Category: Life Lessons

You Move Too Fast

In my oft-used marketing spiel to executives about building awareness campaigns, I often used the potter’s wheel analogy. Executives as a type are eager to demonstrate and push to get quick results. But quick doesn’t always translate to “best” or even to “better.”

Every bowl that is thrown starts with the proverbial pound of clay thrown onto the wheel. As the wheel begins to turn, the potter engages with the clay in a mutually creative endeavor. The wheel starts to spin, slowly at first, and the water is thrown on the clay. The potter gets into the slurry with his/her hands.

It is a common mistake for newbie potters to have difficulty controlling the shape and speed of the bowl or vessel they want to make. Therein lies the craft. The slow, steady coaching of that amorphous lump of clay into an object of beauty and utility is not easy. I learned that in a pottery class.

My New Brunswick potter friend, Tom Smith, who make beautiful raku mugs and sold them by the hundreds, chuckled when I told him that, and said: “We love pottery courses. It’s the quickest way people really find out how hard it is to do what we do.”

New potters let the clay get away from them. The clay can flop over precariously in one direction or another. Hold the clay too long or too firmly and the undisciplined form rushes upwards through your fingers. Speaking personally, flailing about with your hands and fingers trying to tame and pull the wayward clay back into submission is a fool’s errand.

The emerging product on the wheel looks more like an ostrich in need of a chiropractor than anything remotely resembling a serving dish. Once the clay has reached a certain height, there is little option but to scrap the whole project and start over from scratch.

The potter may have learned valuable lessons in this botched attempt. Still, it may have cost considerable time and effort. The corporate world doesn’t graciously allow, or forgive, much botching. Ergo my caution to eager executives to build a campaign slowly and methodically for the best outcome to their marketing/sales/communication plans.

It feels like we have lost our trust in process and investing the necessary time, often years, to perfect our craft. What used to be called apprenticeship seems to have gone extinct along with the late lamented dodo bird.

Writers bandy about a story about meeting a brain surgeon at a cocktail party who declares to the author: “After retirement, I am going to write a book.” To which the author replies: “Isn’t that funny? I was thinking that after I leave my writing career behind, I am going to take up brain surgery.”

Point made but likely lost on the surgeon who could likely never equate the intricacies of his craft with what writers do. Everyone can write, they reason. Which is true, I guess, if qualitatively variant. Writers are used to insensitivity about the actual skill and rigor required to practice their practice.

As Ringo Starr would put it: “You know it don’t come easy.”

Lately I have been having two key thoughts. Some empathy and concern about young people lulled into believing they are “ready for prime time” long before they know what “prime time” even is.

It used to take years to become an overnight success. Today any cute kid with a shtick can publish, perform and profit from an online presence. My question always is, “But for how long?” I wonder how long their audience will continue to be enthralled by make-up application videos once they have aged out into the real work world, had babies and are trying to snag a mortgage.

I am as guilty of techno-distraction as the next person. But I am trying to find a way out of that dependence. I want to revel in the joy that comes from sitting at a potter’s wheel for hours creating pot after pot with well-behaved lumps of clay. (Full confession, I don’t ever expect to get there. But I can dream, can’t I?)

I want to lose myself in amazing books that transport me. Almost anywhere. I’m selective, of course. I prefer to traipse through the mysteries of the heart, mind and soul. Some authors manage to take me on that journey. I often opt for trusted experts who have taught me more in a week with their book than I might otherwise have learned in years.

All to say, I feel an urge to slow down. Not as a surrender to the vagaries of age but to the value and quality of time. Satisfying as completing tasks may be, I don’t see countless hours knocking items off my to-do list as the memories I wish to savor on my deathbed.

I want to spend more time with family, friends and loved ones. I want to spend more time with myself. I want to spend more time in my garden. Yesterday, the HASS avocado tree we ordered arrived. I am beyond excited to see how it grows.

Note to self: Slow down long enough and frequently enough to make sure you can enjoy the process. Big work for a Type A personality like me, but necessary.

The Sounds of Silence

I have nothing to say. That interests me. Words are important currency in our society. People often seem to value them above a lot of other elements. Snakeoil salesmen have historically used them to good effect.

When thoughts and words aren’t forthcoming, it feels odd to me. We need words to offer and feel validation. We use them to connect to and shape our environment.

