Doing More and Defiance

I have been doing some thinking and re-thinking about how to do more writing. As in blogging. As in more often. I actually have several ideas on this subject. Now that my vestibular therapy has been put on hold that I am not going twice a week my doctor appt load feels much lighter. For a while there, I was just so tired from going to a doctor of some kind every day. As in literally every day.

When I think about that it sounds ridiculous. I used to work every day. Once upon a time. Now, doctors appts four days a week just takes it out of me. I am completely wiped. And that may be just one appt or stacked appts. It doesn't matter. However, I used to fit those things in around my work day. It is nuts.

Anyway, I am back to thinking that I need to try and blog more often. So, even though it might not seem like it from where you are reading, I am actively working on ideas. For instance, one of those ideas is reworking the letter meme that I did a while back. The 30 Day Letters. Remember those? I have been tossing around ideas about starting another blog entirely calling it "The Letters I Only Write In My Head." Believe it or not, there are TONS of those. And I can date them, more or less, back to when I wrote them... the significant ones anyway. And then there are the ones I am still writing... lol. Or not writing. Since they are in my head. Or I could just turn it into a 30 Day meme adjusting it around the one I already did changing the recipients. I could leave some the same since the letters would now be different. Strange how that works... You can give me whatever feedback you have on this. I will probably go with my gut, but I am interested in your opinion anyway.

Well, that is just one of my ideas. I have others. I just wanted you to know I was actively thinking about it and not just SAYING I was.

In other news, for those of you who like Young Adult books, CJ Redwine is giving away two copies of her newest book before it hits the shelves. The book is called DEFIANCE and she has set it up that you have to come up with your own review blurb based upon the synopsis of the storyline. She kindly gave us some of the blurbs already out there. Some of them were very funny. This is my contribution as a blurb:

"Any girl who deftly wields a sword has my undivided attention. The fact that she also kicks butt in hand-to-hand combat only seals the deal. This book is a must read." ~Your Daily Dose

I think that they did a nice job with the cover. Makes me want to dig out all of my episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and start over again. Although, I am fairly certain there are no vampires in this book. Just a lot of fighting with swords and stuff like that. Still pretty awesome.



In totally non-related news, since my botox injection procedure for my migraines I have had one day that my migraine was mild enough that I took absolutely no pain medication. That is a first in ten years. It actually made me wonder what a no headache day would feel like, AND to think it might be within my grasp. That thought made me so happy that I thought I might actually burst with it. The truth is that I haven't had a no headache day in so long that I have forgotten what that feels like. I really look forward to remembering.

DAY 30: REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR

Dear Reflection In the Mirror,

This is the last of the letter series and it is one to me from me. I really don't think it is meant to be all about what I see when I look in the mirror, but I guess we can use that as a jumping off point and see what happens. You still need to do something about your hair. Of course, that problem is now really a problem. Once again, a new medication has caused your hair to fall out like you're a cancer patient. For the record, I am not a cancer patient. I would be suffering from severe anxiety about this, except it happened before, and it does thicken back up. Slowly. Very. Very. Slowly. Compared to the other side effects I am dealing with the hair loss is relatively minor. Yeah, I am getting off that medicine. I will get the pain back that the medicine relieved; it seems like this whole thing is always about trades. Trade this pain for that pain. So, I am not going to pay much attention to my hair right now. I am going to imagine it the way I want it to look. That feels much better to me.

In fact, I have been doing a great deal of visualization lately. I am a firm believer that in order to get what you want, you have to be able to imagine yourself living that life. In your mind's eye, you have to be fully there. So, in my visualizations I am a healthy person who lives within the parameters that I need to in order to sustain a healthy life. The fact that I don't know what they are is irrelevant. I just know that I do it. My website is successful. People have come into my life as needed in order to make that project come together. There is a board of directors who share the vision. Everyone does their part for the whole to be successful.

I am still reading Peter Drucker's book on Managing the Non-Profit Organization. I recommend that you buy a copy of this so that you can reread it as many times as needed. You can't just continue to check it out from the library indefinitely. In fact, I think you will refer to this frequently over the next few years. Non-profits differ from other businesses in so many ways, but the biggest is that they don't sell anything. Its product is a changed human being. You can't sell that on ebay. When you are starting up, all you have are ideas. You fundraise like crazy and ask people to trust you that you can change a human being if they will support you with their money and/or time. I look in the mirror and think "not yet, but it will be here before I know it."

I was reading the aforementioned book yesterday and stumbled across this: "The non-profits are human change agents. And their results are therefore always a change in people - in their behavior, in their circumstances, in their vision, in their health, in their hopes, above all, in their competence and capacity. In the last analysis, the non-profit institution, whether it's healthcare, or education or community service, or a labor union, has to judge itself by its performance in creating vision, creating standards, creating values and commitment, and in creating human competence. The non-profit institution therefore needs to set specific goals in terms of its service to people. And it needs constantly to raise these goals - or its performance will go down."

I wrote that down in my notebook when I found it. I ended up with a hand cramp. Turns out that was the most writing I have done all in one sitting in a long time. I haven't even filed the papers yet to become a non-profit, but I know that is where I am going. I also know that I need an attorney to wade through that muck, and I have no idea where to find one. I am trusting that it is one of those things I will stumble upon. Right now, getting my website onto a host site is taking precedence. I think I about have that nailed down. I wrote down the email by hand today. I am sure I will tinker with it a bit. I bet you're wondering how all of this fits into my reflection? It is how I see myself and where my life is going.

That paragraph from the book was huge. It felt huge to me. The non-profit is a human change agent. It does all sorts of things, but above all else it must help people in terms of their competence and capacity. As someone who has been chronically ill, I felt the force of that statement hit home. Wham. When you are unable to take care of yourself and/or your family, it is decimating. Not only do you physically feel bad, but mentally you shatter. Your competence is gone and your capacity to be effective is gone. When I hit that place, I mentally referred to myself as a "waste of space." I was a financial drain on anyone who loved me and the world would have been better off without me. Yep. That was where I was living. Competence and Capacity. People must have these two things. The non-profit is not doing its job if these two needs are not being met.

I don't see myself that way anymore. I know that I needed to feel those things in order to understand those feelings. I needed to live where the people are living that are chronically ill. I needed to know the illness on all levels. If you don't know that, you can't help nearly so well.

I read over the comments from yesterday's letter. Thank you to all who commented. It has occurred to me that H-Girl might gain a lot of insight from this project. While her father will not let her live with me, he is always happy to hand them off for the summer. When this thing gets off the ground and my summers are spent on the road fundraising and/or building houses for chronically ill people... well, that would be an eye-opening experience for her. It would also give me the time that I need to have her see things from a different perspective.

As for you loyal readers, if you know anyone who is a non-profit attorney who works pro bono or for seriously very little money, send that person my way. Also looking for someone who knows various things about building a website. Yeah, I can use some help there.

This letter is kinda sorta all over the place. Well, I guess that tells the tale!

You're Nuts, But In A Good Way,
Me


P.S. And here is something fun for those of you who hung in until the bitter end....




image found at www.weheartit.com

DAY 29: WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY, BUT CAN'T

Dear C-Man and H-Girl,

I wish that I could tell you all of the secrets about how to get through middle school and high school without getting emotionally scarred. Unfortunately, I can't. It isn't because I don't want to, but because I just don't know how to protect you from those landmines. I wish I could say that I had the answers because I once was in middle school and high school. However, things have changed. I never once worried about getting shot, stabbed, or physically hurt at school. In junior high I was under emotional and verbal assault daily, and that was very traumatic. However, I never felt forced to try drugs or sell drugs. I never had to walk through a metal detector to get in or out of school. Teachers still had control over their classrooms and paddling was allowed. Just knowing that you could get paddled made paddling virtually unnecessary. In my three years of junior high school, only one instance of paddling actually took place. That news spread like wildfire through the hallways. I am sure that the echoes of that paddling squashed future bad behavior for at least another three years. That kid probably got another paddling when he got home.

