Beautiful Olive

Tag: inspiration

  • Temper Thyself!

    TEMPER : verb

    tempered; tempering ˈtem-p(ə-)riŋ 

    transitive verb

    To dilute, qualify, or soften by the addition or influence of something else : MODERATE

    Each time I study a painting, I wonder how much it differs from the novel idea the artist first had.  Did he or she paint the entire scene in their imagination first, only to deconstruct and overhaul it on canvas a multitude of times?  Were there layers upon layers of paint on that canvas?  Or was it just right?  Did they perfect it all in the mind first, the only subsequent job being to transfer the image to canvas?

    I write in my head for days before my fingers ever touch a keyboard.  The ideas are born from daily life.  My kids, my husband, my business, my dog, things I read online and things I witness as I wander about the earth.  Same as you – I look around, I make observations and then I say something about them.  This past Friday morning, I woke to the news of women behaving badly in congress.  And, poof, there was my original idea for a post.  Women Behaving Badly in Congress.    

    That was Friday morning.  It’s now Saturday evening.  The Invisible Pencil in my Brain (where all first drafts are written) has been making notes for two days about Women Behaving Badly in Congress, but the keystrokes just started a half an hour ago.  How much does this final, written product differ from my original idea that swam in my head?  Read on.

    The Invisible Pencil in the Brain, Friday morning 10:37 a.m.:

    What in the actual hell is happening up there in Washington???  I can’t believe what I am reading.  One grownup adult woman actually said to another grown-up adult woman, WHILE THEY WERE BOTH DOING THEIR ADULT JOBS THAT THEY ARE PAID TO DO (albeit not paid much, I do appreciate that):  I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.  Again…I THINK YOUR FAKE EYELASHES ARE MESSING UP WHAT YOU’RE READING.

    I read on to understand more about how this unfolded and where it went from there.  It didn’t get better.  It got worse.  There is no reason to replay it here.  Google has a purpose, you can look it up if you’re unfamiliar.  Throughout the day on Friday, the Invisible Pencil in my Brain was furiously writing.  There was so much to say, really.  Women in Afghanistan just want to go to a store or a school without a male escort and we are over here tearing each other down over eyelashes???  I was hopping mad and the Invisible Pencil was mad at work.  The ideas were building and forming and molding.  

    I woke up the next day ready to get it all down on paper.  I asked some of my women friends and family for their thoughts on what had transpired in Washington.  I emphasized to them that my post would not be political, but would instead focus on what it means to be a woman and the ways in which we treat other women.  Here are their thoughts:  

    “Oh boy!  I’ll have to give that some consideration.  I’m not sure my thoughts on how it made me feel should be published!”

    “You mean beyond my first reaction?”

    “I need to look into more about the catty congresswomen argument, I saw a brief clip and was disgusted!!”

    “It was like a Jerry Springer episode omg I was so embarrassed to be an American watching that.  How pathetic.”

    “Hellooo!  I have a different take on it.  I don’t like to see it described as cat fight or whatever other terms to make it a fight between women.  Many of the men and women in that Congress behave shamelessly every single day.  To tag the women with this creates yet another double standard.”

    “I actually didn’t follow that.  I don’t really pay much attention to the news and some of the things that go on in politics.  I do, but not as much as others.  I just kind of focus on the platforms and what people stand for enough that I can vote and feel good about it.  All that background noise and everything I kind of stay away from…I just try to stay away from all that negative BS because it distracts me from the main point of trying to decide which way I wanna vote and where my beliefs are.”

    “I just watched it this am and my first comment was that it made women look so bad and catty.  I’m sure even the congressmen in the room were like omg…It was embarrassing – on both sides.  The eyelash comment was childish, but Crockett could’ve/should’ve responded/addressed it in a more mature, grown-up manner…not how representatives should behave.”

    I let their texts roll in throughout the day and by evening, I was ready to write.

