motivational

Sometimes, in this wonderfully bumpy journey called life; it isn’t enough to inhabit our own skin.
Or rather, it’s too much.

We need some help.

Help keeping our faith. Help pushing our worn out, sad, beat up butts back on the playing field. What we need is assistance from the greats that came before us, whose battle weary eyes have seen everything.

They know stuff. They be wise.

Maybe it was a favorite teacher that you admired or perhaps it was your grandfather, who took you under his wing. Firm but fair.

If they were in a jam- what would they do?

You could turn to them for guidance, perhaps, even for a brief moment, inhabit their skin, standing taller and looking at the situation with their accrued strength, wisdom and grace.

At the Wednesday women’s group, our conversation led to the passing, that day, of Maya Angelou. We were all deeply affected. More than we would have expected. It just felt to us, that Maya Angelou would always share the planet with us….breathe the same air.

It’s been a weepy kind of week, so with her loss, the tears that welled up felt justified in their appearance. Much more so than all the other mundane shit we’d all been crying about. 

Some of us had read her books, others were just familiar with her poetry.
What we all agreed on, was her stature as she walked through this amazing life.
Not only the fact that she was six feet tall; but her grace and dignity, her sense of humor, her courage and most of all; her God-damn gravitas.

I’m sure her BS detector was especially fine tuned.
She didn’t suffer fools and I bet she didn’t take ANY shit….from ANYBODY.

I’m talkin’ to you, Oprah.

Sure, she made mistakes, but she learned, wrote about them, and was the better for it.

We all decided that when life threw us a curveball, or when we were in an emotional tornado, and needed to feel empowered; we’d ask ourselves: 
What Would Maya Do?

It made us laugh-and then we got quiet.
I think it’s now our secret password.
Shhhhhhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.

I have a small collection of rose quartz hearts from our winter solstice meditations, so this morning, I decided to write What Would Maya Do? on one side and her quote “I Am Enough” on the other.
I’m going to give them to my women to carry around as a reminder, you know, in case they forget the password. It looks like the marker is going to wear off immediately. Maybe reaching into a pocket and feeling that little heart shaped stone will be enough to remember.

Nope.

She wouldn’t fuck around.

I have to find a more permanent marker that stays on stone.
I know that’s what Maya would do.

Who do you have as your “go to” person? Who would you ask?

Xox

Try This!

I did lots of crazy shit back in the day.
I held crystal classes at my house and Sunday’s, once a month at my duplex I’d have someone in each room with a different spiritual expertise. You could get your tarot cards read, a reiki treatment, or an astrology reading.
Some people got the whole shebang.

It was pot luck, with an old bookshelf in the living room that held all of my self-help and spiritual books. Hundreds of them. Remember, I’m a seeker.

The agreement was: you could take one if you brought one to trade, although I never held anyone to it if they REALLY wanted a book, without the trade.
Bad karma.

One of the many hundreds of classes and seminars I took was a left hand writing class to help develop intuition.

Here’s a simple, fun, and effective exercise to try:

With your dominant hand, write out the this phrase on a piece of paper ( no typing allowed)

If I were an animal, what animal would I be?

Close your eyes for a sec, take a breath, and write your answer with the same hand.

Now put the pen the other, non-dominant hand, look at the question, close your eyes again for a few seconds and scrawl your answer with your two and half-year old writing. Don’t worry about it, very few people can write legibly with both hands.

I bet the answers are different.

Your dominant hand (doesn’t matter if it’s right or left) is tied to the rational, everyday mind. The one that helps you function in the world. It keeps you “normal” and preserves the status quo.

Most people write down horse, dog or cat. That’s okay. These animal have qualities to which you aspire. How you would like to see yourself in the world.

Your non-dominant hand is so much more interesting.
It gets in touch with your intuitive, creative subconscious. We don’t ask it to speak up very often, if at all, so it can get pretty chatty if you let it. But for the purpose of this exercise, keep focused on the question.

The answer from your non-dominant hand is how your REALLY see yourself. The character traits you truly process.

With my right hand I wrote: cat. Aloof, finicky, regal.
That’s what I aspire to.

With my left hand I got spider. (What!?) makes a beautiful environment wherever it goes, creative, lives on the FLY (badam bum).

