Letting Go of the Perfect Holiday

Tags

Acceptance, adoption, Christmas, expectations, families, gifts, Nostalgia

By: Emily Shirley

We have all seen the Folgers commercial where the big brother comes home from college and starts making coffee. As the coffee smell reaches upstairs, the family comes down to greet him. They are all smiles in the perfectly decorated home with this perfect holiday moment of love all around and… well, perfection.

In other Christmas commercials, the adult children with their perfect families drive up, all smiles and carrying gifts. The food somehow magically appeared without anyone shopping for days, standing on their feet preparing for hours, and stressing over.

I have been guilty of trying to have the holiday depicted in commercials. But I have decided to be honest with myself this year. Those commercials were made up by someone, and many people are doing what I used to do, pretending to have their own version of a ‘perfect Christmas’ because others tell them this is how this season and Christmas Day is supposed to be.

It’s media like the commercials that creates an unrealistic expectation for holiday perfection, that hijacks the moments we could be having with others, or even spending the day alone. And it is this kind of emotional feed that makes us think we have fallen short if our Christmas doesn’t look like the commercials. We get upset with our adult children for not being what the commercials have told us they should be. And what about those people whose lives have changed, and they no longer fit the mold of the families in the commercials. What about the single parents, or those that have lost their spouse, or even children, due to death.

Many older parents are feeling left out of their adult children’s lives at this time of the year. Perhaps these adult children are behaving in ways the parents don’t understand. This can happen when we have certain unrealistic expectations that are not met by someone else. The more likely explanation for their not involving their parents more than they do is that they are working very hard to have their own version of a ‘perfect’ holiday.

We think of Christmas as the season dedicated to everything merry and bright. But let’s face it. Sometimes, it can also be one of the most stressful times of the year. Most of us want a little holiday magic, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. What if the magic happens in the simple moments that we often miss because of our heightened expectations causing this to be a stressful time of the year?  One of the first things we can do is admit that Christmas will never be perfect, or like any of the commercials. They never have been, and they never will be.

We can give ourselves credit for all those “almost-perfect” Christmases that we provided for our children, and others. Now, we can enjoy seeing others having whatever version of Christmas they want for themselves, while we enjoy our own version of this holiday. We can stay home, relax, and simplify things. If decorating is too much to do every year, we can even consider taking a year or two off and just decorating every three or four years, if ever. There are no Christmas police!

The real gift we have at this stage in our life is experience that allows us to step back and accept how things are. We can relax and be grateful for what we have and think about those ‘Christmases past’ that we survived. Rather than stressing over what we must do, we can be grateful for what we don’t have to do. We should all remember the real reason-for-the-season, and beyond that, this day can be focused on young children. It is nice to be able to take it easy. We can even meet up with friends and go to a nice restaurant for dinner, and walk away from the table and not have to clean up after ourselves.

Our gift to ourselves should be to get through the next few weeks without guilt for not participating in this season the same way others are. We can let go of some of the unrealistic ‘magical thinking’ of the past. It is time to adjust our expectations and embrace our own imperfect holiday. We can practice self-care through the holidays by carving out time each day to do whatever reconnects us with ourselves. This is especially important if we are alone this time of the year. 

The magic is there. We must be willing to look for it. We can do our version of this holiday season, based on the season of our lives. The part of the Folgers commercial we should consider is relaxing with a nice cup of hot coffee, Folgers or otherwise, and breathing in that coffee smell, while we munch on store-bought cookies that someone else made. 

About Today’s Guest Contributor:

World traveler and master gardener Emily Shirley is a part time resident of Louisiana and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Writing all the while, she divides her time between two homes. Past careers include Social Services Case Worker and Director and Human Resource Manager. She is currently at work on a memoir titled And Then There Were Ten.

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on the writing, hiking and the outdoors, Santa Fe life, and the world as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Check out her newest novel The Hand of Ganesh. Follow adoptees Clara Jordan and Dottie Benet in their  quest to find Dottie’s birthparents. Order today from Amazon or www.pocolpress.com. And thanks for reading!

