5 Ways To Start & End Your Days With Your Kids

It starts at home. We need to TEACH our children HOW to BLOOM. Start with saying these simple things. They encompass the foundational principles of blooming: knowingness, life ritual, and action.

Morning 

1. I love you.
2. You will have a fantastic day.
3. What one thing will you get done today?
4. Help whenever you can.
5. Remember to share your smile. It is a gift to the world.

Evening

1. What was the best part of your day? What was the worst?
2. What are thankful for?
3. Did you get it  done?
4. Are you proud of who you were today? 
5. I love you.

It starts at home.

Braking Your Heart So That It Isn't Broken

For the past few days, I've been having an unusual thought: Be safe with your heart. Protect it. The reason I call this unusual is because my normal philosophy is to give my heart away freely. This thought has even made it beyond my brain and ended up as advice to others and I'm doubly confused on how such a life operating philosophy could be coming from my mouth. Have you ever been in a situation where you're trying to protect your heart? It's hard stuff. The heart wants what the heart wants and no amount of reasoning can usually convince it otherwise.

How do you put the brakes on your heart?

Is Your Love Broken? Change the Game You're Playing

When you find yourself spending most of your conversation trying to prove that the person you're supposedly in love with is wrong, you need to give it up.

Are you pleading your case? Offering evidence in an effort to win? Wanting to be right?

Is that the GAME you REALLY want to win? Being right?

REMEMBER, this is the person you supposedly love.

The ONE you couldn't wait to see.

The ONE whose smell was so hypnotic that you would sleep with a piece of their clothing.

The ONE you loved to make smile, whose touch you could get lost in.

The ONE you started missing even before you left.

The ONE who redefined winning because nothing was won without them feeling like they were winning too.

Why don't you take all that energy you're spending on proving that you're right and put it into the GAMES worth winning - all the things you would do if they were still the ONE:

• Being named their #1 fan
• Finding a way to put a smile on their face
• Always knowing how their day is going
• Sharing your biggest victories and your smallest irritations
• Being the safest place for each other, your shelter, your sanctuary

And if you find yourself explaining why it's impossible to play any of these GAMES because you need to win at being right first, the likelihood is that you don't even like them anymore. THAT IS OKAY!!!! Stop holding onto the need to assign blame or be defensive. Let them go. Stop trying to fix it. There's nothing to fix. There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with them. You just don't fit together. Like puzzle pieces, when they don't fit together, we don't blame them or think they are broken, we just move on in search of the piece that does fit.

WHAT GAME are you playing?

FLUID LOVE

Sometimes, we don't recognize the moments when we're in them;
Scattered droplets in the sky.
We step away and we see them,
Step back to get them.
But like a flash of the firefly,
I'm finally there but they're gone.
It's too late because we're different - them or me;
But the calm center is there where we were
And where we are

With LOVE all around
And THAT love is captured forever
Recorded in that moment
Even the ones we don't recognize we're in.
It is where we are all the time.

What Will Make You Face the Life You're Living?

Eight years ago, I moved from Cleveland to the Twin Cities. My husband, at that time, stayed behind for three months to close up his private psychology practice and sell our house. I brought our kids and dog to live in temporary housing while I looked for a house. Everything was new to me here. Within a month, I found myself in abdominal surgery to remove what they thought was a huge ovarian cyst only to wake up and be told it was a 7 lb malignant tumor. Ovarian cancer. The surgeon wasn’t equipped or qualified to proceed, so she just removed the tumor/ovary and sewed me back up. It would be three months until I could know how far it had spread and take any next steps. I had to wait for the adhesions to heal.

I remember the first week after the first surgery….not having any idea of what my life would be now. I had been told that most ovarian cancer isn’t diagnosed until a person is in Stage 3 (meaning it had moved outside of the ovaries, beyond the pelvis, into the abdomen). A Stage 3 diagnosis has a prognosis of a 15-20% five year survival rate. So, all the odds said that I probably had an 80% chance of dying within the next five years. I sat there with that “sentence” hanging over my head and was trying to figure out how to weave it into my brain. What should it mean? I just started a brand new job. Should I keep looking for a house? Should I move back to Ohio and try to get my old job back? Were my kids going to be motherless within 5 years?

life isn't happening TO you

There were three gynecological oncologists in the Twin Cities area and I immediately called them. I wanted information and action ASAP. To my horror, their first appointments were at least three months out. I couldn’t wait that long. I needed to know what to do with my life and I needed information to help me figure out a plan. I pressed, told my story and asked if there was ANY possibility of getting in sooner, in the next week. I ended up persuading them to fit me in. And in the next week, I listened to them give me the same advice. Wait 3 months. Get a complete hysterectomy. Do the cancer staging to see how far it has spread and create a plan based on that. 