When I was in school, the parents picked up where the school left off, instead of raking the teachers over the coals for not giving their kid preferential treatment and other b.s. Taking the threat of paddling out of the school system is one of the worst things that they have done to you. I know that you might not see that right now. But, it has allowed kids to take over the school. And that is why they felt confident enough to smuggle in knives. And the parents supported their kid's bad behavior. And then it was guns. And now it is out of control. And everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else. It all went to hell when the parents took the power away from the teacher to discipline the kids in school. The threat of a paddling used to be enough to hold everything in check. Now it is all flying fast and loose. We need the police to guard the doors and monitor the metal detectors.

C-Man, things are different for you because you go to a fine arts magnet school. You aren't dealing with that sort of crap. Everyone must have top-notch grades and an interest in art, dance, or theatre to be there. (I would have loved going to your school.) I love the fact that you love the theatre and are leaning in that direction. You are taking Theatre 2 this year and Stagecraft to learn all about the backstage stuff. It is easier for me to help you with your "problems" because they are more like what my problems would have been. How do I prepare for this part? What monologue do I choose? Is this over the top or not enough? You are also writing short stories already and they are good. You understand how to write dialogue. Wow. That shocks me whenever I read your stuff. The things that will break your heart will be not getting the part that you know you were meant for and that will hurt so much. Or it will be the girl in drama who is just a friend but that you want to be more. I know how that feels. These are the problems that I can relate to, but I have no idea how to overcome them. I ran those same circles myself. It is ground I know well. All I can say to you is to do the best you can with what you have. That pain of not getting the girl will work for you in some other part somewhere down the line. Remember that feeling so that you can channel it later. It will be amazing how it will come right back on demand. I am sorry I don't have anything more to make your life better. They call it schooling for a reason.

H-Girl, we have not talked since the last letter I wrote you. I have thought about you a great deal since then. I have weighed this against that and tried to sort out what I think is going on. In some ways you are like your brother. If you were going to a magnet school, you would also be very involved in theatre. You tend to imitate whoever you are around. When you came to live with us, you were the diplomat. You felt it was your job to soothe C-Man because he got so angry. He was so angry because he couldn't stop the abusive situation he had been living in. He was already feeling it was his job as the oldest son to protect his mother. Of course, that was impossible. He was four years old. So, he got angry. And your biological mother did what she could to protect her children from her husband even if it meant taking the hits. She was the diplomat. She tried to soothe the angry man. And that is what you did when C-Man got angry. Your job was to try and soothe the angry little boy.

When he became less angry, you then started to become more like me. You were the person who was very aware of what was going on at all times. You knew who was where when. You were the little mom. You were my thoughtful, sensitive to others, gentle spirit of a child. Now you have been living with your dad for the last five years and you have become like him. I see that now. The reason you don't know how to do your school work is because you have manipulated your brother into doing it for you. You have been taking lessons from your dad on how to get things done. You are a quick study. The thing is that it isn't serving you well. I cannot fix this for you. You are surrounded by landmines. I cannot even tell your father how this has happened because it will force him to look in the mirror and see that you have merely copied his bad behavior. My previous line of thought was that you would have to carry a terrible burden when you understood as an adult that you manipulated and bullied your way through school. Now I understand that manipulative adults didn't just become that way all of a sudden. It was a learned behavior that started in childhood. What happens to that childhood bully on the playground? They become a manipulative bully as an adult. Of course they do. Unless a force bigger than them steps in and forces them to change their path, that is exactly what happens.

I am so sorry H-Girl, because there is nothing that I can say that will change your circumstances. Your father has tied my hands as far as what I can do. You would have to come live with me for me to make the difference, and your dad has already said "No" to that more than once. On top of that, even if I got a "Yes" now, you have spent the last five years mirroring how to manipulate someone to get what you want. It would take me several stressful years before you accepted that I don't play that. My body can't tolerate that stress. Your dad nearly killed me with the stress he doled out, and I bet you have taken his skills and maximized them. You always were street smart. You are running rings around your father and he doesn't even know it.

The only thing I know to say to you is this: look at how empty your father's life is. People don't like being manipulated. Eventually they realize you are pulling their strings and they leave. Not only do they leave, but they leave mad. You can continue to model after him, but your life will look exactly like his. It will be empty. People will do your bidding until they figure out what is going on and then they will walk away. Right now all you are seeing is how much fun it is to yank everyone's chain and watch them perform for you. If you are going to continue to model after your father, you need to look closer. He drives everyone he loves away from him. I wish I could tell you that, but you are going to have to figure it out for yourself. It is going to be one of those really painful lessons. Unlike your father, I hope you understand what you're doing and make the changes so that you can actually have a life with real people in it who love you.

I love you both, forever and always.

Love,
Mom


image purloined from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 28: YOU CHANGED MY LIFE

Dear Reed,

I almost decided to not write this letter to you. This letter almost was written to my current doctor (Dr. Julie Dahl-Smith), because this is a letter to someone who changed your life. It didn't specify who changed it the most; it just said someone who changed your life. Dr. Dahl-Smith probably saved my life, which would definitely mean she changed my life. She stuck with me until we got to the root of my migraines. The fact that we haven't been able to knock them out really isn't her fault. I kinda have to look in the mirror and suck that one up myself. She said no stress and I kept the stress, so there you have it. Moving on...

I bet you are now wondering why you are getting this letter. Clearly it is because you changed my life. The weird part about this whole thing is that I didn't even know that you had changed my life until YEARS after the fact. That summer selling books door-to-door in Colorado was hard. In lots of ways it was brutal. That first week I really thought I might die. I hated it. The work schedule was grueling. Knocking on a stranger's door at 8am is just stupid. I thought it was stupid then and I still think it is stupid. No one is in a good mood at 8am. And if they are, it is broken by someone knocking on their door trying to sell them something. It also rained steadily that first week. It was actually cold. Cold and wet. Working a 12 hour day with a brief respite for a sandwich brought from home is not my kind of day. 8am-8pm rain or shine. Come on. I will never forget when the diarrhea hit me after about eight days and I was HAPPY. I was THRILLED. Never been so happy to have diarrhea in my life. I could go HOME. No one can work with that. Ann, my actual manager, called for numbers and I told her the sad truth. I was struck out of the game by a bad case of diarrhea. Her response was, "Why didn't you take Immodium?" Well that was met with silence. The obvious answer was that it would take my precious diarrhea away. I was happy to be on the bench. I was exhausted. I needed a time out. Ann and I never really got along after that. In fact, she stopped calling for end of day numbers when Karen quit and Diana moved to Colorado Springs.

After that, I heard a lot more from you. You were a manager, but you weren't mine. However, you would call me several mornings a week just to see if I was awake. I got really good at sounding like I was awake when I was actually sound asleep, and you had woken me up with your call. However, you never believed me. You always thought I was sleeping. That was irksome when I actually was awake. So, I guess I wasn't as good at sounding awake as I thought. Hmmmm. Sometimes, out of the blue, you would tell me to jump in the car and drive down to your territory. I was going to follow you that day. That was fine. It was nice to have company. Sales is lonely, and you were funny. The thing was this: I never got why you took an interest. You never got paid for helping me. I wasn't one of the people on your team. Calling me didn't financially boost you at all. Making sure that I succeeded didn't help you. I know that you didn't "like" me because you had a girlfriend who was there, and it was very obvious that the two of you were very into each other. But, you continued to kick me in the butt to try and make me better at every opportunity.

