All's Well that Ends Well (Revised Post)

I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE FIRST PART OF THIS POST PRIOR TO SENDING IT YESTERDAY, WHICH IS WHY YOU ARE RECEIVING IT IN YOUR INBOX YET AGAIN. I APOLOGIZE! ONE OF MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS IS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE SQUARE SPACE BLOGGING MORE EFFICIENTLY. THANKS FOR HANGING IN THERE, FRIENDS! I APPRECIATE MY READERS SO MUCH. AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES! MAY THIS YEAR BE FILLED WITH UNEXPECTED JOY!

My friend Ginny and I launched Forever We on September 25, 2014. We celebrated by inviting all our family and friends to a huge party, complete with a fancy dinner, live auction, and goodie bags. We were thrilled to showcase our product to the world, and more importantly, raise $30,000 that night for childhood cancer research.

Then, without any fanfare at all, we sold our last doll and called it quits for good in late 2019.

Why is it that we often don’t celebrate our endings with the same fervor we do our beginnings? It doesn’t make any sense. Endings can be awesome—think high school graduation, the closing program at summer camp, and the finish line at the end of a big race. We even call funerals—truly the last great hurrah—”celebrations of life.”

And yet, so often we end things without so much as a passing thought.

You may remember January 1, 2020. Were you as bright and hopeful as I was? We stood upon the cusp of not only a new year, but a new decade filled with possibility.

It was a glorious time.

Gavin and I have been watching the first season of Survivor, which premiered twenty years ago. Ironically, the show mirrors life. Contestants must learn how to survive in a new world surrounded by scary things. And by scary things, I don’t mean just the snakes and rats. The people were the real challenge. The goal: Achieve immunity so you can’t be voted off the island.

Back then, only the imitible Richard Hatch realized the game was never really about physical survival. It was always meant to be a social game.

He played right through to the end, ultimately celebrating with a one million dollar prize pot.

Richard Hatch knew the end was just as important as the beginning.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

— "Closing Time" by Semisonic

Generations of curious children will someday ask the question: “What was it like to live through the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020?”

I’ve heard a lot of people say this year has exposed the cracks in our relationships and in our lives. What was already weak has finally broken.

Early on, our family decided that we would celebrate all the small wins. We knew this year was going to look a lot different than the one we planned on January 1, 2020. We had to adjust our expectations and give thanks for daily blessings. Despite our disappointments, we still maintain that 2020 has given us so much to celebrate.

We prioritized mental health over physical health. We encouraged continuing education because (NEWS FLASH!) sound work is never a guarantee. Gavin earned his doctorate, Christiana discovered she could finish college early and applied to grad school, and little Gavin made the best of his first year at Auburn University. And we are still here, trying not to begin sentences with, “When this is over…” and instead marveling in the wonder that is today.

During this last week of the year, consider what it means to end well.

A quick Google search of those first Survivor contestants yields results indicating that most of them still retain an identity from being on that show. Back then, they had no idea that they were creating a whole new genre of television, one in which “getting voted off the island” would become part of the nation’s collective vernacular. The experience defined them.

And still does.

Will 2020 define you?

There’s nothing magic about that ball dropping at midnight, anyway, and so how you choose to remember and recognize this most crazy of years will be part of the legacy you leave for the next generation.

Give yourself a hand, make a poster, cross that finish line, celebrate with a song. But most importantly, choose the best parts to carry with you into 2021.

As I write this now, I wonder if Ginny and I didn’t mark the end of Forever We because we knew the end would mean something else. It would signal the beginning of an in-between—that scary space you occupy when you’re done with one thing but don’t yet know what the future holds.

But every ending is also an invitation to embark upon a new beginning. You probably learned a lot about yourself this year. Maybe you discovered a new hobby. Maybe you realized you have trust issues. Maybe you found something to be true you didn’t know before. Don’t dismiss all the good things that happened just because there was some bad stuff too. Celebrate the end, so you can embrace a new beginning armed with all you’ve learned, seen, grieved, and experienced.

I promise none of it will go to waste.

And all’s well that ends well.

Want more good stuff?

When the Ordinary becomes Novel

I never thought buying a new pair of shoes would make me feel like the world is ending.

And yet…

Here we are.

On Saturday, I lamented that Covid-19 had officially taken all the fun out of shopping. I had hoped to get my daughter some new tennis shoes at the local outlet mall, but outside every store was a line of people (all standing six feet apart) and a sentry guarding the doors to the stores that were open. Each had its own subset of rules to follow: At this one, you had to wear the employee-distributed mask, at that one a mask wasn’t required at all, at some you had to sanitize your hands before being allowed to enter, and at every one only a certain number of shoppers were allowed inside.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?”
”Do you know where you’re going?”
”Can I help you find something?”

No one was invited to browse. “Just looking?” Ha! Don’t even think about it!

On a “normal” Saturday, my daughter would try on every pair of shoes in the store, then go to three more stores, declare that the shoes at the first store were probably the ones she was going to go with—probably—but first we’d need to try them on again.

And on and on it would go. Shopping for shoes with Cari Jill is never “easy.” She likes to be absolutely sure. And for her, waiting two days for shoes is not an option.

She’d much rather torture me for two hours.

So we ALWAYS do our shopping in person.

I want to be optimistic, and I promise I tried to be: “We’ll get used to this,” I assured her. “It won’t always be this way,” I promised.

But the reality is that I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Maybe the new normal means we’ll never be able to shop the way we used to. Masks and gloves and social distancing will just be a normal part of our everyday.

Maybe.

So far, 2020 has not been the year we had all hoped. Just this week, while we’re all just coming out of our Covid stupor, riots erupted in response to race issues across America.

