Happy Love Day!

 

Hi!

Valentine's Day, the day to celebrate love.

Well, the day for which all the ads tell us that we need to buy expensive gifts.

Another one.

Well, it's been my experience that if expensive gifts and grand gestures are needed to convince your Valentine that you care, there is definitely something bigger going on.

Am I saying you shouldn't buy gifts or put forth grand gestures? Absolutely not! If that's what blows your skirt up, do it! All I'm saying, is that it should never be required.

What you do on Valentine's Day is not a litmus test, or any other kind of test. 

It's not an annual performance review of your relationships or any other part of your life. 

From where I sit, romantic love, love of family, love of friends, love for others walking the planet, should be celebrated every day. Just imagine what the world would look like if that happened. 

Being 40 years deep in a true ride-or-die romantic relationship with my hubby, I can tell you this...

The rom-com version of romance actually accounts for a much smaller percentage of your overall relationship than you might think. The majority of it is spent growing a bond that nothing can break. It's caring so deeply that the thought of hurting them, even by some accidental slip of the tongue, makes you sick to your stomach. 

It's enjoying the things you have in common, while supporting and respecting interests that light them up, but might bore you to tears.

It's about getting through life's shit storms, each taking a turn holding the umbrella as needed.

It's about finding solutions to impossible problems in a way that, though may not make you both happy, you both can get okay with. 

It's about rolling with the changes that are inevitable. Kids, no kids. Kids activities, Kids leaving home, kids staying home. Health challenges, losses of loved ones, changes in jobs and finances. Where to live, where not to live. 

Everything is a compromise. Not because you have to, but because you choose to. Because you chose to create this team. This team in which you are co-captains. So you choose, each and every day, to do everything within your power to make your team stronger.

You create this team with the person you can't imagine a life without. You plan to be together forever. You keep striving to make it better, each and every day because, as you get older, you begin to understand that forever isn't nearly the vast distance you once thought it was. 

Time is precious, don't waste it by celebrating love only one day a year. By celebrating only one kind of love. 

Happy Love Day! 

When Beautiful Is Mistaken For Broken...

 

Hi!

At first glance, if you choose not to look too close, these images can seem to depict something shattered or broken.

But, if you take just a little bit of time, you soon come to realize it is simply beautiful. A result of the extreme. When things get so cold, when the bitterness seems so deep you feel it, not only in your bones, but in the marrow, buried within. 

The world seems to be drenched in the extreme bitterness, hate, and fear, wielded by those who believe they are the most important, smartest people in every room... always. 

If you don't look too close, the world seems broken. The misguided overreach from those who believe the world functions on bullying and greed. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely facets that do run that way. Facets that feed the greed, the greed that created an entire demographic called "the working poor." Greed on behalf of those who already have more than they need is the only reason that demographic exists.

If you look closer, you see those who are fighting against it all. They may not be as loud, they may not wield the same individual power, but as a collective? Never underestimate those who have truly had to fight for everything. We get tired, but never tired enough to make us give up. 

The beautiful. The coming together to fight a common enemy. Greed of money, greed of power, the bullying tactics that try to push through policies that benefit only those who already have too much. 

Although it feels like the current of corruption is strong, it is beatable. A tsunami of kindness and acceptance is coming. 

Those who cling to these hateful, antiquated ways are in the vast minority. They know it, we know it, and they are scared. The number of people who follow and believe in what they say and do is diminishing. The followers are finding that the "education" they receive through toxic, misinformed means, doesn't work in the real world, where they are regularly confronted with reality. The reality that most people are NOT okay with spewing hate. The reality that your toxic behavior will get you fired, or keep you from getting a job at all. The reality that most people don't want to hang around the kind of willful ignorance that goes with these twisted views of the world. 

These are the last desperate breaths of an old, sick, corrupt, backward, ignorant way of walking the earth. They are clinging to a power they should have never been so blindly given.

There will be a lot of swill to walk through to get there. We will have to fight for every right they try to trample. We will need to use every ounce of our power to slog through this muck to get to fertile gardens.

We will cease to support brands that support, or come from a place that supports those who want to be kings. We can aim our dollars at inclusive businesses who pay a living wage. When you are buying whiskey, when you are buying groceries, when you are buying cars... pay attention. Make sure your money is going where you want it to. 

To those who are living in the delusion that we are broken, that we are kind, therefore we are weak, that they have worn us down to the point of giving up... know this... you are wrong. 

History proves over and over again, that no matter how much damage evil does along the way, we always come back. Your power is temporary, you know it, we know it, the coming-of-age generations you have traumatized absolutely know it, the people of colour, the people of the LBGTQ+ community, those with souls not encrusted with evil  know it.

The world runs on people power. The cogs, the gears, the labourers, this was never more evident than when the world shut down. Nobody was missing the CEO's, the yacht owners, the tycoons. We needed the nurses, the grocery workers, the delivery drivers... the people who actually keep the world moving. 

Let them have their bravado, their evil nonsense, their delusions of superiority. We know the truth, and we will feed it to them soon. 

Let's go to work. 

We are not broken. We are beautiful, and we will be more than happy to show you what that looks like.