This life has a way of making you stop and take stock, even if that is the worst thing for you to have to do at the moment...no time, no energy, no reason...whatever.

I love my life.

Most of the time.

Most days.

Less days than I used to.

But...yep, not really sure why certain things make you take stock more than other things/times, but it is what it is and I try to take the push from the karma-world and listen. Now I'm not generally a great listener when I have a point I want to make, but when it hits me that I have missed so dang much by not REALLY listening, it saddens me. I cannot even fathom what I have missed in this life because I have been so goal and outcome oriented. I have flat ignored so many nuances, hell, I have missed whole conversations because they were actually about something else; something I MISSED.

I was raised to listen. Listen to my parents. Listen to the teacher, the preacher, the police, the older. I was taught to react when "told" and to refrain when "asked". It was basically the old adage of "seen but not heard", and yet, I think I might have finally figured it out.

I was feeling particularly down the other day and looking for new ways to navigate what I was dealing with, the emotions and all, when I decided to look up journal prompts for women in midlife. I mean, really, who is going to know about this part of my life better than someone who has already been through it and decided to "put it out there" for the rest of us struggling, not-quite-old women??!

So I found a particular author who challenges women to listen to their inner self. This, I thought, was going to be a piece of cake. But it was anything BUT!

I found I really don't know myself. I define myself by what I've been doing for others. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, a nurse, a caregiver, an educator, a not-great friend, a grandma...everything but what I WANTED to be. She challenged me to dig deeper and to listen to those little nigglings that would wake me up at night; those little spurts where I was energized and fully in the moment--where everything just flowed. I found that I had been ignoring all of that. I would just shift to the next thing that needed to be done for SOMEONE ELSE and just do it. But I couldn't do it for myself...I had no idea how to attack it, to figure it out, to stop this slow spiral I find myself enduring every. single. day...

You know...the "mom mode" that no longer serves me in a good way. 

My grandkids always ask me if I can do this or that with them and I will, but not wholeheartedly, not with the abandon that they are so easily able to pursue it with--I always let the humdrum of daily life take over and it shadows, no, it OVER-SHADOWS the fun in my life. You know! That absolute abandon that children rally in every single day. It is seen as an imperfection in adulthood and we leave that joyous part of us behind, to never be restored or resurrected until we make a conscious effort to bring it back.

So I decided to take back what is mine.

I am going to take back what future I have left and I am going to THOROUGHLY ENJOY IT! No questions asked. No excuses. Braving my future with a new set of rose-colored glasses.

I am going to take time to watch people. To figure out this world. To try and figure out people. To give others, and myself, the grace to pursue a second childhood. A portion of my life that is for laughter and joy and fun, just like kicking rocks down the driveway, I am going to go with it and if the rock veers to the left, I'm going to go left, if it veers to the right, I'm going right. If it gets kicked into a pond, then I'm going swimming. 

Our life is not meant for others, it is meant for US.

I am one of "those" parents. I took what had been done to me as a child and tried very, very hard to not do them to my children--I wanted to do better for my children. But did I really accomplish that by leaving behind all of the parenting skills that were handed down to my parents? I do not know, even to this day, if I should have done things differently or even if I had changed things, would the outcome be the same?

It is a dilemma in the "what if's" that plague a good portion of the population my age (late 40s to mid-50s). We are just getting into the time of our own lives where no one needs us to provide their day-to-day care and selfishly want to try the world on their own terms, so our advice is mostly ignored as they figure it out for themselves. But when our grown children do things that we so strongly disapprove of, we keep our words to ourselves as we don't want them to push us away even further than they already have. It's hurtful, to say the least. To be ignored and dis-valued in such totality is a new condition for me that I grapple with daily. How much texting is too much? Checking in is seen as an intrusion and generally ignored for days by the male children and only given a one or two word return text by the female ones. It is just unbearable to a mother who was once their only parent that made it to every single school and sporting event--not missing even one. Was that where I went wrong? Making them think I would always be there in the stands cheering them on even if they wished I wasn't?

I don't know, but my children have left me behind and have started their own families and have had their own children (all except the youngest). My daughter has become much more open to talking about things but it is definitely a precarious dance between helpful and TOO helpful. My sons are both so different in so many ways, but the same in the continued fight for independence in a way that makes me feel hopeless at times. I know, I know...I did this to my parents too, but for some reason it hurts a little different today.

