self-awareness

Navigating the Path from Fear to Love

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The death of illusion is an opportunity to breathe new life. (Image created using AI on CANVA)

There’s a lot of death these days. No, not the physical death. That’s arriving at some point for all of us. Physical death is constant — a sure thing and like all of life’s cycles on this beautiful planet.

No, I’m referring to a spiritual death. People are losing their souls to the ego to the tender parts of themselves they’ve numbed with everything from downing social media or drowning themselves in the rabbit holes of comparison.

Look, we all do it. We all have an ego. We all spend moments in this precious life Edging God Out (thank you Wayne Dyer). When the pain gets to be too much, we instinctively push it away, deny its presence, rationalize it away. We buy, gamble, watch porn, hashtag until our eyes burn from the blue light drilling a fresh migraine into our skulls.

But at some point, the ego’s armor starts to fall away. The whisper: “You’re off track,” grows louder. 

Right now, the Higher Self knows right from wrong. And the chasm between those who heed their soul’s whisper is growing wider. Fear on one side, Faith on the other. The disparity is stark, maddening as life’s pace ever-quickens.

Humanity is standing on that cliff: the space between authenticity and arrogance, between kindness and cruelty, between self-effacement and self-reflection.

Death is all around me these days. This spiritual death carries the stench of denial. 

Watching those I love fall prey to their ego, to being right over being kind is a bit like mourning. There is a great, palpable grief I feel for those who are encased in the false promise of blame and the temporary relief their denial and control grants them.

The Good News

Whether you are clinging to the cliff of Fear or Love, the spiritual death arrives with good news: transformation and transcendence is on its way.

For those steeped in Fear, they will roll their eyes at my words. Humor is often a way to deny our pain. Their soul will only grow louder, wreaking havoc on their peace until they have no choice but to surrender — even if this means a physical death.

The choice to remain or go to Love can feel like a white knuckle clinging these days. I encourage you to keep clinging. Do not trust the illusion of Fears’ family: blame, control, and manipulation. They are weapons meant to take you down and join them. There’s a reason the aphorism, “Misery loves company” exists. Don’t join their company. Take long walks and deep breaths. 

Hope ironically arrived when I chose to no longer have hope that the fear-based loved ones in my life would ever change. 

Before, Hope caused me to outstretch my arms to Fear only to be hurled stones of Manipulation and Blame.

I’m residing fully in Love now and no longer accepting the breadcrumbs of Fear’s cubic zirconia of love. 

Am I in pain? Of course. Mourning? Absolutely. 

But with mourning, your wounds can start to heal. With death, there is now space to heal and grow.

Freedom is agency within — regardless of what the world is doing without.

Know you are on the right path when you align with the whispers of your Highest Self. The spiritual dying of others often causes many a figurative death rattle of blame and an attempt to shame and diminish you.

Their anger is more proof that they prefer to lash out rather than explore the pain in their heart.

Allow the spiritual death of what could never be in your relationship with those steeped in Fear. You’ll notice the white-knuckling to remain in Love will dissipate and, over time (with heaps of self-compassion), you will be standing with both feet in Love, far away from its edge.

The Bad Ass Mother: Make Way for Her

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Inside every woman is a warrior. (Image created using CANVA)

While getting divorced, my lawyer hit on me.

“It gets very lonely at night. You’ll see. You deserve pleasure.”

He took my hand in his. And I removed it, gingerly, as one does walking away from a live, exposed wire.

I was a young mom, caught in the crosshairs of a legal system that gave power to those with deep pockets — regardless of concepts like justice and morality. My lawyer and his pinky ring held the key to the next door of my life.

Looking back, I realize I gave my former lawyer the key. I’d handed it to him on a vulnerable, insecure platter.

We become what we believe.

Life Reflecting Belief

The world is always mirroring to us what we believe about ourselves. Back then, I believed I received the poor treatment from my former lawyer that I deserved.

Boundaries were regularly crossed because I didn’t even think to have them. 

Low self-esteem does that. It creates a world of default assumptions, allowing a person to morph into prey. 