I know that I irked you because I got to the point that I pretty much told you the truth. Lying gets tiresome when someone continues to invest himself in you. So, on one those days when I would follow you around and you asked me how I ran my day, I finally told you. I started at about 10am. That is about the time I would be okay with my door being knocked on. I kept at it until I sold something. I had figured out if someone was going to buy the books I was selling, they would buy big. I sold them everything. Why go for the small sale when you can get the large one? Once I made that large sale I could go home and watch my soaps or go to the cheap movies. After dinner, I could work until 8pm and pick up the couple business. Sometimes I accidentally sold stuff. I made friends with my customers and would hang out with the people my age. I was going to a movie with one of them and I hadn't sold the neighbor across the street, but she recognized my car. While I was waiting, the doorbell rang. Turns out the mom talked it over with her husband and she wanted to buy the whole package. I left and made my sale and then I went to the movies with my new friend. Yeah, I am just good like that. I remember you just looking at me and shaking your head.

You said, "Can you imagine how much money you would make if you actually tried?"

I said, "Yeah, but then it would feel like work. I did that for a week when I got here and it gave me the runs. Too stressful. This way, I am making more money than most of the people who are working all day long, and I go to the dollar theatre three or four times a week. Plus I stay caught up on my soap. If you would stop calling me at the buttcrack of dawn, I might could get a decent amount of sleep."

That just earned earned me an evil eye and you didn't stop calling. In fact, I think you called more. You were determined to make me pick up my pace. Looking at it from this perspective, I think that you saw all of this sales potential going to waste and it drove you a little nuts. If it makes you feel at all better, you drove me a little nuts by calling me all the time when I was trying to sleep in. I wasn't going to knock on a door before 10am no matter when you called. You just ruined my extra sleep.

When the summer was over, we had this big party, and we all wrote our names on our Styrofoam cup, so that they didn't get mixed up. You wrote on mine, "Made more $/HR than anyone else." We had all been drinking a bit by then. I am not sure if you meant it as a compliment or if you were still ticked by my lack of incentive, but I decided to take it as a compliment. Anyway, I never forgot it. That was the summer of 1988. Ten years later, my life was going to hit a fork, and I was going to have make the Big Decision: What do I want to be when I grow up? I was an English major who no longer lived in New York, couldn't finish a novel, and didn't want to go back to school to teach. In fact, I didn't want to be a teacher. At that point, it came down to, "What am I good at?" I thought about that cup a lot, and I knew that it was sales. I was good at sales.

It took a couple of different sales jobs to figure out what kind of sales job I liked, but it was sales. I am not sure that I would have known that if it hadn't been for you. You and your constant phone calling when you weren't my manager. When you weren't making any money off of my performance. When you called and said, "You are following me today. Get out of bed, get showered, and get in the car. Hustle." I would hang up and mutter that you had no business telling me what to do, but I still did it. And I always learned something following you. The thing was that you didn't have to take an interest in me and my potential. You gained nothing from it, but you still did it. So, thank you. I admire you more than words can say. I will never forget the words you wrote on that cup; those words changed my life. They gave me a career. When I get well, I am going to have the biggest selling job of my life to do. I am going to have to sell the world on hope. On me. On believing that we can give people the tools to assist them in their journey from illness to wellness. It is going to take millions of dollars. I am going to have to sell the people of this country on an idea. You believed in me. It made me believe in me.

Because of you I know it can happen. All it takes is a few committed people and you can change the world. And that is how you changed my life.

You Are Better Than The Best,
Robin


image snatched from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 27: LETTER TO THE NICEST DAY WITH A STRANGER

Dear Stranger,

I wish I could remember your name, since you gave me such a lovely afternoon in Berlin. My traveling companion on my Europe trip was still stuck in meetings, and I was touring the city on my own. I knew that would be the case so I had a plan. I was armed with a guidebook to follow the Berlin Wall around the city. I had no idea how long that would take. I also had no idea how sad that would be. The day before I met you I followed the inset stones weaving around the city. I learned so much. Mostly, I learned how ignorant I was. I had no idea that there were actually two walls and that the space in between was called No Man's Land. In some spaces the two walls were close together, and in other places they were far apart. No Man's Land was where people died, because snipers shot at people that tried to escape from one side to the other.

Along my walk that first day, I found an entire section of wall that was still standing. It was hard to get to and backed up to a fence. It made a much bigger impression than the pretty stones inset into the pavement. It was littered with graffiti, and radiated the frustration, anger, and misery of the people. I hoped that it never came down, so that people would have something to look at, so that they never forgot. The pretty stones in the road did not give off the same feeling as this wall. The wall was tall and forbidding. Pictures of the wall were not enough. I stood there for a long time with my hand on that wall so that I would never forget.

The next day I met you. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to see that day. There is always more stuff to see than there is time. Honestly, I can't remember what line I was standing in when I met you. However, I think it was the Alexanderplatz. You were such a nice young man (as in younger than me) and your English was excellent. That was a good thing since my French was nonexistent. All of my other languages pretty much suck, too. My Spanish is fair to poor. However, as I recall, you didn't speak Spanish, so we were pretty well stuck with English. You were also traveling or were a student. I really can't recall the details now. However, we were both doing the touristy thing alone and it was nice to have someone to share conversation.

I can't say that you made the experience of looking at the crosses of the people who died in No Man's Land any sadder. However, it was nice just to have someone standing there feeling the futility of the whole mess. People can be so inhumane to one another. So cruel. We didn't talk about it and that was also nice. You knew a lot about Berlin, so it saved me having to look up every building in my travel guide. That was a welcome change. You also knew some background stories that were funny. It felt good to laugh about anything. After all of the sadness of the last day and a half, laughter was good. We even took a brief tour through the Volkswagen dealership. We weren't car shopping, but I was curious about a dealership that had every single automobile inside. It must be interesting to test drive those babies. I thought about inquiring, but then decided that would be really just mean, and I would probably wreck the car driving on the wrong side of the road. Karma works exactly like that. However, it was really fun looking at all of the cars indoors. It was like Barbie and Ken's cars for grownups. It was really weird. Of course, you had warned me that it would feel odd, so we both burst out laughing as soon as we made it outside.

I was really disappointed when it got to be late and you needed to go, and I needed to get back to my hotel for dinner. It was an excellent afternoon. You were the sunny side to Berlin. The rest of that trip was all sadness and tragedy and death. So, thank you for coming along and making the end of my day in that city something that was nice. I am so sorry that I can't remember your name. I want to say that it is some variation on Michael, but that could be wrong. I suppose it doesn't really matter. Your name isn't important; it was, and is, all about the spirit and harmony that you carry around. Thank you for being a bright light for me back in the summer of 1999.

Best Wishes,
Robin


image found at www.weheartit.com

DAY 26: DEAR PINKY PROMISE

Dear H-Girl,

I don't know how to make your world better. Your grades are not good. That is an understatement. Your grades are terrible. However, this is not a surprise. Your grades have been moving in a downward spiral for years. I have been telling your father that it is an unreasonable expectation for your math grade to improve when you still don't understand the math from the previous two grades. It all builds on the principles that were not learned in the preceding grades. The fact that you are unable to do the work is not a surprise to me at all. When your dad moved during this summer, changing school districts, I told him that this would be an excellent opportunity to allow you to repeat 5th grade without anyone knowing. You would already be going to a totally new school.

As usual, he didn't listen to me, and enrolled you in the 6th grade. So, you were not only in a new school district, but you were in middle school. A new school. Middle school. And you still didn't understand 4th grade math. Your reading skills were also hovering in the 4th-5th grade range, and everyone is puzzled about why you are failing in all of your classes. Everyone but me. I know why you're failing. You don't understand what you're reading in any of your classes and the math is WAY over your head.

