Observations on life…the messy, the chaotic, the beautiful
It’s summer and you need to stock up on popsicles!
Here is my popsicle mom hack.
For whatever reason my kids have always preferred the popsicle version of a smoothie so when I have extra smoothie in the blender I pour the rest into any of my various popsicle molds (some pictured, others push up variety) & stick in the freezer.
Healthy so Mom is happy. Tasty so kids are too!
Stay tuned for smoothie recipes that you can use for popsicles!
Bible verses about The Battle Belongs To The Lord
— Read on www.openbible.info/topics/the_battle_belongs_to_the_lord
I grew up in a household with a mother who had left the Catholic faith after attending Catholic all her years. She was attracted by the Jesus movement of the 1970’s, trending toward a more fundamentalist, charismatic, experiential based expression of the Christian faith. I was taught that we should avoid rote prayers and make up our own, initiating a conversation with God in an effort to develop a personal relationship with Christ.
These thoughts formed my religious foundation but as I grew into an adult I sought to explore more traditional avenues of my faith. Eventually I became confirmed as a Catholic. I now embrace it as well as many of the practices with which I grew up. The Catholic faith practice includes many established prayers. One of these is the Hail Mary, a short but sweet prayer to…or as I see it…through…the Mother of Jesus, basically beseeching her to intercede for us. The rosary is a repetition of this prayer interspersed with others including the well known Our Father that create a meditative effect which can be very soothing.
I have found this prayer a great comfort, especially at times when the weight of life and it’s sorrows is so great that it stymies our ability to express our own needs for help, guidance, and comfort. One such time was while my mother lay dying in Hospice. Another recent time I drew upon the comfort of this prayer was when my teenage son was having a particularly challenging day. I repeated this prayer to give me strength and calm as I drove us to an appointment.
Life has many challenging moments and I like to have a full toolkit to address them. This is one of my many that I have found useful at the most trying moments. I hope you will too.
Find it here: vaticannews.va.🙏🏻📿✝️
I also recently started listening to two podcasts on Spotify. One is a commuter rosary and one is led by Bishop Barron. I’ve incorporated both into my daily routine. Find them here.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7DaRJY9ticqmNEaiRzoRyK?si=rSshUoqbRju9SdZno2hIsQ
Parenting is not for the faint of heart. Having a house full of teenagers is Really not for the faint of heart. It can drive you to the brink of madness. One minute they are pushing you away. The next they are needy and demanding of your time and presence. You never see them when you’re all at home but as soon as you dare to leave the house for a moment they are texting or calling demanding to know where you are & what time you’ll be back.
And sometimes things get extreme. My middle school son began to withdraw from the family and refuse to eat anything I made for meals (though he’d snack like a boss). A very able kid, his academic performance began to decline. I tried many things but was really at a loss.
One evening things came to a head in a power struggle, a battle of our wills. (Unfortunately you can no longer scoop the teenager up & place them into their car seat. That is the main difference between the toddler and teenager tantrum. Size. That’s it. In most other respects they are the same.) I hadn’t planned it and obviously it is not recommended by parenting books or sites, but by the end of the engagement the phone has ended up in the lake behind my house (or somewhere thereabouts in the swampy grass …I’ve never claimed to have a great throwing arm). Was this the best course of action? It certainly brought on a slew of more anger from son. And was obviously not the best economic decision.
But boy am I glad I did it. It took a few days, and we sought out some professional counseling, but now suddenly he is laughing and joking with his brothers and sisters, doing his schoolwork, playing outside and eating again! I think he needed to hear the counselors affirm that mom is in charge and that if mom feels she needs to take the phone she will.
So…not recommending necessarily as a first course of action but sometimes extreme situations call for extend solutions. Things could not have gone on as they were. Something needed to break the log jam. But, honestly, if I had known the outcome would be so positive I would have done it a long time ago. Phones cause such a battle. But I think we had to get to this point. Bottom line: to me, the cost of a lost phone is worth it to save my son’s heart, family relationships and sense of self. And I think he knows I mean it, that I really do what I say and that I really care about him. Extremely.
