Untidiness and Beauty

Posted on by jtamburini

Well it’s been a week of angst and dread and anticipation so let me entertain you with a little story about how things went down on Cheeky Street.

It was last Sunday and I was in search of my authentic strand of pearls (because, like most women, I have numerous fake ones). I am not known for my tidiness or organization so off to my rat-packing closet I went with a mild sense of dread in pursuit of said strand. There is one box in the back of my closet that I have tossed sentimental things in over the years. I’ll throw something in and forget about it because going down the emotional rabbit hole of examining the contents in the box is often too much.

We have lived in our current home 10 years now so it’s been at least that long since I have taken a peak in the box in the back of my untidy closet. That’s how long it’s been since I have worn pearls. One has to ponder what kind of life, as a woman, one has been living that is completely devoid of my favorite jewel, but this is a subject for a different story.

It has been said that comedy is tragedy plus time. So astonishment must be something similar – in my view, it is struggle plus perspective.

I was not emotionally prepared for the 3 things I found in this box instead of my strand of pearls:

  1. A beautiful snapshot of my parents visiting me and my sister in our apartment for Thanksgiving over 30 years ago. They were struggling and, not coincidentally, they were the age I am now. In the thick of a midlife reckoning . Children raised, empty nest, left to stare at the walls or make deliberate choices about the rest of the journey, together or apart. It stunned me. A wound broke open I thought had long healed. There they were, the 2 people that raised me sitting on the cheap sofa my sister and I shared in our little apartment as young women. Mom and Dad, my biggest heroes. The perspective I have after 30 years of living my own struggles shone a bright light on the beauty of what they did for each other and our family. They stayed the course and supported each other until the end, as the vow “until death us do part” said. Holding that photo in my now wrinkled hands with the ability to put myself squarely in the middle of their struggle with some inkling of how it felt for them made me proud to be their seventh child. And proud to be made of the same persevering cloth they are.

2. A love letter from my husband written during a painful turning point in our marriage. How it is I determined that this letter, among several, should make its way into this particular box full of memories, I wish I knew. Juxtaposed with the photo of my parents at midlife, the letter marking a difficult crossroads with my husband pointed toward a theme: struggle and love are one. We lose our way occasionally and what is the one thing that helps guide us? Love. I started to think that maybe these memories were tucked away in a box in the back of my closet because I wasn’t ready to deal with the pain or release the anger and resentment. Thankfully, the past 5 years of my life have been largely about confronting resentment and finding ways to assemble some tools in my life for managing it. I am glad I have stayed in the struggle for my marriage and our family, just as my parents did. My husband and I have often joked we could write a book about the huge financial and career challenges life has thrown at us and from which we emerged stronger and happier. Maybe we will.

3. Finally and perhaps most preciously, several envelopes of my children’s baby teeth. I told my son last Sunday what I had found and he was completely grossed out. “Why would you save something so gross, Mom?” he wanted to know. I thought to myself, “because you were mine.” And that’s another paradox of love, isn’t it, particularly the love for a child. I kept these momentos of childhood to remember the passage of time and hold close to my heart the struggle and beauty of caring for something outside myself, in my case 2 somethings, my daughter and son.

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed,” Antoine Exupery

I never found the damn pearls. I did find empirical evidence of a life well lived, however. If there were ever a question that my parents or husband loved me, all I had to do was look inside the untidy box at the back of my disorganized closet. Sometimes life reminds us there are more important things than possessions. I am completely grateful and surrender to those times.

My son brought this beautiful croton leaf inside yesterday afternoon as he was helping my husband rake. He knew I would cherish its beauty, something he has always known about his Mom. As the seasons change and he prepares to leave the nest for good, my heart aches once again with dread of the pain of seeing his empty room and missing the sound of his shotgun laugh. Maybe this leaf will go in the untidy box and one day many years from now I will rediscover it and remember yesterday with pride, love and a heart filled with gratitude for a life well lived.

I’m Grateful for Check-Ins

Posted on by jtamburini

It’s that time of year again where I struggle with the accurate spelling of “mantel.”  Or is it “mantle”?  Like “Capitol” and “capital,” this distinction in spelling gnaws at me (in a good way, I suppose).  In any case, as you can see, my mantel is doing just fine.  And so am I .  Thanks to check-ins from many unexpected friends and caring neighbors.  And of course, my constant therapy buddies, Pudgey and Vanilla.

