Beautiful Olive

Category: Welcome

  • Making Sense out of Non-Sense.

    Do you know how many blogs and essays and opinions are out there for us to soak up? I’ve never googled it. But, I know it’s a lot. There are so many, that there are no words or ideas or phrases that I will pen here today that will be necessarily new. So, why do those of us who like to throw our ideas onto paper keep doing it, if it’s not really laying down anything that hasn’t already been said before? Because in the same way that many give big, giant hugs as a means of support, I give words. I do like hugs. Human touch (especially now) is golden. But, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always recorded my deepest emotions in words. And then I give them to other people. Like a hug.

    I’m sitting here on a Sunday afternoon and the window is open because it’s 62 degrees with a barely noticeable breeze. I hear a bird. I hear a dog. I hear the bouncing basketball and the dad and the son shooting it around on the driveway. I hear the unattended tv in our family room – also hoops. I hear an airplane. And because we had an unbelievable tragedy in our state last Monday, as I pause and listen to my surroundings, my mind takes me back 7 days to last Sunday. The day before that tragedy. Did any of those 10 souls, whose lives on Earth were cut short without their permission, hear any of these same things last Sunday? It was cooler that day, maybe the windows weren’t open. Dogs surely barked and birds sang, though. Families played ball. People flew in airplanes. Same as today. Just seven days ago.

    My mind wonders what sounds each of them noticed last Sunday. Of all the sounds that competed for brain space, which ones sped VIP to the frontal lobe, beating out all of the other riff-raff sounds that didn’t matter? There are a lot of sounds that come into our ears every minute. We don’t pay attention to them all. We can’t. Filtering is vital to our survival. The world would be a cacophony from birth to death without it. The possibilities of what each of those 10 heard and noticed on that Sunday before that tragedy is endless. As I listen to the dad, the son, the basketball, the dog, the bird, the airplane, I find myself hoping that whatever it was they each heard and processed, noticed, and felt on that day was full of meaning, emotion, reverence, and love. That they heard the most important things for him or her on that day, at that moment.

    How do we move forward in light of a horrible tragedy? How do we fix what’s broken? How do we heal people who hurt? And how do we heal people who might hurt other people? How do we heal them before they hurt people? Fractured families, workplaces, schools, nations? How do we help people to visit stores, attend movies, drive down the highway, get on airplanes, and go to school without a fear that tomorrow might not look like today?

    The truth is, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. But, you know how a loved one will jump in to hug you as tight as a vise when the sadness in your heart threatens to overtake you? I know you know what I’m talking about. There are people we encounter in our lives that can literally hug the hurt out of us – if only just for a few seconds. But, there is power in that few seconds. Those seconds allow you time to catch a needed breath and get some clarity. Clarity not to forget what brought you the hurt in the first place, but to know how to move forward when the hug is over and in a way that doesn’t destroy you in the process.

    In that same vein, I offer my words. They are my hug to you. And in the same way that a hug can’t directly make you feel at ease getting on the airplane or walking through the shopping mall or ducking in to buy those eggs, that hug gives you so much power. You have power. We have power. We have a beautiful world full of birds and basketballs and people who hug us so tight we see stars. Is it fragile? Of course, it is. Why do you think we see stars and only stars for a quick second when somebody hugs us that tightly?!? Because life is fragile. Fragility is okay. The world doesn’t require us to be tough and unbreakable. It only requires that we care more than we fear. That is how we help each other. Give and get all the hugs this week. They don’t always come physically, especially in Covid.

    XOXO

  • Period. (Pause) Colon:

    New Year’s Day is THE best holiday of the year (hold tight, I’ll explain). This year I am absolutely gaga over the fact that so many other people believe this to be true, also! 2020 made short work of that. I didn’t even have to campaign. There isn’t a soul around that isn’t counting down the seconds to 2021. And it makes sense – dumpster fires are interesting for a bit but who wants to perpetually watch one for months on end?

    Why not make New Year’s Day your new favorite holiday! You see, New Year’s Day is a zero-obligation holiday. No gifts. No big family gatherings. No travel. No musts. It literally is a holiday whose only reason for existence is that the number designating the year changed. That’s it.

