Looking Back, Moving Forward 2024
My dad died on January 1, 2006. We often joked that he knew some sort of tax/financial reason to hold onto the first day into the new year before he died. But it makes it difficult to pass into the new year without recognizing the profound loss that it is, the death of one’s parent, and the reflection of what that means in my life as I travel into a new year.
Several times as the new year approached, I saw a quote that said we shouldn’t make resolutions to change ourselves, instead our resolutions should be to be ourselves.
I don’t think resolutions are about that sort of change- about not being who we are– so much as they are about making our lives better, especially when it comes to mental and physical health. And about making our time on this earth more meaningful.
Still, this got me thinking about my dad and his discomfort in who he was. The very discomfort that kept an open beer can near him as much as possible. I didn’t understand it then, but in the years after he died I began to see how challenging life had been for him, how disappointed he was by it. And how he didn’t seem to ever feel comfortable in his own skin.
There are stories from other people that reflect these gleanings and I believe that when he drank, although he wasn’t a nice person, he felt that he could reside in his own skin.
While thinking about all of this regarding my dad, I also returned to some reflections about my own life and the challenges I have faced being the person I know I am supposed to be, the person that I am. And the difficult road that has been to continue to walk when around me there is constant noise and distraction to change, to be trendy. To be something I am not.
Perhaps I have tried to walk this road because I didn’t want to be unhappy like my dad. But I won’t profess this road has been easy. It’s been quite the challenge to hold steady when I’m pulled in directions I know aren’t right, that won’t last, that might bring me something quickly, but that the light will burn out just as fast.
I always like to take the changing of the calendar to see what I can change for the new year, what closets I can clean out, what I can make more meaningful. But this year I’m also more aware of this path that is mine, that I continue to walk steadily on, knowing it’s the right path. And somehow I need to keep forging ahead.
Merry Christmas from Chelle Summer
Advent
It’s hard to believe that it’s already the third week, the pink week, of Advent. For me, probably because of Chelle Summer, my life is more hectic at this time of year than it used to be, making it a bigger challenge to not lose sight of what it means especially because it only comes once a year.
Advent obviously a much happier journey than that of Lent, one about sacrifice (although I always try to make it about finding a way to grow closer to God which might not be about sacrificing something). Advent is about the light, about the joy ahead, and with my birthday falling on the same day as the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it’s also about a time of year when I feel closest to God.
I wrote last week that things happen to me this time of year and it’s like I must be closer to God because I can hear him better. But I also believe that Advent is a time of looking back and looking forward.
It’s the end of the year so we are reflecting on everything that happened this year. And we are also starting to look forward to the new year, to what lies ahead, and what we’d like next year to be. That great joy from the season, from Christmas, is what propels us into the new year.
And gives us hope for the future. Merry Christmas, everyone.
The Holiday Party Tour
Guadalupe's Reminders
I will fully admit I was wrapped up in party prep on Saturday when Fr. Gene called. We meet every few months at the abbey for my spiritual direction and I figured he wanted to move our appointment because he found out he had something else scheduled at that time.
Instead, he said, “I’m going to my homily on Tuesday about you without naming you. It’s about how a Polish woman from Chicago became devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
Tomorrow, December 12, is both the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe and my birthday.
He asked me to recount how it all began and I found myself…. not remembering.
But as I began to piece the details together, maybe not all of them, but the ones that came to me, I was reminded how Guadalupe always appears around the time of my birthday. As I told Fr. Gene, “Things happen.”
I admit I was a bit tired on Saturday. While I was excited for the party, It also has been quite a six weeks or so of events and happenings. I’m near the finish line now, but there are still things to do before the break really comes.
As I kept talking, something occurred to me that I don’t remember thinking before– that Guadalupe is behind my creativity.
When I go to church, I always light at candle at her statue and ask for her help, guiding and leading me in both my writing and my prayer life. Fr. Gene had told me once that God speaks to me through Guadalupe and I joke that I don’t hear God so he figured out that was the way to reach me.
Since becoming aware of the presence of Guadalupe in my life in the last ten or so years, my creativity and inspiration have increased and feel endless. Now the challenge has been how to balance finding the time to be creative with the realities of making money and keeping the bills paid.
But on Saturday none of that mattered. She just wanted me to remember that she is here with me, that December is the time I feel closest to her and God even though they are never away. In December, I take the time to reflect on where we have come in the past year. And what’s ahead.
December Adventures
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas at My House
Hostess Lessons
When I was growing up, my parents didn’t usually have people like neighbors over for meals as my first husband’s family did. I learned after my dad died that my dad had been close to a neighbor who had died unexpectedly and my mom said he vowed never to be that close to a friend again. But what we didn’t have with neighbors, we definitely had with family. There were several gatherings each year with my mom’s side alone for holidays and other events.
Growing up, I know I didn’t think much about the hubbub and organizing that goes into these events. When we hosted, there was always extra cleaning to do (the cutouts in the dining room chairs that had be dusted were the worst) and my mom trying to perfect her green Jello mold and making it too late, getting frustrated because it wouldn’t set right.