We cannot control the actions others take. But we can have agency for ourselves. Self-esteem builds healthy boundaries. It isn’t frightened to remove a hand from an unprofessional lawyer with highly manicured hands. A woman with strong self esteem is too busy being clear about what she wants to care one cent about the frail ego of another.

The Bad Ass Mother

Hallmark can show all the sappy movies it likes of mother’s being spoiled with breakfast in bed; commercials can advertise all the eye-catching merchandise to “spoil mom.”

 But what about every day of the year? What happens when the sun goes down and it’s status-quo Monday morning?

I am a Bad Ass Mother. I love myself. Really, radically love myself. Even when it’s hard. ESPECIALLY when it’s hard. And I invite you to do the same.

You don’t need to be a mother to mother yourself. You are a part of Mother Nature. You possess all the tools needed to grow your bad ass garden.🪴

Bling is nice. So are vacations. Beautiful clothing. Cars. Flowers. Gourmet meals. But none of it matters a bit without the womb of it all: self esteem.

With strong self esteem, you are naturally going to mother yourself. You won’t take crap from others. You will take steps in the direction of your dreams. You will not settle for breadcrumbs in your personal relationships. You will love yourself for doing things that scare the shit out of you but will allow you to grow. This is cause for a Mother’s Day celebration.

No one is coming to save you because no one else can do the work but you. 

A bad ass mom does what Mel Robbins says:

“Doing what makes you happy, being brave, taking risks, and following your own path will always be more important than other people’s opinions about it. This is YOUR life. Stop allowing what other people think keep you from living it.” Mel Robbins

Join me in being a Bad Ass Mom. Defiantly love every part of yourself — especially the parts you have the most trouble loving. Even the willingness to do so is a huge step.

The greatest relationship you will ever have is the one with YOURSELF. Radically give yourself compassion. Mother yourself like a bad ass. Know you matter.

And you’ll start to notice the world around you will reflect this inner change. That kind of self esteem and self acceptance is both palpable and contagious. It is emotional kryptonite for toxic people.

Embracing Change: Transforming Toxic Relationships

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Knowing the keys to the kingdom are a “level up” sign. (Image created using AI on CANVA)

I recently returned from visiting with a close family member who suffers from frequent physical ailments. The pains themselves alter throughout her body but one constant remains: the shroud of negativity she carries. 

For years, we shared a co-dependent dance. She would complain, and I would morph myself to please her. It was a manifested tango of low self-esteem, each of us playing our roles beautifully: her the perpetual victim and me, the quasi-therapist who could “save” her.

It took many rounds in this particular Earth School classroom to understand I was a participant in the toxic tango.

But on this visit, I watched without reacting. I listened to her cries that she didn’t want to live anymore, her verbal attacks on everything from the weather to drivers on the road. I allowed myself to feel all the emotions that arrive when dwelling with someone who is negativity personified and manipulates to get what they want. 

My body reacted to what I observed with an upset stomach. Our vagus nerve — the longest cranial nerve — runs from our brain to our large intestine. This nerve literally means “wandering” in Latin and plays an important role in involuntary sensory and motor functions — including our digestion. I couldn’t “stomach” the negativity of this loved one.

And yet, I was able to observe it all:

🧘‍♂️ the negativity

🧘‍♂️the upset stomach

I chose to take deep breaths and go for long walks when possible. I chose to find the humor. I chose to look at this spirit having a physical experience. And here’s what I saw:

A woman who is in pain with her knee because she literally can’t move forward in life. She is too steeped in the illusion of darkness to find the light that is her and always there. I saw the child inside the woman, no different than a toddler trying to sneak in an extra cookie, playing a game to get love. I watched her manipulate behavior and words to garner attention.

I realized that I can choose to love her without the need for her to change.🤯

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

Part of the reason there is often great family tension during the holidays is the old, familiar patterns that resurface. Unaddressed — sometimes unknown — triggers surface across dinner tables.

That which hurts is the wound that is unhealed. Leveling up is about growing aware of our wounds, understanding its origins, and choosing to love anyway.