Today in my Family Law Mediator Training we heard from a Domestic Violence specialist. As she discussed psychological and financial abuse I recalled my former life. She talked about how in some relationships one spouse is granted an “allowance,” has no access to the bank accounts, handles none of the financial matters. I had a similar relationship where, though an attorney, I was told I wouldn’t know how (and this sticks with you…you start to believe it and it takes some undoing). He was an accountant so I figured it made sense for him to handle everything. I was busy taking care of my five babies.
The only times I balked were towards the end of the relationship when he tried to give me a credit card with his name alone, when he signed my name on our taxes, and when he would give me a different credit card each week. . . I know, right?
I never handled any banking, credit applications, or taxes. I wrote very few checks. Looking through an old check book recently I saw that in the last year of my marriage my husband had even written the check to reimburse my girlfriend for a girls’ weekend expense. Unbelievable. This person is unknowable to me today, four years post marriage.
A lot can happen when only one person is in control of the finances. You get a limited budget for groceries and hair cuts and time with friends. Things go missing like the proceeds from house sales.
On my own now I handle all my own finances. There was a learning curve certainly but even when I make mistakes it is freeing and I feel so much stronger.
I suppose I am a little jaded over to one side but I will never let anyone control …or really even access my finances again. I have learned a hard lesson and that makes it all the more valuable.
I don’t like to think of myself as a victim. I liked the term the teacher used today, survivor. It is much more positive. I like to learn from my mistakes, move forward & use what I’ve learned to try to help others.
So….if you find yourself washing your hair with baking soda to save money, always being told to stick to a budget created by someone else, skimping on yourself and your kids while your significant other is not held to the same restrictions, maybe all while believing you are saving up for retirement someday…if you have thought about divorcing but didn’t have any money of your own to pay an attorney a retainer, maybe have a deeper look…
Yesterday I was listening to a radio talk show host while I was driving and his guests were lamenting women who work and how much better it is when women were home with their kids. They were claiming it is a lie that women can have and do it all.
Well, maybe…but ✨
What I think is a lie is the happily ever after, the idea that two people can marry and will stay married for their whole lives. 👰♀️💍🤵♂️
💔
I was married for 20 years, a stay at home for 10 of them. For the past 5 years I have been a working mom but have made a point to build my business in such a way as to make room and time for my children. Fortunately my professional credentials make it possible for me to operate my own law firm and I have found that my clients are actually attracted to a lawyer who is also family centered. They love the human aspect. 👩💼
What makes it possible for me to “do it all”? Well I will tell you my little secret…what has helped a great deal is having a personal assistant.
Before I hired my PA things were starting to get a bit out of control between getting my kids off to school and wanting to start my short work day (limited by the school day) as an attorney working out of my house but would be faced with a kitchen sink and countertop full of dishes and other debris left from my kids making their lunches & breakfast before heading off for the day. 😩
Fast forward to finding my Girl Friday (took me a couple of tries)! ✨
She picks up my slack, anticipates my needs. No job is too small or big for her. She picks my kids up, does my laundry, makes sure I have a clean kitchen, handless the endless Amazon return runs.
So I can focus on my area of skill.
She helps make it possible for me to be involved in my kids’ school lives as a Girl Scout troop co-leader and PTO Vice President.
It’s actually kind of like being married but without the drama part.
Not that I am trying to do everything but so grateful for the partnership that allows me to be involved in my kids’ lives while supporting them financially as a single mom and also staying sane.
Highly recommend one! 😀
I have been listening to the gospels this Holy Week. In there are descriptions of John the Baptist who in the Christian Faith Tradition is understood to have prepared the way for the Messiah, Jesus Christ, his cousin in fact. John’s work of preparing the way ended with his head being served up on a platter following a big party.
This tells me that we cannot expect to always have our work rewarded, at least in this life. No matter how we apply ourselves to the work of caring for and providing for our families, no matter how well we serve our clients and customers, no matter how involved we are in benefiting our communities….our work may not be recognized or appreciated (especially if you have teenagers!), or more discouragingly may be despised and envied by others who will seek to stop us in our tracks, maybe even have our head. But this should not stop us from doing good, fighting the good fight, spreading the Good News, and sharing God’s love. Keep up the good work this day!
Some of you have probably heard of an annulment but most will have no real understanding of the term.