It has all come to a head since my youngest has decided to be more like his mostly-absent father in a very self-sabotaging way. His father is an alcoholic who can be violent at times and has taken out his anger on my son several times in his lifetime thus far and has been in trouble for it each time and lots of other things that I was not aware of as we were together before the lovely internet became a perfect way to investigate potential mates. As soon as I began to see the truth in the his father, he immediately got me pregnant and tried to take dominion over me and my household. I did not let that happen and since he had not raised his other son I assumed he would leave our son alone too. And he did, until he shacked up with a woman who worked at a lawyer's office who took up the fight on his behalf as a way to show how much she loved her man. Little did she know that this man would eventually assault her WHILE she was going through cancer treatments for a cancer that eventually took her life. She lied for that man and fought for him in his legal woes throughout their relationship until she herself had to get a restraining order and divorce just prior to dying from kidney cancer. His father has gone on to repeat this very scenario with several other women since then and it always ends up the same, heavy drinking and domestic assault, then divorce. Currently he is on wife number five or six (I've honestly lost count) and is on probation at the age of 58 for the umpteenth time. And now this man is who my son thinks holds the wisdom and knowledge about life that he is searching for, and leaving all of my parenting and help behind. Why? I just don't understand it.

I am scared what he is learning about life from his father and know that it will end badly for him if he doesn't recognize it soon, but I am left to worry from afar and bite my tongue more and more often because his loyalty is so fierce at this moment. I think it has more to do with him not wanting to admit his mistakes (just like his father) and he will do anything to keep me from knowing about any mistakes he might make. He eats up his father's lame excuses for drinking and hurting other people, including himself, and throwing me under the bus at the same time. My son KNOWS me, he KNOWS that what his father says about me is lies, but why is he still choosing HIM??! 

My ability to keep putting myself in a position where I get hurt by my own child's words is waning. A severe rebuke from him can ruin my whole day, my whole week, even my whole month, it's just so dang hard to let go of the dreams I had for him and to not have any semblance of the relationship I had with him the whole time he was growing up. It also feels like I can't find any way to fight it, he's been so conned by his father and current stepmother, they tell him he's doing good even when he obviously is not, they tell him that any problems he may encounter are my fault and not his father's, and it is basically the old "two against one" so I think he believes them because they are both saying the exact same things to win him over. They make me the scapegoat and themselves the heroes in their own make-believe story. My son should know the truth, he lived it, but both his father and stepmother just tell him that he's remembering it wrong, even though this stepmother wasn't around until the last few years! If he will believe someone that wasn't even there then how can I even fight it? ...I can't fight it, can I?

So, yes, I have regrets. I regret living in a state where they don't look at any criminal or civil charges when deciding parental visitation. I regret living in a state that thinks the Fatherhood Initiative overrules common sense. I regret not moving out of state as soon as the older two kids were eighteen so that I could limit even further his father's involvement in his life. I regret not taking his father back to court after every single time he got in trouble for something. I regret listening to all the research that said it is detrimental for a child to not have their father's involvement. I regret thinking that I might be hurting him by trying to keep him away from his father as much as possible. I regret I didn't make a deal with his father (which his father would have easily taken during one of those rare times he was in between marriages) to no longer pay child support in return for no contact. I regret not being the parent that I was with the older two just because I was trying to make up for his father being a mean bastard. I regret not fighting harder for what I just knew, down in my bones, was not going to be good for him no matter what the courts, judge or research said. 

I regret THAT, but I don't regret him in the least, even though he is currently under his father's spell, I will still be his mother and be there when he falls this time too. I will not have another regret about this child, that I promise to myself now and forever, even if it means that I have to be patient and scared right now.

Do you ever wake up in a good mood and then by the time you've caught up with the morning's news you feel all is hopeless? Is it just me or are people forgetting that we ALL have to co-exist in this world? 

Every morning another person has defied the rules, mostly the rich and powerful, but more and more just your "everyday Joe" is too. Maybe it's the frustrations of living in our society in the U.S. today. Maybe it's because we are becoming more and more used by every facet of our society and government. Maybe it's because nothing seems fair...I really think that is what it is:  NOTHING IS FAIR at the moment. 