I LOVE this answer. It’s so much more ME.

What did I tell ya? Much more interesting.

This was the gateway exercise from the course I took to help me access my intuition. I started asking questions like a madman. I was obsessed.

You should try it. Ask: What do I need to know? Or
What should I do about ______?

Anything really.

Like I said, although it’s tough to read at times, it can be pretty chatty, funny and sometimes it rhymes.

Try the animal exercise first. Then tell me what you got.
I’d love to hear about it!
No judging, I promise.

Xox

“When you learn, teach. When you get, give”
~Maya Angelou

I couldn’t let the day pass without paying homage to the Mother Earth, Goddess, poet, teacher, Maya Angelou.

They are paying tribute, as well they should, on all the media outlets today.
In the car on NPR this morning, I heard a hysterical story, told in her own deep, melodic voice, about waiting in an airport bar for her mother to arrive, and it made me tear up.
You could hear in her voice that the story tickled her.
Ah……that voice. Unmistakable. A real gift to her poetry, and the world.

I remember reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings when I was about fifteen or sixteen. It resonated not because I was a young black girl growing up in the Deep South, because that could not have been further from the truth, but because it spoke of freedom and self expression, two things I was desperately seeking in those days.

I just went to look at my dog eared, water stained copy and alas, I must have leant it to a friend.
Damn me and my book lending!

I collect quotes, as demonstrated by the Quotes page on this
blog.
Every wise thing ever said, I tend to attribute to Maya Angelou.

I had a friend (who has since passed) who knew the source of
pretty much every quote. She would joke that if she did get stumped, she’d attribute them to either Mark Twain or Maya Angelou and people wouldn’t blink.

The quote at the top about teaching, is one that comes to mind often, and it gave me permission to start the women’s group. When you learn, teach.
Thank you Maya Angelou.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
This one gave me permission to write this blog, so you have Maya Angelou to thank….or blame.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
One of my spiritual teachers would remind me, that when we die, we watch a movie style life review. There is no sound, just feeling. We have to re-live how we made others feel in every interaction of our life.
That’s some sobering shit, huh?

“You are enough.”
This one’s like a haiku. Enough said.

“When someone tells you or shows you who they are; believe them the first time.”
OMG. This was my mantra in the dating world. I should have had that tattooed to my forehead. (Thank God I re-thought that.)
I was a serial benifitofthedoubt giver. But I eventually learned. When a cute guy, at a party, drink in hand, would ask me out and then quip “I’m not really the monogamous type, or I’m a bad boy, or you’re really not my type”, I learned, from this quote, to run for the hills.

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
This quote is why I’m married. At forty two, love was so freakin tired from the decathlon that my hope was putting it through, it walked through a wall, and delivered to me….my husband. Whew!

Here are some of my other favorite pearls of wisdom from that greatest of life’s teachers, Maya Angelou:

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love.”

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

”I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

I’ll end with this one. So wise, so profound and so true.

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

God’s speed Maya (may I call you Maya?)

Xox

Show of hands, How many of you are doing something else while you’re trying to read this?

The operative word being: TRYING.

Are you talking on the phone? Eating? Tying Timmy’s shoe? Texting? I only ask, because I’m one of you. We are the chronically overextended. The magicians of mult-tasking. We haven’t met a list, task or scheduling challenge whose ass we couldn’t kick.

If you want something done ask a busy person to do it.
~Lucille Ball~

Oh, Lucy, I do love you, and I’ve quoted this MANY times. It may be how I’ve lived most of my life, but it’s an old, dying paradigm.

It is true, that busy people like you and me, we can take on what others have shrugged off, no problemo.

We’ll write that email, while texting, syncing our calendars, peeing and getting dressed, but something will have to give. It may not be accuracy, although studies have shown that it does tend to be a casualty. Case in point: my shirt will be buttoned all wrong, and I’ll send a flirty text, in error, to the last person I texted…..my brother. Inaccurate And inappropriate.

What WILL be lost is: Depth of Connection.

Do you even care? I think you do. I sure as hell do.

We are partially tuned into everything while never being completely tuned into anything.

Not only are we looking down at our devices instead of making eye contact during a conversation, our communication can be so freaking dry.

We aren’t moved by a friend’s loss because it never travels from our ears to our hearts.