This academic disaster is compounded by the fact that both of your brothers are "A" students. C-Man is so smart that your father is going to let him take the SAT in January just to see how he scores on it. He tested so well on something at his school that his teachers think that he will test as well as most seniors in high school. He is in the 7th grade. Therefore, it is not surprising that you dis C-Man at every opportunity. In fact, I get the sense that you try to make him feel left out on the sibling wheel. You and J-Man are the cool brother-sister act and C-Man is just not cool. It makes you feel better. Fortunately, I think that C-Man has a healthy self-esteem and can take your abuse.

However, it makes me wonder what is going on at your school. I ask your dad and he says that you aren't talking about school to anyone. Everyone has tried to get you to open up and they aren't getting anywhere. You won't talk about your classes, classwork, teachers, friends, nothing. The grades are telling the story about your classes. You are not getting it. I have gotten a glimmer of how you treat people that you feel threatened by (i.e. your brother) and that wasn't a pretty picture. I let you know that you could talk to me about anything, and we would keep it just between us. We sealed the deal with a pinky promise. However, I haven't heard anything from you.

All of this has me very worried. H-Girl, you are pretty, probably popular, and I've been on the receiving end of some of your hurtful verbal jabs. Please tell me that you aren't that mean girl that is slicing and dicing other girls in your class to make you feel better about you. My "mom" radar is buzzing very loudly that this is a strong possibility, and I am so worried for you. This will be a terrible burden to carry some day.

I love you. I really want my sensitive, sweet girl back.

Love,
Me


image pillaged from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 25: THE WORST OF TIMES

Dear Teachers,

This letter is supposed to go out to a person going through the worst of times. Here's the thing about that: everyone goes through the worst of times at some time. It is you, the teacher, that doles out the pain. Granted, it is we, the student, that signed up for the class. You must understand that sometimes you sign up for a class not knowing how hard it is going to be; in theory, it looks not so bad, but the reality is that it slices you open, and you just don't know how you will ever get through it. I know that there are no takebacks once you sign up for the class; no drop/adds. I get it, but teacher, I have to tell you that sometimes your class is a biotch.

For instance, right now I am aware of several people grieving the loss of beloved family members. One of them is grieving the loss of a child, and the other is grieving the loss of a matriarch. Another family is struggling because they have a child who has a very rare disease. At this point, there is no cure in sight because the disease is so rare. Each day is a struggle that transcends tough time. There are so many families who have children with ADHD. For those families it is a tough time all of the time. Another online friend posted that her husband was laid off from his job and she was very worried. Their belt was already very tight. What were they going to do? Times were already tough.

Insofar as I know, there is an online friend who still hasn't been diagnosed, but has been in unbearable pain for months now. She described it as being on fire. I would call that a tough time. A friend of mine in Florida lost four family members to various death/accidents within the last year, two of them were her children, and now her grandchildren live with her. She has a brain tumor, and worries about who will take care of them when she passes. I consider that a tough time.

My mother's best friend has Parkinson's disease and it is getting worse. She also has cancer. The cancer seems to be getting better, but the Parkinson's is not. She is convinced that her husband and children are conspiring to kill her. For the record, they are not trying to kill her. They love her very much. My mom's other best friend's son also was diagnosed with cancer. He had surgery and is now going through chemo and radiation. The cancer was a very aggressive one and so is the chemo and radiation. His ex-girlfriend is taking him to court to try and take away his business and home since he is in this weakened position. Yeah, she's a prize.

My brother and sister-in-law have remodeled the first floor of their house so that her parents could move in. Her mother is ill and was living in a nursing home. Her father was not doing well living alone. This solved both problems. However, it will make life very different for my brother and sister-in-law. My mom talked to him yesterday. They moved in this past weekend and he was already stressed to the max. I really hope things settle down for them soon.

I know that all of you heard about the miners in Chile who were trapped for months and finally were rescued. All of them were rescued! For a long time they had it really tough, but people refused to give up hope. In fact, people were brought in to solve this problem and those miners were saved. The only thing that gets people through a tough time is hope. That is it. You lose that and you have lost the war. So, when the tough time finds you, and it will find you, hold on to Hope and don't let go.

Me





image pirated from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 24: JUST MAKING IT UP AS I GO ALONG

As promised, I took a look yesterday at today's letter topic. I was less than thrilled when I saw that it was the person who gave you your favorite memory. I seriously began to question if the person who made up this list was 16 years old. Seriously? The person who gave you your favorite memory? I would have had a difficult time with this one at 16. I can't even see 16 in my rear view. In fact, should I be spontaneously catapulted back to the age of 16, it would be disaster. Thinking beyond everything I have forgotten about higher math, I would have no clue about my locker combination, and I don't need any more challenges.

Therefore, I was still stymied about this post when I was in The Think Tank (aka the shower) where I do my best thinking. I began the mental review of my life, and was affirming everything I already thought about this post idea (it's really dumb), because most of my closest friends have been talked about, or had letters written to them. All of my major relationships have been covered. They had their good and bad points. Okay, some of them just had bad points disguised as good points, but it took a while to figure that out. And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. Ally McBeal meets The Seinfeld Years. That is what I call that bleak period from 1995-2001. It would have and should have been longer if I had said "no" when my ex-husband asked me out. But, alas, it isn't and wasn't.

How does this end up being my favorite memory? It doesn't , really. It just gives me something new to write about. And I loved Ally McBeal. That is a favorite memory. I also really liked Seinfeld. So, it counts, too. Let's trek back to my thinking process in the shower when it hit me that this is where this letter should go....

Well, then there was that time after I broke up with My First Love that I became infatuated with country line dancing. It was a phase. I go through phases. I loved it. I went practically every night. I became really good at it. I never drank alcohol, because the key to the dancing is remembering the steps. What made me good at it is that I have an excellent memory. Well, I had an excellent memory pre-migraine. Anyway, I made lots of line dance friends and we would all sit together. There was this guy who kept coming over and talking to me. Kept asking for my number and I wouldn't give it to him. One night he tells me that he has figured out why I won't give him my number; it is because I am running from the IRS, because I am dodging paying child support. I couldn't quit laughing. I told him he was wrong. He asked for my number again. I wouldn't give it. He was convinced I was a mom who'd ditched her kid(s) and was on the lamb from the IRS. That is why I call them The Seinfeld Years.


When Ally McBeal came on, I was hooked. It was like looking at my life on the TV. I know that it wasn't the same. I was now in commission sales. She was a lawyer. Her First Love broke up with her. I broke up with mine. She had to work next to hers. Mine was in another state. The thing in common was that we both had this "plan" for our lives and it wasn't happening. Instead we were living The Seinfeld Years. We ended up on screwy dates with bizarre people when we finally would go out with someone. She said and thought the things I thought. I didn't have hallucinations, but I felt all of the feelings.

And then the *magic* happened. Larry Paul arrived and we both could breathe again. (That is Robert Downey, Jr. for the non-Ally watchers.) I know that it is crazy, but I thought that if someone with as many issues as Ally (and me) can find someone who gets her and it works out, then all is not lost. There is hope here. Maybe The Seinfeld Years are coming to an end. Maybe the years of going out with someone and having them say things like this, "The guy behind us stopped in time. But I waited until the last possible minute to hit my breaks so that he might hit us. Had that happened, you should say that your neck hurts even if it doesn't. If you don't say your neck hurts at the scene, you can't sue him later." WTF??? Obviously, first and last date... the dating pool is terrible, peeps.

So, yeah, Larry Paul gave me hope. It was like pouring oxygen into a room that had been really flooded with too much carbon monoxide for way too long. And then he got arrested for drugs. Robert Downey, Jr. Not Larry Paul. However, that prevented Larry Paul from staying on the show. The courts were nice enough to allow the show to give him a chance to make a storyline exit. Not a good storyline exit. It was a heartbreaking, painful, and wrenching storyline exit. Ally never recovered from that devastation. Me either. They brought on Bon Jovi to try and revive her and she was like meh. I didn't get Bon Jovi. Ironically, though, that was my ex-husband's first attempt to get me to go out with him. He asked me to a Bon Jovi concert. I already had plans. I had forgotten that until just now. He asked me to see Bon Jovi and I was meh.

