emotions

“I have been so mean to my body, outright hateful. I disparage her and call her names. I loathe parts of her and withhold care. I insist on physical standards she can never reach, for that is not how she is made, but I detest her weakness for not pulling it off. No matter what she accomplishes, I’m never happy with her.”

~Jen Hatmaker Fierce, Free and Full of Love

In the ‘before time’, right before Covid hit, I was listening to Jen Hatmaker’s book while on my morning walks with Ruby, our six-year-old boxer who, ironically enough, has the body confidence of a super-model. Most of the book had me laughing. Other parts had me shaking my fist at Audible and the fact that I couldn’t dogear a particular page or highlight every other paragraph with yellow marker. 

Like the one above. 

This one stopped me in my tracks. It had me fumbling to hit rewind while juggling a bag full of poop at the same time eliciting deep unexpected sobs of recognition—in public. 

If you’d asked me about body image a week earlier I’d have told you mine was pretty good. And then I heard Jen struggle with her own emotions while reading her very vulnerable admissions without choking on her own snot. Seriously. She did a far better job at keeping the full-blown ugly crying at bay than I did. 

I too had been hateful. 

I’d set unattainable standards.

I’d done all of the shitty stuff you can do to a body and as I’ve aged, I may be guilty of cranking up the volume on the insults. 

Crepy skin, burgeoning neck waddle, old lady pillow tummy, ugh, HOW IS THIS MY BODY?  

The five stages of grief were quickly setting in.

Denial— (Catches own reflection in storefront window) That’s not me, it can’t be. That’s my mother! 

Anger— (Age spots appear as if by magic) Seriously? You’ve GOT to be kidding me!

Bargaining— If I drink the celery juice can I eat nothing but carbs on the weekends?

Depression— I feel bad about my boobs which are now a pair of 38 longs.

But I hadn’t quite gotten to the acceptance stage. Until I heard the words she wrote. THAT changed everything for me.

I apologized to my body. Profusely. Every morning and every night. 

I saw her for what she was, my ally, not my enemy. 

I looked at all the evidence and discovered she has ONLY ever had my best interests at heart. 

So, I started to lavish her with praise and compliments and love. After a while, it became a habit.

Then the pandemic hit and being over sixty I was considered to be at higher risk of complications so I upped my little ritual to include extreme gratitude for my continued good health. 

Every morning when I woke up, I’d thank her for her stamina on the hikes, her cheerful disposition in the face of looming uncertainty, and her strong immune system. And as the Covid numbers in Los Angles rose, I assured her that even if she caught it, I wouldn’t hold it against her, on the contrary, we would fight it together and she would be fine. 

It reminded me of experiments researchers have done with water and plants, the ones where they verbally abuse them or shower them with praise —and then study the results—which are astounding.

https://yayyayskitchen.com/2017/02/02/30-days-of-love-hate-and-indifference-rice-and-water-experiment-1/

The ones that are praised, thrive, while the ones that are subjected to hateful speech/emotions, literally wither and die.

Which brings me to yesterday and my fall down the stairs. 

Well, I didn’t so much fall, as get pulled by Ruby down the flight of concrete steps that lead to her daily free-range walk. To be fair, she’d spotted a discarded half-eaten cheese sandwich at the bottom, and who among us hasn’t lost their mind and sprinted toward cheese? Nevertheless, it happened too fast to even let go of the leash so I was knocked on my ass and pulled down the entire flight of stairs on my back until I managed to get her to stop—by yelling STOP at the top of my lungs. I know it was loud because it echoed back up the stairs and out onto the street before waking the dead. 

Lying there in a heap, I assessed the damage. Ankle twisted, elbows, ass and back bruised and battered, but eventually, I was able to get up and walk —which I took as a good sign. Reflexively, I thanked my body for not breaking a hip or anything else for that matter and went on with my day. But as the hours passed, a deep soreness set in. At about seven in the evening I felt as if I’d been hit by a caravan of trucks carrying elephants. “Wait until tomorrow,” my husband warned, handing me the Motrin. “The next day is the worst.” Later, in bed, I tried not to move a muscle, lest I scream and wake the dog. 