    My first words:

    What in the actual hell is happening up there in Washington???  I can’t believe what I am reading.  One grown-up adult woman actually said to another grown-up adult woman, WHILE THEY WERE…………

    And then, much like the painter and his painting, this piece began to evolve and change.  Type, erase.  Type, erase.  As I read and reread the comments my girlfriends shared with me, my heat started to dissipate and I realized I was no longer coming in hot.  I wasn’t even lukewarm anymore. Their words were varied and thoughtful and truthful and I felt a responsibility to be the same with my words.  It was no longer about Women Behaving Badly in Congress. It was about Women Living Above the Bar. Way Above the Bar.

    To Temper something is to Moderate it, according to Merriam-Webster.  But to Temper something is to also Mature it.  To Mature the thought, the idea, the prospect, the delivery, the spirit.  These paragraphs you’re reading have been Tempered over the past 48 hours.  And why?  Because I asked some of my dearest friends and family to share their thoughts with me.  It caused me to pause and consider what message I would deliver using their words as backup.  I had to change my tone.  

    What’d I learn?  To pause.  To think.  To consider.  To allow a thought, an idea, a brainstorm to ebb and flow for a minute.  48 hours ago, I had a bullhorn and was ready to use it.  I had to get the word out that women were destroying women and were being catty and immature.  And it WAS catty and petty and immature.  But, it’s also other things besides that.  Were their actions Jerry Springer-ish?  Yep.  Were they embarrassing?  Yep.  Were they unique?  Nope.  Why?  Because none of us are good at tempering ourselves.  None of us.  Men AND women.  

    I was ready to throw down about how women backstab and belittle and create scenarios where one wins and the other loses.  But over the course of 48 hours, because of the comments from my supremely awesome women friends, I changed my tone.

    We often don’t witness the creation of something from its inception.  We don’t see the layer upon layer of paint that exists under the surface layer of brushstrokes.  We don’t even get to know which brushstroke was the first or the last.  In writing, we don’t see the words that were there, and then weren’t, wiped out forever with the ‘Backspace’ key.  We only get to see the final product.  And I would argue it’s 1000% better than the first-born idea.

  • Do You Know What a Loser Is?

    This past Friday, I was prepared to shut down the blog. The internet was full of sadness over the passing of The Queen of Mommy Blogging, The OG Mom Blogger, Dooce. I pored over the tributes and read some of her best posts. I loved her take and will miss her beautiful words. As I took in the commentary from around the planet, I thought “It sounds like blogging is mostly dead. I think there are other platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram and a whole host of others that I know nothing about that must be the platforms of today. I missed the boat and have nothing new to add to these new-fangled ways of communicating. People don’t want to read blogs. They want visual content and it needs to be in 1-2 minute increments.”

    So I decided I would bury Beautiful Olive. Why pay for the website hosting, the Constant Contact subscription, and the domain name rights when it was just sitting out in the internet world languishing with no new content? When blogging was old-school and a thing of yesterday?

    Have you ever tried to cancel an auto-renew subscription? Well, the business-savvy peeps of the world are business-savvy for a reason. And they have figured out that if they make it really hard to cancel an auto-renew subscription, 92% of people won’t cancel it. You can buy almost anything online, without talking to a single person, with a single mouse click. But if you want to cancel something, you have to CALL someone and TALK to someone first. No amount of mouse clicks will get you there. This is why, two days later, I have not yet canceled Beautiful Olive or any of the internet extras that accompany her. I would have to make phone calls and talk to people and I am an introvert. We don’t play that way. We do not like to talk to strangers whose goals are exactly opposite ours.

    So, the blog is still here because it was too much of a pain to cancel it. And, then I woke up today and I decided to write. So, there you go.

    “Do you know what a loser is? A real loser is somebody who is so afraid of not winning they don’t even try.”