    You don’t have to answer the door and hand out candy. You don’t have to have a bunch of people in your house. You don’t have to buy a bunch of gifts, make a bunch of food, spend a bunch of money, light a bunch of fireworks, or string lights and decorations around the entire front yard. You don’t have to DO anything but you CAN IF YOU WANT TO. That is the beauty of this day (except for the “bunch of people in your house” – please not this year).

    New Year’s Day, as the zero-obligation holiday, is the day when you get to do whatever you want. You want to sleep until noon, eat nachos, and watch football? There you go! You want to get up, start your new exercise routine, meditate, and set your goals? Do it! Do you want to make animal pancakes with the kids, go for an afternoon walk, be in bed by 8 p.m.? It’s all yours! You want to take down every piece of holiday decor, clean every inch of your house, and put your feet up with a glass of wine? Be my guest. Do you want to work on a puzzle? Bake a cake? Meal prep? Boom. All the other holidays boss you around with their fancy to-do lists. New Year’s Day is a holiday just waiting for YOU to tell it what to do.

    But, here’s the bigger reason why I love New Year’s Day. I am a hopeful person. Behind every crap day is the hope of a better day tomorrow. Behind every crap year is the hope of a better year. New Year’s Day has always been this day-long pause in which I take a deep breath, square up the dreams in my head, and rev the engine for what’s to come. Some years I am up early and making resolutions. Other years I am sleeping the day away and eating whatever sounds good (like last year…because my neighbors had an NYE party and they throw the best parties 🎉😁). Who knows what tomorrow will bring?? I will just wake up to that great pause of a holiday and see where it takes me.

    New Year’s Eve puts a period on the past. Bye-bye, 2020. Sayonara. It’s been real – maybe a little too real. And now we are leaving it in the dust.

    New Year’s Day is the pause. Do as much or as little as you want. It is your recess. Your intermission. It is your space between what went down last year and what fantastic adventures await you in the new year. It’s recess and you get to spend your recess however you want. No obligations.

    And then, on January 2nd, you start 2021 like this:

    “2021: _________________________________________

    After the colon, you start listing all the ways you’re going to have a glorious 2021. List as many or as few as you want. The colon is made to handle an endless list or a brief one. I’m sure there are grammar police who would argue, but do we care? No. The list is all about hope for the future and we cannot bog it down with rules.

    See? It’s the best holiday. Go enjoy your day doing whatever it is you want to do. And then? Go explode into 2021 with ferocity, a loving spirit, and a giant grin on your face. The period won’t reappear until December 31st, 2021.

  • Under The Bridge

    I once heard a man give this advice: When I come home at the end of the day, I visualize myself hanging up the work day’s stresses on a tree outside my door. I know I can pick them up the next morning on my way out. This way, I can come inside to my family and be present, knowing I left my worries outside.

    I liked the concept, so I tried to practice this. The way he described it, I pictured him walking up his curved brick sidewalk, draping the problems on his Japanese Maple and then breezing through his red front door. Carefree, of course, because he left his problems on the maple! Duh!

    I hit a few snags while trying to make this work, First, this guy assumes a distinct transition between work and home. Before Japanese maple, work. After Japanese maple, home. Line drawn. Done!

    My drive home is more like this:

    Text one son about haircut while walking to the car; think about first patient tomorrow; ask myself why my car keeps making that clunky noise when I start it; add paper towels to the grocery list; outline email to dental equipment rep in my head; stare at the Christmas decorations while I’m idling at the light; think about how we should gussy up the office for the holidays and that we should play Christmas music over the next week; make mental note to find non-annoying 8-hour Christmas playlist by tomorrow morning; wonder about the decisions I made today; wonder what decisions I’ll have to make tomorrow; think about whether I should ride the bike, play with the dog, make dinner, order dinner or even what IS for dinner? Ladies, even our thoughts multi-task.

    So, that’s the first problem. That guy’s line between work and home is a tree that greets him every evening like clockwork. Same place, every day. The line between my work and my home is a hurricane spaghetti model at best. And if it’s a spaghetti model, when/where am I supposed to hang the day’s worries?

    The second problem is, I enter my house through my garage (I actually park in the driveway, not the garage, but that’s another story). We do have a tree out there by the driveway, but it’s an ugly pear tree and I don’t really like it. It seems ill-suited for this task. As I walk through the garage there are PLENTY of places I could hang my next-day-worries, not unlike many of your garages I’m sure. But, once I fling my problems into that garage, good luck finding them again! Those problems will disappear into the garage abyss just like my favorite folding chair, the basketball airer-upper, 27 flashlights, 18 Phillips-head screwdrivers and my cute little mini shovel that I have needed and can never find every single May since 2002.