“You’ve got this,” I told her, lying there together in the dark.  “Nothing is broken, which in itself is a miracle because YOU ARE A BEAST! You’re sixty-fucking-two and you fell down a flight of concrete stairs and barely missed a beat! You ROCK!” I tried to shift position and moaned. Everything hurt. Even my hair.

“I will take care of you,” I reassured her. “If you need bed rest, I will make sure you get it. If you need CBD rub or Motrin at regular intervals, you can count on me. We are in this together because I love you—now go to sleep!”

“How do you feel?” my husband asked me this morning as I wandered out for coffee and a hug. His face was a twisted grimace, bracing for the worst. “Actually, I’m fine,” I said, twisting and turning to prove my point. 

And I am. Fine. No aches, no pains, no bruises of any kind to speak of. I give all of the credit to my body and our recently renewed love affair. 

Not a big story, not life or death, but proof to me just the same that Love really does work miracles y’all. 

Carry on,
xox

https://youtu.be/WA4dDs0T7sM

“You’re an interesting species, an interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone—only you’re not. See, in all our searching the only thing that we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”
~ From the movie Contact

When I watched this video last week I wept. Like it was the ugly cry, you guys. Because, after six months of watching the planet battle this pandemic, I’d forgotten.

I’d forgotten our greatness.
I’d forgotten our humanness, our drive and indomitable spirit.
I’d forgotten what hope feels like.
I could only see the horrible nightmare, becoming completely oblivious to the beautiful dream.

This minute and a half helped me to remember. To revel in the time before which seems so distant now, and to know for certain that because of WHO WE ARE— this incredible collective of diverse and remarkable human beings, that there are better days ahead for ALL of us.

And I figured that maybe like me, you might need a little reminder of what’s ahead.

Moments of time strung together minute by minute that will be so incredible they seem impossible to imagine.

Just like the ones in this stunning video

We ARE an interesting species, Capable of SO much.
Because nothing can stop what we can do together!

Carry on,
xox JB

I don’t know about you guys but I’m exhausted.

I’m all at once raw and stoic, fearful and fearless, feeling the big sadness, exploring the pockets of grief that show up unexpectedly, expressing absolute candor and telling lies of omission because, let’s face it, it’s easier. All of this happens in the space of a day if I’m lucky—or an hour if I’m low on sleep.

I. AM. DYING. TO. WORRY. ABOUT. SOMETHING. OTHER. THAN. DYING.

So, when I reached out to my dear friend of thirty-something years, my hairdresser, to see how they were doing, and found them struggling to survive, (let’s not be overly dramatic here) make ends meet, I turned my attention toward a much more familiar obsession. My hair. Because hair is everything.

I can feel all of the rapid eye blinking virtually changing the direction of the jet stream as you read that, and if you think that’s bad, then you should stop reading any further because I am not the spirit animal you seek.

I am shallow. Some may call me a heartless turd even as the news breaks my heart every goddamn day. But I tell you guys all the truths. Even when they’re complicated. Because I know deep down, that we are all more alike than we are different. And that spending a few hours being “normal” felt like redemption. Like an extra large scoop of ice cream in hell.

Anyhow, read on if you can.
xox

Dear Pearl-Clutching-Barbara’s,

I did something subversive today that I’m reticent to tell you about. BTW: Reticent and I seldom, if ever, breathe the same air, so this is weird. 

I drove almost one-hundred miles each way to do a cocaine drop, run guns to the border, get a haircut.

A haircut. Something that I’ve done without a scintilla of forethought and a minimum of fanfare (although that purple fringe did make me want to throw a parade) every 45-60 days—of my entire adult life.

Now, before you go and choke on your kale salad, hear me out. 

About a week ago I woke up and looked in the mirror only to find Phil Spector – The Trial Years, staring back at me. 