    Grandpa, “Little Miss Sunshine”

    It’s Mother’s Day and my typical MO celebration has been to do whatever I want with wild abandon. Mimosas and blueberry muffins for breakfast. Naps. Reading. A dinner fit for a queen, complete with dessert. And wine. Plenty of wine. Sometime after becoming a mom, I declared it the day of indulgence and I always indulged.

    But, some things happened to me over this past week (which I will tell you about in a minute) and all week when my husband or sons would ask what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day this year, I would answer “I don’t know. Not much. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to have mimosas or blueberry muffins or a bottle of wine or naps. I know that’s what I don’t want. I’ll get back to you…”

    I’ve been on a collision course for the past year with my bad choices and habits. I weigh more than I should or ever have, I drink entirely too much alcohol, I don’t get the exercise I need and my ability to deal with life’s stressors is out of whack. The real struggle is in the knowledge of these things on the one hand and doing nothing about them on the other hand. The cognitive dissonance takes our anxiety to an even higher level and then we are even more unhappy with ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle. Because we are thoughtful, intelligent beings, we really should be able to figure this out. But, we can’t. So, we are losers.

    I’ve had the “Why do I KNOW what I need to do, but do the opposite?” conversation with myself so many times over the past year I’ve lost count. And every time I have had that conversation, I would follow up with “And, are you ready to do something about it?” And every time, the answer was a resounding “Nope. Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow and ask again. Maybe the answer will be different.” And I would stroll off with my glass of wine.

    About a week ago, I had the same conversation, but the answer was different. You can tell when it’s different. It feels like it rises up from your core and is straight-up bellicose. Everything starts to align and suddenly you’re just ready. You holler back at the old self who answered “Nope” every time. “Hey. Old Self. New Me is taking over. We don’t need your help anymore. We got this. Bye-bye.”

    I don’t know what flipped the switch. All I know is that I’ve been praying for it to flip for the past year and I knew I would know when it did. I was glad it flipped on Sunday because I had an appointment for a routine physical on Tuesday. “Whew!” I thought. “This is great! I dodged that bullet! Thanks, Me!” But, apparently, two days of changed habits is not enough lead time for your lab values to be whipped into shape and my doctor called me on Wednesday to tell me that I might need to go on some medication to combat some concerning findings. 😲

    Truth be told, my inactivity, my diet, my relationship with alcohol (that is a really dumb term) was really getting wildly out of control. I think it was pretty dark at times. And when it’s dark, we peer out of the hole and look around at everybody else to see how they’re doing. And when everybody else seems to be doing just fine, we clamp the shell down even tighter, don’t we? But the inner turmoil is still there beneath the surface. Somehow, we can’t figure out how to just do what we know we need to do. We are losers.

    Well, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The switch will flip. The inner turmoil will work its way to the surface and demand a decision about who wins. I woke up this Mother’s Day and I RODE A BIKE for 30 minutes. I drank water and fasted until 2 p.m. I’m writing, not napping. At dinner, I’m going with CAULIFLOWER MASH instead of POTATO MASH. I e-mailed my physician and asked for a 6-month reprieve, medication-free, to get my sh*t in order. And I’ll gladly pay out of pocket to get new labs drawn in 6 months so I can prove that my switch has indeed flipped.

    Will I feel as sure tomorrow or the next day or the next as I do today? I don’t know. This isn’t my first rodeo. We are all a work in progress, all of the time. Today, I woke up and I felt like writing. I felt like riding a bike instead of drinking a mimosa. I felt like eating an orange instead of a blueberry muffin. And I felt like being a better mom to my boys, which means some of my dark, crap habits have to take a back seat. So many of us are fighting crazy fierce battles. We get really good at hiding them from the world. Keep the conversation going with yourself. Let her answer “Nope” as long as she needs to. When the timing is right, she will suddenly answer “Yes” and you will know. And you will always be a winner in my book.

    Happy Mother’s Day, my beautiful friends. You are nothing short of fabulous today and every day.

