The Lights On The Christmas Tree

Many of you know that 2023 has been a pivotal year for me. It has been scary, challenging, and painful. On the other hand, it has been a year of great growth and liberation. I’ve learned so much. I’ve spent most of my life living in fear and emotional  pain, thinking it was imperfectly normal. This year, I’ve discovered how it feels when pain is not my de facto state of being. It feels more wonderful than I can say. I find myself often reflecting on my improved mental health with a sense of awe and bemusement.

I was talking to my life coach Todd about this transformation. In coaching me, one of his main areas of emphasis has been emotional resilience. He helps me learn to sit with difficult emotions, understanding that I will be able to withstand them and that they will pass. One of his axioms is that feelings are not forever.  There have been many opportunities for me to practice this skill in the past couple of years. As I have developed emotional resiliency, my major focus has been mostly relief when I don’t feel shattered and valueless. I have been gaining strength and confidence, especially over the past year. Recently, I have started to think beyond the moments of relief and contentment, wondering if this newfound peace can really be a new default way of being for me going forward.

I told Todd that I understood his perspective that feelings are not forever. I agreed that I have experienced the phenomenon of paddling my emotional resiliency boat into safe harbors over the past couple of years. However, I can also look in my rear-view mirror and see a time not so long ago when feelings WERE forever. I asked Todd how I could be confident that I was changed in some fundamental way that would prevent me from turning future painful feelings into forever conditions. He replied with a metaphor that resonated profoundly with me.

He explained that, for many years, I had no concept of self-determination. I had no understanding that I had any power to change conditions that made me depressed, scared, angry, or other otherwise emotionally hobbled.  No matter what happened in my life, no matter how anyone treated me, no matter what needs I had- I simply accepted whatever came my way, believing I had no right or ability to change it. Now, I know that I have agency in my own life. I can often take actions and have conversations that can change my circumstances. I can choose how I respond to events that I do not have the capacity to change. Todd said it was like having a stone in my shoe. Most of my life, I wandered around with a stone in my shoe without even knowing I had a stone in my shoe. I just knew something hurt. Since I did not know there was a stone stabbing into the sole of my foot, I never took my shoe off to shake it out. Therefore, the pain WAS forever. Now, I know that there is a stone in my shoe. I can take time out to extract it when necessary, so the pain will be temporary.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to muse a little more about this metaphor. I decorated the house for Christmas.  I pulled out the self-lighting tree I purchased last year. It is one of those fancy-dancy trees that have this “magic” central pole to make the tree light up all over without having to attach multiple strings of lights to each other. I love the lights on this tree. They are so colorful, with pure, clean shades of pink, blue, green, yellow, red, and blue. It makes me happy just to look at them.

I heaved the tree out of its box, struggling to stabilize the trunk in the holder and maneuver the upper section into place. I am just a little too short on one end and a lot too lacking in upper body strength to assemble the entire thing without breaking a sweat. The tree also attacked me with its thousands of sharp plastic needles, leaving bloody scratches on my forearms.  Finally, I had the entire structure standing straight and strong, overlooking my living room. The colorful universe of lights twinkled from top to bottom.

I lovingly unwrapped my ornaments- all of which hold sentimental meaning for me. There is not a single boxed, generic Christmas ball on my tree. I have one ornament that graced my maternal grandmother’s tree when she was a child. I have numerous Tinkerbell ornaments. I can tell you where Max and I were visiting when I purchased many of them. I have a reindeer wearing Alohawear swimming trunks from my first trip to Hawaii- he does jumping jacks when I pull a string. I have a hippopotamus ornament that I originally bought for my mother soon after we moved to Florida. We used to drive by this store that sold large bronze statuary. One day, Momma mused out loud why anyone would want a huge bronze hippo on their front lawn. Confused, I asked her what she meant. She pointed to one of the statues on display. I advised her that it was a cow, not a hippopotamus. That ornament always makes me laugh.

I found places on the tree for each ornament, reminiscing as I worked. Finally, I stepped back to admire my handiwork. I saw that it was good. The ornaments brought me joy and the lights sparkled. I felt like the completed Christmas tree was worth the considerable effort and lacerations. I went into another room to do some additional decorating.

