Matters That Matter ®

Gold Star Mom Speaks Out:

 I was living what I thought was an ordinary life. I had raised my only child on my own and I was enjoying watching him make his way through this world successfully and happily. On May 30, 2004, Ken was killed in a war that I never supported brought to this country by an administration I never supported. While many people say that casualties in Iraq have been relatively low, any number more than zero was too many for this war. Very few people have actually met a Gold Star Mom. It is important that people know what it feels like to be in my situation. I know not all Gold Star Moms feel as I do, I speak for myself, no one else. You cannot or do not want to imagine the process that the military goes through when a soldier is killed in combat, or any other situation. This is not a journey that any family should have to make. Ever. Welcome to my world.

kensmomkm@gmail.com      http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/kmballard.htm

 Mature women singing spending time remembering yet still making new plans deciding what is healthy what is worthy of the dance at hand. She turns around seeing days have slipped by pauses reflects on mistakes reflects on the positives as well. She grows into understanding her own person her own song. She turns around listens for the orchestra yes it is still playing and she sings: I am not music without lyrics I am a woman of substance. I have thoughts that I pursue that speak volumes age has brought me knowledge. I have lists of things I’ve learned. I embrace my worth and no longer fear saying so. I am not a hot flash sweaty without warning that is just a symptom of change. ‘Tis true I was feeling so fresh pretty even then my body reminded me that I am human I am a woman and I say, yes! Aging? Yes. And yet… I stand steady looking toward possibility. Ohh yes! Ready to understand my inner being better? Oh yes indeed. I am not music without lyrics I am the song I always knew I could be. I am the dance I dream of. I am an artist one who creates be it cookies or a garden of flowers be it paintings that line the walls of beautiful older women galleries. I create be it a gratitude journal blogs on line I continue on and feel my own worth. Mature women? Keep singing continue on they create their own lyrics. They know the song they understand the tune because it has become them and it becomes them beautifully.

 http://www.kathyostman-magnusen.com

She passed with flying colors…must have been the granny panties…She was so sure they worked magic that we celebrated afterwards by buying her 6 more pairs.

She’s off to the Senior Center to sign up for a painting class and meet a man. She has decided the panties ought to be seen by someone other than herself.

Tomorrow is the big day!

The culmination of months of disagreements, harsh words, tears and enough fear to go around.

We have all made plans and cancelled them. We have threatened and not followed thru. We have made promises; some kept, some not.

Independence is at stake…a life to call her own…a trip to the store for ice cream any time she feels like it.  A drive, just a simple drive to see what’s beyond her walking capabilities.

Will the driving instructor take pity on her because she is OLD? Her question, not mine. What if she has to parallel park, drive the highway, or back up in a crowded parking lot?

What if she gets too nervous and has an accident, with the car or with her bowels. There is risk involved here and an outcome that will shape the remaining years of her life.

If she doesn’t pass the test, she will take it 3 more allotted times. If she fails on all fronts she will move into assisted care…in her mind a fate worse than death…but one that will be necessary if she doesn’t have her own wheels. She’s decided.

I’ve told her we can work things out, schedules, cabs, deliveries…but NO, she says that she will move if it comes to that.

This all breaks my heart, and I wish I could take the test for her…like my kids SAT’s, or final exams that made them want to throw up. I really don’t care that she should or shouldn’t be on the road…I just care that she feels like this is a life or death (so to speak) test of skills.

I used to always have something special for my kids after a grueling test…homemade cookies, a pair of bright-colored socks, and new head band…just something so they knew that I was thinking of them while they were facing a challenge and doing their best.

I bought her pretty underwear today and will show up with them tomorrow when I pick her up to take her for her driving test.  I thought the pretty underwear would give her a measure of confidence …pretty underwear can do that, lift your spirits. It’s just hard to find granny panties that fit the bill.

 I will wait patiently for her to return; victorious, or devastated. Regardless of the outcome, we will go to lunch afterwards and talk about it and then talk about it some more. One way or the other we are movin’ on down the road with her in the driver’s seat.

