Phone: 616-217-9489 | eMail: jude@midlifetoolsforliving.com
JD's Midlife Tools For Living Practices, LLC
There is a nasty stomach/intestinal flu bug going around and lucky me I caught it this week. It’s just my turn.
I haven’t been this kind of sick since I was a kid with stuff coming out both ends. The only savings grace is that I’ve lost a few pounds! I have to find the silver lining in all this.
With plenty of down time the last few days I’ve been reflecting on just how fragile life really is.
I take so much for granted every day.
It isn’t until things like this happen that I pause and reflect on just how fortunate I am to have really good health. Many people don’t have the ability to leave their homes and go to work every day like I do. Many people live in isolation and have no solid support system surrounding them like I do.
I am blessed. I am grateful.
Once again it is good that life presents these golden opportunities to remind me of how precious life really is and just how much I really have to be so very grateful for.
What are you taking for granted today?
That saying is really so very true. My life is constantly teaching me things. Most importantly I keep learning about me.
This week brought some challenges my way that allowed me to see a pattern of reaction I have that I hadn’t seen before. Seeing that has helped me grow and know more about me.
I remember the very first time I noticed a reaction pattern I had. It was back in my mid 20’s when I was learning how to be a separate person from my parents and wanted to change how I reacted to my mom.
I vividly recall seeing an old very familiar way I had been reacting towards her mid doing. And, I smiled at myself for catching me. Until that moment I had kept my focus on what she was doing.
There was such power in that moment because I saw what I was doing and as a result was able to intentionally change my reaction.
My mom however caught that smile and thought I was being smart with her! I explained that I had just realized what I was doing in that interaction we were having.
It’s easy for us to be caught up in what someone else is doing that rubs us the wrong way. That focus however keeps us from learning about ourselves and growing and, keeps us in misery and suffering.
I only have control over me.
Learning how to see, watch, be witness to our own thoughts, reactions, behaviors is where wisdom and growth lie. This is how we make change happen and peace dwells within our soul. And, we get to have a smile on our face too!
Do you have a challenging relationship in your life? If so, what is your habitual reaction/thoughts/behavior in your interactions with that person?
I want to encourage you to pick up a copy and read this book: “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande
This book is important to those of us getting older—every one of us that means and also to us as we watch our parents and loved ones age. Dr. Gawande compels us to look at the process of aging and how we tend to people as they deal with chronic health problems that continue to worsen.
In reality we are living longer than previous generations and the concept of aging is a new phenomenon in medical history itself. And, we want to live longer or have our loved ones to live longer too often at any expense without consideration of the consequences of what that really means.
Our current medical trends have been to do everything and then some to treat conditions regardless of the impact on the quality of life for the individual enduring procedure after procedure. Sometimes those extraordinary procedures actually extend life very little and create much trauma in the process for all involved. I’ve often thought that we treat our pets with more respect than we do people when they linger and suffer with conditions in our do-all-that-you-can-to-save-her/him thinking.
After reading this book I found myself even more grateful for my mom’s courageous decision to let my dad go after his massive stroke. She asked the ER doctor what he would do if my dad was a family member of his and he told her he wouldn’t do a surgery that was under consideration. That doctor helped my mom do the right thing. My dad would not have recovered a life worth living and being a vegetable was not something he wanted for himself or his family to endure.
In reality we are all going to die. How we live until that moment is important at every age to consider.
When facing the inevitability of death, Dr. Gawande encourages us to examine what our understanding of our condition is and the potential outcomes, what our fears and hopes are, what trade-offs we are willing to make and not make, and what course of action best serves this understanding.
He encourages the medical community to have this conversation with patients. It is not the kind of conversation that many in the medical community know how to have.
If you’re like me once you read this book you will want to be certain that all your health care providers have read a copy of this book too!
What would it look like for you to live a good life right up to the very end?
One of my favorite memories of Mother’s Day is a picnic we had when I was a teen with my grand parents, a great Aunt and a family we were close to. We went for a drive up north as our family did in those days and had a picnic at a park some where. I remember making plans for some special things for the mom’s of the group. I baked up a strawberry short cake and bought them each a pretty little pink rose corsage to wear. Each of those women was special to me in various ways. It felt right to honor each one of them.
This is a special time of year to pause and reflect on the mom’s of our lives.
The mom’s of our lives can come in various forms from the woman who gave us birth, to the mother of the partner in our lives; to a dear woman friend we’ve come to trust, to a special aunt and grandma.
The nurturing we get from those mom’s of our lives helps us grow through out our entire life.
No mom is perfect at the job of parenting
Some of us were fortunate to have birth mom’s capable of giving us “good enough mothering”—a term I recall from social work school. If a mom doesn’t get “good enough mothering” from her mom it makes it very difficult for her to give that to her children.