When I returned to the living room, something looked wrong to me. It took me a second to realize it, but it soon hit me that the top half of the tree was no longer twinkling. It was no longer glowing. It was no longer colorful. It was no longer lit. It seemed that the magic pole had lost its magic, no longer transmitting power through both sections of the tree. I had limited options for troubleshooting because it is not that easy to manipulate a tree decked out with 64+ years of sentimental ornaments. I gingerly tried a few possibilities, but to no avail. The bottom had twinkling, colorful lights dancing around it, but the lights came to an abrupt halt mid-tree. It looked silly, so I decided it would be better to turn the lights off completely.

As the evening wore on, I kept looking at the tree in all its non-lit splendor. It made me sad to see it so lifeless and flat. Also, because there were no lights drawing my eye to the sparkle, all I saw was the clumsiness of my ornament placement. The blank spaces and the places on the tree where too many ornaments bunched together glared at me.  All the joy I felt in decorating the tree seemed artificial. I experienced a palpable feeling of pain, disappointment, and resignation. I prepared myself to tolerate the lightless tree for the next few weeks, trying to convince myself that it was okay.

It wasn’t okay, though. I was downright sad. I thought about buying a few strings of lights to give the tree a little oomph, but everyone knows that the lights go on the tree first. I wasn’t sure how it would work to try to string the lights around the already decorated tree. I sure as heck did not want to remove all the ornaments and start over again. It seemed like a waste of money to buy lights, since the tree came with plenty of lights… if they would just light. I kept trying to convince myself that it was not a big deal, but I could not let it go. It was a stone in my shoe.

By the next day, I had decided. I didn’t care if the lights were supposed to go on first. I didn’t care if I was spending $20-$30 that I should not have had to spend. I wanted lights on my Christmas tree, and it was within my power to have them. I took myself to Lowe’s, bought three hundred colored lights, and added a string of clear lights to put around the bottom of the tree, for good measure.  When I got home, I draped the lights around the tree, over the ornaments.  It was not perfect. In fact, it is pretty messy and bunchy in places. Removing the lights will probably be a nightmare. But you know what? When the lights are on, I don’t see the mess. I just see the lights. And they make me happy.

There was a time when I would have simply lived with the lightless tree, silently grieving while putting on a happy face. I would have simply tried to tolerate the disappointment because that was my state of being. I certainly would not have entertained the notion that I could do anything to change my set of circumstances… or that it was okay for me to even want to change it.

I guess an old elf can learn new tricks. 

What have you learned this holiday season? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me to terriretirement@gmail.com

Have a holly jolly day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Growing Pains

I think I am going through a growth spurt. I went to the doctor last week and I gained two pounds over the holidays. It appears that my girth, if nothing else, has gone through a growth spurt. I’d like to think it is much more than that.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working on being more intentional about how I spend my time. I wanted to disentangle myself from being overcommitted. I wanted to decrease the amount of energy I spent of activities and relationships that I do not enjoy. Going forward, I wanted to focus on improving myself instead of busy-ness and “contributing.” I really wanted to trust myself and my own intrinsic worth instead of relying on the opinion of others or the quantity of my contribution to form my own opinion of myself. It proved to be harder than I anticipated.

I took a two-month participation vacation from an organization that was starting to consume me. I was starting to not like myself and the way I felt when working on tasks related to this organization. It was not that anyone did anything wrong or that I did not enjoy the organization. It was simply some my own tendencies that I had to tame. I tried to rein myself in and protect my feelings while continuing to participate in the organization’s activities. I found the unhealthy part of me was just too ingrained and I needed to disconnect myself completely for a couple of months.

I finally voiced my reluctance to continue with another activity that had been causing me angst over the past couple of years. I honestly did not have sufficient time to invest in the activity at the required level. Also, there were some interpersonal challenges and confusion as to roles, which sapped my energy.

I stopped trying to be the driver of all the many relationships I accumulated since COVID. In my attempt to help people feel connected and valued, I began reaching out to far more people than my sweet little introverted self could handle. I continued in my quest for connection long after most of the world abandoned the “virtual world” and started interacting in real life again. I was typically the one who was reaching out to my relationships. That fed a need in me, but it also critically drained my emotional battery. I began allowing time for other people- people with whom I had genuine relationships- to reach out to me.