So, I suppose in a twisted sort of way Ally & Larry gave me some of my favorite memories, because what they gave me was hope. I was living The Seinfeld Years. Every date I went on was one epic disaster after another. Every guy I met was bizarro strange. I began to feel like a magnet that attracted the crazies and oddballs. I watched Ally do the same thing for years until she finally got a Great Guy. That was huge. I was beginning to think that they were all married, gay, or my parents' age.

If there is any wisdom to be had from this post, it is this: don't give up and settle. Hold out for that person who makes you happy, smile, shares common interests, someone you love and respect, someone who shares the same values. These things are important. That is how you will get the best memories for yourself. I am counting on the fact that MY best memories are still to come!

Here is some Ally and Larry Paul action:





image found at www.photobucket.com

DAY 23: DEAR LAST KISS

Dear Last Kiss,

I don't know where to begin with this letter. You came into my life shortly after Flash made his exit. I really wasn't ready to date anyone. However, I knew your mother and your sister from working my little part-time job, and your sister was really juiced about setting us up when she discovered I kicked Flash to the curb. Honestly, I was really looking forward to just being single. Despite all that, I agreed to meet you. And here is the thing: you were really nice. In fact, I am sure you are still really nice. In lots of ways, you are the ideal man.

You own your own home (no house payment). You own your own vehicle (no car payment). You are a supervisor at your company, and have worked there for 20 years approximately (steady job and can soon retire from there, even though you are in your early 40s). You have no kids and have never been married. You are nice looking. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with you. You smoke. That is the one fault I can pick at. You smoke. Other than that, I got nothing. However, you never smoke in the house or the car or around me. So, even that is weak.

Our biggest problem was there just wasn't any chemistry. That is a magical element that is just there or it isn't. I really wanted to "like like" you because you were the perfect guy. Seriously. I have never gone out with anyone who was more "together" than you. And there was absolutely nothing in the sizzle department. It didn't help that my mom's first comments were how much you reminded her of my brother. She was so right about that. That upped the weirdo factor enormously right off the bat. However, I was fairly determined to try and stick it out. My theory was that if you really liked someone maybe the chemistry thing would just suddenly kick in. I can't say that I proved or disproved that theory. However, I am leaning toward the idea that it doesn't work that way. You either got it from the start or you don't.

It didn't help that we really didn't have anything in common. Being with you reminded me just how important shared interests really are. It is terrible having to suffer through someone else's interests all of the time and vice versa. Having no common ground makes it really difficult to enjoy doing anything together. You spend 40% of your free time in an activity that you dislike (and that goes both ways). That is awful. Eventually, you just start begging off of the thing that they want to do and let them do it alone. And they do the same. You spend all of your really "fun" time with other people doing the things you really like to do. Well, that just sucks.

Honestly, I don't remember that last kiss. I really don't remember any of our kisses that well, because they just didn't set the house afire. Yeah, we are back to that whole chemistry issue again. What can I say? This relationship didn't last all that long. In fact, the part that I remember best was the ending, and that is only because it was so funny. You asked me for your garage door opener because the one you gave your mom wasn't working right. It was no skin off my nose, since I never used your garage door opener. I asked if you were going to come inside and watch some TV, which was usually the case if you came over. You declined. That was odd, but I really didn't think much of it. I then asked you to call me and let me know about your niece's delivery the next day. When I didn't hear from you, I called. You said that she and the baby were fine and got off the phone asap. I saw your sister the following day and she said that the baby was NOT fine and was in critical condition, and she was worried sick. Mind you, this was her grandson, and she was out of her mind with worry. It was at that moment, that I realized you had broken up with me by way of the garage door opener. The fact that I was fine with that, and actually laughed about it all the way home, indicates that you made the right choice. The only thing that bothered me was that you lied about the baby. I guess you REALLY didn't want to talk to me. When you are done, you're done. I'm glad that you think so much of yourself that you think I was gonna break down and beg you to stay. I suppose that is an indicator of a healthy self-esteem. Or an indicator that you don't know me well at all. Either way, it's turned out as it was meant to.

Still Chuckling About That Garage Door Opener,
Robin


image shaken down from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 22: DEAR SECOND CHANCE

Dear Natalie,

I am writing you this letter because today's letter goes out to someone I would like to give a second chance. There isn't anyone in my personal life that I haven't 1) already attempted that with, and succeeded or failed, or 2) I am not interested in giving them a second chance. By mutual agreement, we are done. So, I spent some time wracking my brain and came up with you.

Let me say this first: your voice is incredible. When the Dixie Chicks chose you as their singer they picked a winner. You are so amazing that I got some of my friends who claimed that they would never listen to country music under any circumstances listening to you. You blew them away. It was like putting crack in their country, shaking it all up, and the result was a bunch of addicts. But in a good way. It was still country, but it sizzled it was so hot.

You were so high up that you didn't realize how hard that fall could be. It was a freakin' long way down. The thing that you should have known about Americans, because you are one is this: you can air your political opinions, but it will piss off about half of the people in the country. However, about a quarter of them will have the good sense to realize that you are entitled to your opinion and free speech thanks to The Constitution, and might not like what you have to say, but will die for your right to say it. You change the ballgame when you trash talk your country while on tour in another country. In other words, you don't talk sh*t about America when you aren't in America. The fact that you didn't have the foresight to see your career go down the drain as a result of that fatal error amazes me even now. I think you started to get the picture when people were burning your CDs and saying that the love affair with the Chicks was over. I know you were hoping that it was a "this too, shall pass" sort of thing. It didn't pass.

I didn't burn my CDs. I am not so naive as to think that celebrities are smarter than the general public. In fact, I don't think they are. They just have a microphone and an audience. The smart ones keep their religious and political opinions to themselves. The way I see it, or in this case, saw it, you were sharing your opinion. It was one person's opinion. It was not representational of anything. No one elected you to office, so you were not speaking out on behalf of anyone but yourself. The fact that you chose to dis your country in another country was just stupid. Were you drunk? I am thinking that maybe you had been drinking and your judgment was impaired.

Apparently, the American people didn't quit with the record burning. I guess you got lots of hate mail after that incident, too. When you piss someone off, you do it in a really big way.

You and your team had some serious thinking to do here. This was the time to spin. How do you spin it? Well, you came out fists raised with the song NOT READY TO MAKE NICE. I gotta admit that I liked the song, but I don't think it was the way to go. You effed this up really badly, and saying that you're not going to play nicely with others just wasn't the best message to come out of the cage with, armed to the teeth, guns blazing. That was the one and only single released off of that record, and then it died a slow, lingering death. Or maybe it was quick and painful. Not sure. It just dropped off the map and out of site. Natalie Maines, country superstar, turned into a bad word that stopped conversations in their tracks, and became whispers in hallways of Nashville's underground. Too risky. Natalie Maines: she made and broke the Dixie Chicks with poorly chosen words at a concert. It happened in the blink of an eye. The hottest country band went from the top to the bottom. Splat.

I saw on Amazon that the original Chicks came out with a new record in April of this year. You were nowhere to be seen. But then neither are they. Splat.

I would still give you a second chance. I think the people would have given you a second chance if you had come out with a record that was about the music. No one cares about your politics. Had you reminded them of what a great musician you are, it would have blown over. Instead, you had to rub their faces in it. Tell them how right you were. The thing is that it didn't matter. Now that you are sitting at home thinking about the career you could have had, does your rightness mean anything at all? Or do you just miss the music? You cut off your nose to spite your face. If another chance comes your way, focus on the music, and forget about how important it is to be right all of the time. Nobody cares.

