Staying the Course

Sometimes I forget to follow my own advice.

Recently, a friend's daughter had gone out for her high school cross country team. She ran track in middle school but only the short sprints. After her first race, when she finished almost completely last last in the field, when we were back at our house after the meet to eat pizza, I pulled out the clippings from my high school days. The very ones where I finished dead last on my team and near the end of the line in the junior varsity race. By the end of that season though, I had moved up to last spot on varsity and I wanted Hannah to know that working hard would pay off. I also wanted her to know that everything I have accomplished today is because of those lessons I learned back then.

As I work at Chelle Summer, trying to get the word out there to sell the hand bags I have made as well as make more and get ready to sell customer swimwear in the spring, along with all my other responsibilities (including a full-time research job), sometimes I can be sitting at the sewing machine and I'll begin to wonder, is it worth it?

I wrote several weeks ago when we launched the store of the web site that to me this is the harder part of starting up something new: actually getting people to buy what you've created. Anyone of us can create something and throw it out there. The hard part is making people see that you're different than the millions of other products that we're bombarded with (and see all over social media). 

It's also a challenge to keep going when you're alone and have time to think. It's easy to wonder if it's worth the time and effort, if it's what I'm supposed to do, and if there is something else I'm supposed to be doing.

But then something comes along and reminds me, yes, this is the right direction on the map. I don't always get there as quickly as I would like. But, yes, I'll get there somehow. I've done it before and I know the rewards are great. I just need to stay the course. 

Self-Inflicted Busy-ness

There seems to be a trend this year: everyone is busy. 

Now there are people in the world who are actually busy, but I believe the majority of people who say they are busy could probably walk away from their phone or from the television and realize that they aren't that busy after all.

Whatever it is, people say to me, "Well, you're really busy." They usually add this with how much they see I have created which I share on social media. 

No no no, I am not that busy. The fact is, I choose to be as busy as I am for several reasons, mostly because I have more I want to accomplish in my life and it won't happen if I spend all my time lazing around my couch (although I managed to do that yesterday evening during the Bears-Cowboys game which then frustrated me and I had turn the channel, at which time I became tired and went to bed). That was the first time in a long time that I remember laying in front of the television and flipping through the channels.

I call my busy-ness self inflicted because I have so much that I want to do. Life is short and it's fleeting. In recent weeks I've been making phone calls to several people who don't live near me and making sure I catch up with them. I'm making lists for each day so that I am doing what's important to me (besides my daily responsibilities including a full-time job on a military grief research study). 

I know what it's like to see something pass me by. I often used to joke I wasn't going to miss the boat leaving the dock. I know that life can change on a moment's notice, that time can pass so quickly that I'm going to wake up one day and I want to be sure I can nod and say, "Yes, I did everything I wanted to do."

I stopped telling people I am busy when they ask me what I'm up to. Instead, I say, "I'm busy but it's my self-inflicted list of things I want to do."

However you choose to be busy, make sure it's because your time is spent how you want it to be used. I haven't always had that luxury and phases go where my time isn't always mine but somewhere in there I always make sure that there is something for me.

Be Bold

We were across the street the other night for dinner with some neighbors when we got on the discussion about what it means to be bold. And Tim– who lives across the street– asked me the last bold thing I have done. 

I looked to the middle of the dining room table and pointed at the dark chocolate-banana-peanut butter ice cream bombe that I had made and I said, "To some people, trying a new recipe is bold."

But before I could add anything, Tim kindly told me that he thought starting a new business as I have with Chelle Summer is a bold thing to do.

And that's when I added that I didn't think trying a new recipe was bold (I tried three last week- and mostly I do this because I get bored and like to see if I can find recipes I like more than ones I've used in the past). Bold is doing things on a much larger scale, but I realize that not everyone's life is like mine. I have chosen a life where I continue to put myself and what I create out there in the world.

As I write this on late Monday morning, earlier we announced the web site online store is open for business. 

I have been going back and forth in my head about whether or not I think this is a bold move. I will admit that I am a little, no, a lot, scared as I take this forward. I've "thrown" many things out there; some have done well, some haven't. And yet something has driven me to take on this new venture. I keep myself focused on creating the items, (as well as continuing with my writing). I try not to worry about what will sell and when it will sell.

Whether it be bold or not, I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to. The key for me is to remember it's all about continuing to create– whether I do that through writing or sewing or painting– and let the rest go. 