I remember my mother and other older relatives provide this little sage of wisdom, 'Nobody ever said life would be fair, so get over it'. And at that point I agree, but I'm not so sure now with all of the blatant inequality that has permeated every facet of our lives. 

When I was young and I would complain about not getting the same size cookie, or as many cookies, as my brothers or my cousins, I would speak up and was told that I should be thankful for getting a cookie and that 'life isn't fair'. When I would cry about not getting or having something that the neighbor kids had, my parents would just chalk it up to 'life isn't fair'. But is that REALLY what's going on today? Are the poorest in our communities just supposed to chalk it up to 'life isn't fair' while we have so many billionaires walking on this earth? Is it REALLY fair that everything from your groceries to your housing to your utilities is making someone else rich beyond belief? I think we need to rethink what we are calling this and name it what it REALLY is: price gouging. And who does it hurt? All. Of. Us.

I think we flip into the territory of price gouging when it is done on the basic necessities that every human being requires (i.e. food, roof over your head, water, heat, etc.). Price gouging on a private yacht is one thing, but doing it to everyone through their food is a completely different monster. When you look at the rise in the costs of everything from food to housing in the past two years, there is really no cause for it. There's been a lot of stuff put out on the news as "reported" but then when we look at all of the companies that provide the human basics we see that the only reason prices were hiked were to pad someone else's pocket. There is not a big company that didn't see record profits in the past two years. Not. One. They had about a dozen excuses why they needed to raise their prices, but if any of them were TRUE then their profits would have been either stable or decline, but certainly not INCREASED! It was all lies, every single reason they gave, and no one is calling them out on it. Why? Well, mostly because our news agencies (also owned by the same big corporations) keep "reporting" lies.

So where do we go from here?

There's going to have to be some sort of governmental oversight so that companies cannot take advantage of people on the necessities OR they need to share in the profits with the lowest paid employees in their companies so that they can more easily afford the human basics. 

I truly believe that the only way that we are going to see any change in ANYTHING is if we can get a truly independent news source so that the truth is out there for all. This is the only way to combat the rhetoric that our current news programs are spewing every single morning--none of it true, and all twisted to serve the richest of our people while inflaming the general public and essentially making them their puppets by filling their heads with nonsense and lies on the regular.

One of the most enlightening books I ever read was "1984" by George Orwell. If you have never read it, you SHOULD! It was written in 1969. It predicts what the year 1984 will look like. Mr. Orwell wasn't far off, but instead of 1984 it was more like 1994 when the home computers begin to take up residence in almost everyone's home. It is truly scary how much that book got right about our society and government these days. It gives a view of what happens when the news is choreographed instead of truth, when the government is a puppet-master instead of serving the public, what the rich will do to the poor, what censoring does to the very core of us as human beings. It is truly prophetic!

Where do we start? How do we get something like this started? How do we get the word out without being shut down or censored? Is it hopeless already? Have we waited too long?

I hope not...

Today I am under the weather. This has been happening more and more over the past two years. I blame it on COVID, but maybe not for the reasons you might think.

I am a registered nurse and though I am semi-retired at this point, I still hold my nursing license "in case I need to use it". I was practicing during the beginning of COVID and I had a lot of gripes about what was being implemented and dictated by the government in terms of slowing the spread. Part of my job at the time was to do patient testing, case and contact tracing and education, but the most demanding was being in charge of our social media presence. I just did not agree with what I was having to post or in the answers I was having to give to the general public's comments. It was ultimately the reason I decided to step away from nursing all together and take a "professional redo". I quit nursing in September of 2020, and honestly, I do not want to go back unless the way we have structured our healthcare system makes some major changes.

When COVID first hit, I was well versed in communicable diseases and had done lots of testing, treatment, case management, and education for people with anything from head lice to tuberculosis to HIV. It was one of the most interesting things about my job at the time, being a "health detective" to try and figure out point of exposure and then finding and following up with contacts, and contacts of contacts. Depending on what it was, the web of possible exposure could run out from a single source to dozens and dozens of people. COVID was no different...except it WAS. 