Sincerely,
Robin


Don't forget to turn off my music player at the bottom of the page...
P.S.
This is you at your best:




This is the song that you should have written, to get it out of your system, but not put on a record:





image robbed from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 21: OH, THOSE FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I am skipping the letter for Day 20. It is for the one that broke your heart the most. I have already written about that. It is a tough call. It could be my first love. That was quite painful and I wrote a blog about that. You can read about that here if you want to know me better. Or it could be Mr. Electric. That, also, was extremely painful. In some ways, it was worse than my first love because it had no closure. I wrote a blog about that one, too, and you can read about it here. I finally found my own closure and wrote it in my Letters to the Ex-Boyfriends/Husbands. You can read about that here. Whew. You may not care about any of that. If so, just skip on ahead to today's letter. It is a letter to someone you judged on their first impression. Personally, I think this is a bit silly. We tend to judge, to a degree, everyone on their first impression. As time goes by, that impression solidifies or changes. Ah well. I know that Flash has already gotten a letter in this exercise, but he is a classic example of how judging on the first impression can go so terribly wrong. So, here goes...



Dear Flash,

Whenever I think that I would like to be in a relationship, I think about you, and I immediately change my mind. We tend to draw to us people who are in the same emotional place that we live. Right now, I am still sick. I live with chronic pain. I try to stay positive and live in that place, but I know that I don't stick there. I know that the reason you seemed so attractive to me when we met was because you understood me so well. Our situations appeared to be so similar. You had been divorced longer than I had, the circumstances surrounding your divorce were different, but you had chronic back pain, so you understood chronic pain. We shared divorce and chronic pain. You also had just moved in with your mother to try and help her get through her divorce. Your dad left her for a much younger woman and she was shattered. You seemed to be the ideal son and all-around good guy.

One of your best qualities was your willingness to nurture others. You were excellent as a caregiver. As someone who had been doing all of the giving, and not getting anything back, it was wonderful to be on the receiving end of some TLC. It blinded me to some your more obvious faults. For instance, you had no trouble traveling me with one week of every month back to GA so that I could do my job. You had no money to contribute to this endeavor, and you got cranky if we didn't eat out enough, as opposed to buying food, and eating in the hotel room. The crankiness got worse, the longer we were together. After a while, I began to question why you didn't get your own job. I was much sicker than you and I was still working when my doctor had told me that I shouldn't. What was your excuse?

I finally quit that job because it was too much for me. One week in Georgia led to two weeks of severe migraines back in Florida. Then it was one week of less severe migraines and then back to work. Clearly working wasn't working for me. It was also around this time that your real self started bleeding through your disguise. The care giving was over. Cranky ruled the day. Then there was the stealing of my medicine. That went over real well. Then there was the missing cough medicine at my parents' house that you never would cop to taking. Then there was the cheating and lying about it. Then there was the verbal battering to get me to give you another chance with the kicker being that if I didn't you will never become a good person. That is below the belt.

What is amazing is that I bought that for a while. I allowed you to sell me on the fact that I was responsible for making you a better person. I remember sitting you down and making you confess to all of it. Every rotten thing you'd done. There was a lot of rotten to confess to and it made me ill when I got the list. My response to all of this was that once you start out making bad choices, they get easier to make. I think of it as a moral line. Once you cross it the first time, the second time is easier, the third time is easier yet, and the fourth time you don't even think about it. And that was where you were living. I told you that your moral compass was gone. You had chucked it out the window a long time ago, and you were going to have to redraw your line. I could not do this work for you. You had to look at your own list and decide if these things were okay or not. If they were not, then that was stuff that was now on the other side of the line.

My problem was that you were still lying to me about cheating on me. I just can't abide a liar. I knew in my heart that you would have left me for her had she not lost her job at that last possible moment. You still weren't working and were looking for someone closer to your kids, and who could support you in a lifestyle you would like to become accustomed. It was just bad luck that her company had to let some people go and she was one of them. Good luck for her, bad luck for you. Really bad luck for me. The fact that you never would admit to any of this only dug you in deeper as a liar in my book. Eventually I realized that I had, once again, come full circle. I was only with you because you had emotionally blackmailed me into being with you. I no longer respected you and really didn't like you very much. There was no love in my heart for you. How can you love someone who steals from you, lies to you, cheats on you, and then pins you into a corner when you make it clear you want out? You can't.

So, the next time I left I had some help. You made that necessary. We talked to the pastor at our church and he was the intermediary. I made it so that you had someone to talk to other than me. And he taught me how to break up with someone like you in the future. It's harsh. When someone just won't accept "no" or "I don't love you" or "it's over," you have to cut off all contact with them. Don't listen to their voicemail. Don't read their email. Don't call them back. Don't write them. In a few months, you might be able to do those things if they have let go. Give them their closure. I suppose that is the one thing I can thank you for: you taught me how to break up with manipulative men. So, thank you. That doesn't mean I want to hear from you, because I don't. Just sayin'.

So glad you're gone,
Robin


image found at www.weheartit.com

DAY 19: LETTER TO SOMEONE THAT PESTERS MY MIND

Dear My Big Idea,

You are taking up a lot of space in my head. I know that technically you are not a someone; you are more of a something, but you are BIG. Last night you woke me up four hours into my sleep with more ideas for a name. It has been really tough just nailing down a name for you. The name needs to encompass a broad spectrum of all the things that I can see you doing right now, and it can't be already taken by another business. Sounds easy, right? Not so much. I have a couple of pages of ideas for names. The ones I really like, I run through godaddy.com to see if they have been taken on the web. If they are free as a .com, .net, and .org (aka The Big 3), I feel much better about their availability as a business name. Pretty much every business these days also has a website. Last night I just kept writing variations on names I already had until I came up with this: Forging Hope For Wellness. It took nearly an entire page to get there, but once I did, it felt right. I turned off my light and went back to sleep.

I checked godaddy.com and it is available in all of The Big 3. What a relief that turned out to be. That isn't a sure thing on it not being a business for someone, but it makes the odds better. I have a link from a friend to check it out in the state of GA. What I really need is an attorney who specializes in non-profits and doesn't charge much of anything, since I don't have much of anything. That is me sending a rocket of desire out into the universe. (Wheee!)

I am still reading Peter Drucker's book on managing a non-profit. I do have my mission statement and feel good about it. Forging Hope For Wellness assists people in their journey from illness to wellness. Mr. Drucker says that your mission statement should be concise. It should also be something that anyone in the non-profit can say, and have it be true for them, from the volunteer to the President.

I spend a lot of time visualizing this project like it already exists. In my mind, the website is something that has already happened. It is full of doctor's names that people have emailed to us from all over the U.S. It all started with an email that I created asking people to send in the names, addresses, and phone numbers of doctors who 1) listen, 2) treat the root of the problem and not just the symptom, and 3) think outside the box. The site is looking for any and all kinds of doctors. That means traditional and non-traditional medicine. If you know of someone who has helped make someone better via acupuncture, we want their information. The site is looking for people who are interested in helping someone who is ill become well. In my mind, that email gets copied and pasted better than spam. It just keeps getting thrown like a net. Everyone knows someone who is sick. Even if you don't know of a doctor, you have 50 people on your email list and they might. Copy and paste. In my mind, the website takes care of itself. I write the email, and I post it here and all of you copy and paste, and sent it on your email. I send it on my email. Everyone emails. Done.

There are doctors who are invested in getting their patients well. Those doctors are the ones that NEED to be on this site. People need to know how to find them. People are misdiagnosed and undiagnosed. If this goes on long enough, they will lose their job. If they lose their job, they lose their health insurance. If they lose that, they eventually will lose their house. I call that falling through the floor. Ideally, someone will find this site and get help before they fall through the floor.

If they don't, well that is where I spend most of my time in my visualization. That is what pesters my mind. There are people all over the United States who have fallen through the floor. I am one of them. I was lucky. My parents caught me. There are a lot people who aren't so lucky. There was no one to catch them. They are sick and they are homeless. They can't even afford the prescriptions that were making their life somewhat bearable before they fell through the floor. They don't even know about our website, because they don't have computer access. They need help.

