Imaginary friends

 

I didn't have an imaginary friend when I was little.

My first imaginary friend was when I was eleven years old and we moved to a new school the second semester of my sixth grade. We had moved before, but not since before I started kindergarten, so this time was different.

In the past, moving meant going to a new house with my same family. Nothing really changed but the scenery. In sixth grade everything changed. New house. New school. New neighbors. New friends. We only moved across town, but it was as if we had moved to the moon. On top of all that my Dad was gone all summer picking up new credits to teach calculus and soon after he returned my Mom began working too, so we came home after school to a babysitter. She was only a teenager and very kind, but everything was different at the same time my body began making big changes too.

In my old school I had had the same "boyfriend" since kindergarten. We walked part way home together, played marbles together, played with his electric train in the basement where his mom had an office and examination room. She was a pediatrician. My girl friend since fourth grade came from Canada and we would play at each other's houses, share our dolls, and play house in her huge old garage. We all met during that time when children make fast friends out of pure innocence and joy.

My new school was bigger. The governor's granddaughter went to school there and they had guards. Girls could be patrol girl's not just at the building doors, but on the corners like the boys. There were coat rooms and sometimes we ate in the school cafeteria. Everything was different. There were book clubs and patrol skating parties and we changed our clothes for gym class. Plus the learning part was different too. I had already written an Illinois report at my old school, but here we had to do one on historic sites and give an oral presentation. I was a little overwhelmed and a lot lonely.

Of course I still played a lot with my siblings. We had a third floor playroom with one side for the boys and the other for us. There I made my first Barbie dollhouse out of an orange crate and various and sundry boxes, clothespins, sponges and hairpins. It was mid century modern with wrought iron legs from the hairpins! But here I also pretended to have a boyfriend from my new school. He was a real boy. He just wasn't even my friend in real life. I would talk to him. Pretend he was the dad and I was the mom of my baby doll and we would go on imaginary adventures in my mind. Sometimes I would spend hours writing these stories down and I went to sleep at night thinking about them. Then I had my first period just a month before I turned twelve and when I was late a few months after that I truly believed that God thought Robbie and I were married and he was sending us a baby! I was traumatized. I knew I had done something really bad. Only bad girls got pregnant! I gave up my pretend boyfriend hoping God would take his baby back.

Of course I eventually learned the truth, but it was a turning point in my childhood.

The next time I had a make-believe friend was after my divorce! I was fifty years old! Of course both times I was fully aware it was only in my head and I never told anyone about either of these "friends."

But when I found myself suddenly alone (my husband told me one night before he moved out that he wanted a divorce,) living in my brand new dream house, with all my children off on their own; I invented an imaginary friend. He sat beside me when I played the piano. He lay beside me in bed when I read at night. He even perched on my hope chest and talked to me when I wrote in my journal. 

Looking back I have to laugh at some of this. He was a much more attentive and caring nonperson than my husband had ever been as a real person. He wasn't based on anyone like Robbie had been. In fact, I don't even know what he looked like. He was a presence. I had the support of family and friends and even a dream group, but he was still important to me. I think he left when I moved into my own condo with its balcony and lake and patio where the baby geese came to eat out of my hand.

Since then I have had some very close friends who made the need for imaginary ones obsolete. Until just the other day I found myself thinking about resurrecting one. 

Here my youngest son calls me nearly every day and sometimes on weekends we will talk for hours. My friend from Bloomington emails or texts me regularly. My other children and grandchildren text fairly regularly. Bestest and I share the results of all our online games every morning, but he no longer calls me every day. Now he usually calls once a month, maybe a little more, He still texts, but it isn't the same. 

I realize that although I am not lonely, I do miss having great conversations, when the woman doing my echocardiogram and I exchanged meaningful thoughts about art museums and different art forms I felt like I had gone out for coffee with my friends!

I might experiment with my AI, but I am just learning to be comfortable with it and Alexa is too flip for my taste, besides she isn't always easy to understand. Once more I may have to resort to my own imagination to fill in the gaps for my own personal needs!

Pain

 

Today I walked to my car in the far parking lot, across a parking lot to get a pedicure here in town, back to my car afterwards and back across the far parking lot to my apartment!

