Tag: personal growth

the best of things…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

Inspired by Emily P. Freeman, I’m spending a little time with her reflection questions and considering what I learned this spring. She asks the following questions:

What was your favorite photo from May?

As the season unfolded it became clear that the normal spring we craved wasn’t just going to happen. March faded into April and so many of us sat waiting for it to feel the ways in which we’ve believed spring should feel– and it never did. In the realizing this, with May came accepting that we had the power to choose a new way to approach spring-mentality. With that, here in Pennsylvania, also came a lot of rain.

Rainy days are rejuvenating, but rainy days in the month of May are special. They carry with them a sort of life-giving magic.

Name a thoughtful moment in May.

I stood outside a closed window, in the middle of some bushes and landscape rocks, peering through at my mother. She sat slumped, vacant, in a leather recliner. She could see me, I think, but mostly I believe she saw through me. Through me, beyond me, into something that I could never reach. She couldn’t understand we were there to visit her. For over a year she’d gone without the loving embrace of someone who cares about her.

When I’d visit I would try to brush her hair, and rub lotion on her cracked and aching feet. Most of the time she knew what was happening, but sometimes she did not. Que the pandemic. I’ve only seen her “in person” twice, both times with a pane of plastic or glass between us.

This time, seeing her catatonic and missing, I had to wonder what the next time will be like. Will there ever be a time when I run a brush through her long, grey hair again and she knows that I am her daughter?

i just don’t know.

What’s something you look forward to in June?

My dear, beautiful friend is coming to visit and I cannot wait! She and her precious babies will be in my house. We will laugh face to face and it will be so unfathomably glorious!

8 Things I learned this spring…

  • My body does not heal or grow by my mind-designed time table.
  • I am most at peace with God outside of a “church”. I’d been teetering there for awhile, but finally I surrender.
  • I need to force myself to read more.
  • More about where the land I live on originated. The Native American history is something we all need to intentionally learn about. I’m trying.
  • Different doesn’t mean bad. Sometimes new and different can be better, and sometimes it won’t. Even so, holding space for the different is almost always a good idea.
  • I don’t have to do all of the things.
  • It is important to me that when it comes to publishing my work, the publishing and representative relationships I form are sensitive regarding the topics of inclusivity, mental health, abuse and sexual assault. I will not hand my work over to a publishing house, in exchange for royalties, who may choose to publish someone who contradicts those values. This was a huge moment for me.
  • My body may not look like I wish it did, but she has carried amazingly difficult burdens. She has been through so much physical pain, almost since her very beginning, and it is my responsibility to love every ounce of her.

just a case of the february…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

I hit the second half of February in solid migraine form. I was in bed, living in a heightened state of nausea. The following week my husband had his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine and he was down for the count for three blurred-together days. (his blur, not mine. I was clear headed, but they were unnaturally long days.) The day that he felt human again was the day I was knocked back down:

fever.

chills.

migraine fest.

fatigue.

It was like we were tag-teaming on the worst part of winter blues and seasonal illness, except that he had a reason and I really did not.

In this era of C-19, when every sniffle raises a heightened paranoia, I made the decision to label whatever mystery was bringing me down (life? fibro? stress?) as February.

Are you feeling better? What do you think it was? I am, and February. It was February.

It works, don’t you think? It works because February is possibly the worst of the months. Winter is dragging on (or unfairly pummelling Texas, if we’re lasering in on this year) and though the days are growing a bit longer, it doesn’t matter too much when it’s still cold outside.

Beyond realizing that February is my least favorite of the twelve months, I thought I’d take this end-of-the-month reflection time to share some other things I’ve learned through these past four painfully long weeks:

  • Our little rescue kitten Darcy is nine months old. No one told me that nine months would bring her heat cycle. It was short, but those days were intense. Mostly we both just felt so bad for her. Bless. Also, our vet can’t get her in until April… Will she cycle again? I know nothing… except that the vet will only see her 8 weeks POST cycle so fingers crossed she does not.
  • Because we could not go out for Mardi Gras (something we love to do, even if we are here in the north), I decided to make some Creole food at home. The dirty rice was pretty meh, but the shrimp dish I made was PHENOMENAL and the beignets were a bit like heaven. All in all, a win.
  • A fellow writer talked skeptical me into joining Clubhouse. I was 100% convinced it was stupid and I’d hate it. It turns out it’s timely, pretty fantastic and I love it. Since so much of my job and passion involve community and connection, it has been an incredible experience.
  • Meundies. Have you heard of them? I was told they were the “softest and most comfortable underwear on the planet” and, once again, I was super skeptical. I was wrong. They are heaven. Also, here’s a code to save you $20. Trust me, you WANT to save it to this.
  • I spent moments in February coming face to face with my pride. Really questioning why something may have hurt my feelings and realizing it was up to me to keep myself in check. Sometimes that self reflection can feel really scary and trust me, I am no expert. Growth can be painful, but these growth moments were so healing.