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There is something about the month of December that always leaves me feeling warm, loved and grateful.  It’s not just the ordinary pre-Holiday buzzing around that sustains me.  In fact, it is the opposite.  I like the quiet, reflective times of December and I defiantly make them a priority.  I started reading about “minimalism” a few years ago (check out Joshua Becker’s becomingminimalist.com and the excellent writings and Netflix documentary based on the thinking of Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, theminimalists.com).

More than anything, studying the principles of minimalism has offered space and support in my thoughts and lifestyle these past few years to begin a transformation that has led to the greatest clarity and personal satisfaction of my life.  I don’t need more “stuff,” I need less clutter.  I don’t need more “fake friends,” I need a small circle of amazing friends who check-in with me.

Quite unexpectedly, I left a great job this month and immediately became completely helpless  to a very painful sciatic joint “situation.”  I’ve been knocked off my horse and there’s very little I can do about it.  Yet I feel joyful.  I have abundance.  I see goodness.  I am hopeful.  And my small circle of amazing “check-in” friends and family are exactly where I want and need them to be.  Lovingly offering kindness and ready to ease the pain of loneliness or regret or whatever my ailment of the moment happens to be.

For whatever totally undeserved reason, I have received the gift of loyal friendship and support of friends I was close to twenty and thirty years ago back in my life recently.  Old friends are the most comforting treasure in the world.  One glance or utterance can unfold memories, laughter and complete understanding between old friends that gives meaning and purpose to my humanity in the here and now.  Just yesterday, I reconnected with Shelley, a pal from my twenty-something, unmarried, professional days over lunch.  We are both married, in our fifties now and navigating raising teenagers, nurturing marriages of twenty-plus years, and learning to laugh at our common mid-life physical and emotional challenges.  She texted me first thing this morning:

“I’m so very proud and impressed with all your personal accomplishments!  You don’t give yourself enough GRACE!”

My dears, when a friend who knows you inside and out says these beautiful words to you, I don’t care how or when or in what format, you are LUCKY.  You are enough.  You make a difference.  And you are certainly loved and appreciated.

Like the beautiful fresh greenery another dear friend recently draped across my mantle (or is it mantel? More amazingly, she did it without duct tape!), life is full of simple joys that can be overlooked if you don’t intentionally slow down.  Check-in with your soul on a regular basis and feed it with acceptance, inspiration, a cup of tea, a conversation with an old friend, or a friendly chat with the neighbor walking their dog down the street.  These are the gifts I am grateful for this December, regardless of what packages happen to end up under my tree.

I hope that 2019 brings you lots of positive “check-ins” from loving sources you have encountered and nurtured throughout your life.  A check-in doesn’t have to be lavish – just a few simple words to express what you’re feeling in the moment are all that another person needs to feel supported and ready for a new day.

I dedicate this to all my check-in friends of 2018 and look forward to growing that number in the coming year: Shelley, Pam, Mary, Melissa, Vicki, Vickie, Victoria, Jennifer, Jeanne, Sherry, Stevie, Johanna, Christine, Susanna, Malin, Kit, Laurie, Kelly, Carol, Lincoln, Rob, Mark, Alex, Julie, Susan, Erin, Jenny, Carmen, Alejandre, Ann, Linda, JoEllen, Sarah, Mike, Gwyneth, Bill, Caryl, Sheila, Isa and Mario.

Merry Christmas, friends.

The Path that Found Me

Posted on by jtamburini

My husband and son are out of town on a big adventure for several days and my daughter and I are relaxing, enjoying some down time.  As is my habit when I have a little extra mental space and time, I go digging through old boxes in search of old letters, pictures, tokens from my past.  Though I have seen this photo so many times this morning it startled me:  she’s so young and fresh, like the strawberry she’s posing with next to her friend.  At 52, it is wonderful to have arrived at an age where I can recall a story for nearly every little scrap I have saved in my “special box” over the years.  Here’s what I remember about this picture.

The friend I am with was a special one for a short time.  We were both recently out of Graduate School and beginning our career paths, though mine was in the nonprofit world and her’s was health care administration.  Her career-obsessed, interrupting, impatient colleague drove us to the dinner we are enjoying in the photo.  I was half-heartedly pursuing what I thought would be a good “career path” for myself, though 50 percent of the people I met who were serious “career-oriented” people were way too intense for me.

