Nobody is immune....

Personal evolution is about allowing ourselves to be molded–

crafted into newer, more true versions of ourselves–by our 

everyday experiences. It may not always be pretty but it is 

always true, and I’m not sure there is another way to do it.

Oh wait, there is one other way. I almost forgot because it 

sucks so much to do it this way.

The other way is the one where we commit to something 

because it feels true to us at the time, allowing us to move 

forward in our experience to the point at which we find an 

even more true thing but our lives may begin to suck because 

we’re too afraid to let go of the first thing. It no longer 

serves us but since we already chose that course of study 

or partner or hairstyle, we get stuck instead of moving on to 

the next thing on our journey.

Now, I’m not suggesting that releasing the old to make space 

for the new is easy. I wouldn’t dare… since I’m typing these 

exact words with the discomfort about a professional 

transition churning in my belly.




The above excerpt came from an article I read today called "When Your Dreams Eat Your Plans For Lunch". It was written by a life coach who worked very hard to help other people change their lives, all while missing the clues and signs pointing to success and happiness in her own life. It was a very straight forward article highlighting the steps in life we all seem to trip over, proving that even a professional life coach isn't immune to hurdles, hiccups and forehead-slapping moments. We often assume that some people have all the answers while we struggle to understand the question but this proves that even the best and brightest among us still sometime struggle to see the forest for the trees.  

Thanks Oprah....

Several nights ago I watched Oprah Winfrey interviewing Viola Davis, the actress who played Abileen in the movie 'The Help'. It was a fascinating interview. As black women, they understood and identified with the trials and tribulations of minorities in the 1960s South so they could intelligently discuss the day-to-day life of the character Abileen. The conversation ebbed and flowed between their modern day lives to their childhoods and even to the lives of their own mothers who identified so closely with Abileen. As a middle-classed white woman, I can't relate to their stories so maybe that's why they hold such a fascination for me. I can't imagine having the opportunities of life feel more like a fleeting dream than a certainty. My pale white skin color has been taken for granted, so out of touch with reality I didn't even realize its asset value.


Their discussion about who they were and where they'd come from made me remember a Martin Luther King quote....

• "We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we could be. We ain’t what we gonna be, but thank God we ain’t what we were.”

I try to remind myself of this quote often, especially when I find myself shaking my head over the injustices in today's world that have no place in the 21st century such as the fight to set women back 100 years over abortion rights or the constant desire of the Conservative Right to tell the LGBT community that they are "less than" the rest of us and don't deserve the right to marry the love of their life or adopt children. I've watched in disgust as the state in which I reside stripped away the rights of single individuals who hoped to adopt or even foster children, instead allowing these orphan kids to languish away until they aged out of the system at eighteen and are then released onto the street without any further assistance. I bristle when I think of the inequality of allowing guaranteed citizenship to Cubans thanks to the "wet foot/dry foot" policy while refusing to acknowledge the contributions made by the Central American immigrants to our economy, our tax system and how they are single-handedly shoring up the Social Security system for the white man who works so diligently to keep them in their place of modern day slaves. I could go on and on but when I feel my blood pressure rising, I silently mouth the words "at least we ain't where we were". I have to remind myself that having a bunch of old white men in Congress trying to tell me what I can or can not do with my body and whether or not I am qualified to raise children in the eyes of the law are both just tiny drops in the bucket of inequality compared to what the Abileens of the world had to suffer through. And I also have to remind myself that as a middle-classed white woman, I have the luxury of getting infuriated at the status quo and I doing something about it. The 1960s era Abileens were helpless. Doing something about it was a life or death decision for them.


Okay, well, not sure how I got off on the tangent because that wasn't at all the direction I was headed with this post.


What really resonated with me was when Viola discussed how she came to her forties and after much soul-searching realized that her definition of a successful life had been defined by other people and suddenly who she was and where she was going didn't fit into her image of success. And the hardest part was realizing that not only was some of the decisions she was about to make in her life going against the grain of everyone else's definition of success for her but she would encounter people who didn't want to see her succeed, for whatever reason. The pain she felt was palpable in her quivering voice and her coal black eyes filled with the tears she refused to allow to drop off her eyelashes. Here was the story I could relate to. I can't imagine Abileen's life but I understand Viola's. I've had that same midlife crisis. I know the slow-creeping shock of realizing you've been walking in the wrong direction for most of your life. This, I understand completely.