Without any pain!

I cannot tell you how simple life could be if this were always the case. I think it has been over 21 months since I have been able to do that.

It took me a year to get a podiatrist to order new orthotics for me and months for my feet to recover from walking without them.  

I don't know if this is the new norm, but I surely hope it is. 

Most of my life is spent trying to figure out how to get from my bed or my chair to the bathroom. Everything I do has been a challenge. Vacuuming from a desk chair I scoot along the carpet, washing dishes sitting down and trying to reach over the sink, using a walker to painfully hobble down to dump the trash, everything is harder when you have problems walking.

Today I felt fifty years younger!

Love is work

 

Love isn't just a feeling. It is a choice.

True love isn't just something that feels good to us. It is not doing everything in our power to suck up to someone. It isn't just saying words or doing absolutely anything that will make them smile.

True love is a choice to do the very best we know how for someone. It may be giving them something. It may be taking something away from them. It may be doing nothing and allowing them to grow in some way. It could be a million things.

True love is choosing to empathize and try to understand that person we claim to love. It is seeing the world from their point of view as much as we can. Not becoming them, or copying them. Simply knowing who they really are.

We don't have to agree with them or their lifestyle, but we do have to acknowledge its reality.

Everyone has the right to be loved, but doing that can be the hardest thing we ever do. Just buying stuff for them is easy as is just doing things for them. It is more loving to help them learn to attain their own things, learn to do their own chores, allow them to be happy within themselves.

Love isn't about being needy. It is about growing together in ways that benefit everyone involved. It is about achieving equality where nothing may be the same and yet it becomes cohesive. 

That cohesiveness is the glue that cements relationships and we call it love.

Love is work.

Hope and love and yearning

 

I've started listening to music again. 

Not my favorite classical music or American or Irish folk songs

Not Perfect by Sheeran or What A Wonderful World by Armstrong.

Not even Perhaps Love by John Denver and Placido Domingo.

I've been listening to old country hymns.

They seem to be right at this moment.

I don't believe in organized religion, or really any religion at all, but I do believe in something and these songs seem to be sung from souls that are earnest and filled with hope and love and yearning.

I believe in hope and love and yearning.

I believe in a universe filled with some ineffable power that emanates from the very heart of every one of us and every single thing that has ever been created.

Stress

 

The medical profession doesn't seem to recognize how much stress it puts on patients by keeping them waiting.

Waiting for appointments.

Waiting for the results.

Not knowing is probably one of the most stressful situations we can find ourselves in.

As an example: my blood pressure has been high for over two weeks anticipating an echocardiogram. No matter how many times I told myself it would be fine, it didn't work. Then I had it done, but now there was the waiting for the results. Normally I have to wait a week, or more, to hear back from a doctor after tests are done. This time the office called me two days later with good news and like magic, my blood pressure dropped dramatically.

A simple phone call and my body was relieved of unimaginable stress. Not a small thing for someone with high blood pressure and stage four kidney disease. 

Training

 

It is one thing to try and set boundaries with people who have no ability to keep them, or maybe even understand them.

It is another thing to teach myself how to deal with issues I cannot avoid unless I completely push a family member and all her family out of my life.

I am proud to say that yesterday I think I dealt with it in a productive way that seemed to work without eliciting any screaming, foul language, or hysterics. Twice!

Once I simply said, "Well, that is a lot of bad news I wouldn't have to know about if you hadn't told me."

The other time I stopped her right at the beginning and said, "I don't think we can talk about the Black Widow. I know she is your best friend and that is okay, but I just do not like her at all."

Neither of these comments made her happy, but she seemed to get the gist of both. Then I was able to turn the conversation to other topics and we moved on.

I am keeping her at arm's length, but trying to let her incorporate herself into my life because she wants to.

I think she is starting to realize that the things I say are helpful to her. I can help with her phone and computer which seem to be exceedingly hard for her to use.

So, I give up trying to train her and start to retrain myself.

Lessons

 

Everything is a lesson.

If I don't get it the first time around, fate suggests that I will be given endless opportunities to learn. It is probably true that what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, but some lessons can be fatal. 

Then, no more chances.

But I learned a new lesson a few days ago. There are more ways to deal with a problem, Horatio, than I had previously dreamed of!

