Tag Archives: Friends

Looking Good

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When is the last time you told someone they looked nice? When is the last time someone told you that you looked nice?

People need to be seen, not just as someone that is always there, in the house, on the street, in the meeting or even at a coffee hour. We need to take the time to notice people so they don’t feel they are ghosts among the crowd or at our household table.

It’s easy to criticize someone’s hairstyle or their unusual dress. When we do that we cut to the center of their core by making judgement on who they are. Because of it we may not see the authentic person inside the body. They may hide it and become the person they think society expects them to be, so their feelings aren’t hurt, or they aren’t cut to the core by mean words.

We all have been the purveyor of mean words and targeted those that we see as different than us. We all share the blame. Not only does it extend to what we wear, our hairstyle choices, but also our lifestyle choices of gender. How many of those we love have been afraid to show us who they are in all circumstances because of the way we might behave toward them?

I look back on my life and realize for much of it I haven’t always been authentic. The older I got the more I yearned to let that impish and creative part of me out. I began to do that in my books, and in the last house I had. You can still drive by and see the river I painted down my steps. And many other projects that were a little crazy. I haven’t always spoke out when the good ole boys ridiculed people, especially women because of their weight and because of their looks. I laughed along with them, not because I thought it was funny but because I wanted to belong, and I didn’t want it to turn on me. I am sorry I did not speak out sooner when these things were happening, but I was scared because I didn’t have a good sense of who I was in this world.

We also wear our past. I remember high school when a boy by the name of Bill, in the class ahead of me, one day telling me I was the ugliest girl he had ever seen. It changed how I interacted with people for a short time, especially boys. I couldn’t believe anyone would like me or date me.

As an adult and writing a column for the Albert Lea Tribune, I received a letter from someone telling me how ugly my crazy picture that represented me was, and…that I was an ugly little girl, I had no friends then, and I had no friends now. They didn’t sign it. The difference between the boy in school and the letter in my adult life was that I knew I had friends in school, and I knew I had friends as an adult, and I knew people liked my column. I had the compliments, the maturity and the confidence to handle it.

I’ve had wonderful groups of friends through the years. We forged a solid bond but I must say they were very respectable friends, and I am not sure they appreciated when my weird side came out, but they never let me know that. That is a good friend.

However, I’ve always been drawn to those unique personalities that have a little of the wild side in them. I had a couple of walk on the wild side friends right after I graduated from high school and I found a part of myself I didn’t know, but I let go of that side as I lived my life. When I moved I reconnected with that fun when I met my new friend, who I will call her K. She had many illnesses but she kept on going, and had a wild sense of humor, a what you see is what you get personality, and I felt alive after a very long drought. I never knew what she was going to come up with and when she was going to knock on my door and drag me into one of her crazy escapades, such as getting the tanning bed she had been hiding under her bed, out of her apartment and down the street, under a sheet that made it look as if a ghost was flitting across our parking lot. And it was Halloween. She woke me up again to fun in life.

What does have to do with telling someone they look good? She was good at compliments and not just with me. I noticed those that were silent and didn’t speak, and that a compliment made them smile. Elderly people do not get compliments much. Every day we may see the same people and take them for granted, and not see who they are and how a compliment may be the only bright spot in their day. It also may change how they see themselves when they get ready for the day.

Take notice of the people in your life. Have they given up because they feel it doesn’t matter as no one notices them anyway? One day last fall I was at a brewery, yes a brewery, with a friend, and a stranger at another table told me, “You have a beautiful smile.” It made my day and it made me want to smile more and pass it along.

Have you seen a house for sale in your community and you wondered where it was? You realize you’ve driven by that house every single day on the way to work and you’ve never noticed it. It’s the same with people. We don’t see those that are right in front of us, especially the quiet ones. I am anything but quiet, and I am rejoicing in learning new things about myself that I’ve hidden every single day. Part of the reason I think I did that was because I thought I might embarrass my family with my wacky ideas so I wouldn’t be accepted. We shouldn’t do that. The loud people, like me are seen, but it’s those we don’t take the time to notice that need our caring and attention, especially our family.

