Random Musings About Life

I was sent this meme during the course of a conversation in which I tried to support someone I know and love.  She is hurting due to some relationship struggles.   This was my response: While I understand where you're coming from, I believe that living life guarded can be more damaging than the potential hurt. Here's my perspective: Trust: Trust but verify. Remember to give your trust slowly; it's earned over time by repeated actions that engender trust. Trust is the foundation of meaningful relationships. Love: Love with no agenda. Even if the other person lets you down, it doesn't negate the purity of your own feelings. Love is about giving freely and experiencing the richness of human connection. Hope: Hope is the very thing that keeps us going. It fuels our dreams and aspirations. Yes, you risk being hurt, but you cannot close yourself to risk without closing yourself to joy. Life is about embracing the full spectrum of experiences, both the highs and the lows. By r...

  And so, it’s Christmas… Grandma, Christmas 1992 When I was young, my grandmother emphatically insisted she still believed in Santa Claus. Just as firmly, I insisted, “Come on, Grandma. That is silly. Everyone knows Santa doesn’t really exist.” Yet, Grandma wouldn’t budge. She insisted there was, in fact, a Santa Claus. Years later, as an adult, I think I finally understood what she meant. I believe my grandmother was referring to what Santa symbolizes, not necessarily the literal ‘person’ of Santa. I have heard some say that Santa has ‘taken over’ the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas (the birth of Christ), but I’m not so sure. While Christmas and Yule have been celebrated for centuries, Santa is only about 200 years old. Before Santa as we know him today, people in England believed in ‘Father Christmas,’ a man who dressed in green and went from home to home to feast with families, although he didn’t bring gifts to children. Didn’t Christ also go from place to place and break b...

CHAPTER 1 – IT’S VACATION – IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A TIME TO RELAX!   Traveling by RV is wonderful. You have your own bed, a place to cook, and a space to relax. However, it involves more work than most people realize. In a hotel, you pack clothes and toiletries, and the room is cleaned by staff. You eat at restaurants and return home with dirty laundry and a suitcase to unpack. With an RV, you handle all these tasks yourself, plus meal planning and preparation. Our travel/RV only has a microwave, so we often precook meals before leaving on our trip, freeze them, and heat them up later. The trip to Missouri/Arkansas was no exception.  The beds in our travel/RV are small, so we sleep in two of them. Upon return, we wash the sheets and bedding for both beds, along with the towels and other linens, rugs and clothing. The travel/RV is emptied of clothes, medicines, electronics, and other items that need to go back into our full-time homes. Once emptied, the travel/RV is cleaned, rest...

I was never very athletic; but I am definitely an outdoors girl.  I love being in nature.  It speaks to my soul in a way that is difficult to explain.  I have always had a restless spirit and an innate need to travel and explore outdoor places.  They call it Wanderlust and it started for me as a child.  Tonawanda Creek, Clarence NY We moved a lot – but no matter where I lived, (even in the city), I always found an area of vacant land that I would visit frequently.  I felt happiest in those places.  They were calm and quiet, unlike the chaos that frequently invaded my home.  Perhaps it being my escape is what has made it such a deep-seated part of who I am today. I love finding alpine meadows like I did in Glacier National Park in Montana, so high up in the mountains that they were infrequently visited by humans. Glacier National Park, Montana Seeing the dessert bloom with wildflowers – not just in pictures ...

  Once upon a time, I wore my open-mindedness like a comfortable cloak—a badge of honor that allowed me to embrace diversity, live and let live, and dismiss the “stuffy” conservatism of the right. Politics? Nah, not my cup of tea. Voting? Seemed futile; after all, both sides were equally flawed, right? And then, like a plot twist in a gripping novel, Barack Obama stepped onto the stage in 2008. The nation held its breath as history unfolded—a black President! Surely, this shattered any lingering illusions about racial barriers. Minorities would now find their opportunities, right? I watched Obama’s inauguration—the only one I’ve ever witnessed. But as his presidency unfolded, my rose-colored glasses cracked. Arrogance seeped through, and the fact that he was biracial seemed conveniently ignored. The unity he promised? It fractured. The country felt more divided than ever. In 2012, I cast my first-ever vote—against Obama. Yet, he secured a second term. My disillusionment deepe...

I have commented before on the disservice I believe society does to women - in particular. (It does a different disservice to men in my opinion, which is not the subject of this post). I’m talking about beauty standards. Little girls tend to hear compliments like, “oh isn’t she pretty rather than isn’t she clever”. Our society places a high priority on youth and beauty especially for women - and though I too appreciate beauty (and some days I long for youth), I still believe too much pressure is placed upon women – who then try to hold themselves to a beauty standard they can never attain – and in some cases, it negatively affects their self-worth. We hear of boys in school rating girls on whether they make the ‘hot or not list’. We see stars ‘splashed across our TV or computer screens or in magazines or up on billboards or on buses or – etc. (albeit this is after they’ve probably spent a TON on professionals to do their hair and make-up). I have also seen on various social media s...