You see, I’ve spent most of my early Covid-19 weeks congratulating myself on listening to the thunder rumbling in the distance. I, with my keen sense of the obvious, sensed a lockdown was imminent so I bought enough supplies, food, and such (although, full disclosure, the voices in my head did not warn me about the toilet paper shortage and I’m pissed—irony alert!) to take care of a traveling circus, which, if you knew us, is not such a stretch. I have also learned in the past few months how to use Zoom, paid for the upgrade, and purchased a hot spot to support my janky office internet.

But, (and this is a bone of contention I’m picking with the rumbling thunder) I have come to realize that the high maintenance haircut I’d gotten recently was a mistake. In the beginning, it was a fun and flirty 70’s shag that played up my natural curl. Soon, it transitioned to The Rachel, and now it’s so big and unruly that if I don’t arm wrestle it into blow-dried submission—it scares dogs and small children whose company I looked forward to on my walks every day. 

Yet, I feel bad about feeling bad about my hair.

Everyone gets outraged when you get off-topic. It’s a literal pandemic out there! People are dying!

I get that. I do. How could I NOT? But I cannot stay in the big sadness 24/7. I just can’t. I’m still alive, and the anxiety will kill me before the virus ever does if I don’t refocus my attention sometimes. 

So hair.

Over the weekend I spoke to my stylist via the dark web like all good subversives do. In reality, it was by text but you get the gist.

“How r u doing?” I inquired.

“Ok.” They replied.

“Just ok?” I winced, knowing I could be opening a Pandora’s Box of Pandemic Misery.

“Yeh…I’m out of money.” 

Gut punch. I saw the three little dots waiver…then disappear. Uncertain what I could do to help my mind jumped on its habitrail. I could send them a check for the haircut I’d missed, which I knew they would never cash and send back with a mildly sardonic note and a loaf of freshly backed banana bread, OR…

“When can we do this very forbidden thing?” I asked like I was holding Liam Neeson’s daughter for ransom. Months went by. Okay, minutes, but when it feels like the FBI is about to come and bust down your door, well, it feels like a long time.

“I can do it in a week,” they replied.

I don’t know why, but I was surprised.

“You can? I mean, how does that even work?” I texted back.

Are you beginning to see what a terrible criminal mastermind, rule-breaker I am? I am the worst kind of bad. I treat it like a joke and then I wait for the other person to incriminate themselves. Not really, but it started to feel that way. Texting is so weird. It is void of all nuance and sarcasm and THAT is why I am so often misunderstood. 

Anyway, they explained that they’d been mixing and delivering hair color complete with instructions to client’s doors and that they’d started to cut one person’s hair a week, behind a partition in the back of the salon while following very stringent guidelines. See you guys? Other people, in a very prohibition kind of way, had been bending the rules! (Which by-the-way would still hold no water in an argument with my mother.)

“First, it’s gonna smell like Lysol-hell in here because I disinfect the place like I’m about to perform open-heart surgery. I’m gonna take both of our temperatures when you get here, we’ll both be wearing masks and gloves (see what they did there, they didn’t suggest, they insisted) Then I’m gonna dip you in a vat of sanitizer AFTER you wash your hands and I’ll always stand behind you.” 

“Uh, okay.”

“It’s what they’re going to make us do in a few weeks anyway, only with more people so…” Their text trailed off at the thought of trying to style hair while staying alive, a skill-set that transcends any beauty college curriculum. 

“Okay, so when?”

“Wednesday,” they texted back. “It’s that day that follows that day that’s after the weekend.”

That was funny. We both sent laughing emojis.

“Hey thanks,” they texted, “This really helps me.”

“Me too! (kiss face emoji) That wasn’t a lie.

And that’s the point really, isn’t it? To help the living keep on living? 

That night I felt different about myself. I’ve been such an obedient quarantiner. I haven’t ventured further than the market, hikes, and walking the dog. But now, clearly, I am someone who runs toward the Zombies. I swim the moat. I take matters into my own hands and…I can feel the lingering stares and all the nostrils flaring out there.

STOP.

Let’s put this in perspective, shall we? I’m not storming the barricades brandishing an assault weapon in lieu of a mask— I’m getting a haircut in a level three quarantine setting.

