Turn Myself Around Again

01 Aug 2025 12 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a song, Fall Down as the Rain, that my daughter, Jessa, sang at my father’s funeral with Dan, her partner, who was also the guitarist. It’s about the seasons of life and the inevitable beauty of death. Today, that song has been playing in my head. I’ve turned myself around yet again.

………………………….

I wanted to write. I needed to write. But I was hopelessly uninspired until I started reading Unreasonable Hospitality. 

The book tells the story of a restaurateur in New York City who wanted his restaurant to be extraordinary; the best in the world. The first year, at the annual awards ceremony for the fifty best restaurants, his was number 50. He agonized over how he could improve his game. The chef was exceptional, and the food was already exquisitely gourmet. He decided he would focus on the guest experience, upping the ante to provide unreasonable hospitality to his patrons. And if they were to be treated to the ultimate in service and graciousness, the staff would also deserve to be deeply respected and appreciated. 

He devised a plan and implemented it. The following year, his restaurant was voted number one.

Reading his story made me aware that the events of the past few weeks have jettisoned my life into the realm of the extraordinary once again. Suddenly, I wanted to write about it, to tell anyone who would listen about this sudden, wild, and spontaneous adventure that came out of nowhere.

Take right now, for instance. I’m sitting in a 4th-floor, luxury apartment overlooking the coastal lowlands of South Carolina. At high tide, the view from my balcony looks like this.

Low tide drains those sparkling pools.

This is a trial run, a test to see if a permanent move here is viable for me. I’ve been three winters and almost four summers in the remote northland of Minnesota, where my neighbors are my sister, brother-in-law, and an old friend of the family who moved there shortly after I did. Acres of field and forest stretch between our little community and the next house.

I fell asleep to the lonely wailing of coyotes and woke up in an alternate universe – turned myself around again.

When I landed in Charleston, my daughter whisked me across two bridges into the town of Mt. Pleasant and this complex of 224 units. I instantly had new neighbors. From the balcony, I could watch bikinis worn by tanned, toned, young bodies strolling to the pool, and slow-shuffling gray heads walking their shihtzus and corgies. Instead of the mile-long, dead-end dirt road to my little cottage on the farm, Ben Sawyer Boulevard, with its non-stop beach traffic, hummed day and night. 

I’m revisiting old prejudices. Whatever I had against air-conditioning in the past is passé. With the heat and humidity hovering in the nineties 24/7, AC moves from nice to necessary! I’ll acclimate. It just takes time. But I will say this: it beats nine months of Minnesota winter any way you slice it! 

Despite sucking soupy salt air into my lungs with each breath, I love it here! Everything is easy and accessible. The Publix grocery store is a few blocks away. There’s a Mexican restaurant even closer with superb spicy margaritas! And the amenities available to residents are unreal. There’s a pool, a fitness gym, a yoga studio, a conference area, work stations, a lounge, and a whole corral of bicycles to use whenever the spirit moves. A beautiful courtyard on the 2nd floor of my building screams PARTY TIME!!!

Valet trash pickup comes to my door, and a package delivery service, FETCH, does too. There’s a free shuttle to the beach… I don’t know… does it sound a little too good to be true?

But here I am, and it IS true. All of it. 

The apartment doubles as my daughter’s office. I’ll have the added benefit of seeing her and my granddaughters regularly. That’s what kicks this into the ultra-extraordinary category. If I make this permanent, I’ll get to be here. With them. 

None of it was planned. I didn’t see it coming. But Uranus moved into Gemini on July 7th, where it will remain until November 7th, and as the renowned astrologer, Steven Forrest says, The shock of the unexpected will be everywhere, in the headlines and in your own life.

It’s only August 1st. There are three more months of potential shocking unexpectedness. One could get dizzy with all this turning around!

Just Another Dreary Day

16 Jan 2025 Leave a comment

by writingforselfdiscovery in food, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Icy dervishes whirl across the field outside the window. My weather app describes today as dreary. Seriously? How about cloudy? Knowing there will be an absence of light is enough information. Cloudy states a fact. Dreary assumes a negative emotional response. Not everyone finds an overcast day dull, bleak, lifeless, and depressing. Maybe I welcome this sunless day to curl up with a book or chop and sauté in a brightly lit kitchen, filling the house with the nurturing aromas of a hearty soup. Just stick to the facts, AI. Don’t tell me how I should feel.