Wish us luck!

Fall is in the air, which means it is back to school time.  For most of us that brings up memories of shopping trips to buy pencils, crayons, notebooks, clothes, new shoes, both when we were kids and then with our own kids.  I can still remember my own first day of school, standing behind my mom, begging her to take me with her and not leave me with a room full of other little kids and a kindergarten teacher named Mrs. Griblin.  Her very name sounded way to close to goblin, and taking one look at her stern look, imposing bosom and sensible shoes… well I was just sure that she was one and would just as soon gobble me up for lunch as read me a story. 

 For most of us, our school days, all the way up through graduate school are some of our most powerful memories.  But once we leave that behind… then what.  What about our “continuing education”? 

One of my drop dead favorite authors is Anne Lamott (If you haven’t checked her out, please, oh please, do.  Traveling Mercies, Bird By Bird are just two of my favorites.  She says that we are all here in what she refers to as “Earth School”.  How great is that?!  Earth School.  We are all enrolled and it is public education at it’s finest.  It isn’t dependent upon federal funding, test scores, grading curves or political agendas.  No debate about the value or not of home schooling or charter schools.  From the second we appear on this earthly scene we are on campus and school is in session.

The beauty of Earth School is that we each have our own lesson plan.  The syllabus is drawn from each and every experience that comes our way.  Our learning and our education is built a moment at a time, a choice at a time, an experience at a time.  

So just what are we meant to learn in our very own institution of higher learning?  Just that… higher learning, and while we are heading up, let’s head in every direction… deeper learning, broader learning, wider learning.  Our core curriculum encompasses coming to understand who we are, what we believe and what gifts and talents we can bring to our fellow students and our global campus. Our electives include exposing ourselves to the creative, spiritual, and physical classrooms available to us.  To truly have a well rounded education we might all consider traveling “abroad”.  Which doesn’t have to mean that we fly to a distant country, although it might.  Rather it means that we take a risk and venture out of that which is comfortable and familiar.  It means that we are willing to listen to ideas that are quite contrary to our own with an open mind. Not a day goes by that we don’t have the opportunity to sit in the front row of our own class and soak up the lessons. Learning is about choosing to live with a sense of curiosity and inquisitiveness, while at the same time engaging our critical thinking and analytical skills.

 Every day we have the choice to show up, ready and eager to learn, grow, expand and contribute, or, we can skip class, cheat on the test or call in sick.  The school bus is on the corner… Are you going to make it on time?

written by Molly Davis for one of our favorite websites http://stylesubstancesoul.com/category/matters-that-matter/

Can you imagine what it would be like to be nestled in beautiful, inspiring surroundings, your only goal to rest and indulge in self discovery.  Imagine meeting like-minded women who come prepared to explore the same questions that run through your mind constantly…”Now What?” – “Who Am I?” – “How do I make the most of the life that is ahead of me?” What is it to be a true friend…to have a true friend?” “What matters the most to me at this time in my life?” “How can I  make a difference in the world?” ‘What does success really mean to me?”

PEEC (Pocono Environmental Education Center, Dingman’s Ferry, PA) is holding their  first annual Women’s Retreat,Oct. 24 – 27 2010  They have invited  inspiring authors, experts in their field and speakers who will gather to explore all of those questions and more.  Truth be told, all women share the desire to be more of themselves; more secure, more adventurous, more content in mid-life. It is a time to re-evaluate, renew and recommit to living our lives to the fullest…in essence to live in a way that is reflective of who we authentically are and what we value.

You are invited to participate in an experience that will both inspire you and allow you to inspire others.

