As I sit here watching Almost Famous, it reminds me of one of my ultimate heroes in life. The Beavis to my Butthead, the Luke to my Leia, the Samwise to my Frodo. Yes, I’m talking about my big brother, Matt. Anyone who knows anything about us knows that I have worshipped Matt (sometimes ad nauseam) since the day I entered this World. I have trailed after him with wide and often mischievous eyes always longing just to be near him. Matt is quite literally one of my favorite people on this Earth and I have never understood how people could say they “hated their brother or sister”. That was so the absolute opposite of what I felt for him and even though I know I often made his life more difficult than pleasant as a young child just by the nature of my oftentimes challenging and (shall we say) boisterous personality, it is still Matt that would go to the fiery pit of Mount Doom for me. 

    If this analogy doesn’t make sense to you, let me explain. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic story “The Lord of the Rings”, Frodo, the main character is given the task of carrying the ring to Mount Doom and throwing it inside the fiery pit to destroy it as it’s power is too great and ultimately is destructive. But only Frodo has the power to carry the ring. Frodo and his best friend (and practically his brother), Samwise, set out on a journey to go to Mount Doom to destroy the ring. On the course of their journey, Frodo is consistently weakened by the ring’s powers to the point where it almost kills him. In the end, it is Samwise who makes the decision to pick Frodo up and carry him the rest of the way, stating, “I can’t carry it FOR you, but I CAN carry YOU!!” 

   Matt would, and has gone, to Mount Doom with me. When I needed him most, he was there, and never left my side. He believed in me, loved me, didn’t judge me and had all the faith in the World that I would make it home to The Shire again in one piece. And I did. He is quite literally my Samwise and carried me the rest of the way. I will never be able to put into words how grateful I am to have him as my partner in crime on this road trip of life. 

     Matt has always been a big fan of the movie Almost Famous. It has a particular mantra he likes, “It’s All Happening”. My personal favorite is “Rockstars Have Kidnapped My Son”. But to each his own. So when that movie came on tonight, it just felt like the perfect chance for me to think and reflect on one of my all time favorite people in the World and give him a proper shout out. I love you Marty. ZUNE. You’re JUST THE GOOD STUFF. 

   

    It’s only natural to sometimes look back at your life and wonder “what if”? We all have questions we ask ourselves from time to time when evaluating where we are in our lives. Things like, “What if I had taken that job? What if I had taken that leap and moved to that city? Or what if things had worked out with so-and-so?” Where would we be now? Would we be as happy? Or happier? Less Happy? Would there be a sense of completeness to our lives that we might be lacking or is that just the insecurities of the past creeping up on us? 

   I’m a firm believer in things happening for a reason and everything working out how it is supposed to. I also believe people come in and out of your lives for a reason and it is up to you what you do with those relationships. One of my favorite examples of a friend from the past re-emerging in my present is my dear friend Jenna. Jenna and I were friends, (although not super close ones) in college, we had circles of friends who hung out. We knew LOTS of people in common. Fast forward about 10 years when Jenna got a job back here in Potsdam teaching dance at SUNY Potsdam in the new Performing Arts Center. I sent her an email asking her to dinner and she immediately accepted. That first night we spent 5 hours gabbing and catching up over margaritas at The Cantina in Potsdam and it felt like no time had passed and even better, like I finally had another a really great gal friend here in town. (Up until that point, I had an exact total of one.) Jenna quickly became one of my best and most trusted friends and I love her like a sister. She is family to me and while she has since moved to Buffalo for another exciting job opportunity, she is always close to my heart and constantly on my mind. 

    I’ve had the good fortune to reconnect with a few other friends lately too and it’s always a treat when you can do that. My friend Christie from high school and I have been talking on the phone about some exciting new opportunities and in the process have gotten to catch up on the goings on in our day to day lives. And my friends Andrew and Danielle from college have both been in touch as of late which has been a lovely surprise. I look forward to seeing more of them in the future. 

