Reflections and Lessons
It’s ugly, it’s beautiful, and it’s complicated. There is pain, and there is joy, frustration and acceptance, gratitude, and sadness. With so many contrasts in one relationship, it is hard to define my feelings for my mother. It is also why I feel a contradictory ambiguity, sprinkled with guilt, as each Mother’s Day approaches.
Heroes Among Us
It’s not easy to follow a dream, to take those steps off the cliff edge and surrender to the unknown. It is even more daunting to do so when others depend on you, you are faced with family loss or have health challenges. Yet, Annette Hernandez has followed her dream despite all she has met with courage, strength, determination, grace, and kindness. Â
Reflections and Lessons
It was a dreary morning as I was walking my dog in the neighborhood. Treasured time for me most mornings as I cleared my thoughts and prepared for the day ahead but on this one particular morning I was lost in thought, not in preparation for the day, but in dread.  My business was closed due to the pandemic and I felt lost in the myriad of information presented from so many different sources of how I should be moving forward. My shoulders were heavy and the way forward seemed dim. Â
Heroes Among Us
When first meeting Ken Ostini, his six foot plus stature is rather imposing, but his friendly, warm manner and easy banter quickly expose his love for Lompoc as well as his long history in our community. My interactions with Ken initially looked to be short lived. He became the CEO of the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce as my time on the board came to an end, hardly allowing us to learn each other’s name. Fortunately for me, a short time later, our paths crossed again and again on a regular basis as I was able to work with him for several years on different activities within our valley.Â
Wellness
It was a brief conversation I had with a friend as we discussed our common experience. I had lost my dad a short two years ago and she had lost her mother in the past year. The discussion was a few sentences of shared feelings, of how we each hadn’t realized how connected to our parent we had been and of how there was a lack of acceptance in our community for our mourning. And then the conversation moved on, but the words had intrigued me and I reflected on them for several days. There seems to be an unspoken taboo in our society about showing grief or mourning the loss of a loved one unless it is done quietly, behind closed doors where you aren’t seen. In general, grief for any loss or transition is not tolerated beyond the first brief time frame of a few days by our society. We are told to ‘get over it’ , ‘move on’ , ‘they are in a better place’ , ‘everything happens for the best’ or a multitude of other platitudes in an effort to move us beyond this place of sadness. While I truly believe these things are said in good will, I also believe they are stated because the person speaking them is uncomfortable being in this place of grief with us. I get it, it is not an easy or fun place to be and I have also witnessed someone being stuck in this place, but overall my experience has been that we hurry through it. We push the pain away, deny the tears and are afraid to acknowledge the impact or changes in our life as we go about our day to day activities as if nothing is different. Read more “Grief, The Price for Love”
Reflections and Lessons
‘You make a difference.’ The words were spoken with gratitude and conviction, catching me off guard but they echoed through my mind for days. What a sweet acknowledgment from someone about how something I had done had impacted her life in a positive way. Someone I didn’t know. Someone I hadn’t met before. The action she was commenting on was not a grand gesture but just something I do in the normal course of my work. A practice others have felt unnecessary and challenged me about but I have continued due to my beliefs. And yes, while I believed this action would ultimately help someone, this was the first time I had proof positive that it had accomplished the intended outcome. Â
Reflections and Lessons
We all have expectations of ourselves and others. In many instances it is a function of being a part of society, filling the roles that have been structured for survival of the community. I don’t know about you dear friend, but, the expectation to be some one other than who I am has been an influence throughout my entire life. Either to present a more professional presence, be more fun and impulsive (I tend to be serious and introspective in nature), to be more outgoing with new people, more forthcoming in large groups of people or to not be sooooooo sensitive. These are some of the areas I have often fallen short in, receiving criticism and judgement consistently through my life, to the point I believed that who I was was not okay. I believed I needed to be someone else and so I changed as best as I could. Â
Mother Nature
A few weeks back, dear friends, I shared with you a shift in my perspective about how I chose to honor Mother Nature.  By simply choosing to share my love and gratitude with her, the activities that had once seemed a burden, became a regular part of my daily activities with no resentment. With this change in perspective I also began to make more mindful choices about purchases or how I was doing things. I was wanting to mitigate my personal impact on our beloved planet as best I could. As a part of this change I began seeking other sources for items that I knew were detrimental to the environment and testing them to see if the replacements I found would fit into my lifestyle with minimal impact and frustration. And, as promised, I am revisiting this theme today with information I have found to share with you.  Read more “Loving Mother Nature-Please Suck Responsibly”
Reflections and Lessons
Sometimes the journey is easy and joyful, some times it is challenging and back breaking. It is the back breaking ones that teach us how to grow, to uncover the parts of us that are in hiding. It was one these paths I found myself on unexpectedly (and probably how it should be) more recently.Â
Reflections and Lessons
If you have children, especially of school age, summer is quickly coming to a close. Mornings of sleeping in, not worrying about having lunches packed or if school clothes are clean and homework is done are soon too be a distant memory of luxury. Though my children are grown I remember those times well and I recall hanging onto those last few mornings of peace. No rushing to the car, no tears or harsh words for not being ready as expected. Every year I would hope it would be different but, like groundhog day, the process would repeat itself to a great degree. Invariably the protocols I had put in place to help prevent the mad dash out the door on school mornings seemed to work only when they wanted. And, invariably, it was myself I would hold accountable. Other mothers seemed to have it much more together.