Write with TLC

2024 has found me, us, the world. I keep searching for meaning in the moments, large and small, that made up 2023, globally as well as personally. There are disappointments, challenges, losses, and triumphs dotted throughout the year. Somehow today it is the little kindnesses that stand out to me in a sea of painful moments. And, I wonder if sometimes we forget that a little kindness, a little love, a little compassion goes a long way toward making life bearable for those in challenging circumstances. My problems this year pale in comparison to worldwide atrocities. They were still challenges I had to face and handle. Those challenges taught me some lessons about the people in my life as well as about myself. Frankly, I don't want to talk about my personal 2023 right now. Relationships change, grow, end, and begin. People lift us up and people let us down. Good things happen, and bad things happen. The world around us can be incredibly kind and just as cruel. And through it all, we...

Forgiveness is not some supernatural event that fixes everything. It can't be. Asking it to be is too much to expect as well as absolving us the work it takes to right a wrong or at least acknowledge a wrong that can't be righted. Forgiveness is all about accountability and absolves no one from the need for accountability. Forgiveness is essential to life. It allows hurts to mend, amends to be made, and offers a way to move forward. Sometimes that forgiveness allows people to move forward together, but sometimes it helps them move forward apart. When they move forward together, that's growing closer. When they move forward apart, that's finding closure. Both are important at different times in life. Forgiveness isn't something we do for the other person. It's a gift we give ourselves. It's a letting go of what's beyond our control. It's an acceptance of what happened and whose accountable. Forgiveness allows us to stop clinging to the mud miring us i...

I have left another social media platform, Twitter. I had long considered leaving, but Elon Musk buying the company was the final feather for me.  I archived my data and deactivated my account. It didn't feel as liberating as when I deactivated my Facebook account, but that's probably because I hadn't really used Twitter in a long time. I'd also never used it quite like I did Facebook. I don't think I'll miss Twitter.  Based on what I've seen in the news thus far about how Twitter is now being managed, I'm quite certain I made the right decision. It seems the platform is headed in a direction that's antithetical to the way I live my life and the way I want to move about the world. Inviting hate into my life is unproductive. There comes a time when we have to decide if a company that is antithetical to our values deserves our patronage. I have decided neither Facebook nor Twitter deserve mine. The benefits I get from either one don't outweigh the ...

An analysis of my life has shown me time and again how interwoven strength and vulnerability are. I can see times in my life when I struggled to be strong and when I hid my vulnerability. I have often put up a tough exterior to hide my incredibly fragile vulnerability as well as my incredibly fragile inner strength. It seemed like my inner strength intimidated people and my vulnerability offered them ammunition against me, so I learned to hide both behind a tough exterior. I feared having my vulnerability used against me and my strength scaring people  away . Hiding both my strength and my vulnerability became yet another mask I wore to  protect myself from the people in my life. I didn't quite understand how to be both strong and vulnerable with others without putting myself at risk.  Other times I'd overshare with people as a test to see who would stay and who would leave. I get to choose who sees different aspects of my life. I didn't understand the idea that some peop...

Recently during a conversation, a friend described me as being passionate about my beliefs. This was stated as a compliment, and I took it as one even though it made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Over the next few days, I reflected on this statement "you're passionate about your beliefs" and finally understood why it made me uncomfortable. I can certainly understand why someone would think I'm passionate about my beliefs, but I don't think I am. I am very passionate about my values but not so much about my beliefs. I am fairly certain this is where some readers are ready to shout "semantics", but it's not, really. My beliefs are subject to change when the facts supported by research warrant the change. My values, on the other hand, are much harder, some impossible, to convince me to change. I have cultivated my values over the course of my life in a way that informs my life, how I live in the world, and how I interact with others. I am proudly passion...

I was reminded of this poem from my book, Reflections in Silhouette: Poems while working on the blog post, Masks of Me . I decided to share it. The Mask One day I put on a mask To make you love me Not because you asked But because I feared The look in your eyes Disappointment, I believe it was So I  Settled the mask into place Tweaked it Made it beautiful Perfected it to make you happy Created exactly what Made you smile Turned the look in your eye to approval Made you love me As time passed I deceived myself I accepted the mask as The real me I forgot who I was under The mask When the mask cracked As they will  I quickly – before anyone could see Plastered the cracks Filled in the holes Blended the paint Hid the damaged and weakened foundation Corrected its imperfections Settled the mask back into place When the mask slipped As they will I quickly – before anyone could see Pushed it around to make it fit Smoothed the borders Adjusted it so you wouldn’t notice Ignored the eve...

For much of my life, every time I let me out to play, work, or live, something went wrong. Someone would hurt me, or I would hurt someone.  I’d lose a friend. I would disappoint someone. I’d see that look of judgment. Mostly though I ended up feeling like I didn't belong, that I didn't fit in, that something was wrong with me. I would then retreat behind my mask and secure it in place. I was reminded of how prevalent my mask has been in my life recently while reading  Love Warrior  by Glennon Doyle. She describes her representative in much the same way I've often described putting on my mask for the world. Her descriptions of her reactions to expectations and conformity lined up far more with my experience than I want to acknowledge. I squirmed in my seat every time she referred to her representative. In fact, I kept wanting to change the word representative to mask because it lined up so well with my experience with my mask. I was drawn back to Glennon's descri...

  Here we are again... At the end of another year! I had such big plans for 2020! Yeah.... Sighs! I really want to write some empowering, inspiring, hopeful words right now, but they're not coming. They will come again but not today. I have never been one to think the clock ticking over to a new year is anything more than arbitrary. It changes nothing other than the number we have to write on dated material and resetting the tax year... It doesn't make us more whatever it is we want to be. It doesn't erase whatever bad we want to ignore. It doesn't change our habits or goals or daily lives. There is some comfort in that as well as some discomfort in it. It would be nice if that tick would actually reset things and make them better. If it would push us into a new phase or place or purpose, but it doesn't. I hear many people saying things like "I can't wait for this year to be over." and I've even caught myself saying it. Then I wonder why. I know th...