If we don’t get “good enough mothering” we are left with holes inside that we need to learn how to fill in healthy ways during our life time. Other kinds of mom’s can provide us nurturing and help us grow.
Each mom in our life has a story of her own life journey that impacts who she is and the choices she makes.
For some of us Mother’s Day is filled with pain and longing for a mom we never had. For some of us Mother’s Day painfully reminds us of the mom that we’ve lost.
I believe we each are doing the very best we can at any given moment in our lives—our mom’s did too.
On this Mother’s Day we can pause and reflect on the mom’s of our lives noticing with gratitude what they brought to our lives and with forgiveness for the mistakes they made too. We can use this day to nurture ourselves with the tools of gratitude and forgiveness.
What special memories do you have of the mom’s in your life and Mother’s Day?
Oh yippee, May flowers are on the way! I’ve so enjoyed having my fingers back in my flower bed dirt once again. Everything is greening up beautifully even the trees are budding out.
My mind and heart are budding out too.
I didn’t have energy to give to my flower beds last year and my enthusiasm and energy have returned. I’ve been planting up some pretty pots and clearing my beds from winter debris.
There is renewed life in the garden and in my soul too!
There is nothing better than gardening therapy. I so enjoy wandering in my yard looking at the pretty little buds opening up, delighting in the wonder of new blooms. I especially find an early morning stroll with a cup of coffee in my hand a slice of heaven.
Seeds of hope are all around me as I watch my garden bloom and grow.
I read a daily meditation from Daily Word, a Unity Publication. This is what I found in my reading for April 29, 2016: “Right now, take the time to plant the changes that you would like to see. Linger awhile to share your appreciation for those you love and even offer good seed words for perfect strangers. Take good care of the seed stock of your thoughts. A few moments spent with eyes closed, envisioning good outcomes and radiating positive energy will put you into the flow of positive growth. These are the choices you can make today. These are the seeds that you can plant.”
Just how do you want the garden of your life to grow?
Life seems to keep providing me with opportunity to pause and remember to appreciate all that I have and those in my life. It’s good that it does too. It’s too easy for me to get all caught up in my day to day life and take so much for granted.
My father in law has been having some serious health problems this winter and spring. It’s hard to face the reality of aging bodies and parts just not working so well any longer. It’s hard to know he has to do that. It’s hard to know the harsh reality my mother-in-law and my husband and his siblings have to face too. These people have all been very important to me for a long time now. I hate to see them in pain.
These difficult times do provide opportunity of all kinds.
From opportunity for family to draw closer and cherish time together, to opportunity for reflection on what truly is important in life, to opportunity to make the best of every moment we have—there is much that we can take from the difficult times of our lives.
There are many ways that challenging life experiences stretch us and help us grow if we open ourselves to what the challenges bring rather than fight against what is happening.
Life truly is short. There is no time like the present to take stock and be grateful for all that we have.
What are you grateful for this very minute?
I was reminded of my dad reflecting on my Aunt’s death and found myself missing him too. New losses help us release more from other significant past losses.
Until I allowed myself a good cry, I was out of sorts.
It is important to give ourselves time and space to process our emotions. To sit and allow what needs to come up and out to do just that.
I liken it to a flower bud unfolding and opening up. At the center is our pain. A flower takes time to open and fortunately so does our grief. If that pain were to be exposed too quickly the fragile rawness would engulf and overwhelm us.
I feel sad for the pain I know all too well that my cousins are experiencing. They lost their father years ago. And now their mother is gone from their lives.
I am grateful to have grown up with the opportunity to have extended family close by to visit and spend time with. Families are so spread out these days and opportunity to share time with family often is rare. I’m thankful to have been able to know my grandparents and a couple of my great grandparents, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles and many of my cousins when I was a child. These experiences and memories enrich my life and help me understand where I came from and the my family’s story.
Who are some important relatives from your childhood memory? What makes them important to you?
Do Contact Me during Grief Therapy your grief pain can safely come to unfold.
April is fooling with me today. Mother Nature has dropped a cold white trick on me and my poor spring flowers. I only hope they can thaw out and bounce back for me to enjoy them once again once the sun warms the earth back up.
Early spring does have a way of teasing me and this year that has certainly been the case. I was curious about the origin of April Fools day wondering if it originated as a weather related phenomena and did a little research on line. To my surprise it was not born from my April weather experience at all, but Mother Nature certainly does know how to play her pranks and well beyond April 1st too!
It’s not exactly clear in history what inspired April Fools’ Day. According to News Discovery.Com, the most common theory about the earliest April Fools’ celebrations is that” in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull decreeing a new standard calendar for Christian Europe that later became the standard internationally in the 21st century”.