I saw people in the same household with very close contact to a source individual NEVER get it. This was in the beginning where we were making everyone stay isolated in a household if ONE person was positive. I didn't have much confidence in the early tests and believe not only were we getting false positives, more importantly we were getting false negatives. These false negatives were going around and spreading it even as they continued to have symptoms but negative tests. Why did the national medical professionals think that a brand new "untested" test would be solely used to make our medical decisions on when the signs and symptoms were plain to see. I begin telling people that if they had any symptoms to error on the side of caution and that the tests we had available were not reliable because we just plainly hadn't had the time to test their validity the way we needed to. And to not be holding them as the "deciding factor" in whether to isolate or not. 

In addition to this testing issue, I also know that it is NEVER a good idea to completely mask up for long periods of time. Why? Well there's lots of reasons:

• using anything but a hospital-grade mask that is changed often would give people a false sense of security, making them more likely to do things that would put them at higher risk for contracting and spreading COVID;

• cloth masks are essentially a breeding ground for multiple bacteria, especially since people were using them for hours and hours at a time, they got moist quickly, they were washed with other types of soiled clothing, and most importantly they DID NOT stop anything the size of a virus--they were useless and possibly a danger for getting other infections;

• people were touching their faces MORE while wearing masks than if they hadn't been--having to adjust them or take them on and off frequently--actually increasing the chances of introducing bacteria to the face and to the masks that they would breath through for HOURS and HOURS;

• hospital-grade masks are only good until they become moist, and then they should be tossed away, but that wasn't happening AND they are non-washable, but that didn't stop people from using the same ones day after day;

Honestly, if health professionals have always had to wear special masks to take care of a patient with a bacterial respiratory infection, why would we EVER THINK that home-made masks would work against the much smaller COVID virus?? Telling the general public this was the biggest lie of all and actually increased the death rate among the chronically ill, who were the biggest proponents for masking in general.

I will go into this a little more at another time, but the medical community also was told that there is no specific treatment for COVID, so many doctors chose to not treat at all until people became deathly ill. They forgot to look at the symptoms and provide what treatment they could to relieve symptoms--many people needlessly suffered and became worse because of this lack of medical treatment. People were turned away from hospitals as soon as they had a positive test. I'll scream this one time here and I'll write something more about it another time:  THEY ARE STILL SICK AND YOU HAVE MEDICATIONS THAT CAN HELP THEM, TREAT THEM LIKE YOU WOULD IF IT WAS ANY OTHER VIRUS TAKING OVER THEIR BODIES!! BREATHING TREATMENTS, STEROIDS, THROW ANYTHING AT IT BUT DO NOT TURN THE VERY SICK AWAY TELLING THEM IF IT GETS WHERE THEY CANNOT BREATH TO COME BACK THEN! Damn. 

I also did not agree with the complete isolation portion of our country's response. It set us up for some very bad years to come because we allowed our immune systems to become weakened by not exposing ourselves repeatedly to the same, lesser infections on repeat every single year. Our immune system needs to stay primed and the only way to do this is to USE IT. With isolation and limited contact for months and years, we become so much more susceptible to these little bugs that we become much, much sicker on a more frequent basis since the restrictions were lifted. This is what we are dealing with now--this is what I'm living through now. It sucks!

I have not had this many serious colds and flu-like illnesses before COVID as I have in the last 18 months since everything has basically gotten back to normal. I hear the same thing from other people and it is something that makes me feel scared for my future self.

Is this what is going to take me out? A seasonal cold or flu that I had always been able to fight off before? This is something that I know for a fact can easily do that exact thing if you are 70 years and older or have other major health conditions, but I am none of those. And yet, I have been so sick on a couple of occasions just this year (2023) that I am afraid I may not make it to 70. It is a scary thought. I may die soon. It will be a respiratory infection that could take me out, at a time when my body should still be able to fight it but it just isn't ready for this and I am feeling very mortal. 

Nothing like realizing you are absolutely fragile to propel you into "feeling old". I now fear going out and being around people because of the frequency of illnesses I've not been able to easily fight off this year. I now fear being around my kids and grandkids because they all seem to have sniffles this time of year. I fear living, basically. I stay at home, I see no one other than my husband, I hate to have people sit close to me, I do not want to go to a pharmacy or doctor's office unless there's absolutely no other option, I wash my hands all the time and use hand sanitizer when I can't. I have now been MADE to have to do all of these things because we OPTED to do these things a few years ago for an extended period of time. It's not just me, many of my nurse friends have echoed the same things. The ones who are still practicing do not see it in themselves as much, probably because they were still being exposed to things at work during the lockdown, but to the patients they see now. 

