The Chelle Summer Evolution

With my full-time job working on a military grief research study ending last Friday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the evolution of Chelle Summer. And since I’ve been doing more events, I also have come to realize how much that journey isn’t just me waking up one day saying, “Hey! I’m going to make some stuff!” as much as it’s been a life journey to get here. And no matter how I slice it, there are other people, while deceased, who are traveling this road with me.

My mom wasn’t afraid to use color nor was she afraid to let me constantly rearrange my room (not as easily said than done since I shared it with my younger sister for ten years). And when I hung pages from magazines on all my walls– didn’t we all do that?– I don’t recall her saying a word. Creativity was encouraged and we always had access to markers, crayons, and paper. I also don’t recall her being with Denise and I went we sewed. I think she was happy we had something to entertain ourselves with and she would take us to the fabric store and let us pick out a remnant of fabric– which are always sold at a discount– to make something new for the Barbie clan.

I believe that because creativity was encouraged, I felt more secure developing my own style into high school although I didn’t sew anymore. I loved the geometric designs of the late 1980s and wearing pencil skirts. I didn’t realize at the time how much more I could have done had I made my own clothes. Going to the mall was a social thing anyway.

I put the sewing away for college until Mom gave me her Bernina when I moved to Albuquerque and I had a housemate who sewed. That led me across the street to our neighbor Bonnie who had an entire room filled with sewing and craft supplies (her husband Greg thought the best way to dispose of it after she died was throw a stick of dynamite to it- of course he didn’t, but hearing him yell that from the next room where he was reading, still makes me laugh.

Bonnie used to joke that my job as a teacher was getting in the way of us making quilts, clothes, shell wreaths, potpourri, and everything else we used to do. She taught me so many skills that I use today and there was never a no. It always, “Hmmm, how can we do this?”

After she died and I was working on my doctorate, I once again put the sewing away. While I made a few quilts and such here and there, wasn’t until after Greg and I married in 2015 that we were walking around an Old Navy outlet store and I was griping about how they didn’t make colored denim skirts (but they made color denim shorts).

“Then why don’t you make them?” he asked.

That day the Chelle Summer seed was planted. The bucket bag came first and slowly but surely everything else has followed as I continue to experiment and make items that resonate with me. And that’s just the beginning.

Kindness

While I can’t remember each time it happened, I do remember countless times growing up– whether in school or at home– where the importance of being kind to people was drilled into my head. I remember the “Kids of the Block” program of puppets with disabilities (and I believe the woman who started it always wore a hat…) and how we were taught in elementary school to be kind to each other.

Then last week I read somewhere– almost a lecture– about how people– adults– should be kind to each other.

How sad it that?

I must be spending too much time in my world of color creating things that make me happy and I hope make other people that our world of treating people kindly has come to adults lecturing other adults about the importance of being kind to each other.

There are many times I am cranky– don’t use your turn signal, talking on your phone and not paying attention to people around you, slamming the door in my face at the gym because you’re not looking and don’t see there is someone behind you– but I always try to be kind to people. I reminded the Petco customer service lady on the phone that I realize the fact that Lilly’s new toy balls not being included in my box (or the lack of a lid on the Nature’s Miracle foam– I have no idea how that happened) wasn’t her fault.

The man at Sam’s Club in front of me last week took a long time in his scooter to say goodbye to the woman at the door and I was in a bit of a hurry, but when his box of Swiss Miss packets fell off his pile of items in the front of his scooter, I ran over and picked it up for him, knowing it was easier for me to reach down and get it than him for which he was grateful.

I could continue down my list of seeing the glass as half empty because it would be easy to do. But I don’t. I try to be kind to people. I usually hold a door open for a person who might be just far enough away that it wouldn’t be expected I would do it. And if my cart is full at Target and the person behind me has only a few items, I will offer that they can go ahead of me.

I’m not perfect. If I were I’m sure I wouldn’t be here on this earth. But I always try to remind myself, as I was taught, to treat people as I want to be treated. It’s not hard. And it’s always a bright spot to see a stranger’s face light up. Our interactions with people do affect how we see the world and our own inner happiness. It takes little to be kind to people and has great rewards.

