patience

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

Hi All,
I posted this on Insta this weekend (if you’re not following me, shame on you!) and when I looked at the comments, everyone pretty much agreed that this was a metaphor for life masquerading as story about wisteria.
Take a look and see if you agree.
xox

This never gets old and I’ll never take it for granted since it’s been close to twenty years in the making.

When I bought this house, a friend gifted me with two potted wisteria plants that bloomed anemically for a couple of years.
“Put them in the ground,” someone suggested after getting tired of hearing me complain. “You’ll have better results.”

So I did, put them in the ground; the results unfortunately were…meh..unimpressive.

Then, when we remodeled, I was forced to pull them up and imprison them back in pots for almost two years where they lived unhappily—just barely. If plants can live on neglect and vengeance—that’s what they did.

My dream was to have them frame our newly built outside living room or ‘casbah’, as we call it, but by this point they’d been through the ringer so let’s just say my expectations were…low.

For over seven years they held a grudge, refusing to bloom. People advised me to not to give up hope.
“They’re in shock,” they said, “They’ll bloom eventually, once they feel secure. Be patient.”
Since patience is not a virtue I possess, I forced myself to forget they were a flowering vine and was just grateful for the shade they provided every summer. 

Then, when I least expected it—THIS started to happen and I have to tell you, it’s better than anything I ever expected!
And I can’t even about the fragrance—it’s intoxicating!

Mother Nature. She can be a deliverer of life lessons…a bit of a bitch…and a show off!

Carry on,
xox JB

Listening and talking to the people around me recently and also, living my own damn life, it is evident we are ALL experiencing this to one degree or another. I love and agree with everything Tosha wrote and of course, I added a few words of my own in (parenthesis).
Carry on,
xox

THE PRE-ECLIPSE SENSE of UTTER SUSPENSION ~ by Tosha Silver

I wonder how many of you are feeling this?
It can be common as we go into the March month of eclipses (the first one on March 8 and the second one March 23). In the 30 days before big turning-point eclipses (i.e. NOW) an eerie ‘anticipatory stillness’ can arrive.

You sense something is around the bend, but it’s not Time yet.
The month before has much to do with shedding, releasing, saying No to those things you know in your heart are neither needed nor right. Letting go of what’s been outgrown, sometimes without ANY idea what will ‘replace’ it. (Deciding what from your past will come along with you into your future — Booyah!)

Decluttering your spaces and your psyche.
(Otherwise known in my house as ‘Hazeling’).
You’re literally making room for the next Divine plan to arrive. You may even feel like NOTHING (Zero, zilch, nada), is happening in your life at all and you’ve come to a total dead end. But it’s like that quote, don’t put a period where god only has a comma or maybe a semi-colon:)

If you’re feeling any of these things, don’t worry! It can very much be the clearing of the ‘container’ before the re-filling which often comes either with the eclipses themselves or in the month or two after. (Not to get too scatological on you but “clearing’ can also look like allergies, a bad cold or a stubborn cough, diarrhea, puking and in other breaking news: dumping the chump).

Even the I Ching has a similar line about the cauldron that must be turned over to be cleaned of ‘the old’ before used again for the new meal.(But leave a little bacon grease, just sayin’).

I am feeling all this so STRONGLY myself. (Ditto kiddo)
All I can say is I just feel so damn grateful to know to sit tight, clear out, get needed rest, keep releasing and allowing, and open to the what’s still unseen but arriving. Actually, often in the month before eclipses, you spend a lot more time saying No than Yes! (You’re actually saying YES to saying No! What?)

The Yes comes later :))

Anyone else relate?

‪#‎ToshaSilver‬ ‪#‎LivingOO‬
http://toshasilver.com

*This is a post from last spring but it still applies. Happy Sunday!
xox

“I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary, however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root, pati, which means “to endure.” Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It’s a vibrant, contemplative work. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer. It involves listening to disinherited voices within, facing the wounded holes in the soul, the denied and undiscovered, the places one lives false. It means struggling with the vision of who we really are in God and molding the courage to live that vision.”
~Sue Monk Kidd~

Sue Monk Kidd was on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday a couple of weeks ago. I’ve loved her for almost 25 years.

Her most famous book is “The Secret Life of Bees”, but I became familiar with her after reading her spiritual memoir “When The Heart Waits” in 1990. That was a time when not too many people were brave enough to write about their spiritual journey of transformation. My copy is water stained from reading in the bath, highlighted with a yellow marker, has my insights written in the margins and is dog-eared almost beyond recognition. I ate it up with a spoon when she wrote that waiting for your purpose is a sacred endeavor.

Waiting is not always passive. It can be a passageway from one way of being to another. She gave me permission to wait for the reveal.

These days, even more so than 25 years ago, waiting, being still, has gotten a bad rap. Inactivity is THE cardinal sin of the 21st century.

She used the analogy of the caterpillar in the chrysalis. If you poke a hole to check on its progress, the butterfly’s wings will be underdeveloped, and it will be unable to fly. The same thing happens if you try to help it break through. Every second, every step of the process is critically important to the transformation…and the survival of the butterfly.

