I am angry. Yup. Just plain mad! And I’ve changed my mind about something that I used to be wrong about. I am a fairly conservative dresser. I don’t ever wear sleeveless things and I rarely wear shorts. I am fairly modest in my choices even though I like bright colors and I like things that are a little bit funky. I notice if my children wear things that look “tacky” and I have been known to send all three of them back upstairs to change for various reasons. That said, I am fed up with so-called “dress code enforcement” in schools that only gets applied to women. I read an article the other day that talked about “students humiliated for dress code enforcement.” I want to point out these weren’t just students, they were all young women. Young girls were asked to “bend over” to see if their skirts are too short. Women are being sent home in schools all over the place. You can see the video here of one school. Another mom fought back when her daughter was sent home on the last day of school because her dress was allegedly too short. She wore the offending dress to her daughter’s graduation ceremony. You can see that here. In Quebec this week, a 3-year-old girl was called out for swimming without a top and asked to leave. Read the article here. The child’s mother was told the child couldn’t be topless because they didn’t want her to be targeted by pedophiles. Are you kidding me? What? Are we really going there with our children? After further consideration, I think we need to examine our policy on dress codes altogether. Everyone is talking about whether the schools are being too strict and whether the clothing really is offensive. I think everyone is asking the wrong questions. The question we should be asking is why can’t women drape their bodies in whatever they want to? We have laws for public nudity. I am not...
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Watching my parents age is excruciating. They are kind and lovely people and I want them to defy aging. I want to choose a moment in time and freeze them, exactly like they were, at their best – healthy, full of energy, and happy… probably in the early 1990s and keep them exactly like that forever. I want them to be whole and perfect and not to feel any pain–much the same as I feel about my children. My mother has had Multiple Sclerosis since she was in high school. She’s fought it bravely her whole life and has been happy and very healthy. She has used a cane for most of my life and is now using a walker. When I’m with her, I cannot accept the changes that are happening to her. I want her to fight harder and to defy the aging that is happening to her. I don’t know if she can fight hard enough–start physical therapy again, do exercises, build strength, and stay out of the wheelchair for a couple more years. I know she’s struggling to accept the changes that are happening to her. It is the proverbial “bad thing” that has been looming over her for my entire life: The Chair. Immovability. It is the thing to fight against and I am watching her give up. I am pushing her to fight, fight, fight. Maybe what I need to be doing is telling her it’s okay. Some of the agony is in me not wanting to say the wrong thing and I don’t want to contribute to her giving up. Years ago when I trained to be a hospice volunteer, they taught us to be willing to just talk about death. So many people in our patients’ lives wanted them to get better and sometimes they needed someone to just be with them to talk about dying and what they were experiencing. I wonder if this is the same for my mom–that she is facing losing her ability to walk and...
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I can tell I am aging from the way my brain works. It isn’t as flexible as it once was. I used to find it much easier to go with the flow…to let things happen and to make it all work. Now, I am more attached to my schedule, to having things the way I want them. I like having a plan. I don’t really want to be flexible. I want things my way. I see the change and I imagine it means I am aging, but I don’t really care. I like the more planned version of my former self. I love the way I can orchestrate my life to be about how I want it to be. This new-found desire to plan shows me all the places where I don’t have the time to plan, too. Like when we invited people over for drinks and Mel and I were both too busy to go and put the cushions out on the patio furniture and to make it all “nice” before they came. I realized that I don’t like the stress of entertaining in a half-done sort of way. But, with 3 kids, two dogs, two acres, full-time (ish) work and a myriad of friends and family, we don’t have the luxury of a well-organized life so I am still flying by the seat of my pants even though I desire a carefully planned life. I sometimes dream of retirement as if it is a kind of time porn—endless time to move slow, make decisions, talk over coffee, read the paper and feel in control. Instead I feel like a puppy tied to the back of a station wagon loping along behind trying to keep up with a life that pulls me along with a variety of the kid’s activities, work meetings, and social engagements. I keep up most of the time. Every now and then, I check myself. I look around at the chaos and think to myself, “this is as good...
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My friend is dying. No matter how many mental gymnastics my brain does, no matter how sad I feel, no matter what I do every day, this underlies my thoughts all the time.
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I didn’t succeed at my 200 day challenge. I just couldn’t complete the number of classes I would need to make up to do it. I took my son to New Mexico for spring break, I couldn’t find a yoga studio, I got asked to work in California, and I realized I was just not going to complete my 200 days of yoga challenge. It was a disappointment to realize I wasn’t going to make 200 yoga classes in 200 days. It was a challenge I liked. In the back of my head, I had hoped I could continue and could actually do 365 classes in 365 days. I wanted to know what a year of yoga would do for my body. How would I be different. I was fascinated by the idea that I would do yoga every day and I could see the impact it would have on my life. But I never scaled back my travel or other activities. I wanted it all. I realized I am more diverse than just yoga. I want a rich and full life and I want to travel. I am not willing to give up travel to do yoga. So here I am, trying to find a standard and doing mostly daily yoga. I have been trying to figure out my “new normal.” If I don’t do yoga every day, then how much yoga do I do? I also love the benefits of going almost every day. I like how daily yoga impacts my life. It is a practice and I like practicing yoga almost every day. I really struggled over this and it felt like a real journey for me to figure it out. In my life, I haven’t been good at regular exercise. I don’t wake up and think “exercise sounds good” because mostly it doesn’t. I would rather read a book on the couch. So I had some fear that if I didn’t do yoga every day, then I might just stop...
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I didn’t ever really get the Christmas spirit this year. I come from a long line of women who love Christmas. Every year, I get excited about the holidays. I am touched by the music, I love doing the decorations, I love the presents, I love entertaining. I usually love it all. This year, I never caught that holiday spirit. I tried. We had a big party, we decorated the house, we had presents, we spent time together as a family. But somehow, it felt like work this year and I kept waiting for the hallelujah chorus. Is something wrong with me? Is it because I am getting older? I have been trying to figure out what happened. I don’t really know what it was, except maybe I am tired–I have been doing my yoga challenge since October 15th. Because of an ice storm, our party was smaller than usual and we had too much leftover food–it really bugged me and I didn’t want to throw it away so we ate too much stuff I usually don’t eat. We lost power for 24 hours after the party because of the ice storm and I got really worried about our family. I don’t want to be a whiner, but I FEEL like a whiner. I am so incredibly blessed and I love my family so much and somehow it all just overwhelmed me this year. I long for simplicity and love and quiet. It is hard to find it in the midst of all these people I love. I think next year I want to change some things. I think after 11 years of having a giant Christmas party, I am ready to change it. I want it to be different. I hope next year Christmas will feel different. I want to feel the wonder of the season. My love of Christmas feels like a treasure I should love and cherish–protect in some way. As I wrote that, the tears came, so I figure I...
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