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Poetry Live: May it soon Return

Tags

Acceptance, adoption, Adoption recovery, Attitude adjustment, Coleman Barks, Emotional journeys, Hope, Memory, Performance, Perspective, Poetry, Rumi, Self-realization

The pending new year is filled with promise. With the development of a Corona virus to end the pandemic, we will, hopefully, be able to join live audiences. Zoom will still be around, of course, but there will be other options. I can imagine a time when we will sit with others, in person, to share music, movies, dance and theater performances. I am ready to adopt and embrace that time. Lately, I’ve been remembering Coleman Barks, the famous translator of Jelaluddin Rumi. In the past, Barks regularly came to Santa Fe. His show, “Rumi Concert—A Feast of Poetry, Humor, Music, Dance & Story,” offered a mesmerizing combination of poetry recitation by poet/professor Coleman Barks, music by David Darling and Glen Velez and dancing by Zuleikha, international Storydancer. And it led me to offer you, dear Reader, my favorite Rumi poem.
The following masterpiece fits my topic because the adoptee’s journey is about being at home in ones own skin.
***************************************************************************
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. 
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes 
because each has been sent
 as a guide from beyond.– Jelaluddin Rumi,

********************************************************************** Although he wrote seven centuries ago, the Persian poet, theologian, and Sufi mystic Rumi provided insights that serve us well today. The “guests” are emotions and thoughts to which one awakens each morning. Rumi advises welcoming them all rather than disdaining some as unwelcome pests and others as “right” and correct. It is true that we enjoy those guests that empower, buoy us up, and make us feel successful, capable, happy. But as I’ve traveled the adoptee’s road to discovering who I really am, I’ve found that we need to accept all the feelings and learn to live with them.
The emotions that appear in our personal guest houses can, after all, serve as guides from beyond.

Looking at the world through adoption-colored glasses.

Troubadour for Troubled Times

Tags

Acceptance, Adaptability, Gratitude, Guitar, Jugband Music, Keeping Calm, Storytelling

John Henry MacDonald has been called “the Will Rogers of modern times.”

Today’s guest post features one of the world’s treasures, a person whose attitude toward life I’ve decided to adopt. A few years back. I met John Henry MacDonald on the hiking trail. He is a musician, philosopher, a one-of-a-kind singer songwriter, a man with a healthy attitude toward life, an outlook well suited to these Corona Virus Times. His is a philosophy that I’ve adopted.
And who is John Henry MacDonald?
In his own words: “From the streets of San Francisco to the jungles of Vietnam, from drug addiction and alcoholism and homelessness, to finding his strength and becoming a reigning figure in financial services in Austin Texas for more than 40 years, John Henry McDonald has lived many lives in one. And throughout the years he always kept a common thread: a love of folk, gospel, and blues music and a talent for telling a good story.”
A true survivor of many of life’s challenges, John Henry McDonald endeavors to tell his story of survival and hard-earned success by telling audiences about himself and about the man who saved his life. Entitled “A Guru Named Frank,” his beloved one-man show features 16 original songs wrapped around 11 vignettes and a ready encore. The stories and the songs describe his brokenness after the war, and the rite of passage McDonald undertook after meeting his guru, the man that would serve as John Henry’s guide to leading a productive and extremely successful life.

***************
“Nuts and Bolts of Calm” by John Henry
First we must wish to be calm. Then we must wish to remain so. (A decision has to be made).

A morning prayer recited.
Listing things that make us grateful.
Guided meditation.
A reading for the day.
These are all activities that still the mind. And these moments of stillness are the treasure we are seeking. Moments of calm. Priceless.
Now we’ve established that we can be calm. Next the task of remaining calm.

A worrisome thought has a beginning. And all of those beginnings sound something like this: “what’s going to happen to me when”… (Fill in the blank with negativity).
So it’s our job to identify the beginning of a negative thought and stop it in its tracks. You see, I control my mind, my mind does not control me.
So when a worrisome thought begins, I stop it by saying “No!!” Then I recall the morning moment of calm.
A quick prayer
Listing a gratitude
Return to the treasure of the quiet time of day.

Decide to be calm
Identify negativity
Stop it in its tracks
Repeat Repeat Repeat.

Listen to John Henry MacDonald’s song “Hold On”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtae3nmeup250l5/03_Hold%20On.mp3?dl=0

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Subscribe to Elaine Pinkerton’s website for monthly blog posts on adoption, nature, and the writing life. She is working on a suspense novel, The Hand of Ganesh, slated for publication in 2021.