We write a quick Happy Birthday on a friend’s Facebook wall, often forgetting to send the card or call. Shame on us.

The quick email or text answer we shoot off after only half reading the question, can come across as impersonal and detached, because we didn’t take the time to write mindfully and thoughtfully. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve misconstrued a text ( meaning got my feelings hurt, or got pissed) for lack of a tone of voice. 

Oh hey, I have an idea. Maybe a phone call would have been better, but…shit. We don’t have the time, and we would have to actually engage emotionally.

It is so much easier to send a sad face emoticon 🙁

My husband has this nifty trick. When the doorbell rings at dinner time, which is the bewitching hour for solicitors, he answers the door with his phone to his ear, pretending to be deep in conversation. That sends the universal, non-verbal signal: “Can’t you see I’m busy? Fuck off!”
It works every time. He’s back at the table in two seconds flat.

I know people that enter EVERY room like that. Cellphone up to the ear, chatting away, while shaking hands and air kissing their way through the party, meeting or lunch date. Meanwhile, all of us on the receiving end are wading in the shallows of their connection. To me it always feels like that same F-You message my husband so brilliantly employs.

I, for one pledge to try harder, to be smarter about making that deeper connection. Strive for some substance over fluff. Who’s with me?

And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling “This is important! And This is important! And This is important!
And each day it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, “NO. This is what’s important.”
~Iain Thomas~ Excerpt from Thrive by Arianna Huffington

Do you catch yourself walking and texting or entering a shop while you’re on the phone?
Have you been caught on the receiving end of the shallow connection?
I’d love some feedback on this. Tell me in the comments below!

Xox

Mary Widdicks is an incredibly hilarious, very successful fellow blogger who’s topics are family and kids. She has generously agreed to allow me to guest blog. How cool is that? Please check it out. Thanks Mary!

Xox Janet

http://outmannedmommy.com/2014/05/26/motherhood-calling/

Mary Widdicks is a 31 year old mother of two boys. Once a cognitive psychologist, she now spends her time trying (and failing!) to outsmart her kids. She is the writer behind the humorous parenting blog Outmanned (www.outmannedmommy.com), where she turns for entertainment when she can’t take any more fart jokes or belching contests. Her work has been featured on parenting sites such as Mamapedia, Mamalode, and Scary Mommy. She is a regular contributor on BLUNTmoms, has been honored as a 2014 Voice of the Year by BlogHer, and is currently a finalist for The Indie Chicks’ Badass Blogger of the Year award.

*This is a reprise of five posts I did starting in October 2013. We all have our shit, and sometimes that shit can facilitate a huge life change. I’ve formatted them back to back, to be able to read them all at the same time. It’s longer than usual, but hey, it’s a three-day weekend. Cheers!

Epic Fail or Epic Win?

I owned a business.

It was several years ago now.
I left a good job that I had been at for close to 20 yrs.
I put all my proverbial eggs in that one basket.
My money, my creative juices, my blood sweat and tears.

I was excited at the prospect of being my own boss,of displaying my wild ideas for all the world to see,
using the skills I had acquired throughout my life.
I felt vulnerable, really vulnerable for the first time in my life.
I was putting myself out there on the big stage, with no excuses.
This was going to be a reflection of me, curated by moi, everything I loved, cared about, and thought was cool.

This was it! I was 50 and this was the beginning of my beautiful “second act”.

The first year was awesome!
It was tons of hard work with no days off, but I was okay with that.
This was my baby.
It needed me to nurture it, to make it my only focus, and all was well.

The following year was 2008.
Things got dicey.
There was a feeling of dread in the air, like everyone was silently waiting for the shoe to drop, holding their breath.
Money slowed waaaaaay down.

Then it was 2009 and the entire closet of shoes dropped.
It was loud!
The bottom seemed to fall out of everything.
People were scared. Fear reined supreme.
I did my best to stay out of the fray, knowing that the people who had money would still stop by and shop; but they confided that even they didn’t want to be seen walking out with bags of new purchases.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen in all my years in retail.

Everything that was creative and wonderful and fun was gone.
Replaced by unpaid bills, days of not a single customer, and sleepless nights with me wondering how I got myself into this! How had I taken such an abundant, wonderful life and created this perfect shit storm?