The photo above is of Mom’s side in the family, taken in the late 1950s. I believe this was my mom’s college graduation and those are her aunts and uncles at the table. I chose this photo, however, because that’s my Grandma Zurawski in the background wearing the apron and holding a pot. And that’s her basement kitchen.
The house was built around 1950 and had a small kitchen, but it was deceiving because downstairs she had second kitchen– pantry, refrigerator, sink, and stove. all right next to the washer and dryer that look covered in this photo.
As we have entered this season of gathering together, this year I have been thinking so much about how I learned to host a party. While a lot of it came from trial and error of simply having a party in the first place, there were also things I learned from Mom and that she had learned from Grandma Zurawski. I can look back now and see that learning to host was part of growing up, of becoming an adult, of a family education of sorts.
But I also understand now that hosting a party is one of the most joyful parts of my life. To gather people in my house (the happiness that they are excited to come over for a party!) for a meal that I have made (or partly made if we’re having a pot luck) takes time and planning. Yet it’s about sharing with others. And in life, sharing a meal with others, breaking bread as we have often heard, is where we find joy and meaning.
How lucky I am that it’s been part of my life, too.
What Thanksgiving Means to Me
Thanksgiving Peace
I have never forgotten the pain of that first Thanksgiving without my sister Denise, the same one that was also our first without my maternal grandmother who had died just about six weeks before the holiday.
It was awkward; we all knew it was different. We got through it and in the ensuing years, as I began to speak publicly about suicide and grief, I also began to incorporate ways to not just survive the holiday season, but also make them meaningful, especially those first years without a loved one.
Within a family, each of us have a different story relating to our loved one, our relationship with them, and their death. That often means that when a holiday arrives, some family members are afraid to bring up the person and/or the loss while others want to talk about it.
To not speak of that person, makes it appear as if they never existed. But there might be too much pain for some people to speak of them. It’s important to find a place in the middle to meet.
I have heard of families who set a place at that table for that person; an acknowledgment that they still have a place in the family (as they do– and always will– no one can take away the memories you have with that person).
Through the years of speaking, I came to realize that a lit candle early in the day is a good way to diffuse that tension between family members. It’s a way of acknowledging the presence in some way of the deceased loved one, to remember that they are still part of the family, and a way that doesn’t mean everyone has to speak of them if it’s too painful.
I know many people are approaching their first holiday season without someone they love very much. No matter what road you are traveling in your life this Thanksgiving, may the day bring you peace and hope. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
The Prickly Pear Candy Cauldron and the Color-Blocked Sweater
People We Call Family
My neighbor Basil used to say that sometimes the people who treat you better in life are the people who aren’t really your family. My friend LaRita told me once that she considered me her daughter, but that it was good we weren’t really related because that meant we would argue less.
People we call family.
When I worked on my doctorate in family studies, I became aware that this concept had a name- that sometimes in life we have people we aren’t biologically related to, but we call family.
LaRita Archibald quickly became one of those people the summer of 1993 when I was interning at USA Boxing at the United State Olympic Training Center. My sister Denise had just died a few months before and in the phone book I found the number for a local group of suicide survivors (what we now call the suicide bereaved).
It was LaRita’s number that I would be calling, the same message that stayed in her phone for what seems like forever. She had started one of the first support groups for the suicide bereaved in the late 1970s after the death of her son Kent. She then spent the rest of her life trying to ease the journey for all of us who would come after her.
Today is what would have been LaRita’s 92 birthday. I always call her on her birthday and yesterday I checked to make sure I had the date right (Facebook has made me lazy in that way– I don’t write it down and instead check a person’s profile). It was there that I found out LaRita had died on May 13, six months ago.
It’s hard to sit on the outside, to be one of those people we call family, because oftentimes we don’t know what has happened to someone as the family might not contact us. I have quite a few people in my life who would tell you I am family, but sometimes when they’ve died, unless I see an obituary or the family posts somewhere on social media, I don’t know. Or I might find out when something like an invitation is returned in the family (that happened two years ago with my friend Sally– we had been out of town when she died so I didn’t see the obituary).
We had a great weekend- Greg’s team won the girls soccer state championship, my Chelle Summer Holiday event was the best one I’ve had yet, but this excitement is tempered today by the news of LaRita’s death. I’m not just grieving the loss of my friend, but also of not knowing when it happened.
I know that LaRita was tired, that her body was failing her– she told me so when we talked on her birthday last year. Her husband Eldon had died a few years before. She had to carry around an oxygen tank to breathe. She didn’t have the energy to do things she once did. She had lost two children, one to suicide, one to an unexpected illness.
But she was such a part of thirty years of my life, more than half my life. And not just the suicide grief that brought us together. As the years went by, we shared more and more. We still talked about suicide grief and related topics, but we also simply enjoyed each other’s company.