  • Mid-Life Crisis: The Kayak Project

    I’ve been struggling lately. Have you? Struggling. Isn’t that the phrase du jour? Covid. Wild Fires. Floods. Climate Change. Murderous Insects. Something called an Army Ant that literally took my friend’s yard from lush green grass to dead, dead, dead in just 3 short days. Yep. I’ve been struggling.

    As I am firmly planted in middle age, I feel like I am watching my life from outside my body. And it’s full of judgment:

    • I thought I would be further along by this point in my life (insert retirement savings, college savings, savings in general, health and wellness, travel, business, friendships, spirituality, enlightenment)
    • I thought “this…” was what I wanted (insert clothes, shoes, house, car, massage, bike, fancy makeup brushes), so why am I still dissatisfied?
    • I thought I would “be…” by now (insert “here, there, anywhere”)

    I believe the mid-life crisis for women is slow and drawn-out. It’s a gradual feeling of unease that creeps in around the edges and blurs our sense of self. In our twenties, we take risks. We are full of confidence. Our bodies will still do exactly what we ask of them and our brains are whip-sharp. We just go and do and drive that bus wherever we need it to go. Life is so full of potential and the horizon is barely visible.

    In our thirties, we are so busy. Our careers are solidly moving forward. Our kids are young – they make us smile and laugh and give hugs and sloppy kisses freely. Our bodies still do what we ask of them because what choice does it have? We are BUSY. But, it’s a GOOD busy. The horizon is beautiful, but still so far away.

    In our forties, our kids have grown older and more independent. We are glad to do all of that taxi-driving because we are spending precious time with them. We are still BUSY, so we barely notice that the body is getting a little more defiant about things we ask it to do. We start to hold our book or our phone or our mail an inch farther away from our eyes. And then another inch and another inch still. Finally, we are holding all required reading at arms-length before we trudge into Costco to buy the 6 pack of readers. The horizon is not so far away now, but we are busy with teens and careers and everyone knows “We are in our PRIME because we can go to dinner or a movie or even a night away because our kids are old enough to be home alone for more than 30 seconds” so who cares about a horizon??? And we don’t mind the readers, they come in tons of fashionable styles!”

    I’m on the precipice of turning fifty. I can’t yet write about what the fifties will be like because I’m not there. But, the latter part of the forties has been admittedly uncomfortable. They’ve made me question everything I’ve done up to this point and everything I’ll do in the latter half of my life. This is why it’s a Mid-Life Crisis. MID-LIFE. See? You look behind and you look ahead and you tell yourself all sorts of ridiculous stories about how your life is turning out now that you’re in the middle of it (see above “I thought by now…..). And I hate to generalize, but I will anyway. I believe that for men in Mid-Life Crisis, the realization that they are within it comes fast and furious. And then the decision about what to do about it also comes fast and furious. They buy the sports car. They jump careers or jump out of an airplane or put in a pool and a backyard kitchen. They turn 180 degrees and everyone nods and says “Mm-hmm. See? Mid-Life Crisis.”

    This is not the case for women. Remember, it’s a gradual unease. We start to question ourselves and our station, but it’s so subtle. We are a little heavier than we were in our twenties and thirties and early forties. We are noticing our skin is more wrinkly and worn and tired. Our bodies are getting more belligerent when asked to do certain things. Our kids are growing into adulthood and we are seeing that we most definitely made some mistakes in parenting. Ouch. That’s a blow to the mom-ego.

    The Merriam-Webster definition of a crisis: An unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending. This is where I am. It is an unstable and crucial time. I can’t, nor do I want to, live in this state of unease indefinitely. And I think I’ve been here for several years. It’s making me tired and scared and despondent. I want out of the Mid-Life Crisis. Because when we live in this state too long, it causes us to withhold all of our gifts and talents and goodness from the world around us. The world needs each of us as we are, not as we think we should be.