Looking back on the past fifteen years since the publication of my first book, the boldest move at all for me might be learning to let it go and fly on its own while I stay on the ground and keep creating.

Check out the new store here at www.chellesummer.com/shop.

This Is Me

In the more than twenty years that I have been flying back and forth between my now-home of Albuquerque and my hometown in the Chicago suburbs, from the air I have gotten pretty good at locating the house I grew up in as well as the house that I had bought not too far from it, now sold since my last move back to Albuquerque. I can spot the high school I attended, the quarry-now swimming pool I spent my teens years at with my friends. Then as we travel toward the lake and then around the downtown Loop, I can spot my maternal grandparents' house on the north side of the city. This time I also saw the hospital where I was born at– the same hospital where my grandfather was a doctor on staff– and the high school my mom and her sisters attended.

It had been almost a year until I flew through for a short night's stay this past weekend, on my way to Green Bay, Wisconsin, for a talk. I couldn't get there from Albuquerque in one day to arrive before my talk so I split the trip overnight.

I missed my hometown, on the way in, my nose buried in a stack of magazines that had been collecting on my coffee table. We were heading over Lake Michigan when I looked out the window and instantly I thought of my family. I thought of everyone who isn't here anymore: all my grandparents, my parents, and my younger sister.

All the people who make up much of who I am today.

I am proud to be from Chicago, my parents both city dwellers until they married and moved to the suburbs to raise us, all of us born in the city at the same hospital. I'm proud to be a Midwesterner. I live in New Mexico now, that's my home, that's who I am today, but as the plane traveled forward over the Lake, then turning north to come back to land at O'Hare, a series of memories traveled through my mind, various events in my life– many of them routine– that helped me to dream and become the person I am.

They might be silly– thinking about listening to Chicago radio each morning before school– but each one of those events or parts of the daily routine helped me to dream, to think about what I wanted out of life, to experience life.

I ate pizza with my sister and a very good friend that night, in a restaurant chain we had grown up eating at. And when I checked into my hotel there at the airport and poured myself a glass of water I realized something.

Lake Michigan water.

I was taken back to my grandparents' house on the north side and the little jelly jars Grandma left by the sink so one could grab a quick glass of water (Who thought about transmitting germs in those days? Especially within families). The water had a smell to it, and a taste you could only get when it was just out of the tap.

We had well water in Naperville until later when the pipes were finally laid and then (this was after I had moved away), they, too, had Lake Michigan water. To say I couldn't stop drinking it was an understatement. The next morning I made sure to get my fill and enjoy it.

It might seem silly to some but I believe that going back to where you are from, to be reminded of what brought you to where you are today, takes you forward in life. I don't take steps backward in my life but I look backward sometimes at the steps that have been laid. And in them I remember the family and the people who helped me become who I am today. Then I continue my path forward.

Taking My Steps

Some years ago, I was leading a workshop on suicide prevention at a resort outside Phoenix. We were working with a group of people– all Navajo– from the Navajo Nation. It was a multi-day workshop and on the second morning when I went for my run among the saguaro cactus, I saw one of the participants also out for run. We waved and greeted each other.

Later, when we had gathered for the second day of the workshop, he said that as Navajos they believe it's important to start the day by "taking our steps"– if possible, when the sun is rising.

I didn't realize it at the time but it's something I do every day. As the years have gone on and I've gathered more dogs into my home, my run got earlier and earlier so to allow time for them to have their walks as well.

Each morning I am out before the sun comes up and finishing with Chaco's short walk to the park by the time daylight is covering the city. 

And during that time, I see how much I appreciate not just darkness turning to light but the space of reflection that gives me. For years I have been praying on my run-walk with Chaco, giving thanks for the day before and asking for what I need in my life. 

But about a month ago I hurt my leg after an accident with Lilly, my youngest dog– as she was flying down the stairs, I was walking up then and she ran her head into my knee. I had several days where I wasn't allowed to go on a walk at all. Not taking my steps as darkness turned to light, my routine upside down, took a toll on the importance of the morning to me and the way that I start my day. 

We shouldn't just reflect on the day when it is over, but as it's beginning, giving us perspective to make the most of what's ahead of us.