On my one-hour-plus drive to this clandestine, undisclosed location (that I had to find on Google maps) I couldn’t help but notice the lack of traffic. It felt surreal. So did the yellow helicopter that hovered ten feet over our heads on the freeway. Three separate times, three different yellow helicopters appeared out of nowhere, hovering low over our cars while we drove underneath them.

I called my husband.

“Helicopters are tailing me!” I hyperventilated into the car’s Bluetooth. 

“What?”

“Yellow helicopters are hovering above my head on the freeway!” 

“Yellow? Well at least they’re not all black,” he laughed.

“Well, maybe the black ones are yellow now! I’ve seen this movie! This does NOT end well!”

Suddenly, the moat didn’t feel worth swimming.

My mind was reeling. I was an escaped Tribute and the Capitol was here to take me back into custody.  I had broken free and The Google had turned me in! 

Just to be clear, I don’t want to live in a dystopian world like that. 

So I hit the gas, coddiwompling toward what felt like freedom.

“You’re overreacting,” he said. (As an aside, that is just the perfect thing to say to a hysterical person, especially if you’re their husband. I’m not kidding. It immediately turns their fear—to rage, which somehow feels more manageable.)

“You’re fine.” (Again, this may be ideal for soothing a hostage-taker—just not your wife who is being harassed by helicopters.) “You’re getting a haircut not trafficking children.”

“Okay, gotta go, bad cell!”

Hi, my name is Janet. I’ve been cutting my own bangs with dull cuticle scissors after too much wine, so I broke quarantine in favor of a haircut by someone with sharp shears and a license.  

Listen, Barbaras, we were safe. The salon was empty and will continue to sit empty for another week to “rest”. My stylist lives alone. I live alone (almost). They needed the money and I needed some fresh air and open space.

I know. You’re outraged. 

But Carry On Anyway,
xox Love, Janet

Okay…so…

Since my nature is one of impulsiveness, learning discernment did not come easy for me nor did it happen overnight.  

Decades.. It took me decades to learn.

And since discernment can look like hesitancy, indecisiveness, and, on its best day a bad case of whishy-washy — well, those are words NO ONE would EVER use to describe me, and yet…

These days, when I read something, see something, hear something, or enter a room—I seldom get carried away by the “consensus” otherwise known as “the peanut gallery”.

This tends to frustrate people because people like you more when you get carried away by their enthusiasm, whether it be about a book, a person, a trend, a great idea…or perhaps a cure. But I don’t. I check in with myself. I get still, wait for the noise to subside a bit, and see how this particular thing feels to me.

If my ass does a Kegel—it’s a hell no for me—even if everyone loves it!

I’ve been speaking to lots of women these days and I adore the conversations. And maybe that’s the key-word here. Conversation. We have conversations. Not monologues. Not lectures.

I’m usually brought into these conversations by another woman with waaaayyyy more street cred than I could ever hope to accumulate in this beautiful life of mine and her generosity makes me feel honored. Humbled.

But I’m always clear about one thing: I was vetted and that got my foot in the door.
The rest is up to me.
And you.  
I’m gonna talk, with absolute candor, about the stuff I love. Magic, energy, self-empowerment, and the cheat codes I use to make my life easier. If it resonates with you, that’s great! If not, that’s great too. Seriously. Because another thing I’ve learned is—concentrate on the people who like what you’re saying not the ones who are looking at their phones.

To me, its kinda like a dinner party at a friend’s house.
I love my friends and I trust their judgment in food, wine, and the people they surround themselves with, so if I meet you there, I’m prone to love you at first sight. But, and this has happened on rare occasions—even if you’re renowned in your field, a massive celebrity or someone everyone wants to be seen with—if I find you acting like a bitch faced howler monkey or everything coming out of your mouth makes me feel like I want to stick a fork in my eye—I will, in the most polite way possible, distance myself from you.

And the next day when I talk to my friend we’ll both have a good laugh because you got your foot in the door (you were her sister’s last-minute date) but you most certainly were not a match to the delicious energy going on at that party.

