Balancing Life Inside and Outside the Bubble
When the pandemic began in late winter 2020, my research job had just ended. We knew it was coming for a year and we had planned for it. But we also had planned for me to focus on Chelle Summer– which included selling at events in the Los Angeles area. The pandemic obviously changed our plans. While I had plenty of time to sew and create, what I didn’t have was the income that I hoped for.
Several years later, it’s been a roller coaster ride of not knowing what will happen on multiple fronts as everything keeps changing. I’m definitely not where I wanted to be and I’m finding myself having to continually reconfigure what I’m doing for Chelle Summer as things that worked before, don’t work now, and new opportunities arise, but not always ones that take off either.
In the midst of this, I’m also still navigating a new routine. Because of the pandemic, while I had Greg at home with me and then my neighborhood community that I see when I’m out running in the morning and then run-walking the dogs, there weren’t many other social opportunities or obligations. That allowed me to stay in my creative bubble longer and more often.
I believe that I am a balance of an extrovert and introvert. I need time with people, but I also need time alone. Now that we seem to be moving at double speed socially to make up for lost time, my challenge has been to figure out how to create (writing, sewing, painting) while also having enough time to be social and for life’s routine.
At first, I thought it was just me, that there was something wrong with me that I felt so overwhelmed because I wanted to create more, but have had to engage more socially. Then, as I took a little time to reflect back on the past few years, I realized it was because I never had a chance to adjust to life in the new routine without the job. Instead, the pandemic thrust a different routine into life.
While we’re all weathering some sort of continued change in our lives, it seems to me that the first step to lessening how overwhelming it can be is that awareness of what it stems from. As I have found that, I know the next step is taking things slowly, setting goals, and then reconfiguring them as they fit or don’t fit into my bubble and the life that revolves around it.
Spiritual Strength
We had been away from church for a month. We are Saturday evening mass goers, but there have been a variety of things happening on Saturdays between soccer and Chelle Summer. The hard part about being away from attending mass is that it’s so easy to get out of the routine that it then makes it hard to get back into it.
On Saturday afternoon, I wanted to keep working on the projects I was engaged in, but I knew we needed to go and it didn’t take me long to realize we were where were needed to be.
It wasn’t just about being the physical building– although as soon as I sat down in the pew I felt a sigh inside myself as in, “Thank goodness. I can rest.”
The usher quickly found us and asked us to bring up the gifts, something we regularly do, and I feel like is an extra blessing at mass. And then we received greetings from others.
However, there also has been some pain our church community over the past week or so- the unexpected death of a 31-year-old adult child and the death of an elderly father for another. Being there allowed us to express our condolences, let them know we are praying for them, and also to say an extra prayer for peace and love on the grief journey.
Yes, we were where we needed to be.
When church was closed for so long during the pandemic and then masks kept us from each other, it made it easier to stay separated, to send messages. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We are meant to be there for each other. In person.
And I’m glad we were.
Peace in the Present
It’s so easy to get caught looking backward or forward, or a combination of both. Then when we wonder why we’re feeling bad– because we’re nostalgic for the past or wishing we were in the future where maybe things will be different. We don’t realize that our pain often comes from not rooting ourselves in the present.
I realize there are many people who believe the present is where their pain resides, however, we also have to remember that looking back we see things differently than they probably were and if we look forward, we’re looking toward things that haven’t happened yet and that can either be painful (our fear) or exhilarating (our hope for a better future). And so the vicious cycle begins– we look back, we look forward, and yet we don’t look around right where we’re at.
When I find myself anxious, maybe the worry that I missed a boat somewhere or the hope that I so badly want certain things to happen, I remind myself to stop and look around, to see where I’m at in that particular moment. That’s when I find a wave of peace and the anxiety retreats like an ocean wave.
It’s easy to look past what’s right there, the beauty of our surroundings or the people we’re with. Nothing is ever perfect, but we should always grasp the present moment. After all, soon it will be in the past, too.