Then in September of that year God took pity on me.
She heard my prayers.
But God has a wicked sense of humor, and a flair for the dramatic.
She sent a flood. A random, urban flood to sneak up in the middle of the night and wipe out my store.
I’m serious.
The fireman at the scene told me he had never seen water make a hard right turn. But it did, and it all collected around and inside my sweet little store.
The one that was trying so hard, but just couldn’t stay afloat ( sorry for the pun).

This is the first time I asked myself the question:
Epic fail? Or epic win?
What do you think so far?
Janet
(To be continued)…

Epic Fail or Epic Win Part II

Sometimes we have no idea what the Universe has in store for us.
We can have our sails aimed into the wind, sailing full speed ahead, when in an instant, lightening will strike, and a giant rogue wave will capsize us and shred our boat.

We think we have it all figured out. I KNOW I did!

But life took me by the shoulders and spun me around, just like my mom did when I was a kid and told her I had washed my face, when it was evident by the smear of chocolate, that I needed to be sent back to the bathroom.
It shook me a little and sent me packing….in the exact opposite direction of where I thought I should be going.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I can tolerate, even appreciate, a little course correction at times.
But I don’t like drama, and I like to think I don’t draw it in.
This was something so ridiculously out of left field, 
It was a total loss of my business. Overnight.

I had plenty of insurance, so I wasn’t worried……in the beginning.

With the other stores having 12 inches of water damage and my store having 4 feet, recovery mode looked different for me.
It wasn’t clothes and shoes that had gotten wet, or the cosmetic damage the restaurants sustained.
I had furniture and art, lamps and leather chairs and stuff that just shouldn’t sit immersed in four feet of filthy water for six hours.

I heard everyone saying: “at least three weeks to get back up and running.”
That seemed like a long time to be closed up.
Did I even want to get back up and running? Things really hadn’t felt like they were running at that point, more like a slow stroll, or a pathetic commando crawl.
Was it a possibility? Would I even be able to repair the inventory?
Lord knows, I didn’t have the capital to buy more.
That’s when the first of two miracles occurred.
I even knew they were miracles at the time, THATS how “In your face” they were.
(To be continued)…

Epic Fail or Epic Win (Miracle I)

The dictionary defines a miracle as:
A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.

I’ll agree with that.

A miracle also makes your hair stand on end and your heart beat faster.
Or a least it does that to me.

The first miracle occurred not too long after I arrived at my store to find it ankle-deep in a slimy, sludgy, mud, which was the lovely parting gift the flood had left me.
I was walking around in circles with my mouth hanging open. Oh…I mean I was professionally assessing the damage.
You really do go numb, like the people say on the evening news when something awful has just happened. You CANNOT believe it is happening to YOU.

The file cabinet behind my desk had filled with water, so I was peeling apart my insurance papers to find the number to call, to get the adjuster out quickly.
This was 6:30 am the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Good luck with that!

When I did finally reach him, he said he was away for the weekend and he would get back to me Tuesday, like my toilet had overflowed or something.
I told him to watch the news. News Crews from every channel were crawling all over the place, waiting to get in.
Now, the fire department had caution taped the shit out of the entire block,and they were doing some cleanup on the street, so we had to prove we were the owners to even be allowed near the place.

I was inside for about 30 minutes when a scruffy, middle-aged man walks into the store and starts looking around. He’s shaking his head and doing that tisking sound.
I’m on my phone, looking for a flood cleanup company, but I ask him what he’s doing. He keeps looking around with his hands on his hips. Then I ask him nicely to “get the hell out”.
As he’s leaving he mumbles something like “your insurance is never going to understand and pay you for your this stuff, it’s too esoteric”. My husband and I both do a double take, and at the same time yell out: “hey, what did you say”?
He explains: They’ll deny the claim because flooding is subjective, and even if they don’t, they won’t pay. Pennies on the dollar….maybe. He shakes his head and says I’m in for a long fight. He recommends I call a Public Adjuster. “They will take over everything and deal with the insurance company. For a fee of course.”
What?! It’s now after seven and I’m starting to feel panicky.
I’ve never even heard of such a person, and I ask him for a recommendation. He used a certain company during his own personal calamity and gives me the name, but he says there are several, and I should call a few.
I’m writing furiously on some wet muddy paper, and when I look up……he’s gone.
I run out to get him so he can tell the other merchants what he just told me.
He’s nowhere to be found. When I describe him to the fireman they have no idea who I’m talking about. Several friends I’d called to come get a load of what’d happened, had to call my cell for me to come get them past the security line; but somehow this guy showed up and gave me the information I needed.
I enie , meenie, miney, moe’d and picked one company out of the three names I found.

