It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been doing this whole podcast thing for an entire year now!
The pilot was published on August 12, 2019, the DAY before I had the opportunity to give a keynote speech to a room full of women for the Walla Walla Valley Chamber of Commerce Women in Business luncheon.
Remember what rooms full of people were like?
*SIGH.*
August 15 is Zeb and my wedding anniversary – this year we celebrated 11 years of marriage. Last year, we went to Hawaii for our 10 year anniversary and this year… we had a return trip planned that didn’t pan out because Hawaii is still mandating 14 days quarantine for arrivals.
I feel like I’ve been on a slew of milestones and anniversaries for the past 2 months, honestly.
Bittersweet anniversaries
Hudson’s birthday.
The anniversary of Hudson’s death.
Happy anniversaries, like two years of owning by own business, 11 years of marriage with the man of my most-of-the-time dreams, one year of plugging away at this podcast.
And total bullshit milestones, like how long it has been since we started having to limit physical contact with the world around us.
I’m like Tom Hanks drawing hashmarks on Wilson in Castaway, every hash is a day in this restricted life we call “COVID-LAND”
Of course I preach “Everything is what you make it” – good or bad. I’ve not been shy about letting you know that my extravert does not do well in a quarantine, physical distancing world.
And I’ve been thinking about how milestones can go from being happy to sad, or from being life-ending to being bittersweet.
In the weeks and months after Hudson died, I remember marking EVERY SINGLE WEDNESDAY. She was born on a Wednesday, so every Wednesday was another week she should have been showing off new skills and baby tricks and accomplishments. SHOULD HAVE BEEN, but wasn’t. Because she died. On a Saturday.
And yet, I didn’t mark Saturdays with the same diligence.
After a few months, Wednesdays lost their impact and I didn’t need the weekly text from my mom so bad.
Of course, the 11th of any month kept its significance. Even eight years later, sometimes I’ll realize it’s the 11th of the month and feel a twang of miss-my-baby.
With Anson, Maddox, and Marlowe, we marked milestones with decreasing intensity. Anson’s early life was punctuated by celebratory monthly photoshoots, journal entries and social media tribute posts, and for Mother’s Day Zeb gave me a year’s worth of quarterly photoshoots wit hour favorite family photographer.
Maddox got a newborn shoot and a happy 1 year birthday shoot.
Marlowe got a newborn shoot, and we rescheduled her 1 year birthday shoot because everybody was throwing a tantrum, including me.
It isn’t that these milestones for Anson, Maddox, and Marlowe were any LESS significant. But I’d been there before – life was busier and there were more distractions and competing priorities.
Today, Hudson’s birthday is a bittersweet milestone, a celebration of the impact a short life can have and a reminder of all that we have, even when we have lost so much.
Eight years later, I spend less time crying over Hudson and more time being so joyful that I ever got to call her mine.
Is that perspective, or time healing the wound, or is it just there are so many other things going on in my life today than there were 8 years ago?
I’m sharing this with you today because I think we ALL are a little TIRED OF ALL THIS. I’m waving my hands around as I say it. The world is HEAVY. We have riots, protests, a contentious election, murder hornets, wildfires, a global pandemic. We can’t see the people we love without fear of infecting or being infected. WE’ve become distrustful of people to an EXTREME, in a VERY short period of time. And through it all I can see that this world we live in will never be “back to normal.” It will be something different. I look at cars parked too closely together and think “They’re not social distancing.” I watched a cartoon with my kids last weekend and was offended when a character drank from a shared glass with another character.
All of this HEAVINESS – and a desire to be FULLY present for our wedding anniversary milestone – caused me to totally miss my podcast milestone. Shoot it caused me to totally miss podcasting IN GENERAL for the past two weeks.
But that’s the thing I really want to drive on this. ARE WE BEING PRESENT, or are we waiting for something to change. Are we living the life we have now, or are we vamping while we wait for a vaccine, or for an election, or for whatever is in your life that you think isn’t what it should be right now?
That doesn’t mean you have to look at the life you have now and make it sunshine and rainbows. That is NOT being fully present. Quarantine was lame. I do not love ALOT about what we are facing as individuals, as a nation, and globally right now. It’s not a sunshine and rainbows topic, and I would not be a REAL person if all I did was tell everybody how awesome it is. Or even how fine it is~!
You have to feel the suck to enjoy the rainbows. When I look back on Hudson’s short life and the nightmare of grief and recovery that followed, I pinpoint beautiful hopeful moments, like doing footprints, or feeding her colastrujm with a q-tip. But I also connect to memories of weeping in a rocking chair while holding the mold we had made of her feet. I felt the feels.
I saw this quote the other day – the stars need the darkness to shine.
Our whole life is never going to be ALL AMAZING nor will it be ALL CRAPTASTIC. IT is all the things, and if we are trying to elevate the crap to fine we will inevitably level the AMAZING down to fine too.
SO MUCH OF THE AGONY WE HUMANS FACE IN LIFE IS THE DISONANCE BETWEEN WHAT IS AND WHAT WE THINK SHOULD BE.
What would happen if we just let this be what it is for a second?
If we can look at this life for what it is, to us, right now, we might better be able to find the REAL beauty in where we are at . And it might not happen right away. It might take weeks, or months, eight years to recognize that even in the hardest and darkest parts, there was light and beauty and growth and survival and resilience.
Am I contradicting my “It is what you make it?” Philosophy? I don’t think so. It is what it is to YOU, first, and from there you can choose to make it whatever you need to make it to live life fully, beautifully, joyfully, with impact.
So that is the challenge to you, today, my friends. As Wayne said to Garth eyeballing that sweet electric guitar… “Stop torturing yourself, man. You’ll never afford it. LIVE IN THE NOW! “
The beautiful life IS yours, my friends. The dark parts help the stars shine the brighter. Take some time to write an honest assessment of where you are at with life right now. Like, the one word that describes how you feel on the whole. For me right now, it’s DROWNING.
For you, it could be MEH.
STRESS.
DISTRUST
FURY
WORRY
Then, find something you can do today to punctuate the darkness with a bright spot, something that is the OPPOSITE of what you are feeling. For me, taking a 100% checked out, spend time with my hubby, golf and drink breakfast cocktails and let grandma and grandpa put the kids to bed day was the opposite of drowning. It was light, and worry-free, and reconnected me to myself and to the ME I am with my husband when we aren’t working hard and mammon harder.
For you, it could be a day of celebration with your partner, a quiet walk in nature, a six-feet-apart on the front lawn cocktail shared with a friend you cherish, a morning snuggle with your kids, a bubble bath and a good book, Irish coffee on your back porch.
Because LIFE IS what you make it. You choose what you do with your time, and how you spend your time affects how you feel, and the memories that you create and the milestones you look back on in months, or years. Let’s live this one life, the good and the bad, to the fullest by choosing to acknowledge how we feel today and take action to live the life we want.