And now, we are practically at March. A beautiful, closer to Spring blank slate and I am here for it- tired, but ready…

We are them too…

Published on by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

There is this amazing time-lapse video bouncing around the internet that shows the blossoming of various mushrooms deep within forested areas. It is absolutely fascinating, disgusting, inspiring and flat-out-weird all at once. Isn’t that life, though? Most of the time.

As humans, we stumble upon stories ripped straight from the lives of others. The horrific crimes we can’t comprehend, the amazing tales of survival and super human fathomings. We love the miraculous, the oddly tragic- the real life stories. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been inspired to do something bold, brave or heroic after looking at an individual, upon hearing about their boring upbringing, which was followed closely by their average college, marriage and work experience, carrying them to this point of completely mundane normalcy. Films and books certainly aren’t written about people like this.

Two reasons for this are:

  • because that sort of life wouldn’t really inspire much of anything. (Maybe a little envy from someone whose lot in life has been particularly harsh.)
  • That sort of life doesn’t really exist. A perception of that sort of life can, but that sort of life itself? It’s not even possible. There may be seasons when we identify with feelings that our own journeys have been that uneventful. There will be other times, perhaps when we’re drowning in our own overwhelm, and we may perceive someone else’s seemingly drama free life is just like that.
  • bonus point- the moral of the lesson here is, just because something may look, or feel a certain way, in a moment- doesn’t mean that it is.

That idea, the idea of normal + boring, I think most of us have pretty wrong. We think, in times of distress, that this must be what simplicity and peace is like. It wouldn’t be. That imaginary life I’ve described? It is a one dimensional, apathetic version of what we minimize in our minds. Period. We only feel our lives are dull and boring, when we are discontent in our own circumstances. We only reduce someone else’s story to such when we are attempting to reduce them, in our minds, or when our circumstances feel too big/loud and we long for small/quiet. It is a perception. Period.

If we could see a time-lapse of our own lives, we would be amazed. There are hardships and heartbreaks we’ve all known, and many of us are living them as I type this. Sometimes it is easy to hear the circumstances of our own journeys in comparison to another person and think we have nothing to share. It isn’t true. Each and every one of us have lives comprised of many things, things both beautiful and horrifying, that others may need to see.

We love the stories of the hero who lived through incredible difficulties, overcame extreme odds and we sit through the movies and documentaries about them, awed. They inspire us. We read books about them, tell others about them, and often make changes in our own lives because of the incredible examples those people were. Our entire world is built on the foundation of everyday people living through something and then paving the way for a better future because of it. (NOT despite it. BECAUSE OF IT.)

Guess what, friend- you and I? We are that very sort of person. The abuses we’ve known, the mistakes we’ve made- these things can bury us in their rubble, if we let them. How do we not allow that to happen? We choose not to let it. We move on, altered for the better, because. Because, because, BECAUSE- Always.

Someone, somewhere, can see the time lapse of your life (in a sense… not an actual time-lapse video, because that would honestly be awkward for everyone.) and move forward, for the better, too. The mushroom is merely a fungus, living on the ground, and sprouting from the mildewed bits of dirt on the forest floor. Often they are toxic. Sometimes they can make people happy, or paranoid, or what have you. Some of them are ugly, many are beautiful and often they are an annoyance. They come from the worst, often remain the worst- but their journey when viewed with a nutshell perspective is mesmerizing.

Friend, we are so much more than forest fungus. We may come from the worst, but we don’t have to settle for becoming that.

A Mermaid Princess…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments

Little girls dream and act out their fantasies of being mermaids and princesses. I know many of my fond childhood memories involved splashing around in my neighbors pool with my friends Melanie and Monique. We’d act out movies we’d seen, dance horribly to music on the radio and pretend we were mermaids almost constantly.

This was raw mermaid imagination at play, well before Ariel or the mermaid trend of these days took center stage. When I look back, the only Mermaid pop-culture references I can think of were in the cartoon of Peter Pan and the Tom Hank’s movie Splash… The mermaids we became were nothing at all like those adaptations so I’m not sure what inspired us- other than the water.

I don’t recall ever pretending to be a princess, but my youngest daughter definitely did. Her imagination was princess rich, and I loved every second of it. Up until recently, society has loudly delivered the message that such aspirations belong in childhood daydreams and deserve no place in grown-up lives. This is a truly sad thing, don’t you think? I’ll admit, as a parent, I too fell into the whole dream crushing mentality of frankly selling “reality”, responsibility and that most dreams simply don’t pay the bills… And, I mean, it’s true- most dreams don’t pay the bills. That doesn’t mean we have to stop dreaming them though. (lesson learned unideally late.)

This week’s podcast guest, Jessica is all grown up. She’s a single mom. She is a first generation daughter, whose father came from the Dominican Republic. She has grown up learning to work hard and pursue relentlessly. She has responsibilities, hardships and the many  other things we all have. What sets Jessica apart is that she also has dreams, and she fully embraces them. Jessica dreams of owning her own Pastalito food truck. Jessica also dreams of being a mermaid princess. Full of so much energy, life, light and motivation Jessica is pursuing both dreams equally, in her own ways. Check out  episode {37} by following this link to our various listening platforms. As you hear her incredible story, I hope you can find a glimmer of courage to go after your own dreams too…