Delaying The Inevitable

I'm scared of things.  Lots of things.  And there are things that I really don't want to do.

 

But I usually force myself to do them.  Because eventually I know I will probably have to do them all by myself.

 

I could ask other people to do things for me but I always feel silly doing that because I know I can do it for myself.  Besides, by the time I ask someone else to do something for me and I explain what it is that I need done, I could have done it for myself.

 

I try to live my life by making choices that I feel good about but still there are situations I find myself in that I really don't like.  At all.

 

I don't like certain things that happen when I am at home and I don't like certain situations at work.  However, I don't have control over the majority of things I don't like or am scared of so I end up talking to myself and trying to work my way through these potential walls that could possibly make my life very narrow if I let them.

 

Everyone has something they're scared about; it's just that I don't want my "scary things" to stop me from enjoying spontaneous times with friends and family.  I listen to my "scarys" but I try never to act on them.  Last week I was invited to join some friends for dinner in a place I was not familiar with at all and I almost didn't go.

All I could imagine was that I was going to get lost and not know how to get out of where I was or I would make a wrong turn anf find myself driving on 95 heading south towards Richmond.  I really hate getting lost when I am by myself.  I talked to myself about the whole situation and how ridiculous it was to feel that way and then Google mapped my directions and then talked to myself again.

 

And then I went to dinner and had a great time!

 

Life is full of choices.  It's up to you which ones you decide to make.

 

You've got the power!!

 

Embrace Your Journey

"Embrace Your Journey."

You may have wondered why that phrase is listed at the top of my blog underneath the title, "Cry, Laugh, Heal. " 

"Embrace Your Journey" is something called a tagline, a phrase to give you -- my fantastic, wonderful and supportive readers -- a heads up about the things that I'm going to write about.  Things that have helped me to slowly but surely work my way through the loss of my husband, learn to be both mother and father to a young son and develop resilience.  "Embrace Your Journey" helps me to set a tone of strength and acceptance and even humor in the posts that I write for you and it lets you know this is my approach to living life -- no matter what hits the fan.

Embrace Your Journey No Matter Where It Leads

I came to call this phrase my own because I truly believe that I get out of life what I put into it.  Things may happen to me that I cannot control but I can choose how to react to it.  I can stay down for the count or I can choose to get up and try again.  I can choose whether to be positive or negative.  I can choose whether or not to hold on to something that hurt me, something that made me feel bad or something that didn't work out right.  Me.  All by myself in the driver's seat. 

Sounds simple right?  No way.  It is anything but simple.  It took me years of living and making mistakes and talking and support groups and feeling bad and more talking and gaining experience from all of that up and down and turned around rigamarole to get to this somewhat healthy point of view. 

It all hit the fan for me in 2003 when my husband died.  I had no idea what life had in store for me and our young son but I was sure that I was going to do my best to make a good life for us.  At the time, it looked like a dead end.  Truly I felt as if I were free falling off a cliff and who knew what was going to happen next?  But then daily small decisions and small steps built upon themselves and my confidence began to come back.  I actually began to believe that I would heal.  There were a lot of stops and starts, a lot of two steps forward and five backwards.  But eventually it all began to work together and I began to see that day by day life was going to stabilize and get better.

It will never be the life I had before but it is a different life and I am blessed to have what I have.

It is not easy, I will be honest with you about that.  There were times when I completely fell apart and also times when I forced myself to do things I really, really didn't want to do but knew were good for me.

For some reason, the pain made me grow.  The pain made me a better person.  Now isn't that weird?  I would never wish pain on anyone but sometimes you have to feel it to work through it, and when you find yourself on the other side of it, you feel emotionally stronger and confident.  You feel as though you can deal with anything that life might toss your way because you have already lost everything and come back from that deep pain.

The pain made me reshuffle my priorities and now I look at life differently.  I appreciate it more and I also understand how quickly it can change.

Your present journey may not be everything you want it to be, but don't be afraid to work on your journey and embrace it for what it is.  Embrace it for its beauty.  Embrace it for the pain.  Embrace it for the laughs.  Embrace it because it's yours.

Believing is half the battle.  I know you can do it.
 

Angelina's Health Decision

Angelina Jolie made a powerful decision.

It's not a decision that every woman has the opportunity to make, but I stand and applaud her courage and wish her a future of wellness.

 

Faced with medical information from her doctors that she had an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of developing ovarian cancer because she carried the BRCA1 gene, she decided to take control of her health and be proactive.  She decided at the young age of 37 to have a double mastectomy which means she had both of her currently healthy breasts surgically removed.

 

Jolie didn't want to wait around for the cancer to come and claim her.

 

Jolie, the winner of an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild and three Golden Globe awards, wrote an op-ed piece which appeared in yesterday's New York Times about her medical decision and I think every woman who read it paused afterwards and thanked God for their good health and blessings and maybe at the same time they also thought about someone they had already lost to breast or ovarian cancer or is in treatment.