Thankfulness

Saturday evening we were walking out of a restaurant with a takeout order for our dinner when a woman stopped me and said how much she liked my bag. Of course I was carrying a Chelle Summer bag, but this was the first time in the nearly year since I made the first one that anyone had commented on it when I was carrying one (except my gynecologist when I was leaving my appointment with him, yes, him– obviously he works with a lot of women so I'm sure has learned a thing or two about style over the years).

We had just come from church where one of my prayers on this particular Saturday night was asking to make sure I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Sewing, like writing, is something that often is done alone. And alone can be good– to a point. I work from home and balance that with walking and running the dogs early in the morning (where I have my "park" community to interact with) and doing errands. I also make sure to break up my day with a swim– weather permitting. And I have my job interviewing people for a military grief research study that keeps me engaged with the participants and the people I work with.

But I'm lost in my thoughts much of the time either writing, at the sewing machine, or cutting at my dining room table where I have plenty of space to spread out the rolls of fabric. While I don't ever feel like there is enough time to create everything I want to, one of my daily prayers is to "stay the course" so that I don't get off track. And because I'm alone, not knowing if what I'm doing is going to be a dud or something great, it's a challenge to keep positive when there is only me to talk to.

In particular over the past week, I've had multiple conversations with people who have told me how much they enjoy seeing all that I'm creating, mostly shared on social media. It's my goal to keep creating and share it, not worrying about the rest (like what happens next!). Hearing those comments helps me to keep going and they keep me reminded that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing: sharing through living the life that I want to have.

To all of you who are inspired by my work, who enjoy seeing it, who tell me how much you enjoy it: Thank you. Thank you for being part of this journey.

Building the Dream

I saw this on one of my recent Facebook memories:

"In elementary school when asked what I would do with $1 million, I always wrote buy a house with modern furniture and an in the ground pool."

I'm sure I found it written in something my mom had saved from elementary school. I have no memory if specifically writing that although I do remember that was how I pictured my life as adult.

What struck me, however, is that without a million dollars, I made this happen. As my hairdresser Amanda said, as she was cutting my hair last week, "You built it."

I'm sure in elementary school I thought it would take a million dollars to make my dream come true. But now what I understand is that it really takes a belief in a dream and the willingness to work toward that dream. I call my house, like I do my Chelle Summer brand, "modern design with a retro twist."

It hasn't always been easy. The hardest part has been the patience in learning to build something that might not happen in one day. It took me a long time collect the furniture, to figure out how some of it could be redone to be made new again, and also to select colors that worked in the rooms. There have been mistakes a long the way but I can see where the constant rearranging of my bedroom growing up, the Barbie houses my younger sister Denise and I built, and just the freedom to dream got me here.

There is always much more to do– and always something to fix and update– but when I look around, I'm proud of where I live and how far it came from essentially a blank slate with a lot of potential. 

It's just one of my dreams I've made come true. There are more to come.

The Big Move

After an extremely hot July here in New Mexico, the mornings have cooled into the lower sixties. It's one sign that fall is around the corner. But in August I also see the days getting shorter as darkness keeps with us later in the morning and just a general feel that it's time for school to start as the shadows change.

But I am always reminded of August in Albuquerque because twenty-two years ago this week I moved here as a twenty-two-year-old college graduate heading off to graduate school at the University of New Mexico.

New Mexico was not a place familiar to me much more than my uncle's brother lived here. I didn't intend to stay so much as I saw it a stop on my journey, hoping to continue to head west to Los Angeles, the place where I'd wanted to live since I was thirteen.

Yet twenty- two years later, with a year and a half hiatus where I moved back to Illinois, here I am.

And here I intend to stay. With time spent in Los Angeles, of course.

I know that it was hard for my parents to leave me here, and a Uhaul filled with my belongings as well as many useful items from my grandmother's house because she had died less than a year before (to this day I have more Pyrex glass dishes than Target). My move was only eighteen months after my younger sister's death and it would have been easier for everyone if I had stayed closer to home. But my parents knew I wasn't going to be the kid who stayed close to home. 

While I did try to move back for a time, I realized that I might be a Midwesterner by blood, but I'm much happier here in the Southwest. It seems to fit me better (the vast amounts of sunshine help). A priest I knew back at Ball State said, after I had come back to New Mexico for the second time, "I don't know why you left. You spent almost your entire adult life there."

I came in New Mexico as a twenty-two year old and it has influenced much of who I have become right down to my cooking. 

I won't leave but I also don't forget the journey here.

