When Father’s Day Is … Complicated

When Father’s Day Is … Complicated

As Father’s Day approached, my dad would call and ask “What did you get me for Father’s Day?” 

He thought he was being funny and clever — especially since my birthday is right around Father’s Day. But to me it was a painful, mocking, in-your-face question, because he could be hit-or-miss about my birthday. 

Or, he’d remember and promise a gift that never came, when truly what I really wanted was some of his devoted time and attention.

These days leading up to Father’s Day are still bittersweet and loaded for me. 

I want to be sure the good, solid and caring, reliable men in my life — my husband, my stepfather, my father-in-law — feel special, honored and appreciated. Our families, our communities and our society all need good, honest, reliable, caring men.

And I want to honor my dad’s memory — by sharing the lessons of our relationship and how we made peace, with hope that it will help other people. 

Telling the Truth

Shopping for a Father’s Day card into my 30s was stressful because they all say really nice things. Like “Thanks for always being there” and “I have the best dad.” 

My dad was always a different kind of dad than the ideal one described in the greeting cards and on the TV commercials around Father’s Day.

He’d cheated on our families and left the heavy lifting of raising and supporting his two daughters to his ex-wives, our moms. That’s the truth. As a kid, I was entitled to my anger at him.

As adults, we can see a fuller, more honest picture of our parents as real, flawed human beings. We can’t change them. 

But we can choose compassion, to forgive, and to heal. Not necessarily for them — but for us.

I know this isn’t possible for everyone. Self-preservation is paramount. You must do what you feel is best for your own emotional health.

Still — my wish is to inspire people to do whatever they can to heal their own family estrangements and complicated relationships whenever possible.

Is there some way to make it better? A small step toward a healthier relationship?

My decision was worth the trouble. I often think of my dad, and feel peace.

“Willing to Rebuild … You?”

By June 1996 — as Father’s Day approached — I was an adult about to turn 26, and decided to stop punishing my dad. By then, we’d had our first real, honest, heart-to-heart conversation. I could see his own pain, and I knew that his insensitive, edge-y jokes reflected the way his parents and older brother talked and tried to shock each other into laughter.

So I did something different than buy a funny Father’s Day card with some fishing or golf cliché that didn’t really say much of anything. 

I sent a little gift book from the bookshop in my office building and a blank card with a handwritten, personal message pledging that I was willing to work on rebuilding our relationship, if he was. 

He was. He did. He took it to heart and tried and worked at it. 

We enjoyed a pretty good, relatively healthy father-daughter relationship for the 17 years until he died. 

It didn’t match the father-daughter clichés. I never felt like a princess. What we re-built was much better. I said exactly what I was thinking and feeling to him. I think he did the same. It was real, true and loving.  

He was there to help when I bought my first house, and to walk me to a waiting groom on my wedding day. When the end of that marriage was fresh and raw — and I melted down just looking for a tool in the basement — my dad was standing there to simply hold his arms open and let me sob and blubber against his chest. 

He didn’t say a word — Thank God! That’s exactly what I needed.

When he emerged from two weeks in a medical coma, he was disoriented and confused and certain he had been in a car crash and had brain damage. Neither was true. He could not process the details of what all happened after his appendix ruptured. The fiery car crash he had dreamed about was so much more real to him. 

I looked him straight in the eyes and said: “Would I bullshit you?” 

He shook his head no. I told him he was not brain-damaged, that it was the medications. He would be just fine. I’m not sure he believed me — but he hopefully felt some comfort.

We can’t fix it. But we can often make it a little better — and with grace that may help turn things around.

I’m grateful for the wisdom of that 1996 decision — and grateful my dad cared enough, and was still around to work at it. I know not everyone gets that. We were both better off because we patched it up. I believe it led me to a healthier, more whole and peaceful life, and was well worth the effort.

My dad and I the summer before he died.

Sticking Around

This week, I’ve been listening to and transcribing the recording of a conversation with my dad’s brother from 2014.

He, too, like my dad, had a child in 1970 with his first wife, and then soon divorced. When that marriage ended, my uncle moved 3,000 miles away, and a few years later surrendered his parental rights to his son so that the little boy could be adopted by his stepfather.

My uncle spoke about his decisions as openly as he could. He agreed to my questions and recording the conversation, knowing there could someday be a book.

He spoke warmly of seeing his newborn son for the first time, and explained his decision to move away. He felt he needed a clean break. He thought his child would have a better life without him. 

