You are here: Home / Archives for Personal Notes

Inspiration

October 28, 2014 by

OpEdThe other day I was strolling through the blog world, trying to catch up with my reading; it seems I am always behind these days. I haven’t been up to my usual self frankly; things have been weighing on my heart and mind, keeping me from my normal enthusiasm, my desire for social interaction and visits with friends flung far and wide. I miss you all; I truly do yet can’t seem to concentrate, to focus on what is needful to maintain the important relationships we have built through our shared words in this strange and wonderful blog world we all visit and make a piece of our homes.

Then I saw this: What Inspires You, by Penny

I have been thinking about this one for days, truly off and on I have been thinking about what inspires me for days. I have also been thinking about why I am feeling a bit uninspired, why it is hard for me to get up off my azz and write, dance, visit or anything else I normally do. So, in response and as a challenge to myself, I have spent the past couple of days writing down what inspires me.

Life inspires me. Yes, just life, the idea we have a limited number of days on this earth and how we choose to live them, what we do with them is a concept so few of us grasp completely. Some of us, we spend our life in frivolous, sometimes ignorant pursuits. Others are amazing what they are able to accomplish, so yes life inspires me.roseglasses

Hope inspires me, so much seems terrible and tragic these days and yet so many still face the world with hope. I know there are those who look at me and think I see the world through rose colored glasses, who believe I am a bit naïve. Honestly though, I am not naïve. I know there are monsters in the world; I have met many of them. I simply choose which I will dance with and continue to rest in the lavender in a lounge chair of green wearing tarnished rose colored glasses. I am inspired by hope, all around me I am inspired by others, who despite the terrible and the tragic continue to rise up out of the muck and the mire, face adversity and hope for more and better.

Malala

Malala

Fearlessness inspires me. Not stupidity, not bungee jumping types of fearlessness, but fearlessness in the face of great odds. I am at times stunned by just how truly fearless human beings can be when it is needful and meaningful.

Joy inspires me. There is nothing more I can say about this. Great joy, pass it on.

Selflessness inspires me. Those men and women of our past who gave the gift of their blood, sweat, tears and lives to gain us so much; they inspire me to do more and better. I forget sometimes how much they gave, I think we all do.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Love inspires me. Yes, love in all its manifestations love inspires me. It is so easy to say, “I love you”. It is really hard to live, “I love you”, every single day, every single night. Love is hard, perhaps it was meant to be so we would have to work for it. We are, I think by nature, selfish and self-centered creatures. Love is, by its very nature, selfless. For any of us to love, we have to set ourselves aside and choose to not be selfish, even if only for the minute it takes to not think about what 1img-thingwe get out of it.

That is what inspires me, it isn’t all that inspires me but it is enough for now. There are people who inspire me. There are things, great works of art, great pieces of music; but for now, this will do. Many of you inspire me quite often. If I don’t visit often right now, it is because I am having a difficult time keeping up, working through personal things that will sort themselves out as they should.

I hope you will visit Penny, who inspired this one. Maybe you will be inspired as I was.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Pursuit of Rights

October 16, 2014 by

OpEdThe world has lost its way; this nation in particular has lost its intent though we should always be wary of setting our sights too high on a moral standard that never truly existed. I was originally going to write in one pithy piece to show, historically the truth vs. myth of this nation. I found though, there is simply too much information to write one piece, too many pivot points where we might have done the right thing and choose differently. Because of social media we can now see daily what has been before us all along. We are witness to the casual violence entwined through our cultural foundation and accepted as normal, even sometimes encouraged as necessary. We, this nation in particular, we have lost our way at every level that is important.

While the Founding Fathers and those who supported their intent certainly had a desire for ‘freedom’ it did not extend beyond themselves or their narrow worldview at the time. Despite the high-flaunting words of the documents that continue to define us today, (e.g. Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America, Federalist Papers), there was never any though that ‘all men’ had the ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. What they meant was, White Men, men of European ancestry, men of property and means. Certainly, there was never a thought regarding the idea that ‘men’ might be a more inclusive term, might embrace ‘all men’ and even women.

The nation, that is the US of A, these divided states, this unfortunate collection of frightened and poorly led humans distributed across masses of land with lines in earth and names drawn from the language of the indigenous people the European invader cheated, robbed, hunted, tortured, murdered and kidnapped. This unfortunate nation, led down paths of patriotism through fear to a misguided belief we are or should be the moral police of the world; that we have an obligation, an edict from God to direct others to do what we ourselves have failed so miserably at within our own land.

What do we think we are directed to do, what is our Manifest Destiny?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

To lead other nations to Democracy and even hallelujah Christianity, Amen and pass rocket launcher.

What have we failed at, do you truly ask this or are you simply curious what I believe our failure as a nation is? I will try to be succinct, I promise you. We lie to ourselves, the most obvious and is when anyone, whether politician or man on the street says stupid things such as:

“America is the Greatest Nation in the World.”

No, no we are not the Greatest Nation in the World. In fact, we are far from the Greatest.

In fact, we did not make the Top 10 on any ‘Best’ list.

We did not make the top of any lists, except these:

Incarceration Rate
Defense Spending

This isn’t anything to be proud of, is it? We aren’t doing a great job of building on the foundation laid by our forefathers, those visionaries of the American Dream, or are we? Shall we take just a moment to consider some of their more important contributions to infamy and how we are living up to it even now, nearly two hundred and fifty years later.

