Where To From Here?

Once you write a book about your journey, or a portion of your journey, what’s next?  From Lemons to Lemonade is complete, poked, prodded, reworded and finally delivered into the world. So what now? 

Well, I could roll back the clock and look into other areas of my life:  I could write the story of my moving from addiction to a path of healing. I could share the tears, sadness and even funny moments of my mom’s journey through Alzheimer’s. I could talk about the absolutely hilarious year that I spent in New York City—just the stories of living in the middle of a frat house will make you spit your coffee out. I could document what’s going on in my life right now--what’s happened in the two years since Ted and Lateef died.   Or I could get out my crystal ball and peer into the future, looking for what might be coming in the future.

My gut says there’s more to be said but what and why?  Will anyone really care?  Will anyone be helped?  Why am I writing anyhow?  What is my intention? My burning desire is to help and if that translates to helping even one person, my goal will be accomplished.  I remember when I was in corporate America.  I pretty much was all about getting the job done.  I hated the intrusions of meetings, trainings and impromptu visits from my boss.  What I learned about trainings, though, was that if I learned one thing—just one thing, from a training session, I could consider the time well spent.

As I’m writing this today, I am just realizing that I use the words “I remember” quite often in my writing.  Remembering is very important to me.  I remember telling Ted how I felt about my scrapbooking hobby.  “Ted, when we’re old and gray and can’t remember anything, we’ll walk through the pages of these scrapbooks and see our life’s journey.”  I remember the feeling of loneliness as my mom was descending into the depths of Alzheimer’s—my trying to remember all of the stories of her life that she’d told me throughout my life.  Kicking myself for not thinking that those stories were important during the telling—being an impatient teenager—then young woman, wanting to get on with my life—wishing I had those moments back.

Except for a short period of time when it was all about me, I’ve always loved stories. My mom listened to story-telling radio throughout the night and Ted and I did also—My favorite podcasts today are This American Life, Snap Judgment, The Moth and Story Corps.  Everyone has a story to tell.  A life remembered is a gift. With all of it’s tears and joys—it is a gift—a chance to grow, a chance to help others.  A life remembered is a blessing.  It is a way to shed the skin of any pain experienced and morph into the beautiful butterflies we all have at our core—a way to examine our past and try to do better.   Once we’ve made peace with the past, it’s safe to remember.  A life remembered is a lesson in mindfulness because we’ve taken the time to live and relive the moments of our life—the corridors we’ve walked down.  What we do with those memories and experiences is completely up to us.  Live the same life or let our experiences change us for the better?

Have you ever visited a place and wondered about the people who lived there before?  Wondered what their stories were? I have.  Always inquisitive, I’ve been steadily upending the boulders and small rocks of my life, examining, making sense of, and reading the stories of others who have done the same.  Why?  Because there are opportunities to grow, live compassionately and give to others each and every day for the rest of the days that we are blessed to remain on this planet. 

Do you have a story to tell?  It doesn't matter if you tell it to the world or if you tell it to your journal as long as you tell it.  

So, where to next for me?  We’ll see.

100 Days of Meditation

I’ve meditated every day for the last 55 days.  My muse just threw out a thought the other day.  “Mom, do you think you could meditate for 100 days in a row?”  She didn’t challenge me to do so, but it sure sounded like a challenge to me.

I am one for a challenge.  I love them.  They motivate me, stretch me and just plain give me things to do.  From the time I was a little girl, the way to get me to do something was to tell me I couldn’t.  When a friend suggested that I wouldn’t get a job because I had no experience and no degree, I went all out and got the job.  When someone told me there’d be no way to run a marathon with the responsibilities of a husband, two children and a full time job?  Nailed it!!  Even if I had to get up at 4:30 am some mornings to get my training runs in.  Complete a 100-days of happy challenge—one that only 71% of people who start, don’t complete?  Game on!!

I’ve been focused on meditation lately.  I took a mindfulness meditation class in New York last summer and it really resonated with me.  Mindfulness meditation is a meditation practice that encourages you to pay attention to things that are happening in the moment—right now.  No small feat for a person who prides herself on her ability to multi-task. 

The mindfulness practice was good for me.  Though I couldn’t necessarily measure the difference on a daily basis, over time I felt myself slowing down, doing things more deliberately, not immediately responding to stressors thereby allowing myself to come up with a thoughtful response.  I caught myself appreciating a cloud-filled sky more often, rather than rushing around trying to dodge the ever-growing traffic. 

Things were going along swimmingly, as they say.  That is, until I hit a bump.  In the middle of a screaming match I realized that I was not even remotely using any of the skills I had learned in my meditation practice.  In this instance I was right, and I knew it, but there was no way my message could possibly be received at the decibel level I was delivering it!  For emphasis, I was banging my fist on my granite counter top.  I couldn’t believe it.  I never reacted like that.  As I watched this drama play out, I was ashamed of my behavior.  I had just proverbially lost my s**t!