 

Adoption Recovery 101

Tags

Acceptance, Adaptation, adoptee, adoption, labyrinth, Reflections, Sarah Ban Breathnach

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

…Nothing so wise as a circle. -Rilke

This morning’s labyrinth walk yielded reflections that I’d like to share with you…

With the publication of The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries, a memoir comprised of diary entries from the 1950s through 1980s, I began to heal from years of repressed anger and pain. I forgave the past and myself. I redirected my imagination. Instead of dwelling on all those invisible wounds (from being separated from my birthparents), I was able to focus on writing.

After The Goodbye Baby, I decided that I’d moved on. Producing a memoir was instructive and healing. Helpful as it was, however, it wasn’t enough. Or to put it more accurately, it didn’t last. The stress and instability of my first five years of life sometimes come back to haunt me.

Here’s my newest “rescue remedy,” a three-pronged remedy for adoption recovery.

ACCEPTANCE –
Realizing the difference between dreams and expectations. As Sarah Ban Breathnach recommends in Simple Abundance, I’m following her recommendation:
“You dream. Show up for work. Then let Spirit deliver your dream to the world.”

WALKING-
I do this daily and I reaffirmed this intention with creating a new edition of my             guidebook Santa Fe on Foot. (www.santafeonfoot.com)

READING-
Allowing time each day for books.
I spend time reading for edification, for entertainment, for information, and (sometimes) sheer escape.

We really do not know what’s in store for us. As Sarah Breathnach recommends, “…we’ll only find out once we start investing our emotions in authentic expression, and not in specific outcomes.” Don’t get caught up in the “delivery details.”

Keep your dreams even as you accept what IS. Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for adoption thoughts.

 

 

 

Remembering Cindy

Tags

Acceptance, Adaptation, adoption, Burnt Mountain, Cindy Bellinger, Dear Diary Readings, Los Alamos, memories, Paths, Santa Fe Film Festival

It’s been said that we do not truly die until the last person on Earth who remembers us is gone. -Unknown

On the long path of “adoption recovery,” I’ve learned a few things. One of the most important is this: memories have the power to hurt or to heal. At the loss of a friend who dies, I’m heartbroken and grief-stricken. These are demoralizing blows, painful and bitter. On the other hand, those who I’ve loved are in my heart. Even though they may be physically gone, the departed can still be part of our lives. They can even teach us, which is the focus of today’s posting.

Cindy reading about an old high school flame

My friend Cindy Bellinger died of cancer when she was barely sixty. A modern-day Renaissance woman, Cindy wrote, rode horses, taught, lived a fiercely independent life, and, a year before she died, fell in love with a wonderful man who became her soulmate. Recently, as I was cleaning my office, I came across a manuscript that I’d totally forgotten about. It was a draft of Cindy’s book Not a Rock Out of Place, and I recalled editing it for her and writing a recommendation. Before many people saw the final version, published by her company Blue Mesa Books, Cindy slipped away.

While living in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 1980s, Cindy walked a forest path near Burnt Mountain. For four years, she did this nearly every day. In her “Pre-Amble” she writes, “The path that traversed Burnt Mountain didn’t take me deep into the wilds, but it brought me into some extraordinary happenings… On Burnt Mountain–with its trees, birds, butterflies, and grass–moments sparkled with the simplest wisdom, or the darkest truth. I’d take a question beneath a ponderosa and learn how to find the answer. I’d sit on a rock and the anger that accompanied me would melt away.”

Another aspect of Cindy that I cherish was her generously supportive nature. Cindy helped me during the first decade of this century by participating in my “Dear Diary” staged readings, benefit performances which we produced as fund-raisers for Santa Fe Film Festival. We held “cringe readings,” sharing selected excerpts from our adolescent diaries: Cindy, as she read from old diaries, was a star. Even as a young girl, she wrote with style and exquisite wordsmithing.

Dear Diary Readings 2009

I’ve adopted Cindy’s habit of walking the same path nearly every day. My route is not through a forest but up Sun Mountain. Thank you, Cindy, for inspiring me. And thank you as well for the reminding me not to wait to express appreciation. Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you. Do it today.