    I think especially with this past weekend being my college’s Alumni Weekend and my Mom receiving an award for excellence in teaching was a powerful moment for me. She commented on how she was prepared to follow the path she chose right from when she entered college directly out of high school. She’s always been a music teacher and a really wonderful one. But that path was always laid out for her. She had mentors and teachers along the way guiding her and helping her achieve her goals and when she started teaching, she really never stopped. 

   This isn’t necessarily the case with the people of my generation. We are more likely to move away from home, switch cities, and change careers more than once. We are also less likely to meet and marry our high school or college sweethearts as was once more the norm, and may even marry more than one person in our lifetime. Our families may be blended and start much later than when our parents had us. And this is all ok. It’s all very normal, because it’s part of the journey life has taken us on. No matter what your life’s path is, the most important thing is to not have regrets. Do your best, give everything you can a try and remember that cliché adage is so very true. You only live once. And it’s quite literally your duty to live it in a really GOOD WAY. 

     I have always been fascinated with hearts. Not just the things you send little emojis of or the shape you make when you curl half of your hand towards each other, but actual human hearts. 

   It may be because mine has always been different. It never had a “normal” beat to it as a child. I never knew this of course because you don’t know anything different than what you are as a kid and growing up I thought everyone’s heart raced like a puppy when they would run a short distance or walk up stairs. Over the years I became more and more fascinated with the sound of heartbeats and would find myself turning my ear inward whenever I would give someone a hug in hopes it would linger long enough that I could press against their chest and seek out their heartbeat for a beat or two. 

   When I had trouble sleeping as a teenager and found the rest of my family used White Noise machines to help soothe them into a peaceful slumber, I went searching for a noise machine with a heartbeat setting on it to lull me to sleep. 

    When I was 25 and finally got the rhythm of my heart surgically fixed, I had a short gap of time between when my body’s natural pacemaker was ablated and the artificial one I now depend on to make my heart beat was put in. This was because it took a few days for my body’s natural pacemaker (my SA nose) to die after the surgery I had to “turn it off” happened. My heart was essentially improperly sending signals all the time to the rest of my body in regards to how fast my heart should beat. 

   The plan was to permanently turn it off, and then make me artificially pacemaker dependent with a nice even, steady heartbeat. I remember being very nervous to leave the hospital in between the two surgeries, but the doctor said to me, “You’ll know when it’s time to come back. Everything will get very quiet.” And that is exactly what happened. I woke up one day and things felt very quiet. Like I couldn’t hear any heartbeats anymore. They had been with me for so long, and I suddenly felt like the Tin Man. No heartbeat. I almost felt hollow inside. But, like The Tin Man, I soon got my visit with The Wizard. And it turned out a couple titanium wires were almost as good as tin, & kept the beat like a Sousa March. 

    I put a piece of surgical tape over my heart that day that said, “please handle with care”. My nurse and good friend Marisa, kept it and a year later on the anniversary of my surgery, and as an early Christmas present, she gave me a rose quartz, heart shaped vase with that piece of tape inside. It was the first in my collection of heart shaped vases. 

    Actress Drew Barrymore has written a book which I am very fond of called “Find It In Everything”. It is a collection of photographs of heart shapes that appear in every day objects and life situations. I find myself constantly looking for heart shapes and getting a great sense of joy when I find one somewhere. Especially when it pops up where you least expect it. I like to think it’s the universe telling me it hears my yearning for that perfect “thump, thump, thump”. Because truly there is nothing like a good strong heartbeat to tell you everything is ALL GOOD. 
    

  

    It’s been a little while since I’ve posted here. I haven’t been consciously avoiding it, but when I started this blog, I made a few ground rules. 

1.) Only “Good Stuff”. Whatever that meant to me. It didn’t mean things couldn’t take a serious tone, but they eventually had to round back to a positive one. 

2.) Only write when you have something meaningful to say. Don’t write just out of obligation or because you felt a need to fill a silence. 

   So with those two ground rules out of the way, I’d like to comment on something I’ve been noticing quite a bit lately and I’m guessing some of you have been too. Because it’s human nature to do so. And most of the time it’s ok, until it becomes hurtful, ugly and not constructive. What I’m talking about is our appearance. Things like what we wear, how we style or if we choose to color our hair, how much or little we weigh and various other components that make us who we are on the outside but often are only very small indicators of who we are on the inside. 