Silly then, sillier now.  That’s me.  But I was ashamed of it then.  Looking at this sweet girl in the picture, I want to love her and reassure her that the right Path will find her. That it ultimately does not matter in life who you impress at meetings or how high you are willing to climb to earn a career.  The rude colleague of my friend ultimately achieved the highest honors in her career and she received accolades, awards and respect.  Good for her.  My “non-path path” has been glorious, sometimes painful but always given me the right kind of experience and space I needed to grow.

My son brilliantly summed up for me the most valuable part of any journey when he exclaimed his woes about his second day of kindergarten on the car ride home:  “My day was horrible!  The teacher only gave us 7 minutes to daydream!”  This kid is so my kid.  To resist externally imposed structure so resolutely at age 5 was both a blessing and curse for him and I have personally witnessed the toll an absurdly rigid school routine can take on his soul.  My advice to him and all you other free spirits out there:  trust yourself enough to know that the choices you make in life will yield abundance in many beautiful ways.  You may not choose a path that is laden with financial rewards and career milestones worthy of publishing in a business journal.  But this much I know:  THE WORLD NEEDS DAYDREAMERS!

So the path that found me was the one that was inside my heart as a youngster.  I loved getting on my bicycle and playing “carpool” with my imaginary children.  Unfortunately, as a woman in the eighties and nineties, it wasn’t very cool to admit that all you really wanted to do was “just be a Mom.”  But that’s what I have done and it has been my greatest joy in life.  I have a daughter, too, and she’s a creative genius and force of nature.  And I married a guy who does my favorite thing in the world:  he writes great love notes.  This one popped up when I was treasure hunting in my special box today.  We had been married exactly 5 weeks, I was undergoing testing for terrible allergies, and my guapo half Argentinean new groom wrote me these words:Love Note

My life has been rich and the journey becomes sweeter with age, as anybody over 50 understands, because we know each day is so precious.  I am so happy I decided to go through that box today and even happier that the Path I always dreamed of found me.

 

The Dog Days of Missing Boo

Posted on by jtamburini

In 18 days, she’s coming back home for the summer!!!  It is a triumph to have survived the most dreaded event of my life.  I could not help but project onto my daughter my personal feelings about being away from home for the first time, so I caused myself infinitely more suffering this year than she ever came close to experiencing.  It’s what I do.

During her time away, my daughter has fully embraced her new experiences.  She’s in a great sorority, she participated in variety shows and charity events, she travelled to other college campuses, she has made wonderful friends, and she has her own separate identity that is hers and hers alone.  Her Dad and I are extremely humbled and proud.  And somehow, through all of it, my heart got BIGGER, not smaller, and we got closer, not more distant.

When my college Freshman daughter was in kindergarten, we BOTH hated it so much I had a countdown calendar in the kitchen that we eagerly scratched off the days leading up to the long-awaited summer break.  I think I hated kindergarten more, come to think of it, because my Isa spent the following summer writing letters to her teacher who was helping her husband heal from cancer.  That’s my girl, she stays connected to the people she cares about.  I should have known the “break” for college would not be an actual break, as my heart feared.

This is my message to all the Moms who are now in my shoes, anticipating (perhaps dreading) their child’s first year of college and what lies ahead:

  • Whatever groundwork has been laid before college holds the parent/child bond together;
  • In spite of whatever fears you may have from your past, your child is eager to move into the future and will do so regardless of how you feel, and it will be okay;
  • Your child needs to experience the world without you and vice versa – families change in many ways over time, but love makes more than enough room for the new stuff and people that will come into your life;
  • Instead of thinking as the transition to college as a personal loss, remind yourself each day that it is a victory – you created and raised a child who wants to engage in this crazy world with the tools you helped nurture;
  • If you are married or have a partner, be extremely proud that you did this together –  and if you are still together, even more so, for staying married and releasing a young adult into the world are both enormous accomplishments.

Yes, my heart aches because the time with my daughter as a budding adult is gone.  I am learning to put those feelings aside to wholeheartedly enjoy the friendship and journey we are on together.  She’s not going to leave me behind, she has proven that.  I can keep counting days until I see her again if I want to, but this year has shown me that our bond of togetherness is stronger than physical presence.  She lives in my heart.

