Ode to 43

Today, I turn 43.

I remember when we moved into our house, I heard that the sellers were in their 40's and I thought, "God, that's old.  I can't even imagine who I'll be in my 40's."

Now, with the benefit of a few decades of hard knocks, I feel like I'm just getting started.

And to that end, I'm learning to:

Make peace with the risings and the fallings.  

It never fails that when I'm on the mountain top--a string of good parenting days, meaningful time with friends and family, a welcome change in weather, forward movement in my mediation practice, an engaged class of students--the other shoe drops--my kid tells me (not verbatim, but I get the drift) that I suck, I get insanely overwhelmed by my work load, someone gets sick, a financial set back occurs, bad news arrives-- uncertainty kicks in, and I find myself remembering that this is what it means to be human.  There is no such thing as living infinitely in a place of joy or pain.  It's an extraordinary mixture of both, that is largely unpredictable and many times unexplainable.

Never underestimate the power of the hustle.

I used to think that giving up my career made me a fool.  How would I ever dive back into my field?  What would the loss of a double income mean for our family?  What was the point in amassing all of that education?  A decade later, after spending all of my 30's at home, and now teaching at a university and being back at the mediation table, I can wholeheartedly say that the best people I know are the scrappy ones.  They don't measure their worth in one long continuous line.  They take chances.  They trust their gut.  They believe in their value and they morph and shape their skill sets to prioritize the people and experiences that matter most.  They're the most interesting story tellers and the truest companions.  And for my own experience, I have to say that they bring a level of empathy, adaptability and resiliency to the table that is second to none.

Relish the paradox of living.

There was a time when I believed that having the answers defined a good life.  Now, I know differently.  Living in the uncertainty of the questions, with a willingness to course correct when your heart and intuition tell you otherwise is what it means to be present.  Non-judgemental, operating out of a space of love, not fear means that faith and trust are guiding, not a false sense of control.  Trusting that it's okay not to know...and that someday, this time of wonderment, fork in the road, will pass and eventually, you'll understand why you are, where you are, is the only way to do this life thing.

Gratitude makes life purposeful.

I used to stress over ensuring that I mailed a thank-you card within a proper window of time when someone had given a gift or done something kind.  Three kids later, I know that what matters isn't overt gestures...it's the little things...sending a text when someone comes to mind, telling them that you're thinking about the upcoming thing and that you're rooting for them and that you love them.  It's noticing the unbelievable abundance of blessings that show up in buds on the trees now that it's spring time, a really strong cup of coffee before the house wakes up, the fact that your legs take you places and somehow, your heart decided to beat for you all night long while you were sleeping and that God gave you another shot at today.  Saying thank you, nearly every moment, keeps you appreciating the bounty that surrounds you.

Comparison steals joy.

I've always yearned to be someone else.  When I was younger, it was the girls who were cheerleaders or the ones who were Merit scholars.  In my twenties, it was the girls who were married.  In my thirties, it was the ones who bounced back to their pre-baby weight and lived on certain tree-lined streets and vacationed at all the right places.  Now, in my forties, I'm too tired for that.  I have a really good life.  People who love me that I get to love back.  A body that moves.  A brain that thinks interesting stuff and friends who I can lean on and laugh with.  On most days, that's enough.  On the days when I look in the mirror and see extra jiggle, I have to remind myself that it's okay and this is the price of admission to the beauty of mid-life.

Change is the only constant.

God do I hate the devil I don't know.  If it were up to me, we'd main line coffee all day, only stopping to eat sushi, drink stout, read the NY Times, listen to podcasts while we did yoga and solved the problems of the world.  I get very antsy when it comes to doing new things...but the truth is, the birthplace of creativity, hope, opportunity and true engagement happen in the spaces where we are vulnerable, with hands outstretched saying, "I don't know, but I'm willing to try." 

So, as I approach this new space...this 43rd year...I say...

Ode to 

laughter and pain

hope and despair

worry and belief

adventure and momentum.

Ode to me

and the bounty of  life,

and the change that will bring me to forks in the road.

May I rise to meet them, even in the falling.

May I live in the present, without the guarantees,

embracing the dichotomies and uncertainty.

And may I know, deep within that being me,

the real me

the 43 me

is  enough.

Risk Joy

I'm raising three very different children.

My son, Sam is not necessarily a happy-go-lucky tween.  He's relatively serious and when he wants something done, it happens.  His humor is dry and witty and forward thinking. He is polite and very aware of how his actions are affecting others.  A typical type A, achieving, first-born through and through.

My oldest daughter, Kate, the 10-year old is smack dab in the moment.  When she's sewing or playing piano or dancing in ballet or cracking an egg, she's feeling the experience.  Rarely worried about what others think, she's fully connected to the present.

My youngest daughter, Claire, the 6-year old has been dancing in the nude since she could stand.  She laughs openly and loudly with and at anyone.  Her motto is that it's a good thing to like her.  I'm not sure that she could be more comfortable in her own skin.