One last tidbit. What’s the difference between skepticism and discernment you might ask? Good question, because I confused these two for years.

Skepticism is me walking into the party with my mind made up that I’m not going to like you.

Discernment is meeting you with an open mind and a giant helping of “benefit of the doubt” and coming to my own conclusions about how I feel about you after we’ve met.

With all of the madness, the endless Facebook and Instagram Live’s that stream constantly, we’re being bombarded with confusing and conflicting information that’s being fed to us by “experts” and people with “credibility” these days more than any I’ve witnessed in my entire life. We’re being asked to make life and death decisions for chrissakes, which is turning discernment into a fulltime job!

So, when somebody speaks I do a “butt check” which is just like a “gut check” only lower. Anyway, I invite you to do the same.

Even here. Even with me.

Stay well my friends & carry on,
xox

I’m sitting in my den watching the news when the phone rings. Someone I love wants to be soothed. By me. I feel ill-prepared which always leads to me shoveling raw cookie dough. 

By far the question most asked of me on week one of the pandemic was was :
“Are we going to be okay?”

The uncomplicated answer was…

“Yes. But, I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, and I don’t know what that’s gonna look like.” 

Silence.

Some people who weren’t already crying started. The ones who were crying continued. That’s what happens when you ask a question you can’t imagine the answer to. You hear something you may not like, or even worse—be emotionally prepared for. 

I suggest not giving anyone, even me, that power. 

I believe in deferring to the experts. My gut and my heart. 

And I’m not gonna lie, even they had a hard time finding the truth inside all of the fear, adrenaline and cortisol coursing through me that first week. I mean, they told me I would be okay even if I got sick and died. But no matter how much you believe it in theory, that’s not something you want to put into practice— and it’s certainly not a truth you pass onto your friends when they text or call. 

So I didn’t. 

“Are we going to be okay?” They asked.

“Yes.” I simply said. “Yes, we will.” No further explanation offered. That’s when the crying stopped. 

Weeks two and three: Shit gets real.

I’m making cookies for the neighborhood. I’m answering the unasked request for cookies that came to me in a dream.

It’s barely 8 am.

A friend is talking to me on speaker-phone. “I had to delete some of my fears, she says. “I just don’t have the room for them in my head anymore!” She exclaims over the sound of my mixer. “They’ve been replaced by bigger, life or death ones now.”

Which got me to thinking; I’m sorry if I’m a bit indelicate here but don’t the things that triggered you previous to the pandemic (a sentence I never imagined writing) don’t they seem, well, ludicrous?

I mean, come on, hasn’t this put all of our pre-pandemic fears (which I won’t list here for fear of embarrassing us) into perspective?

Listen, I think we can all agree, global shaking of the Etch-A-Sketch on this level hopefully only happens once in a lifetime, and since no one can tell us for sure what the future will look like, our fears have an unbelievably limited job description these days:

Kill the virus. Do I have enough toilet paper?

And all the Karens of the world with their free-range outrage, doesn’t what you were on hold to complain to customer service about only one short month ago seem ridiculous?

People are scared, Karens.

People are dying. 

People are lonely.

People are worried and hungry and need more masks, and gowns and hand sanitizer! 

For the love of God, Karens, make yourselves useful, rage on that!

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Week four: Adaptability.

I’m waking up…happy. What. The. Fuck. 

Who am I to be happy amid all of this death, uncertainty, and sorrow? I go immediately to the place in my brain to shut that shit down when I get stopped by curiosity. How did this happen? Three weeks ago I was waking up terrified. Am I suddenly brave? uh, no.

You know why? Because human beings are incredible creatures. 

First, we freak out, cry, hide, or run. Then we adapt. 

Eventually, we fall into a “new normal” because it’s how our brains are wired and seriously, what other choice do we have? 

Because I’ve never witnessed a “disturbance of the force” of this magnitude I’ve also never seen this level of adaptability.
It’s mind blowing. It takes my breath away. 