Gary was there in an hour, fired the cleanup crew that was walking around clueless and overwhelmed, hired some pros that specialize in art and antiques and got the whole thing under control. He was professional and comforting, and knew exactly what to do. Ten percent sounded like a bargain, I would have paid him a million dollars at that point.

For the first time that day I took a deep breath, and started to cry.

Oh, and my scruffy, middle-aged angel? He was exactly right! When the adjuster came on WEDNESDAY!!….he denied the claim. He said “flooding” was open to interpretation, and I didn’t have flood insurance anyway. But that was okay, I had Gary.
We were in for a long fight.
(To be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win , Miracle II

The second miracle occurred during cleanup.

We were about four days in.
The mud had been cleaned up, but the floors, walls, windows and merchandise, were still covered with a layer of smelly slime.
We covered our faces with those cloth masks, and plugged on.
Oh yeah, did I mention it was over 100 degrees?

This was the day I was told that the walls of the building had to be cut open up to 5 feet in order to air them out and avoid the dreaded black mold. I don’t know why that hit me so hard, but it did, and I went outside and sat on some hard concrete steps across the way and cried while the sawzall carved up my beautiful little store.
This felt serious…….and sad.

Gary came outside and put his arm around me, and we sat silently watching the carnage. When he finally did say something, he asked me if I wanted to go in and box up the things in the bathroom storage closets that hadn’t gotten wet.
Since the walls would be wide open, someone could potentially get inside and help themselves to whatever was left behind, so he suggested I go take a look. I think he also just wanted to keep me busy, so he didn’t have to look at my big, sad, soggy face.

The bathroom was pitch dark as I poked around in the back closets with a box and a garbage bag, waiting for my eyes to adjust. It felt weird to me to be salvaging windex, paper towels and toilet cleaner. It occurred to me I could just leave it for the salvage crew. I was numb, just going through the motions, trying not to feel too much. Tucked in the back was a box of Tampons with the top torn off. All my good customers knew it was there. I would occasionally bring a handful from home to refill it. All the women reading this know what I’m talking about. There were several left in the box, so I tucked them into my pocket, and tossed the empty box in the garbage bag. But it wasn’t empty….There was something heavy that was sliding around the bottom of the box as it hurtled toward the trash. I reached inside and pulled out the expensive watch my husband had given me for our 5th anniversary.

I stood there in the dark, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I started to shake, then I started to scream!
That watch had been “missing” for about 2 years.
My husband had just recently mentioned how disappointed he was that I hadn’t yet found it. We both knew I wasn’t someone who lost my jewelry. In my previous life as a jeweler, I had worn the watch a lot, but since opening the store, it seemed too fancy, and I only took it out of the safe for special occasions. I NEVER wore it to the store.
One day I had gone into the safe to get it……and it was gone.

Did I mention I found the watch on September 9th?
Our anniversary is September 9th.
The missing watch had mysteriously appeared after 2 years, on a sad but significant day, in an impossible place.
It was a sign. Don’t lose hope. Miracles occur.
I couldn’t call my husband fast enough.
(to be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win Part III

The claim was denied. Then it wasn’t.

Then the insurance wanted to pay me $10,000 to settle.
They sent a letter basically patting me on the head and sending their best wishes on my “fresh new start”.
I was advised not to settle, and I didn’t.

The 100-year-old pipe that ruptured was called a “trunk line”.
It is 6ft in diameter and carries water from the reservoir into the city. That night, I was told by a DWP official, 30,000 gallons a MINUTE had burst through the asphalt and formed a flash flood that took out my store. It took them over 6 hours to get the water off. DWP said to have my lawyer file the paperwork, and they would get back to me in a year and a half.
After all, they were busy, they were having water-main breaks almost daily. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months.

Now, I know life isn’t fair.