Dealing with my sister's persistent and vicious habits often leaves me with my heart pounding, my ears ringing and sweat pouring from all my pores. It is a pure and simple response to trauma that she doesn't seem to understand or care about. 

Whatever it is that makes her incapable of honoring the boundaries I've asked for (Stop flooding me with all your horrible negative stories about everyone you know and everything you see, or experience, or think) it leaves me incapacitated for hours and sometimes days afterwards. She doesn't understand the difference between simple communication and bad news stories. She claims there is nothing we can talk about. 

And she is right if everything she has to say involves something dark, ugly, sad, or frustrating. She isn't looking for help, so there is nothing I can do for her. She resents the fact that I don't condone her enabling and complaining. I try to say nothing but eventually my frustration gives way and I do.

I just discovered 532 Hz. It is a sound that helps me let go of her words and abuse. It is the best thing I have found that works. It takes a while, but eventually it blots out all her negativity. Since she is my sister I cannot avoid her all the time, so now I have an alternative way to deal with the fallout.

Black widows

 

I first met her through a mutual acquaintance. We were all going out of town for a weekend of fun, but she kept us waiting three hours so she could go garage sailing.

As time went on her husband accidentally killed himself hanging himself in the bathtub for erotic satisfaction. 

She came to my house to swim in our pool and I watched in shock as she went from blissfully ecstatic to so droopy and down she looked almost dead. She was depressed.

Then she started dating an older man. He had a mild heart condition so she had him take a baby aspirin every day and he was all she lived for. But when he had a stroke and had to have a metal plate put in his head she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Instead she dated another older man and eventually they got married. I never heard her say anything nice about him and when he became bedridden she moaned and groaned about him continually. He finally died.

She moved right on to another man, in his eighties now and she is happy as a lark about their relationship. So far.

But she is not happy. She has never been happy since I've known her. One of her children married a drug dealer and dropped out of medical school to work for him. Eventually this one got her act together and married into a wonderful family down south. But her other daughter filled right in. Unemployed, not interested in raising her boys, wanting her mother to give her the house so she could live in it. And the son? His list of problems is unbelievable, ending right now with him living in her house with her and his entire family. She supports them all, but of course never stops complaining about them.

Over thirty years of continual misery surrounds this woman and she loves nothing better than to share it. She and her best friend are the only two people in the world that I know who focus mostly on the negative side of living and seem to thrive on it when they are together. 

They are always there if someone needs them. As long as it doesn't interfere with their running around and buying things. I think they mistake being needed for love and feel that doing anything in any way is better than not doing something. The trouble is they don't do things with love. They just do them to get them done.

Don't question their methods. Don't disagree with what they say. Take everything they say with a grain of salt. 

And they will still manage to find something negative.

Help

 

There is at least one person in this world who will call and ask for help when all they really want is to complain and have someone tell them they are right and this is justified and everyone else is causing them problems.

They do not know how to socialize except by hashing and rehashing everything that is wrong in their lives and the people they know.

And no matter how many times you ask them to keep their negativity to themselves they revert right back to their normal behavior.

They see themselves as cute and sweet and put upon by a world that is not up to their standards. They see no relationship between all their problems and themselves. 

They are victims.

Victims of their own negative thinking. 

In some ways maybe they are true narcissists who believe bad things come into their lives from all the bad situations and people they have to deal with.

Heaven forbid they ever listen to people or try to change anything. Even changing the smallest things in their life like food is beyond them. They live in a make-believe world they think they remember from the "good old days" or their childhood. They cannot learn anything new like using their computer or taking charge of their own financial situations. Everything must be done for them. Being helpless is a cultivated art. 

They imagine themselves helpers for the world and yet they despise most of the world unless it demonstrates a need for them to come in and do something. Doing for others must make them feel love and yet they do not do things with love. They do them just to get them done in the fastest way possible.

Beware of these people. They will always find a way to integrate their negativity into your life and then blame you for not being the kind of person they want you to be.

Character flaws

 

Imagine taking away your child's playmates at ages four, eleven, twelve, thirteen and sixteen by moving. Then of course that child goes to college. That is six major disruptions in fourteen years.