The creatives are back to creating.
The inventors are hard at work, as are the big thinkers and the innovators.
Zoom is connecting us in ways that were incomprehensible six months ago. 
Easter services were streamed online. Andrea Bocelli sang Amazing Grace in an empty cathedral in Milan and we all saw it. Same with the Pope holding mass in St. Peter’s. 

At seven PM every evening entire cities gather at their windows to cheer doctors as they change shifts. 

Food is still being delivered to school kids in need.
Classes continue for most students online.

My husband’s Dermo was able to diagnose his hives over the phone via a video chat. 
My doctor sent me a similar link.

People are holding happy hours on Zoom. There are video yoga classes, video meditation, video AA and mental health care. The list goes on and on and on. 

Ben Affleck held a video poker game for charity. 
Chris Martin and John Legend to name a few, have held video concerts.
Birthday caravans drive neighborhood streets with kids and balloons and singing.

The farmers market and local bakery in my sister’s neighborhood are offering $25 and $40 boxes of veggies and baked goods a couple of times a week and donating the rest. 

Adaptation—the ability to change with new conditions. To change you’re expectations and pivot. 

It looks to me like we’re all starting to get the hang of this. 

Who knows what the following weeks will bring?

Carry on and stay well my friends,
xox

I love eleven-year-old girls. They smell like freshly opened boxes of crayons and cupcakes. The kind with sprinkles on top.
I love it when they’re named mid-twentieth-century names. The names our grandmothers, aunts, and librarians carried.

Helen lives on the route I walk with Ruby each morning. I’ve estimated her age and that of her little sister Abigail, by their smell and zest for life. Abigail smells like baby powder so she’s eight. I can’t explain how I know that——I just do.

Since quarantine began I don’t see them out and about anymore. But the signs of their zesty, lifieness, well, that’s EVERYWHERE. At some point in the past few days, the sisters, apparently armed with chalk, got out. And instead of the usual flowers and twirly-que-grafitti they usually leave, they jotted down a bunch of their most inspirational thoughts.

How did they know it was just what I, what we ALL needed?  

Because eleven-year-olds and their little sisters are wise. Like scary wise. It’s that time just before conformity and perfectionism kicks in, when sheer grace can shine through unobstructed. Lately, due to circumstances beyond my control, my own eleven-year-old self has started to show up more and more.

She’s named Janet, a fifties name if I’ve ever heard one, and she’s zesty, and feisty, and smells like hope.

I love my husband.
He is doing all the hard stuff. We’re all doing the hard stuff, but I’m watching him do the stuff that’s hard and well, that’s hard too—so I stopped. I stopped watching him and starting paying attention to my own hard stuff, which I’m sad to report didn’t make his stuff any easier but I felt better.

Even when his circus of hard visits itself upon me, I do my best to look away.

I have to.
I have my own hard stuff to attend to.
This morning, when I was in our bedroom meditating and he was already out in his office, having coffee and looking at his empty calender, I heard something unusual in our backyard. Naturally, I texted him to go and investigate because I’m just that lazy and husbands are made for that kind of hard stuff. They relish it. It isn’t even hard for them. It’s fun and who doesn’t need a little fun these days?

BTW: It was nothing. But I know it was something. Something was lurking. So there’s that to add to my hard stuff pile. Backyard lurking.

I love my friends. All of them. They are the reason I am who I am. so you can blame them. 

My BFF and I laugh our guts inside out on a daily basis and it SAVES me.
We’re doing big work in the world these days. Work we were born to do. Work I know I’ve trained for my whole life. Yet, some days the “hard” wins and I just want to disappear into a pile of marshmallow cream— or donuts.

This morning I went to the grocery store which used to be such a non-event but has now become a scene out of The Hunger Games. Masked and gloved and ready for some dystopian warfare, I walked the aisles of Trader Joe’s like a tribute. “May the odds be ever in your favor” I wanted to say to the hollow-eyed man lunging for the last ripe avocado.

When I got home, my husband left the hard stuff he was doing at his desk and helped me set up a grocery triage/sanitation station in the kitchen. After that, I took a Silkwood shower and began the rest of my day. But even my eleven-year-old has no zest left in her. And you know what? That’s okay. Because it has to be.

