Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 35

The Sixties Two Ways

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s are now in our 60s…including my lovely husband, Al, who turns 60 soon. Al and I are at the top of our game, if you think of life as a game, which of course it is. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. With Al, I won big time! He’s my favorite person on the planet and supports me no matter what. There have been a lot of amazing sunsets in our thirty years together:)

Since early 2014, Al and I have had more challenges as a couple than we’ve had in our entire marriage. We’ve also had more blessings. Through it all, he was the one I leaned on, he was the one I could count on, he was the one who held me in the light. He loved me well; he loves me still. How lucky am I? I will never forget the remarkable kindness of this man I had the good sense to marry.

I’ve grown in amazing ways just by following Al’s example. Where I am anxious, he is calm. Where I am insecure, he is a rock. Where I am sad, he always has a smile. He’s sparked some major changes for me, all for the better. He’s always telling me to “go for it” with whatever my heart desires. And now I’m able to do the same for him. I tell him all about the Desire Map stuff I’m learning even though I think he somehow intuited it the day he was born sixty years ago.

As Al and I came of age in the 1960s, the world was all about peace & love. We had those qualities instilled in us at an age where they took root and grew. Peace and love are still two of my favorite words and best feelings. And we are still stardust, we are still golden…just like Joni Mitchell says in “Woodstock.”

I used to think that bodies being made of stardust was a nice metaphor. Many years later, through my interest in and study of cosmology, I learned that we are literally made of stardust. Joni wrote some smart lyrics. And we are still living in Woodstock Nation, without the mud and bad acid:)

Al and I create dreams for our future instead of rushing to meet deadlines. Our next big dream is to visit ancient Greece. Well, that’s my dream. Al wants to go to Alaska, via Seattle of course. I’m on board with that trip because there’s a little someone in Seattle I’m longing to see. And his parents, too!

No matter where our stardust lands on the planet, I believe that, for both of us, the 60s are going to be sensational. All over again.

Peace & Love,

Tagged: 1960s, 60s, baby boomers, happiness, marriage

What a Ride!

My friend Ali, writer and book blogging goddess, has been kind enough to give me space on her amazing website, A Woman’s Wisdom, to read and write about some awesome indie novels. Every Wednesday you can read a new one by yours truly:) This week I covered The Killing of Mummy’s Boy by Joan Ellis and it was deeply chilling. The psychological depth of the characters was way interesting and a little bit terrifying.

Why We Get Fat

In April, I kicked off a six-week program of very low carb eating. My mission was two-fold. I wanted to zip my jeans again after a vacation (that happened within a week) and turn a two year “pre-diabetic” diagnosis around. After the first pre-diabetes report, I quit eating sugar. No more desserts. For me, that was huge. I love chocolate and sweets of all kinds. After the second test, one year after giving up sugar, my numbers were better, but I was still pre-diabetic. My doctor suggested cutting carbs that turn to sugar in the body. The white stuff: flour, potatoes, pasta.

This is tricky for a vegetarian. I love cereal, bread, and potatoes. Pasta is a staple. It is almost impossible to eat in a restaurant without either meat or grain. Soon into my new program, I found myself adding a little meat back into my diet. I didn’t like the idea, but my health is primary so I did it, telling myself it would just be for six weeks, until I got my test results. Then, if nothing changed, I could go back to being a vegetarian who relied heavily on grains and legumes for my protein needs.

I am a questioner, so I needed more to go on than just my doctor saying to stop eating “refined carbs.” I mean, I was a vegetarian who mostly ate whole wheat pasta, brown rice, multi-grain bread. The healthy stuff. I’d been eating that way all year. So I knew it was going to take more than just cutting “refined carbs” for me. Auspiciously, at just the right time, I found the book that changed my life and my health forever. Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. I figured I’d give Taubes’ findings a try, and see what happened.

After about a week of adjustment, my digestion got much better. No more bouts of IBS. And best of all, I no longer had craving or the urge to binge. Freedom from the tyranny of food! Feeling in control of what and how much I put in my body is incredible. For the first time in forever, I can be around cookies, bread, rice, potatoes, crackers, muffins, donuts and just say no. I can even occasionally indulge in pizza or potato salad, but I don’t particularly crave these foods. I don’t even want chips anymore, and they used to be my favorite food.

According to Taube, humans evolved to be meat-eaters. Our earliest ancestors relied on a diet of mostly meat protein, green leafy vegetation and a few berries in season. Our bodies still carry that basic DNA. Grains were only introduced a few thousand years ago, not long enough for our complicated and ancient physiology to catch up. At least for some of us. I love Taube’s analogy: just as not all smokers will get lung cancer, not all carb eaters will end up with pre-diabetes. The research is not in on exactly why, but genetics seem to play a role.