My uncle spoke of his guilt over trying to re-connect 40 years later, and wanting to see his biological son, now a man with a family of his own.

I feel his pain and regret on that recording. It’s palpable to me. 

My uncle has since died.

I hope it all worked out for the best — that my lost cousin indeed had a better life with his mom and stepfather — that my dad and I had a different path that helped us grow into better people together and on our own.

If I could send a Father’s Day card to my dad now, I’d still write my own message:

Thank you for loving me. Thank you for sticking around. Thanks for never letting go, and working hard to rebuild. Thanks for doing the best you could. It was enough. It was plenty.

How One Tough Mama Raised a Strong Daughter

How One Tough Mama Raised a Strong Daughter

Sister Louise looked like she’d bit into a frog. I’d just read my assignment out loud in her fifth-grade religion class.

Her stunned expression made me nervous. The kids’ faces also registered shock.

We were to write about how our parents reflected Catholic church teachings at home. My response was a literal, matter-of-fact report — missing entirely that I was expected to highlight the holiest, most wholesome and loving moments from home.

There were, indeed, lots of those.

My single mom rose early for work and made dinner every night. On winter evenings after supper, we’d twirl and glide across the ice rink at the park, warming up with hot chocolate. Every summer, she somehow found a way to take us on vacation, pay for swimming and piano lessons and explore the woods.

She worked hard to raise me and provide everything I needed, and pay the tuition at St. Wenceslas. The parish of brick buildings had one large school building including a church with stained glass windows of garnet red and sapphire blue, classrooms for kindergarten through eighth grade along shiny linoleum corridors perpetually scented with disinfectant.

Good King Wenceslas, alabaster and life-sized, stood sentry over the black asphalt parking lot where we had recess. For many years, I thought that statue high up on the brick building was God watching us play kickball and tag. 

By every measure, she is a great mom. There. Steady. Loving.

Yet, I was a kid who could fixate on who wasn’t there — my dad — and how things at home fell short of the Eight is Enough family I saw on TV. All those brothers and sisters looked like so much fun.

En Route to Hell

So, how were my parents reflecting the Catholic lifestyle and teachings at home?

Well … Not exactly, I wrote. It’s just my mom and I. My parents are divorced and sometimes we argue about stuff and she gets mad. She swears sometimes. We say “Oh my God” which is wrong because we’re taking the Lord’s name in vain.

My mom remembers the phone call that day. My guess is Sister Mary Gerald, the principal, acting on Sister Louise’s concerns, gave her a ring.

“The nuns were so sure you were going to hell and I was pushing you along,” my mom recalls. 

By sending her daughter to Catholic elementary school, my mom was already subjecting herself to judgment and shaming. The Catholic teaching is that only death can break a marriage, and that divorce is immoral because it breaks up the family, has a contagious effect and is a “plague on society.” Civil divorce can be “tolerated” under certain conditions.

I can’t imagine how painful it was for my mom to be part of a community that “tolerated” her difficult decision to split with my father to protect her child and herself. He was volatile — not violent — unpredictable, and unfaithful. Later, he and I made peace.

While reconciling with my dad was beautiful and healing, it was my mom who nurtured me through childhood.

Imminent Punishment

By the time I reached my grandparents’ house after school that day, my mom had gotten the call, which she shared with her mother. My grandmother asked me some tough questions. I told her what I’d said. 

As she TSKed her disapproval, my cheeks were already hot with shame. 

Public opinion mattered. What I did at school reflected on our family. And, surely, my grandmother was being protective of her own daughter.

My grandparents were good, strong, honorable, capable people, part of the Greatest Generation. They were World War II veterans and devout Catholics who regularly attended St. W’s. My grandmother had served as an Army nurse and then worked nights in the local hospital as a maternity nurse. My grandfather was a community leader, the full-time, elected mayor of our suburb outside Cleveland.

I was 10, clueless about the big picture — and certain I’d be in big trouble when my mom got home from work.

A Lesson in Unconditional Love

When she arrived, my mom shook off the whole thing. She chuckled. No big deal. My grandmother’s face showed her disapproval, but she held her tongue and dropped it.

Alone in our blue station wagon in my grandparents’ driveway, my mom said she was proud. She was pleased, she said, to be raising a daughter who would question authority and tell her truth. She wasn’t raising a parrot, but a thinking, questioning, honest human being.