And last but never least, I love this community.

I see you and I FEEL you all sequestered in your homes, your big hearts beating in tandem. Wondering and waiting for the day when the world looks less scary. When we can leave our homes and hug a friend. And never take “normal” for granted again.

Carry on,
xox

Dearest ones,

I thought you might need this. It made me cry tears that were looking for an outlet to come up…and out and I know I’m not alone in that struggle.

Music heals. So does love, and I’m send both to all of you. This is my way of reaching over 110 countries around the globe while still practicing my social distancing.

Stay well, I’m thinking of you every day.

Carry on,
xox

Dame Helen Mirren who turned 70 this week.

This is from back in 2015 when I was a Huffington Post contributor and my very existence seemed to rest on whether or not they ran something I wrote. Maybe you can relate?

I look back on this and marvel at how much I’ve changed in five years. No longer at HuffPo, and writing mostly books and screenplays, I’ve developed what I guess you could call a ‘submission callus’. I write, submit and go on with my life because what I’ve had proven to me over and over and over again that God, or the Divine, or whoever runs this show—she has a plan—and the details and timing involved are none of my business.

Carry on,

xoxJB

Hi, My Lovelies!
Here is my latest Huffington Post essay on rocking the years after your fifth decade, AND, there’s a cool, humiliating, humanizing, little life lesson attached.

I know there are a few over-fifties in this group and you guys will appreciate this post. So you get your glasses while I find mine…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/turning-50_b_8282198.html

Anyway, the lesson was this: I gave this to the HuffPo over three weeks ago. Three. That’s like an eternity in dog years.

Anyway, cue the crickets…

I was well aware that the divorce pieces had gotten some legs, but come on! There’s more to my story than a divorce that happened thirty years ago—WAY more! Yet, the divorce pieces continued to run and my thought process went something like this:

Why didn’t they run the Over Fifty piece, it’s been a week? Clearly, they hated it and are rethinking their decision to make me a contributor. Shit. I’ll just lay low, fly under the radar.

Then…

It’s been two weeks, I can’t continue to just lay low, maybe they never received it. Should I risk seeming desperate and re-send it? I sent something else instead, an essay on unsolicited advice, you know, just to check the system for bugs (no bugs detected, the piece ran the next day).

Instead of making me feel better I was now convinced they HATED the Over Fifty piece. A plain and simple case of literary loathing. 
In my imagination, they all laughed over lunch about how stupid it was, “Can you believe that Janet Bertolus! She doesn’t know shit about being over fifty! Or writing for that matter!” Bahahahaha! (insert diabolical editor laughter here).

Fuck.

By week three I decided that for the sake of my mental health and to maintain any shred of self-confidence I had left (it was hiding somewhere in the vicinity of my big toe) —I had to just forget about it and go on with my life.

That was last week. Yesterday, they sent me the email that they were running the Over Fifty piece.

Oh, really…that piece? Remind me again which one? Oh, yes, hahahahaha (insert insipid, forced, and awkward laugh here) the one about being over fifty, Oh, well, I’d forgotten all about that one. (Insert somersault inducing eye roll here).

When I pulled up the link I literally gasped (and not for the reasons you think, like grammatical errors or blatant overuse of commas). There, at the end of the essay, was one beautiful photograph after another of spectacular women over fifty! What a great surprise!

Sometimes I can be incredibly batshit insecure.

They’ve obviously been busy the past three weeks compiling pictures to run in this section—and here I thought it was all about me.

Lesson #1789–Trust the process. At a certain point, it has nothing AT ALL to do with you.

I’m beginning to think this applies to every situation in life!

Carry on,
xox

Friends,
Around this time of year, missing those who are dearly departed can be absolutely heart-wrenching. A while back I read this little story and even if it proves to be some sort of made-up myth, I don’t care!—it warmed my heart. It’s about things changing, about looking for our loved ones “where they are”, not where they used to be. As energy transformed. Energy that’s on an epic adventure.

You may not recognize them at first.