Lots O' Orange
My laundry room, fun skirts, retro Tang, sweaters that hang just right, and lots of orange in this week's video.
The Choice to Move Forward
While there are a great many lessons that came from the suicide of my younger sister Denise, probably the most profound one was that I couldn’t stop living my life because she had died.
I was twenty-one when she died and when I would speak, I always said that before her death the world was my oyster. I knew I was bound for greater things than even I could see in front of me. But after she ended her life, I felt like the oyster shell had slammed shut on me. The key was I had to figure out how to push it back open, to see the open road and everything beyond that hill in front of me again.
In meeting people in the thirty years since Denise died, I have encountered countless people who have chosen not to move forward. These are people stuck in their grief, stuck in the pain, and many times refusing to budge from where they are. I wasn’t going to be one of them.
I have always known that I can’t change the past which means I also can’t bring my sister back. And when she died, I was twenty-one, I had a long life ahead of me. I wasn’t going to be destroyed by the loss. Life is short (Where have these thirty years gone? Heck, where has October gone?).
That’s not to say it was easy as it wasn’t and some days it still isn’t. As our world continues to evolve, and not necessarily in good ways it seems lately, I have to really reach inside myself and remember that I pried that oyster shell open once and I can do it again. Yet I also don’t want to have do to it again so instead I look up and ahead of me. I look at the view. I see the hope. I see the vista that stretches for miles.
And I remember that’s why I continue to forge forward.
Greeting the Day
It’s Monday morning as I write this and I can’t think of anything better than starting a new week with a sunrise like this one. I freely admit that I don’t jump out of bed in the morning, yet there is something about starting a new day before the sun comes up that makes it worth it to get up early.
Once I was doing a workshop outside Phoenix with a group of Navajos. It was a two-day workshop and on the second morning when I went for a run, I encountered one of the attendees on his way back (I was on my way out). He told me later that they have been taught to greet the day with their steps.
I always think of this- whether I’m out running in the early morning hours of the day or swimming as the sun is coming up. There is something to be said for starting a new day with steps or a swim, some kind of movement.
I was thinking this morning how easy it would have been to sleep in and miss this beautiful show by Mother Nature. It’s worth the effort to drag myself out of bed and into my running shoes. It’s the best way to greet a new day, to see hope in the possibilities ahead, no matter what happened the day before.
The Chelle Summer Videos Return
I made a little video yesterday- two new bags to share, some estate sales finds, a room filled with inventory ready to be transported to an event, and it wouldn't be a Chelle Summer video without some dog antics. Happy Friday, everyone!
Time vs. Process
We’ve all heard it– time heals all wounds.
If only it were true.
In all years my speaking with people after loss, particularly suicide loss, there have been those who had lost a loved one long before I had and their pain was much greater than mine. If it were true that time heals all wounds, they would have been leaps and bounds ahead of me. Instead, often they had been told to stuff their grief (mostly because it was suicide) into the back of the cabinet and move on.
Watching that pain was an integral reason why I worked so hard to process the loss of my sister, my parents, of my divorce, and the countless other losses that have happened in my life. When people ask how I was able to meet Greg and marry him and have such a good marriage, I tell them it’s because I did the work.
I trudged through the incoming surf and darkness like in the photo of the temple in Bali above. It wasn't pleasant ever and I hated every stupid minute of it, but I knew that if I wanted to go forward, it was what I had to do.
The processing road is rocky, but if you choose to stand still and simply look at it, things might get better for a time, but they’ll come back and eat away at you in a bigger, more painful way. It’s better to push yourself forward. You’ll find that sunshine, you’ll find the rainbow.
You’ll find the happiness. I know because I was there and I found it myself.
The Story Changes
I spoke at the high school where Greg teaches at two health classes a week ago. It had been some years since I’d spoken at a high school and I worried about how to tell the story of Denise's suicide, now thirty years in my rearview, to students who are fourteen/fifteen, two lifetimes for them removed from it happening.