I once had a snarky t-shirt that said something to that effect.
But I did everything right, and I trusted the system. I carried the big insurance policy, with the giant monthly premium, I kept meticulous records. I had every receipt. My books were completely transparent, But somehow that wasn’t good enough.
Somewhere the tables had turned and I was the villain in this drama. They asserted that I somehow had a direct line to God, and had arranged for a flood to come and wipeout my store because business wasn’t great.
It was 2009. Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual Bank and Circuit City were among the over 200 big businesses to file bankruptcy that year.
They could have just asked God for a flood and saved themselves a lot of trouble.

After 18 months it was clear, I had to lawyer up to get any real money from the insurance company AND DWP. Oh yeah, and a third one because my landlord was suing me for every dime of back rent.

Realization number one:
Well, life isn’t fair is number one, so…
Realization number two:
Insurance companies will do ANYTHING …NOT. to. pay. you.
They will drag their feet, and lie and be just awful. And that surprised me.
Realization number three:
You still have to pay all the bills on a flooded, cut up, closed business.
No slack…no kidding. That STILL gives me a stomach ache.
Realization number four:
Next time ask God for a fire.

It’s feeling pretty Epic Fail right about now, isn’t it?
(To be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win Part IV

Let’s get to the Win, Right?
I’m gonna tie it all up now, in a nice neat bow.
Readers digest version. Get the Kleenex.
Kidding….sort of.

I sued and was sued every which way you can imagine.
And it is really not my nature. I’m not the litigious type.
I’m the artsy fartsy type. I’m a lover not a fighter.
I was a fish out of water…swimming with sharks.
I found myself wanting to blurt out in one of the numerous depositions, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Some of the people who worked with me were great. Gary and his company were great. Others were not. Let’s just leave it at that. You know who you are.

There were no more miracles.
God had shown off early in the game, with two back to back.
I was lucky to have those.
But the quota had been met, and now, she was uncharacteristically quiet.
She must have been working on more important matters…..Like world peace.

So I prayed for an answer. Why me? Silence
I prayed for relief. There was none.
I felt ignored and alone.
When I felt emotion at all, I felt rage. 
Now I realize she WAS there, she just wanted me to go inside.
To pull up my big girl pants, and find my own courage there.

After three years I eventually recouped 80% of the COST of my merchandise. Then the lawyers took 40% of that.
I owe everybody in the world money, and I’m slowly paying them off. I probably owe you some money…….get in line!

I’m normally an optimistic, happy person. My sister used to ask me “who blew sunshine up my ass.” This had turned me into a sad sack. I became super serious, with absolutely no sense of humor, (Which really COULD have saved me). 

I had absolutely NO coping skills whatsoever.

Some people handle adversity with strength, wisdom and grace. Yeah. That was NOT me. I wanted to go live under a bridge with the trolls. I hated answering the phone or looking at mail. It always seemed to be bad news.

But…I’m SO lucky!
Honestly!
I always had a roof over my head and plenty of chocolate to eat. My husband never left me, which was a miracle, given my disposition and the fact that 2009 sucked for his profession, construction, as well. We made it through with our deep un breakable love. Oh, come on! Let’s get real! That and copious amounts of wine.
My friends and family have also been there for me, helping me feel like I wasn’t a total deadbeat. “Look, you took a shot at your dream” they said.
Secretly grateful they still had their day jobs.

The bottom line is this:
I know things always work out for me.
I WILL pull a rabbit out of my hat!
This transition feels big, and beautiful and perfect.
So I’m now looking forward to the next chapter,
And I’m starting to believe that the best times of my life are ahead of me.
I’d say that’s an Epic Win!
(To be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win Finale
My reasons for sharing all of this are two fold.
The first is purely selfish I must admit. I still have a dark pocket of pain around this situation that still holds me down.
And I’m finally done.
I’m done with the shame.
I’m done being scared.
I’m done feeling unworthy.
I’m done not trusting myself because I think I led ME astray.
I’m done punishing myself 
And I’m done being diminished.
And by that I mean living a small and non abundant life, because I’ve listened to the peanut gallery, I think that’s what I deserve.