I expected that my self-imposed hiatus from the wild world would be pleasant, relaxing, and satisfying. That did not turn out to be the case… at least, not initially. In fact, after just a couple of weeks, I felt isolated and lonely and discouraged. I felt kind of hopeless. Maybe I was not such good company for myself after all. I struggled through the holidays a bit. My brother, my last tie to my family of origin, died this year. I had given up, at least temporarily, my involvement with some of my affiliations. Many of the people with whom I have the closest, more authentic connections were off doing family stuff. Nothing felt right.

I think my feelings were the delirium tremors of the soul. I was detoxing from this need for validation of my worth- either from activities or from other people. Unfortunately, I did not recognize this right away. I embroiled myself in another major activity by which I was measuring my worthiness. It was something I did want to do for some excellent, valid reasons. However, I allowed myself to stop focusing on these great reasons. Instead, I got caught up with the idea of proving myself and being valuable in other people’s eyes. I did not react well.

Just in the past few days, I’ve realized that I have been holding on to some resentment and hurt left over from before my hiatus. I stopped the activities, but I did not stop the unhealthy thought patterns. Thanks to a frank conversation with a friend, I realized my problem. In that conversation, I allowed myself to feel all the negative emotions I was pushing to the back of my brain, in an attempt to convince myself that they didn’t matter and that I should just get over them. They did matter and I couldn’t get over them until I dived into them. My poor friend was completely unprepared for my reaction and I am sorry she had to see it, but I am so grateful to her for being the pilot light that ignited the bonfire. Now that I have burned at least some of that negative emotion, I might be better equipped to trust in myself and in my intrinsic worth. I am entitled to be me. What’s more- the world is better because I am me.

People always say that there is no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth. I say that I see nothing wrong with comfort. People also say that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I say that I don’t see why I have to be so frickin’ strong. God often has to drag me kicking and screaming into the next phase of my development.

Still, it is pretty cool when I do see the growth that comes after the pain.

What have you learned after experiencing some “growing pains?” Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a painless day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

The Life Cycle Of A Flower- Part 2

Last week, I began a survey of my life, as told through flowers. As I wrote, I was surprised at what a large part flowers played in my childhood. This week, I am continuing the saga of the seed.

Flowers came up again in high school. Our high school girls club used to have a Valentines’ Day sale each year as a fund-raiser. You could buy a carnation to be delivered to another student during class. It was a stressful time for the unpopular. The idea that one might receive a carnation was exciting, but the probability that I would go through the day blossomless created all kinds of angst in my teenage soul. I am sure I am not the only one. It felt bad to go through a class during the appointed time without receiving a carnation. It was such a public display of popularity or lack thereof.

I went through three years of high school dreading Valentines’ Day. Once or twice, I did get a flower from a friend. One year, my mother called the school and arranged to send me a carnation. When the girls’ club member delivered it, people asked who gave it to me. I am sure they were all shocked. I told them it was from a boyfriend at a different school. In retrospect, I doubt I was fooling anyone. In retrospect,  I am also sorry I did not say it was from my mother, who loved me with an intensity greater than she loved anyone else in the world.

I did have a miserable adolescence. So did a lot of people. It is amazing anyone makes it through high school alive. Those carnations were one of the contributing factors to the trauma. However, there were some other flowers that contributed to healing. When I was a kid, my bedroom had a sliding glass door that led out into the backyard. I remember warm, quiet nights when I would open the glass slider and leave just the screen closed. The scent of my father’s night-blooming jasmine wafting into my room. When the jasmine was in bloom, all my mind could process, as I drifted off to sleep, was the sweet, spicy, exotic fragrance of the flowers. Even today, I find the scent of jasmine comforting. It evokes memories of the “safe” times in my young adulthood… evenings safe in my bed, with my family around me, and the jasmine lulling me to sleep.

I remember my high school graduation. My parents got me a corsage for that occasion. It was a white gardenia. At the beginning of the day, the scent was nice. The flower wilted throughout the day. The velvety creamy white petals began to brown at the edges. The aroma became much stronger and overpowering. The cloying sweetness began to smell like decay. It was a fitting end to the agony of adolescence.