    What to do? Where am I going to hang these worries for at least a few hours or days at a time?

    I recently started my own business. Last week was slow, which generates stress, anxiety, and a general sense of impending doom. You know how it is: “This isn’t going to work and we’re going to lose everything and live under a bridge!” (Because thoughts like this are super-helpful and productive. That’s exactly why we have them. Duh.) I worked throughout the week tweaking marketing plans, changing my outreach approach, reviewing my advertising and social media outlets. Pretty soon it was Friday afternoon. By that point, the people I needed to market to were long gone, out of their offices and home with their families. I needed to leave it for Monday and go home to my family. But that stupid voice kept prattling away about losing everything and living under the bridge, making my head hurt and my stomach upset. My body felt so heavy. I knew it was time to go home and do the weekend but I was trying to figure out how to do the weekend with this anxiety in the background.

    Then I had a thought (thank you, good part of my brain, where have you been anyway?). I walked into the house and told my husband “I’ll be with you very soon. I need about 15 minutes to put some things on paper and prepare for Monday so that my weekend is all about being here, with all of you, and not about work or the bridge we might have to move to.” I grabbed one of my favorite journal books, poured a glass of wine, slapped on the noise-canceling headphones, and began to write. I made a list of 10 things I would do on Monday that would work to move my business forward. Some tasks were small, some were larger, some were scary. Also, I added this to the list: Every time I have a negative/anxious/worried thought this weekend I will immediately refocus back to the present moment and what I have to be thankful for right now. Even if it’s as simple as my dinner plate or the fact that I have fingers and toes.

    Guess what? It helped! It wasn’t perfect. My anxious part of my brain is frequently running ahead of the rest of the pack so the thoughts would slam in out of nowhere and interrupt a perfectly fine moment. But I got better at refocusing on being thankful for whatever I could find – one time it was an avocado. I had a good weekend and Monday morning, I picked up the plan and I went to work.

    This list gave me permission to relax and spend time with my family knowing that I had a plan for those worries come Monday. It’s not as idyllic as a Japanese Maple along a curved path to the door, but the wine helps! I think I’ll do the same this afternoon. Maybe it will even become a Friday afternoon ritual.

    We have to learn to put our thoughts down every once in a while and pick them up later. Our brains do their best work during these breaks and often give us the solutions we are seeking. You need peace this weekend. Find an avenue for that in any way you can because you need a break. Monday will be here soon enough and the list of tasks will be waiting for us and we will be ready to take them on, even if we have to go bridge-shopping! Xoxo

  • Your Inner Voice

    That voice in our head goes all day long, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s positive. Sometimes it’s negative. Sometimes it’s contemplating what to cook for dinner or reminding you of the need to put gas in the car. Sometimes it’s making a long wish list for the future or telling you to be nervous about something coming up on the horizon. Sometimes it’s just content looking around, feeling the good vibes.

    If you read up on the subject, there are actually two inner voices. I call one the outer inner voice. This is what they call the ego in the woo-woo world of books and podcasts. The outer inner voice hardly ever shuts up. It thinks its job is to protect you and to fight for you. It thinks it needs to constantly give you feedback because the world is a dangerous and scary place. It makes you question if you are good enough, stable enough, smart enough, able enough.

    The other voice is the inner inner voice. This is the deep down who-you-are at your core. Call it what you want – a spirit, a source, a being, a soul, a light. This is a beautiful voice because it’s at peace, it’s comfortable, it’s vibrant. It doesn’t need to be anything else at that moment. It is very comfortable with what it already knows. It’s just you. Brilliant, beautiful you.

    I think it’s hard for many people to hear the inner inner voice. I’ve been trying for a long time to listen more closely to that voice. I’ve done a lot of reading and listening to podcasts about this process and I started where they all told me to start – meditation, prayer, walks, nature.

    We’ll start with meditation. I slapped on the noise-canceling headphones and tried varying degrees of meditation. Guided. Not guided. Sitting just right. Sitting in whatever way was comfortable. Inside. Outside. Sometimes at home, sometimes at the office. But nothing really happened. At least not yet. I’ll keep trying – I think it’s good for our minds and bodies. It just doesn’t seem like my real self wants to talk during this process.