As she talked about the pain of waking up to her own life, of experiencing others who didn't want her to succeed, of feeling lost and adrift, she talked about hurt feelings and forgiveness....forgiveness of others and of herself. And she quoted someone that seemed to put it all in perspective. She said, "forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."  Those words washed over me like a cooling rain shower on a hot summer day. I always thought of forgiveness as something you directed toward another person or a particular event but this is directing the forgiveness at your internal self. It is myself who wishes constantly for things to have turned out differently but this is saying I'm letting go of that wish because I can't change the past. It is us who constantly evaluate the past, wringing our hands in disbelief, berating ourselves and beating ourselves up. It's our internal dialogue that whispers into our ears...if only I'd done, why didn't I just, I handled it all wrong, I could have saved them, it's all my fault.....


I've always believed that we don't grieve our losses nearly as much as we grieve what we were suppose to have. The children who beg to return to their abusive parents don't really want to go back into those painful homes nearly as much as they crave the kind of parents they were suppose to have. Women constantly go back to an abusive husband not because they see the good in him but because they believe in the "potential" good in him. It's like we want to re-live our histories in the hopes of a "do-over", another chance to make it right, the opportunity to choose what's behind door number two. But this quote recognizes that there's no going back and you can't change what's already happened, no matter how much you crave a better outcome. It recognizes that even if every bad move was caused by your actions, you can't replay the game. Once squeezed out, you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. 


For me, this quote is the most honest thing a person can ever say to themselves. It acknowledges that you can't change the past but still gives you the opportunity to learn from it. As soon as you recognize the past for what it was and let go of the hope of changing it, you can follow up by saying but never again, I'll never let anyone treat me like that again, I'll never be a doormat for someone again, I'll never react that way again, I can't change someone else's choices, next time will be different, I deserve better than that, I am better than that..... Immediately you stop asking why the other person choose the path they did, you stop asking why it couldn't have been different, you stop seeing the possibility that it ever could have been different and you realize that it was what it was...good, bad or ugly...it simply was what it was and there's no changing that now.


I've spent many years trying to forgive those who hurt me or my loved ones...a feat that requires the faith of Buddha and still feels nearly impossible....now I know I don't have to forgive them. I simply have to stop wondering why it couldn't have been different and I can stop expecting more from them than they were capable of being. For some reason, this feels a whole lot easier than forgiving the person or the act. It feels doable, it feels honest, it feels logical...it feels right.

food for thought....

So imagine someone you love very much....someone like a parent or child, a spouse or best friend....was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I'm talking about the kind of illness that has no course of action, no hope, guaranteed fatality. All the doctors give your loved one six months to live....max.


Would you want to be told immediately about his/her impending death so you could savor every moment of the following precious months even while you began grieving, worrying yourself sick and making deals with God and the devil at the same time? Or would you prefer to be kept in the dark until the last possible moment so you could maintain some semblance of normalcy without the pain and anguish of losing them a thousand times in your heart and mind?


If you think about it, there's only one right answer....

a gentle reminder....

Forget what hurt you in the past
but never forget what it taught....


~sometimes we need a gentle reminder of this~
 some people need to be reminded of the first part (that would be me)...
others need to remember the last (you know who you are!)

Are we really that naive???

At a pre-Grammy gala Saturday night, where Whitney Houston was scheduled to perform just a few hours after her untimely death, Tony Bennett took to the microphone to say.... 

           "First it was Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse,   now, the magnificent Whitney Houston. I'd like every person in this room to campaign to legalize drugs."

           "Let's legalize drugs like they did in Amsterdam," said Bennett, who battled drug addiction in the late 70s. "No one's hiding or sneaking around corners to get it. They go to a doctor to get it."




I was taught to respect my elders so I won't repeat the first sentiment that crosses my mind about Mr. Bennett's statement but I can't help but wonder if we are truly that naive? I suppose for the sake of science I should explore this concept even though I consider it nothing more than a waste of time. So let's think about it for a moment.


In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I've heard this sentiment before and personally I find it to be an incredibly simplistic answer to a ridiculously complicated problem but I'll play along for now.


So start by examining several of our vices....


Prohibition was repealed in 1933 (that statement is only true for the United States of America) so alcohol has consistently been legal in this country for almost eighty years yet alcohol addiction is alive and well. Legalizing it made it easier to purchase and possibly cheaper but did nothing to quench our thirst for it. Believe it or not, I live in a dry county where the sale of alcohol is prohibited by retail stores (yes, Virginia, they still exist even in the 21st century). Basically prohibiting alcohol sales in Benton County has taken valuable tax dollars from this county and filtered them into the neighboring counties where the border areas are lined with liquor stores. Legalizing alcohol hasn't reduced the rate of addiction at all, or at least not enough to be measurable.


