memories – in thriver words

Broken Bowl? Let it Go.

Broken bowl? Let it go. I feel bad when I break things. Today, I broke a milk glass antique mixing bowl. It’s not the only mixing bowl I own. I should throw it in the trash without a second thought.

But I can’t – not because it was almost as wide at the bottom as the top and pleasant to use, and not exactly because of the many many apricot cakes I mixed in it when I was small. My association of this bowl with a kitchen long-ago turned into a music room is related to larger memories that took place in that kitchen.

We often make memories in the kitchen. Some are good, all covered in sauce, syrup, and dusted with sugar. Others produce broken glass as a by-product. Good or bad, some events must be processed before we can let them go.

Memories and their emotional aftermath can take time to work through. Sometimes the process moves slowly. Obviously, it makes no sense to hold onto a broken bowl for weeks, months, or years. And yet it can be tempting to clutter our homes with things that no longer serve a purpose.

Items that evoke strong memories may be the hardest to part with. But keeping misshapen, broken, crumbled stuff around can make it harder to let go of the attached emotions.

How can you make it easier to part with things?

Take the pressure off. If you try to muscle yourself into compliance, you may feel overwhelmed and cling even harder. Try placing objects in an appointed place out of sight and leave them for a few weeks or months. You don’t have to decide right this minute.

I use a space in the back of a closet to hold items that are difficult to part with. After a few months, I pull them out and decide whether to throw away, donate, or keep. I’ve been doing this for years and I can only think of two times that I kept something.

Take a photo. I’ve found I don’t always need to hold onto the actual item. What I’m looking for is the feeling I feel when I see it. A photo can generate the same feeling. When it’s time to part with a special possession, I snap a photo and put it in a folder labeled Memories on my computer.

Take your time. This year, I decided to get rid of one thing per day. At the end of the year, I will have gotten rid of at least 365 things. Some days I cover all seven things for a week. Other days, I simply remove a vase or blouse or pair of earrings.

Take it to someone else. If you have a friend or family member who collects Niloak pottery or Culver glassware and you have some you don’t need, gift it. I’ve been served drinks at parties in glasses I previously owned. It always makes me feel good that they’re being used.

Take a moment. When it comes to something broken beyond repair, it makes sense to remove it promptly. While you may not be able to fully process the attached feelings, taking a moment before giving it a toss is a way to honor your need to continue the process. Doing so can help you take the next step.

So, I’m going to throw away the bowl I broke this morning. And I’m going to think of it as a symbol of the broken memories from that kitchen. Then I’m going to let it go and walk away from the trash bin with a smile!

There are some things I’m better off without!

Coulda, Woulda, and Should Have!

Thankfulness and Gratitude

Hopefully, some of us are focusing on thankfulness and gratitude this week. Most every conversation I’ve overheard has been food related. Don’t get me wrong, I love talking about food. But I don’t really need a holiday to make that happen.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a great time to take a moment to notice how I feel about what I have. And not just how I feel about what I have, but what I’ve learned and experienced, and who I’ve known.

This became clear to me last night when I read an article celebrating a journalist with whom I worked 33 years ago. I was immediately transported back to how it felt to be surrounded by a quirky cast of larger-than-life storytellers.

It felt great. I hated my ad sales job, but I loved hanging in the newsroom listening to the banter. It took the distance of time to separate how I felt about the job from how I feel about the people. And recognizing that the feelings are the thing that stuck is instructive.

Without photos, I remember one pair of pants, one skirt, and one shirt I owned. I remember the house I lived in, but not my bedspread or where each picture hung. The things that stand out are people and events.

I don’t mean big events like trips. I mean things like a catfish in the bathtub, burning the furniture to stay warm, standing at a window at work watching cars slowly slide in the snow, learning to waterski with the kids, hugging my favorite customers, happy hour with friends.

Looking back, I appreciate each of those things in a different way than I did at the time. And I clearly recognize that what I possessed at any given moment has faded into the background.

As I practice gratitude this week, I’m using this insight to target people, events, and feelings rather than possessions. I will acknowledge my gratitude for the ease of having a car to drive to work, the feeling of security provided by food in the refrigerator, the warmth of a hug from the grandkids, the joy of watching them learn self-control, and the beauty of the sun through the palm trees.

I don’t know whether this shift in focus will change my experience of thankfulness and gratitude, but it feels like the right thing to do. If I’m given insight and don’t use it, I feel like I’m disrespecting something larger than myself.

Wishing you and your family the chance to make memories that help you feel safe, secure, peaceful, content, loved, and amused this holiday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Keeps On Giving at Cooking2Thrive

Face Mask Memories

I already have face mask memories. Soon you will too. It seems my mother was ahead of her time. She wore a mask so often we called her “the woman with no face.” Of course, during ragweed season she also plugged her nose with silk panties so maybe she was just weird. Even though I was small during the silk-panty-nose-stuffing era, I remember it vividly. I wonder what children will remember from this time?

My grandson DJ is the same age I was when those visuals were burned into my brain. Yesterday, he and I made up songs about coronavirus because, well why not? I was explaining why he couldn’t take swimming lessons right now. It was about the 15th virus-related thing I’d had to explain yesterday. He’s sick of hearing about washing his hands, using a tissue, not touching his eyes, not running out to greet our neighbors, and why we need to take his temperature even though we’re pretty sure he just has allergies. At least putting the reason to a beat made it a bit less tiresome.