The first time dreary popped up on my app, I chuckled. I was used to seeing cloudy, mostly cloudy, intermittent clouds, and snow. Clear days here in the far north aren’t designated sunny, they’re just called cold. The new word felt like a whimsical departure from the norm and made me smile. But today’s dreary followed a long string of overcast and cloudy days. My first reaction was, “Go away!” (Like the nursery rhyme: Rain, rain, go away, come again another day, little Sherry wants to play…) My light-deprived inner child was annoyed.

So, I was already in a pissy mood even before getting out of bed.

After journaling in front of my cozy fireplace and pivoting to a more positive mindset, I decided to spend the day cooking.

Mom used to make Italian Wedding Soup. I’d found a recipe online and skimmed it for my shopping list and purchased the ingredients. But true to form, I’d neglected to read the details.

Remembering how delicious it was, I decided to make a double batch and set to it, mixing Italian sausage and ground beef, egg, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, and onion. When it was the desired consistency, I glanced at the instructions and did a double-take.

Form the mixture into about 40 – 1/2-inch wide – meatballs. 

One-half inch wide? The size of marbles? Forty?You’ve got to be kidding! For the next hour, I sat rolling sticky blobs into teeny-weeny balls that more accurately approached 3/4 of an inch wide. I filled a 15 x 20 cookie sheet with 108 meaty marbles.

All that effort and half the mixture still remained in the bowl. I shoved the pan in the oven and made an executive decision. The rest would be four times the size of those wee nuggets.

The minis were done in minutes. I left them to cool while I prepared their jumbo siblings. That went much more quickly. But, when I tried to turn the oven back on to bake them, nothing happened. After two years of cooking, my forty-pound propane tank had run out of gas. The line from a Seinfeld episode screamed in my head: No soup for you!

I put the sheet of large raw meatballs in the freezer and went outside to unhook the propane tank and load it in my trunk for the next trip to town. The not-so-dreary day got worse. The tank was frozen fast in place. It wouldn’t budge. I wrapped my arms around it and tugged. I wedged myself between it and the house and pushed. I cursed it in Spanish, Indonesian, and English and kicked it forgetting I had metal ice cleats on my boots. No damage was done, they only marred it a bit cosmetically. In the end, the tank won and I quit.

After the frustrations of the morning, a warm blanket and a good book sounded like heaven. I cuddled in and fell instantly to sleep.

Today was to be mostly cloudy but warmer, according to my app. Mid-afternoon, armed with a bag of Ice Melt Salt and a quart of boiling water, I once again went on the offensive with the tank. I tucked salt around the base and doused it with hot water. At first, it didn’t appear to be working. But then… there was a slight jiggle when I tugged. With renewed vigor I grabbed it. Back and forth, back and forth, I rocked that baby loose. Success!

Tomorrow is predicted to be above freezing followed by four days of cold. I’ve positioned a cement block over the frozen spot and the freshly filled tank will sit atop that from now on. Problem solved.

In the midst of all this, I had a Human Design reading. It was a birthday gift from my daughters. Among other things, I discovered that I am an Experiential Learner. Is that a polite way of saying I have to f*** it up first before I get it right? That would explain a lot!

I hope you’re keeping warm and there are no drearies on your weather app.

One Big Idea – Part 3

29 Dec 2024 11 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in vision board, wisdom, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

You blew me away with your responses! What great suggestions you all made! I’ve taken your advice and have been busy rewriting and expanding to the next few chapters. Once again, critics have at it! Please!

I do have a few specific questions.

1) I’ve written in a very informal style, incorporating comments from my everyday life. Is that working?

2) The information isn’t new, but my goal is to present it in an engaging way. Is that working?

If you could respond to those and then freely voice all other thoughts, criticisms, and advice, I’d be thrilled! Here goes round two!

Don’t Hold On To What You Can’t Have

CHAPTER 1

Grasping, clinging, and telling myself lies compromised my happiness long past the use-by date. So where do I get off asking you not to hold on to what you can’t have? How do I dare offer advice when I personally screwed up so brilliantly?

If I had an imposter syndrome, that would shut me down. But impostering isn’t one of my issues. How do you measure what has been learned over decades? Here I am, a seventy-something who fudging knows a bit from living it. I’ve laughed, loved, failed, and yet come out on the other side vigorous and vim-full of…well…you decide. 

