose thread on my sweater, knowing that at any second the whole thing could unravel and I’d be literally as naked as I was feeling in that moment.

He turned to face me, looking at me intently, actively listening for what was coming next.

We were at that stage of dating where you start to lay the groundwork for the impending relationship. In your forties, this terrain can be peppered with land mines. I was hoping this mine would not blow my face off.

“I have a guy… he’s really an ex boyfriend” I saw something flash across his face, fear? confusion? I continued.
“He’s very special to me, and not like your thinking – well, anyway…we still talk and it would seem weird not to; he’s important in my life. We’re just friends now and…”

“You want me to meet him?”
It was like a brick to the forehead, I felt a little dizzy – I wasn’t expecting that response.
“Um, yeah, sure, that could be nice, sure…you can meet him.” The sweater was unraveling.

That actually sounded like it would be up there with the most awkward night of my life, but I didn’t want to sound deceptive or crazy: ‘Oh hey, there’s this guy who’s very important to me, but I want you to immediately forget I’ve mentioned him and NO, the two of  you will NEVER be in the same room together with me, because – well, just because. (Because I would spontaneously combust from the yuck of it all.)

“I also have a woman from my past that I still see occasionally – as a friend” he said, “like you and your friend.” Did I hear sarcasm?

Nope, he went on to explain that he truly did have a “special someone” from his past.
“I think it would be great if you two met, I think you’d like her.” I sensed some relief on his part, and as he got up to refill our wine glasses; I did, I saw relief wash over his face.

Our respective cats were now suddenly out of their bags.

Well, weren’t we something?
In a land somewhere beyond enlightened; trotting out our old flames like that, a couple of weeks into a new relationship.

The thing is, by the time you reach your late thirties, early forties, hopefully, you have a few ex’s that you can still stand the sight of. Where things have become…civil. Not horrible ex spouses who violate restraining orders – people you can actually stomach.
BECAUSE…
Sometimes break ups go well.
They are loving and mutual and…bullshit – sometimes after a couple of years, you can talk to the person without going to your dark place. Without circling the drain.
They’ve managed to make the huge leap from significant other, to sex buddy, to pal.

You did used to be in love, after all.

He explained her to me, this “special” woman who was now out in the open, virtually standing in my living room.
They’d known each other for years. It had been significant. They had been lovers, lived together, broken up, tried again, failed, not spoken, gone on to other relationships, and then recently reconnected – as friends.
“She’s a part of me; like family. You’ll love her.” And I did.
She is like family, and I learned volumes about him by meeting her.
She is smart and funny and I see why he still holds her in such high regard. I do too.
I may even have a bit of a girl crush – she’s THAT good.

My “special” guy was substantially younger than me. I had shoes that were older.

He was new to the horrors of dating in LA and had never been hurt in a relationship, so he had the MOST open heart of any human being I’d ever met. It used to scare the shit out of me. But I adapted.
He taught me how to love. Really.

Not open and free like him; my heart was a dried up raisin from dating more years than he’d been alive; but better than I had up until that point.
I now had a reconstituted raisin/heart with which to love my new man, and I gave the young one ALL the credit. I suppose that’s why I wanted to tell my new love about him; the fact that we would have never stood a chance, had he not come first.

When they met, they embraced. Then all three of us did. We had a lot in common.
I loved both of them, and they loved me. I burst into sentimental tears; not into flames as I had feared.

Our relationship went on to get serious. We’ve now been married thirteen years, and although we’ve spent time together with our “special” people, as life would have it, everyone moves on, and we see them less and less.

They were never a threat, as some of our friends had feared; they’d had their time and it had passed, but we gave them the credit they deserved.

In the court of popular opinion it is either incredibly brave or ridiculously stupid of us to include these people inside our new relationships. What do you think?

When my inner Miranda comes out, asking the hard lawyer questions, being all judgy and playing the perpetual devil’s advocate – I want to kick her ass.

Seems she’s my inner cynical adult. She doesn’t believe in love or magic or happy endings.
I didn’t cast her in that role, yet, there she is – big shoulder padded business suits, short, choppy red hair and all. She snuck in there around the millennia…and stayed.
“Well, what does that mean? You’ve GOT to be kidding me. What are you going to do about that? When are you going to take care of that?” she asks, with no hint of inner sweetness, just lawyerly cross examination, tinged with disdain.

My inner Judge and confidence executioner is Miranda Hobbes from Sex And The City.

While single and in my late thirties, early forties, I never missed Sex And The City.
I could totally relate to the friendship between the four girls, and the similarities between their life and mine.
New York, LA, it didn’t matter. Dating was dating; and several episodes felt so familiar, I had a sneaking suspicion that my apartment was bugged, my phone conversations were taped, and there was a mole in my circle.

The parallels were uncanny.

For about five years I spent almost every weekend either at a wedding, IN a wedding or at a bridal or baby shower, just like the girls.

I was tragically single – no kids. Shoes, dating, shopping and eating at the latest, greatest restaurants were my hobbies. I spent every dime I made until my accountants had a literal intervention with me, and made me buy a house. Like Carrie.