  • Slavery — yes this is a good one, the nation was built on the backs of stolen lives, stolen from the continent of Africa, stolen from the arms of mothers and fathers, stolen from their culture and homes; simply stolen. The first slaves were sold into a lifetime of servitude and misery in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. These ’20 odd’ human beings were the beginning of the end for the nations soul. Here is a bit of history for you, want more go here:
    • 1705, Virginia codifies Slave laws some of which you might recognize today: All non-Christian servants entering the colony are slaves, all slaves are real estate, masters who kill slaves during punishment are acquitted, slaves and free colored persons are forbidden from assaulting a white person, slaves are forbidden the right bear arms or move freely without written permission.
    • 1740, South Carolina passes a comprehensive “Negro Act,” making it illegal for slaves to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money and learn to read English. Owners may kill rebellious slaves.
    • 1788, the new nation adopts the Constitution including Article I, which reads in part as follows:
      • ……adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons….
    • 1819, Virginia outlaws, whether free or slave all blacks and mulattos, from meeting for the purposes of education and forbids teaching blacks to read and write.
    • 1837, free Blacks in Pennsylvania and Mississippi lose the right to vote. In New York, they petition for continued voting rights.
    • 1857, SCOTUS renders the Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to all slaves, ex-slaves and descendants of slaves, further denies Congress the right to prohibit slavery in the territories.
    • 1865, Thirteenth Amendment is signed abolishing Slavery throughout the nation.
    • 1866, the Klu Klux Klan is founded in Tennessee
    • 1881, Tennessee passes the first of the Jim Crow segregation laws other states follow and the era of Reconstruction is ended less than a decade after Slavery officially ends in these United States.

A few things to consider in the much-shortened timeline above, Article 1 of the Constitution has never been repealed or changed by Amendment. Though many like to think the Thirteenth Amendment emasculated Article 1 and the Three Fifths counting rule of Blacks held in slavery and ‘others’, the fact is Article 1 remains intact.

Something else to consider as we approach mid-term elections, The Dred Scott decision which in part read as follows;dred_scott

” . . . We think they [people of African ancestry] are . . . not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. . . .” — Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, speaking for the majority

The Founding Fathers failed fundamentally in their vision, they failed to understand ‘all men are created equal’ should have meant just that, should have been an inclusive statement if they wanted to achieve their goals. Instead, they built a nation whose cornerstone was bathed in the misery and blood of slaves, not equality, not freedom and certainly not the pursuit of happiness for all men. This touches only on the issues of Blacks in America, I have not dived into the theft of land, destruction of culture and murder of an entire indigenous people, tell me again how you discover a land already populated by millions.

Want to be part of change? Vote. Get up and Vote. Don’t believe what they tell you, Vote. Don’t let your voice be silenced, Vote. We can no longer afford to have more than half our citizens treated as if they do not count, be part of the change, Vote. Save a life, save a child and save a future; Vote.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Best 2014, Top 20

Global Gender Gap, 2013

Most Reputable 2013

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Imprinted for Life, Attractions

October 12, 2014 by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe power of attraction, what attracts us to another person is personal and fundamental. There are all sorts of ‘professional’ studies about this, do a search on Google and you will find everything from pheromone studies to Plato’s original Affinity theories. In more recent times social scientist who have proposed first the ‘Law of Attraction’ where Like attracts Like based on Plato’s theory, even more recently the Opposites Attract theory and everything in-between. Of course, lest we forget there is the ‘you will like what I told you to like’ and the ‘I will like exactly what you told me not to like’ theories, generally though these apply only to teenagers. Finally, there is that oft told and all too often snickered about mother or father fixations, better known as the Oedipus Complex.

The truth is I don’t believe any of us know what heats us up, gets our blood to boil and our panties in a twist. Not a single one of us knows what causes us to follow with our eyes down the street that man or woman we find particularly appealing;  none of us I think knows why return time and again to the neighborhood coffee shop to drool over the uncommonly beautiful barista. It is unlikely any of us could point to the place in time when our desires were set down for us, when we became fixated on a certain type and this became ‘our type’ forever and ever, amen.

We all have a type; don’t lie all of us have one. Even if you didn’t always date your type, hell even if you didn’t marry your ‘type’, you have one, I have one we all have one. That particular type of human we find we want to wrap ourselves around, that type of face that draws us, that type of body that excites us, that tone of voice that beckons us, yes even the personality that calls to our inner desires and needs. Put all of what we want into one single package and we are done, we are right there heart throbbing and knees weak. But first, we see with our eyes what somewhere in our mind we have defined as our ‘type’.

I have a type; I suspect I even know the genesis of my type. My type runs counter to social norms and has my entire life. My type has gotten me into trouble back in the 1970’s when following my personal choices wasn’t as accepted as it is interracialtoday. In retrospect, considering my relationship history I believe it is important that we understand what it is we want, that we own our desires and our choices. I think it is vital we never settle for just who wants us but for whom we want and what we want.

Do our desires change? I think they do, change is inevitable. I think as we mature our understanding of what makes us happy and what we need from relationships changes. I also think we grow less reluctant to ask for what we need. What perhaps doesn’t change is our ability to easily verbalize our needs, desires and boundaries. We are the amalgamation of all that has come before; we are our history without pretty packaging and brilliant ribbons for the unwrapping. For some of us and I certainly fall into this category, fear is a constant companion when attempting to ask for what we need or want.