In my mind, I can see people hearing this, getting this, and sponsoring this site in order to really make a difference. In my mind, I visualize HGTV deciding to do something totally new for them and helping us build houses for these people. We, meaning me, will have to fundraise like crazy for it to happen. However, when people understand that they get to actually see where their money is going, it is a gamechanger. Most of the time when you donate money to something you don't get to see the results. When you donate your money to building a Hope House, you will get to watch it being built on TV, and be able to say proudly, "I had a hand in building that." When you watch the people move in who have been living on the streets, you will see the lives you are changing. You will be able to say, "I am making a difference in those people's lives." And it will be the truth!

I visualize this project going on for a very long time. I visualize the American people embracing this with love. I envision them supporting these houses with their time, service, and dollars. The goal with the houses is the same as the website. The mission never changes. It is to assist people in their journey from illness to wellness. When someone is well enough that they are able to move out, and go back to work, then someone else will get to move in. The job of aiding people in this journey is never-ending. There will always be more sick people than we have houses. Of course, it is my goal to have as many houses as possible. The more houses there are, the more people we can help.

This next part is for the readers of this blog if you are still awake...

If you believe in visualization, spend a little time each day visualizing this project, if it something you believe in. The more people who can get behind it and support it, the stronger it gets. If that came off as sounding crazy, let me say it another way ~ Jesus called it having faith. Faith is believing in something before it happens. By having that unwavering belief, it is certain to come to you. I have prayed about this and already thanked God for it in advance. Now I am living in a place of faith that it will come to me. The visualization is my active belief of what will come. My sharing the project with you further activates my belief in this project. Asking you to visualize it is yet one more step in solidifying my faith and belief that it will come to pass.

With Love,
Robin


image found at www.weheartit.com

DAY 18: DEAR WHO I WISH I COULD BE

Dear The Pieces of Me,

This letter is supposed to be written to the person who I wish I could be. There isn't any one person I wish I could be. However, there are quite a few people who have qualities that I wish I could somehow understand so comprehensively that they became a natural part of who I am. I am going to be embarking on an important task. Actually, it is more of a mission, and having these qualities would make things run more smoothly. So, let's get down to brass tacks.

I wish that I had my next door neighbor's bullshit meter. You can read about that here if you want a chuckle. She could smell a lie before somebody finished a sentence. She was that good. Having a fine-tuned bullshit detector is an invaluable instrument, and should be handled with care. I do believe that Life has tried to hone me with this skill by sending several extremely talented liars my way. Time will tell the tale if my meter beeps as clear and true as my neighbor's always did.

You know that line in the song The Gambler, "You gotta know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, Know when to run." Well, from the reading that I have done thus far, running a non-profit is a lot like that. You move too soon and it falls apart. You don't move soon enough (aka take the risk) and it stagnates. Timing is everything. So, I guess I want the quality of the gambler. Obviously one who knows when to move and when to stick.

Most people are not born with the art of listening. They just aren't. That quality is often developed. Nurtured even. It's important to know how to sell your organization. But, you have to listen first to understand the need. If you don't know what the needs are, you don't know how to meet them. I think of Mother Teresa. She did a lot of listening. She didn't run a non-profit insofar as I know, but by listening, she helped people one person at a time. She was so devoted to helping, that you could put her stats up next to any doctor's and... I bet her patients had a better quality of life in her care when she was done with them. Just sayin'. Don't ever underestimate the value of listening.

There is no I in TEAM. I am a serious Type A personality. I am one of those people that would rather do it myself than take the time to explain to you how to do it, just to watch you screw it up anyway. Or not do it at all. Or do it late. College projects were a bitch. I just did them and told my other project mates to go home and watch TV. Or whatever. They weren't lowering my freaking grade with their lameass work. Crap. I am cursing again. Sorority projects were worse. During pledging it was all too much. I had to delegate crap because I was the Pledge Captain. Did you doubt that? Come on. Seriously? I about killed one of my fellow pledges. As in dead as a freakin' doornail. I hated her until I graduated. Sorority love be freaking damned. I just cursed again. This is a bad subject. We had to do something for pledging. She volunteered to do it. Day comes for it to be turned in and she didn't have time. Say What? You don't tell me at the last fucking minute that you didn't have time. If you didn't have time, you tell me the day before, or the day before that, when I can take that bitch back, and do it myself. You biotch hoe with bad hair. As your Pledge Captain I take the SHIT for the stuff you don't do. I am gonna mop the floor with your ass after we come out of that pledging meeting. Let's just say I have delegation issues. I still loathe that biotch and would hit her with my car if I saw her walking down the road. Not kill her. Just break a leg or something.

I think I made my point about delegation issues. This is a toughie. There is no I in TEAM. Well, the good news is that I get to pick the TEAM. I got stuck with the teams I had in class and who the sorority picked for my pledge class. That ain't happening again. So, the key here is to pick people I feel comfortable delegating important tasks to, and not worrying about it afterwards. In other words, I know that these people will do what they say they will do. And, if they can't do it, they will delegate it to someone else, or they will let me know, so that I can redelegate it, or do it myself. Whew. Maybe cursing is therapeutic. I feel tons better. Or maybe it was just the idea of breaking her leg with my car. Broken legs heal people. Don't judge.

I believe that most people will resonate to this non-profit in a really beautiful way. I think it will help so many people, and will be greeted with an armful of love. The flipside of that is there is always someone or several someones who are the haters. There are people who look for ways to hate and try to turn good things bad. Always have been. Always will be. I have no doubt that organizations like the Red Cross, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts, etc. get hate mail. Why? Because there are people out there who hate all things good. They hate organizations that try to make this world better. Ignoring the haters will be hard for me. Someone in the organization will say, "Robin, you shouldn't take this personally." They are right. I shouldn't. However, it will feel personal. My idea come to fruition. So, yeah, I am taking it personal. Maybe I should take it as a sign that I am doing something right. If you haven't pissed somebody off, you aren't working hard enough.

The last two are biggies. Yeah, like the others weren't? This one is really hard. Accepting the fact that I cannot save everyone. Change that. Accepting the fact that I cannot save anyone. The only thing I can do is provide tools, and hope that they use those tools to save themselves. That is it. I cannot even get too closely involved in somone's illness if I see that they are not using the tools they have been given. That is me trying save someone else. I have this personality that wants to band-aid the world. It is ironic, since I am having a really difficult time just keeping my head above water right now. That is how I know that each person is responsible for their own recovery. You have to fight for it. You have to use the tools in front of you.

Letting go. As this organization gets bigger and bigger, it will become vital that I train more and more people to do all of the things that I am doing. No one person can be indispensable in a non-profit. If you create a non-profit so that one person is vital to keep it running, and that person dies, the non-profit dies, too. That cannot happen. We all like to think we are indispensable, but it is critical to a non-profit that no one is indispensable.

So, Robin, you need to work a bit on your personality. You are a flawed human being that needs to make some changes in order for your non-profit to get off the ground. However, you really believe in this project and want it to work, so I know that you will do what needs to be done. I have faith in you.

Love,
Your Inner Self



Image found here

DAY 17: LETTER TO SOMEONE FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD

Dear Stony Glen Camp,

The first time I set foot on your grounds was the summer between sixth and seventh grade. I only stayed for one week, but I knew I would come back the following summer. I loved everything about you. I had no idea when I signed up to take Riflery as one of my three summer activities that it would turn into something that I loved. Loved and Respected. The cabin I stayed in that summer didn't have electricity; in fact, most of the cabins didn't have electricity, so I became well acquainted with where my flashlight was at all times. I never was all that keen on swimming in the lake, but I loved to slip down there alone at quiet times for contemplation and reflection. This was church camp, and I was doing a lot of thinking about God, Jesus, me, and how that picture all fit together.