The Webster’s/Wikipedia definition of annulment is basically (paraphrasing) a determination that a marriage was void from the beginning. This of course differs from the legal act of a divorce which terminates the marriage but allows that it existed. And then there are those who separate or remain in divorce limbo for years…but I don’t want to digress.
My divorce was final almost exactly four years ago. I am Catholic and my faith has a procedure for annulment. As I began to look into it and learn, I realized I needed to follow this path as well.
At first I was concerned that it would affect my five children from the marriage. If the marriage never existed, wouldn’t that call into question their validity and existence? (Not legally, but in the realm where annulment exists.)
The US Confederation of Catholic Bishops explains the process and its meaning as follows: “What is often referred to as a ‘marriage annulment’ in the Church is actually a declaration by a Church tribunal (a Catholic Church court) that a marriage thought to be valid according to Church law actually fell short of at least one of the essential elements required for a binding union.”
For those who really want to understand Catholic doctrine, these are:
The process is long and entailed but guided by a priest and very confidential. Each party has the chance to answer very detailed questions about the marriage. (Unfortunately so do friends, family and sometimes mental health professionals who you name as having information concerning the marriage. It is to say the least an extremely thorough process.
This differs from a legal annulment (recognized in some states), which can be based on factors such as:
Originally I thought of seeking the nullity as a way of encouraging my children’s father (my former spouse) and his girlfriend to marry because I felt/feel that their living together without that in full view of my children contrasts with our Catholic faith (of which they also both subscribe).
As I entered into the process I found it was also a way to reflect upon the marriage in a deeper way than the legal divorce process allows for. It also provided, or I feel will, when granted, final closure on a chapter of my life that requires it.
When I left my marriage I was running from a bus headed over the cliff. My husband at the time had left his well paying job with great benefits, moved our family of 7 into a 3 bedroom apartment, leaving finances and tensions to be strung as tightly as a well tuned violin, which we were not. There was not a lot of time to assess. Just as the flight attendant directs you to do if you need to escape a downed plane, I basically left everything behind. As I begin to experience freedom and independence for the first time in my adult life I begin to reflect on aspects of the marriage and my partner that I never saw. I begin to read a lot on the matter and to understand our challenges in a new light and context. I begin to see that not everything had been my fault. I begin to forgive myself and to try to pass on a sense of self awareness to my children.
Annulment for me was, is, necessary for me to leave the marriage fully, to confirm that the marriage as I understood it, hoped for it to be, the life I tried to build for my children, wanted some badly and fought so hard for, was never possible, never existed. It was smoke, a mirage, the vapor over a grassy field in the morning light.
It allowed me to refocus my intentions and efforts on exemplifying a life to my children that takes the raw material of life, lessons, experience, wisdom, and forms it into a new life of meaning, beauty and purpose.
Today we are going to find out if in Florida someone can effectively steal your children, have you threatened in the public right of way, stalk and harass you, act as conduit for hidden marital assets and not only get away with it but charge their victim for the pleasure. Stay tuned.
On my mind today is a curiosity. As a solo practitioner with a focus on boutique estate planning I have to say 99% of my clients are amazing! I visit them in their homes where they serve me coffee & homemade banana bread or key lime pie. They come to my home office where we have seltzer. 😅
But that 1%…most don’t even make it to client status because I have gotten pretty good at intuiting who will be pleasant to work with. And one of the benefits of running your own shop is choosing who you want in your “sandbox” as my friend refers to it.
I am not sure why these folks feel they can expect free service from an attorney. It is unlikely they would visit their doctor or done in a restaurant or shop at the grocery and expect for it all to be zero cost. But somehow when it comes to a lawyer’s specialized services built on years of experience they expect something for nothing, balking at fees that have been presented up front and trying to argue that it really didn’t take that long or they could have done it themselves.
Is it because I am a female? Because I have my own firm? Because I do not keep office space and work on a mobile, virtual basis? Because I seem nice? …???
This is in sharp contrast to my other clients who ask to pay up front when I typically bill once the work is complete and thank me profusely.
The goal of my practice is to seek out those positive thinking, grateful clients who appreciate the hard work, attention to detail and professionalism I bring to the table, whether it is theirs or mine. And to all of them whom I’ve had the honor of serving, I am so grateful for YOU.
Notes From Real Life