I said I had a type and that I suspected I knew how mine was imprinted; I was quite young when I met Winston. Living in Germany I attended an Army base school part of the week but was not an Army Brat, this made me different from the other students and subject to bullying. I was also younger and smaller than other children in my class, another source of great amusement for my classmates and one they took great advantage of at every opportunity. I hated that school, I hated them and I hated the teachers for not protecting me. I spent a great deal of time alone during recess, book in hand finding dark corners so none of those little bastards could hurt me. Sometimes I would climb a tree, which is where Winston found me one day.

Winston was a year older, a grade ahead tall and gangly. His father was a Sargent in the Army and Winston already was a leader in his class and on the playground, much like his father. He had a brilliant smile, tight curly hair shaved close to his head and his skin was like chocolate milk. The day I met him he climbed the tree I was in and asked why I was up there alone all the time. When I told him, he frowned and climbed back down and wandered away. From that day until we moved back to the US, Winston became my protector. I ate lunch with him and his cadre of friends, if I wanted to read I did it in full sight of others and no one bothered me, ever. I was invited to birthday parties and other childhood functions. Winston never told me what he did, I guess it was a boy thing but from that day on, he became my ‘type’.images

So what is my type? Need you ask?

Tall

Milk Chocolate Skin

Strong

Take Charge

A protector

Okay, let’s just say it shall we. I like Black Men better than I like White Men. I fundamentally find Black Men more attractive. This isn’t to say I have never found a White Man attractive; it is simply that I find Black Men more attractive, physically that is my ‘Type’. Did Winston imprint me when I was eight years old? I suspect he did, I suspect his kindness in light of all the bullying had a profound effect on my psych, but it is unlikely this is the only reason.

I was raped at eleven by White Boys, they did grave harm to me. My first real boyfriend, the first person who showed me real kindness after that rape was Black at fourteen. I was a runaway, most of the horror stories from the streets during my time there was by those of my own race. By the time I got off the streets, I was imprinted with fear of men of my own race.

I say all this for a reason, I like men, I did not become Lesbian it is not something you become you either are or not Gay. On the other hand, what you find attractive, what your ‘type’ is within the context of your sexual orientation, this is an entirely different issue. Though my ‘type’ is certainly not always socially acceptable it is nonetheless mine, my choice in partners is mine alone. Were it not for the landmark 1967 anti-miscegenation case of Loving vs. State of Virginia, my choice would still be illegal. My question then, how is my ‘type’ different than sexual orientation of others and why are we still discussing their Civil / Marriage Rights. Doesn’t it make sense that all members of society should have the same rights?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I am just curious about this mind you but your thoughts are most welcome.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Reciprocity

October 7, 2014 by

OpEdI believe strongly in the idea of nature and nurture that we are products of both but that we also ultimately choose how we will interact with the people we meet throughout our lives. We choose whom we will love and how we will love them. We choose what we will give of ourselves, of our time, of our resources, our heart and yes even our secrets in each relationship we engage, whether friendship or love.

At the end of the day, no matter what happens we choose how we will react and thus, how we will act. Each of us makes a conscious choice how we will face adversity and whether we will live our lives with joy or something else, something less, whether less is apathy, guilt or true regret. What I know, deep in my soul is we do have choices, no matter what, we have choices.

What else I know is human beings are taught to be evil through nurture and despite our nurture, we can overcome our training and choose to be better human beings. Parents have enormous influence on their children; they bring blank slates into the world and write evil onto their hearts turning them into horrifying, selfish, racist, misogynist shits. Children are sponges; they walk through their young lives watching their parents, their neighbors and other influential people, sucking it all up into their hearts and spirits.

If you are a racist shit, it is nearly a guarantee your child will carry on your terrible legacy of race-based hate. Beat your wife, some lucky girl will likely be the recipient of your son’s future fury or your daughter will lay down and accept some man’s fist as her due. These are some examples of the horror stories of what happens; the legacy children are gifted by ignorant parents. There are more, abused children are likely to abuse, children of alcoholics are likely to become alcoholics. Children are blank canvases; we paint upon them what we want the world to know about us.

Despite history, despite learning at the hard knee of a parent we still have a choice not to carry forward a legacy of hate, racism, of violence. We are all gifted with free choice, whether you are Christian or otherwise, all of us share one core value: Free Choice.

I do not believe in angels and devils as a birth ‘defect’. I believe we choose how we will interact with the world and those within it. I believe we choose how we will interact with communities or individuals, it is true whether we are talking about friends, family, lovers or a broader community. I choose how I love, where I love and whom I love, without asking for or excepting the judgment of others, I choose.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

My nature is not formed by my history, or perhaps it is but not in the way planned or expected by those who tried hard to warp it. My nurture did not corrupt me, those who would have twisted my heart into unrecognizable forms failed to change my core. Yes, there are days, even weeks when I question, when I pull into myself and build walls; those times do not last. Yes, I know my nature opens me up to the potential of being hurt more easily, even of being taken advantage of at times. I also know there are those who think I am blind to their faults, that I live in a world where there is only sunshine and rainbows without a darkside. I do not live in that world, I have seen the worst in people, I have lived on the darkest side of the world and within the shadows. I made a conscious decision not to be corrupted, not to be bent, not to be twisted, not to hate others or myself by the hurt others did to me or I did to myself. I made a conscious choice to choose joy, to choose hope.