As a result of their world views, they each experience and embrace joy differently.  Sam is cautious. He believes like me, that what goes up, must come down...and that the world is filled with a lot of suffering, so we should temper our joy to reflect our responsibility to the people who are wounded or marginalized.

Kate thinks it's extraordinary that baking powder helps to make pancakes rise and that you can make your own dragon costumes at home instead of buying them at the store.  She embraces a "tickled pink" world view--similar to a "wow, who would have thought that this could happen?" mindset.

Claire never fails to share that her classmate farts at recess and pretends like it wasn't him.  "I mean, come on, he has a smell, everyone knows it's him.  And it has a sound too. It sounds like this...." And then she makes the sound and Kate bursts out laughing.  And Sam says, "Claire what about the people in Texas and Hurricane Harvey?"

And part of me feels similarly, how can we carry on at the dinner table, talking about our day, sharing fart stories, while many, many people have lost their homes, their loved ones, their memories and are refugees trying to pick up the pieces?

The world is filled with so much heartache and unexplainable hurt.

And then, it struck me that in the midst of sorrow and the unknown, our responsibility is to live.  This is why people laugh at funerals and laugh while they're crying in the doctor's office and laugh after a scream fest with their spouses or their kids or laugh when they've behaved ridiculously.

Because stress, fear, trauma, uncertainty and angst can only be sustained and endured for so long.  The real task is to live and to live fully....fully in the pain and fully in the joy.

So, at the dinner table, I turned to my son and said, "You're right.  It's terrible what has happened to the families in Texas.  We must pray and donate money.  But we must also risk joy.  It's okay to laugh at silly things even though heaviness is happening in the world.  It's okay to tell jokes and funny stories, even when there are no answers for the greater burdens.  Our job is to live.  So, Claire, let another one rip..."

As the beautifully, brilliant poet, Jack Gilbert once said,

Joy Above Resentment

I'll grant you that it took an act of God to get me there this morning.  Running out the door with an apple in my mouth, water bottle dripping in my purse, yoga mat half rolled, car keys no where to be found.  FUUUCKKK...why is my life so God damned chaotic and why can't someone get ME ready to get out the door.  With moments to spare, I walked in the door a little flustered.

In retrospect, I did show up a little pissy.  It's that time of the month and I was hot and feeling fat and fine, I wasn't in my happy place.

Scanning a packed room of mats neatly adorning a circle, I found the lone spot next to him.  From the minute it began, he wouldn't stop smiling and then laughing and ugh.

The class was particularly challenging and I was in no mood for this spontaneous, joy-filled nonsense.  Come on, be a real yogi, dude...take it seriously for Christ sake.  Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face and focus on deepening the poses. 

But he didn't, every time I looked over, he was just smiling away seemingly making a mockery of it all.  And then, bent down trying to balance my legs on my elbows, I glanced and he was looking at me with big eyes as if it to say, "Good luck with that sister...you're inches away from falling on your face or your ass or both and that's pretty funny."

I fell out of the pose and started laughing which made him laugh and her laugh and all of us start wearing shit-eating grins. 

And while in shivasana (resting pose), it hit me.  We all walk around feeling the weight of the world, the stress of the day or week, the exhaustion of responsibilities, obligations, the anxieties of what has been and what is to come.  And when we harbor these things for too long, we get angry at people who seem to rise above it and recognize that all of it is laughable to an extent.  Because really nothing in life is so extraordinarily serious that it doesn't merit a good belly laugh from time to time.  And even those very tragic, heart breakingly traumatic acts that are thrust upon us have moments of joy, little bits of silver lining, ancillary blessings that we might have not experienced had we not endured the pain.

When it was over, he rolled up his mat and jetted out of the room.  I wanted to say thanks.  Thanks for helping me to recognize that joy is far more contagious than resentment.  And that no matter how hard I try to hold on to my big, important, serious life...well, someone will always come, knock me off my pompous elbows and remind me that joy, laughter and love always win.

To Sorrow is To Live

I don't know where you live, but here in the midwest, the weather is stunning.

The leaves are turning extraordinary shades of abundant red, orange and yellow.  The temperature is mild and the sun, at least for the past several days has been shining.

So, on my way to the gas station and the grocery store this morning, I was smiling in gratitude. 

I needed to.  I'd been moping a bit.  Care taking for my two daughters who have been down for the count with the flu and now feeling badly that my husband has caught the bug. 

Just as I rounded the bend, out of the blue, a friend sent a text to tell me that she was grateful for the spirit of joy I bring to her life.  I was astounded and probably looked like a dip shit with big tears in my eyes at the gas pump.  We exchanged a few messages; one in which, I lamented about how sometimes life isn't fair and that certain things don't add up.

That's when she sent me this:

"Joyfully participate in the sorrow of living," Buddha.

And then, a moment later, this popped up in my in-box.