Words are important for plotting a path in life. Words underpin the narrative upon which we build our beliefs and develop our goals. Without words, we cannot articulate our dreams nor map a way to actualize them.

What is it about having nothing to say that intrigues me? In part, words have been my survival tool. I have relied on my ability to write or talk my way either out of or into any situation I believed I wanted to be part of.

I cannot say words were equally effective in improving my judgment, however. Some of those situations I got into I very quickly I wanted to get out of. There is a lot of wisdom in the caution “be careful what you wish for.”

We don’t much value nothing these days. It doesn’t sell well or for much money. And yet, there is so much available for us to learn and feel in nothingness and silence.

Most people fear emptiness. Recall in your own life uncomfortable silences that may have made certain interactions difficult and awkward. Recall the allure of frantic celebrations or parties we attended when thinking or speaking might have been impossible. The din of people trying to talk over loud music drowns out any intimacy there could be.

I once attended a 10 day silent meditation retreat in a beautiful country setting based on the ancient Vipassana tradition. Vipassana is a meditation discipline wherein we train our minds to “see things as they really are.” My interpretation of Vipassana is that by letting the mental clutter in our minds settle, we can clearly see ourselves and others.

Here is what the worldwide Vipassana website tells us about the practice:

There are three steps to the training. The first step is, for the period of the course, to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual activity, speaking falsely, and intoxicants. This serves to calm the mind, which otherwise would be too agitated to perform the task of self-observation.

The next step is to develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one’s attention on the natural reality of the ever changing flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.

By the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself: observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them.

Finally, on the last full day participants learn the meditation of loving kindness or goodwill towards all, in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/about/vipassana

The experience of a silent retreat is purifying. And calming. But many don’t make it through the ten days. Days Three and Four are well known as “bolt” days. These are the days when people are most likely to leave. For some people, being alone with their thoughts in complete isolation is too difficult and too frightening.

I believe you have to be ready before you undergo a ten day course of complete silence and disconnection from the outside world (no cellphones, journals or even books are allowed). Participants are free to go as they wish. They are also free to come back if/when they feel ready.

Finding a time and place to experience complete silence and disconnection is no mean feat. Social media bombards us with an endless array of opportunities to connect and share and communicate with others. Quantity has won the day over quality.

So embracing my inner Luddite, I am better and happier generally when I carve out tranches of silent “me time.” Early mornings are good for that. And what is it I do in that space? Nothing.

I try doing something that is very hard for me. Just being. I ignore my devices, TV and my phone. No reading or writing emails. Not even writing this blog until I have had some nurturing quiet time. I like to sit and absorb what the world around me is offering me in those periods.

Birdsong in nearby trees. Jet planes flying overhead. Squirrels scuttling at top speed across the wooden fence in our backyard. I often do a body checkin at the same time.

How does my tummy feel today? Are my muscles aching from that swim yesterday? Am I hungry? Or thirsty? The body chatters away incessantly, if wordlessly, with us if we just tune in to it.

Odd admission for a writer, no doubt. But I believe in the underlying logic. By carving out time to card through my thoughts and reactions, the output of words is a little clearer and more focused.

As Vipassana aims to teach, I feel more confident emerging from silence that I am seeing the world as it really is, rather than how I want to see it. Maybe the world would be kinder and more sane if more people did.

Illogical Conclusions

I once read about a woman who had the peculiar habit of cutting the ends off a ham before roasting it in the oven. For no good reason. When one of her children finally asked why she did that, the woman didn’t have an obvious answer.

“It is what my mother always did,” she replied. “But why?” her daughter insisted. So the woman asked her mother. “Why did you always cut the ends off the ham before you put it in the oven?”

“Well, it was the only way I could make it fit in the baking pan I had.”

Have you ever explored where your personal beliefs come from? The ham roast example is pretty specific, I realize. Need a more generic example?

“Girls aren’t good at maths.” “Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” “No one in my family ever went to university.” “A woman’s place is in the home.” Granted, those “beliefs” are all a little dated. My age may be showing.

Be that as it may, there are still a whole bunch of people who earnestly believe, “A woman can’t do … [fill in the blank].” It is such small and limited and exhausting thinking. Exhausting because it is an uphill battle to confront and overcome such thinking. Not only in others but often in yourself.

We conduct our lives and do certain things we do based on our beliefs. What we believe, guides and informs our daily life. To keep things fresh, I find it a good practice to challenge my beliefs occasionally.