That day, she respected me and honored who I was at my core: A truth-teller, come what may. She knows me inside and out. She knew I struggled because I longed for my dad and our family was atypical.

She made it crystal clear she loved me unconditionally. Still does.

I became a professional journalist and non-fiction writer, digging, searching, thinking and writing about truth every day.

Despite my many flaws, bad habits and quirks, I am strong. I am resilient. Of this I’m sure.

Dr. Meg Meeker, a pediatrician and author of six books on how strong parents can raise strong children, lists “Believe in Her” as the number one way in which parents can raise strong daughters.

“When your daughter senses you believe in her, she begins to believe in herself, and when she does, she can do anything,” wrote Dr. Meeker in a March 2017 post.

The most important, powerful birthright of any child is to feel loved beyond measure, no matter what. Seen. Respected. Honored.

That’s what I remember most from that day. 

Just Fine — and Furious

My mom most remembers being furious.

The sister told her the nuns were concerned about my moral upbringing, certain my mom was leading me down the wrong path, if not straight to hell, then certainly a long imprisonment in purgatory.

My mom stood right up to her for both of us. She, as the parent, was in charge of my moral upbringing and thought it was going just fine. 

So, respectfully: Butt out, sister. 

My mom, my superhero, and I in Maine, hunting for plants.
My mom and I in Maine,
shopping a favorite greenhouse
for plants on Memorial
Day weekend.

Mission Accomplished

My blood boils thinking of what my mom went through. I cringe at my accidental humiliation of her before a community that should have been so much kinder, more loving and accepting of her.

The most satisfying irony of that day in 1981 is that the nuns indeed did their job, just not in the way they’d apparently intended. They deserve my benefit of the doubt that they genuinely did what they felt was right and in my best interest.

They gave my mom an opportunity to teach me, not only that she believes in me, but about love.

My blood boils thinking of how judgmental people and divisive rules block someone’s reach for God and a loving community.

Love is more important than rules or judgment or church doctrine. God is Love. We are all loved.

I grew up knowing right from wrong, knowing I was loved. I shook free of the nuns’ judgment but never lost my faith, or belief that LOVE is above all else.

That’s my truth.

(Which makes me neither perfect nor holier-than-thou. Still struggling to put a lid on my swearing.)

So, my mom said when we compared memories of the incident in Sr. Louise’s fifth-grade religion class, What I tried to instill in you worked?

She knew the answer.

Yes, mom. You did a fine job. Actually, truth be told, a damn good job.

Keep In Touch

Keep In Touch

Hi. It’s me. Your Dad. We Came From Love, Part 2

When I was 37, my Dad changed my first name from Lisa to Jisa.

Entering my name as a contact on his flip phone required expert toggling through the J, K and L on a single button — a skill level beyond him for that first letter.

He could not — would not— figure out how to correct it. 

Much easier, of course, to give his eldest daughter a new nickname.

I can just see him in his leather chair in front of the TV in the vast, open first floor living room of the renovated barn east of Cleveland, the home he shared with his longtime girlfriend and their rescue animals. He’s pushing buttons, squinting to see the screen, getting frustrated.

Then, shrugging his shoulders, he gives up. Good enough.

So I became Jisa, to him, when we talked on the phone. Hey, at least he figured out the rest of the letters.

Beautifully Flawed

A dear friend recently described my Dad as “beautifully flawed.”

She nailed it.

David was infuriating, funny and charming. Stubborn, smart, and strong. He sold cars and insurance policies and maybe even commercial ovens at one time. He loved to chat, to joke and flirt. To schmooze.

My dad was great at connecting with people — and never stopped calling, even when I didn’t have much to say to him.

He’d wanted, I believe, to be a family man like his dad — yet cheated on our two families, which helped bust his marriages, first to my mother then later to my stepmother. He’d left the heavy lifting of raising his daughters to his ex-wives.

He could drive a perfectly sane person to want to strangle him. I’ve seen white with anger, in response to his words. And rolled my eyes. (A lot.) And chuckled. And cried.

For about 10 years, I checked out of the relationship. We didn’t speak or see each other much. I was perfectly entitled to my anger.

Still, I could not help but love him, and miss him. He never stopped calling. I focused on what he had done and could do, less on how he’d failed. We rebuilt. We found peace. 

Coffee Break Check-In

By the time he changed my name, we talked every few days about completely ordinary stuff — mowing the lawn, fixing stuff on my house, what’s for dinner, keeping tabs on my younger sister. 