Here’s where the Epic Win comes in.
I NEVER would be writing this blog had things stayed the same. This energy has been wanting a conduit for 20 years and I wouldn’t allow it. Not as a jeweler, because I felt safe, and not as a store owner because I never had a minute.
But the real reason was: I wasn’t in enough pain.
There! I said it!
The pain made me do it, and it’s been such a gift.

So now that I’ve found this outlet of writing, 
I wanted to share my feelings at the same time I was processing 
all the curious things that happened around the loss of my business. It has been cathartic…and extremely uncomfortable.
Re living these events can bring me right back to the smells,
the sounds, and most importantly now, now that I’m finally able to really process them……the feelings.
I was in “get it done” mode, so I stayed pretty numb.
I’m done with numb!
When you numb the sadness you also numb the joy.
That is a price I’m no longer willing to pay.
I’m not certain if it was just that it’s the same time of year, 
or that four years have passed, Wow, It can seem like a million or the day before yesterday.

Maybe it’s my newfound commitment to vulnerability,
But I felt compelled to share this story via my blog.
What I know for SURE is we all experience a wake up call in our lives. It can be disguised as an accident or an illness, A panic attack at three in the morning, a divorce or break up, the death of a loved one or another profound loss.
It leaves us open and raw and ready for change.

So there you go!
That’s the second reason.
Everyone’s life looks so shiny and perfect from the outside.
Mine does. But here’s the thing, we all have our shit.
Really. You are not alone. Here’s MY expensive, crazy, messy, miracle inducing, Wake up call.
It’s changed me in ways I can’t even express.
But it didn’t kill me.
I’m a grown up now, my eyes are WIDE OPEN, and that’s a good thing. I feel endless empathy for people going through their hardships. “Been there, done that” big hugs. I’m kinder, more compassionate and thoughtful. I’m over pretending things are great when they’re not, so I’m an open book, (much to my husband’s chagrin, because he’s still pretty private).
I’m reaching out and helping people, at least that’s my intention.
Thanks for indulging me.

Now tell me your Epic Fail/Epic Win stories.

Xox 

* I’ve always loved this quote…Happy Sunday!

“An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. ‘A fight is going on inside me,’ he said to the boy. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you — and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
~ Cherokee legend
Excerpt from the book Thrive by Arianna Huffington

Intimacy
I invite you to read the word “intimacy” as “into-me-see.” We create intimacy with others when we allow ourselves to be seen.
~Christine Hassler~

Who sees you clearer than your friends?
Not the acquaintance at the office, or the barista who makes your coffee every morning.
No.
Your REAL friends. The ones that you can’t even remember not knowing.
The ones that GET you. I mean get you, in the deepest, most soul stirring, tear jerking way.
They know every hair style you’ve ever had, and they told you you rocked it.
But, they wouldn’t let you leave the house in those God awful green pants.
They are brave enough to tell you he’s not good enough for you, and almost more thrilled than you are, when you find someone who is.
You’ve had dinners where you’ve talked until the candles burned down, and New Years Eve’s that were hilarious disasters and days on vacation that were magical. Those experiences are etched with a permanent groove in your brain and make you weepy when you replay them.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
~anonymous~

They are on your speed dial (now speed text) for those three in the morning, pillow punching, holy shit, “will you just talk to me until I fall asleep” nights.
You’ve shared clothes, bathing suits, a toothbrush in a pinch, recipes, even candid details of the fight you had with your mom on her birthday, or the bad sex you had with that someone who you thought was “the one.”
You hold hands at funerals, weddings, baby showers and the Sunday farmers market.
When they lost the baby, you were there, to hold their hand. When they had the baby, you were in the room, to hold their legs.
When you’re an ass, they feed you, because they know how you get when you’re hungry.
When they hurt, you hurt.
When you laugh, they laugh louder, and longer, which makes wine come out your nose.

In-to-me-see is earned.
It is doled out judiciously. We are not transparent to the casual observer. Not to the blabber mouth or the revealer of secrets.
This kind of friendship, this kind of bond feels ancient and epic, almost older than time.
We carry it wherever we go, even into death.

Cherish these people. Hold them close to your heart, no matter how far away they may be. They’ll feel it. Then consider yourselves lucky to be accepted and loved that way.