“When you can find joy in the midst of the scariest times, you know you’ve leveled up.” Brenda Grate

Loving this person who identified with a false sense of self, I leveled up. Loving myself and finding joy in the midst of her pain, I leveled up. Loving her essence, the little girl with unaddressed wounds, I leveled up.

We think of leveling up in terms of gaming or a career move. It’s a term we associate with improving or growing. This world is a matrix, a classroom for our souls to experience life as a human.

Each time we choose to see light in the midst of darkness, we are leveling up.

“No romance, amount of money, credential, or achievement can give you the sense of certainty your own joy can provide. When you practice having fun along the way, the Universe supports you.”-Gabrielle Bernstein

The keys to the joy we seek is inside of each of us. We can’t make someone else happy by making ourselves miserable. When we can find inner peace and joy from within, we are free from emotional vampires. And we can also choose to love those Downer Debbies.

Even letting the Universe know that you are willing to see a negative person or situation in a new way and surrendering this desire to the Universe is a leveling up step.

Heaven or hell is a state of mind. It is not dependent on people or places, financial or health circumstances.

Find your Heaven on Earth now by being the change you want to see in others.

XI Peak Meditation

The Profits and Ethics of Ghostwriting

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Ghostwriting can be quite profitable. Yes, it often requires a great deal of research and time, but if you enjoy writing, this can be both a rewarding and lucrative endeavor.

A man recently asked me to ghostwrite his life story. It would require both the aforementioned generous doses of research and time. He offered me a generous amount to write it as well. And his life story sounded like the stuff of a Lifetime TV drama. The juicy fodder was there.

And yet, I turned his offer down.

The reason? 

A big part of his life story involved his passion for hunting.

“It’s about winning.” His eyes gleamed. “It is pure sport.”

He made it clear that hunting had everything to do with his love of guns and taking the life of another animal. 

To write someone’s memoir is to spend hours with someone, to study countless photographs and letters, documents and newspaper clippings, until you can hold the essence of a person in the space between your mind and heart.

I had no desire to hold a hunter’s essence in my mind and heart.

Oh, I tried. For the generous amount of money he offered, I tried. But my gut kept got tighter the more he spoke about his love of guns and killing defenseless animals in the wild.

He will no doubt find the right writer for his memoir. It will be a tale of conquest and winning at all costs. 

The heart of a writer bleeds onto the page. It can be tasted between the words. I couldn’t create a likable protagonist for this life story without my heart feeling torn and without a certain element of passive-aggressive sarcasm oozing between its pages.

Someone else might feel differently. And that’s okay. We each have to do what speaks to our inner compass. 

Years ago, I would have pushed down the discomfort that arrives when you feel something you don’t like. I would have resided in the Land of Denial.

Age (and a steady meditation practice) has taught me to heed that — even subtle — tug of discomfort. Much better to address it early on, then spend years addressing an ever-growing issue with psychological Band-aids.

The Illusion of Love

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And why we fall for it

I discovered boys at a young age. A generous portion of my teen years were spent choosing a different “crush” in each class — an unusually fun form of academic entertainment.

Each boy had a story: the tough guy who was misunderstood, the quiet one who spent his afternoons sketching seagulls at the beach, the funny boy who used humor to deflect pain that I daydreamed about healing.

And yet…

The narratives of each boy were more fictional than a Harry Potter series. 

They were surface tales that made me feel good to weave in my imagination.

Illusory Dating

But then, dating started. 

“He likes you.”

The three coveted words my riddled-with-hormones brain wanted to hear. It didn’t matter who the he was. What mattered: someone liked me.

My teens and 20’s were greatly spent looking externally for a sense of self worth.

The primary focus: what did they think of me?

It was secondary to consider how I felt about them. My value was tied to their perception of me.

When we look for merit or worth in another’s eyes, we give away our power.

When we hand over the invisible yardstick of worth to another, we lose ourselves.

There is often an illusion to dating — particularly in our youth: we believe the person we are attracted to is the cutest, sweetest, funniest or any other “est” qualities we find ourselves thinking. But who “they” are is just an illusion of what we want them to be.

One of the many boys I had a crush on was Zack — a sarcastic know-it-all, a “bad boy” with whom I shared an AP History class. Almost every day, Zack would come up to me, give me a playful smile that reached his blue eyes and say, “Can I have a quarter?”