Six weeks later and my test results are in. Good news! I am no longer pre-diabetic. My blood sugar has stabilized. My cholesterol and other numbers, including calcium and some other former deficiencies, are off the charts wonderful. This is what Why We Get Fat predicted. I talked to my doctor about the books’ premise and the changes I’d made in my diet because of it. When she gave me the good news, she commented that my new diet is working wonderfully and to keep it up. Music to my ears.

Tagged: diabetes, diet, fat, low carb, Sugar

Looking Anew at Desire

Danielle LaPorte knows how to work the word desire. Yes, the Buddhists are right: if we desire someone or something we cannot have, we will suffer. In another entirely different way, desire leads to liberation, fulfillment and happiness. LaPorte’s Desire Map project, with workshops and books, clarifies desire done right.

It has been 21 days life-changing days since my Desire Map workshop with Laura Zera. I’ve done a lot of writing, thinking, and desire mapping. Getting clear with what I want the rest of my life to look like. Before I took this workshop, I was lost. I knew it. I’d been working my way up from hell for several months, but was still stuck in so many places.

Enter Desire Mapping. Even the word “desire” freaked me out. Whatever I desired would automatically be denied, would lead to suffering, would hurt me by its utter absence from my life. Or so I believed. LaPorte does a different thing with desire. She keeps the luscious word but mixes it up with a few others to focus her idea about how to get happy, how to let go, how to feel free.

I love the story at the beginning of the Desire Map book telling how LaPorte discovered this method of living life its highest potential. One New Year’s Eve, she was, as usual, making a list of goals. She had gotten good at this and had goals for several areas of her life: work, love, play. Somehow she didn’t feel so great as she filled out this goal worksheet. She had the feeling those goals would just get lost.

She contemplated her feelings around goals. What if she just gave up setting goals? Her energy shot up. She felt lighter. Happier. She wanted to keep those feelings, but how to make them about her goals? She began to scribble down words on her worksheet, not goals but feeling words. She was on fire inspired about how she wanted to feel. Just reading, I got that fired up inspired, too.

I knew joy and I knew sorrow and for sure preferred joy.  I did not live in joy. Not most of the time. My feelings more often than not bossed me around, dictated I do what I did not want to do, rained on my parade, criticized and diminished me. I wanted to figure out how to stay in joy longer, and drop the despair. Could I put joy in charge of every action I took? Maybe I needed to give myself permission to desire again, to feel good, to dig deep for understanding about what I wanted and needed.

It’s going to take more than 21 days, but I am well on my way, amazed that I am clear on how I want to feel, focused on doing the things that I know will get me there, letting everything else go. If you’d like to see your life sparkle again, the Desire Map might just be your way out of darkness, too.

Tagged: desire, feelings, goals, happiness

The Truth About Single Moms

Saturday I attended a writer’s conference. I had a long-standing commitment to participate on a panel with writers Cindy LaFerle and Lynn Cobb on women’s issues. The always fabulous Cindy LaFerle moderated the panel, so all I had to do was show up and say something smart. Not easy, but I’m a woman, I’ve been through stuff, I’ve written about it plenty.

I also had a spot in the bookstore, giving Luke a final push. Of all my novels, Luke’s #1 Rule has been the book closest to my heart. It’s got the most substance and I don’t just mean the various chemicals Spence ingests.

Like Chloe, I was once a single mother, so I talked about my real experience raising two little boys, trying to decide if dinner would be mac ‘n cheese or hot dogs. Chloe, I realized driving home from the conference, did not have to make hard choices about what to feed her kids. I had softened her life, given her the kind of support I didn’t get from her loving widowed mother, Ursula.

I made the story gritty for Spence, the ex-husband addict, but, except in love and work, I let Chloe way off the hook. She had a better job than mine as a secretary. As a “pink collar” worker, I was smack on the poverty line. Not so Chloe. She lived with her widowed mother, who handled childcare and cooking so Chloe could get on her feet as a single working mom.

My mom gave birth to me when she was 16. When I left my husband, she was not happy about it. She lashed out, saying she would not be babysitting while I “went off to work.” This was a hurtful thing to hear, not that I had asked. I never had any intention to ask. But that remark made me create Ursula, a grandmother in the most selfless sense of the word.

In real life, I had already arranged childcare before my mother’s remark. It was after school, until my dragon boss would let me go home. Yeah, the employer in the opening of Luke is based on the type of men I have worked for most of my adult life. Entitled, uncaring, unconcerned about my small children and smaller paychecks.