This summer, she has promised to take some walks with me and our dog, Pudgey.  Over the winter, Pudgey and I got sort of lazy and may have put on a few pounds wallowing in self-pity.  Thank goodness the Commander is on her way back home to whip us into shape!

 

The Practice of True Belonging

Posted on by jtamburini

Lately I have reflected alot on Brene Brown’s definition of “true belonging” from her latest book, “Braving the Wilderness”:

“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to
yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”

There is a big whopping heap of wisdom in that one little definition! Consider it from the framework of a marriage: a happy and successful “union,” some say, is the sum of two whole parts. Both partners are complete going into the union. What about the years when outside influences and family responsibilities gnaw at the core of one’s “whole self” – what about times when you are giving so much of yourself, you feel lost inside your own home?

This happened to me when a series of overwhelming challenges happened in rapid succession. Not only did I not belong to myself, I felt separate from the “wholeness” of marriage. Alone and terrified. Money, kids, health, work, geography and all kinds of other mini-challenges crept in my life and the me I was once so solidly familiar with started to disappear. Often weary, I dulled my fighting impulse with red wine. I thought I was stronger (i.e., belonged more authentically to myself) when I was drinking, but this could not have been further from the truth. I forgot how worthy I was of a happy life, so I drowned all my dreams and ambitions in alcohol. Fortunately for me and my family, a spark of life remained and I woke up in 2015 to the realization that I had made a big mess trying to comfort myself through numbing rather than belonging. I was in a crisis of disconnection.

Brene Brown continues her definition of true belonging”

“True belonging is not something that you negotiate externally, it’s what you carry in your heart. It’s finding the sacredness in being a part of something and in braving the wilderness alone. When we reach this place even momentarily, we belong everywhere and nowhere. That sounds absurd, but it’s true.”

I wonder if the quest for “true belonging” isn’t the biggest challenge we as humans are meant to overcome. It seems so simple but the piece that brought me back to myself and the living world and my family was finding the sacredness in being a part of something. Somehow I had internalized the message early in life that belonging equaled weakness so when the road of my life got very twisty – I retreated into myself and stopped connecting.

Many addiction experts believe that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety – it’s connection. I wholeheartedly believe this to be true. The joy of connection is an equal opportunity healer – yet for some, the most difficult to attain. If you are around enough people who suffer from addiction disorders, you will likely hear it repeated that they are grateful for their addiction because it led them to this awareness that true belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world.

Living a sober life after years of dulling the brightness of the real world truly is an adventure in re-connecting with the child you once were and the loved ones you travel with. I am grateful to Brene Brown for helping me to clarify the importance of true belonging, it is the foundation for my whole life now.

Love Between Sisters

Posted on by jtamburini

As the youngest of 5 sisters, “sisterly love” has been a major theme of my life.  One thing I absolutely know to be true:  if you have a sister, you have an ally, best friend, confidante and personal coach for life!  As a youngster, it was fun for me to write letters to my three oldest sisters who left for boarding high school (each one following the next, one year apart) starting when I was 4.  My goal was to entertain, make them laugh, and convince them to let me “tag along” behind every teenage adventure they had.  I remember hiding behind a curtained window hoping to catch one of them kissing a boy in our driveway – everyday was a new adventure (or violation, from their perspective)!  My relationship with my sister just 3 years older than me was much more like the traditional sibling rivalry yet unique because we have always had completely opposite personalities.  As anyone from a large family can attest, my identity and purpose throughout life has largely been framed in the context of being an “annoying little sister”!

A sister can enrich your life more than any other connection.  Between sisters, there is a shared lens on the world and life formed so strongly and early that it is nearly impenetrable.  What one can see, the other feels, maybe another interprets for the rest.

Sisterhood is a flowing exchange of perceiving reality and washing it in the bonds of caring, safety and love created when we were young – and giving it back so the world feels softer, more tolerable.

As I get older, washing the pain I feel in my sisters’ lives is the greatest act of love I can conceive.  These champions of my spirit move through the world and experience human pain, suffering, joy and the like but to me they seem larger than life, as if immortal.  I want us all to stay little and innocent forever.  For my psyche to process actual pain and suffering is an excruciating emotional task.  I do feel “one” with them.