    So, how to climb out? We are told by all of the professionals to take baby steps. Incorporate small changes daily. Walk twice a week for just twenty minutes. Add one piece of fruit a day. Wake up ten minutes earlier. Get your coffee at home, save $$$. Drink one more glass of water a day. Start small and the change will become a habit. Right? Here’s the thing. We think too small. The reason we are uneasy at this stage in our life is that the world NEEDS us to be our big, beautiful selves and instead we are over here in the corner being small. That’s why we are STRUGGLING. We are grappling with a horizon that is now clearly approaching and we gave up our coffee and drank more water and ate the banana and NOTHING HAPPENED. We still feel uneasy and restless and inadequate.

    The Mid-Life Crisis requires a bold response. The other day I came across this in Jen Sincero’s book “You Are a Badass at Making Money”:

    If you want to change your life, change your life.

    Well, there you go. That’s really all there is to it. But, instead, we women are over here overanalyzing, overthinking, overstressing. If we want to change our lives, let’s change our lives!

    There is a saying “Spend twenty minutes a day in nature unless you are too busy, then spend an hour.” I am one of those “too busy” people. I multi-task and juggle 18 things at once. I am a “doer”. And I am pretty sure I wear it as a badge of honor. But, I’ve always been intrigued by this saying because it is the antithesis of the way I live my life. I don’t know how to “not” do. As I pondered the Mid-Life Crisis and how to get out of it, I realized that what we all need to do is something dramatically different, completely out of our comfort zones. Something that will make us terribly uncomfortable for a little bit.

    Enter The Kayak Project. To begin emerging from my Mid-Life Crisis I plan to get a kayak, take it to the lake several evenings a week and float around in nature for an hour all by myself. I’m not going to be on my phone or talk to people or read or listen to podcasts. I’m just going to be in that kayak all by myself for an hour. I am going to do this MOST ESPECIALLY when I don’t have the time. As a Type-A person who really doesn’t know how not to be busy, this is going to be HARD for me. I don’t yet know how to be alone, skimming around aimlessly in nature when there are so many things that need to get done on the homefront. It gives me anxiety just considering it. I don’t even own a kayak! I have only actually been in a kayak one time in my 48 years of life! But, all of this is solvable and I am going to solve it. I realize many of you already kayak and go do all kinds of things on weekday evenings and stay up late all the time, opposite of me. That’s not the point. The point is, I DO NOT. But, now I am going to. So, yes, your Kayak Project will probably look different than mine – just make sure it’s out of your comfort zone and makes you nervous and makes your heart skip a bit. Go take a class, open a business, write a book, bake a souffle, climb a mountain, take a solo trip. Just get it going.

    Eckhart Tolle says “You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.” We need to think bigger, ladies. We are restless and uneasy and watching our life from outside of ourselves because we are not being bold enough. Pick something that scares you and gives you some anxiety and do that. Just one thing. If it just so happens that eating another piece of fruit every day or drinking that extra glass of water is what it takes to make your heart skip a beat and scare you, then maybe that’s your thing. But, I’ll venture a guess that it’s not. We can take a lesson from how men deal with the Mid-Life Crisis and think BIGGER. Small thinking is holding us back. Grab your readers, it’s time to go! Xoxo

  • Look Me in the Eye and Tell Me How You Are

    25 years. My husband and I have been married 25 years today! I don’t know how we got here. I mean, I do but I don’t.