During my divorce year, we talked almost every day. He knew that grief.

On an ordinary, sunny summer afternoon he’d call to say he was sitting outside enjoying the sunshine, watching his Bassett hound play with the Airedale, drinking a cup of coffee — always the coffee — and taking a break from cutting the huge lawn on his riding mower. 

If I answered – Jisa, is that you?

If I didn’t answer, he left a voice-mail: “Jisa! Hi. It’s me. Your Dad. I was just thinking about you… Just wondering what you’re doing.  You must be busy. Guess I’ll go finish cutting the grass. I’ll talk to you later.”

Then a pause. His voice would soften, reflecting the puckering of his upper lip as he said: “I love you.” 

Keeping in Touch ~ More Powerful than it Seems

He is gone. So are the voice-mail recordings.

But when I read my grandfather’s letters from World War II, I can almost hear my Dad’s voice on the other end of the line.

Loving you for Always —
despite time, miles, war and death.

My paternal grandfather, Bill, wrote his wife and young child every day from a Navy ship in the Pacific, to relay seemingly unimportant details about ordinary day-to-day things: laundry, last night’s movie in the mess hall, work shifts, the next cup of coffee, shower and shave.

In the midst of all that mundane stuff, the most important truth: I love you. I miss you.

The letters and my Dad’s routine phone calls remind me of how powerful it is for us to keep in touch with the people we love, especially those from whom we are separated — whether that distance is emotional, geographical, time or all of those. 

Even when there isn’t much to say — or it hurts an awful lot to say it.

Every Family Has a Story

We are all part of a family, and every family has a story. Most, if not all, of those stories include someone who is somehow separated. Lost, yet alive. So among all that pain, still there is hope.

If you are the separated someone, I promise you are loved and missed. There is always a way back to love.

Addiction. Divorce. Mental illness. Anger. Bitterness. Our families can go off the rails and fall apart in far too many ways.

Craving healing and wholeness in my family has been constant through decades. Maybe you know how that feels. I’m grateful for those wishes that have been granted, hopeful for those that remain.

Sometimes, it’s just not possible. No matter how much you want it or work for it, or pray for it, reconciliation remains impossible. Sometimes, self-preservation and staying healthy means severing ties. True, yet this makes me sad. Still, we must hope for light over darkness.

There’s Still Time

I had the good fortune recently to be nearby as a father and daughter got to see each other for the first time in too many years. Far too long. They hugged. They cried. They’d terribly missed each other. 

My heart ached for all of their lost time — and melted thinking about the time they still had together.

People who kept in touch over the vast distance made their reunion possible. They found a way to keep saying: You are part of me. I miss you. I love you. The faith that they would somehow be together again ultimately was rewarded.

Keeping in touch is powerful — more so than it may seem at the time.

Determination vs. Death

My dad never gave up on us or life, never stopped calling to say, “I love you.” 

David in July 2012, at the Cleveland Botanic Garden, our treat on the way to chemo.

He died in January 2013. 

A few years before that, 10 years ago this November, he had somehow defied death.

He battled a serious infection and spent about two weeks in a medical coma, struggling to live. As he deeply slept, I sat holding his hand, both talking to him and silently urging him, to fight and stay in this world. 

I pulled at him with more than I knew I had. 

I dug in. I yanked. I tugged. With him, we all battled death.

I love you. I miss you. Stay with us.

He survived, and we had a few more years. For several days after the coma, he was awake but loopy from the drugs, certain he had been in a car accident and suffered brain damage. Neither was true.

As his mental fog began to clear, the weekend of Thanksgiving, I was on the road, stopped at the Capitol Diner in Harrisburg, Pa., when my phone rang. My sister helped him call me.

Jisa, is that you?

The sweetest sound. Relieved and exhausted, I slumped into the booth’s vinyl seat.

Yep, right here, Dad.

We Came From Love ~ Part 1

We Came From Love ~ Part 1

Hello my Darling Wife & Son 

So begin many of the letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother during World War II, soon after they were married, every day for seven months in 1945.

He was 30. Still a kid really. A new husband and father, and he must have been scared. 

He worked as an electrician’s mate on the U.S.S. Onslow, a Navy seaplane tender ship in the South Pacific, halfway around the world from home among the flat fields of Ohio. 

The letters are full of ordinary things, routine tasks and duties, longing and love. 