The only continuity is family, mostly the immediate family including three other siblings.

The family does expand to include a grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins during the second to last year, but in two years many of these people are eliminated too. It is once more just immediate family.

Both parents do the best they know how. The father, who has a post college level education, works three and four jobs to try and make ends meet, but tries to also maintain a relationship, mostly with the oldest child. The mother runs hot and cold. She is passionate, overwhelmed and her values mostly center on superficial things like how her children look to others. She will do whatever it takes to maintain her belief in that look, even doing their homework and projects.

The mother uses force, shame, and anecdotal and mythological advice, to control the children. Fearing for their safety she imposes all her fears as deeply into their subconscious as possible. 

Both parents tend to label all the children. There is mommy's little old maid who is very gifted and brainy, the petite, beautiful one, who is encouraged to do gutzy things without thinking, the oldest son who has serious medical problems and is enabled in doing pretty much as he pleases while his mother makes excuses, and the youngest who is the one most likely to succeed because, among other things the next door neighbors become a second set of parents who encourage him to be athletic, competitive and a perfectionist.

In spite of whatever they might want to be, these children pretty much all fulfill their parent's type casting. All but the youngest one grow up with some fairly serious character flaws. The oldest one is the only one who ever really leaves home. The rest never venture more than a few miles from home for any length of time.

However even the oldest one experiences such deep traumatic homesickness when she goes to college that she cannot stay away from home long enough to graduate and marries with the idea that now she will have someone at her side forever. (Which of course is not true.) For an abundance of reasons her marriage only deepens her trust issues with people.

This oldest sibling has children who live in states that span the country from sea to shining sea. Favoring mountains and water and beautiful places while still struggling with personal relationships to some extent, but are good parents in spite of everything else in their lives.

The two middle siblings are medical and social disasters. One dying at 65 from medical problems stemming from both genetic and lifestyle issues. The other bouncing from one bad relationship to another, focusing on people who will enable her and her myriad fears. They each have one child who makes a relative success out of their life while all their other children fail miserably.

The youngest sibling, while raising athletic wonders and collegiate winners, also encourages his children not to go too far away from home. Allowing them only about 30 miles of freedom in the end, which vastly limits their potential success in the world.

Generations of people struggling to overcome the things that held their parents back, starting maybe as early as the 1850s.

Love

 

Love stories abound in literature, but they are not uncommon in real life either.

I loved my husband beyond understanding and yet we ended up divorced. He could not and cannot ever believe that he is loved in the way he understands love. What a true horror story that is!

My youngest son fell in love with a woman seven years older than him. No one in our family liked her, but we held our tongues because he was so obviously in love. She was very creative. His whole life became about trying to make her life happier and better because he loved her so much. 

Everything he did was for her. When he cleaned the house he did it in her name. When he did the grocery shopping after work it was for the love of her. When he home schooled their son it was a true labor of love. Their son was the ultimate physical manifestation of their love.

He planned intricate celebrations for her that included songs and music he had written and the music of local famous artists. He helped her promote her creative work and made himself an invisible support who always stood behind her, ready to do whatever was necessary to make her life better in any way.

And one day when the police came to evict him from his home and issue an order of protection so that he could not come within 100 feet or her or their home, his first thought was, "Be quiet or you will wake (her) up."

She had a habit of discarding those she was finished using and that day he discovered he was one of them. Nearly 25 years of pure love and care were thrown in his face along with a packet of obscene lies. Their friends were stunned. Their son was baffled. He was crushed.

It was the worst moment in his life. Worse than the time he worked three jobs around the clock to support her, so that he slept less than a few hours at a time for months. It was inconceivable. No one understood it. Not her family. Not our family. Not friends.

Now, looking back, we, and he, all realize it was a gift. She finally set him free. Not out of kindness, but out of narcissism and her total inability to truly love anyone.

The most valuable relationship

 

Sometimes I think you cannot really help most people. 

And that is because they are not really looking for help. They are looking for validation that they are right, or they are looking for sympathy, or even just wanting to be enabled.

I went to couples counseling for years and felt vindicated when the counselor told me things like, "The only thing you and he have in common is that you both love him."

Validation? Yes, but it didn't solve my problem.

