Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Falling in love and being loved is just so oh-la-la isn't it?

May your heart expand today with the joy of being with your Valentine or having great memories of a special Valentine who may no longer be with you.

I'm sending this song out today to Valentines around the globe:

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I was getting ready for work yesterday morning when I turned on the radio which was tuned to NPR.  The station was airing an interview it did with the incredibly talented and award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman when he was appearing on Broadway in 2012 as Willy Loman in a revival of the classic play, "Death of A Salesman."

 

It was strange to hear Hoffman's voice on the radio knowing that friends had found him Sunday in his New York apartment sadly and tragically dead of an apparent drug overdose at the young age of 46.

 

I stopped and listened as Hoffman talked about the power of the play's story and how it audibly affects each audience that sees "Death Of A Salesman," a play focusing on the waning days of an aging and failing salesman.  Hoffman sounded so calm and thoughtful in the interview, so in control. (NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/12/150305122/philip-seymour-hoffman-broadways-new-salesman)  



Philip Seymour Hoffman
Photo By Dominique Charriau/Wire Image

And yet he had private inner struggles vying for attention, strong addictions that he was constantly fighting and trying to face square on.  Life for Philip Seymour Hoffman was intense and beautiful and all of it had to be felt and distilled and carefully brought to each role he powerfully acted.

 

Nor surprisingly, he also recognized the emotional hard work of grieving and in this interview with Yahoo Movies, Hoffman talks about what grieving is and what it is not:

http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-news/philip-seymour-hoffman-told-us-grieving-225637926.html

My thoughts and prayers are with his family and may his soul forever rest in peace.

Happy New 2014!

As I awake to the beginnings of a new day and a new year,

I feel the air is crackling with the sense of possibilities.

 

Let us embrace the unknown and untried.

 

Let us go forward, secure in the knowledge that we are resilient.

 

We can gain strength from pain and we will help others in their journey.

 

For we are truly better together!

 

 

Your Green Zone

When I find myself getting close to sensory overload, I seek out quiet places to sit, to refresh and chill out.

 

After Monday's tragic shooting and killing of 13 people in the Washington Navy Yard, I truly needed a break from being bombarded with images and information.  Sitting in nature helps bring my focus back to what is important to me about the big picture of life.

 

As I notice and enjoy what is around me, I remind myself that I can't change the fact that highly stressful events happen, but I can change how I interpret and respond to these events.  You can develop being resilient.  Resilience involves maintaining flexibility and balance in your life as you deal with stressful circumstances and sometimes even traumatic events.

 

There is a beautiful park a few blocks from my office and I often find myself there in the middle of the day enjoying the beautiful flowers or listening to the cleansing sound of the small water fountain.  I don't stay there for very long but ten or fifteen minutes is long enough for me to reduce whatever stresses I may be feeling.

 

And when I go home, I don't sit in nature, but I do check in on my new green space: my lettuce garden.

My Lettuce Garden

It's not a very big container but I am proud of my little lettuce garden that I keep on my screened in porch.  My son gave me some packets of seeds for various kinds of lettuce this summer and it has been comforting and hopeful to nurture and grow my small plants.



Lettuce In A Box

Find your green zone; a place where you can calm down and pause to think about life's small, fleeting pleasures.  You'll be surprised what a little patch of green can do for your soul!

Renewing Friendships

Academy of the Holy Cross
Yearbook 1972

Making friends for the world to see

Let the people know you got what you need

           ~ Elton John

Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to catch up and renew friendships with two women who went to high school with me.

Both women are incredibly talented and very smart: one is an internationally respected sculptor and the other is a retired teacher/photographer. They both look great and we easily fell back into conversation about our lives since high school graduation which was (unbelievably!) many decades ago.

 

We lost track of each other as our lives went in different directions after high school but to connect again now as adults and tell each other our stories is an interesting and healing process.   I think it's pretty normal to temporarily lose contact with people you went to high school with because your focus on starting a career and a family changes from not having either in high school to wanting both when you graduate from college. 

I think it's fair to say that in your twenties and thirties you are focusing on what is emotionally important to you.  It's not that you forget about the friends you made in high school, because I did think about them and wondered what had happened to them; I think it's more that life calls you to try different things and see different places in the world and you slowly lose track of what is happening to those people you used to see almost every day for four years.

If Facebook or Twitter had been around when we were in high school or college, I think it would have been a no brainer for us to maintain contact.

In my teenage enthusiasm for having a good time, I don't think I paid full attention to what was really going on with people I went to school with.  Looking back now, I see many serious issues that were happening to all of us but we never addressed them unless it reached a crisis point such as your parents getting a divorce.  Today, I understand it a lot better and truly appreciate the strength, wisdom and patience it takes to change and grow after life throws you some curveballs you weren't expecting.

But I digress.  Saturday with my high school friends was all about fun and sharing.  It was about appreciating each other's talents and life experiences and supporting each other as we are right now at this stage of our lives.

In the car on the way to Annapolis, I listened to my friend talk about her love of photography and how she recently started a blog, which of course I found exciting.  I have seen her pictures, and even if I didn't know her, I know I would be drawn to them.  The composition of her photography is thoughtful and when gazing at her pictures your eyes don't want to leave what they are seeing.  She photographs all kinds of beach landscapes, general scenic pictures and pictures of people in spontaneous situations.

Our reunion took place at the Maryland House, in Annapolis, where our other friend's incredible sculptures were on exhibit.  Her art is truly beautiful and inspiring and I learned a lot about how her marble pieces, both large and small, came to be.  It is truly a gift to be with the artist and their art at the same time.  I took some pictures and I will be sharing them in a future post because I want to tell you more about the organic nature of her sculptures.

Later when we went to a restaurant for dinner with others, I sat and listened to my friends and thought about each of us and our winding life journeys and how we ended up coming together.  We each handled challenges yet were resilient and persevered on and found our passions.

Life works in funny ways and when I have days like this, I wouldn't change one bit of it.

Please check out my friends' art in these links below.  I think you're going to love it as much as I do!

http://weathereyefocus.com/ (photography)

http://cmsculpture.com/ (sculpture)
 

Reflections of Nora Ephron's Son

 

Nora Ephron

Crying is unsettling.  Especially if you are watching one of your parents do it.

 

My son hates it when I cry and has said that when I would cry all the time immediately after his father/my husband's death, he would feel this mix of emotions that he didn't want to feel and so he would walk away.  I understand it and think his reaction was perfectly normal.  He was thirteen years old and dealing with something that adults find hard to handle.  He was just trying to survive.

 

Now, at twenty two years old, my son explains his reaction this way: "When children see their parents cry, it's like a wall being broken.  It messes everything up.  I wanted you to be my Mom but when I saw you cry, it's like you weren't my Mom anymore.  You were a person and I didn't want that. I wanted my Mom."

 

It makes sense to me and I love him all the more for his insight; as painful as it was, and sometimes still is, for both of us.

 

That is why Jacob Bernstein's long and loving story about his mother, Nora Ephron, is so powerful and compassionate.

 

It's a universal story of how children feel about their parents as children, and as adults, and especially sons and their feelings about their mothers.

 

But having an accomplished, high-profile, multi-talented mother such as Nora Ephron is a unique story. And Jacob Bernstein writes it beautifully.  I knew it was a long story so I only intended to read the first page and then come back to it later, but then I couldn't stop reading it until I reached the end.

His mother is proud.  He took good notes.

Please click on this link to read Jacob Bernstein's story as it appeared in the New York Times magazine this past weekend:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/magazine/nora-ephrons-final-act.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1362652331-n02tv3ThoWXX1qcUk6JoRw