They are a beautiful comfort to me. A small window into my grandparents as a young couple, into the roots of my ordinary American, Midwest family.

The man I knew as my grandfather was emotionally reserved and physically weary compared to the young man writing his new wife every day. Still, he cherished his family and took great care in tending the tomato plants and peach trees in his back yard. He made Christmas wreaths out of pinecones and built corner shelves with a jigsaw.

By the time they were my grandparents, Bill and Margaret had been married nearly 30 years. I remember them as devoted, respectful companions, though not particularly affectionate.

Comfort through Connection

I turned to the letters out of curiosity, longing for connection to my family-of-origin, longing for my dad — who was slipping away when I first learned the letters existed.

By then, my maternal grandmother had shared some of the love story of my maternal grandparents — both World War II veterans who were also married nearly 50 years.

But my father’s side was a total mystery.

My uncle, my dad’s only brother who lived in California, found the stacks of letters in their father’s tidy handwriting, in my dad’s stuff — which included my grandmother’s keepsakes — and gave them to me before he died.

This snapshot of my grandparents’ love story is so comforting. Despite the divorces of their sons, we — their children and grandchildren — came from love.

Four Tidy Bundles

My grandfather wrote nearly every day from March to November 1945. 

There are four bundles of letters. I don’t have to know all their words. Just pulling the stacks from safekeeping and touching the faded ink swirls of my grandfather’s handwriting is soothing to me. 

The letters are enclosed and protected in identical air mail envelopes 3 ½ inches by 7 ½ inches. Three stacks are gathered with thin twine, a fat white ribbon secures the fourth. Most of the envelopes have a dirty tan patina with red and blue stripes. 

My grandmother’s name, Margaret, in my grandfather’s handwriting in faded blue and black ink marks each envelope. They bear a brick red air mail postage stamp, a Navy postmark with the date, and a “passed by censor” stamp.

That stamp is probably why the letters give little indication of what it was really like to serve on board that ship: The comings and goings of airplanes, watching for submarines or the invasion of Okinawa, all of which I’ve read about online.

He first wrote on March 9, 1945, from what I can tell so far. From the ship’s history I can find online, Onslow sailed exactly two weeks later in preparation for the invasion of Okinawa.

“Ordinary” Days in Extraordinary Times

Generally, the letters follow a script:

“Hello my Darling Wife & Son” — or sometimes “Joey” instead of son.

He was referring to my uncle, who was just starting to talk and “into everything.” My dad was not born until after the war, in 1948.

After he asks how they are doing, he adds: “Fine and dandy I hope.”

He reports on whether he’s received mail from back home, and describes some assortment of daily rituals: the movie playing that night in the mess hall, a recent card game, whether all of his clothes properly reappeared from the laundry, whether it’s been hot or cool at night. And he writes about what’s next: a nap, a hot shower, a shave, a cup of joe.

Part of a Love Story

The letters, I thought, would help me better understand the men in my father’s family and the fathers they became, to better understand their stories that became the roots of my story.

My grandfather clearly pines for his young son, so they helped a little.

The way my grandfather closes his letters always give me goosebumps. He pours out his heart, and in my mind’s eye I see a young man, scared, so very far from home and just deeply longing for his wife and child.

“Well darlings for tonite then loads of love and hugs and kisses to the ones I love more than anything in the world. Your loving husband & Dad.”

He signs them “Bill,” then adds at the bottom “I love you – I miss you.”

That’s when the comfort of the letters washes over me. They are touchstones and reminders that my grandparents were in love — the long-lasting, golden anniversary kind. 

And I remember that my parents must have been in love, too. Short and fleeting, but love nonetheless. My parents’ marriage did not last nearly as long as my grandparents’, but I like to think for at least a little while it was just as real, just as grand and sweet.

In my family, like many families, a lot went off the rails. Yet, we are all part of a beautiful love story — it’s right there, in my grandfather’s handwritten letters.

My Cure for my Grinding Mind: 10 Ways to get Unstuck

My Cure for my Grinding Mind: 10 Ways to get Unstuck

We keep a few small, plastic discs in the freezer — a baseball shape, a football — to chill packed lunches.

Sometimes, they are my only relief from a headache.

As my husband and I headed back to central Pennsylvania from Florida last week, my head throbbed. Two ibuprofen got me through the flight home.

But despite a restful sleep, the pounding in my crown and forehead was back with a vengeance on Sunday morning.