According to the article, “prior to the 15th century, Europe’s nations and city states operated using the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar moved the date of the New Year from April 1 to January 1, among other changes. Catholic monarchies were naturally its earliest adopters, though Protestant nations later followed suit.
“Given the nature of the reform, both in terms of communicating such a fundamental change to a large population and dealing with critics of the new calendar, some Europeans continued to celebrate the new year between March 25 and April 1. April fools were those who still celebrated the holiday in the spring, and were the subject of pranks and ridicule by those who observed the New Year months ago.”*
So this fun tradition originated from bullying behavior!
I find it interesting to learn where sayings and traditions originate and notice how things morph over time. I certainly hope in today’s experiences of April Fools’ Day pranks that we don’t hurt the very people we are playing with!
There are life long impacts from being bullied when we are young. Being picked on at any age does indeed hurt and the scars can go very deep.
While I am all too eager to get out in my yard, I will have to wait a few more days and be patient as Mother Earth has decreed. The good news is there are much warmer temperatures in the forecast for next weekend…we will see what Mother Natures has in store for me then!
What experiences have you had with bullying in your lifetime?
I’ve had another appendage for years now. Currently, its color is blue. It’s had other colors in the past. It’s my water bottle and it goes with me just about everywhere. In fact on the rare occasion that I leave the house without it I feel rather naked just like when I don’t carry a purse.
I started drinking more water years ago when I was running. It was important to replenish the fluid my body sweated off during my runs. These days I am walking but the habit of consuming water throughout my day has stayed with me.
I even take my bottle with me when I go visit someone and in the house it comes with me too. I do this so it doesn’t get warm for my trip home but do find that I continue to use it once there.
It’s just gotten to be a habit to drink water and a good one too.
Several years ago I found a travel purse that has a neat little folding pocket to store my water bottle. That comes in handy when I’m going places and don’t want to carry my bottle in my hand. This week our local newspaper had an article about a variety of fancy water bottles that are on the market now from collapsible ones that fold into a small disk easy to store to one that has a filter in the bottle to purify the water as you drink it.
My goal is to drink at least 2 of my blue bottles a day. I’ve noticed that when I drink less I don’t feel as good and tend to get hungrier too.
In “6 Reasons to Drink More Water”*, a Web MD article, it says that our bodies consist of 60% water which helps our body’s digestion, absorption, circulation, in the creation of saliva, transportation of nutrients and maintenance of our body temperature. I did not know that all of these body systems are dependent on our intake of fluids to work!
The article also suggests that drinking water can help us control our calorie intake. Water energies our muscles. Cells that don’t maintain their balance of fluids and electrolytes shrivel which can result in muscle fatigue.
Water helps keep our skin looking good because our skin contains water. Our skin looks more dry and wrinkled when we are dehydrated. Our skin functions as a protective barrier to help us prevent fluid loss.
The article states that body fluids help our body transport waste products in and out of our cells to our kidneys and into our urine cleansing and ridding our body of toxins. If we don’t drink enough water we can be at a higher risk for developing kidney stones. When we are hydrated our gastrointestinal tract keeps things flowing well preventing constipation. When we don’t have enough body fluid the colon pulls water from our stools to maintain hydration and we become constipated.
And, fluid loss is accentuated as we get older too!
I did not know most of this information…I know so very little about how my body functions. Guess I’ve just added a number of more reasons to keep carrying that additional appendage of mine around!
Do you drink enough water? How might you add more H2O into your life if not?
I’ve started my annual spring cleaning projects around the house. Our bedroom and closet have been thoroughly dusted and vacuumed behind, in and under. My aching back told me so too.
I’m not as young as I used to be.
It seems projects requiring my physical effort take a little bit longer than they used to for me to complete. I am slower. I hurt more when I am done too. Ibuprofen has become like my new best friend! It’s not easy to acknowledge this as reality either.
My mind thinks of me as being 21 while my body tells me a different story.
Twenty years ago I worked one evening a week and had the morning home. In the hours before work I vacuumed the house and washed the floors and then got ready and worked a full day’s load. There is no way that I could so easily accomplish that effort today. I wouldn’t want to attempt it either. I’d be too worn down to do a good job towards the end of that very long day.
This is just the beginning of noticeable changes that occur as we age for me. I see evidence of things to come when I glance towards people older than I am. I recognize just where I am headed. It’s scary to peek at that reality too.
A youthful body gets further behind me with each passing day.
I can color away the gray and put cream on the wrinkles to smooth them out but my body’s response to physical efforts can’t be simply covered up or ignored. I am getting older and my body tells me so.
It’s growing increasingly important to exercise and stretch those well-worn muscles of mine. This I can and need to do to help remain healthy and active into the years ahead.
Spring cleaning projects feel great to see accomplished at any age. I suspect as time progresses I will increasingly be grateful to have the ability to accomplish those projects too!