One of the things I loved best was all of the singing. We sang after each meal in the dining hall. After breakfast, the counselors who played guitar strapped them on, and we sang songs about God. Some of them were so pretty that they squeezed my heart hard. At lunch and dinner, the high schoolers led the songs. They didn't stand up or anything. They just took control by leading. Those were all fun songs acapella style. At night, we broke apart by division and did an evening activity. Those were always so much fun. That meant that four or five cabins would join up (girls all in the same age range). I don't remember so well now what the fun things were that first year. I know that as time went on one of my all-time favorites was Capture The Flag. After the fun was over, we always made a campfire, sang some more, a counselor gave the message, and then we went to bed. I always slept really well at camp.

My riflery obsession eventually led me to try my hand at archery. I never was quite as good an archer as I would have liked. I also became dissatisfied very quickly with just one week of camp. One week quickly turned into two weeks. Two eventually turned four. I would have stayed five, but I was too old by that time. I was already there for the duration of camp. I liked camp so much that I took the Camper In Leadership Training Program (CILT) when I was in high school. That took two years of overall time and two weeks of camp time for two years.

That second year of camp it hit me like a rocket launcher that at the end of the second week I would no longer be a camper. I would graduate CILT, and they would expect me to be a counselor. That meant that I could no longer hang out with my friends. My days of living at Sam Grey were over. This was devastating. Sam Grey was the best place ever. Sam Grey was this A-Frame house with electricity set far away from the rest of the camp, where the high school kids lived. Sam Grey was the bomb. I never wanted to leave Sam Grey. How did I not see this coming? Ironically enough, the theme song for camp this year couldn't have explained my predicament any better than I could. The chorus started like this: "Mmmmm I want to linger, Mmmm a little longer, Mmmm a little longer here with you." We sang it every day. Check that. Everyone but me sang it every day. I cried through it every day. Two weeks of crying.

Adulthood was coming for me and I wasn't ready. They didn't put it in the manual. I checked. I kept praying for time to stop or slow down and it steadily moved forward until the day of graduation. One day I was a camper and the next I wasn't. Snap. The next three weeks I was a counselor. I was a fairly miserable counselor, but I was a counselor nonetheless. The following summer, after my senior year of high school, I came back as a counselor and it was completely different. I knew I was coming in as a counselor, so this summer was I was perfectly aware that I was a grown up now. Being a counselor this time around was a lot of fun.

Stony Glen Camp, so many of my best memories happened with you. I learned so many things about fire building, riflery, archery, people, and myself, that I wouldn't have learned if not for you. Most people transition into adulthood so seamlessly that they are only vaguely aware that it is happening. One day they wake up and realize that it snuck up on them, passed them by, and they cannot pinpoint the when or the where. That is not my story. I know exactly when and where it happened. It wasn't painless, easy, or desirable. I was dragged through the doors of adulthood kicking, screaming, and crying, because I knew that something beautiful was dying. I would never get it back and there wasn't anything I wanted more. However, you are patient and waited for me to come and appreciate you from my new perspective of adulthood. I did. That next summer I realized it was my privilege to give each girl the wonderful experience that I had every year. If they left with a heart filled with more love, faith, songs, confidence, and joy, then I had done my job.

I haven't been back to see you in almost twenty years, but I can picture you clearly in my mind. The website indicates that you have undergone some changes. I prefer not to think of that. I like to picture you the way I remember you. On those nights when I wake up, and cannot fall back to sleep, I imagine myself in Milner Cabin. It is the only cabin close enough to the waterfalls that you can lie in bed and hear the water as it goes over the falls. When I was in junior high school, I prayed every year that I was placed in Milner Cabin so that I could fall asleep listening to those falls. The sound of those waterfalls is still one of the best sounds I've ever heard.

Love,
Robin


image stolen from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

DAY 16: LETTER TO SOMEONE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

Dear Purple Cow,

This isn't going to be one of those letters in which I put you up on a pedestal and bow at your feet. You have repeatedly made it clear that people are so thoroughly flawed that I would be better off to worship bees. Unfortunately, bees are not very conversational, so I just can't really get behind sending them a letter, therefore I am stuck with you. Ha! You get to be admired whether you like it or not. However, I shall remove the pedestal, throw in some of the things I dislike, as well, just so you know that I am not completely addled.

It has been a learning experience getting to know you. It feels a lot like peeling an onion. The layers are so thin that it is a lot of work. Every now and then you peel a layer and you get a surprise. The smell of the onion wafts up, burns your eyes, and leaves you crying your eyes out. Reading your blogs is a lot like that. All of them reveal something about you. You just choose most of the time for that something to be your knowledge on Greece, world politics, history, literature, the written word, satire, or perhaps even something light, like a day at the beach or some hot dancing. So, it is always heartburn when you offer up something real.

I am not sure that I said that exactly right. You care very much about the situation in Greece, so that is also you. When you write so thoughtfully about world politics, I know that you have done your homework, so you spend time reading, thinking, and keeping up. It, too, makes up the puzzle that is you. You are clearly well read and reference writings of extremely deep thinkers. People like you. All readers tend to be somewhat enamored of the written word and you are no exception. There are times I can see that you are particularly pleased with how you twisted the words to suit your meaning. Your pieces that are humorous, with just a bit of pain to them, speak ever so loudly about where you are in your head. Well, who doesn't enjoy a day at the beach or romping about on an island? I only wish I knew how to tango. You are a woman with many talents. All of that said, I still like the heartburn best.

So, when you quit writing this blog, I hope you don't delete it. Just leave it as is. That way I can go back and reread it from time to time. It will be like revisiting an old friend I haven't seen in a long time.

Love,
Robin


image found here

DAY 15: LETTER TO THE ONE I MISS THE MOST

Dear H-Girl,

I think back to when you first came to live with me and it was so hard. You missed your biological mother, despite all of the abuse and dysfunction, that living with her brought. You also rebelled against the boundaries that I set up, not knowing that you craved them, and they brought relief. Finally, someone was running things. For the first few years of your life, you and C-Man were in charge of the household. How scary was that? You don't want to turn over those reins of responsibility to just anyone. You have to trust the person to navigate the waters safely for you. I know that when your dad and I divorced, that threw you back into unsafe territory.

You have been trying to be captain of the ship ever since. It hasn't worked out well for you at all. Your grades are abysmal. Your disposition has gone from a sweet, loving person to a shut down, closed off person. People keep telling me it is the tween thing. I know that it is a contributing factor, but I think that it is more than that. I am not saying that you don't joke around and laugh. You just don't really let anyone into your heart anymore.

I tried to get your dad to let you move to Florida and live with me, even though I was still sick, and he wouldn't have it. I could tell from the time I spent with you in Augusta, and the visits you made to Florida, that you were floundering. You needed stability and more help in school than he was able to give. However, I have no legal rights to you and his "no" on that was final. I am now back in Georgia, and sicker than I was before. You are beyond my emotional reach now. I was still able to get to you when we were discussing you living with me in Florida. You wanted to live with me. Now... I am not even sure you would choose it. I don't feel capable of doing the job even if you did.

That doesn't mean I don't miss you. I miss that little girl who was so in tune to other people. You were always the one who was most aware of when I felt really terrible. So many times when I felt lousy, you would come into my room, lie in bed with me, and just hold my hand. You were always the child you wanted to spend time with me, was free with hugs and kisses, made pictures and jewelry, chose to be helpful, was an easy conversationalist, and was always eager to spend time with me.

I told you when you spent the night last time that you could tell me anything and I would keep your confidences. I can't parent you because I just am not there enough to do so. I can be that special adult in your life who just loves you, listens, and offers up advice when asked.

Sweet girl, I miss you so much,
Me


image robbed from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos