mortality

I Write Therefore I Am

It’s winter time, which means I have plenty of dark days to ponder such somber thoughts as what kind of legacy I will leave behind when my time comes to become stardust in the universe. As I collect past writings and journal entries into a collective published piece, I am reminded of the Latin phrase Verba volant, scripta manent, which translates to “spoken words fly away, written words remain.” I live and die by the pen, so this resonates particularly strongly with me. 

Between Facebook and my blog, I am pretty much an open book. This has enabled me to nurture and develop relationships with people from all walks of my life all over the world, and with some whom I have never met. Just this week, I have been messaged by three different people of varying degrees of familiarity who said they thought of me because of something I had written.

My friend, Nick, from my study abroad year in England, messaged that something came across his feed about people who can make jokes about grammar are the cleverest of the lot and he thought of me. My bff’s mom, Linda, texted that she thought of me because she got an entire bag of “foldy” chips with her dinner and she knew that bag should’ve been mine. And then my own daughter, J, has texted me at the exact same time numerous times, indicating that we are never far from each other’s minds. 

Just the idea that I crossed these friends’ minds and made them smile for a moment fills my love bucket to the brim. I am not one for long conversations, always a better listener than I am contributor, but I can collect my thoughts into an essay with relative ease. I think this has allowed me to be precisely in the moment soaking it all in, and then write about it later. While I hope to make an impact on people in real life connections, the reality of our virtual world is we have so many of those interactions online. We are who we are because of our words, and our written words are even more pertinent and meaningful today. 

It brings me joy and a sense of fulfillment that I can elicit a smile through my actions, but especially my words. My writings are an expression of my love for this journey we are on together, and that Love will remain in others whom I have touched after I am ashes. Hopefully I have plenty of years left to continue to make an impression in others who enter my sphere. At the very least, I will have left a library for my children and future grandchildren so that they will always know I love them. After all, scripta manent, amor manet. 

I love you all, some more than others 💜🌻 

Proper Punctuation

The idea came to me the other day that not only is my career ruled by proper punctuation as an editor, but my adult life stages can be defined by punctuation marks as well. 

My first decade of adulthood started off with some certainty, as I married early at 21, but the rest of my life was a big fat question mark. After I decided not to go to medical school, I began down a path that would have many detours toward different careers. I spent a lot of time in nonprofit land, working with an adoption agency, the Girl Scouts, and an art museum. In my mid-twenties,  I would spend hours on the phone with my college roommate, Karri, wondering what I was meant to do with my life. We both had big aspirations and knew we were meant for “more,” we just weren’t sure what. Motherhood at almost 27 solidified a little for me, as I started a new job both as a mother and as a science editor. I pondered going back to grad school, but two quick pregnancies followed and I had 3 kids under 4 by age 30. Grad school would have to wait.

My thirties brought a divorce, a mental breakdown, several years of instability, and navigating single parenthood. A semicolon, signifying a pause in your life’s path, defined this decade. Being in and out of mental hospitals in my early thirties, finally stabilizing in my late thirties when The Mayor became a fixture in my life, marked a decade of tumultuousness with frequent “time-outs” and pauses. I was glad to make it through my thirties without the finality of a period, full stop. 

I spent the majority of my forties raising three teenage girls and growing my relationship with The Mayor, so I choose the ampersand for my forties. My forties weren’t about Just Destiny anymore, but rather Destiny and…I still have two years left of this decade, and though I am still working through the ampersand years, with adding projects AND hobbies AND work AND helping teens become adults, I anticipate the next decade will reap the rewards of all of my addition of my forties. The way it is going, I can already determine that my fifties will be marked by an exclamation point. Will it be a book deal? Grad school, finally? Eloping with The Mayor? Who knows, but whatever happens, I welcome the next decade with open arms. But only after I tie up the loose ends of my late forties.

I hope to revisit these ideas as the decades progress and I gain wisdom and insight into this raw and beautiful journey I have been so fortunate to live. I hope I am in my 80s writing about my 90s being the ellipses as I fade into the universe. But for now, this editor is still leaving her mark. Here’s to fresh red pens and track changes on…

I love you all, some more than others. 💜🌻

Like the Down of a Thistle

Last night I had some wicked crazy dreams, so much so that I woke up with a bunch of ideas for a blog topic. My head swimming, I tried to narrow one down as I checked into my Facebook to tap my social media vein. I scrolled through my feed, looking at cute baby pictures, laughing at my lawyer friend’s posts, which always crack me up, and suddenly stopped at a college friend’s status. She had chosen today to break her silence about her fight with breast cancer and asked for prayers and positive thoughts for both her and her family as they all struggle to support her through this difficult time.  Continue reading →