Signs and Messages

I was only going to go to one estate sale Thursday morning. I have a quadrant in Albuquerque that I focus on, partly because I have other things to do and also because I've had more luck in certain areas than others. I went to one, not planning to go to the second one I knew about, because I didn't think the area would have anything of interest for me. 

I ran my errands and then decided I would go anyway. 

I entered a room of the townhouse and instantly saw some vintage blue and orange fabric. I bleed blue and orange, not so much for the Chicago Bears but because my high school colors were blue and orange. As I went to pick it up, a lady standing next to the pile said, "Oh, that's mine."

Oops.

She showed me where there was more but there was nothing more cool than that blue and orange she had picked up. And I had no idea what was under it. I began going through piles of fabric, finding a few neat things but nothing as great as what she had. And as I did, another woman started looking with me. We talked a bit and she told me she was the president of the Albuquerque chapter of the American Sewing Guild. And that she taught classes on fitting.

She left the room before me and as I drove home with my new stash, kicking myself for not going straight from the first estate sale to the second (thinking it was more important to buy dog food and bananas for the next week), I was reminded of a conversation on my run-walk with Hattie earlier in the morning.

We were walking with a man named Sam whom we often see. I happened to mention something about sewing and he looked at me, surprised, and asked, "You sew?"

He proceeded to tell me how he hadn't met anyone else so young who sewed and that his wife is a big sewer. 

"You should come shop at our house," he joked and I instantly knew what he meant (there is always the joke about who has the biggest stash of fabric- my friend Bonnie taught me that).

Twice in one day life had intersected with sewing. It was one of those moments where everything had fallen into place so I could receive a sign.

I'd been late getting out to run in the morning because Greg and I had stopped to talk to our newspaper carrier about an issue we'd had and then I opted for my shorter route rather than my longer route. If I had gone longer, Hattie and I would have missed Sam.

While I missed the elusive blue and orange fabric, had I not been in the room at that time, I wouldn't have gotten a chance to talk to that particular woman while we sorted through the boxes and bins of fabric.

I'm in the midst of recreating my own version of the blue and orange fabric on paper, hoping it might be the first of my own fabric designs. And knowing that the signs and messages are all around us all the time if we're open.

Keep sewing, I told myself. It's slowly coming together.

The Swimsuit

The plan had been to start making swimsuits. I just thought I had bit more time to learn my new serger before I tackled my first one. However, my friend Veronica was leaving on vacation at the end of July (to the beaches of California, no less) and she needed a suit. I wasn’t going to say no to the opportunity to create something for my friend, especially because it was a chance for me to start making them.

But I didn’t really consider what a daunting challenge I had in front of me. What didn’t scare me was that I knew my mom had created one for my older sister Karen in the 1970s– one that lasted Karen quite a long time– and Mom had done it on the same Bernina sewing machine that I am using.

We bought a serger for me in Late May but with two trips in June, I haven’t had much of a chance to use it. I would need to make Veronica’s swimsuit on the Bernina with lots of zig zag stitches.

Taking her measurements, the pattern, the notions, and the fabric she picked in hand, I realized what a daunting task I had in front of me. I couldn’t do it alone.

Often in the past I have written about my struggle to be the competitive runner I was supposed to be. I often joke that in high school God and I broke up- an unanswered prayer in eighth grade regarding my dad’s job situation left me not believing in God. I thought I had to do everything on my own.

But several weeks ago as I watched the Olympic trials, particularly track and field, many of the runners talked about how much God helped them.

If I was going to make a swimsuit, not only would I need to channel my mom but I’d need God’s help, too.

Sewing knits– which tend to slide all over the place– is tricky. Getting the needle and thread to behave on the knits can be perilous, too. I allowed myself hours at a time. Just in case. And prayed a lot, often shaking as I sat down, unsure how I could truly make Veronica’s measurements match a pattern that was confusing (my friend Bonnie often called pattern instructions “destructions” because of the chaos they cause). It also made me realize why women hate buying swimsuits. No one’s measurements are the same. How can we be standardized when our bodies are so unique? And I know this from trying on all the clothes that I do– how much doesn’t fit right because of my short frame.

With the seams sewn together but nothing else, Veronica came by and was happy with the fit. It looked great but I was mostly concerned that it felt good. I didn’t want to create something she would never wear.