Choosing joy doesn’t mean I don’t grow despondent at times. Choosing hope doesn’t mean I don’t feel hopeless at times. Truthfully, there are days I feel despondent and hopeless, unloved and unworthy of love. Choosing joy, choosing hope LindaHead_2doesn’t mean I don’t see the possibility others are not kind, it simply means I don’t base my willingness to love on reciprocity. My giving doesn’t require an even return, love is not an investment rather it is simply a choice we make. For me, it is a choice I make every single day.

Filed Under: Love & Marriage, Random Thoughts, Series: Dumpster Diving Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Why I Hate It

September 29, 2014 by
Cowgirls have To-Do Lists

Cowgirls have To-Do Lists

Why I hate to travel, all the time and every single time I do it. After nearly a year of not traveling, I had forgotten just how much I truly hate to travel. I spent more than twenty years as a road warrior, every week on the road, Sunday night out and usually, if I was fortunate Thursday night back home with Fridays spent catching up on expense reports, conference calls and all the rest of business activities necessary to keep my life in order. This was my life for over twenty years. I wanted out, I made a conscious decision to get out, that did not quite work. Now I am reminded why I wanted out.

All the reasons why I Hate Travel, in no particular order.

There is the schedule itself usually dictated by clients leaving you with approximately 16 waking hours unless previously scheduled on Friday to see; doctors, hair stylists, manicurists, dentists, friends and family. Of course, did I fail to mention during this short time home there are also things screaming for your attention such as house cleaning, laundry and shopping because frankly whether or not there is a spouse or family one still must have at least some food in the house and in my experience, no one but me is ever going to put it there.

Why do I Hate Travel? Because this is absolutely no way for a normal person to live, it is not romantic, it is not exciting and it surely does not make me at all happy.

Let’s talk about hotels, just for a brief moment. When you travel for business you are not staying in Five Star hotels, no most of the time you are staying in chains, sometimes they are fallen stars. If you are like me, you only have a few 170380_13053106480012593076_STDrequirements some these days are harder to meet than others. I don’t want to leave my room in the middle of the night for a cigarette, don’t hate me I smoke and believe I should be able to do so in the privacy of the room I am paying for. But let’s talk about the rest, shall we? Starting with closets without enough hangers and those f’ng hangers that do not come off the rack, I am constantly fighting them. Then there are the mattresses, has anyone ever slept in a hotel and gotten a good night’s sleep, I toss and turn all night and wake every morning feeling like I have run an Iron Man. As a coffee drinker, I ask only one thing please, leave me more than one small packet of real coffee; I have learned to ask for more on check-in and every single night when I arrive back. Then there are the dangerous as all hell shower/baths, why in all that is holy don’t hotels simply install showers stalls rather than these tubs with showerheads? Narrow tubs, no traction and add to this flimsy curtains that stick to your skin actually climbing into your crevices when you are trying to bath, gad I hate bathing in hotels.

Finally, why do I Hate Travel so completely and entirely?

Airports and flights, it is getting worse and worse. No matter where I travel, I notice the ‘cost cutting’ measures first, the lack of human interaction when checking in. If you need assistance, you had better plan on a long wait. Then there is Lines form at the security line at Denver International Airport at as the TSA works to clear passengers for their flights.TSA and the security process, come on boys and girls, you have anywhere from 3-5 lines you could open up and you have a line of people waiting to get through security, tell me again why is only one of the lines open? By the way, please explain to me why I have to take my computers out, my shoes off, my coat off, my sweater off; damn do you want me naked? By the way when it comes to TSA, could we please have a line for seasoned travelers and another for those who are on vacation with families, I know very elitist of me but really the next time I am behind a family of four struggling with children, strollers and too much carry-on luggage I think I will scream, loudly.

Finally, we get to the airlines and the flights themselves. They are in another round of cost cutting and they are idiotic in their methodology. I can only talk about the one I fly the most often, bet you can guess given I live in the Dallas area. Now I have flown this airline for most of my career, I am a Million Miler on them, retain my Gold status for life even if I never fly again. In truth I have flown more than 1.5 million miles on this airline alone, this doesn’t count other airlines, all together between the four primary airlines I fly I have well over 2 million air miles, this means miles I have flown not all the additional miles I collect in other ways. The benefit of being an ‘Elite’ member of the club is upgrades when they are available, when they aren’t the flights are even more miserable. These days though even First Class flights are fairly low class, there is no service unless you ring your bell repeatedly and demand attention from the apathetic attendant’s, there is no meal service for any flight under 2.5 hours, even if that flight is during the dinner hour, if you are lucky they will throw you a bag of peanuts. Drinks are served in plastic cups, coffee in paper.

Don’t get me started on Coach where you are kicked in the back, stuffed together as if you are an anchovy and must keep your elbows so close to your ribs you can’t breathe for an entire flight. Service? Forget about it.

So far, no flight has left on time and thus no flight has landed on time!