I want to talk about letting go because it’s sticky, and tricky, and one of the most important keys to happiness. There are times when it’s necessary to sever all bonds, and other times when subtly loosening the grip does the job. 

But it’s knowing, isn’t it? Knowing who we are, what we need, what we want. Knowing when enough is enough and too little is too painful.

Socrates, one of the great philosophers of all time, is credited with saying, Know thyself. He also said that self-knowledge is a philosophical commandment that can help people avoid mistakes in their relationships and careers. 

Philosophical commandment! Holy ravioli! What does that even mean?

Ravioli – I’m starving. Time for lunch. More later.

CHAPTER 2

Okay, I’ve given it some thought. Let’s reduce philosophical commandment, to a less lofty-sounding but equally valid expression. Let’s call it the guiding rule. Self-knowledge is the guiding rule that helps people avoid mistakes in their relationships and careers. When it’s spelled out that way…so logical…right?

Until I read the iconic book by Kathleen A. Brehony, Awakening at Midlife, I had not devoted one iota of bandwidth to pondering those essential questions about myself. I was living on autopilot, numb, checked out. 

Sadly, we can’t flick a button to light up our awareness. Learning who we are is a process; if it hasn’t been part of the daily regimen to date, there’ll be some catching up to do. 

I was in my fifties with four failed marriages and a felony conviction to my credit (or debit) when I began to ask Who am I? Fortunately, the conviction was overturned on appeal, but I’m just saying, I was a late bloomer at the awareness table. And, I hate to admit this, but even after I began the process of self-discovery, I married and divorced one more time. Breaking old patterns is a bitch. 

 On the flip side, my transformation is a testimony to the fact that it’s never too late. Are you listening? It   is   never   ever   too   late.

Uncovering who we are is an exciting journey. I didn’t know I was a writer. Didn’t know I loved solitude. Didn’t know how much I needed adventures, challenges, experiences, and an out-of-the-box reality. It gives me goosebumps to write this, to remember how lost to myself I was.

When we don’t know ourselves, we’re vulnerable. Instead of choosing what will feed and nurture us in healthy ways, we run the risk of falling prey to opposite energies. That’s what I meant when I said I was on autopilot. I let life happen to me rather than making informed choices to determine my fate. Self-knowledge = informed choices = a higher potential for happiness and success.

What does all this have to do with holding on or letting go? Everything. Yup. Absolutely everything. 

Okay, it’s 32 degrees Fahrenheit, as warm as it’s going to get today, and it’s already closing in on 2 p.m. I need to get my walk in before dark. In the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota, winter brings nighttime virtually on the heels of sunrise. I need to catch while catch can – back soon!

CHAPTER 3

It’s a quarter to eight in the morning and still dark. In honor of all that’s true and holy, I’m letting go of my need for sunlight and embracing the gloom. To my point – I’m choosing not to hold onto what I can’t have right now. I’ll practice patience. That’s a good place to start. I’ll loosen my vise-like grip on the desire for a bright and beautiful day knowing that if I’m patient, that day will come. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, and if I check my weather app, maybe not for a week. But it will come. So, Sherry, give up your infantile whining already! 

Patience isn’t always a virtue. It’s good to have patience for something over which you have no control. Like the weather, for instance. But in circumstances where your needs aren’t getting met…. Here’s where you have to know yourself. If you don’t know what you need, you don’t know when you’re not getting it. To be a healthy human, you must know when action is required to make a change for your well-being. 

So let’s help you get to know you.

After I read that life-changing  Awakening book, I set out on my journey of self-knowing. I made a list of things I love. Not people. Not pets. Things. One of them was sunlight through French doors. Really! That’s random. But it’s something I love. My list went on for pages and pages. I found myself returning to it throughout the days as another ‘love’ popped to mind. 

What a simple task, right? But, by becoming aware of the things I loved, I was able to give myself more of that. I immediately weeded out of my life the things I didn’t love. Itchy clothing, stinky candles, lumpy pillows…. You get the drift!

#1 – Make a list of the things you love

When I well and truly couldn’t think of another thing I loved, I asked myself, What do you want that you don’t have? I quickly realized I’d opened Pandora’s Box – a real can of worms. My day-to-day was a shallow shell of shoulds. I was trying to fit into a mold of imagined expectations – what I thought others wanted of me – that had no resemblance to the life I desired. I remember thinking, I’m just marking time, waiting to die.