Sometimes, I’d give him one; sometimes, I didn’t. The quarter was irrelevant in my 15-year-old-hormone-rattled brain. 

What mattered: Zach’s attention toward me — including those playful blue eyes. 

My focus was so consumed on his attention towards me — like a beggar starving for crumbs — that my heart began thumping like mad in my chest every time I saw his long legs make their approach to my desk.

And if he winked at me? Utter elation.

As a grown woman now, hindsight renders me shaking my head, a humorously sad smile on my lips.

Zack was a goofy kid with a lot of chutzpah. Maybe he thought I was cute; maybe he just needed money. He smelled like he hadn’t gotten the memo on deodorant — all sweaty and stinky from a mix of hormones and PE. He had as much experience at flirting as a fish living out of water. 

Dating in youth (crushes included) often includes two potential illusions:

  1. Creating a story of who someone else is.

and

2. Creating a story of who we are (in an attempt to please the other)

It’s no wonder so many of us in our early dalliances found heartache: we were dating an illusion, experiencing relationships based on false or incomplete narratives.

Illusory Love

Real love — that intangible experience humans crave and is written about in everything from songs to scripts, arrives like a crockpot meal: in time.

Intimacy requires trust — something acquired over time. But this is not just intimacy with another; at some point, love means intimacy with ourselves.

Illusory love is the couple that rationalizes they are “good” when the frowns in their faces speak a different story. It is the white picket fence of relationships that looks great on the outside, but you can’t help but notice the paint chipping when you step closer.

When we eclipse who we are to please another, it doesn’t matter how many years we’ve shared with a partner. Resentment and disappointment fill the cracks of the unstable foundation. 

An illusory love is the emotional equivalent of building a house on quicksand — it won’t last.

There’s a powerful quote from author Alice Hoffman that illuminates the why behind our seemingly irrational behavior to chose or remain in an unhealthy romantic relationship:

“Is it the man you want, or the feeling inside you when someone cares?”

When we remember the why behind our behaviors — particularly with love — we can better discern if we are with someone out of love or its illusion.

The late Maya Angelou once said:

“When a child walks in the room…do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.”

We are children in grown up bodies, hungry to matter, starving for connection. 

But the greatest connection, the most important relationship will ever have is the one with ourselves.

When we nourish ourselves, when we remember that our self worth is sourced from within, we are less likely to fall prey to an illusory love.

 The grounded feeling of knowing you matter prevents starvation and taking emotional crumbs from someone who is not in your best interest.

The Truth About Pipe Dreams

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There’s a manuscript I’m working on. It’s in its 3rd round of drafts. The seed of inspiration for the plot arrived, like many creative ideas, via the idea of another (in this case, a brilliant story by Marian Keyes, The Brightest Star in the Sky.

We have the power to choose where our attention goes. And wherever that energy goes, so too does its expansion.

I could have chosen to read Marian Keyes’ brilliant book, experiencing the creative zing of thought that happened, and subsequently brushed it away like crumbs on a table after a meal.

Instead, I gave my attention to the idea that whispered in my psyche over the course of days and weeks. 

When we give ourselves permission to pursue our imagination, our imagination only grows.

Stuck in Pipe Dream Mode

When we care more about what is going on externally, our dream morphs into a pipe dream. 

Ironically, the term pipe dream derives from the fantasies envisioned from smoking opium at the end of the 19th century. 

Ironic that the pipe known to deliver imaginative thinking is now associated with keeping one’s dreams stuck or unattainable. 

We are born creative. Imagination is one of our greatest birth gifts. 

Releasing the Pipe Dream

So how does our imagination get stuck in pipe dream mode?

When we focus on the myopic, we receive more of that mindset, closing the figurative door to creativity.

Creativity is messy. It isn’t linear. It doesn’t arrive with neat stop and start points. Creativity doesn’t offer guarantees. 

Fear is the cage holding our dreams.