But as I began to speak and weave parts of her story leading up to her death as well as the immediate aftermath for us, something struck me– how much the story has changed in those thirty years.
I first spoke at schools about three years after she had died, maybe less than that. Comparing it to having thirty years of happenings to share, I wondered how I filled the time previously. But I spoke in more detail about the events leading up to her death and the immediate aftermath. Those are the very things that I now weave into the story, more sidebars to other parts of what I share.
When I was living back in Naperville after my divorce and not long before I moved back to Albuquerque, my high school health teacher, Mazz, asked me to speak at his advanced health classes (there were two). Even then (now more than ten years ago), I worried what I could say that might inspire them.
After I finished speaking, a girl came up to me and told me how much she appreciated my story because they were all seniors getting ready to graduate and hearing all that I had been through made them see, “That no matter what we go through, we’ll be okay.”
I had been so focused on working through my challenges that I didn’t see how they could help others. Now it’s time to share how I made it happen.
Sustaining Hope: National Suicide Prevention Week
Sunday was World Suicide Prevention Day and I thought I wrote a really good post on reminding people to seek help and where they could do that (one can call or text 988). The post didn’t go anywhere on Facebook, did a little better on Instagram, did the best on Stimulus. I bring this up because in the United State each day, we lose 132 people, that means a plane full of people dying each day. And yet I find it interesting that Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, clearly kept my post from going anywhere.
Suicide affects us all and the numbers continue to push upwards. There are a lot of reasons to not be happy when one rolls out of bed each morning. Despite all this, I’m here to remind you that there a lot of good things in our lives, but it’s up to use to find them! No one else is going to do it for us. No matter what’s going on around us, we still need to get up, we still need to go through the motions. But in that, we need to add something– seeking what sustains the hope inside us.
I know where I find hope. I have worked hard to cultivate that in my life and I have tried to help others with these blogs and the things that I post on social media. As I write this, I’m getting ready to head up to the high school where Greg teaches and speak to two health classes. Part of my message will be about this very thing I’m writing here– sustaining hope. We can all find hope, but how do we sustain it?
In this National Suicide Prevention Week, my challenge to you is to think about what sustains your hope. Make a list! I hope it’s a long one! Keep it somewhere so that you can refer to it when you feel down (or down on the world at large). Remember that quote and saying, “Happiness is an inside job”? That’s the truth.
Seek it, find it, hold onto it.
Hope in Emptiness
It’s funny, for several weeks this phrase– there is hope in emptiness– has been running through my mind. And yet I can’t remember where I saw it. I actually think it might have been something I wrote in the manuscript I’m working on and stumbled on, but I don’t want to give myself that much credit.
How easy it is to forget that no matter what’s happening to us, no matter what road we’re traveling, there is hope..
Somewhere along this journey, we seem to have been taught that we will get instant answers if we pray for something. I learned that one the hard way- the answers don’t always come right away (have they ever?) and sometimes the answers aren’t quite what we expect them to be (remember, always be specific for what you’re asking for!).
The reality is that prayer often feels dry and empty. But, yes, there’s hope in that because there is hope in taking the time to ask, to know that there is possibility in that asking.
Someone once told me the sun can’t stay down forever and I always remember that when life feels overwhelming and challenging. It’s like the sun has to break through those clouds eventually.
It’s much the same for hope– it’s out there even though we can’t always see it or feel it. Life isn’t joyful and fulfilling all the time. We must be open that even when we do feel empty, that life feels meaningless, we don’t know what beauty and joy is around the corner.
There is hope in emptiness. I bet each time you repeat that when you feel emptiness, the dark clouds will subside and you’ll see some glimmer of blue that reminds you that it’s there and you’ll find it soon.
The Surfing Anniversary
When I wrote about surfing and Bali last week– or the lack of surfing I did in Bali- wasn’t aware that twelve years ago today I surfed for the first time (in Rye, New Hampshire). And eleven years ago last week, I picked up my custom-made surfboard in Redondo Beach, CA.