Fast forward—conversation over—nothing accomplished except that I had made my point.  I stewed over what had just happened for several hours with the end result being that I felt I needed to apologize for my behavior—not for the message but for the mess I’d made of delivering it.

I called the family member involved and apologized.  She told me that I didn’t need to and that she was all right with everything that had happened.  I told her that I was not all right with it—that I was on a spiritual walk and expected better of myself.  In a calm tone, I delivered the message I wish I’d delivered to her the first time.  No yelling, no screaming, no hurting my hand on my counter top.

When our conversation was over, I felt better.  When I behave in a way that is unacceptable to me, my load gets heavier.  I made a promise to myself after Ted and Lateef died.  The promise was that I would live each day as if it were my last.  Something happens when you know that you’re dying.  It’s time to fix things—it’s time to make amends.  Something also happens when you lose someone you love.  For me, that something equates to living the best, most authentic life that I can—a life that my loved ones would be proud of—a life of no regrets.  No regrets might be thinking about what I’m going to say before I say it or it might mean cleaning up after myself after a messy interaction.   Acting like a Tasmanian Devil or a screaming banshee is not authentic—it is not who I am.  So I cleaned up my mess and moved on.

One of the skills I learned in my mindfulness meditation was how to react to stressors. It’s really easy to react to stressors without even thinking—it takes control and awareness to take a moment, breathe and respond appropriately.   Eventually I’ll catch myself before I go over the cliff—but if I don’t, as I didn’t in my screaming match with my family member, I can clean it up, move on, and learn from the experience.  Perhaps I’ll catch myself next time, respond appropriately and have nothing to clean up.

Yes, this life is really a journey and with each day I get an opportunity to behave better, do better, be better. 

I’ll be checking in with you all periodically on this challenge of 100 days of meditation that might turn into 365 days, who knows?

What Makes You Happy?

On many mornings, Ted and I would sit on our screened-in back porch, sipping coffee and reading to each other from The Geography of Bliss—a great book written by Eric Weiner, a foreign correspondent for NPR.

What makes people happy?  Is it truly an inside job?  Do some places support happiness better than others? 

We didn’t read from this book every day but whenever we had some downtime, one or the other of us would pick the book up on our way out to the porch.  Sometimes he’d read, sometimes I’d read.

We read about the author’s travels and thoughts.  He’d traveled to India, where he found happiness and misery living side by side.  Bhutan, where the king made Gross National Happiness a national priority.  Switzerland, where residents believe envy is the great enemy of happiness.  During his tenure at NPR he visited over 30 countries.

The book ends with the author talking to a bartender whose name is?  Wait for it…Happy.  The bartender related that his father was so happy when his son was born that he named him Happy.  When asked the secret to being Happy, the bartender said, “Just keep on smiling.  Even when you’re sad.  Keep on smiling.”  Pretty simple, huh?  Simple but not always easy.  It reminds me of something I learned in my mindfulness meditation study.  “When you’re hungry, eat.  When you’re tired, sleep.”  A simple reminder to us that we are many times so unaware of what our body needs that we just keep barreling on, not noticing something that is so very simple.

He ends with this quote:  “Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends.  Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”  I like that.

Thank You For The Love

I’m cleaning out my storage unit with a goal of nothing stored by the end of the year.  Not only will that save me $145 a month, it will also help simplify my life.

It’s funny how after Ted and Lateef died, I really wanted to get rid of a lot of stuff.  It’s almost as if I’ve decided that after I lost two of the most important people in my life, other things really had little meaning.  More succinctly, my losses are making me re-evaluate what’s really important in my life.  That’s a good thing, right?

Well, last month I made my journey to the storage unit to get boxes.  Remember my goal?  Five to seven boxes a month—out of the storage unit—into my garage—and out of my garage in a few days. 

I brought 7 boxes with me and one of them caught my attention immediately.  The box was marked “Sympathy and Get Well Cards”.  I put it to the side with the idea that I’d get to it, but it kept calling me so I sat down and opened the box.

Wow!!  Memories came flooding back as I looked through the cards and read the verses and personal messages from friends and family.  I remembered reading every single one of the Get Well cards to Ted and his smile as I read the sender’s name.  I remember reading the Sympathy cards—in a mind blur sometimes but thankful, nonetheless.  Also in that box was a set of index cards--the ones Rashida used for the tribute video for Ted.  All the words of love from his friends and family--the words that made him smile on a day that he thought he'd never smile again.  Today, rather than tears, I felt happiness that individuals would take time from their busy schedules to send messages of support to Ted and to me.  What a show of love this box was.  No wonder I had to hold onto them.  What shall I do with them?

I love scrapbooking and I know that I’m going to put together a memorial scrapbook for Ted and Lateef.  I haven’t had the courage to embark upon this project yet.  Maybe a year or two down the line I’ll feel more like it.  Until then, just looking at the sea of support is enough.

Thank you friends and family from the bottom of my heart.  And as Ted would say, “My heart is full.”