To free our dreams from our self-created pipes means:

  • discounting the naysayers (this can include your mind’s negative chatter)
  • honoring the still voice deep inside you
  • taking steps each day in the direction of your dream (however small)
  • surrendering to its unfolding (whatever that looks like)

I’ve been playing with the manuscript for years — playing, not working (mindset is everything). I don’t know:

  • if it will ever be published
  • how an audience will receive it

But I keep the dream alive, out of the figurative pipe because:

  • my inner voice is telling me this story needs to be written
  • playing with the manuscript is a form of great joy

There are plenty of days where I find my mind churning out comments and questions like:

“Those are hours of your life you’ll never get back.”

“Do you really believe what you’re writing will make any difference in someone’s life?”

“You need to be practical and responsible. Stop wasting your time with this bullshit.”

The Pipe is Your Ego

I believe that the figurative pipe trapping our dreams is nothing more than our ego, Edging God Out. (Full credit to the late and great Wayne Dyer:-)

The ego tells us fear-based words. It speaks from a place of lack.

When we acknowledge the fear and continue to walk in the direction of our dreams, the voice of fear will (over time) grow fainter.

Remember: the mind’s chatter is like that of a toddler. When you first refuse to give into its demands, it might very well stomp and throw a generous temper tantrum.

But what happens when you allow that upset toddler to cry without running to it? It eventually, grows quiet and falls asleep.

Thriving dreams require our attention.

So, tune into those ideas percolating in your imagination and let the mind’s worrying chatter grow sleepy and quiet.

Abundant Living

Calling Writers and Teachers

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An insightful (and fun:-) writing prompt

Calling all ELA teachers, parents, poets, and writers! Do you want to:

  • explore the inner terrain of you
  • connect with your students/child/children
  • inspire self-exploration and self-awareness

If the answer is a resounding YES to any or all of the above, you’ll want to keep reading:-)

For the Educator

Whether you are an ESL secondary teacher or Language Arts teacher to 1st graders, the activity I’m shortly going to suggest will boost:

  • insight
  • emotional intelligence
  • creativity
  • language development
  • self-esteem

So, what’s the activity? Hold onto your academic seats…

I Am From

Students of all ages love a creative activity that offers a rare combination of form and freedom. Enter the I Am Fromwriting prompt.

Just having a sentence stem soothes yet challenges the novice to the experienced writer.

Bonus points — while your students are waxing creative, two big things are developing:

  • a positive association with writing
  • a connection between teacher and student

When a student is given the verbal water wings of a sentence stem, they can “swim” with an idea.

Sentence stems promote students’ confidence and provide a focused theme for them to explore.

For the Lover of Words

The I Am From is no ordinary I Am prompt. Oh dear lover of words, just look at the beckoning use of the preposition “from” teasing us to respond.

The I Am From writing prompt is an invitation to explore our soul’s journey.

This is your chance to weave those unspoken thoughts into a tapestry of verbal color as intricate and mesmerizing as wonderful you.

I’ll be running a writing camp for the next couple of weeks. Their ages range from 5–14. So, I’ve created an I Am Frompoem as a model for them.

Poetry is to writing what a trailer is to a movie.

Poetry gets to the heart of a matter, literally pulling on the gamut of emotional strings just long enough to let us know there’s more lying many leagues below the sea of our psyche.

Poetry is the sampler; prose is the buffet.

My Poetry Sampler

I am from
metal swings,
plastic-covered couches,
and station
wagons

I am from
dogs barking
at mailmen,
8 millimeter films,
and fireflies
on summer nights

I am from 
45 records,
playing hopscotch,
and Mr. Softy’s 
ice cream truck

I am from 
building forts
cartwheels,
and the end 
of the Vietnam War

Whether you are a teacher or lover of words (or both:-), I hope you find the I Am From prompt inspiring.

Abundant Living

The Snapshots We Carry

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There’s a photo of me in 5th grade sporting braces and a perm reminiscent of a poodle fresh from a blow dry. It’s 1980-something, a time when bigger meant better and this included the Linda Richmond-esque bifocal glasses with gold-hued stickers of my initials in one of the lenses’ corners.

For decades, I hated that skinny girl at the start of puberty. The one who begged her mom for a training brawe both know wasn’t necessary.