It wasn’t a lecture, it was just a reminder that we reap more from kindness than we do from anger.

Setting Intentions

While I often don’t realize it at the time, in the rearview mirror after a significant event has happened in my life, I can see that I had set an intention. And that intention was fulfilled.

There are several of these that come immediately to mind– the first that I became aware of was when we had to pay for the second printing of my first book, Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling. My first husband had helped me pour quite a bit of money into my suicide-related work and I didn’t think it was fair to ask him to do more. But I was $1,000 short and had no idea where it would come from.

A business-friend-acquaintance had asked me to attend a workshop held by Microsoft locally. It was something web related (this was circa 2004 and things were very different– web sites as we know them were still in their infancy). As the workshop went on, it turned out I was in the wrong place. I was supposed to be around the corner with the “users” while I had been in the workshop for the “resellers” which included my friend.

I didn’t realize this until later and just stayed and listened to a bunch of stuff that really made no sense to me. However, there was a raffle– there would be three prizes and the first person would get the first pick. One of those was a server worth almost $1,000.

Yes, you guessed it, I got picked first so what did I choose? The one thing I didn’t need but knew I could resell easily unopened on eBay. And there was my money.

This also happened with what I call my Australian dream. I had wanted to visit Australia since I was in fifth grade. Now I’ve been there three times. And somewhere along the line, my eyes opened to surfing. I didn’t really ever think I’d get on a board, but now I own a board.

When people say to me, “Well, I’ll never do that”– even though they clearly want to do it, I respond with, “You never know.”

Because I know. The intention is out there. You never know how and when it will be fulfilled. But somehow it happens.

The Significance of Home

I hate to clean my house. I’m sure if I didn’t have so many other things I wanted to do, I wouldn’t resent it so much. But having three dogs (plus two humans) means constant upkeep especially vacuuming and erasing slobber marks on the windows (no, those aren’t from Greg or me!). I also realize that if I didn’t care so much about how my house looked, or how it made me feel, I could let more of the cleaning and organization go.

However, that’s not me.

As I was changing the sheets on the bed yesterday and admiring my choice of colors, the calmness from coral and turquoise I had chosen for the week, I looked around our light-fill room and I thought, yes, this is what makes it all worth it.

It’s home. And home is the place where generally most of our life happens. And we spend most of our time (even though some of that is sleeping– but it’s good to have a place where we enjoy sleeping). Home is the source of our energy, it’s where we refuell after a day of work or school or whatever we have going on. It’s where we happily come back to after a trip, glad to having taken the trip, but glad to be home. And it’s where we might add a momento of our trip.

Greg recently look at the buffet in our dining room and said, “We have Morocco, Argentina, and Russia all represented here,” as he admired the objects placed on top.

When I was young, my parents took us to visit open houses in new developments as they sought out ideas for our house. The bug for the importance of enjoying where you live was planted in me then and it’s why I have devoted so much time to turning my house into a place I enjoy and a place that inspires me.

The work is all worth it. After all, every house should be a home.

Embracing Color

I have a goal, well, I have many goals, but one big goal I have this year is to encourage people to embrace color.

Why the fear? I find myself constantly wondering. We were at an event and a woman came up to me and told me how much she loved my outfit (I was wearing my orange leather coat from Morocco with a dress and long black boots) and that even though she wasn’t dressed up, she loved seeing me dressed up.

That also happens with color– people tell me how much they like my color-filled work. And yet they’re wearing black and afraid of expressing it themselves.

Maybe I have been lucky that my mom encouraged color (“That store was dead inside!” she might exclaim after going somewhere that she felt had no color) and then later it was the same with my friend Bonnie when my former husband and I bought our first house.

“Live with it for a while,” she had suggested, noting that I’d then know what colors to paint the rooms. And she was right– within several years all the white walls, except the hallway, were painted a color.

I started small, or light, and gradually worked my way into bolder colors, sometimes choosing several colors for one room, that way everything didn’t feel like it was shouting too much. People thought I was crazy to paint my kitchen lime green, but once the white cabinets and colored tile were in place, it all came together.

It’s the same with my clothes. I used to wear a lot of navy blue. When I married the first time, I used navy blue as my color. My chosen towels were navy blue. There was navy blue everywhere. I ran in a lot of black and dark colors, making me feel as dull and drab as a Midwestern winter day.