What changes are you noticing in your body as you age?
I learned a wonderfully helpful meditation tool many years ago. As you sit with focus on your breath when you inhale say to yourself: “Everything is”; and when you exhale say to yourself: “As it should be”. Say this over and over and over and over again too with each breath you take.
I remember vividly at the training session that soon into my experience I had tears streaming down my face. Don’t recall what I had been clinging to that day but I clearly recall letting go.
To accept that everything is as it should be, means that we radically accept life as it is. We don’t have to like it just accept it is what it is. But it takes practice and lots of it to radically accept life as it is.
We all want what we want and often when we want it too. However, this causes us so much pain and misery because life happens not to be exactly what we want or need or hope or demand of it.
The reality that “everything is as it should be” came home to me in a real life example on my way home from work one day.
I was driving through the heart of the small town I live in behind a person who I thought had too much space ahead of them. We hit a read light at the last stop light because that driver was so slow. And after the light changed we managed to get caught for a train! Of all things too! Not just a red light but a train! I was not a happy camper. Grumble…grumble….
Waiting for the train to pass I noticed a woman about three cars behind me got out of her car and ran up the line of cars. It was a beautiful warm day and I had my window open. She came right up to my widow and kindly informed me that I had lost a hub cap about two blocks behind. I thanked her and she ran back to her vehicle before the train finished going by.
I retrieved my hub cap thanks to her and that pokey driver ahead of me and that train that I grumble at each time I catch it on my way home. Had none of that happened I would have arrived home and maybe noticed the missing hub cap. I would have not known when or where I’d lost it. I might not have even noticed it was missing. I may have never found it.
I am very grateful for those drivers both a head and behind me and for that train and those events that happened just like they did. It was all meant to be.
I’ve grumbled at that train when it makes me a little later getting home after a long day and I am tired and hungry. But now I’ve realized an appreciation for the company who uses it for transport. They’ve provided jobs for thousands of people over the years, paid taxes that support the community and have donated in many ways to better the community.
Looking beyond this community there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who are touched in some form by that train and its cargo.
Because of this, my attitude about that train has changed. My patience with other drivers has improved. I notice I’ve had more pleasant trips driving home from work this week.
Everything really is just as it should be which is not always the way I demand of life to be. When I open and see that more clearly I am a much happier camper indeed!
Will you pause and reflect on your day to see how everything is as it should be?
Do contact me to work on your radical acceptance with depression therapy and/or anxiety therapy today!
JD’s Midlife Tools For Living Practices, Holland, MI Offering Heartfelt care, Compassion and Coping Tools!
It’s amazing to me what information you can find on the internet for free in the matter of seconds. Just a bit ago I looked up a knitting stitch I was having trouble understanding from the picture and explanations in the books I have here at home. And, low and behold in the matter of less than a minute I found a short video clip that helped me see what I was missing.
Not so many years ago a challenge like that might have involved a trip to the nearest knitting store or visiting a friend who knits to find a skilled knitter to show me how to do it. And in less than a minute my dilemma was resolved. An instant fix to a problem I was having.
In my life time there has been a tremendous amount of change. Often I see value in the benefits change has provided. Often I shake my head in frustration longing for the good old days when life was simpler, you knew you’d find the products you’ve come to enjoy on the store shelf each week, and you could get something fixed when it broke or a part wore out. That’s all changed. It’s a challenge to find some products I’ve come to enjoy and finding someone to fix things or locating parts at times can be more hassle than it is worth doing.
I am a “tech idiot”—a description I’ve given me as a way of laughing with myself and my tech follies. It’s also a way to explain to tech savvy people my level of skill when I am trying to communicate with them about things I haven’t the proper words or understanding to communicate clearly to them about.
A few weeks ago the host of my website made some upgrades in the tools used to create the sites they host. I learned of this when I logged into my account to add a new blog post that week. The changes involved in the upgrade challenged me greatly to use and I am still learning how to use them. I am sure I-page is very happy to be offering such new and improved tools to their customers. I however was not at all happy. In fact, I was so frustrated that for about 24 hours I considered whether to stop having a website or move it some place else.
And then, after the frustrated energy inside me dissipated, my wise mind kicked in. And, I was able to see more clearly and realize that no matter what I want technology changes are going to keep right on happening. My minimal skill level will either continue to be a source of frustration to me or I can use each change as an opportunity to learn a new skill or two.
There is no sense swimming up stream against the current of change and waste precious time, energy and peace of mind. It is what it is.
And I am who I am, a generation or two removed from what’s currently being taught in school and it’s a great big world of things to learn.
It will be good for me to remember just how simple and easy it was to locate the solution to my knitting problem when some new “fangled” changed phenomena gets under my skin!
How are you at negotiating through the challenges of change in your life? What tools help you cope?