When I got married, my mother and I had a tough time figuring out how to plan a wedding. In the days before the internet and the TLC channel on cable, it was much harder to figure out what to do than it is today. Besides, neither I nor my mother were noted for giving parties. Both of us were practical. I was raised that functionality is more important than sentiment when it comes to spending money (somehow, that perspective has not followed me into adulthood!) It never occurred to me or to my mother to have the reception anywhere than in the parish hall, which was also the parish school cafeteria. We decided to visit a nearby bridal salon that specialized in renting wedding gowns and one-stop wedding arrangements. They sold “packages,” that included the rental of a gown and headpiece, pictures, flowers, and cake. They had vendors to provide catering at an additional cost. When we arrived there and began looking at the dresses available for rent, it was apparent that my misshapen body was not going to fit into any of them. Still, the salon kept a seamstress on retainer to make gowns for brides who wished to purchase a gown (or was too oddly shaped to fit into a rental gown.) We spoke to the seamstress, who was somewhat linguistically challenged, and described what I wanted.  We signed on for a package and agreed to a caterer to provide sandwich trays for the reception.

The dress she produced looked nothing like what I imagined. For most brides, this would have been a disaster. I do not think it bothered me that much for two reasons. First, I was convinced that I could not look pretty, no matter what I wore. Second, I did not want to upset my mother.

While the gown was not that important to me, flowers were. I wanted to carry white roses and stephanotis. Both species of flowers are on the expensive side of the scale. The stephanotis was not even on the scale for the package price. If I wanted roses and stephanotis, I would have to drastically economize on other flowers. I ended up abandoning my idea for pew flowers. My bridesmaids carried daisies. I had my bouquet of roses and stephanotis. I even had a little stephanotis vein woven around the edge of my rented headpiece. I do not know why that detail meant so much to me-  why, in fact, the stephanotis was the only wedding detail that meant anything at all to me. Years later, I learned that stephanotis is a variety of jasmine. When I read that fact, the circle closed. I love it when things come together like that.

White roses have another meaning for me. There was a white rosebush outside the house where I grew up. It grew in a stony, rocky area between the house and garage where we kept our trash cans. Nobody paid much attention to it. Still, that rosebush thrived. Year after year, it yielded beautiful white blossoms at Christmas. White roses were more of a Christmas tradition at our house than poinsettias and holly.

After we moved out of the house, I made sure my mother had white roses at Christmas every year. Sometimes, it was a table arrangement. Sometimes, it was a corsage. Sometimes, the roses were artificial. Sometimes they were real. Sometimes, when I was particularly poor, it was just a Christmas card with white roses on it. No matter what, there was some form of white rose for my mother at Christmas.

One year after we moved to Florida, my mother announced that she did not want me to buy her white roses. Instead, she said, she wanted me to wait until spring when the stores were selling those sad looking dormant rosebushes  the roots in a bag and plant her one of those.

“Oh crap, something else I have to figure out how to do,” I said. On the inside. On the outside, I smiled and said, “okay.”  At least I figured I had a few months before spring to read up on rose resuscitation techniques. Who knows, maybe she would forget the whole idea.

A couple of weeks later, we were at Big Lots and a group of cub scouts were selling small plants for a couple of bucks. You guessed it. They had one small white rosebush, with a few little buds on it. My mother thought it was a sign from God that we should take it home and I should transplant it. So we did.

A couple of weeks went by, and the rosebush was looking rough. The term “scraggly” comes to mind. Eventually, when the rosebush seemed terminal, extraordinary measures were warranted. I went to Google to learn how to safely relocate the bush from its pot to my mother’s front yard. Armed with a print of the page, I went to the local home store and tried to purchase mulch, potting soil, and peat moss. When I came face-to-face with the bags of these items, I discovered that I could not even pick up the smallest bag of each of them without the aid of a chiropractor. Not to mention that the cost and quantity were overkill for one tiny rose plant. I finally noticed a small bag of something called “potting mix” a few shelves over from the gargantuan bags of mulch, potting soil, and peat moss. Sensing a conspiracy, I checked out the label and discovered that the $5 bag of “potting mix” contained…. mulch, potting soil, and peat moss! What a bonanza! I purchased the potting mix, feeling very accomplished. I was starting to get the hang of this gardening stuff.