As I was throwing ingredients into the grocery cart to make chicken noodle soup, apple crisp and pumpkin muffins, I started throwing it around in my head.  It makes sense.  There are so many attachments, desires, cravings, fears that we walk around harboring.  Some of them will be actualized and some of them will not.

I suppose, our job is not to wallow in the parts of us that don't work out the way that we yearn, but rather to learn to live with the outcome, the season, the challenge, the trial with joy.

Essentially, to relish as best we can in the sorrow, the failure, the shortcoming, the hurt and to trust that it is temporary.


And maybe to be reminded that

Here's to friends and falling leaves and quiet moments of solitude that let us know we're not alone in our journey.

Cultivating Happiness

It was the middle of the morning and I was doing the dishes. 

You know, scrubbing the cereal bowls, reheating my cup of coffee for the third time and trying to catch up on my "Moth Radio Hour" listening while simultaneously paying attention to my three-year old who is the perfect mess of a ballerina endlessly twirling in and out of the kitchen screaming, "MAMA...mama, I want chocolate milk...A, B, F, Q, R, S...Twinkle, Twinkle, Glory to God in the Highest, Itsy Bitsy..."

My life is loud and its forever full of multi-tasking.  I'm dead in the water if I try to do one thing at a time.  Raising three little ones and managing the daily in's and out's of it all is loud, busy, and incessantly messy.

And then she called.  My friend.  I love her.  I sort of feel like we were separated at birth.  She's smart.  Beautiful.  Sacrificing for her kiddos at every turn.  And always making time for my stuff.

And about once a week, she does her dishes or cleans her bathroom or vomit off the rug and I do mine and we fancy ourselves mini philosophers taking on topics that enter our consciousness and won't let us fully digest them until we've garnered the input of the other.

On the docket the other day was happiness.  Do you luck into it?  Can it be chased? Pursued?  Or, does it organically emerge?  If you force it, is it ultimately, illusory and bound to fall through your finger tips?  And what if you're unhappy, is it okay to reject your current life station and pursue another, even if there's residual collateral damage along the way?  What is happiness worth?  Is it a worthy pursuit or is it just an ethereal notion?

Post our conversation, I stumbled upon a quote from one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda. 

"Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”


And I think his words sum it up.  We're all searching for purpose, meaning, a sense of belonging, an authentic knowing of ourselves.  We want to know that we're where we're supposed to be.  And when something feels amiss, whether it's in our interpersonal relationships, our workplace, our career, our health, our spirituality, or in general, the quiet moments when we're real, brutally honest with ourselves because no one's looking over our shoulder...we realize that it does matter.


Happiness doesn't emanate from the collection of things.  It emerges when we're being who we're supposed to be.  And the journey affords us multiple opportunities to decide, is this right?  And when we gut check, we find instantly whether we're joy filled or just getting by.


So, as I shared with my friend, being a full-time stay at home mother is fraught with exhaustion, frustration and isolation.  It's not easy to do the same routine day after day after day knowing that your children are not going to provide you with a performance appraisal, a raise, an annual bonus and a promotion.  Nope, but what you will get is time.  Time that you can't get back.  Time that involves story telling, singing, baths, parks, bikes, painting nails, and lots of hugs. And, I'm also hoping (most importantly) that you get staying power.  The memory and the belief that my children know that I was there and I always will be there for everything from the banal to the extraordinary.


And that for me is happiness.  And when I gut check, I know that there is no paying job that would be worth the loss of any of that for me.  Which is why Neruda's quote is perfect...one day, while doing dishes watching the craziness emerge around me, I realized, I'm happy....just not in the ways that I thought I would be...but joy filled I am.  The real cultivation of happiness.

Cultivating Happiness

The past few nights, I haven't been sleeping.

You know what it's like...

When you're in and out of that haze of consciousness knowing that you should be sawing logs but thinking about all that is wrong with the world and wishing you could wave a magic wand...

to make it all better.

Through phone conversations with family members and friends and my own private longings, I've been hearing the phrase, "I just want to be happy," over and over again.

Admittedly, it's easy to look over the fence (physical or virtual) and assume that a certain street address, occupation, or life station would make one happy.  As if it's a destination.

So in one of these hazes, I grabbed my nightstand book, "Eat, Pray, Love" and was struck by one of Elizabeth Gilbert's quotes.

"When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness, after such dark times, you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt-this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.”

And so with the various life circumstances that my friends' and family find themselves in and the ones that I lament from time to time, I am mindful that happiness, like love is something to be cultivated.

More than a noun, happiness is a verb...an active state.  A way that we live.  A mantra for being.  Not something that we're entitled to unless we put the work in...and in some cases, meant to be redefined from rainbows and butterflies to peace and joy.

Happiness looks different for every person.  And in the end, only you know when your heart is aglow.  But what will it take to get you there?  Are you willing to participate in the process?

Ultimately, we have responsibility for this life of ours.  Finding something beautiful, joyful, and peaceful to love is the calling of our heart which over time manifests into happiness.