Being right doesn't make things better. There has to be change for other things to change. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself, or patting myself on the back thinking, "By golly I knew I was right!" Neither of those things changed either one of us.

And nothing in our relationship changed, or improved. The sad truth, after knowing each other for over thirty years, was that our divorce was the beginning of my growth. 

I went to a counselor who asked why I was there and by the time I left her I had a much better idea of the things that made my life better. And it was all about me making changes in my thoughts, actions, and goals. I realized I had been passive aggressive and began stating my real needs not trying to placate someone else. I stopped blaming anyone else for my unhappiness and became accountable to myself. I allowed myself to experience the freedom of being me and doing what made me happy instead of trying to be who Grandma wanted me to be, or Mom wanted me to be, or some man, or some absolute stranger. 

I stopped passing the buck and did my best to find out how to feel joy in being me just because I was who I was. 

Somehow I grew up believing that if I made everyone happy I would be happy, but you can never make everyone happy. You have to start closer to home with yourself. If you aren't happy it is up to you to figure out how to change things and whether you do it by trial and error, by counseling, or simply dumb luck, it doesn't matter.

As long as YOU do it. It's not easy. In fact it may be the hardest things you could possibly do, but in the end life is better. One tiny increment at a time, things get better. It may take a long time. You may never reach what you believe is the perfect life, but you will be amazed at the satisfaction you begin to feel.

With yourself!

And you are the one person you will always have to live with. Work on that relationship first!

Accidents waiting to happen

 

There is a difference between people who panic and people who get flustered.

I get flustered and have a tendency to talk too much as I sort it out.

My sister panics.

She was in a car accident yesterday. The call I got from her son said she had probably broken her hand, crushed her chest and they didn't know how badly she was hurt. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital in a nearby city and admitted overnight.

This morning she discovered that other than a few bruises from the seat belt and the air bags she is fine. She was scared. When our children were toddlers her son got his fingers pinched in a huge door. She stood there crying and screaming while I took charge.  She is a nurse! She has cultivated being scared, thinking it is feminine until now it is a liability.

That kind of response is going to cost her a fortune. Her friend, who was thrown into the dashboard, simply walked away. The car is totaled.

It was not my sister's fault that the guy who hit them ran a red light going 55 in a 30 mph zone, but she is not a defensive driver. I have been with her many times where my scream to stop was all that saved us. She thinks this lack of defensive driving is a cute womanly response. I find it scary. Also, this is the second time in three weeks that she has done major damage to a car. Last time she hit the posts at a local drive through. Twice! 

She has also gotten lost going home twice, but none of this seems to bother her family. They chalk it up to being a ditzy woman. Eventually she will really hurt someone, or herself, and then maybe they will believe me, but it is a shame it has to go that far.

Lucky?

 

People talk about luck as if it is some magical property.

I think people make their own luck.

Honest self evaluation can almost always come up with a reason why something succeeded or failed.

Attention to detail.

Perseverance.

Even a positive attitude can eliminate failure or create success by keeping the focus on what is happening in the moment and not letting the mind wander off into what ifs or could be.

If the skills are perfected and the materials are correctly used by knowledge and perseverance then success is often just a matter of time. It is important to want something badly enough without letting that wanting get in the way of clear thinking and correct action.

Most bad luck is due to negligence of some sort. It may not be intentional and it doesn't make someone a bad person, but it is still a factor.

People don't like to take responsibility for their mistakes and some people are afraid to claim responsibility for their successes, but that doesn't make these things a random result of luck.

Whenever I am tempted to claim good or bad luck I try to step back and honestly evaluate exactly what happened and why. So far, most of the evidence points to hard and fast facts.

Not luck.

Belonging

Belonging seems to be a pretty common human desire. People go to great links to belong in some way. They dress a like, wear similar hairstyles, choose similar neighborhoods, drive cars they believe reflects who they are, even choose to eat in certain ways that define them.

Belonging is comfortable. It is a safe feeling. It can also be a defensive act. Certain nationalities or ethnicities are safer in today's messed up world.

I belonged to my birth family and with my children while they were growing up.