Since I was on a roll, I went over to my mother’s mobile home and started digging the hole. I followed the directions from Google and stuck that little rosebush right into the ground. Filling the hole back up, I just said a prayer and hoped for the best.

Two nights later, there were record low temperatures. And frost.

God must have sent angels to blanket that rosebush, though. Against all odds and despite my complete ineptitude, it flourished. Within a couple of weeks, new buds started to blossom. The bush grew and the roses kept on blooming!

My success with the white roses was a powerful reminder of what I can do when motivated by love. It was also a powerful reminder of the part that flowers played in my relationship with my mother.

The concluding chapter of the flowery tale occurred several years later. On what would have been my mother’s 90th birthday, I contributed altar flowers for the Sunday service at my church. I asked the florist to make sure the arrangements included white roses and, especially, flowers with fragrant blooms. After the service, I brought the arrangements home and made potpourri out of them. Our parish ladies’ group sold these sachets with little “romance cards” that explained that the potpourri was made with love, prayers, and flowers from a worship service in our church.

My mother would have been happy.

If you could represent your life with a flower, what flower would it be? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Bloom beautifully today!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

Wayback Wednesday

One of the benefits of staying at home during the COVID-19 quarantine was that it gave me time to reassess the “stuff” I have acquired over the years.  I did a merciless, no-holds-barred purge of my closets and bedroom drawers, throwing out or donating all the clothes that don’t fit, are too worn and threadbare to be respectable, are not suitable for my current life (as evidenced by the fact that I can’t remember the last time I wore them), or make me feel dumpy or like I am trying too hard.  This process was traumatic, but I stuffed my feelings along with the rejected garments. I ate some chocolate and plunged ahead.  I also trashed some of the souvenirs from my working life.  I did not get rid of everything, but I did discard items that no longer sparked joy.  I cannot imagine why I ever thought it necessary to move across the country with a list of emergency contact numbers for people I temporarily managed two years before I left the workforce.   

As I conducted my shock and awe purge of joyless articles of uselessness, I ran across some writing I did over the years.  As some of you know, I always wanted to write, but the business of making a living pretty much dominated my life for 30 plus years.  I forgot that I had, in fact, been writing during that 30 years.  I tended to write a bit or piece of something and stuff it in a drawer.  I am beginning to think that my reason for not pursuing my writing was only partially about time.  I think a big part of it was about fear- fear of failure, fear of exposure, fear of myself.  I do not have a lot of the material I wrote in my prime, but I do have a few things.  These pieces, strangely enough, seem to be remarkably like what I would call “blog posts” today.  Most of them were written long before anyone had ever heard of a “blog post.”

As I was reading these relics of the me I used to know, I found myself chuckling.  They reminded me of a time in my life when my priorities, self-image, and outlook were different than they are today.  I remember the me who suffered way more than her life conditions merited.  I remember the me who did not believe in her own worth.  I enjoyed knowing her. I enjoyed maturing her into someone more settled, more joyful, and more confident.  As I read these older writings, I remember I liked the girl who wrote them.   She was kind.  She was funny.  She had a great sense of life’s absurdities.  She was introspective.  She was committed to becoming the best person she could be.   She had a catchy turn of phrase.  She believed in the beauty of the soul. 

I realize all those qualities I admire in the girl who wrote the articles I found stuffed into drawers are still me.  They are simply better and more polished and more well-integrated now.  That makes me happy.

I have now written over 500 words now to give you the backstory for my main reason for today’s blog post.  I think I am going to share some of that early me with you over the next few months.  Every now and again, I am going to post something I wrote years ago as a “Wayback Wednesday” blog piece.  I hope you will enjoy them and that you like the girl who wrote them as much as I have come to like her. 

Do you ever come across a picture or letter or some other souvenir of another time in your life?  How does it make you feel?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a wayback wonderful day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Show Me The Way To Go Home

I recently returned from a trip back “home” to California. When I was leaving Florida, I felt a little trepidation because, on my last trip to California, I experienced a rather strange sensation of disorientation (http://www.terrilabonte.com/2017/08/a-weird-and-strange-sentimental-journey/). I wondered if my equilibrium would be similarly out of whack on this trip.