I have had a nagging belief in lack for my whole life. The belief was instilled through suffering traumatic losses in my young life. That pain and chaos created all kinds of dysfunctional issues and drama around acquisition and money.

I would spend, then regret my spending, then take things back to the store and then get mad because I either needed or really wanted what I’d bought. I’d go back to the store.

I’d have a full-blown argument in my head about the merits of either buying something or saving the money right there in the women’s clothing aisle. Talk about exhausting. I was lucky I wasn’t committed.

Make no mistake. Letting go of our beliefs can be painful, too. No one likes being “wrong.” Or even if we inherited the belief and are merely following the dictates of the family and culture we grew up in, it can still hurt.

Aside from your whole guiding belief system, there are millions of lesser beliefs we might take a look at and toss. A timely one for me is the fear and losses of aging. I am at that juncture but have never been more happy and at peace with myself and my life.

Yet I am bombarded daily with a dazzling array of products and procedures that will reverse this dastardly process and vague hints of irrelevance and looming discard that accompany my advancing years. Poppycock.

Yesterday I watched the movie, Nyad. Starring powerhouse actors Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, I first noted how lined their faces have become. And that there weren’t heaps of make-up applied to cover that.

Nyad is the story of marathon swimmer Diana Nyad who – at 64 – managed to swim from Cuba to Florida, a distance of some 110 miles. The producers took great care to make it not look easy.

In fact, Diana Nyad eventually only succeeded after four previous failed attempts over as many years. The online movie bumpf around this film makes a lot of noise about Nyad’s achievement breaking down stereotypes of age and gender.

The other word it uses – and I encourage my female friends to consider adding this to their own personal belief system – is that older women can be pure badasses. The stereotype of sweet little old ladies (SLOL) who quietly fade off into the distance is a belief worth tossing.

I take heart from the great ladies and role models out there who have turned the SLOL archetype on its head. Old AND sexy. Betty White. Carol Burnett. Sophia Loren. Ann Margaret. Helen Mirren. Judi Dench. Elizabeth Hurley. I could go on.

Overriding beliefs I’ve had all my life, that I have looked at closely and see no need to let go of are these: never give up and never say never. Because by giving up it is then and only then, that you are done.

I believe then as I always have that “what will be is up to me.” You should, too. As for society’s insidious perception that we may getting too old to take on new challenges, I like to quote my Dad in response to the naysayers and feet of clay people: “Up ‘em.”

In Our Stars

I like to explore things I don’t fully understand. High level finance, for example. The meaning of life. Relationships. Of all types.

When I discover something in the world that has been around forever, it sparks my curiosity. I want to know more. I may not make my exploration a full-time pursuit but I am usually wiser having found out more about it.

I was a faithful church goer at one time as I tried to fathom the depths and mysteries and sticking power of Christianity. I wanted to know what this Christ guy was all about and what he was trying to teach us. I was particularly intrigued by how he has held so many people in such thrall for such a long time.

I have thrown runes. In Norse mythology, runes functioned as letters, but they were much more than just letters. Each rune was an ideographic or pictographic symbol of some cosmological principle or power, about which I understand zero to nothing. 

Even if my interpretation of the stones I drew was facile and superficial, I loved how cool they looked. And even tarot card readings. Again, pretty cool looking pictures regardless what the symbols were trying to indicate.

Ancient cultures developed their own methods for seeking guidance from the spirit world. Historically, all peoples needed and eventually found some methodology to help them work through the mysteries of life and living.

Is there a parallel spirit world out here with guardian angels and demons and all manner of unknown entities that act on us in our daily lives? Damned if I know.

Yesterday, I had an astrology reading. If that revelation hasn’t moved you to close your device, I want to explain the value I took away from that session. To start with, I chose a reputable astrologer dianabadger.com.

I sent her details of my birth earlier in the week with the day, date and time. When we went online to meet yesterday at about 4:30 PM (EST), she opened by displaying my birth chart. The only impression I had from the visual was an enormous amount of activity in one of my houses down in the far right corner.

To her, this was instructive and meaningful. My fifth house showed strong fire and creativity. I was born with Aries rising. It also revealed my tendency to run slipshod over people’s feelings in my drive to accomplish in the world and get things done. That resonated, if a bit uncomfortably.