That is the last time I truly felt like I belonged. Otherwise there has always been a caveat that made me feel separate, or apart from most people around me. And yet, I feel a kinship with all of nature that makes me know we are all interrelated much more closely than most of us imagine.

Other people seem to need lots of human contact. I am content to be physically alone most of the time. I do like human contact, but it has to be specific. I like to be intimately involved in a conversation with one person at a time whose ideas are creative and varied, but only for a short part of each day. Groups of people groping for conversation or simply acting out do not draw me in.

I love my life. It is full of creative thoughts, beautiful music, lovely living spaces, comfortable furniture, good books, and hobbies that are creative. It is comfortable in almost every respect until invaded by someone outside my realm.

It may sound selfish, but I enjoy my own company and, sometimes, those people with like minds. The rest are simply a part of nature I prefer to watch from a distance.

Happiness is not

 

Negative people often do not even realize who they are, but they are a drain on those around them.

I have tried every way I know to redirect a negative person's conversation without any real success.

They believe they are just sharing information, but all that information centers around sad, bad, or even cruel things. Their friends all have problems with family using them or ignoring them. They focus on the one child they say they want protection from. Their pets all have quirks that they find funny but annoying, only not annoying enough to take the time to change. 

They are constantly having minor problems with their car. They don't know how to use many of their car's amenities. They don't know how to use their own phones or computers and don't really want to learn.They think people don't send them the same photos and texts other folks get because they really don't know how to use their electronic devices.

They hyper-focus on things and want to share how vigilant they are by shampooing their carpets all the time or counting the bugs in their vacuum cleaner dirt.

No matter what they are asked, they will find a way to turn it into a negative reply of some sort and if you point this out they become angry and accuse you of thinking they are dumb.

It is a losing proposition that upsets me unnecessarily. I have tried to think just let them be who they are, but they have a way of wriggling it around to where they seem to need a response from me - just one that enables them or else.

I find myself angry, frustrated and my blood pressure soars to the point that I am actually ill sometimes.

I know you think I should just ignore these people. Avoid them. Keep them at arm's length, but that is very difficult when it is a close family member. Any and all family gatherings must include this person. They are not avoidable.

And they are not going to change. In some strange perverted way this life style makes them happy.

The right way

 

There is a time while we are children that the adults in our lives rule! We believe they know. They really know! And so we love them and honor them and try to emulate them in every way. We believe this is the right way. The best way. Maybe even the only way.

Growing into young adulthood we branch out, go off to school, or move away to live among other people and most of us gradually discover that other people often have other beliefs and they are as adamant about them being right as we are ours.

But over time we grow. We discover other ways of being and some of those are just as good or better than those things we grew up with. And sometimes we discover that the things we took for granted as normal were not so normal, or even so good.

Not everyone comes to these decisions or has these thoughts. There are people who never really grow up. They just continue to parrot the ways and words of their families as gospel. Some people discover their families were not as odd as they might have felt they were and some people find that the things their parents or families did were not always as good and kind as they believed.

These discoveries can create mental blocks, or even anger, but they are learning situations and important in our growth as whole human beings.

We can forgive our families for many things. Most of the time they were truly doing the best they knew how even if it hurt and most of the time they would be crushed to know that they hurt us the way they did.

It creates a strange dichotomy of feelings. Love and anger, resentment and nostalgia. It is the road to wisdom when we realize we can accept these things for what they were and move on along our own road to try and do better.

It is true, I am what I am. But it is also true that I have the power to be stronger, wiser, kinder, more open to learning and understanding. If I am still trying to do everything Mom's way when I am an adult I have failed to mature into myself.

Live

 

I think women in my generation especially used to get caught up in the idea of who we were.

Maybe because we were sort of the first generation of television children. Kids who knew what day and time it was by which program they were watching was on the air.

Instead of relying on the fairy tales and folk tales from books, we saw soap operas and westerns. Lots of westerns! The women often standing in the background with their hands over their mouths in horror as the men battled it out with their fists. Heaven forbid one of those women pick up a chair and lob the bad guy over the head. They were bystanders. Watchers. People to be protected and honored. Judged on their beauty and money and clothing, but not much else.

So when these women grew up they seemed to either follow suit and put themselves in that make believe role of being pampered and protected, or they did an about face and became rude and crude in order to make their point. Both of course were extremes and neither one was enough for a whole life.