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Embracing my sister on her wedding day after some huge life difficulties!

The past decade my sisters and I have all moved into middle age and experienced the natural illness and loss of a parent and the challenge of creating a loving environment for our Mom, who is very ill.  Throughout these days, life has brought us each some pretty difficult health, financial and emotional challenges.  The laughter we shared feels distant many days.

It’s hard to accept that the people you love most in the world can be cut at the knees by life yet the purpose of life is to flow freely through the pain and darkness and share joy and light with one another.

This much I know for sure, I may disagree with my sisters philosophically, politically or any number of ways, but THEY ARE ME.  We belong to each other, and that is the most important thing in the world.

Some people believe we make “spiritual contracts” before entering the physical world, and part of that is choosing the souls with whom we travel through life.  It makes sense to me when I consider the love I have for my sisters and the joy that comes from witnessing their high points in life.  This year, I want to be a better sister, I hope to be able to do more than just entertain and make them laugh.  I want to fill the vessel of sisterly love until it overflows.

When I feel wounded and scorned by an intolerant world that does not understand me, my sisters are there protecting my heart.  My sisters are Grace personified.

Grandma’s One Question

Posted on by jtamburini

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Helping Grandma Rhetta blow out her birthday candles!

Last week my family crammed into my husband’s Prius for the 4-hour drive on Interstate I-70 to St. Louis to visit my Mom, “Grandma Rhetta.”  My kids are 16 and 18 and they insisted we make the trip because it might be the last opportunity for my daughter to see Grandma Rhetta before she leaves home for the first time to start college.  Although we have made this trip more than 100 times, my heart was full of pride and wistfulness over this visit, especially because the kids are nearly grown and Mom is very frail at this time of her life.  She is confined to her bed with only her imagination, visits from friends and family and the television to comfort and occupy her.  Sometimes a short visit with Grandma Rhetta is best, even though the grueling drive on the highway suggests a longer stay.

When people love one another, they willingly take time from their “journey” to be together.  As Mom’s health declines and my teenagers approach adulthood, their journeys are polar opposite.  Yet my kids keep wanting to go back and love their Grandma.  Even though it was a conscious effort by me to foster a bond between my children and their Grandparents, discovering that at the busiest and most self-centered part of their journey they choose to spend time with their Grandma Rhetta overwhelms me with joy and sadness (because I am perimenopausal now!).

We enter Mom’s world – her room – and she lights up with love and reaches from her bed for Isa and Mario.  Before each visit, she tells me many times to inform them she is expecting many warm hugs – and she gets them!  The kids adore Grandma Rhetta’s Southern accent and the warmth and charm it exudes.  Imitating her characteristic sayings has always been funny to them (in a loving way):  “My Stars!” and “Iced tay with lots of lemons!” are among their favorites.  Grandma Rhetta “southernizes” the pronunciation of Isa’s name (pronounced “Eesa”) so it sounds like “Eaze-a-Bella!”.

All those mornings at Grandma Rhetta’s kitchen table being lavished with her love and her special buttermilk pancakes mean something to Isa and Mario, and nothing thrills me more.  I’ll never forget the first time Mom visited Kansas City after Isa was born.  She rushed in the house after her long drive and, without putting her purse or keys down, walked straight to Baby Isa and cooed, “Are we gonna be friends?”.  Indeed they are.

Getting Sober Is Like Starting A New Job …. Everyday

Posted on by jtamburini

Next week I will celebrate my 2nd consecutive year living in long-term recovery from alcohol use disorder.  Notice my language.  It is very specific for a reason:  I believe that I will spend the rest of my life working to develop deeper understanding of my need to numb feelings and, hopefully, will be granted the Grace and inspiration to pursue ever-deeper practices for managing and maintaining a healthy, well-rounded life without relying on alcohol.

I am so proud of this achievement yet I know that I could “slip” at any time if I begin to neglect the positive practices that keep me humble and eager for continued sobriety.  Just like a person who has changed jobs, my openness about my struggles is just one of many facts about my life – in other words, sobriety will never define me as a person.  Yet, surprisingly, maybe because of tv shows like “celebrity rehab” or the heavy infiltration of 12-step type phrases in popular culture, it has been my experience that people automatically have their own sets of expectations of what your recovery should look and feel like.