We live in a world where hate is being thrown at us right and left on our social media. We don’t know what’s real and not, and the bots are attacking people causing some of them to take their life. It’s a helpless feeling. Maybe all we can do is give someone smile or a compliment, especially those who we take their presence for granted. It may help them get through their day. Maybe all we can do each day is find something good about them, and let them know they are valued, or boost their confidence by a kind word. Let’s feed them with kind words about themselves.

When is the last time you told someone they looked nice? When is the last time someone told you, you looked nice?

Sunday Musings On Monday

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My mind is wandering today. It is pieced. I’ve been working on the cover of my new book coming out soon. Visit my website JulieSeedorf.com if you want to know more. While I write, occasionally I think of other things, and thoughts of my week interrupted the creativity. The week was a mixture of happiness and sadness. Isn’t that what our life is about most of the time, only we don’t take the time to be thankful for the mixture. We want our life to be smooth sailing. No ripples to mix it up. That never happens. Why do we expect it?

I went to a funeral of a friend this week. I’ve known her for two years. She was sixty-years old, smart, funny, kind, loving and brave. She’s had cancer for as long as I’ve known her. I saw her at her lowest low, and her highest high when she experienced remission for a short time. Through it all she never complained, always lifting others up, and was a devoted mom and friend. If you met her you might have thought she had an easy life. I knew better as she shared life’s experiences with me, but at her funeral, listening to her daughter speak, I was surprised at the early hardships she didn’t share.

My friend, was a migrant, coming to this country when she was a child. She worked in the fields in Texas and California, starting when she was nine years old. They were twelve hours days, seven days a week. Her husband died in an accident when her children were small. There was no money and no life insurance, or help back then from Social Security, and she wouldn’t have qualified if there was until she became a citizen, which eventually she did. I suspect it wasn’t as hard to become a citizen back then as it is now. Life threw her and her children many hard knocks, yet she wasn’t bitter.

As I listened to her daughter speak, I thought back to the age I would have been when my friend was nine. I was twelve-years-old and hanging with my friends, going to concerts and leading a care-free life. At nine, her age, I was playing with Barbie dolls and very innocent about the world. I thought about my kids and what they were doing at that age and I counted my blessings, but yet I was appalled that we in the United States, back then, let child labor happen. Not only did I grieve my friend, but I grieved the way she had to navigate her childhood. I have been insulated in my life from what those of other cultures go through in my country, and in their home country. My friend’s family came here to give them a better life from violence and poverty. Would I have done the same with my children? I would like to say I would, but I don’t think I had the courage that my friend and her parents had to break through the barriers.

I never gave a thought to the people that drove up to Minnesota from Mexico and down south, that worked in our fields and in our canning factories. We needed them because there were not enough workers to fill the shifts. They became a part of our community for a few months, yet, they were not part of our community because they kept themselves separate from us. Probably because they would not be accepted, possibly out of fear of the unknown of another culture invading our space that we weren’t familiar with.

This is not a political post. It’s a post about that which we fear, the unknown of those that are different because we may not know someone of a different culture or…we may not know their history. We don’t take the time to listen and hear their past, and what is driving them to their future. I have been thrust out of my small town roots into a mix of different experiences and different cultures since I moved, and am learning more everyday about others and myself and the misconceptions I’ve had. Because I either didn’t know better, or didn’t take the time to go beyond my tiny little world except to judge that which I had no experience in. There is an enormous amount for me to still learn about the diversity of the world today.

I feel blessed to have known this woman and learn about her Mexican heritage. She was proud of her roots and made sure her children are too. We as her friends were given a small understanding of her rich culture, as she shared it with us with pride. Though she hadn’t much money, I would call her rich, and she felt that way because of where she came from. To her wealth was family, friends and faith. . A faith that never waivered during her journey. All of us are richer too because we knew her. Rest in peace. We will never forget your quiet lessons.