    So how about prayer? Back in March, when we started quarantine, I developed an early morning habit of reading a bible passage, praying, meditating on it, and journaling. I do it every morning now. It’s become a part of my routine and I miss it terribly if I skip it. I am a spiritual person and this helps connect me to my faith and grounds me in the right mindset as I start my day. But I wouldn’t say this is where I really hear my true inner voice. I read. I pray. And I wait to hear my spirit burst forth with amazing insights for the day ahead. But that hasn’t happened yet and it’s been 8 months now. Again, I’ll keep doing this because I believe it is helpful to me, but my inner inner voice isn’t talking much here either.

    What about walking, being in nature? Love it. My mind does wander when I spend time outdoors and I get a lot of creative ideas and fresh perspectives. But it doesn’t feel like I’m hearing from the truest, most inner part of myself here either.

    So, last night I was in my bathroom getting ready for bed. I took out my contacts, washed my face, and removed my makeup. This is my routine every single night. Then I climbed up onto the counter between the two sinks, sat criss-cross, and stared at myself closely in the mirror. This is also my routine every single night. I look at my complexion, my eyebrows, my lips, my chin. I check out the pores, the wrinkles, whatever needs to be inspected and I sometimes take the tweezers to whatever needs tweezing. So last night, as I was sitting there looking over my face like I do every night, I was pondering about what to write today. I knew I wanted to write about the inner voice, I just wasn’t quite sure where I was going to go with it.

    And then, after I’d stared down the wrinkles, took care of the eyebrows, looked myself over from forehead to chin, I sat there and stared at my eyes. I was looking into them and thinking about how I sit here every night, for as long as I want just staring at myself, never really being critical of what I see. Sure, I adjust the eyebrows and fix a few things up, but it dawned on me that I never engage in negative self-talk while I’m sitting on this bathroom counter at the end of the day. I don’t wish for my complexion or my hair or my eyes to be different than they are. I just look them over and know they are exactly as they are supposed to be. While I do this, my mind will wander back through the day, turning over the events and looking at them from different perspectives. Then it will wander into what is to come tomorrow, looking that over from different angles. Then sometimes it wanders into my goals and dreams and ponders how to make them happen. It’s all kind of slow and non-deliberate and it just does this without my help because I’m busy looking at myself in the mirror. Honestly, I didn’t even realize this was happening in my life every night…

    Until last night when I was sitting on that countertop thinking of how to blog about listening to my inner voice. I sat there staring at my green eyes from two inches away and boom – I realized that RIGHT HERE ON THIS COUNTERTOP is where I hear my innermost self loud and clear. Here’s why:

    1. I’m by myself. Not right away, mind you. Because as soon as you climb up onto the counter to have some serious alone time with your face, the people come from all throughout the house to ask questions, get toilet paper, get a band-aid, say goodnight. You name it, they need it. The very premise that you DON’T want anyone asking you why you sit on top of the bathroom counter for long periods of time, staring into yourself, is enough to cause them all to appear. It’s the most Jesus-like act I perform in a day. Sit on the counter, they will come. Never fails. But, eventually, they run out of needs and I get to be all by myself.
    2. I stay as long as I want. Sometimes I sit there for 25 minutes and my feet get tingly and fall asleep. But I never look at the clock or think about time. This is always at the end of my day, so except for going to bed I have no obligations. I just sit there until I decide I’m done. There is no rush.
    3. There is no negativity. I don’t wish for different eyes, lips, skin, appearance. I just accept that what I am looking at is how I am made and what I have grown to be today. It’s just me. I’m not sure how this works so effortlessly because many times throughout a day I will glance at myself in the mirror or in a photo and let the ego have a heyday: “time to lose some weight, your clothes don’t look right, your hair looks funny, one eye is lower than the other, nice double chin…” But when I am on my counter at the end of the day, the ego is as quiet as can be. The silence is golden.
    4. The insights are magical. The ideas, thought processes, creativity just flow right into my conscious space. All kinds of projects are born on that bathroom counter without even trying. They just show up.