    As someone who has been every size from a 16 to a 0 in the past 5 years, I can tell you that there is no such thing as the “perfect weight”. Only the one at which a person is healthiest at is what can be considered the “perfect weight”. It might sound cliché , but at my thinnest, I still had cellulite on my thighs and butt and people making negative comments about my appearance. It wasn’t a barrage of compliments about “how great I looked”, but instead, people almost felt entitled to comment on something they knew very little about. No one knew if I was dieting and intentionally trying to lose weight or if I was sick, or if maybe, like some girls, I might have had an eating disorder. If we’re being candid here, and I believe honesty is always a good policy, I have had a history with all three of these things at some point in my life. So when I say I understand the sensitivities that can surround the discussions associated with weight and weight loss, it is putting it mildly. This most recent time, I was not doing anything intentionally (in a healthy or unhealthy way) to lose weight and so it became even more of a sensitive subject that I perked up and paid attention to. As a woman with a now healthy, rational, mindset, but a body that was losing weight for rather unexplained reasons, you can find that people harbor feelings of jealousy, envy, resentment, and even disdain towards you for your situation even when it’s one you have no control over. I really had to take a minute and say, “hey now, what about when I was heavier and couldn’t lose the weight? Did we all feel this way too?” And maybe to a certain degree some people did have other negative feelings, but my hope was that if I was “body positive” others would soon follow. 

   We, especially as women, need to learn to build each other up and celebrate our bodies. Embrace them for all the wonderful shapes and sizes they come in and the incredible, powerful things they can do for us. Like climb mountains, birth babies, and run companies and in the cases of a few really amazing women, run countries too. 

    I honestly don’t know if I have Grey hair or not because I’ve been coloring my hair since I was 14 years old. My Mom never wanted me to do what my childhood neighbor did and go buy a bottle of peroxide to lighten my hair when I was a teen, so she just took my to the salon and let me get it done properly. I’ve always been very thankful to her for that, but I’ve also never really gone back to my “natural” color so honestly, I don’t know what I’m “working with” there. My lighter hair has always just “suited me” better than my darker color and with about 2 or 3 brief exceptions in the last 20+ years, I haven’t ever given it a chance to go dark enough to see what would happen if I really grew it out and let it go natural. 

    At almost 36, I am noticing a lot of my friends are starting to let the Grey in their hair come through. Men AND women and I’ll tell you I LOVE IT!! I think it looks great and that it’s something that is so chic and posh looking! Anyone who has the ability to let their Grey or silver lining shine through SHOULD!! The word “distinguished” comes to mind when I see someone with a smattering (or even a full head or beard) of Grey hair. 

    Now, if you’re like me and you’ve been coloring your hair forever, I get it. Just do what feels right. But know the option is there, & don’t feel you have to shy away from it. 

     Last but not least, the ever present matter of sun spots, age lines, wrinkles, scars and the like. Our skin is like a road map of our life. Mine has many twists and turns on it. I recently met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen in about 10 years and my Mom asked me if I was going to cover my scars before I met him, (I have acid burns on about 15 percent of my face & other scars from various life experiences). I thought about it for a minute and then shook my head “no”. I rarely wear makeup anywhere these days and decided I didn’t want to start now and hide myself from this person just because it had been a while since we’d seen each other. My scars aren’t anything I’m ashamed of and they’re not particularly unpleasant to look at. Honestly, they look like I have really dramatic freckles on a portion of my forehead and some of my cheeks and then I have some natural flushing in my face which kind of makes me just look like I’m blushing. So I put a tiny bit of concealer on a few really obvious blemishes, some eyeliner and a quick swipe of lip gloss & out the door I went. I felt like myself & that was the best mask of armor I could ever have. Confidence is key and it will be your best friend and greatest ally. 

   I don’t have all the answers, but when it comes to appearance, as a woman who had gone from someone who was practically the prom queen of her work environment one day to completely unrecognizable the next, trust me when I say there is no better lesson in life than learning to be happy in the skin you are in. Looks fade and beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, styles, shades and patterns. And I for one think that is incredibly GOOD STUFF!!