Tobacco is and always has been legal yet thousands of people are still addicted to nicotine. You can't even say legalization has held the cost down since our government imposed a sin tax on cigarettes which skyrocketed the cost of a pack of smokes to somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.00. And over the last decade we've even made it illegal to light up in nearly every public venue in America yet thousands of smokers are still willing to trudge outside in rain, snow, sleet or fog for a few minutes alone with Joe Camel.


There are many things that are were once illegal but legalizing it hasn't stopped any of us from indulging. Casinos, horse and dog tracks, sports betting, OTBs...all legal and all addictive. For that matter we eat and feed our children crap we know is bad for us but it doesn't stop us from doing it. Just because the McDonalds and Taco Bell restaurants on every corner are legal, we don't crave their food any less. Our groceries stored are brimming with junk food. All legal-all easily available and all sold by the bags full. The retailers wouldn't carry it if it didn't sell.


I think all these examples blow holes in Mr. Bennett's suggestion but unfortunately he's still missing the most obvious point. He's lived over three quarters of a century yet his solution is naive and too simplistic. Because you see, Mr. Bennett, drugs are legal. They are called prescription drugs and account for the fastest growing addiction in the world today. Xanax, Methodone, Oxycotin, Hydrocodone....I could go on and on but the point is these drugs are all legal. My sister was arrested once for erratic driving yet the only drugs in her system were legal drugs. She had valid prescriptions for each one so the charges were dropped. Was she high? I'm sure she was. 


There is a short period in everyone's life where breaking the law is exciting. It begins somewhere around puberty when you think anyone with authority is an idiot and it ends near high school graduation. Other than those few years, most people don't engage in illegal activities simply because they're illegal. Even though I didn't know Whitney Houston personally, I feel very comfortable in saying she didn't begin using drugs because they were illegal and hard to get. Even in today's world where kids are growing up much faster than my generation, their drug use isn't slowed by ease of availability. Unfortunately if you go to the doctor for a toothache or a sprained ankle, the doctors write a script for one high powered narcotic or another. Long gone are the days of "take two aspirin and call me in the morning." All these scripts for popular narcotics fills most household medicine cabinets like a kid's candy store. It doesn't matter what the drug is used for...it doesn't even matter if it's meant to be taken by a female or male patient. Kids are stealing these pills from their parents and having Pharm Parties. For those that don't know what a Pharm Party is, it's when kids bring as many pills as they can get their hands on to a party and everyone dumps them into a bowl together. Then they all indulge in an experimental high after reaching into the bowl of "legal" narcotics and ingesting a rainbow of pretty little pills. They don't know what's going into their bodies and they don't care. Not knowing is half the fun. Is it life-threatening? Sure. Can it be life-altering? You bet. Do most kids think they will live forever and nothing bad can ever happen to them? Absolutely.


So you see, Mr. Bennett, your solution is outdated and naive. This isn't the same world you grew up in and legalizing drugs isn't the answer. Sure it might put the growers and cartels in Central and South America out of business but the drugs our kids crave are made in labs owned by major corporations and the pushers are our own doctors. The only benefit I can really see to legalizing all drugs is that there will be a lot less people in jails and the court system will be freed up to fight different battles. Unfortunately morgues and funeral homes are guaranteed a booming business as "legal" drug addiction gets even more deadly.


I'm sorry to say, Mr. Bennett, but your suggestion is somewhat like trying to cover a severed artery with a bandaid. A good try but a complete waste of time.

and the devil wins again....

It breaks my heart to hear the sad news of Whitney Houston's death...I feel like I've been kicked in the gut. Even though I only knew the persona she showed the world, my heart still aches like she was family. 


Whitney hit the scene when I was a teenager so she quickly became one of my favorite artists. I remember arguing with my mom about who sang "I will always love you" better, Whitney or Dolly. Different generations, different influences but no doubt about the talent and gifted voices of both ladies.


Whitney Houston was a superstar, a title I can't imagine trying to live up to every day. Walking in her shoes is beyond anything I can comprehend so I'm not trying to judge her life, her choices, her decisions but I know where to place the blame for her death. Had she died in a horrible car wreck like Princess Diana or an unexpected plane crash like Aaliyah, her loss would be painful and shocking. Instead Whitney's loss is painful and shocking for a completely different reason. No matter how the coroner rules or what cause of death is printed on the death certificate, somehow her last breath will be influenced by her addiction, either as a direct cause or a contributing factor. 