I see women now who spent their youth slaving day and night thinking that was the noble and only way to live. And I see women who are aging primadonnas trying to recapture a youth they should have outgrown fifty years ago. They seem confused and sometimes almost frantic as they realize something is missing, but they just don't know what.

Then there are the women, I was going to say lucky, but I don't think they really were lucky, I think they were realistic, who stopped trying to live somebody else's life, or emulate an idea that only existed on film. They got out there and did things! They were the ones who found fulfillment in jobs, art, sports, mothering, whatever seemed important to them. 

They made mistakes. All human beings do, but they lived and they were willing, wanting and able to accept responsibility for who they were and what they did.

I admire these women.

Independence is the ultimate gift

I know a family who considers helping people a Christian trait they are proud of, but what they really do is enable people

They do it with the best of intentions, but the truth of the matter is that what they do makes them feel better than the people they supposedly help.

The old adage that if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime applies to everything in life.

If you wait on someone hand and foot, encourage them to ask you for help with anything and everything, you are turning them into eternally needy people.

I have always believed that the best gift we can give anyone is to teach them to think, to solve problems, to figure out how to do what they think they cannot do.

It is usually easier to just do it yourself, but that is truly unkind. There will come a time when you are not there to do for them and what will they do then? 

Teaching someone to be self sufficient is not abandoning them. It is a careful way of nurturing that encourages self sufficiency, increases self worth, makes people feel stronger and therefore more confident and content.

But if someone has spent a lifetime enabling or being enabled that can be tough. It requires real love to put up with the tantrums, the self pity and the destructive actions of people who don't want to learn or grow. Whether it is out of laziness, or fear, or some disability, relying on other people to get through life does not feel good, because there is always the niggling knowledge that this help may not always be there.

Being an enabler doesn't make people love you. In the end it is just the opposite. It teaches them to use you and not respect you.

Teaching people how to solve their own problems is a much better way of showing love. It requires patience, repetition, and intelligent redirection. It is laying a path through the forest, not carrying someone on your back.

Who are we

 

Over the years I have noticed that people in my generation often value themselves by who their relatives are, where they live, what kind of car they drive and how much money they have.

I once did this too. I was raised to do this. 

But the difference between me and some of the people my age is that I knew early on that something was off. I wasn't sure why, but I knew it felt wrong. We followed all the rules and there were rules for everything! How to sit. How to talk. How to set a proper table, make a proper bed, cultivate the correct friends, even how to laugh. It was all about presentation. How we looked to those around us and the world. 

We were taught this was the price for being who we were, somehow superior to many others. It created a generation of people out to please everyone else (who was worthy of being pleased that is.) Noblesse oblige took care of the rest of those poor souls around us who couldn't help being born who they were. 

Thank goodness for the sixties! The hippie generation had its ups and downs, but it taught me that there was more to life than the facades and faces we donned every morning before we went out in the world. It was one of those things my dad tried to teach me. There are extremes at both ends, but the middle is generally a better place to be.

I wanted to change. 

It took years of reading and therapy and meeting people and trying things out to learn that passive aggressive is really a terrible form of aggression used by people who are angry and afraid to show it for one reason or another. I discovered there was nothing wrong with stating my needs or wants, but that no one else was obligated to take care of them.  I discovered that simply being born a lion didn't mean I had to, or even had the right to, eat everything I could catch and devour.

I discovered that for every idea there were probably ten others that were different in some way, but they could all be valid in some ways too. And, sadly, I learned that all those rules I had learned were the very most basic lessons for being a human being. Each one had its uses, but not one was sacrosanct.

I can still enjoy setting a fancy table. Sometimes I like to dress up. Eating good food that I enjoy is still wonderful, but it's just that now I don't think everyone who does it differently is wrong. I don't long for the good ole days. They were sometimes awful too and I don't idolize people anymore either. 

I do have a hard time understanding people who refuse to grow and change. To me that is like collecting dead wood. All it's good for is the fire and as beautiful as a fire can be in some moments, it is so destructive left unbridled. 

Who we are is a product of who we were and we are artists creating an unending masterpiece if we choose to be.