So I am going to stop right there. Because saying anything more about what Diana told me would undermine the nuance of Diana’s work and would likely be dead wrong or garbled. I tried to listen more than I talked.

Diana validated many things I already knew from other explorations in counseling and Myers-Briggs testing and enneagrams and readings in the whole wide world of self-help literature. A lot she said I already knew about myself.

So my question was, how did she do that? How is it that there can be such accurate revelations about a single individual in a chart based on when, and where you were born?

She said my chart indicated I was turning away from pursuing public accolades and accomplishments and evolving into a person with a greater sense of service and community.

You likely have passing familiarity with the archetypes of the zodiac signs. If you do, you would know what a course correction that is for a flamboyant and attention-seeking Leo (and c’mon … are you telling me you never once read Jeanne Dixon’s horoscope for your sign to see how the day was likely to turn out?)

She said my chart indicates I am heading toward the influences of Aquarius which should make my approach to life more balanced and egalitarian. Dear God, I hope so. My connection to the Earth and Nature is likely to become stronger.

In summary, Diana told me I am moving toward a greater sense of “me” to “we.” I sure hope so. It can be lonely being a lion that people may respect but avoid out of fear. Diana accurately nailed difficulties I had in my life “getting a seat at the table.” She suggests that will happen naturally with surrender and by letting go.

For a self-reflecting, hyper-vigilant, control freak like me, letting go is pretty intimidating, to say nothing of surrender. I am not even sure I know what that would look like, if I’m honest.

But I guess I am going to have to learn.

Wish me luck.

Thanks for the insights and the nudge, Diana. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

The Power of Two

My son – my eldest child – got married yesterday. To a beautiful, elegant, intelligent bride. I was not there. None of his family was. That was by choice and not an antagonistic one.

The couple deliberately sought and got the privacy and simplicity they wanted as they exchanged their vows. Family watched the live-streamed event at Ottawa City Hall from a great distance on our computers. Technology, eh?

Our society creates so many false expectations and financial demands around weddings. So much so that it didn’t surprise me when I read many divorces take place because the couple seems to forget that a wedding is followed by an actual marriage. Which is way different.

For years, I pooh-poohed the importance of having an intimate, loving relationship in my own life. If I’m honest, fear held me back in single, celibate check. I figured if you can’t skate yourself and everyone in your family is a really bad skater, don’t head to an ice rink and make a fool of yourself.

My parents made a complete cockup of their marriage. They both brought a bag full of unprocessed issues and dysfunction to the table. Within that marriage’s walls, three daughters were dutifully born one after the other.

I was number one. A precarious perch to hold in any family dynamic. That place in the siblings’ birth order is loaded with expectations and often imposes a sense of excessive responsibility on that child. Perhaps even moreso in the specific circumstances of my birth once my origins became clear to me.

Unearthed in counseling, the wise woman listened patiently to my seemingly endless tales of maternal betrayal. In one pivotal session, she stopped short, looked up from her notepad and piercingly asked: “Is there any chance your parents had to get married?” My world flipped. The immediate sense of potential truth I had shook me to my core.

That night, I called my father and uncomfortably asked him the question. His response was sheepish, but honest. “We were going to get married anyway.” It was a sweet phone call tinged with sadness.

Then I called my mother asking the same question. I might just as well asked her if she routinely drove pins into small helpless animals for sport. She shrieked at me and called me down and accused me of all manner of foul things that I even DARED to ask such a question. “How could you!?” Her response was my answer.

I married my children’s father under a Sword of Damocles. My mother was clearly upset leading up to and at the event itself. Still she didn’t say a single negative word. Instead, she smiled too much and too broadly, paced about the room and looked decidedly drawn and anxious at the little wedding ceremony we managed to have.

That marriage was not a great romantic story. I believed the guy I married was the ”boy next door.” Plucked carelessly from the available pool surrounding me at the time. Safe and harmless, I reasoned. We would have one of those loveless marriages of convenience. We’d raise good kids. He would be the chief cook, bottle washer and cheering section to support my rising star.

Since I was not in love with him, I believed he could not hurt me. That delusion was emphatically ripped away after my son was born. In spite of two university degrees, it turned out my real education was only just beginning.

My mother’s abundantly and publicly supported my son’s father. And I, like a hapless beast who finds itself being sucked into quicksand or a tarpit, faced the dawning realization my mother was my mother in name only.