In recent interviews, she tried to appear new and refreshed but I could feel the tiredness of her soul. Deep inside I feared she was winding her life down, done with her time on this earth. I waited in anticipation for her come-back-tour to put her back on top, to give her back the life she was born to live. Instead her voice told us what we already knew. Just the fact that a superstar of her stature had to stage a "come-back" was proof enough of just how badly her life had de-railed. Her once amazing voice that could reach un-imaginable octaves now sounded tired, raspy and broken. The light had faded from her diamond-like eyes. Even her smile had lost a bit of its dazzle. Her body was tired of the abuse, her soul seeking a path back home. I couldn't watch the talk-show interviews found on every TV channel and plastered all over the internet. There was an uneasiness to her that felt all too familiar. I'd witnessed it up close and personal, too many people trying to convince the world and themselves that they were okay. I knew the look, the body language, the fleeting gaze that won't quite meet your eyes for more than a quick second or two. I knew the story she told. It was a little too dismissive of her past and too confident of her future. She tried to assure the interviewer that her life was back on track but she spoke in a voice that was more cocky than confident. She was trying to convince herself and hoping that no one noticed. I wouldn't be surprised if she was using the whole time she was trying to defend her new life. She was still broken...just working harder to hide it now. Maybe she really was trying to fight the devil but she wasn't ready to be in the ring...not yet.


I certainly don't claim to be an expert but I've never know or heard of an addict that successfully beats the habit without humility and honesty. It seems an impossible hill to conquer if you aren't willing to acknowledge where the blame belongs. It's never as simple as one reason or another. A terrible childhood, a broken home, rejection, bullying, heartbreak, divorce, the loss of a loved one, a rising career that plummets back to earth....the list goes on and on yet ultimately the blame must be placed at our own feet. We may have one horrible contributing factor or one hundred, but the choice is still ours.


On the Grammy Awards program tonight, they'll talk about her career, her amazing voice, a brilliant light dimmed much too early. We'll hear about the singers she influenced, the differences she made, her heart and her spirit. Even in years to come when stories are told of her rise and fall, often the surface of her addiction battles will barely be skimmed. Her stellar career will be placed directly under the spotlight but her battles will always be in a dimly lit shadow. No one will honestly tell of who she was or why she chose the path she did. All stories will either sing her praises on high or point a condemning finger. No one will simply tell her story, the whole truth, without glory or judgement.


While Whitney may have taken her story to the grave with her, she was surrounded by people who knew bits and pieces of it. They could probably piece together her life and shed light on the whole picture. Addictions aren't decided on. No one wakes up one day with the intent of losing themselves to the devil. It happens in little decisions made everyday. That's where friends and family could make a different. If we could just be diligent with our loved ones. If we could speak up in the moment instead of waiting until it's too big, too scary, too far gone. If we were willing to see a spade and call it a spade instead of trying to gloss it over or minimize it. While there's no guarantee that anything we do could ever make a difference, there is a guaranteed outcome if we aren't willing to try.


Tonight and possible forever, thousands of people will lift up Whitney Houston and place her on a pedestal. They will sing her praises and proclaim their sadness at her loss. How many do you think will stand up and ask themselves what they could have done to prevent this from happening? How many will sing the praises of her life instead of pointing out wrong turns she made over the last decade? How many will tell the whole story instead of just the highlights?


Ultimately, we can't save someone else from addiction. We can't stop a train that's already left the station. All we can do as a bystander is to be honest about it. Instead of making the addict a martyr, we have to talk about their pain and why they made the choices they did. Addiction is a monster hiding in the closet and the only way to get rid of it is to turn on the light. Only by acknowledging the wrong decisions can we hope to help others. Singing the praises of an addict's life while attempting to ignore the darkness that controlled them helps no one-not the addict--not anyone else. 


The world lost an amazing singer yesterday, but her soul was lost years ago. As a singer and superstar, Whitney Houston inspired thousands of young artists hoping to follow in her footsteps. With her death, we as a collection of humanity, have a opportunity to make sure she inspires millions of young people to NOT follow in her footsteps. We have an opportunity, an obligation, to share her story--to shed light on the monster--so no one succumbs to the demon. This is our chance to give back to a woman who gave so much to so many. This is our chance to truly immortalize her. This is Whitney's ultimate gift to the world, to truly be a superstar who chances the course of humanity. This is her time to shine. This is her real "come back" tour. But it's up to us. We can open the door to the closet and face the monster head-on or we can keep it in the dark and allow it to devour more and more of us, all while we pretend it doesn't exist. The choice lies at our feet.


Rest in peace Whitney. You were blessed with the voice of an angel, but still couldn't outrun the devil.

inspiration is everywhere....