Just let that one sink in……All the way down to your toes.

This quote from “When The Heart Waits” is one of my favorites.
I need to add it to the list.

“When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the Spirit laughs for what it has found” 

That makes my heart stop every time.

When Sue had her chat with O, she relayed an insight she had around 50.
She realized she had been a seeker all of her 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. In that respect we are kindred souls. But recently she’d admonished herself.

Enough seeking, she needed to “find” something.

It was time to become A Finder.

That just about made my head explode. Now I get it.
That’s what happens in your 50’s. The energy you expended as a seeker is replaced with the energy of “finding” and sharing. You’ve sought, delved and explored. You’ve attend countless retreats, seminars, conferences and sweat lodges. You’ve discovered along the way you DID get some answers. You have found nuggets of truth. Things you KNOW FOR SURE. All your seeking has borne fruit. That fruit is deliciously ripe and ready to share.

It’s the reason I write this blog.
I used to spend hour upon hour, day after day reading everything spiritual I could get my hands on. At one time I had over three hundred spiritual and self-help books. I have given half of them away.
Now I spend hours writing what I’ve learned.

I will always be on a journey of asking WHY? I’m hard-wired for it. But I’m also hard-wired to share anything and everything I know.
THAT is the payoff, the pay-it-forward of the seeker. We get to say: Hey, you wanna know what helped me? Have you read this or seen that?

I feel like in our second acts we are now Finders.
Things start to make some sense. Not everything, I still can’t wrap my brain around vows of chastity and silence.
What I HAVE found is that I am much more willing to wait and see how things work out.
I’m not perfect, some days I still want to see the progress inside the chrysalis.
I am forever a work in progress. I will always be asking questions. But I’m embracing my inner Finder.

I feel like she has a lot to share.

Tell me what you know about waiting. How comfortable are you with being passively passionate or passionately passive? Lol.

Xox

The energy since the first of the year has been intense. No, it is not your imagination. It has been howl at the moon, scare small children, eat an entire pizza by yourself level intense. But as fate, or luck, or all our answered prayers would have it, it is leveling the fuck out.

The good part has been that it cleaned out all the muck. Good way to start the new Year – muck free, don’t you agree?

One friend asked her massage therapist last week to virtually “get in
there with a Q-tip.” I like that. Getting into the corners and crevices and really digging that shit out.

This energy, bless it’s heart, cleaned out our collective closets. It shook all of our Etch-A-Sketchs. It threw all the plates in the air. It emptied the refrigerator, even way back on the bottom shelf.

You get the picture.

But that can make life VERY uncomfortable.
Some people get sick in response, ‘cause if you’re in bed, binging on Netflix, you don’t have to deal with the shitstorm…yet.
Others are just pissed off. Cantankerous bastards who keep yelling “get out of my way!” We can forgive them though, right? Hey, their Etch-A-Sketch is blank – and the glass is cracked.

I took the coward’s way out. Kidding, but only a little.
I meditated, went to the movies, wrote and slept, as I waited for the shitstorm to pass. Oh, and I played this little ditty on an endless loop. You remember this from earlier this summer. Deva Premal, her voice and this chant in particular, lull me into a sort of coping coma.
If this is playing in the background, I can read the snarky email, deliver the bad news, eat the last of the disgusting holiday leftovers, listen to someone’s squed logic, and watch three minutes of CNN (with the sound off, it’s easier to stomach that way and hey, the ticker says it all).

All that to say, here it is again. Let it help the dust to settle. Let the sound and the calming effect arrange the dust in a more pleasing pattern, so that when we all emerge in the next week, from our caves of confusion, things will make sense…or at least look better.

Happy Sunday
xox

Hi Loves,
Holy Moly…
Transformation is messy, and difficult and at times infuriating! Don’t loose hope. Don’t throw in the towel at the 11th hour.

Remember, before the caterpillar’s transformation into the beautiful butterfly is complete – it is literally soup.

Don’t open the chrysalis before you’re cooked.
Don’t take score too soon.

We are ALL in the process of transformation, the journey from one point to the next spanning our entire lives. You WILL get to your destination – you WILL metamorphose, of that I am sure.

The grander, more ambitious and fantastical the transformation – the more hellacious it seems during the process.

Don’t listen to the soup. The soup is well…soup. It’s uncomfortable and ugly and incomplete. The soup does’t know shit and it doesn’t give good advice.

Soon you’ll take flight,
Love you!
xox

I LOVE when the Universe sends me a love note that says just the right thing at just the right time, don’t you?

This one was so good I had to share it.

So, be impeccable with your thoughts and words, your dreams and desires, because it’s ALL cueing up behind the scenes.

“Janet, do you know what happens in time and space just before something really incredible happens? Something mind-blowing? Just before a really HUGE dream comes true?

All the best,
The Universe”

Sign up to get your own Notes From The Universe:
tut.com

xox

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me.
I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.

