Month: April 2016

kindness

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Today was a day where the judgement of others was free flowing and by evening had reached maximum capacity. I had one of those moments where I just stopped and became genuinely overwhelmed by the fact I am raising my children in a society full of people that seem to bring attention to what they “hate” instead of promoting the things that bring them happiness. Insert brief moment where I begin to narrow down my thought…now, cue the realization that it’s not an entire society, it’s just a small, conservative town in the south. It is a place where I have lived less than 10 years of my adult life but also the place my three children consider “home.” I rationalize with myself on a weekly basis that bigots are everywhere. Then I allow myself to believe the truth, there is a concentrated population existing in my general vicinity.

Hear me when I say it is not hard to raise tolerant individuals. It goes a little something like this…from a very early age you teach children to be kind and accepting. The end. The problem is children are sponges and they are soaking up the “hate” from the adults around them. Those adults probably soaked it up as children from the adults around them.

Intolerance has become rampant. People excuse others intolerant behavior on a daily basis and they are rationalizing their “hate” using every excuse from ignorance to religion. Ignorance can only be remedied through education. Children are learning how to read, add and subtract, the state capitals and the periodic table but somehow so many are missing the important lesson of empathy. No one is teaching them to understand where another person is coming from and how to treat the concerns of others the way they would treat their own. On the religious front, I’m pretty sure Jesus would be disappointed in the amount of “hate” being spread around in his name. If I remember my lessons from Sunday school correctly, Jesus gave one and only one commandment. Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another. Maybe this explains why I have a hard time weeding through them myself. It’s hard to see the LOVE through all the HATE.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. ~ Nelson Mandela

 

friendship.

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“You have been a friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.”~ Charlotte to Wilbur

My husband and I will celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary this August. We first saw each other at the 8th grade graduation where he and my friend Erica attended middle school. We were 14 years old. We have a son who is the exact age that we were when we met. As his mom, I am astounded that I met my husband at his age. There was an energy that connected us from an early age that even we didn’t understand and were incapable of  explaining at that time.

At 33, as I sit and write this blog I still feel that energy. I don’t know that I understand it or that I am capable of explaining it any better in the almost 20 years I’ve known my husband. I know that first and foremost, he has been my bestfriend for those years. He is a part of a team that has raised 3 incredible children who are kind, thoughtful, empathetic, compassionate, and accepting humans. He has allowed himself and his family to grow with life’s experience. He has supported our family through devastating loss and been the calm through various storms. Our marriage has had tremendous stress and at times, life’s circumstances that were dealt to us seemed almost unbearable. I know without a doubt that the strength of our friendship is what enabled us to make it to the other side of those times and allows us to face the days that are extremely difficult to take on even today.

When I stood in a church at barely 18 and married George, I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. Unfortunately, I was not given the circumstances of a childhood that allowed for self discovery. My childhood didn’t come with a lot of respect or loyalty from my family but what it did come with was the gift of friendship. I met Erica and her family the summer after kindergarten. Erica’s friendship provided me with a portal to a different childhood, an opportunity to live out many days spent with her family making memories that will last me a lifetime. Her mom loved me and included me in so much that she didn’t have to and the selfless love she gave me had a tremendous impact on the mother and person I have become. When I look back on my wedding day, I’m sure that the doubts (and there were lots of doubts) that I had that day were put to ease by the trust I had in my friendship with George. I’m grateful now at 33 that I married a boy that grew up to be a man that valued our friendship enough to let me grow into a woman that discovered herself and her ideas of what she wanted her life’s picture to look like. My friendship with George was my portal to a different family experience, one that showed me respect and valued my contributions. When I look back at my wedding day, there are only a few things from that day who truly represent who I was. It certainly wasn’t the building, the dress, any part of the ceremony or the majority of people who filled the pews who had no vested interest in our happiness. It was looking out into the eyes of the few that attended and truly wished us happiness with Erica standing beside me as I married my bestfriend…oh and the little flower girls who sat on the steps at my feet and giggled.

This week, I had the most amazing opportunity to watch one of those little flower girls get married. Let me first say, she is one of my most favorite people in this great big world, second only to my husband and children. She is one of my bestfriends, and one of the few people I look up to. She is 19, only a year older than me when I got married. She also married her bestfriend, her portal to a life where she too was understood, respected, and valued. That is where the similarities end in regards to our weddings. As I photographed her special day for her, I thought – she is going to look back on this day with such gratitude. She married her bestfriend in an intimate ceremony at the courthouse, in a casual dress with a DIY bouquet expressing vows that you would have thought a poet who studied the true meaning of love wrote, with so much confidence and self assurance. If I hadn’t been so damn happy for her, I would have been envious.

As I reflect on this time of my life, I’m thankful for the friendship of my husband. I’m thankful my little flower girl found friendship in her husband. I’m thankful that my children don’t need friendship as a portal but sincerely hope they will use it as a guide through their lives.

Roll call…

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Magaen… Present and accounted for.

“The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts” H. Jackson Brown

Well if that quote doesn’t sum up my intention for this blog, I don’t know what does. I’ve had big dreams of writing a blog for many years. I’ve sporadically blogged over the years but I’ve recently felt the need to do it on a more consistent basis. Deep down, my dream job is to be a columnist for one of my favorite sites like Huffington Post or Elephant Journal. The quote said BIG dreams. Writing is extremely cathartic for me. I’m an intensely emotional person and am quite passionate about the things I love and the things I despise. Most things fall on either list, there is not a lot of middle-ground storage in my opinion vault. The quote also says dreams are more powerful than facts, which is great because this blog is fueled on dreams and opinions.

In the past I’ve written primarily about my three children because being their mom is such an integral part of who I am. My dream for this new blog is to write about whatever topic I feel the conversation in my head between myself and I just didn’t squelch. I hope to share funny stories that make us laugh, ask questions that help us learn and provoke thoughts that help us grow.

Also, please don’t hold my children accountable for my opinions. They have their own opinions and that’s not only allowed but encouraged in our house.