This post is a direct result of Cindy LaFerle’s “Writing Memoir” workshop. Cindy’s talk gave me the courage to write about real things in my past I have always preferred to fictionalize. Creating Chloe and Ursula was a way to mother myself, to live in a world for awhile with a happier alternative to the stark truth of being a single mom with nobody on your side.

It only occurred to me as I drove home from that conference that I didn’t do anybody any favors by softening the truth of what it means to be a single mom. Certainly not single mothers looking for some comfort. Of course, single moms in Detroit can’t afford to buy novels. And if they can, they don’t have time to read them.

Tagged: bad bosses, mothering yourself, On Memoir, single moms

Runnin’ Up That Hill

Maybe I’m morbid but I have a habit of thinking doomsday scenarios whenever the slightest hiccup happens in my life. For example the latest episode with my knee buckling and me not being able to walk or stand or wear most of my shoes or practice yoga or dance. My favorite dance is the Twist and I just know my twisted knee would not like it. I sigh to think that the Twist may be firmly in my past.

So that would be the doomsday version. To never do any of those things again. There are other things that are worse than temporarily losing the use of a leg. Losing the use of both legs. Completely. Forever. After all, I’m not even sure this is any big deal. Specialist said wait another week, take it easy, and if the knee doesn’t get better, we’ll do an MRI. Leaving his office, my leg buckled suddenly and I almost did a splat on the asphalt. Thank you 20 years of yoga for helping me keep a wobbly balance in airplane pose. It didn’t look as pretty as this but you get the idea.

Not being able to do everything I want to do right now is messing with my head. It’s only been two weeks. So, one more week of inactivity. I’m trying to look on the bright side. I can still read and write. I simply cannot vacuum or dust or rush about running dozens of errands in a day. I cannot take a walk in the park. I have to keep meals simple and maybe hire a cleaning service, which really, if I’m honest, seems like a perk.

I realize this is all very frivolous,  the silliest part is feeling bereft about not being able to wear my summer sandals, at least the ones with cute heels. Ah well. The worst possible outcome is surgery. I feel pretty confident that I will be able to practice yoga (all the poses, not just airplane) again and yes even dance. The Twist. In heels.

I will climb Mt. Cynthus…which is a very small mountain, more like a hill, really. Greece and the tiny island of Delos is my next big life adventure. A highlight of the Sensational 60s! So this time I’m dropping the doom and gloom as usually it turns out to be nothing and I’m embarrassed for being overly dramatic. I mean, there are worse things than having to buy new shoes. If it comes to that.

A favorite Kate Bush song is my new anthem: “Running up that hill with no problem.”

Tagged: Being 60, dancing, greece, Kate Bush, knee injury, shoes, yoga

Scouting Out a Scottish Star

Rosemary Gemmell makes me want to plan a trip to Scotland and follow in the fascinating footsteps of her wonderful heroine Eilidh. Read my full review of this terrific novel right here at A Woman’s Wisdom.

Tagged: novels, reading, review, Robert Burns, romance, Rosemary Gemmell, Scotland

Perfectly Imperfect

Just returned from an ambitious trip I hoped would help me define my 60s, show me how to take a big step forward in personal development, and shower me with love. It did all that and more, but not without a bump or two. I live in Detroit and the trip would involve three airplanes, one B & B in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, two guest rooms (one in each of my sons’ homes) and a hotel room in L.A. I’d be changing planes four times. Lots of hustle bustle but I was undaunted, excited.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to my meticulously planned adventure. The plane hadn’t even lifted off the ground in Detroit when I stood to switch seats with someone and turned my leg but not my body, resulting in a painful pop of my knee. Then it buckled. I sat in my new seat, only a little worried. My knee didn’t hurt, not exactly, until a little later when I got up to use the little phone booth the airlines call a restroom. I couldn’t put any weight on the knee without pain and that annoying inexplicable thing where it collapsed, ceasing to hold me up as it has all these years.

Two flight attendants were at my side, helping me to my seat, arranging for a wheelchair at the gate. They could not have been kinder. They even wanted to phone a medic to meet the plane but I said no. My son was in Seattle and he’d be getting off work right about the time I arrived at my B & B. I just wanted to get there and stretch out my leg and see what Mike thought I should do. My husband had already weighed in via text saying I should go to the ER. Mike thought so too and sent a Uber car to take me there. It arrived in five minutes!

Oh, my B & B was beautiful. I didn’t want to leave it for an emergency room visit but I did because it was the right thing to do and I anyway I was still hobbling. I texted Laura, my friend holding the Desire Map workshop I was scheduled to attend that night. I told her what had happened and that according to the ER nurse, I’d be getting pictures snapped of my knee at the time of the event. I said I’d see her the next day. My plan had been to walk from my B & B to hers, which is why I didn’t stay with my family, but that wasn’t going to happened as I had been issued a leg brace and crutches and complicated instructions for icing and elevating my sad little knee. They offered me painkillers but it really didn’t hurt, and I’m a baby about pain. This wasn’t physical pain, just annoying, intrusive, exhausting.