I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons.
I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.
In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement.
Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals.
And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

This quote has been making the rounds recently, attributed to Meryl Streep.
The problem is, this quote is actually from the pen of Portuguese self-help author/life coach José Micard Teixeira – not a woman, and not an elder, but a younger man who is suddenly becoming the “not Streep” Internet celebrity of the month.

It makes no difference to me, I’ve got no patience for that stuff.
I just love the quote.
Happy Wisdom Wednesday!

Xox

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http://youtu.be/_waBFUg_oT8

Elizabeth Gilbert.

I love her. I devour anything she writes.

Her advise to help us navigate failure and success? You do the same thing for both. WHAT!?
Watch. It’s only 7 mins.
It applies to anyone….about any endeavor.
But now, as a writer, this has a whole new meaning for me.

Xox

Mary had a little lamb,
Whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went.
The lamb was sure to go.

I had a couple of revelations last weekend.

The first one I’m not proud of, but I think it’s important to know yourself, and I’ve become uncomfortably acquainted with my lack of tolerance for anything that whines, cries, looks to me to entertain it, or needs my constant attention and approval. In other words, it was validated once again, that I would have made a terrible mother.
I just lack that gene I guess.

The second I’ll tell you about later.

My husband was off racing high performance sports cars.
I know.
I want to come back as him in my next life, as MANY others do, so….take a number and get in line.

This left me alone with the boxer-shark puppy and the old girl, and when they are left with only one parent, they become dogs in sheep’s clothing.
They follow me EVERYWHERE and it’s been driving me INSANE.
And the whining. Hello? It’s torture.

Yet, there they are, every day. One with the face of an angel and the body of a super model and the other with a snaggle tooth, a limp and the face of an old Hungarian bubby.

Even in the bathroom. Which reminds me of the stories my sister used to tell about her two toddlers crying and knocking on the bathroom door, while she tried to have a moment. I thought those stories were a riot. Shame on me. I should have had more compassion.

Note to self: My compassion gene seems to be missing as well.

My two little lambs cry outside my bathroom door, and the puppy has taken to body slamming it in hopes of getting inside to drink from the bidet. Who taught them THAT filthy habit?

They have taken it upon themselves to become my two tiny tyrant time keepers.
They make sure I wake up at six sharp, by licking my face and play/fighting either right on top of me, or positioned close enough to where I get sprayed by flying drool, covered in hair and can feel the heat of their sweet and sour dog breath on the back of my neck. They want to make sure that I’m aware that it’s six AM and they’re STARVING.

They can’t understand how I can find happiness outside of chasing a ball, chewing on an orange plastic pretzel, or licking my own ass.

They whine if I’m in the kitchen past their boredom tolerance time allotment, which is approximately three minutes.
Same with writing, watching a movie, and any other task that seems mundane….to them.

Yesterday I was in the shower, the one place I can find some peace (although the puppy is just on the verge of joining me in there as well) and I was contemplating throwing down some kibble and water and leaving for the weekend (to pick up my Mother of The Year Award). Shit, the puppy would totally be fine, she is my renegade.
The older dog is the do-gooder, people pleaser. If I gave them each spare change and sent them out to buy me a cow, Dita, the old girl, would return home with a prize, grass-fed Heifer. Ruby would saunter in pregnant, with magic beans and a hell of a story to tell.

The two of them will get up from a sound sleep next to me on the couch, to follow me in circles (I do lead them in circles to see if I can shake um) following me outside – to the kitchen – around the bedroom – into the den and back – whining the whole time.

They double team me, telling me their big doe eyed doggie lies to convince me I’m a hack and a terrible person.

Which brings me to the second revelation:
We all have doubts, fears, worries and obligations that follow us around like whining little bitches, demanding our attention, just like these two canine creatures. Except…my thoughts are more like wolves in sheep’s clothing – merciless predators.

The stuff that follows you everywhere, stealing YOUR time, and convincing you that you’re no good.
They don’t have to wake you up at 6 a.m. because they don’t let you sleep –– at all.
Yeah, those guys.

Husband (he now only has one name, like Cher and Elvis) isn’t bothered by any of it.
He never hears the whining, he doesn’t mind the wake up calls and he doesn’t trip over them like I do all. day. long.

They are just dogs. And THAT is the reason in a nutshell why he maintains his level-headed, good-natured sanity, while I take the slow slide down the rabbit hole. (Slight exaggeration) He has the innate ability to let things roll off his back. They don’t stick. And THAT’s his trick to life. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

I’m working on it.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Got it.
I don’t have to trip over my doubts and worries, or watch them follow me around in circles. How about if I just tune out their chatter, like husband tunes out the whining?
Okay, good idea.

Now, what about the old girl and the puppy?
Those two furry obligations? They are the trouble I’m willing to keep in my life.
The others….not so much

What annoyances can you ignore and which just HAVE to go? Tell moi.

Big, big love,
Xox

*Those cushions were white five minutes ago.