Whether a mother or a daughter, grandparent, sibling, or friend, chances are very good that almost every New York Times and Cry, Laugh, Heal reader knows someone affected by fbomb cancer.

Actress Angelina Jolie and her partner, Actor Brad Pitt, with their six children

I imagine that every woman, when first diagnosed with breast cancer has two burning questions, "What am I going to do?" and "Will I lose my breast?"  As the mother of six children and the daughter of a woman who died from cancer at age 56, Jolie said she had all the information she needed to face her scary health dilemma, stare down her future and go forward.

Her New York Times op-ed is amazing and for me, her most inspirational words came in the last two sentences:

"Life comes with many challenges.  The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of."

 

Cancer can many times take us to the land of grief and, believe me, it is not a place anyone wants to visit.  But once we find ourselves thrown there, we can and must find a way to get through the tears and the pain and work to find a new way of living our lives.

 

It is about trust, and love, and being human.  And it is most of all about hope.

 

Please don't ever give up.

 

You've got the power.

Life Is Not a Cereal

Have you heard of Kid President?

While I was on YouTube the other day I discovered this young ball of fire who is very funny and very cute.

So today's post is about laughing because laughter is a tremendous resource for dealing with stress and forgetting how bad your day was.  Laughter is infectious and if you are laughing and smiling then your friends will want to know what's going on to make you all giggly and then pretty soon they'll be laughing too!

More importantly, laughter may go a long way to reducing and healing the pain you may feel from a loss and a good laugh can help you feel like you truly can go on and face your next set of decisions.

As Kid President would say: Life is not a cereal and it certainly is not a dress rehearsal!

Believe and don't give up!

Let Your Light Shine

Today is twenty four hours of new time.  Time you didn't have yesterday and time you won't have tomorrow.

Today is a day for you to shine.  In the words of South African President Nelson Mandela (please read below), "We are powerful beyond measure."

 

Today is a day to discover something new about yourself.  A day to show what you are about.

It's your day. . . Find your power!

 

 

 

Find Your Power

 

 

Our Deepest Fear

From Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural speech

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who I am to be brilliant,

gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you NOT to be?

You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the World.

There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that

other people won't feel unsure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God

that is within us.

It is not just in some of us;

it is in everyone.

As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously 

give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

our presence automatically liberates others.

Michele Woodward -- Managing Change

Michele Woodward

I'm always looking for people who have positive insight about life and its surprises.  An office friend told me about Michele Woodward and how she is a fantastic life coach.  I read her blog (www.michelewoodward.com) and have found that she almost always presents a fresh perspective on how to get out there and do whatever it is I need or want to do. 

Michele doesn't just talk the talk.  She has also walked the walk.  She is a divorced mother of two teenaged children, so her down-to-earth advice is not clean and dry theory; it's based in real life, rolling up your sleeves and being in the trenches experience.

I loved the following inspirational post from Michele's blog and I hope you do too!:

From Here To There
By Michele Woodward
March 11, 2012

I am rather smitten with the idea of transformation.

Utterly fascinates me.

It fascinates me how common things like today's newspaper gets recycled into tomorrow's paper towels.  Like how left over table scraps can become food for tomorrow's flowers.

Magical things fascinate me, too, like how simple trial and error leads to a new invention that changes the world.  Like the light bulb.  Or the internet.

To some of these things we say, "Yes, but..."

Yes, but nature's way of doing things - has nothing to do with me.

Yes, but that's somebody like Thomas Edison.  That's somebody like Steve Jobs.  Not somebody like me.

Rarely, it seems, do we say, "Yes, but...I can do that, too."

But it's more than possible.

You absolutely have the power to transform things.

You.

An you can do it all by yourself, when you think about it.

You can transform the challenge of sickness into the relief of healing, just by talking about it in a different way.

As in, "I am on my way toward remission."

You can transform the stress of working with a difficult person into calm productivity, just by managing your own energy and being an advocate for yourself.

As in, "I am not jumping into that drama with him.  No, I am not."

You can transform your business from struggling to succeeding, just by focusing on your strengths and what really matters.

As in, "Despite the advice of marketing gurus, I know I am an introvert and not at my best in large networking events.  I'm going to meet people my own way."

It's daunting and a little confusing to think that you have any power to change anything.  Because so many of us have lived our lives believing we're at the mercy of others.  That power belongs to someone else.  That we're small, insignificant, unable.

But we're not.

I know you're not.

The power to transform -- to shift one thing into another -- is your greatest superpower.

And, if you open your eyes and see, you will find that you use this great skill of yours every day, in ways large and small.

Every time you open a door, turn a corner, start a new document, begin a conversation, you have the ability to transform one thing into something else.

And guess what?  The more you use this superpower, the stronger it will get.

The stronger you will get.

So begin today.  Begin by transforming where you are right now, to where you'd like to be.

And that's as easy as getting up from your chair and moving some place else.