Tag Archives: life

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?

Devil or Angel

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I usually tell people that I am an open book. I share everything or so it seems. I don’t know if my friends would tell you I am the same person in their lives that I am online. They might say they know me well. But do they? How much do we share with the people close to us? Is there a dark side to us we keep hidden from them? Is our online persona different if someone is a charismatic leader, trying to lead us to his or her persuasion, than they are in private? Do some people exude sweetness and niceness for their fans while those that know them personally could tell you that is not who they are?

I might come off as this confident person who has it all together. My friends know better. They know I am easily hurt, not confident in some of what I do, and crabby some of the time. Only a few friends know I have hidden much of who I am in my life because of the some of the conservative settings I grew up in, especially as a woman. I didn’t balk (much) when the men got fed first at the table. I seethed inside at some of the restrictions at church that I thought didn’t matter, such as no pink cakes at funerals or the perfect lining up of the silverware in the drawers because we were bullied by the kitchen committee many years ago. It seems petty but it was the small things that set me off at church and made me want to not darken the door. Ok, I can’t say I was always quiet about those small things or the big things either and I felt the judgment.

I was a frustrated housewife trying to keep up and decorate my house in a way that was acceptable in society the first thirty years of my married life, and when I began to be weird in my decorating sense that made me happy, I was ridiculed. So I hid the wildness inside of me for a long time because I had to be a responsible person so I garnered acceptance. That may sound strange. This was before the internet.

We become a chameleon changing our face to the public depending on what is acceptable. Should we do that? We are arguing big time about morals and politics right now. I don’t recognize some of my friends and they don’t recognize me. Before I wouldn’t have challenged their beliefs. I wouldn’t have known if they have hate in their heart for another race or religion. Maybe that is why they are surprised at my advocacy and I am surprised by their views. We kept hidden in many instances who we truly are out of what? Fear? Worry about losing a friend? Or worrying our views would be judged? Also to keep the peace. Were we fooling anyone? Did they know who we were but didn’t say anything because as long as we didn’t openly do it in front of them, it was that silent elephant in the room and our lives could continue.

I once knew someone who was the outstanding church worker. You never heard a word of bad language come out of their mouth when they were working in the church. They treated people well and with respect. The minute they left the church they were a different person with one the foulest mouths I knew. The also liked their drink. The language offended many people but it was never used in church. I never understood that. I am not judging, and I liked this person, but it was my puzzlement that made me want to ask why they used different language in church than in public. We all knew. It wasn’t a secret. It was well talked about. Did this person think God just lived in the church and didn’t hear them outside of the church? Or did they change who they were for that short time in church so they wouldn’t be ostracized. Should our church have been a place where this person didn’t need to change who they were when they walked through the door? And then begs the thought, if this person could hold the language when inside a church, why couldn’t they hold the bad language outside the church? Who did this person want us to see or want to be? Do we not accept all of our foibles and is that why we pretend to the world?

A long time friend brought up the subject of someone they had known for years, grown up with, spent their childhood with. My friend married someone of a different race in the early 70s. Her old childhood friend visited their home, sat a their table for years with both of them and their children. Then the internet arrived. Racism ruled it’s ugly head on social media posts and this longtime friend of my friend, started posting horrible, racist posts. I knew this person too and I was shocked as I had known them a long time too. My friend said to me, “They sat at my table with my family, shared meals. I had no idea they hated people of other races until now. What do I do with this? Who are they? I never knew when they sat at my table they were pretending.”

Who are we? Who and what do we let people see and why? It seems the advent of social media has given us all permission to be who we really are because we aren’t standing across from that person. If we were would we spew the same thing? I am just as guilty as anyone else of hiding behind the distance of social media posts.

I’m working on being more authentic. I don’t want to hurt people, but I’m finding that all that has been kept hidden from us by our friends, and all we have hidden, challenges that authenticity. I have heard the phrase, we have to agree to disagree. The problem I have with that is that if I agree to disagree I am compromising my values and who I am to the core of what I believe, and I now realize I have done that much of my adult life. When someone has made fun of someone, instead of standing up for them because I believe it was wrong, I laughed too, while inside I was cringing. I wanted to belong. When I saw someone that needed a friend but they weren’t acceptable because of how they behaved, I stayed away too so I wouldn’t become unacceptable in the crowd. When my kids wanted to hang with someone whose reputation was a little shady, I put my foot down and judged instead of accepting them into my family and finding out who they really were inside, and why their behavior deemed them unacceptable to the people in the community. All of that was wrong and though I wanted to, I did not speak up. I was too afraid of being left out in the cold by others.

I have stepped away these past few weeks from people that I have known forever, stepped away for a time is the action, for a time. I had to remove myself so I don’t bring out the inner devil that sits inside of me wanting to scream at our difference of opinion. I can’t agree to disagree but I can disengage myself from them because our views are so different. Step back and take a break. I suspect I am blocked too by many of my friends because of my views.

I don’t want to become that person again that laughs at a cruelty instead of speaking up. I can be cruel with my words, as I suspect most of us have that hidden devil inside. I am working on accepting my friends as they are, but if I feel that devil rising I know that I need to take a break, distance myself. I need a break from them and they need a break from me. That is a compromise I can do to keep peace even when I don’t feel peaceful. I don’t think there are any totally authentic people. But we can work on figuring out what we show to the world and is it true to who we are?

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.