Because the main driver for this trip was to scatter my mother’s ashes at one of her favorite places, I guess I felt I was a little vulnerable to emotional earthquakes from the get-go. Scattering my mom’s ashes in my backyard in Florida was a pretty gutting experience for me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to scattering ashes while simultaneously feeling like I somehow fell down a rabbit hole into a home that used to be mine but no longer seemed familiar.

I need not have worried. The trip was good. I felt like the time I spent with my brother was valuable to both of us. Scattering my mother’s ashes did not result in a meltdown for either of us. I think we both took comfort from being together with our memories of our mother- memories that only the two of us could share in the same way. I think we both felt better afterwards. My brother texted me that he felt like she was home now. I delighted in the time I spent with my friends. I felt like I was actively participating in life and relationships, rather than just sitting still and letting things happen around me. I enjoyed the sensation. As I drove around Southern California, the territory felt familiar again. I did not sense the weird and strange, as I did a few months ago.

I wondered what was different. I am sure that my mother’s death and my adaptation to a different life without her had something to do with it. Still, I think the biggest difference is how I see my home in Florida now. It took me a long time to really kick into gear and feel truly connected to my new life in Florida. It was a process. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it or that I was unhappy. It was just that shifting gears is very difficult for me. I have an extremely slow emotional transmission.

The last time I was in California, I don’t think I was quite comfortable in the idea that Florida was my home. I didn’t yet feel settled and secure in the life I’ve built here. My life in Florida was starting to gel and become my new comfort zone, but things were still a bit wobbly. I think I could not feel truly confident that my new “home” life in Florida would still feel stable and sound when I returned if I allowed my heart to experience some of my old “home” life in California. I could only allow myself to experience the distorted shadow of what used to be so familiar. I was kind of like a polar bear trying to make her way across shaky ice. Instead of gracefully and confidently jumping from one ice float to another, I was trying to balance each of my four paws on different ice floats at the same time. It wasn’t working and I felt myself being pulled in numerous different, uncomfortable directions as the various ice floats diverged.

This time, I think I’d become more secure and embedded in the fabric of my “home” life in Florida. Because I have created a richer, more connected life for myself in Florida- a life that is growing and becoming more deeply rooted- I feel more comfortable enjoying and appreciating the “home” I left behind. Feeling more stable on my current block of ice, this polar bear is now more confident leaping her way to familiar and unfamiliar ice floats as she travels wherever life leads her.

Do you think it is easier to appreciate the past more when you are contented with your present life or when you hit a rough patch in the present?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.  

Enjoy today, both at home and away!!!

Terri 🙂

Springing Forward

The hospice nurse says my mother no longer experiences time in the same way most people do.  Do you think it might be contagious? 

Never before in my life have I messed anything up because of the beginning of Daylight Savings Time.  Last Sunday, I was getting ready to go to church.  I happened to look down at my phone and noticed it said the time was an hour later than I thought it was.  I wondered what was wrong with my phone.  As it turns out, nothing. 

I went to church, still operating firmly in Eastern Standard Time despite all iPhone indications to the contrary.  I thought I was arriving early for Sunday School and was surprised at how full the parking lot already was.  I noticed some folks going into the church and wondered at that.  By Terri Time, it was just about an hour before the service was to start and people usually don’t arrive that early.  Finally, out of nowhere (or, maybe, out of the numerous hints that my brain was consuming but apparently not digesting very quickly), I realized that Daylight Savings Time might just have started at 2:00 o’clock that morning.   

So, I did not have a spring forward this year.  It was more like a stumble forward.  Maybe I was actually pushed directly into the path of an oncoming time change.  I think there might be a message for me in this. 

I think I may have become a little stuck in flux during this past season.  Is that an oxymoron?  Can one be “stuck” if one is in a state of “flux?”  All I know is that I think my brain has been wallowing in some sort of disagreeable sludge ever since my mom had her stroke.  I have become used to living in a nearly constant mood of sadness, anxiety, fear, and inadequacy. It has become a comfortable ooze, if not a pleasant one.  I tend to sink deeper into it rather than exerting the effort to lumber out of it.  Yes, this whole journey started back in the last Daylight Savings Time.  Theoretically, I’ve had a couple of time changes to adapt to my new circumstances. I’m not sure my transmission is that good, though.  It tends to slip.  Given my sinister slide into the emotional muck, I’d say I had no trouble at all “falling back.” 