The flimsy bonds of attachment I had had to her already unravelled in an instant. Never marry or have children to give your parents grand babies. The ensuing years were difficult and traumatizing.

Such is the unwelcome gift children inherit from unhealed, immature parents. “Growing up” isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. In our family’s convoluted and dysfunctional dynamic, the damage and scarring continued well into adulthood.

My greatest regret was the trauma and deprivation foisted upon my children. They were born into circumstances they had no control over and didn’t deserve. What child does?

So my son and his bride’s decision to marry yesterday after his own faltering first attempt was and is – as all important ventures are – a victory of hope over experience.

I feel the same about my own marriage. Truly a “whodda thunkit” situation. After years on my own, I was blessed in my dotage to find someone I can love and laugh with. I love and appreciate my husband beyond my own understanding. We treasure each moment we have together and all the more because we know our time together is limited.

There is a simple happy moral to the story at this point. The bonds of intergenerational trauma in my little family – while far from being fully healed – have at least been confronted and challenged.

My two children and me – and their father too, to be fair – have committed to and follow our own healing path. Admitting there is a problem, they say, is the first step to overcoming it.

For Cameron and Shaar, I wish them every imaginable positive experience and joyous occasion their formal union now opens to them. They have had a pretty phenomenal run as partners.

I wish them the strength and wisdom they will need to face and overcome inevitable challenges and disappointments that will come into their lives.

I support their growth, their love, and their boundaries. It is their life and their show. I am happy to be invited to watch that show occasionally and take part in the assigned parts I am given as I can.

From where I sit, the vows Cameron and Shaar took today exhibit a maturity and commitment that will serve them both as they evolve in their married life.

In ideal relationships, we believe love will give us the security and support to help us heal and grow. I wish that for both of them.

Let the future unfold as it will in the spirit that abounded at yesterday’s lovely and intimate ceremony.

Much love and good wishes on your forward path, you two. God bless and Namaste.

Nest Building … Again

There are curtains going up around our patio today. The sense of comfort and coziness is palpable. I am going to enjoy it while I can.

I have frequently been guilty of my eyes bigger than my belly. No more so than when trying to set up house.

After some pretty unsatisfactory relationships, I chose singledom for decades (would I say anything different even if I hadn’t made that conscious choice?). That decades-long period of my life was socially thin but healing. And safe. It allowed me to clear a lot of cobwebs from my eyes.

But I have to admit I was a lot less productive than I might have been had I been coupled up. No way of knowing, really. During my hermitage, I found it mighty easy to devise elaborate plans and projects in my head. Actualizing not so much. I have that gift. Living in my head, I mean.

So when I imagined the verdant garden I would build in my minds’ eye, it was invariably better than actually creating it. Setting out to create a garden brought me nose-to-nose with hard reality. Especially of the four legged variety.

I once saw (to me) a hilarious cartoon. An onlooker watching his gardening neighbor working in the soil, waxed on about the paradisiacal scene unfolding in front of him. The gardener looked up and sharply retorted: “This isn’t paradise. This is war!”

After years of impotent vegetable production and many failed gardening attempts, I well understand that gardener’s frustration. Though I lived in the city, it might as well have been living in the deep, backwoods country.

There were skunks that lived under the deck. The groundhogs set up shop beneath the storage barn. The rabbits lived on another property nearby but visited regularly. The raccoons came and went and were very attentive to the slightest food scrap left out for them to enjoy. And the squirrels.

I am not sure I could utter that word out loud without having it sound like a curse word. Diabolical, clever, determined beyond all reason are those little bushy tailed demons. And hungry. They are blessed with great appetites. As I learned and it turned out, nothing I set out in my garden was safe.

A beautiful green pepper was growing in my raised container garden (that I sing the praises of a single pepper underscores how poor my green thumb actually was). I was so proud. One day I came out on my back deck.

The pepper was sitting on the rail of the deck. I panicked but quickly settled when I saw it was still verdant green and perfect. On the side facing me. The backside of my single perfect green pepper was carved out like someone had conveyed an abstract menacing message in hieroglyphics. I got the message.

On another occasion, thrift seeker that I am, I once bought a half dozen end-of-season corn plants. A good three to four inches high. I couldn’t wait to get them into the ground.

The local rabbits couldn’t wait to get them into their gullets. The morning after I planted them, I found only several sad remaining nibs poking out of the ground.