And when the suit was finished, truly looking like a swimsuit, I felt like I’d survived a final exam and needed a nap. When she put it on, not only was it a perfect fit, but she was happy and comfortable. Excited is a better word.

It wasn’t beginners luck as I attribute some of my successful to the binkini bottom I made in January that taught me some elastic lessons, but rather it was taking the time and letting go, asking for help in a way it took me a long time to comprehend.

Welcome to Chelle Summer!

After years of of a variety of web sites, we have merged all my work into one place. 

Chelle Summer.

Here you'll find links to my books (and there are more of those to come!), the inspiring blogs I'm known for, recipes from Chef Chelle, and– soon– a store for the Chelle Summer bucket bags and tote bags.

The focus of Chelle Summer is also the idea of bringing together what inspires me and sharing that with you and the world. After spending many years helping people through grief and loss, my concentration has turned to living the creative and inspiring life I have dreamed of. And by living it, I'm showing that despite whatever happens to you, you can go forward and have a great life.

You'll find links to social media where I often share the items that inspire me or what I create. And of course the awesome photography of Pamela Joye (who also built this site). 

Take a look around. Pull up a chair and stay awhile. Connect with us on social media.

And get ready for what's next. First up? The Chelle Summer store, of course. 

Finding Inspiration in Style

For many years I wouldn’t say that I had any style.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have any sense of style because in junior high and high school I had been really into Benetton, Esprit, and, of course, Forenza, and Outback Red, the Limited brands we thought were so cool.

But after not wearing jeans for several years (I wore skirts and even shorts in the winter- something kids do all the time now but I don’t think many of us did then unless my memory bank is fading from my suburban high school Chicago days), I ventured back to them in college and while I wore nice clothes, they were quite boring.

I lived in jeans for many years even though I had some nice dresses. I wore denim or khaki shorts in the summer. Most of my foray into prints came from a vast collection of bikinis that started in 2004 when my then-husband and I added a pool to our Albuquerque backyard.

But in 2011 I began to find my way back to style, starting with skirts and then color.

However, it was finding Trina Turk’s brand in early 2013 that changed me.

I don’t know how I stumbled on her prints but I fell in love with the swim cover up in the photo. I bought it and used it as my reward for when my house in Illinois sold (which didn’t happen for two more years so I gave up on it as a reward– I knew if I didn’t buy the cover up it wouldn’t be available later although I really expected the house to sell long before it did).

After spending a year and a half back in Illinois, I realized I didn’t belong for many reasons but one was my sense of color was very different what many people wear and decorate with there. I have since heard the people who bought my house painted over the orange walls of my office and the turquoise of the guestroom. Back to brown I’m sure.

For me though, it’s about the prints that remind me of my Barbies and the clothes they wore in the late seventies. Maybe it’s because those are happy memories, with my younger sister who isn’t here anymore. But I’d like to believe it’s about me becoming who I am today.

What I didn’t realize all this time is that in those years I was creating that person. I didn’t know that this style would come full circle by discovering what someone else had created.

That then opened the door for me to explore everything that has inspired me in the past and make it part of my present and future.

Finding Inspiration

I have just a smidgen of Irish in me on my south side Chicagoan dad’s side. He was mostly Polish but in many ways he identified– or wanted to identify– with the Irish him although it was American Irish: corned beef sandwiches and the taunting every St. Patrick’s Day that we were all to trek to city hall downtown Chicago and have our rear ends painted green.

But I don’t identify with being Irish myself. Two weeks ago Greg and I set off to spend a week in Ireland, my third trip there, but it wasn’t about stepping foot where my ancestors did or seeking out family history like many Americans who go there do. I can still remember sitting in the departure lounge at the end of my first trip watching all the Americans drinking bottles of Guinness at 10:00 in the morning.

That’s not Ireland to me.

Two of my three trips to Ireland took me there for speaking gigs and this one was the offshoot of a speaking gig in England because there was something else I wanted to do: spend some time on one of the Blasket Islands.

But it’s also because I am always inspired by the places I go. My first fiction novel, The Australian Pen Pal, only could have been written because of my trips to Australia. By going to places, I experience the people, culture, and the physical place itself. For me, I can’t write about a place without having been there. And this trip had one new place (a blog to come somewhere down the line after it’s incorporated into the novel I’m working on) plus returning to Dingle, Ireland. I wanted to do the drive around the area again, just make sure what I remembered is what is there– at least through my eyes. And it also gave me more details to add to the future story where it will be included. The richness of detail is that transports my readers into places they might never have been.