But at some point I wanted to be something more; I didn’t want to be a piece of paneling, blending into a wall.

Color makes a dark day feel happy, color makes me feel happy. I get more compliments when I wear color.

Life is too short, wear color, paint a room a happy hue. Carry a handbag with a fun print and pattern.

And you’ll see how much better life can be. With color.

No Regrets

It’s easy to get caught up in feeling like what we have accomplished isn’t enough or to reach an age where we look back and wonder what we missed out on. It seems it’s even easier to feel that way because the billboard messages are large and more prevalent– thanks to social media and technology– or because someone has written a book telling us so (the inspiration shall we say for this blog, but I won’t reveal the book as I believe it’s whiny and stupid and I’d rather give you a positive inspirational message).

Over the past few years, I’ve often found myself reflecting on choices I’ve made and as I drive through life and the roads I didn’t choose pass me by, I see how easy it is to spend my time wondering what if I had made other choices. Sometimes I believe I haven’t accomplished enough because I haven’t accomplished some of the goals I set for myself going forty years back.

Thankfully, I’ve managed to remind myself to fill the glass back up of all that I have accomplished. While in many ways it’s not the life I expected to have, I know that in the long run, I’ve had a better life. And when I feel bad about these thoughts, I ask myself what I can do with them, where I can put them, how I can include them in my writing (most my fiction).

Then there are the things that have happened to us that we, quite honestly, didn’t ask for. Those things? Those are the ones where our response is what it’s about. We can’t change them, we can’t spend our days agonizing over everything we could have done differently. What we can do is find a way through it and use it in our lives to propel us forward.

My life choices haven’t been the same as many people and, just as I see the choices others have made, I know they aren’t ones I would have made. However, that doesn’t mean they are bad, they are for that person, not me, because I’m supposed to have a different life.

If you’re still feeling like there’s something you haven’t done, then find a way to make it happen, or make some aspect of it happen. Life is short and you don’t want more time to pass you by. But if you need to rest to collect your thoughts and figure out what’s next, then take the time to do that.

Whatever it is that you need to do to make your life one that makes you happy, do it. Don’t let others tell you anything else. Reflect back on where you came from if you need to, but don’t stay there too long. There is much hope in the future and you can start now to make that light burn brighter.

Helping Each Other

Things had gotten slightly out of whack at our house.

It had been really important to me to make Greg’s lunch- and not for the reasons most people might think I did it– but because I knew that if I made him lunch, he was more likely to eat better than than eating crap or not eating at all (and arriving home starving and grabbing whatever he could from the kitchen).

But the pace of my life in the past year has changed, especially because I had to speed the Chelle Summer process and creation up in preparation for my research job that ends in six weeks. And in that time, there were some things I had to let go. One of them turned out to be Greg’s lunches.

Last spring when he did the Mt. Taylor Quadrathlon– the crazy thing where he bikes, runs, snow shoes, and skis both up and down a mountain– the weather was terrible. At the finish line where I shivered for an hour wrapped in a blanket in the wind waiting for him to finish, I told him that I was retiring from future races.

When he couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers several months from frost bite, he, too, said he was retiring from the race.

But the problem was he also retired from any motivation to exercise. Lilly didn’t get her morning runs with him (she usually gets one from each of us) and the weight that he had worked so hard to lose, crept back on.

I knew that when we joined “the winter pool” in October that my 11:00 am swims weren’t going to work for him because he’s teaching. When he found out the pool and gym open at 5:00 during the week, he adjusted his swimming from evening to first thing in the morning.

That left weekends when the afternoons can be filled kids whose parents have dumped them at the pool where they exercise. I made a proposal that we swim on weekends right after my workout.

This is torture for me as I’m coming off six miles and running and walking with the dogs and I’m cold. But if I go, Greg will go, and we’ll be finished for the day. The entire reason I run first thing in the morning is because I know I would never run if I waited until afternoon. If Greg does his workout early, I can see it’s the same for him. Otherwise, it’s easy to spend the day making up every excuse in one’s head of why not to go.