Sensory overload. The schlepp to the airport, driving in heavy traffic, the Florida heat shock to my pasty white Northern skin.

My grinding mind. 

A self-imposed deadline is fast-approaching. I’m not as far along as I’d like to be. Panic creeps in. Shallow breathing, tight, queasy belly. Here we go.

Maybe I should just give up? Take myself off the hook, and return to my comfort zone. That just hurt more. 

I put it all on ice, under that small, frozen disc, and let myself lay on the couch for awhile, soaking up the quiet peace of being home. 

The next morning, I was back at the desk, feeling inspired and ready to roll.

10 Ways to Get Unstuck

Stop and drop. Pain is a shout out from my system that it’s out of whack and needs attention. I play through discomfort — but not intense pain. That lands me on the couch with an ice pack.

Stop thinking. Start feeling. Sometimes the best solution is to stop thinking about one. Start breathing, as deeply as you can. Pay attention to senses. If you are on sensory overload, find those earbuds and pipe in something calm and soothing. If not, pay attention to senses: the quiet stillness, the light, the blue sky, the softness of a quilt, the scent of wood burning in the woodstove.

Routine. Your routine is there for a reason. It works for you. Our Sunday morning church service leaves me feeling nourished, and so I rallied off the couch and into the shower. I slipped into the pew beside my husband just moments before our service started. It definitely helped me hit the re-set button. If your routine is not working for you, tweak it. Not all at once. Just one thing. This also means permission to exercise flexibility. Grocery shopping just felt like too much that Sunday, so I found some time on Monday.

Put the phone down. Seriously. Yes, a useful tool. I can be away from my desk and still keep projects moving. It’s also a screeching monkey, poking holes in my brain because it constantly interrupts real connection, in-person conversations and thoughts. I catch myself on that darn phone doing things that can either wait, are hardly more important than experiencing the people and scenery around me — or, are just completely unnecessary. Just. Stop.

Stop the madness. Turn it over. Put it down. Leave it there. Please.

Self-care: Walk. Tight muscles often lead to my headaches. Finally, we’ve had enough warm days here to melt the snow and ice on my favorite trail in the woods. So the big dog and I walked my favorite ridge trail, soaking in the sunshine. The kinks and knots in my body released with every step. 

Self-care: Sleep. I’m not a good napper. But I know most of the time when I don’t feel good, I’m tired. “There’s a cure for that, hon!” the hubs reminds me. Twenty minutes on the couch, even if I never fall asleep, makes a difference. Then I vow to put myself to bed early.

Self-care: Drink a lot of water. Then some more. I detest the plastic waste of water bottles. Somehow, it’s much easier — but no less wasteful — to reach for a coffee or diet soda, until my brain aches. 

Leverage the positive. Half-empty or half-full? I can freak out about the work left to do, or note the research that’s done — which is more than I had a few weeks ago. Progress is being made. Never as fast as I’d like … Yet progress nonetheless. 

The timer is your friend. Writers often have trouble getting started. Nothing is more terrifying than the blank page, they say. I won’t stare at that empty page for long. Over many years as a pro writer, I’ve trained myself to set the timer for 10, 20, 30 minutes and just get something down. I can fix it later. The key is to just get started. By Sunday afternoon, after the ice pack and the walk and the nap and a lot of water, I set the timer for 2 hours, started a new thread of research, found some interesting information and very soon knew what to do next. 

Take the next best step. Don’t get snaggled up on steps 3, 4 & 5. All you have to do is identify the next best step, then take it.  

Finally, gratitude. Always gratitude. Every day of the year, there is much to be grateful for. Even pain holds lessons. Onward. 

Here’s the thing: Making new stuff is hard. Putting yourself and ideas out there, opening yourself up to rejection is hard. 

Yet, that’s the gig. For many of us, that’s the deal, that’s the mission. 

You’ve heard a call, and answered. Now you just have to keep going.

The only answer is to take the next best step. And when you can’t, your biggest job is to take care of yourself and get back in the game so you can.

I’ve never been an athlete, but live with three others here in the Man Cave. My hubs and stepsons are either resting, relaxing, working, playing or on the move. No wallowing. No whining. 

They keep me on my toes. In the moment, when I’m struggling to catch up to them, I’m admittedly more sour than grateful. Yet, never down for long. Turn the page. Tomorrow is a new day.

And ultimately, immensely grateful for this life.