These anniversaries, paired with my move to Albuquerque for graduate school in August 1994, sit in the back of my mind, but always come to the front when the calendar turns to August each year.
While I understand the significance of starting a new numerical year on January 1, for me, the most movement forward has always taken place as summer turns to fall. Some of it is obviously school related, but there is something about the fall that brings on new things in my life. Perhaps it’s because the start of school always meant new things– new clothes, new friends, new classes– and that has become a routine of sorts and carried through to the rest of my life.
But taking that surfing lesson in Rye on that August Saturday and getting my board a year later were part of sweeping changes of moving my life forward. The photo above also was taken in Rye although I believe in 2012. When I see those two girls (the daughters of a high school friend’s sister), they were to represent Denise and I and the significance of water in our sister relationship.
I have always written about the importance of the ocean and the Holiday Inn (usually!) swimming pool and how much time we spent in those places together. Surfing not only challenged me to do something new in my life as I was getting divorced and turned forty, it also gave me a different relationship with the water, specifically the ocean.
I wrote last week that I long be on the back side of the waves, listening to the water lap under my balsa wood board. I never would have had that without surfing. It has helped me form different relationships with places I have visited from Hawaii to Australia to Wale.
And it changed my relationship with God as a priest I knew started to call it “surfing with Jesus.”
I had no idea how much my life would change twelve years ago today when I took that chance on something I never ever thought I’d get to do my life. But I see now it helped me become closer not just to the person I want to be, but the person I’m supposed to be. I don’t get to surf at least for now, but I still get to keep forging forward and surfing has helped me do that.
Mourning the Surfing Loss
When I started to surf, over ten years ago now, Bali was just hitting the surfing map. It wasn’t on my radar of places to go and I was so lucky that I have surfed both coasts of the United States, Hawaii, Australia, and Wales (the most unlikely of them all!).
Surfing wasn’t the reason we traveled to Bali, but I had this glimmer of hope inside me that maybe, just maybe, there might be a low-key place for me to get out of a board with a long rolling wave. More than anything, knowing I can’t push the left arm too hard or it’ll pop, I know that if the waves are low key enough, I can get to the backside of them and at least listen to the sound of the board as it hits the gently lapping water.
The one ocean spot we traveled to in Bali was a crazy, soul-less tourist infestation. There were good things about it, but there were so many people and so many of them out on the waves that I knew instantly I wasn’t going to get out there. It was the complete opposite of any other surfing experience I’ve had, even the mecca of Waikiki.
I haven’t trashed the surfing dream forever, I know there will be a day that life will get me back to Rat Beach in LA on a warm September day after school has started, the beach is empty, and the surf is nearly flat. I will have that opportunity to at least ride my board Orangey as a body board and hear that lapping sound I miss so much, and that chance to connect with God as I do on the water.
But in Bali I mourned the opportunity I wouldn’t have there, of being on another ocean, of meeting people on the water and the beach, of another unique memory of the trip. I have to remind myself there are other memories, there are other opportunities.
Still I mourn what I can’t have and by acknowledging it and all it taught me, I’m understanding why it was part of my life, if only for a short time.
The Advantage of Taking a Step Backward
None of us could ever count the number of times people have been rude, unkind, or downright mean to us. Especially in recent times, it feels like it’s more prevalent than ever before. It’s annoying and obviously hurtful. We wonder why people have to act, well, that way. And we find it easy to get caught in their web and might start snarling ourselves.
And that’s when it’s time to remember: it’s usually not about us. If you trip someone, that is about you (unless you didn’t mean to do it). But if someone treats you badly for no reason, perhaps just because you’re standing right there, then that’s on them. Don't get caught in their bubble!
Their bubble isn’t a happy place; it’s not a bubble you want to be in. I realize it’s painful and baffling, but you don’t know why they are projecting such annoyance on you. Perhaps it’s better not to know.