I may have had my sexually promiscuous moments (okay, years) but it was all to avoid true intimacy, like Samantha.

I didn’t feel so bad when Miranda fell hard for Steve and then ended it because – well – he was just a big hearted, underachieving, bartender, and not so ironically at the time I had just endured a break up with a handsome, unemployed actor – with a heart of gold.

And I too had divorced a perfectly lovely man with mother issues, just like Charlotte.

I would say, at that time, I was a composite of all the girls.

For two years I even had a Mr. Big.
He lived in New York. Tall, dark, handsome and mysterious, with the big job, the driver and the arrogant attitude. He found me interesting and a challenge; I thought he was always pulling a fast one. He and his life didn’t seem for real.

Just like Carrie’s Big, he called me kiddo or kid, which I hated, because I wasn’t a kid, it felt condescending as hell, and I was convinced he’d just forgotten my name.
So many cites, so many women.

Sometimes we were pals, sometimes we were lovers.
It was all very confusing. We’d bicker incessantly and one of us would end it about once a month. Then, after about two weeks, a first class plane ticket, an Hermes scarf or something from Tiffany’s would arrive via FedEx, or he’d call me from the airplane (which was a huge deal back then) or wish me good night with Italian church bells ringing in the background.
These romantic gestures were enough to open the lines of communication, and the next thing I knew, he’d schedule me into his life for a weekend, or I’d fly to New York for great make-up sex.
We finally stopped trying to make it something it wasn’t – a relationship; and within six months, it all just faded away.
A friend of mine who lives in New York reports that he’s still single and quite the player.

So years later, Mr. Big on SATC would make me squirm – too similar – hey, maybe my Big’s phone was bugged.

But I digress. Back to Miranda.
I caught a SATC marathon the other day, as a guilty pleasure, while I was under the weather, and Miranda was really annoying me. I always found her to be a perfectionist, a hard ass and difficult to please and… Shit – Miranda, my least favorite character, I now realize, SHE is the shitty voice inside my head.
Doesn’t that just figure? She’s a perfect fit for the embodiment of the critical me.
Makes sense since that was the role she played so well in the series.

I’m going to contact Critical Casting and see if I can change things, switch it up a bit. Miranda is someone from a life so long ago; I think I can give my inner bitch a more current persona; like lets say…Chelsea Handler?

Who personifies your inner critic? Whose the voice of your inner bitch? Is it time for an update? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

xox

This is a reprise of one of the more popular posts from earlier this year.
Have a wickedly great Saturday!
xoxJ

I have a slogan for when things get messed up: Wait for the turnaround.
~Debbie Harry~lead singer of the punk rock band Blondie
(If you don’t know that – shame on you)

I’ve always been a “fix it” kinda gal.

If you present me with a problem or a mess, I’m gonna brainstorm it until I find a solution.

I’m going to fight it and wrestle it to the ground, I rarely take NO for an answer, and everything is figuraoutable.

I’d like to think I’m a lot like Debbie Harry…in more ways than one.
Truth is, I have waited for the turnaround…after I have exhausted every other option known to man – and then some.

Then I wised up.

I bet that wasn’t her slogan at 25 or even 35.
That’s the kind of wisdom you gain with maturity; the end result of many, many, many, mess ups.

Fifty – I’m going to guess that she came to that epiphany after fifty.
It’s around that age that you realize that there can even BE a turnaround.
That there will ALWAYS be a turnaround.

After fifty THIS you know for sure: You have to pick yourself up off the bathroom floor to be ready for the turnaround.

You have to make it until the sun comes up, because in the deep, suffocating blackness of 3am, you can’t even imagine a turnaround.

That you have to get sober to start the turnaround.

That tears make your eyes that much more capable of seeing the turnaround.

That sometimes you have to be alone, inside the silence, to listen for the turnaround.

That your wounded heart, with its bandages and skid marks, has to open enough to let the love in.
That love – is hidden in the turnaround.

Note to self:Look away.
The turnaround doesn’t reside anywhere near the mess, so if you stay digging around in that pile of shit, it will allude you.

You can’t stalk the turnaround, you can’t cajole it. You can’t bargain with it, or coerce it into place. AND……you certainly can’t rush it.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

When things are messed up. When they are epically trashed. There WILL be a turnaround. History has proven it.
It comes in its own time. It can take years or days or even just hours. Look at every disaster, natural and man made. Things appear bleak, all hope is lost, but eventually the dust settles and in rides…….the turnaround. Remember 9/11?
We were in shock, then despair, then pissed off, then….wait for it…we emerged stronger and more united than ever.
Humongous, miraculous, turnaround.

You gotta love Debbie Harry. Gorgeous, Sexy, smart, 70’s-80’s rock star icon and a guru after 50. Just like me. 😉
I bet she never thought she’d be quoted in a spiritual blog. There’s a first time for everything…even for you; Debbie Harry.

Tell me about a big turnaround in your life. I’d love to hear about it.

Xox