I recently read A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost . It's a beautiful book and one I'd been salivating over for a while, ever since I saw it in Costco several months ago. It is filled with poems that speak to my heart, my imagination, my core. I was thumbing through one day while reading - yeah, I was looking ahead - and came across Nothing Gold Can Stay , and the first thought that popped in my head was "Stay gold, Ponyboy." I stopped in my tracks as a shiver went up my spine and a smile slid across my face. I remembered in that moment the first time I read The Outsiders   by S. E. Hinton . The first time I read Nothing Gold Can Stay in the book, The Outsiders , the first time I heard the poem aloud in the movie , the first time I read the letter at the end of the book, the first time I heard the letter at the end of the movie... Robert Frost and The Outsiders are forever linked in my memory because of this poem. S. E. Hinton used Nothing Gold Can Stay to...

Sometimes people are surprised to learn that I fit the description of a hillbilly, a person from a backwoods area (Mirriam-Webster Dictionary) because I'm not what people  often   expect a hillbilly to be. But I am. I grew up on a farm in a "holler" in a small town in Eastern Kentucky.  Both my parents grew up in the same general area where I grew up. They also both grew up on farms. My mom's parents lived on "the ridge" above our house on the other side of the woods. My dad's mom lived "over town" but back  yet  another holler, strictly speaking.  You don't get much more hillbilly than that. Hillbillies are individuals just like people within every group that exists. Hillbilly families are not all alike.  Hillbillies who move away take parts of the culture with them, but we also tend to adapt to new environments and create a whole new culture - a mishmash of our hillbilly upbringing, our other life experiences, and where we're living a...

I'm not one to think the changing of the year changes much... It's just another day, but I have to admit 2019 was a tough year. Friends, family, and loved ones have faced challenges I could do nothing about. I've faced my own challenges which pale in comparison to what people I love dearly have faced with courage and aplomb. I've had to face my own limitations in ways I never anticipated, but there they were shining in my face refusing to be denied. There is only so much I can do, and sometimes even that just isn't enough. But that doesn't mean I'm not enough. As I look toward 2020, I can't help but think that next year has to be better, yet the realistic side of me knows many of the challenges are still in the middle, no where near the resolution, and in some cases the only, or at least likely, resolution isn't desirable anyway. Maybe, just maybe, I'll handle them better than I did in 2019. So, this isn't going to be a romanticized r...

There's no way to change some things. We can't always make things right once we've made them wrong. We can't take back the damage we've inflicted with careless words or actions or attitudes. Some damage is simply irreversible. Most of the time we navigate the world worried that our actions are more important than they are, but we also tend to downplay other actions. We all live on the same planet, and our actions affect people we might never meet. I struggle with this more and more as I navigate a world that seems to be focused on accumulating stuff no matter the cost to other people. The people working in abysmal conditions in some factory on the other side of the world are far removed from our daily lives. What can we do about it? I used to hear people say "Vote with your dollars" and wonder how my little purchase could make a difference one way or the other. As I researched more, I began to see how this little thing and that little thing and this ...

Every time I start to write this I get start hearing George Michael's voice singing "Charity is a coat you wear twice a year" from Praying for Time yet what I want to write about is being thankful... Sometimes I think thankfulness is something we put on like a scarf to go with that charity coat twice a year. I wonder... I wonder... Oh, God, I wonder why is that thankfulness only seems to matter in November? Why is it that charity only seems to matter in December? Why is it that we want peace on Earth and love for all mankind from Thanksgiving to Christmas? Then the rest of the year, we support war and violence and greed while we blame our fellow man for circumstances beyond their control. Why, oh, why? It seems like it's so hard for us to see the world around us through clear eyes. And then I wonder... I wonder... Oh, God, I wonder would we even bother to be thankful that one month a year if we didn't feel obligated   inspired by the approach of Thanksgiv...

Gratitude has become a bit of a buzzword for focusing on the positive in one's life. Technically, though gratitude is simply the state of being thankful; however, we often attach meaning to gratitude that often gives it a hint of the supernatural. When I started actively practicing gratitude in 2011, I had a purpose. I wanted to focus on the positive in my life in order to bring more positive into my life. I didn't quite realize there was already so much positive in my life I was downplaying or not noticing at all. The more I practiced gratitude, the more I realized what I was really practicing was noticing and embracing the positive in my life. The more I noticed and embraced the positive in my life, the more positive I found, but, as I also stated in The Dark Side of Gratitude , I also noticed the negative in my life more distinctly as well. As I noticed the positive in my life, I started working at cultivating more positive in my life. I worked at it. I discovered ...

Peace is a practice, not a goal. I used to think if we could just reach peace, everything would be perfect. We'd somehow transform into utopia. But, at the same time, I didn't believe peace could ever be truly achieved. In my search for peace both in my own life and in the world around me, I've come to see peace as more about how we live, think, and interact than it is about checking off a box as a mission accomplished. That shift in perspective has made my goal to cultivate a climate of peace in my life much easier. If we live in a climate of chaos, then chaos is what prevails in our lives. If we live chaotic lives, we bring chaos to the world around us. If we allow the chaos in the world to dictate our lives, we bring chaos to our lives. Early in my life, I thought life was chaotic and there was always some catastrophe lurking around every corner. I accepted that as a reality that could never be changed. I never felt a moment's peace while in that state of ...