So while many Americans are off exploring Ireland to step where their ancestors did, I’m thinking about my characters and how Ireland might have shaped their lives in some way.

 
Tags inspiration, ireland, dingle, blasket islands, writing, writing life, fiction, novel, writer, author, travel

New York City to Chicago Flight

I confess I’ve never been much of a New York girl, always favoring the west coast.

However, when I was in high school, my mom worked for the old Midway Airlines (based out of Chicago’s Midway Airport) and she took my younger sister and I on many day trips, particularly during the summers.

Now that I’ve been living in New Mexico for twenty years, I forget how easy it is to get to the East Coast from the Midwest which meant it was less than a two-hour flight to places like Washington, DC, Boston, and New York City.

One time we went to Macys, another to the Statue of Liberty, and yet another to see the Chicago Cubs play the New York Mets in Shea Stadium.

A few weeks ago, work took me to NYC for a training at Columbia University. And luck struck again that I had the opportunity to stay with a family friend of my husband’s­– one of those people in our lives that isn’t family but we call family– who lives on Central Park. Staying with her and also the opportunity to meet some of her friends and see a musical gave me a different perspective of NYC. And a greater appreciation.

But a memory I had long forgotten also stuck with me as I began to remember the trips with my mom and my sister.

Because we flew stand by (or space available), sometimes we were split apart. As the older one, if they could only get us two seats together, then I was the one who sat separately from my mom and my sister. I traveled with my journal and used that time to catch up on events (I wrote often in those days, right down to what mail I had received and who I talked to on the phone). The woman next to me on one flight to Chicago was an editor of a major magazine. I forget now but it was something like Ladies Home Journal. And her husband was the publisher of something like Country Living.

We spent that time on the plane discussing journalism (my planned major– of which I did receive my bachelors’ degree in) and she was very encouraging.

What I realize now is what an opportunity that was for me, to sit next to someone who was doing work I dreamed of doing. And while the world has changed and we aren’t bound to locations like we once were, still, it could only happen in a flight that involved New York City.

The Intersection of Life & Grief

In the past nine or so days, three friends have had a parent die. All three of these friends come from separate parts of my life and I knew all three parents to some extent: one from college whose mother had attended the bridal shower when I was first married; the second friend a former neighbor with whom we had many parties with and whose parents visited often; and, finally, a friend who with his dad stayed at my house after Thanksgiving one night during their move from Illinois to Arizona.

For most of my life I thought that I had old parents (my dad was 41 when my parents had me and I’m not the youngest child). While a parent can die at any time, I saw a decline in mine, particularly my dad, when I went off to college. It wasn’t until recently that I began to realize how many friends had parents the same age as me.

Still, in many ways I was one of the first to lose a parent, and now to be without both of them. As I think about my three friends and the grief that’s washing over them, I can’t help but also think of how I have learned to cope with it.

I still remember when my paternal grandfather died over Labor Day weekend in 1989, the start of my senior year of high school. As we drove home from the north side of Chicago– where they lived– to our home in the western suburbs, I felt awful. The funeral was over and while I hadn’t been overly close to him, there was still a sense of loss.

And the feeling of what now?

Each loss in my life since– in particular that of my younger sister, my parents, all my grandparents, my dogs (who are like kids to me), and all the other people close to me, has forced me to rethink this each time it happens.

It’s probably the worst part of the grief experience to me, that sense of emptiness after the funeral is finished. Finally, after my mom’s death two years ago I began to understand it better.

There is a time after a person dies that feels as if each of our lives has a divide in them. We have the life with the person, and then there is the life we will have without them physically present. That awful feeling I’m describing is what I have felt as I’m trying to merge the two together, to figure out a way to keep that person in my life, even if they aren’t physically here.

It’s not something that’s easy but because grief is not something we have talked about easily in our lives, it’s also not something which many of us are familiar. I won’t say that it takes time to work through this feeling and close the divide (I have seen many people thirty and forty years following a death and still struggling) but rather it’s a process. We have to feel– which means allowing pain and sadness to overwhelm us– and we have to be open to the ways in which our loved ones are still with us.

There is no one way this works for each of us, we all have unique journeys to travel. But for my friends who I know are relieved their loved ones aren’t suffering anymore, but are still mourning the sadness of losing a parent, I also know that their parents are with them still (and always will be), cheering them on.