Now that we are back to the post-holiday new year routine, the first thing we did Sunday morning after arriving home from LA the night before and my early morning workout was go to the pool. I knew more than anything, we had to show up.

So that left me with Greg’s lunches.

I recently found a recipe for breakfast sandwiches that can be made ahead of time and frozen. Between these and breakfast burritos, he can down them after the pool on his way to school and then we can figure out snacks to keep him full the rest of the day.

It’s a hard balance with my overflowing plate right now and it means extra work to plan, but if I want Greg to succeed with his fitness and weight loss, he shouldn’t have to go that road alone. Two are always stronger than one.

It’s worth the journey.

Article in Rio Rancho Observer

Happy 2020, everyone! Let’s cheer a great year ahead!

In case you missed it, here’s an article recently written about me in the Rio Rancho Observer. The blog will return next week!

Read it here.

My Christmas Gift

I like to give parties. And I like to do Christmas cards.

I know there are many people out there who hate both of these things, or at least doing them. Many are happy to attend a party or receive a card though. And I am quite happy to invite them to a party and send them a card. If there were some way I could invite more people– because I have friends all over the world– to my house for parties, I would.

And I like to make a new dress when I have a party. Yes, I realize it all sounds extreme, but it’s not something I do daily or even weekly, just maybe twice a year. And through planning, as Greg will attest, the day of the party isn’t frantic at our house at all. In fact, the hardest part is right before the guests arrive and all the food is laid out, one of us has to remain in eye distance of the food because Ash will steal things off a counter, table, anywhere reachable.

Our house is typically very zen by fifteen minutes before the party starts (although there was the one party where Nestle decided to go for a swim right before the guests arrived and when she heard the doorbell, she went flying out of the pool and through the house, leaving a wrath of water on the clean floors).

I don’t exchange gifts with many people in my life now without my parents and younger sister here, however, Christmas to me isn’t about exchanging gifts anyway. It’s about something small I can do for a larger group of people and thus the party and the cards, those are my gifts to all.

The Patience of the Unknown

Fr. Josh, a priest I know, said once that he was praying to Mary because he needed help with patience and that was something obviously Mary knew well. It didn’t resonate with me at the time, but as I have found myself drawn closer to Our Lady of Guadalupe (essentially, the Mexican Mary) and on Thursday, December 12, I will celebrate my birthday on her feast day, I have awoken to what she is teaching me this year.

I have been writing recently that my job will end in late January and I’ve been busy trying to gain both traction and momentum as I await for new windows and doors to open. After all, I know well that if you want doors and windows to open, you need to work hard, too.

But in all of this, has been much frustration as I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels, taking more steps back than forward, and feeling a start-stop-start-stop with all that I do.

Then one day it occurred to me, maybe it was because yesterday is the celebrated Immaculate Conception, that Mary didn’t know why she was called on to be Jesus’s mother. And that’s when what Fr. Josh said to me several years ago about praying to Mary to learn patience better made sense.

I feel like I know what I’m supposed to be, to do. I feel that I am supposed to be more, to do bigger things. And yet here I stand with a gorge separating me from where I want to be. I ask and ask and ask to cross it (and I’ve recently decided that it’s a gulf and that maybe I should swim across it), but it’s still start-stop-start-stop.

Every year this time I feel closer to Guadalupe, I feel a stronger sense of meaning on my birthday, that the day is more than, well, my birthday. It’s a day– and time– that Guadalupe comes closer and brings me messages for the journey, while we also are in the thick of the waiting and magic of Advent.

Patience. The unknown. All the things I hate. And yet Guadalupe is saying, “It’s coming. I’m with you. Keep walking with me. This journey will make sense and you’ll get across that gulf. But not on your schedule. On God’s, on mine.”

Stay the course, I often tell myself, just as we did particularly when running cross country. Stay the course. It will come, it will happen. Patience. The lesson has to be learned first.

The Holiday Season Upon Us

How did it get here so fast? Where did the year go?

And with that comes, we’re going to blink and it’s going to be January!

It’s hard to believe that it’s December already and all I keep thinking is how quickly the next few weeks are going to fly by. Seems so different than childhood when it felt like Christmas Day would never arrive, like it took all year for time to pass on just Christmas Eve.

The Christmas season– Advent– is one of waiting, of listening to what’s inside us, of the end of the year when we reflect back on not only where we’ve been, but where we want to go. All this as we await the magic of Christmas Eve and the joy and peace of Christmas Day.

While it’s a challenge during this time when we’re pulled in all sorts of directions for different reasons, take the time to think about what it means to you, what’s inside of you that you’ve been pushing aside or ignoring. As we come to the end of another year, it’s the perfect opportunity to seize what we don’t want to miss in the future.

And have a few cookies, too.

Thankfulness

Since my mom’s death, I’ve been able to write more about her struggles and challenges in life– many of which I believe stem from her having had polio when she was six and walking with a limp the rest of her life. But I also have become more aware of how the way she felt about herself translated to us, her children. She loved us, I have no doubt about that, but that’s not what this about.

Instead, it’s about how she never felt good enough with anything that she accomplished or had in her life.

And if you know me well enough, do you see the connection?

While she often told me that I was from another limb of the family tree– one that didn’t connect with the rest of the family– what reflects back at me is how much I saw the pain, the challenges, the unfulfilled lives of my parents, and how I didn’t want that to be me.

Maybe I am from another limb, maybe I’m an old soul, but with each passing day I am more and more aware of how I choose to spend my time and what goals I want to achieve are a culmination of everything that makes me who I am.

Long before there was social media where I could share what inspires me, the items I create, or anything about my writing (how different my life would have been if there had been social media when my first book about sibling suicide grief was published), I was still doing everything I am today. I was still a bit crazy (okay, anal is a better word) about my housekeeping, after all who judges a husband on how clean a house looks?! It’s always the female half who gets the judgment. I ran, I swam, and I ran my dogs. I cooked, I tried new recipes. And there was that doctorate somewhere in the midst of all of this. I thought people who took three-day tests were crazy until I became one of them.

Everything.

These things that make me not just who I am, but who I want to be. As I stand here, I’m in front of a gulf that separates me from where I am today and where I want to be. I used to call it a gorge, but I’ve changed it to a gulf because I can swim that gulf. I wasn’t sure how I’d get across the gorge as there wasn’t a bridge.

I struggle some days with the fact that I am not where I want to be, that my goals that seem so close in my mind, still look so far away on the outside. And then I take myself back to my youth, to the very things that have inspired me to get here, that have kept me motivated. And I remind myself to keep going.

I don’t want to live an unfulfilled life. I don’t want the sadness and depression that I saw plague both my parents in their lives. The inspiration is flowing so fast some days that it’s overwhelming, but it’s what keeps me going. I rest when I need to and gather strength for the next leg of the journey.

I have worked hard to get here. I might have a long way to go to where I want to be, but somehow I’ll get there. I refuse to be sidelined by the thoughts of “not good enough” that my mom had.

More than anything, for this Thanksgiving week, I am reminded how much I am thankful for who I am.

Why not?

Lois Bloom said some of the most significant words in my life to me when she turned around in the car and asked me “Why not?”

She and her husband Sam had just picked me up from the airport in Orange County where I had flown in to speak at an event several days later. First, I was going to spend a few days with them at their house and a friend I was texting in the car asked if I was going to surf while I was in LA.

I told Lois and Sam this, and that I had told him no, and that’s when Lois turned her head toward me in the back of the car and said, “Why not? You can rent a surfboard.”

But I also hadn’t thought to bring a swimsuit, I told her– not even addressing that I’d only been out on a surfboard three times and was both exhilarated and still fearful of the experience.

“You can buy one,” she reminded me.

I don’t want to say that I was raised in a home where new opportunities weren’t encouraged because that wasn’t the case. As I grew older, I began to sense that because my mom had spent all but the first six years of her life with the effects of Polio lurking in the background and being told she couldn’t even have ballet slippers because she couldn’t wear them, that life became more reserve, more tentative.

I wondered in later years, while my friends were on the swim team and soccer team, why I hadn’t been asked if I wanted to do them. She told me I’d shown no interest although when I asked to join summer track after sixth grade she signed me up and took me to buy a very new thing, running shoes.