Now that spring is here (whether I sprung with it or not), it might be a good time to recognize and acknowledge new birth.  There has been a lot of growing inside me recently.  I’ve graduated from my perception that retirement is simply well-earned rest.  I’m now seeing how retirement can and should be enriching, as well as restful.    More than two years after my move, I have started thinking of Florida as “home.”  It no longer feels disloyal to prefer my life in Florida to what I was experiencing back in California.  I believe I have learned more about myself in the past two years than in the prior 30 plus “career” years put together.  The best news about that self-education is that I am figuring out how to appreciate myself.  I’m not saying that I am all that and a bag of chips, but I think I can now safely say that I am at least the bag of chips.  

In addition to recognizing and acknowledging the new beginnings I’ve birthed since my retirement, spring seems a good time to nurture the seedlings that are beginning to sprout for other changes.  I know I’ll never be okay with my mother’s condition, but I do sometimes feel the stirrings of acceptance and reconciliation.  This spring, I want to be a gardener.  I want to tend to my mother’s heart- to fill it with beautiful flowers and plants and lovely scents to remind her how much she is loved.  I also want to tend my own heart- to heal it and love it and remind it of how much I love. 

Is spring growing season for you?  Any particular “gardening” you are planning for this year?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Happy almost spring!

Terri 🙂

I’ve Got That Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart

Easter reminds me that my race is not yet run.

 When I started working, I did not select my career with my Christianity in mind. To be honest, I’m not sure I selected it at all. I had just finished college with a fresh out of the oven degree in English. I was working at my minimum wage college job. I had a brand new husband, who was a full time graduate student.  He needed brand new food every brand new day. When the chance for federal employment was offered, I took the job for purely temporal reasons.

That doesn’t mean that, for the 33 plus years I worked, I left my faith at the door. While my job description wasn’t particularly missionary, I believed that God expected me to live a mission. I spent my career purposely, consciously, and genuinely trying to make each decision from a place of goodness and to be a light in the world to the people I encountered. The fuel for that light was Jesus. I often fell short. I was not always a good example or a beacon of Christ’s light. I simply trusted that, when I did succeed in my mission through the wisdom and grace God granted me, the Lord would use that work to let others see Him and His love.

 When I retired, I was tired and worn down in my very soul. I looked forward to my retirement as a period of rest and relaxation, my years of work being done. I did rest and it has taken a very long time for my spirit to relax. Now, I realize my work is not done. My workplace is different and the conditions are unfamiliar, but I am sure God still has a mission for me.

 I believe I am called, like St. Therese of Lisieux, to live an ordinary life with extraordinary love. There is still some life left for me to fill, using God’s grace, with extraordinary love.

 I am writing about reinventing myself in retirement. This Easter season, I have been journeying towards a spiritual reinvention, or, at least, a spiritual reinvigoration. I’ve been participating in a Best Lent Ever program.  It is a series of daily email video reflections. It is offered through www.dynamiccatholic.com.  You might want to check it out. Even non Catholics might be interested.  Really, anyone with a spiritual orientation that includes Jesus, even tangentially, might find it useful.

 In working on my spiritual reinvention this Lent, www.dynamiccatholic has helped me remember some valuable lessons.

 When I give in to shyness and avoid people, I put my Jesus light under a bushel and miss potential opportunities to provide comfort and extraordinary love.

When I get impatient and rushed, I miss the opportunity to be absolutely present in the moment, to cherish the joy that God gives that moment.

When my heart flashes with irritation and anger, I miss the opportunity to gain understanding and closeness. 

 Moving forward, I know that I will forget these lessons and will fall short. I also know that God has more lessons for me.  I will try to keep an open heart and be available to His teaching, as I strive to be a carrier of extraordinary love.

The real lesson of Easter, though, is that, no matter how many times I fail, I am forgiven. Jesus saw to that.

Happy Resurrection!  I know that not everyone believes as I do, but Easter seems like a great time to remind ourselves that reinvention can be sacred as well as secular.

What do you think?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.  Have a happy and blessed Easter!

Terri 🙂