Now I remember I hate travel; truly, I do. I want a real life. I want to be home after a day at work. I want to write and read, sleep in my own bed. I want the opportunity to have dinner with friends, family or someone I love. Hell, I want to enjoy travel because I am going someplace romantic to get away from it all.

Just a slice of life!

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Oddities and Grandma’s Wisdom

August 19, 2014 by

LVal_2010The world is burning and Nero fiddles from the balcony and we, the peasants are dancing in the streets to a song we barely know and have long since forgotten the steps to. Now and then though something occurs to us, something leaps out and bites us on the ankle, perhaps a memory of days past when things were simple and life didn’t break our hearts. For me, despite some folks in my family were crazy as hell and honestly didn’t have the sense the Good Lord gave a gnat, some of that time was time spent with one of my grandmothers in South Texas.

Valentines Liquor Store 6903 - 3-69-45

My Granddad’s Liquor store

I didn’t see a great deal of her, didn’t spend much time with her because my father and grandfather didn’t see eye-to-eye, this is mildly put. My grandfather was a mean son-of-a-bitch, he was a bigot and a card-carrying member of Racist-R-Us, if he didn’t have white sheets hanging in his closet I would be shocked. Because of my olive skin, dark hair and dark eyes my grandfather regularly called me a spic, papoose and even nigger; frequently asked my father why they didn’t return me where they got me since I was obviously not White and they never should have adopted me. My grandfather gave me my first drink of whiskey and my first cigarette when I was eleven years old, said he could prove I was an ‘injun’ if I got crazy with firewater. He and my father got into a fistfight on that visit, though it wasn’t just over this it was part of it.

Back to my grandmother, she was mostly a good South Texas Lady. How she ever tolerated my lying, cheating polecat of a grandfather for more than fifty years is beyond me, but she did. When I was seventeen I spent two weeks with her while she was recovering from surgery, it was the most time I had ever spent at one time. During that time she imparted her lifetime of wisdom, she made me laugh hysterically and often, she made me question her and my own sanity. All of this while we sat at the dining room table over coffee and cigarettes, my grandmother by the way smoked like a chimney until the day she died in her 80’s.

Here is the wisdom of my very Southern Grandmother and some of my thoughts about that wisdom.

    1. Never go out without lipstick.
      1. I try to remember this one, sad to say though I carry at least two tubes I rarely remember to smear it on my lips.
    2. Never go out without your hair done properly and don’t ever leave the house with curlers in your hair.
      1. Well, yeah now that I am growing my hair out my stylist has taught me how to wield a blow dryer and a brush, I am getting pretty good at it actually. Five days out of seven I do in fact actually somewhat successfully do something with my hair. Previously not so much, but I think my grandmother would be proud. There was a time I followed her rules much more closely and was a good Texas girl with the mantra of ‘the bigger the hair the closer to God’.
    3. Always wear a hat, this protects you from the sun prevents freckles and in your case dear stops you from turning so damned dark.
      1. Yeah, well thankfully we have sunscreen for this now. I own hats and wear them now and then, but this is for show not to protect me from the sun.
    4. Don’t wear pants in public, unless you are gardening they simply aren’t attractive and those jeans the girls are wearing now are terrible. Wear skirts or dresses, women should look like women.
      1. Okay, I don’t know what to say to this one, does anyone? Pants are my go to wardrobe choice most days.
    5. Always wear foundations, honey you need to wear a bra.
      1. Is there anything sexy about the foundations she was talking about and still wearing when we had this conversation?
    6. Wear high-heels, your legs look better in high-heels.
      1. This is the one I entirely agree with, wear them, collect them, even sometimes salivate over them.

        This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    7. Wear stockings, only floozies go out bare legged.
      1. Come on, I live in Texas where it is sometimes +105 for days at a time. Suffering for beauty is one thing but this takes things just a little too far.
    8. Do not ever get drunk in public, it is fine to have a drink at home but never get drunk in public.
      1. This is one we should all agree with. Nothing more to add.
    9. Marry where you love. Don’t let other people stop you not even your Daddy.
      1. Great advice from a woman who married “down” and was disowned by her parents for her choice in spouse, I often wonder if she ever regretted it.
    10. Be kind to others, kindness will always get you further than ugly.
      1. I have always tried to follow this.
    11. Don’t move with the crowd, they will push you over the cliff when you get to the edge.
      1. Isn’t this the damned truth.
    12. Honey, don’t compete with men they don’t appreciate a woman that can beat them at their own games and don’t need their noses rubbed in it all the time.
      1. Well, this is the truth and yet sometimes there is no choice is there?
    13. Don’t raise your voice in anger. Speak softly, force them to listen to you.
      1. It took me years to understand this one.
    14. Stop marking your body up, those tattoos are for bad girls and sailors.
      1. My grandmother hated my tattoos. I wonder if she would have changed her mind. At the time she said this too me I had two small ones on my back, now I have eighteen and many are sizable.
    15. Don’t let your past hurts color your world, live. You are young and your life is ahead of you.
      1. I try to live by this one. I knew what she was telling me at the time and we had many long talks about forgiveness and letting go at that table over those two weeks. It took me a very long time to absorb this lesson. I am grateful to her for it.

Those were the truths of my grandmother. It has been a very long time since I have thought of her or those conversations. Someone who is special to me and brings me a great deal of happiness reminded me today of these conversations, of wearing skirts instead of pants, of girdles and oddly of what it means to be feminine without losing who I am as a woman. I am grateful for the reminders and for being able to step outside of the world for a minute.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse of my grandmother and her wisdom, I surely enjoyed the memory.