It is impossible to convey to a person who does not have addiction controlling their life the excitement and liberation you feel once you decide to change, accept your limitations, and work everyday to seek newer and better ways to live “a normal life” without obsessing over wanting to numb.  That’s why I write about it.  But it makes people feel “awkward,” it seems.  So I am supposed to confine and limit my experience to groups of other “users.”  This does not make sense to me.  You wouldn’t avoid talking to a person about their new “job,” so why would the topic of pursuing a life without addiction be any different?  This is why maintaining sobriety can be difficult – it is more “polite” to ignore the addiction monster in casual conversation.  This kind of sweeping under the rug behavior is bad for our children.  They need to hear us talking about and showing them what a life built on zero reliance on alcohol looks and feels like.  Just like we introduce our children to the concept of work by taking them to work  with us, we should not be afraid to declare our commitment to sobriety to our friends, family and community.

The reality is that the younger a person is when they first experience alcohol, the more likely it will cause an addiction problem later in life.  We don’t perpetuate self-sabotaging cycles in other health-related concerns (for instance, heart disease), so why are we reluctant to openly discuss and support addiction and sobriety?

I have a suspicion it is because many of us believe one of two things:  that we are already slipping into bad habits of relying on alcohol to “numb” difficult emotional situations or we mistakenly believe we are immune to addiction.  Those are highly dangerous beliefs.  I think another reason people don’t want to talk about their feelings related to numbing and alcohol is because there is a widespread misunderstanding of what a sober life looks and feels like.  I will definitely admit (if you have not already ascertained this fact!) that I am a much more sensitive person sober than drinking.  I have to work hard to process my thoughts, feelings and responses to everyone and everything around me to avoid falling into old patterns of numbing.  But that doesn’t mean my life is no longer fun or that I will not tolerate others’ drinking around me (everybody has their own barometer of tolerance about this, so it is always thoughtful to ask).

Over the weekend, I felt so many “feels” as we celebrated our first-born child’s Graduation from High School.  At once sentimental and fearful, the onslaught of well-wishing from people in  your life you may still be reconciling with, the entire weekend was challenging and tiring for me to navigate.  And the past two nights, my poorly trained brain with only 2 years of sober thinking under its belt, even began telling me “You should go ahead and enjoy a drink or 2 or 10.  You don’t really have a problem.”  This is proof to me that I will spend every waking moment for the rest of my life “managing” this enormous force that lives inside of me that wants to numb everything.

Finally, some thoughts about people in Recovery that might help others better understand this journey:

Sober people are fun people;

Getting sober means the party is just beginning, not ending.

Sober People do  not intend to make you feel uncomfortable ;

Sober People would rather you throw out all your old ideas about Recovery and learn by engaging with them rather than avoiding the topic altogether;

Just like becoming confident about one’s performance in a new job, living comfortably in your own skin as a sober person takes time, and you should not have any unrealistic expectations about what this should look like – every sober person is unique.

It has been an honor and a pleasure sharing the past 24 months with Readers. I have received so much love, grace and appreciation from the many people who want to understand addiction.  This propels me forward, especially after my 99th cup of coffee during absolutely perfect cold Heineken or margarita weather!

For All the Milestones in Life, I Wish You This One Thing

Posted on by jtamburini

Today, my precious first-born graduates from High School.  My God, wasn’t I just at her kindergarten graduation?  All of us parents share the same wistful feeling about time with our children – it goes by much too quickly.  She’s a healthy, balanced, focused, driven, joyful, beautiful and brilliant young woman now.  What more could I ask for? I must step aside and watch her grow.

If there is one thing I have learned from my recovery, it is there is no shame in starting over.  I do it everyday.  We all do.  The previous 48 years of “all or nothing” thinking really limited my growth and perspective and that hindrance ultimately led to a dependence which became an addiction.  Now I know.  To paraphrase the brilliant Maya Angelou famously, “Once you know better, do better.”

People ask me all the time, “How have you stayed sober?”.  The answer is simple:  each morning when I open my eyes, I thank God for another day of life and I commit to not drinking that day.  I have other things I do, and attending a 12-step program is not one of them.  I did for the first 12 months and decided I needed to broaden my resources and thinking, and have happily managed a workable – if not patchwork – program on my own.  I am enjoying life today instead of enduring it.