    In our newlywed years, we never doubted our “together foreverness.” We were young and in love. We couldn’t imagine anything derailing that. We were a love-at-first-sight couple and our wedding was one fun party. So, we just figured we were one of those couples with a bullet-proof marriage. But, as our marriage grew in age, we began to witness the separations and subsequent divorces of friends. A few of them were not surprises – to them or us. However, more often than not one of the two spouses was completely blindsided by the split. You’ve heard it, too. Cue a random Tuesday in July. She comes home from work like she always does, tells him that she isn’t happy, that she hasn’t been happy in years and that she is leaving. They had just spent the weekend together having dinner with friends, doing yard work, watching a movie. Everything seemed fine. She seemed fine. He is completely blindsided. And this is a terrible situation because the spouse that has been unhappy for years has been molding this moment in her mind for a long time. She is prepared. But for the spouse that is blindsided, this is devastating. He’s had no preparation, no chance to see it coming and now he’s desperate to work on saving his marriage and she’s already long gone – literally and figuratively. How’s that going to work in marriage counseling? It isn’t and it doesn’t.

    As these marriages were falling like cards around us, Matt and I would continue to be shocked by the couples that were dissolving. We started to look at each other and acknowledge “If it could happen to them, then it could certainly happen to us.” I’m not talking infidelity, lawlessness, drug use, or some other “well, obviously” marriage dagger. Many of these couples were so like us. I understand that we can never really know what goes on behind closed doors, but several couples were as similar to us as I could ever imagine. So, yes, if it could happen to them, then it could certainly happen to us. Scary.

    So, how did we get so lucky to be here together, 25 years later? The truth is, I don’t know! Seriously, I don’t have an answer. But, as I replayed those 25 years in my head, I kept returning to something that Matt and I have been practicing since we realized that divorce doesn’t discriminate. We check in with each other. It goes like this:

    Hey, we’re good, right? We’re still good? Remember, we always say that if we are not good, we will say it and we will start the work to fix it. So, look me in the eye and tell me how you are.

    This is not on a schedule. It doesn’t happen every Sunday at 4. It just happens every few weeks or months. If there’s been another heartbreak on a marriage train, then it’s going to happen more often because that’s scary. If life is flowing like a river, then it’s going to happen less often because that’s bliss. We just check in with each other. And we’ve been doing it ever since our first friend was blindsided.

    Does this bulletproof our marriage? Nope. But, do you know what it does do? It allows us to live in a tiny fraction of uncertainty, comfortably. Marriage is uncertain. It might only be a very tiny bit of uncertainty, but it’s uncertain. And this is because no matter what vows we take, words we say, or acts we do for the other, we can never, ever be 100% certain that our marriage will last until death. We can’t. And the reason we can’t is that we can never know for certain what is actually happening inside of our spouse’s heart and mind. So no matter how much my husband does for me, says to me, or showers onto me, there will always be a small space of uncertainty because I can’t be in his mind and know his thoughts. It is in this space of uncertainty that I have to trust in us. I have to trust that his actions and words are true. Marriage is uncertain but uncertainty doesn’t have to equate to doubt.

    We are currently raising teenagers. This has been our marriage’s greatest test and is the hardest thing we’ve ever done. By this point, we have been on our knees countless times. We have even been flat on the floor. And when there is as serious of an issue as a teen’s life at stake and the two of us are at odds as to the right plan of action, fissures form quickly in the marriage. We have had some terrifying marriage moments in the last five years. Checking in has been crucial. Because when one of us spoke these words “I’m actually not okay. We are not okay right now” for the very first time, we both cried a river. It was so, so painful. We had never answered the “Hey, we’re good, right?” question that way before. We were already struggling at parenting and now, one of us had pointed out that the marriage was in a brutal hailstorm. We almost didn’t know what to do. I think we looked at each other and said “Does this mean it’s over? Did we not make it??” I can laugh about it now, but we truly weren’t sure of the next steps or what it meant for our future.

    Marriage is some hard, hard work. You have to check its pulse every so often. Give it some oxygen, or a nap, or a vacation. I think that’s how we got to these 25 years. We started asking “how are we doing?” and we learned to not fear the answers, however painful they might be.

    Happy 25th Anniversary to my husband, Matt, who really does make my life sparkle like the sunshine. May we never be afraid to ask, and answer, the hard questions.

    “Look me in the eye and tell me how you are.”