    Apparently, my bathroom counter is where it all goes down. Who knew? I have been looking everywhere else but there. Maybe meditation or nature walks aren’t really it for you either. Or maybe they are! Maybe your thing is exercising or driving aimlessly in your car. Or cooking or making art. Or staring up at the clouds or watching the sunrise. Whatever it is, identify the space in your life where the ego is at a complete loss for words and you are 100% comfortable being you. THAT, my friends, is where you will find your innermost voice. And she’s perfect.

  • Welcome to “Beautiful Olive”!

    Olive: Grandpa, am I pretty?

    Grandpa: You are the most beautiful girl in the world.

    Olive: You’re just saying that.

    Grandpa: No! I’m madly in love with you and it’s not because of your brains or your personality.

    Have you seen Little Miss Sunshine (2006)? Olive Hoover stole my heart from the minute I met her. At 7 years old, Olive believes that if you want something bad enough and you work hard, practicing every day, you can achieve your dream. When do we stop believing this? Most assuredly, adulting kills the Olives of the world.

    I first met Olive when I was 36 years old and I remember thinking “What a glorious personality! I wish I’d met her when I was a child! To feel free to create, perform, dive in head-first despite the fear! Who doesn’t love Olive!?” But, I soon left Olive behind because the very next day my 3rd son was born and, as they say, life took over again. I haven’t thought about Olive for years. Until today.

    The purpose of this blog is to feed women funny stories, tidbits of energy, ideas to help us all push forward into another day. We might talk about things as big and terrifying as opening a business and as small and insignificant as eyebrows and socks. Maybe you’ll see things about coffee or wine, how to find balance, or how to find the car keys. We’re most definitely going to talk about how to stop beating ourselves up with our negative self-talk. We’ll just see where this journey takes us. And all blogs need a name and a personality so sweet, beautiful Olive popped right into my brain today!

    This blog is written for women. Women who work, women who work at home, women who are raising kids, never had kids, who are married, divorced, single. Women who are having a good time or a rough time, women who just want to make the most of what time we have. Women who are trying to train a new puppy or raise the most challenging child. Women who have lost something precious, who are sick to death of social isolation, women who need a reason to smile right now. Women who wake up with energy, thinking “Today, I will…” and then subsequently hit the pillow that night thinking “Dammit, I fell short again…”

    Here is what I am. I am a dentist. I recently opened my own business after working for others for years. I am married. I have three teenage sons. I am more introverted than extroverted. I love my small group of friends and I love my alone time (introvert, after all). I listen to all types of music, I read all kinds of books. I love to learn about new things and share the thoughts that pop into my head. I love words and I like to write. I’m awful in front of a camera and I think my voice sounds ridiculous when I hear it played back to me. Hence, a blog.

    Here is what I’m not. I am not a business expert, parenting expert, financial expert. I’m not a gourmet chef, exercise aficionado, or fashionista. I don’t have connections or links to things that will make your life a million times better by Saturday. I don’t have all sorts of tricks, tips, or easier ways to do things. I barely know how to run Instagram. I’m not a crafter and my house will never be Pinterest-ready. I don’t think I really have very many answers. But, I do love a community of women who want to support each other and that is what I want to grow.

    I’ve entertained the idea of a blog for a while now. Content would pop into my head, I would get that excited, butterfly feeling that it was interesting and worth sharing and I would resolve to get the blog up and running. And then a few hours later, the inspiration would fade into this:

    • It’s probably been shared before.
    • Would anyone even want to read it?
    • I’m not an expert on this.
    • My grammar isn’t good enough.
    • I am a dentist, not a blogger.
    • It’s not unique enough.
    • It’s not interesting enough.
    • I’m not smart enough.
    • I’m not fit enough.
    • I definitely do not have my ducks in a row.
    • And so…that was a dumb idea.

    Poof. The inspiration fluttered away into nothingness. This has happened at least 150 times in the past two years. But it just so happens that I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear and on page 90, she gave me a permission slip to write this blog:

    “All of which is to say: You do not need a permission slip from the principal’s office to live a creative life. Or if you do worry that you need a permission slip — THERE, I just gave it to you. I just wrote it on the back of an old shopping list. Consider yourself fully accredited. Now go make something.”

    So, here we go! I’ll post every couple of weeks (ish). I’ll share ideas and observations about all kinds of things. Business. Work. Family. Recipes. Funny things I see or hear. My only real agenda is to bring more of our internal Olives front and center. Welcome to Beautiful Olive!