And yet, here we are continuing to plow forward with ever-growing fervor toward… toward…toward who knows what?

Settling over the countryside, however, I have noticed this general malaise, a weariness that extends from work to family to home as people try to navigate a changing reality.

I want to pretend that everything is normal, but on the news I never hear the word normal unless it is also attached to the word NEW.

And so as I begin to accept this new normal with growing unease, I have also tried really hard to tell myself that the new normal is perfectly normal.

It seems ridiculous to think about something as mundane and ordinary as buying new shoes right now. Like I’m torn in two directions — my regular life and what’s happening in the world. I can go without new shoes, but my growing kids actually do need them—and they need to try them on first.

And with everything else that has been canceled or delayed, I just wanted this one thing to feel like something I recognize.

It’s only a pair of shoes, after all.

The ordinary and the mundane have always shaped my life, far more than any big moment.

And you know this is true.

Your high school graduation was fun, but it wasn’t the event that made you who you are. It was the tests, papers, relationships, and disappointments all along the way. Your wedding was a huge event; you planned for it for a year or more. But it was really all the time together and conversations you shared that came before and after the big day that determined the quality of the actual marriage. The birth of your children—an extraordinary miracle—but what mattered was not how they came into to you. All the sacrifices and memories you made as they settled into the routine of family life with you was what really made them a part of the family.

Quarantine.

What’s disorientating now is that the little ordinary moments no longer feel ordinary.

I was trying to figure out what was so depressing, and then I realized that was it; the ordinary has become novel.

But just because something is new doesn’t mean I can’t adapt.

That’s what healthy people do.
They ADAPT.

So from now on I’m just going to tell myself how mature and self-aware I am—adapting to all these new things like it’s no big deal. Whether things go back to the way they were or they don’t, one thing I’ve decided is that I’m not going to be one of these old people “so set in her ways” that she can’t welcome the new and unfamiliar with open arms—despite the fact that those open arms will be able to embrace exactly nobody anytime soon.

Will you join me?

---

Want more good stuff?

Have questions or comments? I love hearing from readers, and I read every single message. Feel free to reply to the email in your inbox or use the comments box below.

The Best Job in the World

How’s it going over there?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who's been thinking about our current situation -- managing the day to day, adjusting to our new normal, and taking care while staying sane. 

I’ve been thinking about you too - and how so many of you let me know you’re barely holding it together.

If the family is clothed and fed, you probably feel a little bit like Wonder Woman. And that might be because there’s no such thing anymore as a day job and a side gig. All the gigs have squished together like a 90s mosh pit.

We’re doing what we have to do right now, not necessarily what we want to do.

Which is weird because I can think of a lot of jobs I’d never want to do, and it’s crazy they involve a lot of the work I’m doing now. I can tell you for sure that I don’t ever want to be a full-time teacher, chef, nail technician, or nurse.

But speaking of nurses….

I know a guy whose wife is an oncology nurse. Last year, she missed a Christmas party because she had to work. “Awww,” we all said when he told us she wasn’t coming. “That’s so sad.”

He shook his head violently. “Are you kidding?” he said. “She has the best job in the world! Every single day, she gets to be the best part of someone’s worst day.”

You can always be the best part of someone else’s worst day.

And that phrase has always stuck with me.

Especially when I think about my friends working in the healthcare profession right now. They are exhausted, worn out, and emotionally spent. There’s a big sign in front of our local hospital that reads: “Heroes Work Here.,” and every time I pass it, I smile. It’s lonely and terrifying work, but the ones on the front lines also tell me that it’s extremely gratifying.

I, too, want to be the best part of someone’s worst day.

On days like today.

When I found out my senior is going to have an online graduation ceremony.
And probably not until July.
And when my friend told me her husband’s job was furloughed with paychecks to end “immediately.”
And when my daughter saw her friends from across the street and couldn’t go hug them.
And when this lady I don’t even know who wanted to buy a bed we were selling on Facebook marketplace told me about her daughter fleeing an abusive husband.

Oh, there’s so many things out of my control right now!

But you know what? In the midst of all this bad news, I have an opportunity to be “good news.”

Even in quarantine I can find a way to make someone else’s day better.

And I don’t have to be an oncology nurse (or any other kind of nurse) to do that. I just have to be…

AVAILABLE.
THOUGHTFUL.
PRACTICAL.

Some ideas:

• I love these cards from The Hope Deck, perfect to pop in a mailbox, tape to a bathroom mirror, or leave on a pillowcase for a child to find.

• Jeni’s Ice Cream is always a fun treat. (You know I love good ice cream because I’m always talking about it!) Try the Terrace Brunch or the Virtual Crowd Pleaser collection.

• Send a video text to your best friend, so she can see your pretty face.

• Buy some happy stickers and pop them in the mail. You could also add these limited edition coronavirus stickers to your favorite water bottle or face mask.

• And of course, don’t forget to remind your bestie to “follow her mission, not the madness” with one of these cool tees.

The thing about quarantine that I’ve found most surprising is that my emotions are like little ghosts, creeping around, both there and not there at the same time, and jumping out at me when I least expect it. And I’ve found that this is true for a lot of people right now. It’s not just me. A really good day can turn into a bad day in an instant.

Above all else, be kind. Be extraordinarily kind.

Then count your blessings because the best job in the world is the one you’d do even if no one paid you to do it. And you’re in luck because being the best part of someone’s worst day is something we can all do—FOR FREE.

Want More Good Stuff?

Liked this post? Forward to a friend!

And as always, please feel free to reach out to me with comments or suggestions. I read every single message, and I love hearing from you.