Presenters/Speakers:

Amy Ferris, author of Marrying George Clooney; Confessions from a  Midlife Crisis.  Ms. Ferris is a successful writer/screen writer;  A Greater Goode and wrote the movies “Mr Wonderful” and “Funny Valentines”.
“Amy Ferris has successfully combined a rip-roaringly funny page-turner, with an unvarnished account of the personal history that formed her. This gut-wrenching look at intimate relationships will resonate with readers because of the universality of its raw emotion, clarity of vision, and self-revealing courage. Destined to become a classic of Feminist literature.”
– Marcia G. Yerman, Huffington Post, Writer/Artist/Activist

www.marryinggeorgeclooney.com

Kristine Van Raden & Molly Davis, authors of Letters to Our Daughters and co-founders of MATTERS THAT MATTER LLC  “Kristine and Molly have superlative intellect, capacious and tender hearts, and compassionate and forgiving souls. Their diligent and dedicated literary endeavors are a special gift to those of us who really understand the importance of the matters-that matter.” Dr. Les Garfinkel. “Molly and Kristine are excellent presenters, touching the hearts and minds of all who are lucky enough to hear them.” Rancho La Puerta Health Spa Tecate, Mexicowww.mattersthatmatter.com

Monica Holloway, critically acclaimed author of Cowboy and Wills , Red Boots and Cole Haans and the memoir Driving With Dead People, described by Newsweek as “unforgettable.”  She contributed to the anthology Mommy Wars, from which her essay was described by Newsday as “brilliant, grimly hilarious.” Monica works with and for the benefit of autistic children and their families…She is a force to be reckoned with.

www. monicaholloway.com

Robyn Hatcher is an actress, writer and communication skills expert. Robyn was so shy as a child, “Shy” was her actual nickname.  Having grown up afraid to speak, taught Robyn a lot about the subtle art of communication. Now she is passionate about helping people express themselves with clarity, confidence and power. – www.SpeakEtc.com

Gregory Ann Cox has been featured on CNN, as well as New York City and San Diego TV programs.Her writing has appeared in Better Homes and Gardens Special Interestpublications, Agency Magazine, Sell!ng Magazine, The New York Time Sunday Magazine, For Women First Magazine, The San Diego Union Tribune, Homes of the Hamptons, and others. Her midlife mission is to help women take back their midlife minds and bodies reverse the rates of heart disease and diabetes in Boomer women. She is a certified life Coach from Coach Training Alliance. www.midlifewithavengence.com

Amy Litzenberger is a real champion of women ‘investing in their own lives’ on many levels: spiritually, emotionally, personally, and financially. Since graduating from Vassar, and receiving an MBA in Finance from NYU, she has worked in the financial investment world, raised two extraordinary boys, and has managed to understand fully – through her expertise – that women struggle with money because we struggle with our own value.  

Hollye Fisher is freelance writer, blogger and author of a soon-to-be-released memoir. She founded two nonprofit organizations, running arts programs for teenagers in the Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Systems. In 2004 she received the Agape Spirit award from Dr. Michael Beckwith (from “The Secret”) for her work with at-risk youth. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

 www,hollyedexter.blogspot.com

REGISTRATION BEGINS SOON AND SPACE IS LIMITED. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT HEIDI NORMAND AT hnormand@peec.org KRISTINE VAN RADEN AT kristinevr@mattersthatmatter.com

there is this woman, hollye dexter, who is a FaceBook wonder. You know the kind. She loves and cares for perfect strangers with authenticity and an extremely generous heart. She is overwhelmed like the rest of us, but she has the guts to say so and ask for help and then extend the help she receives to others in need. You should know her.

This morning her blog is about telling the truth. It moved me to think about my own. So here goes and I hope you are motivated to tell and share and expose yours…We are all in this together and there is unconditional love for just the person you are, flaws and all.

1. I lie about my heighth, still…I am 6′ 1/2 ”

2. I am uncomfortable at parties…I would rather not go, but am so disappointed if I am not invited

3. I spend so much time jiggling the chubby ring around my middle, but do nothing about it.

4. I don’t do money…I don’t like anything that comes close to looking like math.

5. I am afraid no one will come to my funeral…so molly says she’ll put an ad in the obituaries for a free wine tasting…that will bring them in.