Because we should all have memories that bring us back around this is dedicated to someone I love.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Dragging Baggage

August 8, 2014 by

18f8d6bbabeadaf291971b7c3a5dd3edIt is all too often true we carry all our baggage with us everywhere we go, dragging it behind on wheels run down and bare from all the use they have seen.  If we reach any age at all, with any experience at all we have baggage it is impossible for any of us too get through life without it. What we do with all that luggage though, how we handle it that is an entirely different issue.

Fundamentally, I am a good person. I am kind, generous and loving to my family and friends.

That is how I would like to think of myself most of the time. My life hasn’t always been simple, nor has it always been easy. It has left me a bit banged up, physically and emotionally. I have a just a few scars; some of them are very visible, left on my body so every single time I look in the mirror I see them. When I see those scars, when I look at them in the mirror, my first reaction is to close my eyes, turn away as I think others would do when first gazing on them. Other scars, they aren’t so visible left on my heart and soul, though sometimes I think when I look in the mirror I see them too.

My reality is I am frequently less than secure about both my physical appearance and how lovable or deserving of love I am.

Recently I had to confront some of my baggage. One of the problems I have is acknowledging that anyone would be interested in what is on my mind, what might be truly bothering me and why anyone would care. For so long, for most of my life, my needs and concerns have taken a backseat to everyone else’s and I have been the caretaker. I have taken care of everyone else, I have been the breadwinner, the responsible one the person who had to be ‘strong’, even when I was the one injured I had to be strong for everyone around me. I got use to never asking for help. It became ingrained in me too not show weakness, not give in to fear and not talk about my feelings or ask for what I needed.

I learned I did not matter. I think what I learned is ‘I’ did not exist except to make other people’s lives easier.060410-travel1-kristen

That is a terrible lesson; it is a very hard truth to drag behind you on wobbly wheels with a bent frame. This is especially true when as a human being the natural instinct is to reject that lesson, to fight the loss of ‘I’, to want to be seen and heard, even when we might not know how to raise our hand or our voice. My instinct when something is wrong? To retreat into my head, if asked give half answers or no answer at all safe in the knowledge no one is interested, instead, they are asking just to be polite. Until very recently, this has been mostly the case. Conversations, even with friends and family have tilted toward one of two types. Either competitive ‘my pain is worse than yours’ where no matter what I said it always ended up about them, their pain, their sadness, their hardships. The other style is always the fixer, the person who listens to half of what I say and tells me how to fix it, in the process blames me for the problem. In both cases of course, they don’t really hear me aren’t really listening and clearly don’t really give two tinkers damn about how I feel, thus over the years I have learned it is far easier to simply live inside my head.

When we love, we offer our whole selves even the baggage. What we hope for is we can explain why it exists and that someone will help us drag it along behind us.

What is unexpected is, someone who loves us back and enough to say drop the baggage I am not your past or your bellhop; forcing us to confront our history and examine our behaviors in new light.

Our luggage often includes insecurities, bad behaviors and false fronts. If we are forced to lay down our baggage, open it up and throw out all the old ratty stuff we have packed away it can be a painful experience, even while we are lightening our load. We are not our insecurities, though they may have made up the extra weight they are not who we are at the core, they are simply what was added over the years by others. This was one of my hard lessons recently, I don’t know that it is entirely learned I am still insecure. I am still me, my history still lives firmly in my head and the voices still whisper, ‘not worthy, not lovable’. Nevertheless, I am learning slowly those voices are my history not my present and they are liars. I am learning also it is okay to be afraid, to show some weakness and to say I am both I am learning I don’t have to always be strong, I think this one is even harder to learn for me. I have spent so many years guarded, so many years not crossing emotional lines; I am still finding my way through this one.

dance

When I started this blog, I did so to give myself a release valve, for my thinking, my feelings, my history even. What I found was so much more, including the potential of love. Now I just have to learn to let my history go, let myself be loved and let my demons dance the way they deserve without the impediment of baggage.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , ,

I Choose

June 22, 2014 by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt has been a strange year for me a year full of lessons learned and introspection. I have taken time to look what I wanted from life and what I have been doing with life to now, whether because I thought it was the right thing, out of obligation or because it was simply my nature. I suspect some choices we make will always be born out of our inherent natural instincts, others will be our history combined with our natural instincts; that is how we have inhabited the world through our history. If we have had trauma in our lives and who hasn’t, we will be changed and thus how we interact with the world.

One thing I know after this past several months, anger and bitterness is counter-productive. I made real choices in December of last year, they were scary as Hell but they were right for me and without them, I don’t believe I could have found peace for myself or been open to the opportunities that have been laid at my feet.

When my husband left without word, at first I was devastated, crushed by the blow. In retrospect, what I found was not a broken heart but fear and fury. Fear for myself, that I would be bitter, that I would not find a way through my anger to a loving heart, that I did not know how to love or be loved and so many other terrible fears, mostly fear that all he had said to me would manifest and I truly wasn’t worthy of being loved.

Fury that I could be convinced or convince myself that doing what was right equaled happiness or that life could be lived without joy. I was wrong, thankfully and happily I was wrong.