It's a scary thing. Locking the nation down completely may have set us up for a long, long recovery--one that none of the government officials seem to be worried about now. 

So as I lay here in bed for the second day, my stomach is bloated with chicken broth, my nose is red and peeling, my chest is sore from hard coughing, I have mountains of white tissues piled around me, my joints are stiff from having to rest and lay down, and I am slowly losing my shit because I have so many things I need and want to do. But I keep getting sick every few weeks with something  and it has slowed me right down into old age, an age that I am not officially near yet, but I sure feel like it. 

So today I see myself as old and fragile; a scared little old lady with thinning skin and a worried glance. Someone who is fearful instead of running into this semi-retirement with joy and vitality. But it really wasn't my choice to be this way, and THAT is the part of growing old that has taken the will right out of me--growing old is not a choice, it either happens or it doesn't, it comes early or it comes later...we absolutely have no choice on what is going to do it for us. We are at the mercy of so many things, so many decisions, so many mistakes that came before us, that was imposed on us, that was made for us...the past has more impact on the future than we sometimes realize. 

Our NOW has such long, far-reaching ripples that we need just be aware, be cognizant of how far out in the future things are affected and make the best decision with the least disturbance to the normal way of things that have worked for generations and generations. Unfortunately, many people think that the newest ways, the newest gadgets, the newest pill, will cure everything--I beg to differ, as we are living it today in continued, premature isolation and ill health (physical and mental). These ripples are going to be with us for a long time.

I am having a midlife crisis. Not a standard buy-a-little-red-convertible midlife crisis, a full-fledged midlife identity crisis, and it sucks!

It is just so funny, not ha-ha funny, just weird funny that I am still trying to figure things out. I always thought my life was good, and it was, it is...but now I am more uncertain and worried than I ever was when I was running around trying to work one and sometimes two jobs, raise three kids AND keep a somewhat clean and functioning home going. 

I always had this idea that when I got to be in my 40's and 50's that everything would be winding down and balancing out and that it would be WONDERFUL because "I'd finally have time to myself" while still having the good health, agility and finances to take full advantage of anything and everything that I wanted and had been putting off all those earlier years. I'm finding out that it is not that at all! 

For me this new, less tethered part of life is very hard and unnerving. I did not realize how much of my identity was tied up in two things: my career and being a mom. I was doing it all, and now, I have no purpose, no reason to push myself, I have nothing...I am lost without an identity to nudge me in the right direction. I am trying to find a balance, but there's nothing to balance anymore so I am struggling. And this struggle has led me down a road of self-discovery that should have been over with by now, but it's not and there's no end in sight as far as I can see. Unpacking my inner self that has been so long neglected has led me to realize that I'm not sure I can sort it out at all. But, like a true Gen-Xer, I just can't seem to leave it alone. I can't just keep floating around out here, right?? Right. 

As part of my haphazard attempt to solve things, I have resorted to digging up and pondering over the past--my past mistakes, my past choices, and how I was brought up--how all of this came together and got me to where I am today. What am I missing? WHY is something missing? I honestly feel like I've missed something along the way, why else would I feel this mixed up and adrift? It's so unsettling to not know yourself. I thought I did. I just didn't know I didn't know myself until now. At the age of 54 I am being forced to try and figure out who I am as a person and "what I want to be when I grow up". This is no easy task, I've been trying to figure it out for about four years now by throwing myself into a variety of different things, and yet, I do not seem to be getting any closer to an answer.   

I have tried to go back in my memories and recapture the things that I enjoyed doing when I was younger and try to define what things I could get lost in for hours on end. Unfortunately this is not as easy as it first seemed like it should be. So many things influence our growth almost from the time we are born, but so much more so after we start going out in the world on our own. Separating ME from all outside influences seems almost impossible, but I am not giving up, I want to be happy, not just existing in regrets and endless days of ho-hum experiences.

