I love Tina Turner and everything she stands for – confidence, tenacity, resilience, woman of action. If I asked you who you consider to be a woman of action, what would you answer?
Gloria Steinem? Oprah Winfrey? Hillary Clinton? Eunice Kennedy Shriver?
It’s funny, how things kind of all happen at once. I literally received word on the endorsements while my son was barfing. Life can be so bittersweet. And you just gotta laugh sometimes when too many things come at once. For some reason, my life has always been this way. Sorrow and grief have always come during triumphant moments. Not sure why. Maybe it’s to ground us from the triumph, or maybe it’s to show us that the darkness never stays for too long and that the light is just waiting around the corner. It’s been an interesting year. Lots of good and not so good have come all simultaneously. It challenges us to be better people, I think. And I never ignore the message. There’s always a message.
Lately I have been seeing and sensing a greater open discussion amongst my peers relating to the issue of toxic parents. For many years, it was falsely believed that by the sheer fact that your parents gave birth to you, you must love and respect them regardless of how they treat you. There is a point here. Even when you are seventy years years old, you are still a child to that parent. So where does that leave you if you are in the prime of your life, starting your own family and balancing the time between your family, and your toxic parents? What is a suitable amount of time to know when you have to make your own way in this world, relegating those parents to the sidelines?
So, the point of today’s Blog post is to demonstrate, that if you dream it, with a little stroke of luck and a lot of hard work, great things can happen. I am living proof. And it takes a positive spirit and the passion, and the drive to never give up. I spoke last week of unlocking your passion. Now is your time. Spring is around the corner and it’s a time of rebirth. I urge you to unlock your passion and make a commitment to your own happiness.
Like so many of you, I tuned into the Tiger Woods press conference on Friday. When I watched him speak, I couldn’t help but notice how the words were all the right words on paper, but it all seemed very disjointed, calculated and cold. And I wondered if Tiger will really ever change his ways. It all led me to wonder– do people really change? I’m VERY on the fence here.
I must be unconsciously thinking about my mortality this week, because Wednesday’s Blog was about aging, and now I’ve created my Bucket List. I watched the movie “The Bucket List” last night, and cried for two straight hours. What a fabulous movie. But my bucket list, (everything I want to do before I “kick the bucket”) is really a Hodge Podge of the realistic, the possible and the improbable. I wanted to share mine and encourage you to make your own. Maybe it will get you off the fence about something you’ve been sitting on for way too long. Call it a bucket list, but really, all it is, is the 25 Things I want to do before I die. And I ain’t on the fence about any of ’em. Here they are, in no particular order (ok maybe Oprah and Ellen are at the top for a reason)…
If there’s one thing no one in this world is exempt from, no matter how rich, how poor, how thin, how nice, how evil, how generous, WHATEVER, it’s AGING. Yes, we are all aging. And we are fighting it at the exact same rate as the next woman. Some age better, some worse, but it’s a process we all must face whether we like it or not.
I learned early on in life what survival meant, and have been doing just that since the tender age of 5. It’s from that point that I remember the very first beating I had from my father. I was physically abused as a child, to the age of 22, and had spent my adolescent life lying about the welts and bruises I had on a weekly basis right up until I got engaged to be married, but still living at home.
I help busy women (like you!) prioritize self-care so you can experience less stress, more calm and greater joy every day!