Surfing had been something I never thought I would do, after all, in that time you didn’t see girls on surfboards like we do now, and having had the opportunity three times, that was great.

But Lois knew there was no reason I couldn’t do more of it. And she was right. She, Sam, and I took what I called a “family outing” to the surf shop and I rented a board and a wet suit. I found a bikini between Target and TJ Maxx. I took one lesson and then for those few days I was in LA, I drove down to the beach attempted to get up on the board. Even if I paddled around, even if it were a cloudy and dreary day (it was June gloom), I got out on the water, shivering, and did it anyway.

By the time, I returned to Chicago– where I was living at the time– I called Jamie, the surf shop owner and a board maker, and asked him when he could have a board ready for me.

Why not? I thought.

I won’t say that I’m any great surfer because I’m not, but the lessons from surfing, from the ocean, have taught me more in those eight years since I got the board than in most of my life.

All because of two words, one question. Listen. There is always a way forward to more.

Setting My Creativity Free

When I was growing up, we had a big plastic bag filled with crayons. It was a Kmart bag or something similar and we were always adding stray crayons to it. When my sister Karen was in college, she would bring home the green and white dot matrix printer paper– stacks and stacks of it– so Denise and I were never without scrap paper to draw on.

But somewhere along the line, I stopped drawing, I stopped using crayons. And then I stopped using markers. As it was with sewing, I guess I just thought I was busy doing other things and really didn’t give it a second thought.

When I started Chelle Summer four years ago though, one of the goals was to start creating my own fabric designs. This meant, yes, that I had to draw and paint and create. For some reason I found this hard and while I would travel with markers and paper (I stopped taking paint and canvases to Los Angeles, much to the relief of Greg who was glad we had the extra space in the car) and yet I drew nothing. I set small goals, like an hour in the evening of just doodling. Still nothing.

What was this block? I finally realized it had something to do with the freedom that I give myself in my head to do things. While I’m good about writing five days a week, about spending some time each day working on sewing projects, I was having a harder time getting my visual creativity of drawing on paper to emerge from my head.

Finally, one afternoon in the middle of the week, I told myself to take some time and do some creating. From there I started doodling on the church bulletin during the homilies (shhh, don’t tell anyone that– but as I do the church’s social media, I’m also writing quotes down from the homilies so it gives me a better focus than of the crying child that’s keeping me from hearing everything). I spent several hours yesterday working on paintings, something I typical only can do on Sundays otherwise I end up going somewhere with paint on my hands.

Slowly but surely, that side of my creativity is emerging again. The hardest part– like my writing and sewing– is that there is much I want to do. And yet I know that if I spend time on it when I’m not doing other things or even just a few minutes a day, that is moving forward.

Giving God a Chance to Talk

I’ve been talking too much in my prayers.

I hadn’t thought anything of it until I was stopped in my tracks last week by a Facebook post that had a quote from a book reminding me how easily prayer can become a one-sided conversation. That’s totally me lately– there’s a lot of movement and traction I’m trying to put into place before a major job change in late January. I’m afraid time is running out on me and I don’t want to miss any boats, planes, or trains that I’m supposed to catch.

So I keep talking, I keep asking. But I realized I wasn’t giving God a chance to speak to me.

While I know that the answers I seek aren’t always found in the prayers– many times they come later in unexpected places– I am also aware of the important of silence to give God a chance to speak.

On Saturday, we joined what we call “the winter pool” so that I can swim all winter– outdoors in a heated pool while our pool has dipped into the fifties and we’ll be closing it in a month. I made a promise to myself that when I go to swim each day, I’ll take that time to do a better job listening.

And I’ll use the silence to make sure that I’m not missing the messages God’s been trying to pass along to me and I’ve been too busy talking to hear.

Making Each Day Meaningful

Pain, routine, life in general. You name it and it can be hard to get out of bed in the morning. No matter what’s going on in our lives, the days can be monotonous or we might dread them for a variety of reasons. Or we can simply be bored because life in general is routine.

That’s why it’s up to us to find the joy in each day. Even when the list is long, someone is always nagging at us to do something, or we have a time consuming project that we simply don’t want to do, we have to find something meaningful in that day, something to not just keep us going, but to inspire us in our journey.