Here’s the point I want to make today:  you can change at any time and begin a new path.  My 18-year old daughter is graduating from High School tonight with beautiful dreams of her own.  There were days when she was very young when I would find myself in a heap of laundry and tears on the telephone with my oldest sister saying, “I can’t even take care of myself.  I am so afraid and overwhelmed.”  But life marched on, didn’t it?.

The takeaway I want anybody reading this today to receive is this:

Never Be Afraid Of Starting Over

Perfection is an unrealistic expectation and illusion that does nothing but create resentment and discontent.  Wouldn’t you be happier saying you tried something and enjoyed the moment rather than standing still in perfect silence, terrified by the prospect you can never be perfect?  Motherhood taught me so many things, and especially raising such a determined little character as my daughter, Isabella Bernadette.  When she was 3 and just starting out hosting “play-dates,” I would be so desperate to please the other Mothers, I would constantly intervene and scold her, telling her repeatedly to “share” with the other children.  Her response?

“I want to share with ME!”

Don’t we ALL?  Who can argue with the brilliant logic of a 3-year-old little girl?!

The thing is, we all have to learn to be our own cheerleaders and personal life coaches.  Instead of looking in all the wrong places (e.g., malls, catalogs, bars, escapes), the answer can be found within.  I guess I was too skeptical, cynical and afraid to trust myself.  I know better now, so I am doing better.

Girlfriends are like Quilts

Posted on by jtamburini

Oh, Girlfriends!  How would a woman survive life without them?  They come to our aid before we even know we need to be rescued.  They understand our innermost feelings and needs in the deepest way.  They refrain from judgment.  Like Momma Bear protecting her cub, a great girlfriend will work wonders in your life and expect nothing in return.

I reach for my Mom’s handmade quilts every single day of my life for comfort.  Tattered and ragged, sometimes I drag my favorite one like Linus, as if the quilt could make me invincible.  Magical powers sewn into every square, crafted and pieced together by my Mother’s hands with abundant love and the greatest of hopes for a life well lived.  I literally can cover myself in her protection any time I want.  The girlfriends who have sustained me through life’s toughest challenges are exactly like my favorite quilts.

In this picture, I am in the most miserable physical pain you could imagine.  I had been laboring for over 2 days with my first child and was waiting the last few hours before heading to the hospital to begin the terrifying birthing process.  I am sitting on a heating pad because I have lovely back labor.  And draped across my knees is the “Cotton Boll” quilt my Mom made for me more than twenty years ago.  “Don’t machine wash this,” she cautioned.  “It will fall apart.”  Nope.  This thing might as well be made of kryptonite.  Virtually indestructible.  Just like my ties to my girlfriends, one in particular, my Pammy.

Pam took this picture of me when she delivered a beautiful Wendy’s lunch of french fries and a Frosty.  She had had her daughter the year before, I had been her “birth coach.”  I did not even know I needed her to check on me that day, my mind was swirling with nesting details and anxiety about the future.  I am sure we laughed about the indignity of the last day pregnant – I was hobbling around, grunting and moaning in my hugeness.  Pam’s presence was comforting, though, and nothing really needed to be said.  There was history between us (at the time we had been friends over 10 years, thinking we knew everything about life, love, family and careers!).

We both moved away from Kansas City for many years and hardly stayed in touch, but fate reunited us a few years ago, and we have both returned HOME:  to Kansas City and our friendship.  I can look at her and imagine what she is thinking and we both erupt in raucous laughter!  We have the comfort of each other’s company and support and a very long history of experience together to sustain us.  Friendship is, indeed, a joyous thing.  As a woman grows older, the comfort of a close girlfriend is one of the greatest treasures she can have.  Nobody knows us better or would go farther to show us who we are when we are lost.  And midlife, I am discovering, is a bit of a “curious wonderland” where one can get very lost, indeed.  I am finishing the intensive Mom phase and looking ahead to the second act (actually, it has begun, I am just in denial).  Pam helps me laugh away the embarrassment of my arthritic hips and knees when I try to get up gracefully from a restaurant chair.  She will be there with me, locked arm in arm, for the second act, and there will be laughter, joy and comfort.  And I am one grateful woman of a certain age!