Instead of saving lotsa bucks with my thrifty purchase, I lost ten bucks worth of plants. Or, as the rabbits would have described them, absolutely delicious tender little bunny hors d’oeuvres. Bunny hors d’oeuvres sounded pretty appealing around that time.

In other aspects of gardening education, I learned how to drown slugs in beer placed in jar caps. The little lushes.

I put chili flakes and cayenne pepper in the feeders to ward off the little curse words because I was told squirrels will not eat hot spicy things. Well, that was a lie. I’m convinced the squirrels deeply appreciated how the spice kicked the birdseed up a notch. Don’t get me started on blood meal (which was bloody expensive) and whatever pestilence that was supposed to ward off.

And I knew it was the squirrels because no bird goes through as much birdseed as that feeder dispensed in just a few short days.

So I am enjoying my current delusion of comfort and coziness with the installation of new curtains. In here, protected from the elements and Mother Nature.

I can fool myself that there is not a whole wicked world out there full of raccoons, and skunks and bunnies and squirrels that will soon descend on my virginal and vulnerable patio vegetables and make short work of them.

For Northerners reading this, I will agree my complaints and caution may seem unseasonal. But mark my word. You have a whole winter ahead of you to gird your loins and bone up on how to protect your plants and keep the peskier elements of nature far away from you.

Trust me, if you wander down that garden path, you are going to need all of the ammunition you can get.

Aging a la Anne Lamott

This is not the first time I have dragged writer/author Anne Lamott into the spotlight for well-deserved laud. I love her voice and a whole lot of other things about her.

Sardonic, witty, spiritually grounded and insightful in a no-nonsense, non-preachy way. She’s funny. She gets that god must have a sense of humor to absorb and deflect the mess we masses have made of his/her/its many gifts.

So this piece she has written and had published in The Washington Post is her take on aging. I found it hard at first to put Anne Lamott in the crone category. But, according to the US Bureau of Statistics, at 70, she surely is.

So enjoy her essay/rant about the skulduggery and indignities of aging. And some of the good stuff, too. Lamott is such a pleasure to read and has such a quirky insightful voice that she almost manages to make aging sound fun.

I said almost.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/30/aging-health-strength-mind-heart/?_pml=1

Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo

I kinda love witches. Well, I love them to the extent I know anything about them. Which I don’t. Not really.

I really liked the three good witches in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty: Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. They were kind of like maiden aunts who always had Sleeping Beauty’s back and her best interests at heart.

I could have used a couple of them when I was a girl. Maybe I had them but they were all in my grandmother.

Witchcraft always seemed to be a fairly limited career choice. I mean, there was all that mystery and spell casting and multiple spiritual dimensions to get a handle on. And the danger of spell blowback haunting you. Like Mickey Mouse’s curious, if hapless, novice magician in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Sounds dangerous and exhausting.

And then there has always been the very real danger to witches of being beaten or banished or burned or basically, disrespected.

Wait. That still sounds vaguely similar to the risk of any woman lives with. 

The world of spirits and the occult have largely gone out of fashion in the secular world. Well, except for today, of course. Halloween is the one day of the year when we can all express our inner witch by sporting pointy black hats and corn brooms and painting on shrieking blood red lipstick.

I got a particularly stunning shade of red Mac lipstick as a gift from my daughter’s girlfriend. Fashion forward and high marks for good taste. I still pull it out when I need an instant power boost.

I deliberately mixed up my witch costume one year by taking a Rocket stick vacuum cleaner with me as my ersatz transportation. A modern upgrade from the trusty corn broom. People looked at me funny.

Witches have had a real and traumatic, if compelling, history. I recently read on a self-identified witch’s website that the beauty of the “craft” (so-called by its practitioners) is in its simplicity. Many spells and potions can be concocted with readily available kitchen ingredients and implements, like a variety of spices and essential oils.

The allure of witchcraft to women in days of yore was understandable. Constrained by biology and narrow-minded society to dreary lives of minding the hearth and repetitive childbearing, it is easy to imagine women who would have been up for a good time dancing around a roaring campfire in their birthday suits.

Exuding a hint of witchery (aka mystery) was a useful tool for women whose power in other spheres was excruciatingly limited. My mother was a storyteller and would recount tales of backwoods provincial witches.

She may have been a tad more personally familiar with their witchy ways than she let on publicly. Just a guess. She was certainly drawn to the craft.