Currently I am trying to define not only who I am but also I am trying to figuring out what makes me truly happy by separating myself from the long-held expectations of my parents, my kids, my community, my old career, my friends, and basically any I had put on myself along the way. This requires a look back at myself way before I became a mom and before I decided to become a nurse. Both of which have totally ingrained in me an underlying current of self-sacrifice, but being a nurse has made care-taking so deeply embedded in my identity that I fear I will never be able to dig it out. That splinter has festered for so many years that it keeps me from truly taking a look at a new career as "possible" if it doesn't involve direct interaction with people and solving their problems. It's crazy! I got out of the nursing profession because I got very burnt out and now I keep gravitating toward things just because of familiarity, not because it might be something that I ACTUALLY want to do or enjoy.

So, like I was saying, part of my plan to figure out who I am and what could possibly make me happy for the rest of my life here on this little blue marble, I am looking at how I grew up; how I was raised. I am hopeful that this will give me some insight and help me connect the dots so that I can make a solid decision on what I am looking for to add into my life at this moment. I need something that will sustain me without stressing me the heck out, but to do this I have to go back and recognize the parts of me that I left behind. The loves and interests that I have forgotten because they were pushed aside by responsibility and expectations to provide for my family first. I have to remember what sparked me up before life took over. So, here goes!...

I am an early Gen-Xer. I grew up with a stay-at-home mom until I was in my mid-teens. EVERYONE's mother stayed home and only those that were divorced worked, and then it was only until they got married again and then they would once again take on the household and children. My dad worked a full-time job and had several odd jobs that we sometimes helped with and sometimes he just picked up handyman things if he had the time. I have two brothers and we were expected to help with anything and everything that our parents needed. 

We lived on a farm and helped my great grandmother on her farm, so we learned all about farm life and how to feed yourself from the land. We always had our own beef and chickens, we grew a garden every year, we owned an industrial size pressure-canner with reused jars and rims, and we had a huge chest deep freezer that was one of our staple appliances throughout my childhood. Sometimes the only room we had that was big enough for it would be my parents' bedroom, and they always sacrificed the space because it was so important to our survival as a family. I think that almost everyone we knew also had one of these huge freezers. My great grandmother's was in her basement, which ironically was built AROUND it. 

My grandmother wanted that cellar, not just for the safety during a Midwest tornado, but it was mostly for her canned goods and to finally have a place for an indoor toilet, shower, ring-washer and indoor clothes line. It was a luxury for her to have this and it was something her husband could get for her. 

From the stories told, it didn't take that long to jack up the little house and put the basement in because all of the family and neighbors helped. I only saw one picture of it when they were working on it and it was of my great grandfather standing outside looking down into the two feet of emptiness between the foundation of the house and the start of the grass at ground level. He appeared to be discussing something with the three men whose faces were peering up at him from that dark, empty space between--one of them being my great uncle as a very young man. My grandfather had on a white, short-sleeved dress shirt, grey slacks (could have been tan but it was a black and white picture), black belt and a smart hat on his head like he was actually a banker instead of a farmer. He was rotund in the middle but with big, muscular hands perched on his hips, elbows back and thumbs hooked into the waistband of his pants. Their discussion looks serious and yet full of respect and my uncle has the twinkle of excitement and a broad grin focused at someone off camera. It was a community affair that built so much more than that basement; it built connections and camaraderie; it was a neighborhood party.

Anyway, this is how my family came to be and it was a life full of sacrifice, especially for the women. My great-grandmother was a school teacher before she married but gave it up to have a prize basement to show her worth. I only now realize that it was silently and generationally instilled in us--that it was noble to give of yourself, putting aside your own wants for the good of all the rest. I didn't realize that this was something that I absorbed from all the women in my childhood, and the worst part is that it was, and still is, culturally expected. Women were cherished, but only for what they could give away. 

I did the same, but just didn't know it. 

I chose to be a young mother, but I didn't see the value in being a young wife, so I put off being married for the sake of being "progressive" and independent; mistakenly thinking I was making a stand against the "misogynistic culture". I can see now that I sacrificed just the same as my grandmother, and more. On top of being a "partner" and doing all the domestic chores and duties, I was also having to work to make ends meet. I didn't have the luxury of pursuing a "dream" or "figuring myself out", there just weren't enough hours in the day.

Being in the position to have to provide for more mouths than just my own absolutely stunted, if not buried, my passions, because our survival overrode it all. Now that urgency is gone, depleted, and none has taken its place...where do I go from here if I cannot find a new reason? Stay lost for the next 20-30 years? This is not what I was promised for all my sacrifice. 

I feel cheated and angry.