6. I think I have been an overbearing  parent

7. I’m not good on the phone, my voice goes up and I talk too much

8. I drink too much coffee

9. I have convinced my husband to let our dog Jack on the bed, now I can’t hardly sleep with out one of them on each side

10. I envy my daughters confidence, beauty, and self-knowledge.

11. I am sure that I love my husband more than he loves me

12. I’m afraid that when I get old I will be exactly like my mother

THAT IS ENOUGH FOR TODAY…NOW, HERE IS HOLLYE’S BLOG FOR THE DAY followed by admissions of truth by Amy Ferris…starting a trutholution!

http://hollyedexter.blogspot.com/2010/08/truth-whisperer.html

http://marryinggeorgeclooney.com/blog/2010/08/08/leading-by-example/

Every year on my birthday, my mom gives me the same hand written words on a card. She recalls the morning I was born;  ”Perfect as a peach. When the nurses handed you to me I thought you were the most perfect thing I had ever seen. Lips like a rosebud. I’m so thankful that you are my daughter.”

I save them. All! Years ago I started sticking special notes and cards from people I love between the pages of my copy of Joy of Cooking. At first it was only the occasional card that would fall out into the cookie batter or pot of soup. Now, so many years later, the cook book is so full of love notes and cards that it is held together with a gigantic rubber band. I make no attempt to rescue a recipe, its only purpose is to store the treasures I couldn’t bear to part with and didn’t know what else to do with them.

I have note after note from my mother; birthdays, thank you notes, even some are asking for forgiveness. Love notes from my husband (and there are plenty) are mostly filed in the dessert section, since I will remember always that he never could resist a sweet thing. My children’s early scribblings and home-made valentines, wedding invitations and graduation announcements take up as much space as everyone else’s  combined. By comparison I have very few from my father. He didn’t do emotion for so many years. So the cards where a hallmark sentiment, signed, Love Pop (I kept every single one). But in recent years I have received several cards…some a complete hand written paragraph or two. I have received a couple of letters filled with his own words, not relying on the sentiments of a stranger at all. He has written that I am the light of his life, that he is proud of me and that he loves me with all his heart. He doesn’t look back because there is emotion lurking there, so there are no I’m sorry-s, no seeking forgiveness. But there have been words that I have waited a lifetime to hear.

I know that when cards and letters stop coming from my parents I will pour through my cook book one page at a time, savoring the treasures and tidbits wedged in tight; their handwriting, humor and cliché phrases. Their words will call to me from the poultry pages, the molded salads and baked Alaska, while I am trying to cram in birth announcements, inky footprints of a newborn, a kindergartner’s first attempt at mastering the alphabet.

I wonder if Irma S. Rombauer had any idea she was in fact creating a sacred family journal…and for god sake, if there’s a fire grab the cook book.

I love art…I find that the art I’m drawn to is  usually created by a person that I instantly fall head over heels in love with. I see the vulnerabilities they dare to express, and can recognize them as my own. I understand that they are entrusting the viewer with private places and secrets well kept.  If I meet them face to face I have been known to embarrass us both. If I never meet them, there is a place in my heart that they reside. Artist who work from their souls have no choice but to create. And they will use what ever means they need so as to  manifest the messages that haunt them.

Such is the nature of Robin…her last name is Carlisle, but Robin sums her up. She is beautiful in her natural state, releasing her innate  abilities. In her personal understatement she brings joy and a sense of complete contentment. Hers is the work that last a lifetime…it is deep and pure and elegant and original. I am honored to introduce her to you, my people.

http://robincarlisle.com/

Misunderstandings…

We’ve all had them.

“You said, that I meant, but you did, and then I wasn’t, you’re wrong and I can’t.”

Sometimes, regardless of how sure we feel that every rock has been over-turned; every possible outcome discussed and contemplated; roadmaps explored, compass readings, GPS and lining up the stars… we find ourselves surprised when we get to the end of the road with another person and well, they aren’t there. Not standing next to you, not a few steps behind. They flat-out aren’t there. So you wait and wait for them to catch up and while you are waiting you notice a wiggly thing way off in the distance, and I’ll be go to hell…there they are, about a bazillion feet off track on a road that you never knew existed.