We’re complex beings (if my dogs spoke English they’d tell me that all the time) and often we do things that don’t make sense. We all have bad days; we all say things we don’t mean. Our world would be better if everyone took a step backyard before saying something (or in today’s world, before posting that comment!), but that might not change. What we can change is our reaction to it.
Think of something positive; think of someone in your world who likes you, who cares about you. Think of your dog. Think of what inspires you, makes you happy.
Anything that will take your mind off what isn’t worth giving another thought to. Life is too short for that.
Where Hope Resides
It’s hard to believe it’s the start of August and that Greg went back to school yesterday. I’m always reminded, as we head toward fall, that September is the month we put extra effort into suicide prevention with National Suicide Prevention Month and World Suicide Prevention Day.
But there have also been some deaths lately, a death here in New Mexico that no one is saying is a suicide unless one reads between the lines and the death of Sinead O’Connor who couldn’t seem to find peace in herself and then the suicide of her son that made it even more challenging.
All this together started me thinking on what my message September is this year and I realized it’s going to be much different than usual although not a new message for me.
It’s about where we find hope.
I don’t know why, but so often my head the phrase, “where hope resides” travels through and it did last week as I contemplated these deaths and the emotional pain that these people- and so many others– feel.
Life feels so much more challenging these days than ever before- we remain divided and angry. There has been change that makes sense to some and not to others. Even going to a restaurant has come to feel like a chore when you don’t know if they have enough staff to feed you (another topic for another day). Sometimes finding joy feels sucked away with the vacuum cleaner in this change.
When I find myself getting down, the question comes floating through– where does hope reside? In some way, it does in this photo of sunrise in the rice fields in Ubud, Bali. A new day always means a new start. And no matter how difficult the day before was! There is something about darkness giving way to light. After all, it can’t stay dark forever, the sun has to come back.
Perhaps instead of a message this year, a statement of inspiration, I’m issuing my own challenge to everyone (a good challenge, I’d like to think!): where does your hope reside?
Barbie
I have written multiple times over the years about the positive influence of Barbie in my life. It was usually because an article would crop up about what a negative influence she was for girls (which is totally interesting given that right now I’ve heard nothing bad about her with the movie out). And the film made a crazy amount of money over the weekend.
My older sister Karen had a Barbie and Ken. What I remember most is that Barbie had so many careers, notably she was an astronaut. I don’t remember that Ken had an astronaut suit although he was the pilot when she was the flight attendant (still a stewardess in those days).
As you can see from the photo, I received my first Barbie when I turned seven. Superstar Barbie. For Christmas, the furniture started to arrive (a wardrobe case and a vanity from the Dreamhouse collection). I believe Ken showed up the next year– Superstar Ken to match.
There would be more Barbies, Kens, and Skippers. And a Scott, too. There was a house of furniture although I longingly never received a dream house. When Denise was given her first Barbie (Malibu Barbie and then Malibu Ken), we were sent to the basement to make our own houses using boxes for walls and 1960s carpet samples for flooring. I had new furniture (I had most of the Dream house furniture but not the Dream house itself) while Denise used Karen’s Karosel Kitchen and a set of furniture our Grandpa Linn had made Karen for her Barbie.
We played Barbies all summer especially (Mom’s favorite way to get rid of us on hot days, “Go down into the basement and play) or sometimes outside in our plastic wading pool. After all, Karen had a boat and camper so we got to use those, too. Often, we were joined by my childhood friend and neighbor Christine.
Our Barbies did whatever we wanted them to. They went places. They wore beautiful gowns and the coolest 1970s dresses. I learned to sew making Barbie dresses. And learned how to design clothes when Mom gave us her bridesmaids dresses to cut up. I could go on and on and I will about side topics related to this in future posts.
But the bottom line is Barbie is where I learned to dream. Barbie taught me that I could be anything I wanted to be because she was whatever I wanted her to be. I could have her life if I worked hard and set goals.
How lucky I am to have such a positive influence to be the spark for my inspiration.
