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You're on a roadtrip. You're headed to the beach. You have 10 hours start to finish and it seems like it is taking FOREVER. You stop a few times for bathroom breaks and lunch. The travelers are getting cranky. They JUST WANT TO GET THERE. When will we get there? How much longer? And then you realize. We are over halfway there. At 47 with 2 gnarly autoimmune diseases, I'm probably well over halfway there. I rushed the beginning. I looked so closely towards the end goal that I forgot to enjoy all the scenery I passed. Or did I? So I slow it way down.
As much as I can. I watch each inning of my youngest boy on the mound or at bat or hovering just off third like it's the bottom of the 9th in the World Series. I sit patiently before the curtain rises at every one of my middle boy's performances. I have no where else to be. I am his mom, and I am watching him shine. And I dance at my oldest son's wedding. I laugh. I smile. And I remember what it was like to be twenty years old and in love, the whole universe at my feet. I sip my coffee with my husband on the rare occasion we are enjoying breakfast together. I look out over my back deck at the spring leaves, the blooms of each flower, the squirrels scurrying, and the birds in flight. Slow down, Mr. Squirrel. Not so fast, Mrs. Bird. What's the hurry? You see I just left Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith and they remind me each day that the end is not always easy. The end can be lonely, painful, or both. The end can be joyous and abundant, but we have no guarantees. So I slow it down. This line between my eyes on my forehead is from my Granddaddy Taylor. He earned his and so did I. I am reminded of him each time I look at it and I remember his favorite line: "aren't you glad you got to see me?" 🥰 If I cover it up, needle it away with miniscule doses of botulism, does that mean life never happened? The tears I cried and the belly laughs I bellowed - weren't those worth these lines on my face? And here we are, old friends. Me and my impatience. Me and my ambition. Me and my PLANS. What a farce. What irony. What next? The sun will rise and the sun will set. I choose to embrace these next decades with a little LESS energy and a little more PRESENCE. I'm showing up this time. I'm all in. I want to love hard and laugh often. Will you join me?
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Spring Break. Panama City Beach. 1995. 4 girls and without a care in the world. Bikinis. Coppertone. Alcohol we scrounged up from our older friends. Junk food and rap music mixed with Southern Rock on our 6-disc CD player in our car. No social media. No Life360. No palm-sized demons tracking us or telling us who to be. Sand. Sun. Free time and Free Bird. No likes. No followers. No shares. Real time. Analog. Conversations without abbreviations or acronyms. Spoken not typed. Love. Relationships. Heartbreak. Hormones. Naivety. Learning as we go without Siri, Alexa, or YouTube to help us. Is it better or is it worse? Public coming of age or private memories? These "stories" told in 2023... are they even the truth? I can't stop it. I can't change it. My boys are in it. Will they survive it like we did? Corona with a lime. 19, 20, 21 and a beach breeze. Music as the soundtrack to youth in the night. Some things remain true. Love and heartache. Friendship and comparison. The vigor and the pain of growing up. Goodnight sweet sunset. I see you in my rearview. Sweet Home on my Apple Car Play. Blue eyes smiling back at me. On a recent poll with my readers, the results were not surprising:
The poll was not anonymous, and I know many of my readers. Several of the "way too much" respondents are married, have children, have jobs, are surrounded by people all the time, and YET... they feel alone. I can relate. Loneliness is harmful to your health. But how do we fix it? We've never been more "connected" in our lives? Or have we? I have found 10 ways to feel more connected in a digital world. These are not from some article or YouTube video. These are just what has worked for ME. I hope they work for you too:
I love interacting with my readers. For more of an inside look into my days, you can follow me on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. Please support my other hope*writers by reading their works based on the prompt word LONELY: Is God Lonely for You? By Sharla Hallett https://sharlahallett.com/is-god-lonely-for-you/ Loved vs. Lonely by Lisa Crowder https://lisacrowder.substack.com/p/5c456855-76dc-499f-90cd-6ffef071a3d3 Simple Is Better Lent - When Lonely is OK by Dianne Vielhuber https://simplewordsoffaith.com/2023/03/01/simple-is-better-lent-when-lonely-is-ok/ Open Letter to the Lonely Mom by Ashley Olivine https://www.ashleyolivine.com/lonely-mom/ Breaking the Stigma: Understanding and Talking About Loneliness by MelAnn https://lifesouvenirs.net/p/breaking-the-stigma Legos and Laundry. These have been in my living room and dining room for over 10 years now. Should legos be in the rooms where we eat or relax? Should laundry? I say - YES. I have wanted to be a mother since I can remember. I babysat most of the kids in my neighborhood. Back when 12-year-olds could safely keep a few toddlers without any cell phones to reach any adults. Back when toddlers were thrilled to have said 12-year-old-neighbor-girl to make them pretend-school-worksheets and teach them how to hopscotch. Those were the days. Back to the legos