So as you stand there on your deserted road realizing that all the preparation you did obviously wasn’t enough because you and your companion still ended up on separate paths; you have a couple of choices to consider… (I DO love choices). #1 you could pleasantly wave good-bye to that poor schmuck and just keep heading for your destination. #2 you could start making your way through the prickly brush in the hopes that when they see you coming in their direction, they will do the same and meet you somewhere in the middle. Or #3 you go back to the beginning of the trip, the place you both started and plan and re-plan again in the hopes that this time you will travel more efficiently together.

We base our decisions on how important the outcome/destination is; how much we care about and respect our traveling companion(s); and how we want to feel about ourselves at the end of the trip.

Oh one last point…Money Ruins Everything! Be sure your travel plans include an air tight budget.  “you pay for the gas, I’ll buy the beer and Cheetos…DEAL.”

She was on my mind when I went to bed, and she was still dominating most  of my brain cells this morning as the sun rose on a brand new day.

Yesterday brought another difficult conversation. She has made her wishes known and we are respecting them (to the best of our collective ability). For now she is staying in her own home. She is both relieved and tormented. She knows the decision has bucked the system…the team is not happy. It is a toss-up at this point which matters more, her independence or her children. From her perspective neither is cooperating.

Cooperation looks like one or all of us stepping in and fighting the holy crap out of DMV and her primary care doctor…once considered a savior, now a consideration for this decade’s anti-Christ competition. She wants what she once had and the bottom line is just not adding up. If she stays in her house and can’t drive, she is a burden to us (her words) and will probably go bankrupt paying the chiseling cabbies (also her words).

Her 3 visiting lunches at the assisted living center of choice had her surrounded by old people…of which she is most certainly not one (hm-hm, her words). She found them difficult, uninteresting and incapacitated. She took herself off the highly coveted waiting list with no discussion with her fellow team members.

So yesterday, I just sat with her and let her vent…about the ailing neighbor whose daughters have been there day and night for a year(that would be guilt aimed in my direction); how her ailment was misdiagnosed and therefore she has been accused unjustly; how she has asked for a state provided legal assistant for the elderly, and that the DMV is the worst run government bureaucracy since the food rations program of WW II. I agreed with her on every point. I projected myself  in to her cozy food stained recliner; being serenaded by her obnoxious canary that rivals Andrea Bocelli and waved at by her red headed mail man who knocks on the window each day around noon.. asking for so little, yet troubled by so much…how  unjust, undeserved, unnecessary, undignified and very un-rewarding.

So this morning I have decided to write about the UN-Chapter. Ours is coming and  like it or not we are connected by that common thread.  In preparation I want us to agree to see the elderly through kinder, gentler eyes. They are in-fact our greatest teachers. Their fear and stubbornness; their denial and lack of compromise; their willingness to  survive each day with pain and talk as little or as much about it as they need to, is in fact how this chapter has been designed.  Letting go of a parent…

…not unlike a pregnancy that becomes so huge and uncomfortable that all you want is that THING OUT OF YOUR BODY…or living with a  teenager whose need for independence becomes so completely unbearable that you actually buy him/her a car so that they can get the hell out of your home. The bitching, the fighting, the resisting, is all part of the pain necessary to let go. I know she is not being stubborn or a pain in the ass…I see now that she is just going through the necessary labor pains to let go. And in doing so she is providing us a means of letting her go a little more gracefully. How she goes about this chapter, regardless of how we like it, is her job…not unlike an unborn baby pushing towards the light, or a young adult demanding his wings be released by those who have held him in safety…this is her job…to protest, to fight, to face her fear, to teach us, and to let go.

Mission Accomplished

“Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities – always see them, for they’re always there.”

norman vincent pealeart by lisakaser.com