I panicked. I’m not kidding. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. My breath came fast and shallow. The room faded in and out of focus. I was cemented into a job, a house, a marriage, a community, an entire life that belonged to someone else.

We stuff this information so deep…we tell ourselves stories to support the lies…we deny, deny, deny, that anything’s wrong and put on a show of the perfect family, the perfect marriage, the perfect employee, the perfect wife, when all the while we are perfectly miserable.

If our reality is dreadfully out of alignment with our heart, it will require great courage to take the steps necessary to shift it. As I viewed my list of woes, my first thought was, no way. There is no way out. My second thought was, But this is unsustainable. I’m just marking time. I have to find a way.

According to the Constitution of the United States, the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right. Deep down I felt that. I hated what I had to do yet I knew I deserved better than a robotic, disengaged existence. But, Oh! My! Where to begin?

And there are times, like now, when my heart says, Keep writing, and my body says, It’s noon! For god’s love, stop and eat breakfast!

‐———-

After breakfast, I did a new vision board.

After lunch, I walked with my sister in a marshmallow world.

After the walk, I worked on chapter 4! Now I await your feedback!

Out With the Old, In With the New, and All That Jazz

09 Jan 2024 16 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Bali, Italy, love, Mexico, Renovating the Hunting Shack, wisdom Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s 2024. That, in itself, is a wonderment to me. It’s a big number. When I thought in terms of my life span, I didn’t think of the year two thousand twenty-four. I thought maybe I’d live into my nineties, but the corresponding date never entered my mind. I’ll be 80 in 2030, ninety in 2040. Okay. I’m going to talk about something else.

My house.

The new addition was a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of last winter. Chipping ice off my car because the doors were frozen shut. Shoveling it out of six-foot snowdrifts. I didn’t ever want a repeat of that. So…

…a garage.

One thing leads to another. If I were going to the trouble and expense of building a garage, I should make the most of it. At the very least, I also needed an entryway where guests’ boots and coats could be shed before entering my very small house. And maybe I could capture some of the attic for living space.

At this very moment, my Prius is tucked securely away from inclement weather, safe and sound. I’ve sheetrocked the entryway and loft, and today I spent several hours mudding the seams.

But when I look at those spaces, I don’t see gray drywall with white spots and stripes.

I see a daybed with a pop-up trundle to accommodate guests. There are comfy chairs and a stunning 9 X 12 rug. Perched above the stairs overlooking the entryway is a desk with a papyrus painting in a sleek black frame hanging on the wall above it.

I’ve already chosen the rug, the daybed, and the chairs. They’re waiting in my Amazon cart. I’ve sourced mattresses. Daily, I scour Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for other furnishings…

…like a desk…

I found it last week on Marketplace, in North Branch, Minnesota. I’m typing this post on its impeccable wood top, sitting in the adorable chair that came with it. My very small house is filling up with accessories for my unfinished loft. But that’s what happens with visualizing what I want. It manifests! And the Universe doesn’t care about timelines. It just gives me what I ask for.

As my house becomes a part of me (or I a part of it) I feel myself settling into my life. So much changed so fast for so long that, even though my body arrived in Minnesota, my heart was scattered over thousands of miles. I’ve come to accept the fact that it always will be. I have loves, many loves, in Bali, in San Miguel de Allende, in Priano, Italy, in Doha, Qatar, in Spain, Germany, Iceland, Norway, in Montara, California, Isle of Palms, South Carolina, and all over Minnesota. Those people are precious to me and distance won’t change that.

But the hard physical work that has been my reality for the past year-and-a-half, kept me focused in the present. I needed the effects of sweat and exhaustion, and the vision of a ‘forever home’ here in the far north, to ground me. And, fortunately for me, I’ve never been one to cling to what is past.

Tonight, my brother-in-law asked me what I’ll do when the work is done. Only recently have I allowed myself to entertain thoughts about that. It seemed so remote. But now there’s a faint glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Gwen spoke up. “You’ll write!” I do have an unfinished novel, Nettle Creek, to complete. And there’s a local book club I’ve been invited to join. My yard needs flowers. I’d like to continue to study Spanish. And travel? Do I still have gypsy feet? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, it’s 2024. A potent year. I’m 74 and will never be younger than I am right now. Whatever is left undone in my heart, needs to be addressed. But, oh! What a privilege to have a home!