and the laundry, there are many days where "I can't wait until this house is in order and everything is in its place and nobody's dirty socks or underwear will be on the floor!". But now that I've had one successfully leave the nest, I don't catch myself wincing over the legos or the laundry as much. See I know those cleats will be gone one day. I know that clarinet practice I hear from upstairs will be a distant memory. I know the messy rooms and the slammed doors and the "WHATTTTT?" of a teenager (with the required eye roll) will soon be in my rearview. And sometimes it catches my breath. Because I know. I know I will go from discussions around algebra to conversations about mortgages. From little league to stadiums. From junior Broadway productions to a college stage, perhaps. It's the perhaps that gets me too. See they were little, hard to believe but true. No bigger than my short arms could nuzzle. And I rocked them every night. And I picked out their nursery furniture and their first backpack and their first set of beliefs in many ways. But they're growing up. And they're SO smart. They can think for themselves and they challenge me, too. Make my brain stretch. Make my heart explode. I didn't know it could feel so good and so awful at the same time. Good that they're becoming themselves and that they're happy. Awful that I can't protect them and keep them from getting bumped and bruised like we all did. Now when I hang up that uniform or listen to the show soundtrack for the 100th time, I just smile. I let the legos pile up. I keep the clean clothes folded in the basket on the dining room table. And I hold my breath just a few more years and soak in every minute that I can get with them. How many more loads of laundry will I get? I think any mother would agree there is never enough. Written by one sappy mom to anyone else who feels this. Written when my boys are 10, 12, and 20. Written when I'm sandwiched between launching children and caring for aging parents. Written when the world seems automated and conversations seem rare. Written with my own youth creeping toward my rearview, with a coffee mug in my hand, and a knowing heart swollen in my chest. Godspeed. The whir of the wall heater lulls me to sleep. I’m in seventh grade again, at my friend’s house, dreaming of my life as an adult. We just watched Dirty Dancing and inhaled a bag of Doritos with a 2L of Dr Pepper and no one considered the carbohydrates involved. In reality, I am an adult. With children. And two husbands by now. And a whole lot of disappointments and triumphs along the way. I still feel like that awkward seventh grader when, I’m actually the mother of a seventh grader. How did this happen? I’m typing this in a cottage in the woods. A writer’s weekend, that’s what I claimed it to be. And in late 2022, I am stuck trying to decide how much of my life to share on social media and how many posts are “enough” to promote my writing. The internet connection is poor here and it’s a blessing and a curse. When did we become so tied to people we’ve never met and numbers oft generated by bots? Do I measure the importance of my work by likes, shares, and follows or by actual lives impacted? And let’s be honest, we rarely know when we impact a life because the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs tells us that a certain % of folks are introverts and would never tell us if we helped them, to no fault of our own. And the trauma we have all endured. I am not joking. The real actual trauma and pain I have seen my fellow GenXers and patients and friends endure. We all go to therapy and spend countless hours trying to right some of the wrongs between scrolling and TikToking, working our regular jobs, raising tiny to full-sized humans, and trying to eat whole foods. In this world of 2-4 second attention spans, I feel lost. I feel lonely. I feel drained. Am I the only one? And so I sit. In Midlife. In the Southeast. In middle school bleachers and while planning a wedding for the oldest. I sit at baseball tournaments and in my car traveling to see my patients. I sit at kitchen tables discussing hospice the same morning I sit with my fifth grader studying vocabulary. I know I’m not alone. The Middle is weird. It’s not the beginning, like I am reminded of with my oldest and his fiancé. The furniture shopping and the bedspread and dishes selections. It’s not the end either. The disbursement of family heirlooms and quiet days sparsely populated by visiting friends or family. It’s not the days of toddler-parent-survival where bath time and nap time ruled the schedule. But it’s not the days where everyone can drive yet either. And oh yeah a pandemic happened. School shootings. A nation so divided I can’t even recognize it. But just keep on going folks. Keep on posting and hashtagging and hustling. Meh. I will take this Middle. I will take the Menopause and the investment planning and the figuring out how to parent adult children. I will take it and try to learn from it and admit that it’s uncomfortable. See, we are too old to fake stuff in this Middle. We have seen too much. I think my writing will continue to be what it is. Real. Raw. With a flimsy filter and a side of sarcasm. It will grow as I do. I hope you join me. If anything in this little diary entry stirred your insides, then know that we are in this together. Let’s go. Awkward but not alone. 2 year anniversary of covid- what isn't in the news or really discussed publicly:
What is working?
