MAYBE I WILL JUST SHUT MY MOUTH

All effort just feels like spitting in the wind.  Like silence and solitude are the only "good".
Then again, I just finished a fifteen minute meditation.  So my word reservoir is empty or at least not churning.

Just to make sure you have the right image, I am at the kitchen table in my pajamas surrounded by newspapers and computer wires (my husbands).  That's where I meditate.  Right smack dab in the middle of it all.  No candle.  No incense.  Boom.

What's worth saying?

Foundation garments matter.
A pedicure can change your day.
A compelling book is better than most other desires.
Pop-corn re- calibrates a bad mood (but only if it has butter on it)
Don't move if you have found the perfect comfort position in bed.
When you hurt (feelings or body) --let it pierce you, sink into it  and go do laundry.
Making something look nice so that it suits you perfectly is the best path to more creative release.
Creating order is a continuous process--don't expect a result--ever.
Forcing gratitude doesn't work.  Allowing it does.
Doing a good deed really is the best path out of your crazy ass self.
Being sincere is an underrated quality

I'll stop before I'm not.

I'M A LOUSY FEMINIST

I didn't used to be.
I was never strident but I was vociferous and active in correcting inequalities of gender.
From minor to major.

I insisted on using the men's bathroom in the law school my then husband attended.  The women's was waaaaay far away in the basement.
I did make coffee for meetings with my all male colleagues but made sure they knew it came from my hospitality gene and was not a gender assigned role.
I wrote letters all the way to the top of a Fortune 500 company when asked in an interview what my plans were to have a baby.
I pointed out inequalities and blind spots right and left.
Always with good humor making sure not to push the delicate equilibrium of power out of tolerance into rejection.
I always carried my own luggage on business trips with my male colleagues.
Still the Chairman of the Board only asked me about the room temperature or the quality of the sandwiches in Board meetings.

I think the insidiousness of "good enough" did me in.
My husband was "good enough" with sharing of house and kid tasks.
My salary was more than "good enough" but not quite what a man in the role would have gotten.
My self expression and sense of self was "good enough" too.  I didn't have to kill it or over protect it to get ahead.  "Good enough" but not all it could be.

It takes discomfort to be a feminist.  Pain and Irritation.  Enough irritation to make action more comfortable than inaction.  "Good enough" is the opium of women.

I am mulling on my own behaviour and values on being a declared feminist.  Time to recalibrate.
"Good enough" isn't.

MARRIAGE IS MORE COMPLEX THAN THE ADVICE ABOUT IT

 I just quit holding my new granddaughter for three hours while she snoozed and squeaked and
snorted and contorted and I'm telling you it knocked the words out of me.
It is a wordless bliss that just doesn't demand blah blah blah.  Just being.  Well and burping.  And pooping.  I have seen all of my daughters go into the baby trance that makes linear thought harder than the first sit-up after giving birth.

 BUT  I am going to wrap some words around the fuzz in my head because I said I would come back to the marriage advice I avoided two blogs ago.  Right.  Mmmm.  What WAS that about?   OK.  I got it.  My husband and I were at dinner with our daughter and her love for our hard won 29th Wedding Anniversary and we discussed it at dinner.  Rules?  Three ideas a piece.  One sentence each.

OK.  Well alright.  Here I go.  I'm in an anti-glib moment so I'm hesitating.  Let's hear it for Ben Affleck. "Marriage is work.  And it is good work."   Some of the time.  Sometimes it's just hard work.
That's my disclaimer in case the ideas below sound glib.  They are so not.

l.  Get back to love as soon as you can or better yet, before you can.

2.  Each person is responsible for their own happiness.

3.  Start with God and get that relationship right first.

4.  Also take responsibility for your own craziness and know that you have your own craziness.

5.  Take the trouble to learn what to expect in a marriage BEFORE you marry so that you are ready for
     the journey.

6.  Stay curious about one another.  Ask real questions of your partner

7.  Know how to manage your fights, say your truth,  lick your wounds,  reach out and kiss and make-up

8.  Stay connected physically--all kinds of touch.

9.  Be friends

Bonus:  Patience, patience, patience--said in jest but we all nodded vigorously in agreement.
           