Soon, face masks will become part of his experience too as will bandanas over the face. I associate that look with farmers, but it probably makes most people my age think of bandits or bank robbers. This can cause some confusion when a car backfires, the police sensors pick it up, and a bandana masked policeman shows up at your door. Is this a bandit posing as a policeman or a policeman who wants to rob you?

Now I know that sounds like a far-fetched, made-up scenario. But that’s because you don’t own a 1978 International Scout and live in a neighborhood where gunfire is common. We had just such an event on my street last night. (That bandana part could be made up. I didn’t see the cops faces. But it makes for a better story, don’t you think?)

And the weirdness of that visual accurately reflects how things feel right now. Nothing that was true two weeks ago is true today. Thinking has to shift swiftly. In a pandemic, you only get one chance to prevent. You cannot go backward.

Financial thinking will have to shift quickly as well. Did I make a mistake putting that 2019 IRA contribution in my account last week? Should I have kept it as a reserve instead? I don’t know. None of us know. We are facing territory we aren’t familiar with.

Can some of the unemployed in Georgia shift their thinking quickly enough to harvest the currently ripening blueberries and squash that farmers lack migrant labor to harvest? If so, we can prevent holes in our food chain, save some farms, and get income in their hands. But it will require a shift from predominant thinking. And uncertainty often leads to one of the four F responses: Fight, Flee, Fawn, or Freeze.

This is another opportunity for face masks to help. Just think how many superheroes wear face masks: Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the Flash all wear masks. And so do our real-life superheroes: healthcare workers. If we follow the new CDC guideline, we can all be superheroes!

Superheroes are powerful. Viewing ourselves as powerful can help bolster us as we navigate our way through uncertainty. Perhaps the face mask will become a symbol of courage and community-mindedness.

Hopefully, that’s what our children will remember from this time, our courage and willingness to adapt quickly for the benefit of our entire world community. At least that’s my wish for new face mask memories!

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover.html

Remembering and Renewal Can Go Hand-in-Hand

Daisy Remembering and renewal can go hand-in-hand. Where I grew up, Memorial Day coincided with larger traditions of Decoration Day. While the official holiday is to remember our veterans who died, my mom spent the day visiting every cemetery in which our relatives are buried. She’d remove last year’s old, faded, plastic arrangement from each grave and replace it with a new one.

This morning I am at my mother’s house, the one that now belongs to me and my sister. I walked down the road to the farm homesteaded by my great, great, great grandmother looking for wild strawberries. When I was here a few weeks ago they were in full bloom, so I was excited by the possibility of picking the small, juicy berries. I remember when I was 5 or 6 picking berries off these stems and popping them in my mouth right there on the spot. They were delicious.

Today, there are no berries, just a few stems chewed flat at the top most likely by the rabbit I saw bounding across the yard. While I feel disappointed about the berries, I had an enjoyable walk past an incredible display of verdant fields and a roadside of hearty weeds topped with delicate flowers. All around me I saw growth, change, renewal.

It’s common to become attached to things that feel familiar – not just furniture, paintings, dishes or clothes, but attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Sometimes loss or change will cause us to grasp onto the familiar with a death grip and hold on for dear life. Stay in an emotional spot too long and soon enough you’re in a rut. Ruts can be deep tracks that we subconsciously follow. While they give us a defined path which can look like a way forward, they also limit us to that path which can sometimes mean we’re stuck.
rut
When we’re stuck, there is no renewal. There’s no room for new growth because our physical, spiritual, and emotional space is full of the familiar. Remembering how things used to be can be a method of hanging onto the past and keeping us stuck, but it doesn’t have to be and nature is a great reminder of that.

I know what it feels like to move into the familiar groove of feeling alone, not really lonely, just alone as though I must carry any burden by myself. The only reason this is a reality for me now is that I easily slide into that familiar groove. I do it in spite of many layers of healing. It was my reality for so long at so young an age that I have many layers left to heal.

The good news is that not only do I have a healing process I trust, I see examples all around me of the renewal that happens naturally when we stop interfering.
sticker
I see it in the sticker bush that in two weeks has grown from two feet tall to 5 feet tall.
blossom berry
I see it in the blackberry bushes that in the same two weeks have shed lively flowers and begun to create fruit.
yellow dlion
I see renewal in the dandelions that spread their seeds on the wind. And I’m seeing all of this renewal on the farm where I grew up, the same farm where I spent most of my days walking through the fields and sitting in the woods…alone. It is a place of many memories. It is a place of renewal and growth.

Sometimes we remember how great things were because those are the things that left the biggest impression. This can either keep us stuck in the past or encouraged for the future. Sometimes we remember only the bad things. This can keep us stuck in our pain or give us a starting point for healing and renewal. Staying stuck in our memories or connecting with our memories to heal and move forward begin in the same place. It is the place of choice.

When I interviewed Life Coach Mack Arrington for our Cooking2Thrive interview series, he pointed out a moment at which I was “at choice”. It’s an expression I’ve heard from other life coaches and it’s exactly the time/place where memory and renewal intersect. Memorial Day is the perfect time for renewal to begin.