The next decision I made was not to work for toxic people who made me miserable. I have worked as an independent IT Project Manager in one of the most competitive markets for twenty-three years. In December I made the decision I no longer wanted live the life of a Road Warrior. I love my work, but 100% travel was killing my body and soul. I wanted the chance at a real life, with friends and maybe someday in the future at love. Being gone four to five days a week didn’t lend itself to this. I quit the job I was working and took a hiatus, I will grant you I didn’t intend it to be a six-month hiatus, but that is simply how it turned out.

Monday morning I start a new job with a great company (good reputation) that has promised 30% travel or less doing work I am good at and enjoy. This will certainly be a change, no more lazing about doing whatever the hell I feel like doing!

Cowgirls have To-Do Lists

Cowgirls have To-Do Lists

Now, let’s get to what I really want to say. I decided I am worthy of love. This one didn’t come quite so quickly, in fact it snuck up on me. I decided I have value and I can reach out and claim love when it is offered, I don’t have to be afraid, I don’t have to run and I don’t have slam doors. I decided not every single person wants to devalue me or my history, some of them simply want me just as I am. Sometimes people can be taken at face value, what they show you is what they are you can choose or not to accept them into your heart just as they can choose to accept you.

There are times I can be surprised, by myself and by others. I would guess most of you who read me regularly would be shocked to know I am still in many ways very naïve, sometimes shy and quite often a bit restrained. Though I have told much of my story here, there are many parts of my world and my life I have never told, a history that makes me what I am a history that created the complete me. Breaking down my many walls can be hard work, laying claim to a heart stilled by years of ‘doing the right thing’ rather than the joyful thing, this can be heroic work.

For many months a hero has been giving me lessons on what it means to be a grown assed man or for that matter a grown woman and to fully realize just how worthy of love I was. It began to dawn on me what I was missing as we talked through email, when he first told me this in response to an answer I gave about recognizing love:

You’d better get educated to what love is, and teach yourself to alertly recognize love when it does eventually come ringing your front doorbell ……….

As we continued to talk over many months, I knew I had found someone who did know me and was patiently helping me to discover myself through our discussions.

I know you. You and I have met and loved before. I know your soul and your heart. I know you and sometimes I remember.

There is more to these, more between these small statements, why they are important is they were the pein hammer knocking against a frozen heart, causing cracks to let light in and a few real blushes now and then. Through thousands of lines in e-mail, through longer and longer phone calls in the early mornings and late at night, through storytelling, through banter in various forums both private and public I was learning to be joyful, self-forgiving and more importantly self-accepting.

I was learning to claim myself, my whole and complete self and doing this I was learning I had the right to expect love, to claim it for myself. I was learning to choose for myself what I wanted and what I needed from love and for love. I was also learning to speak up, to say clearly “I choose” and “Mine” without stepping back from those statements afraid of being forward or pushing too hard.

Is this lesson complete? Not by any stretch of any imagination, I have a very long ways to go I think. I was caught unaware and am still stunned by the depth of emotions, yet and still, ‘Mine I choose’.

Some might say, too soon. Even I might say that using my pragmatic brain instead of a heart frozen and in stasis for far too long; yet and still I would say, ‘Mine I choose’.

I choose, because it is the only thing I am able to do with an unfrozen heart turned toward life and that wants love for as long as it is offered to me. I choose, because it is far better to live with joy than to live without it. I choose, because as he said we have met and loved before, I am his rib and he does indeed know my heart and soul.

So now you know my secret and you know my muse. Well you don’t know my muse, only that there has been one for the past few months as I write some of my musings, especially my poetry. Life has been interesting; it has offered me choices, different paths. I could have chosen anything and I chose, we will I think see where it leads.

 

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Most Fortunate with Two

June 15, 2014 by

the dads

Fathers are people too, I was both cursed and blessed with two Fathers through the course of my life. They would over time become touchstones, friends, guides, mentors and ultimately true fathers, dads and daddy.

I was always, from the day I was brought home from the hospital a ‘Daddy’s Girl’. At best I tolerated my mother, but my father, him I adored. The stories that were told of my bad sleep habits, bad eating habits, colic and overall bad temper; all these were cured immediately upon my Daddy walking into the room and picking me up. I slept on his chest, drank from the bottle he fed me and apparently any illness I managed to catch he could cure by a laying on of hands. I tracked him with eyes that did not yet focus, cooed happy sounds if he was in the room but screamed bloody murder at the approach of any other person. Mind you, I do not remember these things thus can only relay the stories I was told.

What I do know is my first memories are of my father, the smell of Fiberglass and sawdust.DAD&Me

I was adopted at birth and brought home from the hospital at three days old. My original birth certificate doesn’t have a name, it says ‘Baby Girl’ with my first mother listed and my first father listed as unknown. This last part wasn’t  true, my first father was known and had tried with the help of his parents to stop the adoption from proceeding, in 1957 though it was a different world and biological fathers were not afforded consideration regarding their children, born or otherwise.

My ‘Daddy’ and I had an imperfect relationship through most of my young life. In large part this problematic relationship had to do with his absence, not so much his physical absence as his emotional absence from our lives. I spent a very large part of my life trying to get his attention, even as a young adult what I wanted was my father to ‘see’ me. It wasn’t until my father remarried in later life that he and I finally learned how to talk, where secrets of my childhood were revealed and we finally repaired what was broken between us. Even with all that was broken though, I was a ‘Daddy’s Girl’, I loved my father he was my rock, the most dependable person in my world.