I remember the story Mom told of Granny Bubar, in particular. She was a “widder” (widow) woman of wide reknown in the 100 mile circumference of the Nashwaak River in backwoods New Brunswick.

In other locales, she might have been seen as crazy. In her circle, was feared. No one dared cross Granny Bubar for it was a known fact she was the real deal. A genuine witch. There was proof.

Local farmers recounted stories about Granny Bubar planting herself on a gatepost where the cattle had to go through. Each night, they were herded in from the fields to the barn for the night. But the cows wouldn’t pass by if Granny was near.

They bolted and mooed and generally made a fuss. Granny just sat there, quietly, and unmoved with her arms folded across her concave chest. It was reported she took much delight in the frustration and fear oozing from the farmers.

After a time, and much pleading by the farmers, Granny came down from her perch and sauntered slowly home. Once she was out of sight, the reluctant cows hightailed it through the gate and into the barn, leaving the farmers perplexed and shaken.

My mother would recount the story of Granny Bubar with unabashed glee. The story had more interesting roots as we discovered years later. Mom happened upon a PBS documentary about witches. The script explored some women’s deliberate attempts to curry respect and fear in their communities.

The deflection of cows and other livestock by certain women was a common tale. It turned out, women would smear their bodies with bear grease under their clothing or roll about in a bear or polecat den.

There wasn’t a right-thinking cow out there who didn’t know that odor. Granny Bubar likely sauntered slowly home chuckling to herself from her fence-post vigil to wash and freshen up.

Serious spiritual traditions swirl around the night of Halloween in the Celtic traditions, or Samhain as it is called. And while I come from that cultural stock, I still don’t know much about it.

This is the one night of the year, I gather, when the veil between the spirit and material worlds is most transparent and permeable. It is the night when offerings and thanks should be freely given to our ancestors.

Honoring ancestors has disintegrated to practically nothing in our material world awash in superficial bling and Grey Goose vodka and fast cars and money. This lost contact with other dimensions out there seems a profound loss to our culture and to us, as individuals.

So tonight I think I’ll give my ancestors a sacred shoutout. Many dear relatives have passed and I wish to honor and reflect on them tonight as I occasionally do during the year. I will give thanks for the gifts they gave me while they were here. I will forgive their trespasses.

The only difference I might expect tonight, I’m told,  is that on this one night, my ancestors may very well hear me. They may even respond in some way or another with a signal or a sign.

In any case, I’ll be watching and listening.

If they do reach back, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Take My Own Advice, Maybe?

Self-isolation is a gift. When the world has been nipping away at you for longer than you can stand to meet its own particular needs, we all have the right to call “time out.” The trick is learning we have that right.

I am working on recognizing my own complicity in allowing the nipping to happen. If I’m not available, no nipping can happen I theorize. But there are times and tasks that must be faced and worked through to avoid unpleasant consequences. There are people and tasks we must face to accomplish certain ends.

Too often we put ourselves out there and on the line emotionally for no good reason whatsoever. Okay. I often put myself on the line emotionally for no good reason whatsoever.

The trick is to catch yourself in your own wrongheaded thinking. I have come up against some challenges of late that have me questioning what is going on in the world today.

My primary physician’s staff resolutely refuses to release my own medical records to me. That was so wrong and crazy I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

People recently charged with my well-being literally walked away from their posts. They were not even mildly apologetic or disturbed by my distress. Rather they were defensive and accusatory because I took issue with their shabby behavior.

Someone I hired to do a task didn’t show up and hasn’t bothered to explain or apologize. That person “ghosted” me after making a commitment I relied on. I’d writhe in shame if I did that to someone. I honestly don’t know how to make sense or put any of that into a relatable context. The world seems to have gone mad.

I operate on what I guess are old-fashioned and out of date rules about keeping your word and doing your best and treating everyone you meet with respect and decency. The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That often makes me feel like a social Luddite. When I talk about the importance of honesty, I can hear some people chuckling under their breath. “Nice thought, but get real. No one is honest these days.”

And we wonder why the world feels so screwed up? I don’t follow the Golden Rule to make someone else feel better. I follow it to make myself feel better. Mostly to apply some consistency and predictability to my social interactions. Some days, though, it feels like that rule no longer works for me.

As a result, the circle within which I live is getting smaller. As I meet and interact with people who seem devoid of kindness or decency, I psychologically and physically recoil from them. And I certainly hope I don’t need them up the road.