Yet over time, I started to look back at that photo and saw a completely different image staring back at me.

Snapshots Can Change

Hindsight offers the ability to see through the past with a different lens.

Think of any experience in your life — good or bad or somewhere in between. 

How we remember an experience affects our perception.

For years, I looked at the photos of me in 5th grade and saw a mess of big hair, huge glasses, and boobs that made Houston look mountainous. 

Now, on the cusp of fifty, I am able to see the tween I was less myopically. I’m able to zoom the mental camera out see the terrain of that time and place:

There I am, holding a baby in my 11 year-old arms. How cool is that? The neighbor, a mom of a 5 year old little girl and now a mom again, is trusting me with her kids. I get to babysit both of them regularly after school, and I’m so good at taking care of them. 

I move closer to my 5th grade self and speak directly to her:

You’re not skinny — you are thin. And it’s the 80’s — of course your hair is big!

Be kinder to yourself; no one has this thing called Life figured out. Don’t be in such a rush to grow up and get those boobs. Everything has its season and there’ll be plenty of time for boobs. Just revel in the stories you make up with your neighbor’s daughter each day after school. Trust me, all of these creative games you are playing with her will be something you’ll miss in adulthood.

The Illusion of Snapshots

Author and therapist, Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone) writes about remains of our snapshots:

“People don’t always remember events or conversations clearly, but they do remember with great accuracy how an experience made them feel.”

We’ve all had that moment when we speak with someone from our past and they recall an event one way and we another. Since our perception dictates our reality, this makes sense — both people are correct.

We can look at the same snapshot — the same moment in time and see it differently because of the lens we respectively look through.

Perhaps the real illusion is believing there’s only one snapshot, one angle to view a memory.

Future Snapshots

We not only have the power to alter the filter of our past snapshots; we possess the ability to transform the mental photos on their way.

Instinctively, we do this with young children: seeing the wonder of who they will grow up to be while still wearing diapers.

One of the reasons parents possess so much power in those formative years is their ability — whether realized or not — to affect a child’s inner snapshots.

The great news: we can transform our inner snapshots at anytime to what we want to see.

I’m not talking denial or sweeping things under the figurative carpet. I’m referring to our ability to look at ourselves with compassion and unconditional love, embracing the fractured parts of ourselves to let in the light.

Imagine how the snapshots of your future will develop if looked at through the mental lens of self-compassion and willing vulnerability?

Talk about a Kodak moment!

The Most Dangerous Word

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And why we need to catch ourselves saying it.

Friends invited me out for dinner. Weeks before, we’d originally had plans for them to head over for brunch.

“I’m making homemade waffles and smoothies,” I’d said.

Only the day of the brunch found me flying to Florida to see my father in the ICU.

Last night, at our dinner, I found the following words percolating in my head:

“I should be able to have them over by now. Why am I so tired? So overwhelmed?”

I didn’t say these words aloud. Keeping them silent only made a looming sense of failure inside of me fester. With my unspoken self-recriminations yakking away, I vocalized the following to my friends:

“You can come over for brunch next weekend. Let’s do that!”

The Most Dangerous Word

Did you catch the word yet? Whether merely thought (as I had) or spoken, the word we need to be vigilant of is SHOULD.

Should arrives with verbal tentacles that carry guilt and shame.

Should is an emotional lever that heaps blame and obligation onto our psychological shoulders.

When we think from a place of should, we are subconsciously telling our psyches we aren’t enough. 

Should is the barbed wire of self-compassion, thwarting our ability to listen to our intuition.

Planting New Seeds

Should is a weed of a word, surreptitiously preventing our emotional garden from flourishing.

We can remove the “shoulds” in our garden and replace them with words that nourish like need and want:

Of course I’m overwhelmed and exhausted. It’s not even a month since my father left this Earth. I want to make a brunch for my dear friends but now is not the right time for me. I need time: time to linger in my pajamas longer, time to curl up with a good book, time for long walks that go nowhere, time to devour a sleeve of Oreos.

By yanking out the albatross of SHOULD and replacing it with the seeds of WANT and NEED, I feel lighter and flooded with self-compassion.