Grief Doesn’t Have A Plot

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Many of you might not know I was a columnist for many years with a column called Something About Nothing in the Albert Lea Tribune. I came across this today as I was looking for columns to include in a book for the future. Though it is not a holiday it seemed appropriate for my life today. I also used it for my TikTok post. I hope it moves you and helps if you are grieving.

SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING
by Julie Seedorf © November 2017

Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end. Ann Hood

Grief is strange. It pops up when you least expect it, blotting out the sunshine and carrying you back into a sea of sadness. It happened to me this week starting with an ache in my heart. I missed my mother. I wanted to walk out of my house and across town and visit her in her home and sit by the floor furnace and talk. I didn’t have any particular subject in mind. I was missing our mother-daughter time by that furnace grate. It has been fifteen or more years since we were able to spend time together. I am not one to remember death dates for anyone. I prefer to remember life dates such as birthdays. I can’t tell you what year she died.  Just when I think I am over her death, like a jack-in-the-box, the sharp twinge of grief pops up taking over my body. It is an ache in my heart which feels as if a part of it is missing.

Perhaps it is the time of the year, November when holiday cheer is rife but for many, sadness overtakes the joy and doesn’t let them savor the holidays.

We don’t only grieve for those we lost to death. We feel loss for many different reasons. For me, I feel the loss of a special family member who because of divorce is no longer a part of my life anymore. Love doesn’t stop because of a divorce. I feel loss for a special dog that is missing from my home because a former illness would no longer let me care for him. I feel loss for a way of life when jobs went away and nothing replaced them so we had to adjust to the simpler way of living. I felt loss when two of my best friends moved away and we could no longer get together at the spur of a moment. Loss came through a broken leg, a broken foot and an illness which laid me low, followed by depression and anxiety because of it. ‘

Loss can be felt deeply at holidays when families are split, or our childhood families are no longer living, or distance makes it hard for families to be together when togetherness is needed the most.

We all grieve for different reasons and our memories and emotions are unique to each of us. It doesn’t have to be a big event to make us feel those twinges of sadness. It can be an outside force such as losing a favorite restaurant that holds memories or a favorite pair of shoes which marked a special occasion. Feeling the emotions of grief is not relegated to certain rules or people or places.

Some people grieve in silence and others grieve loudly. Our feelings, that twinge in our hearts show up when we least expect it. It is what we choose to do with that ache that makes the difference.

Occasionally I will sit with it and feel all I need to feel. Other times I need to ask for help to find a solution so it doesn’t pull me under. Or I work on gratitude. There is so much to be thankful for in each and every part of the things that made my heart break.

I had a wonderful mother and accepting our relationship was occasionally oil and water doesn’t negate that thankfulness. She and my father taught me right from wrong. My family had a wonderful person in our lives and this person gave us beautiful grandchildren. I will be forever thankful for that person.  Sam, my pooch, gave me unconditional love when I was sick and he comforted me through it. Now he is happy with children who make him jump and play. We made it through job loss and we came out stronger. My friends are a phone call away. I am grateful they accepted me as I am. How lucky I was to have friendships like that in my lifetime. Through illness I learned to be thankful for every day and I found I had a strength I didn’t know I had.

The best advice when I was laid low six years ago was from my Pastor daughter. She pointed out I hadn’t taken time to grieve all the loss I felt in my life the former five years. I was the energizer bunny through it all. She told me to take the time to grieve, to rest and to get stronger. Feeling someone cared made all the difference in the world for me.

Holidays are coming and I am thankful I have the memories I do of family holidays and though families change we are still a family, only evolving.

You might ask why I am sharing these things with you. Grief is a sad subject. I can’t find anything funny to say about it. I decided to touch on this subject because in this chaotic world people are grieving about their lives and feeling guilty for having an ache in their hearts at what should be a joyous time. I want others to know they are not alone.

I don’t have answers. I know what works and doesn’t work for me. I know the grief I feel never goes away, but joy fills more places in my heart than sadness. I want to remember both because it is what made my life mine.

If the holidays are a sad time for you or if your emotions are more than you can handle please reach out to social services, your medical doctor, your church pastor or priest or a valued friend.  It is in sharing that caring hearts connect.