It is not that person doesn’t have my full compassion. I simply recognize we are not operating on the same level with certain key values about how to build and sustain social relationships.

No use trying to push a string, I often say. It doesn’t do any good to expect an elevated level of behavior in people who simply aren’t mature enough to be there yet. That would be like expecting a three year old to drive.

It is often said water seeks its own level. That is, we tend to seek out and build lasting relationships with people who are more or less in tune and simpatico with who we are. Even if some people are not at the same social or economic level, it is relatively easy to sort out decent and authentic folks from charlatans. Mostly.

Of course, there is an inherent cost to longterm self-isolation. There is a danger of losing touch with what is going on in the society around you. Your relevance to the world may diminish. Your awareness of societal trends can wither. Humans need one another to grow and thrive. Isolating for too long can rob you of that connection.

But it is useful when your extremities are bloody from being incessantly nipped at and your body and soul need rest. Self-isolation can be a highly desirable doorway to duck into for a time. You can fill your days with things, like music and books and beautiful things and nourishing food.

So many of us, especially women, are fed the lie that our presence is indispensable to others and our self-worth often centered on making sure others around us are well taken care of.

I have come to believe that absenting myself for a time to take care of my own needs is an opportunity for others to learn to take better care of themselves. Win-win.

With that single, simple decision, think of the drama and burnout and suffering that could be avoided in our relationships. I sure do. All the time.

Facing Forward

Today the curator of the Ultimate Blog Challenge on Facebook asks us to plan the 90 days after the challenge ends on October 31st. Halloween for those of you who have been sleeping under a rock.

God knows I’ve tried to ignore the incessant commercial come-ons. How many Kit Kat bars and Reese’s Pieces can one person eat anyway?

This will be the third monthlong Ultimate Blog Challenge I’ve finished this year. Ninety days ahead takes us through November, December until the last day of January. Oy, do I have plans.

November 1st is always a new year’s day of sorts for me. It is loosely associated with All Hallows Eve or Hallowe’en. According to pagan Celtic traditions, it is said that on this day the spirits of the dead are most clearly present on planet Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

It also marks the time of harvest and beginning of the “dark part of the year.” The only harvest I participate in is doing my part in filling up the sacks of local trick and treaters.

As my spiritual “New Year,” I do have some modest resolutions for the next ninety days.

Stay healthy. That’s always Number One and always will be. I am a devotee of the “health equals wealth” philosophy. Without health, wealth don’t mean much except applying it to attempts to restore it.

Develop a debt management plan. This is also a perpetual theme in my life. I would love to be one of those people sitting on bags of money. I’m not. I’m a very low profile, ordinary financial citizen. So I manage debt.

Survive the holidays. There is a swack of them coming up in the next ninety days. If you go by the dictates of advertisers, you could go broke tricking out and tearing down and retricking out your house for the tsunami of “blessed events” coming up.

My strategy is to do as little as humanly possible for each of these events: Halloween (in a couple of days); Thanksgiving; Christmas celebrations (which is essentially the whole month of December); New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. And all of January for recovery.

If the marketing strategy is to keep us on our toes by distracting us with one holiday after another that we are expected to execute “perfectly,” it is rather brilliant.

And if we don’t have the spirit or means to pursue holiday perfection, no matter. A whole lot of compensatory products are available out there to make us feel better about not “being perfect.”

If we are single and don’t have an existing or created family to go to all the trouble for, so much the better.

And, of course, I plan to keep writing. This blog has surprised me. Over 225 days in a row so far. The biggest surprise has been that I’ve managed to keep doing it every day and plan to continue. It centers me and reinforces my own views about the world and what’s happening in it. I wish I were more unfailingly optimistic about what I see.

By January 31, 2024, I expect to be six weeks away from the goal I set up on March 14th, 2024 of writing a daily blog post for a full year. I set out thinking I would have a book manuscript by then. That seems unlikely.

There have been an inordinate amount of distractions this year. Challenges I didn’t expect. Challenges I took on that cost me more emotionally and financially than originally anticipated.

External demands that ranged from irritating to overwhelming. I was never quite sure starting out which way a challenge was going to turn out. Life is surprising that way.

In spite of the roller coaster I’ve been on this past year, I am happy to report that marketing soaked holiday celebrations have not been among them. And won’t be, dieu merci.