My Thoughts

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The Power of Being Seen

It is a lazy, late February morning, the last Sunday in February this year. I am puttering around the kitchen putting away things, straightening, enjoying my lukewarm lemon pepper water detox. Well, I am enjoying the morning, maybe not the lukewarm lemon pepper detox water. It has been a very long time since I have felt seen, and recently, I met a man who has done just that. So far, I feel stable, like I can take a long, slow approach and not try to pin my hopes and dreams on one person. I was so afraid of jumping back in to the dating world. The ending of my marriage was 20 years ago in July of this year.... 20 years; and in that time, I have only casually dated and never had a long term intimate relationship. I worked really hard to be a strong presence for my daughters, to build a future that I could inhabit alone, on my own terms. I won't lie; I'm terrified. Personal and intimate relationships are so difficult for me, and I often flee instead of address my insecurit

Strict Scheduling as I Spiral

I am not ok. I want to be, but I am not ok. As the last, precious minutes of a weather induced 4 day weekend draw to an close, I sit in numbed silence trying to piece the mangled pieces of my life into a semblance of order. I am not ok. My heart aches for a world that existed once. My soul bleeds for the chaos that faces so many in our country. I keep hoping that I am overthinking it; I just don't feel that is true. I am exhausted, and I am not ok. No wonder the retreat of my precious home offers the only comfort lately. Here, in contentedness, I can script my hours. I chose music or movies that feed my soul. I prepare healthy food to nourish and heal my body, and I shut out any and all intrusions with swift deliberations. Exhaustion can do that. It can blind reality. Maybe it's my age or the unbearable weight of responsibility I bear - it seems to get harder and harder to find strength. For the first time in my life, I struggle to fi

Long Time No See

I know, I know......it's unbearable how long it's been since I was here last. I have definitely neglected you with blatant disregard. Forgive me. It is gloriously Autumn outside; can you sense it? I mean, like fully, sense it?? This is my absolutely favorite type of day. I am cooking slowly over the week. I have my tablet on its cute, lil', decorative easel watching "The Price is Right" and enjoying my second cup of coffee. Autumn scented candles are lit around the house, and I am having pumpkin baked oats for breakfast. This is the warmest, gooiest thing I've ever eaten, and I fully intend to make this a regular recipe in my life........healthy and yummy. I've thought about you so much lately, and I have missed our times together more than you can imagine. Well, maybe not more.....maybe you feel the same way. I fear that if I don't make our relationship a true priority, I will wake up at the end of my life and regret its passing with intens

Adaptability instead of Equal Access

Draft started 4/16/2020 I'm gonna start this thought before I lose it and before I do any scientific research. Ugghhh, grad school severely altered my ability to develop a full thought without thinking about quantifying data. With the craziness of the school closures and distance learning, I've read over and over remarks from teachers about equal access. I've been there, and sometimes, I linger here still -- the idea that all students should have equal access. It's easy and simple. I only have to create one lesson plan to push out with the expectation that all students have equal access and that no issues will arise as students complete the assignment. Ok, none of us teachers really believes this myth. We may long for it, but we don't believe it will ever happen. Sometimes, magically, we get close??? Teacher background and education level, age and experience all contribute to ideology. As an illustration: younger teachers with less experience, especia

You've Got Mail

Oh my, I can so vividly remember the excitement, the joy even, of opening the AOL app and hearing "you've got mail"- the eventual reward for waiting for the dial up to reach across time and space to connect to a world that had been so remote only a year previous. I, like so many others, found new friends (connections) in those early chat rooms - reading the conversations of strangers and finding familiar threads of commonality. For a couple of years, I even had a couple of steady email friends who brought my loneliness into companionship and helped me also discover my sequestered voice again. Even 22 years later, the Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan movie enchants me. I try to watch it at least once a year and to use it as a guidepost into my own growth. This year, as I watched it, I was caught off guard to a new fact that I have seemingly ignored for a long time - Joe and Kathleen were "cheating" on their relationships. The dark and often crippling reality of "in

original date 7/27/2015 Everyone deserves to be the hero of their own story. It is a concept that few people truly understand, yet they strive to accomplish. We seek the glory, honor or fame that will create in the minds of others a hero legend. I read the book " All my Puny Sorrows " a couple of months ago and the idea of each person being the hero of their own story was presented in a way I had not conceptualized. Neither had I had thought about the concept of each person a hero in her / his own story prior to that novel; but I have thought about it quite a bit since. Being the hero of your own story is like being the jolly good fellow: you are the center of a story; you're the central focus - the main person - the protagonist. This sounds brilliantly clever, doesn't it? I think all too often many people live with this ego-eccentric belief. Sadly, if a person lives with this ideal, then to be a hero, you must have an antagonist, an enemy, a dem