Xox

When I was working in Estate Jewelry, we had a bench jeweler, David, on the premises.
He had a set up, kind of like the glass blowers have at Disneyland. He worked in a veritable fishbowl. There he sat, in a glass enclosed booth at the front of the store, working his alchemy with his torch and tools.
When people would drop off their repairs, especially a badly damaged engagement ring, David would put his other jobs aside and get to work. The woman would then press her nose against the glass to watch. I would walk over, put my arm around her shoulder and gently shepherd her away. 

“Oh, you don’t want to watch this.” I’d whisper. “Go get a coffee and come back in an hour or so. Better yet, I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
She’d kinda look at me funny, wondering if I was serious, and then, when she saw the look on my face, she’d hand me her number, grab her purse and go.
I knew that while she was gone, all hell was going to break loose on that bench.

I was being kind. I was sparing her the horror that watching the process would undoubtedly cause her. I also didn’t want to pick tiny pieces of broken glass out of David’s hair, after she jumped through the window to strangle him.

What I knew, from years of observation was this: During the process of fixing, rebuilding and restoring the ring to its former glory, it was going to get ugly. And by ugly, I mean the catastrophic results of the biggest shit storm you’ve ever seen. There would be broken bits and diamonds scattered everywhere, as he deconstructed it. At a certain point it wouldn’t even resemble anything close to a ring. It would look like a pile of platinum scrap with some shiny bits. It used to horrify me, in the beginning, when I would walk over to check on the progress of a repair. I’d gasp and stop dead in my tracks with my hand over my mouth and tears in my eyes.
And I was a jeweler.
No one should have to watch that kind of carnage. It’s cruel.
I wanted to save clients THAT experience.
David explained that in order to build it stronger, he had to tear it down and basically start over. Not just anyone could get away with that. He was a sorcerer, my Merlin, he preformed feats of incredible alchemy and he was a master at antique jewelry restoration. When I eventually handed the ring back to the client, it looked good as new, actually….better.

No civilian is allowed to watch a surgery, that is reserved for other doctors, and the reason is the same. During the “putting you back together” portion of the procedure, there are blood and guts all over the place. It doesn’t look like the patient could possibly live.
It appears that there are too many guts OUT of the body, to go back IN the body. Too much blood loss to survive. We would puke, and then faint in our own puke; so they save us the stress and humiliation and hand us back a cleaned up, sewed up, repaired, person…… Better than new.

I was having lunch today with a friend, and I told her I feel as if lately, I’m at the jewelers bench or on operating table, and I’m watching the carnage of the rebuilding of my life. It’s in the ugly stage of reconstruction, with bits lying everywhere. It looks NOTHING like my former life. And I’m not being a pro about it today.
I’m the novice, gasping with my hand over my mouth and tears in my eyes, in complete terror.
I know better.
I would tell YOU to avert your eyes.
I need to look away.
It seems like a shit pile right now, but it will be good as new soon……..probably better.
I AM a pro and experience is on my side.

*What happens if you have something left over after you put all the guts back into someone? Is it like the two extra screws that remain behind, and don’t seem to belong anywhere?
Just wondering…….carry on.

Xox 

Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.
~Rumi~

OMG. THAT is my new mantra. What if we all did that?
We’d walk differently in the world. I know I would.

Like a card shark at the Blackjack table. If he knew the game, the deck, was rigged in his favor, he could just sit back, and relax. No more counting cards, no more strategy running though his mind……..no more fear of losing. He’d know, that no matter how it seemed, as the cards were dealt, that the game was rigged in his favor, and he’d bet…….BIG.

There would be an ease, a facility to things. Life would have a lovely flow.
We wouldn’t worry about each day so much, or how shitty things may appear in the moment. “It’ll all figure itself out”. We’d say “you know, it’s rigged in my favor.”
“Well, that’s funny, because life is rigged in my favor too” the person next to us would reply. And that would be okay. Because there’s enough good, enough money, enough love to go around. No one else has to lose when we win.

Using the Blackjack analogy, the player would win big, but the house could cover the bet. It makes money on food and shows and liquor and such.
There’s enough. There’s always enough.

So live life like its rigged in your favor. Bet BIG on your success.

Question: Would that take the fun out of the game (life) if you knew it was rigged for you to win? Interesting huh? Maybe the challenge isn’t so bad. I’d really love to know what you think, tell me!

Xox