My son picked me up from the ER and we had dinner downtown. This was May Day and Seattle has a long history of protests of all sorts on that day: a workers free-for-all. I’d heard about it from my cab driver, my Uber guy, and the B & B host. From what I gathered there were three things: immigration (they want to make it easier for people to live and work legally here) Baltimore (showing solidarity for our African Amercian men) and one more thing I can’t remember. I do remember the surging crowds of protestors and the police in riot gear as my son drove through the Capitol Hill and downtown neighborhoods. Everywhere we turned, it seemed, we were cut off by barricades or police on motorcycles who seemed determined to block every street with a restaurant.

We did finally eat and got caught up with each others’ lives. A gift of the knee injury: dinner alone with my son. Something so rare I don’t remember the last time it happened, but probably a decade. It was quite splendid despite the crutches and the leg that had to be propped on a chair. Back at the B &  B, Laura had left a text saying she would pick me up early the next day for the full nine hour Desire Map session. I was ready.

The workshop changed me from the inside out. I’ll write more about that another time but for now I’ll just say WOW. I got what I came for, and way more. I retreated to my lovely B & B and was picked up the next day by Mike for a day of Owen, my grandson. He is a joy! Mostly what we did was sit him on the floor and watch him play, giggle, scoot around in a semi-crawl and perform other antics for our viewing pleasure. It was a gorgeous day–Seattle is so green just now, its flowers large as plates, lush and vibrant. It was the kind of day that begged for a walk, but my condition had us settle for an hour on the deck with the sun shining down on u through those impossibly green fully leafed out trees. Then we went out to dinner and Owen really liked the guacamole.

The next morning, Mike took me to the airport, where I was catching a flight to LA, meeting Al for a hotel rendezvous. I checked my bag curbside, they wheeled a chair out to me, whisked me through security, upgraded my ticket to accommodate the leg brace, pretty much pampered the heck out of me. Also the same in LA, where the wheelchair attendant crossed six lanes of traffic to get me to my waiting husband. I was now an expert at tipping airline personnel. They are golden.

Al and I had cocktails at our hotel pool, located on the roof in direct eye line of incoming planes. The palm tree background made it all seem like a wondrous moving postcard. We had a romantic dinner where I basked in the sure knowledge that I was not alone anymore. Many people had fetched me ice and cool drinks and pillows as I navigated my trip thus far, but nobody beats the guy you’ve been married to half your life for true comfort. I was never so glad to see him.

The next day we were on the road to Ventura and our NEW grandson, just a month old. I’d had, at one point, a grand plan to walk that baby until I wore out the floors, but instead I settled for lots of lap time. Ben is an angel. He has Tim’s blue eyes and I suspect he’ll get Alicia’s dimples. He’s smiling already and very alert. He knew me instantly. Babies are incredible that way. Ben had been my primary reason for coming west. Trick knee and all, I was very glad to meet him in person for the very first time.

Even the red eye to Detroit reserved an entire row for me to stretch out my knee. I see an orthopedic surgeon later this week, which I arranged from Seattle, but really, the knee, the brace, the crutches, the constant need for ice packs…none of that made much of an impact on my trip. Well, except everyone was extra nice to me. That was pretty cool.

Tagged: airline perks, grandchildren, knee injury, travel, vacation

The M Word

I have a mom who is still alive in this world. I love her but it’s complicated. I’ve unpacked that bag a few thousand times and still never bring enough socks. Bottom line: I love her. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Also, I am a mom. That is not complicated at all, unless geography counts.

Then, there’s the icing on the cake that is motherhood,  the grandest of all of the grand moments,  becoming a granny! For me, that means more suitcases, but pretty ones I can pack at a moment’s notice. And do.

A week ago, I was with Owen in Seattle

He seemed puzzled that I was not on the telephone screen, but then he got used to it.

This week I’m with my new little grandson in California.

He’s not confused about anything yet, he’s just an angel.

There are a couple of new moms I’m related to…those awesome women my sons had the good sense to marry. This is their first mother’s day ever. Last year, I had no grandchildren, this year I celebrate two of them!! A rainbow of a Mother’s Day

Tagged: grandmother, mom, motherhood

Leaving on a Jet Plane

My bags are not packed, but I am definitely ready to go! In just a few days I’ll be winging my way across the country on the way to new adventures. It’s a good time to take a blog vacation, but I’m already planning a post for Mother’s Day, so please come back and see me. Until we meet again…