I know that my posts are generally positive and that’s done for a reason– if I post anything negative (like the time the health insurance company had me irked to no end many years ago), it leaves me feeling angry and that anger it starts to fester and eventually ooze. That means I can’t function, or move on.

But by posting things that are positive, inspiring, motivating, and/or meaningful, the vibe of the day ahead for me changes. The glass is half full.

And it’s the same for finding meaning in each day. There are days where I feel tired or just don’t want to do the items on my list. Sometimes boredom sets in because, while I have plenty to do, there is a monotony to writing and sewing when I have editing or stitch removal to do. None of that is fun, however, it’s during those times where I have to find something small to do, something that will make me happy and feel better. Then the tasks don’t feel so overwhelming.

Often, I’ll choose a project I can finish in a few hours simply so that I have completed something, so that I can see what I’ve completed, and I can enjoy what I’ve done.

There is meaning to be found in each day if we choose to. It’s not always the same, but even something small can turn the day around into one of gratitude.

The State of Suicide Prevention

Yes, New Mexico, this is for you, but the reality is that it could be for any state – or any country.

Several weeks ago, The Albuquerque Journal ran an article about suicide here in New Mexico talking about how much the numbers have gone up. When I thought it was time to move on– that I had done everything I needed to– the numbers were increasing, but we could see what was happening. The economy had tanked, but there also were more people reaching for help. And today it’s hard to really know how much numbers compare when suicide has become a more acceptable death for people with terminal pain and illnesses.

The discussion always turns to the increasing numbers of teen– and younger– suicides. People term these the most heart wrenching because of a life that barely starting ending early. But people also forget that we lose more middle-aged men to suicide than other other age group. That means that these teens are losing their fathers, their uncles, their role models.

While we don’t exactly know how much influence a suicide has on the bereaved, anyone left behind to mourn the death, we do know there is an effect. And we know that when you’ve had a suicide, that word becomes part of your personal vocabulary. I used to say it was no longer something that happened to the family down the street on the “Tuesday Night Movie.” While we say it’s not an option to those of us who have had one, yes, it is an option because it’s happened once before and now it’s in our own orbit.

I used to train people on warning signs of suicide, how to ask the question if one was suicidal, what to do when someone was worried about someone. However, what we were never able to do was to keep going back and inoculating people year after year. You can’t just get trained once. Every place– and this should include school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, coaches, and anyone else who comes in contact with kids in any sort of setting– should be trained yearly as staff changes, as situations happen and people have questions maybe they didn’t have before.

The end of the article stated that they had reconvened a group that would suggest recommendations to make changes here in New Mexico. They aren’t reinventing the wheel, what’s changed is the people doing the work. We’re not talking about it more than we used to. Rather people are more likely to listen. However, true change will only happen if we continue to educate people – no differently than on the ill effects of smoking, on CPR, on how to spot skin cancer, how to do a breast exam– year or after year.

After all, isn’t life itself worth that?

Exploring Deep

I believe one of the hardest things for people to do in life is explore deep inside themselves. There are a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it’s because it, well, it’s painful and it’s work. After all, wouldn’t it be easier just to coast through life on the surface where everything looks okay, especially on a sunny day?

I don’t know where I heard this– and it was related to swimming, but it also can be attributed to life– someone said that what’s really important is what happens below the surface. For swimming, that means your breathing, your strokes, your body movements. But in life it means what’s inside you, what’s happening in your soul, in the deepest depths of who you are and who you want to be.

And that’s where the most meaning of life is. While it’s great to have lots of social media likes (believe me, I don’t mind lots of likes because it’s then that I know that people are seeing and reading what I’m posting), it’s what’s inside ourselves where we find true meaning. But if we don’t allow ourselves to “go there” then we’ll never know that. Instead, we stay on the surface and continue to coast.

However, in that coasting, we also find that things don’t necessarily come together or work out. And we wonder why!

After my divorce, I bought a book by a therapist about how to move forward and find the man of your dreams sort of thing (I gave the book away and now have no idea what the author’s name or book title was). I was trying to figure out why I was attracting the wrong sort of man (lots of emotional unavailability there!) or not attracting men at all (unless they were my mom’s age– if you’ve never heard the story about what happened in the church parking lot after morning mass one day…).