Where Does Should Emerge in Your Life?

Where does the lurking word of obligation sneak up in your life? It may be something seemingly innocuous as:

“I should floss my teeth every day.”

But the statement, however genuine, lingers with the fresh scent of guilt. Instead, we can say:

“I want to floss my teeth every day.”

or

“I need to floss my teeth every day.”

I challenge you to observe the words you use, catching yourself when you use or think the word should. The word might seem innocuous, but it has the potential to subtly cause a sense of obligation, shame, guilt, or blame.

When we say:

“I need to…”

there’s a sense of responsibility.

Should takes that responsibility and serves up an unsolicited side of guilt.

What do you want to do? What do you need to do?

Empowering questions for an empowered soul.

My Therapist, Kenny Rogers

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The late Kenny Rogers recently made an entrance into my life.

Maybe it’s because he knew I needed some help.

The singer and songwriter’s lyrics whispered to me like a forgotten dream:

“I’ve made a life out of readin’ people’s faces, knowin’ what the cards were by the way they held their eyes. So if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces.”

How’d Kenny know I was out of aces?

Kenny Roger’s Wisdom

To live means risk. Life hands us a deck of cards. Some of those cards are desirable; some are the kind you want to hide from the world.

The cards life deals us are always changing. And one person’s perception of fortune can be another’s confirmation of failure.

How we perceive life’s cards makes all the difference.

Kenny’s lyrics reminds us that our attitude affects a great deal of our outcome.

If we believe we are out of aces — opportunity or fortune, it will show in our body language.

The Problem

A family member called me a couple of times while I was at work to tell me:

“It’s your birthday soon. Here’s what you are going to do. Here’s when you are going to do it.”

It’s worth noting: I had told my family I had a big work event and not to call me that day.

This family member not only didn’t respect my reminder not to call that day; they called me twice, finally leaving a text message that their “plane tickets” were all booked and now they were waiting for me to book mine.

There was never any question such as:

  • Would a trip on this day at this place work with your schedule?
  • What would you like to do for your 50th?

My Therapist, Kenny Rogers

I was annoyed that this family member was dictating how I “should” celebrate my birthday.

There’s something about turning 50 that feels symbolic. It’s the chronological wake-up call to take stock of life, standing on the precipice of life’s past and the unknown future left.

“I don’t want them telling me what to do or how to celebrate my birthday!”

Thankfully, I had my dear therapist, Kenny Rogers to offer his gambling wisdom:

“You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.”

And Kenny’s sage advice continued:

“Every gambler knows, that the secret to surviving’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep.”

Mic drop, Kenny Rogers. Man does he know his stuff.

Life’s Gamble

The family member who made my blood pressure rise has a huge heart.

And here’s the truth: no one can make us angry unless we allow it.

An Australian army nurse, Elizabeth Kenny once said:

“He who angers you, controls you.”

We are all diamonds in this life, coming into this space and time with many facets. Sometimes, the less attractive facets shine brighter than others.

The facets we choose to focus on determine our life’s experience.

I could choose to focus on my family member’s controlling personality facet, or I could decide to lean into their big heart.

Our challenges are either “winners or losers”, depending on how we perceive them.

Kenny Helps Me Decide How to Play

Kenny helped me see that my family member is nothing more than a little child in a grown up’s body, so eager to see me and celebrate my birthday, they forgot things like:

  • boundaries
  • considering my perspective

There is no malice to this family member. I’ve often thought of them as bull in a china shop: opinionated, loud, and clueless to what they are psychologically knocking over in their wake.

This person puts everything into their family. And sometimes that means missing the forest for the trees.

So, I’ve decided to turn 50 in the location they’ve told — er, strongly suggested. My ticket is booked. I will get to be surrounded by family I miss like crazy.

I’ve let go of the need for this family member to be a “winning card” on my terms and accepted them for where they are right now.

I’ve let go of the need to “change my hand”, appreciating the family deck just the way it is.

For this round of life, I’ve decided to hold. And it feels pretty darn good.

*Kenny Rogers’ lyrics are from The Gambler