Maybe they’ll show up as the delicate snowflake that gently touches your cheek with the first snow. Or dog kisses.

They can even show up as the kind act of a stranger.

Rest assured they are everywhere, all you have to do is look for them where they are. Everywhere.
With so much love,
xox Janet

When he was 40, the renowned Bohemian novelist and short story writer FRANZ KAFKA (1883–1924), who never married and had no children, was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll. She and Kafka looked for the doll without success. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again.

The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll that said, “Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I’m going to write to you about my adventures.”  

Thus began a story that continued to the end of Kafka’s life. 

When they would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures and conversations about the beloved doll, which the girl found enchanting. Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased. “This does not look at all like my doll,” she said. Kafka handed her another letter that explained, “My trips, they have changed me.” The girl hugged the new doll and took it home with her.  

A year later, Kafka died.

Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter, signed by Kafka, said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”

I❤️this.

 I have readers who request some of these holiday posts throughout the year. Even in July. From as far away as Brunei.
Seems we are all united by the one simple fact that family is family wherever you live.
And Americans have not cornered the market on dysfunction.

And neurosis speaks every language and crosses every border.

Oh, and by-the-way, that obnoxious cousin in the last sentence? Seems he may have had the gift of clairvoyance.
Carry on,
xox

Thanksgiving in the U.S. can be brutal. I blame it on social media and the unrealistic Norman Rockwellian expectations we place on each other. Unfortunately, what in our imagination looks warm and fuzzy, can quickly turn cold and prickly.

Even though everyone at the table is somehow related, dinner etiquette can morph into a kind of blood sport. Back-handed compliments and thinly veiled sarcasm abound and it’s just not Thanksgiving unless someone leaves the table in tears.

Add tons of carbohydrates, loads of judgment, a dash of shame, with a pumpkin pie chaser and voila – Hilarity ensues!

NO. No it doesn’t.

When you put together people who only find themselves sitting in the same room once a year there isn’t enough alcohol on the planet to keep you in that loving place.

It can turn into a real numb-fest.

The carbs numb you down.
So do the booze,
The sugar,
The football,
Even the ridged potato chips smothered with delicious sour cream onion dip. THAT is my numbing agent of choice.

Yes, you heard me. It all numbs us down, making us compliant enough to smile and remain civil so that everyone lives to see another holiday.

But let’s all try to remember, shall we, that almost everyone had the highest of intentions when they pulled up in the driveway.

And each year can be a fresh start. We talk all about gratitude that day, but I think it’s a good idea to start with acceptance.

When we can make acceptance the first course, it helps us all to remember that everyone is just doing the best they can and it makes the rest of the day play out differently. 

My family is loving, relatively sane, and really quite civil —now.
I think that’s because we’re all so damn old. The last time we served crazy for Thanksgiving was during the Reagan
Administration.

Gone are the caustic comments lobbed across the table by a perpetually inebriated uncle that he meant to be funny—but weren’t. And the long, squirmy, uncomfortable silences that followed.

Everyone, even Aunt Barb, who’s worn a wig for the past twenty-five years has stopped criticizing my hair. I’m fifty freakin’ seven Barb! It’s gray with some purple fringe—let it go!

My dad used to insist that we get dressed up. You know, jacket and tie, skirt and (gulp) pantyhose were mandatory. But since he’s been gone for a decade, elastic reigns supreme. These days style is sacrificed for comfort. Think sweatpants thinly disguised as dress pants.

To add insult to injury, this year, I intend to give up the fight—the Spanx stay at home.

Hey you! You picky eaters! Stop your complaining. If somethings not Non-GMO, gluten-free, free-range, antibiotic and hormone-free, vegetarian or vegan. Please, just be polite and eat what won’t kill you—or feed it to the dog and stick with the crudités.

So…let’s all practice forgiveness, humor, acceptance and gratitude; choosing to operate from the heart remembering the true intention of this day. Being with family.

Now take a deep breath, put on your best holiday smile, and listen with loving acceptance as your well-intentioned cousin explains to you all the reasons why Hillary will never be President.

Happy Thanksgiving,
xox