When I was 24 I had the opportunity to meet my first (biological) parents. It truly was unlooked for, not something I had planned but a gift. What I found, my first parents had married after I was born; married and gone on to have five (5) more children. It was an unusual circumstance, not something most adopted children find when the files get opened and their ‘birth’ names are revealed to them. By the time I met my First parents they had divorced, both were leading separate and different lives, my first father had remarried, had two step-daughters, a very pregnant wife not much older than me. The first time we met, it was a phone call. A short, stuttering phone call with each of us not certain what to say or how to react to this unlooked reemergence of me or him into each other live.

What is important to remember about my first parents, they and I, we are the same generation; all of us Baby Boomers though born at different ends of the generational curve we were still within the same generation, still had some of the same experiences and same expectations. My ‘grandparents’ biologically were the same age as my adoptive parents. It was a very strange dichotomy we created, when you added to this a sibling group, two sibling groups actually it was a great deal to wrap my head around.

LVD and dad

This takes me back to my fathers, two of them. The relationship with my adoptive or second mother was such, broken and toxic would be the kindest terms I could use that finding and meeting my first mother was something I considered a curative at the time. Something that would fill a hole in my heart, I believed since I hadn’t really had a mother – daughter relationship up to that point I would perhaps find what had been missing. The idea I had a father out there, one who was prepared, even eager to meet me had never crossed my mind up to this point and I didn’t know how I felt about it. In truth, I didn’t think I needed or wanted another father, despite truly not having mended all the broken bridges between my ‘Daddy’ and I.

What I found when I met my first father.

  • Someone I looked like in many ways, I am a blend of my first parents and you can certainly see me in them. When you line me and my siblings up there is no doubt we are related. I had never looked like anyone before, it was stunning and for months after meeting them I would stare at pictures.

o   Gee thanks Dad, love that ass you handed down to me

o   Yeah, and those hips gotta love those

o   But the cheekbones, I do appreciate them they give my face character

  • Someone with a similar sense of humor, until I met my father I hadn’t really ever met anyone who saw the world the way I did and laughed at it. Strangely my Dad had the same sense of the ridiculous, I never knew this was simply built in.
  • Someone with the same intellect. My Dad was truly a very smart man, I am fairly certain he didn’t always use it for good, but he did use it. I am so grateful  I inherited his intellect, his brain.

o   I am also grateful I was nurtured by my Daddy and gained my moral compass where I did, giving me a true sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ even if I did not always apply it to my own life until much later.

  • Someone who truly did love his children, all of them. He wasn’t always present, didn’t always do what was ‘right’, he did though love his children and from what I observed they knew it. In later years and with his youngest daughters he was their primary parent, present and very much part of their lives, he and I talked about this once, he called it redemptive.

When I met my first father I was most fortunate, I didn’t know it then and wouldn’t realize it for many years but I was most fortunate to have another piece of me returned. I was also most fortunate to have my Daddy encourage me to seek a relationship with my ‘other’ father. My Daddy was secure in his place with me and felt no jealous need to hold me back, instead pushing me out of the nest and into the arms of another ‘father’.

Both of my fathers are lost to me in this world, but not from my heart. I treasure their contributions to my life, to my mind, my heart, my compass through the world. I am most fortunate to have had them as a measure of what men should be.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: , , , ,

What is Love

June 2, 2014 by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe other day I asked a question on Facebook, just a small innocuous question…..

“What is Love?”

I dared people to answer the question, no debate or argument with other answers allowed. I wanted to know what some of my friends and relatives thought the answer was. Here are some of the answers:

Love

I thought all of them were interesting, some more than others. This is my favorite:

“The emotion which makes us hunger to give, even when we believe we hold nothing more.”

Given the diversity of my Facebook friends, I was somewhat surprised by how consistent the answers were. I honestly thought some of my ‘friends’ would have come up with something more, something grander. Then again, I sometimes expect a great deal when I throw the door open with general questions. I think when we ask these questions it stumps people.

What is Love?

How do we know it when we are touched by it?

Here is what I think love might be, these are just my thoughts mind you.

Love is the perfect storm, everything around you might be chaotic but inside the safety of love you always find peace without asking.

Love is the perfect counter balance, your weakness and strengths are balanced without constant power struggles to maintain the upper hand.

Love is a gift offered freely, nothing withheld, mind, body, heart, soul and spirit. Unbroken, unchained and without reservation, in the offering is freedom and the knowledge of the gift returned.

Love is absolute trust, our secrets laid bare without fear of judgment and complete knowledge we will be held closer for our painful opening.

Love is focused, love notices and remembers everything, love is vain about love itself. Love balances on the precipice of silence, always basking in the glow of its own light, jealous of sharing but tempted to preen and show its delight in its possession of Love itself. Love once sure of itself, certain of its circle and passion, love cannot help but crow and claim. Love is a claiming and a choosing.

That to me is love. I am sure there is more, I have been thinking about this a great deal. I know there is more, I have written about love and what I want in my future, I thought though this simple question was a brain teaser.

What is love to you?

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , ,
«Previous Page
Next Page»