My hope is that all three feel that, too.

The Hawaiian Wedding Song

Several months after my dad died in 2006, my mom and I went to the Crate & Barrel store by her house– the house that I grew up in– to buy a new family room rug. As we walked through the store, she suddenly stopped and I looked back to find her standing there with tears in her eyes.

“It’s the song we had our first dance to at our wedding,” she said, of the music playing in the store.

And it was a song I’d never heard of or heard before: “The Hawaiian Wedding Song.” I couldn’t remember any other time in my life where my parents had told me the song they had first danced to at their wedding.

Then I started to cry and as we stood there in the store, both crying, I realized it was my dad telling her it was okay to move forward, to buy a new rug, that he was okay.

She settled on a really nice green rug and her dog Ginger enjoyed it immensely. I believe we had to throw it out before she moved though because it had been peed on too many times by her other (later) dog, Daisy, though.

Mother’s Day was a much-needed quiet day at my house after several weeks of non-stop work. I took occasional peeks at Facebook, glad to see the old photos people posted of their moms, but feeling sad that I didn’t have a mom to celebrate it with (although I have many second moms). Still, it wasn’t a bad day and the sadness didn’t ruin my day. Life is always good.

Greg and I settled in front of the television for several “Mad Men” episodes after dinner. Greg likes to keep the captions on and suddenly “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” flashed across the screen. And began to play.

I know it was my parents, but mostly Mom on this day, telling me it was okay to go on. I know well moving forward doesn’t mean I ever let go of the memories I have. Instead, it means I continue to live life remembering she and my other loved ones are with me, especially on days like Mother’s Day.

But sometimes the signs are nice reminder that I’m not without my mom.

A Mother's Day Message

Friday morning I went out to run errands– the day I typically hit the grocery store and places like Target. Everything was busier than usual when I remembered it was Mother’s Day weekend. At Target, the greeting card aisle was particularly busy; all of it– and the constant commercials on the radio and television about buying gifts for mom– are a reminder that my mom is no longer here.

Her birthday is this coming Thursday, the 12th, marking the end of a two months of death anniversaries, my parents’ anniversary, and their birthdays as well as my younger sister’s birthday. To say I’m a little worn out emotionally is an understatement.

I have tried to make plans on Mother’s Day– one year hosting a brunch for the family and extended family of a group of people close to me– but I am also reminded of Mother’s Days gone by. We always went to my maternal grandparent’s house and it seemed like my mom never had the card ready or a pair of “nylons” that didn’t have a run so we had to make a stop at Osco on our way to the tollway. Mother’s Day meant pie, too. Someone always had to pick up the Poppin’ Fresh (now Baker’s Square) pies to make sure there was enough for everyone.

My life is good, it really is, and I do focus on the good, on knowing they are with me. But it’s sad at times and the constant reminding– although materialism at its best– leaves me feeling somewhat empty.

Friday night we had a booth for my Chelle Summer bags at the Girls Night Out Event that benefitted the local Ronald McDonald House. On my left wrist I wore a bracelet of my grandmother’s that my mom gave me and on the right I wore one of my mom’s funky sixties bracelets. Tomorrow will be a quiet day at my house, filled with some much needed rest, but Friday night I honored both my mom and my grandma by taking them with me as I took Chelle Summer public in a new way for the first time.

That’s my Mother’s Day this year.

Focusing on Ourselves

When I was running competitively, I always remember how we were constantly told not to look back at the person behind us. We weren’t supposed to be worried about how close or far behind us they were because that meant we weren’t focused on looking ahead to the finish, to passing the person(s) in front of us.

How true this is for life: how much time do we spend thinking about what other people are doing? Of course this is made easier by social media where we are sharing more of our lives in ways we obviously weren’t doing when I was in junior high (it was a big deal to have an answering machine then and how primitive that seems now). But it’s easy to get wrapped up in other people’s lives. We look at what they have, what we don’t. We think about the good times they are having while we are struggling with something.

What’s the point? If we took all that time that we spent thinking about what others are doing, we’ll realize how much time we’ve lost being productive in our lives, spending time with our loved ones.

We all know that life is short and if those thoughts aren’t helping us move forward, then let the thoughts go and replace them with what inspires you and you’ll see how much you gain by making that change.