There!  Promise kept.

DO THE PREPOSTEROUS THING

I just observed my daughter as she went through labor and finally the birth of her little baby girl.

Which by the way seems preposterous from an observor point of view.

You are doing what?  Through that tiny opening?   And how long is it going to take?  How much effort?  How much pain?  As if I had never done it myself.

But even my daughter, on day three after the birth began to forget what she had gone through beginning to think it was by magic that the baby was here in this world.

We need to remember that labor.  If not our own, then the stories of women we know who have gone through birthing labor.

Remember that the act of creation is one of passion.

Remember that you have to gestate--wait and prepare and wait and prepare and wait some more.

Remember that you have made a profound committment to the end result--through birth pangs, through

true travail, through wanting to quit, through the real feel of what commitment is.

Remember you didn't do it alone--there was a partner-- whether medical or intimate.

Remember  that by staying the course you brought a new person into the world.

So please remember:

You are strong.

You can create

You can commit

You can take the pain

You can persever  to push through

You can produce your precious idea, painting, business

Don't forget the lessons of labor.

Translate that strength, that focus, that determination, that preparedness to your own life.

Do the preposterous thing.

faking my way to authenticity

I was a senior executive woman working with all men at my peer level.
Women's articles at the time talked a lot about "fake it til you make it."
AND I  did fake it til I made it.
Meaning, I had no path, no experience, no sense of being born to the role.
I had to forge my own way.



But in the first wave of women top executives,what was I supposed to fake?  Who to copy?  Who to look like?   Who to try to be?
So I was left with one option which was to be my self.  Not in the false reassuring, follow your bliss,
keep blossoming, gloriously rewarding expression of a self that makes everything wonderfully right.
But rather in the rough edged, lurching forward,  bumping and getting bumped, exposed vulnerable self that had to keep forging and learning and and plunging on again.

And from that honing i grew what was my core, my values, my voice, my talent.

You'll have to end up being your true self eventually.
I promise you. Life will eventually demand it.

So you might as well start there.
Lucky that I had no one to copy.

Mmmmm. REALLY GOOD MARRIAGE ADVICE OR OSCAR GOSSIP??

Ok,ok, ok, ok.  I have some really great advice about marriage.  Really.  Our daughter Megan and her love Joshua took my husband and me out to dinner for our anniversary and we had a great discussion with them about the top three things that support a committed relationship.  Really good stuff.

But I'm dying to get a read.  Did you watch the Oscars?  Did you still respect yourself?  Did you enjoy

picking over and picking at all the dresses?  Did you cringe as much as I did at Oscar winners trying to be funny and being too pathetic to make it into a high school variety show?  Were you bothered by

Anne Hathaways nipples?  (Can I write nipples?)  Did you want to punch the face lifted French poodle looking little rat lady interviewing people.  Obviously I did.  Did you want to say to Sally Fields, "no, no, no, no."  Did you like my other  very grown-up daughter say, " I have a crush on Abraham Lincoln"?  Just checking.  That's all.  I feel better.   My gossip quota for the year.

Marriage advice next time.

I JUST MAY BE READY TO BE A DOWAGER

My family may already think I am!
Yes I am a fan of Downton Abbey.  I tried to avoid it just like I tried (and managed) to never see The Titanic.  But I am addicted like the rest of the world.  I cry.  I always hate the first half when everything goes to hell, but am relieved when the resolution begins in the second half.  I wait for the plucking sounds of the string section to start.  Listen for it.  It means things will get better.

Anyway, I ask people which character they identify with.  It's like a Rorschach test.
Much to my surprise I identifiy with the Dowager.
I would prefer to be the wife of Lord Grantham.
But I am beginning to want to say and do what I want to say and do and get away with it because I am the Dowager!!
And I am fierce about wanting to protect my family and to hand down things--like pots and pans and photos and recipes and family traditions and values.
And to be waited on a little and revered too.
And not to care if I am dreaded a little and made fun of as well.
And to say my wisdom and maneuver if need be to make things right---to my thinking.
Positional power in the home!
I've had it in the work place. How nice to have it at home.

I think I need a cane.