My husband returned to Ohio. I returned to work and lived the only way I could. Until the data says otherwise, I lived life with what I knew. I would not allow my reality to change yet. I based the plan on the latest information and right then, I could only assume I no longer had cancer. I don’t remember a lot about those 3 months. Being a single parent in a new city with a new job provided me with plenty of things to keep the dark thoughts at a distance. I think I turned my brain off as much as possible. I remember walks with my kids. I remember baths in my condo reading a wonderful book called “The Anatomy of Hope”. I remember standing on the deck with the realtor and talking about what a great yard the house that we were going to buy had. Great for kids, parties. (But would I be there for them?) I remember going to the house closing and wondering whether I should be buying a house. But it was the only thing to do. Life could not stop based on maybes. I kept it at a distance, at bay. I refused to deal with it until there was something certain to deal with. But there were moments that eased their way in, usually with the help of a song, that would wake me to possible realities and the profound sadness associated with them – motherless children being the most difficult one. Lifehouse’s song “Hanging By a Moment” was my song that summer. It was a plea, a promise, an anthem all at the same time. It was my negotiation with life, with the Universe, with cancer, with myself. I just needed this one thing – to not die. Just give me this one thing and I’d make it worth it. I wouldn’t waste it.

So, three months later, as I pulled up to Abbot Northwestern, listening to Cities97, “Hanging By A Moment” began to play – the Universe with its grin – and I walked in not knowing that when I walked out, I would be one of the lucky ones. Stage 1A. The cancer was only inside one ovary – and even though it was 7 lbs, it remained completely encapsulated. No chemo, no radiation. Nothing further to do except watch. 95% survival rate.

wake up

I returned for my follow up appointments and as I glimpsed each time into the eyes of what could have been, I was reminded of my secret negotiations with the Universe. A poke in the side to recognize time was passing and it could be taken away at any time. The Universe wasn’t blinking and it wasn’t going to allow me to hide. So, I had no other choice but to allow cancer to become one of my gifts and slowly face the life I was living.

Or better yet, the life I wasn't living.

5 Short Steps to Achieve FOCUS

Are your days passing and you find that you are busy but you aren't busy doing the right things?

1. Brainstorm for 5 minutes - "What am I trying to accomplish in my life?" WRITE the answers!
2. Circle the 3 most important things.
3. Review the list at the beginning of each day. 
4. Review the list at the end of your day. Did your activities drive the 3 things?
5. Adjust. Repeat.

                                                   

The 10 Ways a Hill of Sand and Life Are the Same

First, let me say that when my 14yo son, Ben, told me to stop the car because he HAD to get out and climb the sand hill, I had a proud parent moment.  We had just taken a turn off the main highway hoping to find a road closer to the Mississippi River. I was trying to turn a short, simple trip into a longer, something worth remembering trip. There, out in the middle of nowhere, was a huge hill of sand. Well, when you see that kind of thing, you just have to stop.

I had just picked Ben up from his first week-long camp. He was full of stories and the promise that it was the best time he's ever had, beating every vacation we've taken. (I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess it's good.) It was a beautiful day. Sky was bright blue and evening was approaching, so the sun was shifting lower, extending the shadows.

We got out of the car and left the music blaring. We took the camera with us. Ben immediately set about climbing to the top of the huge hill. He had to stop a couple of times, amazed at how much harder the sand made the trip. Eventually, he made it and yelled from the top, "Mom, you should see it up here. There's a whole field."

I was still at the bottom. I hadn't made it past the warm sand on my feet and the unexpected discovery of gorgeous shimmering shells polka dotting the hill. I had also discovered that Ben's motion was creating small avalanches. I sat watching sheets of sand release themselves and streams of sand create crevices and sand waterfalls off the ledges.

So, how is life like a sand hill?

1. When something surprises you, you should be willing to shift gears and tune into it. Ben saw the hill and demanded to stop. He wasn't willing to pass it by.
2. The trip up is hard work, but the trip down is fun as hell. Learning life's lessons can be hard but the wisdom is sublime.
3. Sometimes it takes a messy butt to get down the hill. Ben slid down the hill on his butt and his shorts ended up looking like he had an accident. In life, I think you have to be willing to loosen up sometimes, let things not be easily explainable, let it be messy.
4. Go with the wind. Pick up momentum. Go with the flow. Don't fight what the universe is telling you. The wind's force was a creative force in the face of the hill.
5. There were crevices in the hill and life has crevices. We become entrenched in our thoughts and habits. We have to notice when we're in them and work to get out of them. They're hard to get out of. 
6. Unexpected beauty is everywhere. Look for it! We found a sand hill in the middle of nowhere because we went looking for it.
7. Things aren't always what they seem. It was a hill of sand but it was also a moment, a metaphor, an enabler of a broader view.
8. You can get buried quickly if you stand still. Sometimes you just have to move, do something. The sand buries things quickly.
9. Truth depends on your point of view, your perspective. The experience at the top of the hill was very different from the one at the bottom of the hill.
10. Life is constantly changing even when it seems the same. From far enough away, that hill just seemed like a hill sitting there, but when you looked close enough, it was constantly changing. Structures that look permanent are fragile. A single distance vibration can result in a cataclysmic change.

Go out and find your sand hill now.