She so badly wanted to come to my wedding when married Greg but no one would make the trip to Albuquerque with her and she was past the point in her life she felt safe enough to drive the trip down I25 from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque. We had always visited each other and I know she wanted me to visit more, that she was a bit envious we went to LA to see the Blooms instead of going north to see her (I tried to explain it was because they had the ocean).
I have so much more to say, but I think that’s where I’ll stop today. She had an enormous influence on much of my adult life, being that I was 21 when we met. Perhaps more blogs will come from it, particularly one about a major influence she still has to this day. Sometimes I need to travel the road a little to sort it out. Or swim some laps.
I’ll do that now. I know she is at peace, she is with Eldon, her parents, and her children Kent and Karen. But I will always miss the sound of her voice, of the funny things she would tell me. And the love she gave to me.
Chelle Summer Cover Up Tunics
If you haven’t met the Chelle Summer coverup tunics, now’s your chance in this week’s video.
Balancing Life Inside and Outside the Bubble
When the pandemic began in late winter 2020, my research job had just ended. We knew it was coming for a year and we had planned for it. But we also had planned for me to focus on Chelle Summer– which included selling at events in the Los Angeles area. The pandemic obviously changed our plans. While I had plenty of time to sew and create, what I didn’t have was the income that I hoped for.
Several years later, it’s been a roller coaster ride of not knowing what will happen on multiple fronts as everything keeps changing. I’m definitely not where I wanted to be and I’m finding myself having to continually reconfigure what I’m doing for Chelle Summer as things that worked before, don’t work now, and new opportunities arise, but not always ones that take off either.
In the midst of this, I’m also still navigating a new routine. Because of the pandemic, while I had Greg at home with me and then my neighborhood community that I see when I’m out running in the morning and then run-walking the dogs, there weren’t many other social opportunities or obligations. That allowed me to stay in my creative bubble longer and more often.
I believe that I am a balance of an extrovert and introvert. I need time with people, but I also need time alone. Now that we seem to be moving at double speed socially to make up for lost time, my challenge has been to figure out how to create (writing, sewing, painting) while also having enough time to be social and for life’s routine.
At first, I thought it was just me, that there was something wrong with me that I felt so overwhelmed because I wanted to create more, but have had to engage more socially. Then, as I took a little time to reflect back on the past few years, I realized it was because I never had a chance to adjust to life in the new routine without the job. Instead, the pandemic thrust a different routine into life.
While we’re all weathering some sort of continued change in our lives, it seems to me that the first step to lessening how overwhelming it can be is that awareness of what it stems from. As I have found that, I know the next step is taking things slowly, setting goals, and then reconfiguring them as they fit or don’t fit into my bubble and the life that revolves around it.
Holiday Signs as November Begins
Chelle Summer Rope Handbags and Dog Distraction
Goose, Lilly, bolts of fabric, and Chelle Summer inspiration
Spiritual Strength
We had been away from church for a month. We are Saturday evening mass goers, but there have been a variety of things happening on Saturdays between soccer and Chelle Summer. The hard part about being away from attending mass is that it’s so easy to get out of the routine that it then makes it hard to get back into it.
On Saturday afternoon, I wanted to keep working on the projects I was engaged in, but I knew we needed to go and it didn’t take me long to realize we were where were needed to be.
It wasn’t just about being the physical building– although as soon as I sat down in the pew I felt a sigh inside myself as in, “Thank goodness. I can rest.”
The usher quickly found us and asked us to bring up the gifts, something we regularly do, and I feel like is an extra blessing at mass. And then we received greetings from others.
However, there also has been some pain our church community over the past week or so- the unexpected death of a 31-year-old adult child and the death of an elderly father for another. Being there allowed us to express our condolences, let them know we are praying for them, and also to say an extra prayer for peace and love on the grief journey.
Yes, we were where we needed to be.
When church was closed for so long during the pandemic and then masks kept us from each other, it made it easier to stay separated, to send messages. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We are meant to be there for each other. In person.
And I’m glad we were.
Peace in the Present
It’s so easy to get caught looking backward or forward, or a combination of both. Then when we wonder why we’re feeling bad– because we’re nostalgic for the past or wishing we were in the future where maybe things will be different. We don’t realize that our pain often comes from not rooting ourselves in the present.
I realize there are many people who believe the present is where their pain resides, however, we also have to remember that looking back we see things differently than they probably were and if we look forward, we’re looking toward things that haven’t happened yet and that can either be painful (our fear) or exhilarating (our hope for a better future). And so the vicious cycle begins– we look back, we look forward, and yet we don’t look around right where we’re at.
When I find myself anxious, maybe the worry that I missed a boat somewhere or the hope that I so badly want certain things to happen, I remind myself to stop and look around, to see where I’m at in that particular moment. That’s when I find a wave of peace and the anxiety retreats like an ocean wave.
It’s easy to look past what’s right there, the beauty of our surroundings or the people we’re with. Nothing is ever perfect, but we should always grasp the present moment. After all, soon it will be in the past, too.