I was in LA and had driven south to Huntington Beach for some surfing. After I was done, I decided to take the book to the beach and read for a while. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember exactly what the book told me, but at first I was thought, Oh, that doesn’t apply to me.

What finally admitted to myself was that DID apply to me and the sooner I admitted it and figured it out, the better off I would be. But it was my resistance from reaching deep inside of me that was keeping me from finding deeper meaning and from truly moving forward.

It’s uncomfortable to reach inside ourselves, to walk a rocky, uknown road. But it’s well worth the journey when you see the view from the other side.

Is the Grass Really Greener on the Other Side?

We are very fortunate to live in this time for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we have many choices, whether it be for toothpaste or laundry detergent, or even what career to choose. But it also means that we might be spending more of our time looking at how the green seems greener on the other side, especially when it comes to the romantic relationships in our lives, wondering if we’re missing out on something better.

There are definitely areas in life where we always should be looking to be better, to do better, but is that always the truth in relationships? In marriages?

While usually I speak about moving forward, about letting go of the past, about helping people see that they can do better, this time I’m taking another perspective because I’ve watched many people do this and the unnecessary havoc it wreaks and their lives and everyone around them (and I’m guessing most of the people I’m referring to will never read this blog because they are seemingly unaware or in denial of the havoc they are creating for themselves). In another way, they are keeping themselves from moving forward.

There was a time– and I think back on a conversation Fr. Gene and I had about a year ago when he had twenty-something come see him and the man was feeling so confused about getting married because he felt there were so many options of women and relationships that he wasn’t sure he could settle on one. And what about the person in a marriage who looks around and doesn’t like the way things are and peeks out the window and wonders if maybe things are better across the street, down the road, or that the grass in the next town grows greener?

It’s easy to believe what is right here in front of us isn’t enough because we see what others have– especially in the misconstrued social media spotlight.

Spin it around though.

I’ve been married before and I’ve had other relationships in my life and there’s a huge major positive I can say about Greg– he makes my life easier. And because he makes my life easier, my inspiration cup has been bubbling over so much in the past few years that I can’t keep up with it. I know that all the stress I let relationships cause in earlier parts of my life– when the grass was definitely greener on the other side– kept me from being who i’m supposed to be.

So what if I thought that the green were greener on the other side? I clearly believe mine is the greenest it can be- and should be– and if I were to start looking elsewhere I’m the one who would be missing out.

Go ahead, take a look at where it might be greener, and then take a look around you and see if it really would be better over there. After all, there is much you can’t see from a distance– like crab grass and dandelions.

Maybe the focus should be on making your own grass greener through looking inside yourself and wondering why you think it might be better over there. That sort of reflective journey is painful and challenging for many people, but it’s a road worth traveling because it’s about finding you, not about finding who you think will make you better. If you’ve really got it good, don’t let it go.

Taking a Step Back

I am easily irritated by many things, especially when they seemingly get in the way of my list of items I want to complete in one day. Don’t get in the way of my grocery cart and make sure you use your turn signal if you’re going to cut me off in traffic.

But I have learned to take a step back when what feels like continued derailment of my day is wreaking havoc with everything I want to accomplish. I have also learned to take a step back when someone irritates me. Or when people in my life react in unexpected negative ways.

While I might not like it, there is always a reason that things are unfolding the way that they are. I might not understand it now, or even in the next ten years, but I believe at some point I will get it when I reflect back in the rearview mirror.

Thinking that way has made it easier for me to cope with many situations and also to remember that we’re all navigating something in life and not to take it out on others (well, except when you blatantly cut me off in traffic and I’m driving faster than you– but maybe we’ll address that another day– I usually try to move on by turning up the radio and singing along with an eighties station).

I also have learned that somehow the list gets completed. Maybe not on my schedule but clearly someone else’s– let me poke the sky at the universe for that one.

In the meantime, often the best we can do is roll along and remember that a step backward is really several steps forward in own growth. There is much we can’t control in our lives, except our on reactions. That’s where taking a step backward matters the most because eventually– by doing that– we’ll be taking two steps forward instead of anything backward at all.