What is not working?
What's next? What do I want more of?
Okay, so what does my list of "stuff" have to do with you? It's meant to be a guide or a tool for you to do your own quarterly review. What is working? What is not working? What do you want more of? Or less of? What have you learned in the last 3 months? I encourage you to take a few moments to yourself in one of those cracks of time we all barely get these days. Write it down. Type it in your phone notes. Say it out loud if you want to do that. But give it some THOUGHT. Consistent quarterly reviews or seasonal reflections can be life-giving and increase your productivity, contentment, and enthusiasm for what lies before you! Godspeed. ❤️ My quick money story. Everybody has one, right? Some people are born into money, some are not. Some people make a fantastic income and still struggle to pay their bills. Others make an average income and live comfortably within their means. Not many people talk about money. It's a secret. It now comes and goes in several icons on our devilish palm-sized devices (see my love hate relationship with my phone here). Anyway, my money story goes something like this: - average childhood, that's my parents' story to tell, but I never really felt STRESSED about money as a child and I was taught some good sound financial principles (thanks Mom & Dad) -got into > 40k in debt in my 20's by living above my means, keeping up with the Joneses and making poor financial decisions -spent 4 years of my 30's GETTING OUT OF DEBT which looked like paying $1000 /month towards old credit card debt FOR FOUR YEARS STRAIGHT (ouch!) -now I am in my 40's and focused on saving for retirement, paying our house off, and avoiding unnecessary debts I say all of that to say: I am not certified in anything financial. I have read some books and followed some financial influencers over the years, and I am very entrenched in our family's finances. I am also learning from my retired parents about what it will actually look like to live on a retirement income. I am familiar with Medicare, pensions, social security benefits, Roth IRAs, and 401k/403b plans. I am not a day trader or financial wizard. I'm somewhere in the middle, and I think that is probably where most of my readers are too. I have had to have very frank discussions about money with patients over the years (financial stress can GREATLY affect one's health and cause caregiver strain with children of elderly patients). So I decided to write about it. Part of my passion for writing is speaking the truth and shedding light on everything that is making us all stressed and uncomfortable. Now that you know my purpose for this piece, are you ready??? Let's do this! My 10 smart money tips for anyone, anywhere:
Let's go through each Money Tip in more detail so that we have a better understanding of them.
PRO TIP: The pictures below are just an example of using my banking app to monitor my spending. You can see the pie chart is for ALL of my 2021 spending. Since I don't have a car payment, I divided my auto expenses by 12. That came to around $392. Since I know car insurance makes up around $200 of the $392, I calculated that I am spending around $172 / month on gas. This is just an easy example of using your banking app to see what you are ACTUALLY spending on categories in your budget. What you think you spend and what you actually spend are often 2 very different amounts. So do your research! It costs you nothing to look at your spending and it will give you so much insight to your financial health! I did not write this post to provoke guilt or shame about your spending or finances. I have had 40k+ in debt and I have felt that overwhelming burden. It's just part of my story, and I am no longer ashamed of it.
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