We just had a holiday brunch at our house and I got to thinking, “What really makes a house a home?” Is is the smells from the kitchen, or the knickknacks on the shelf? Is it the way you choose where every piece of furniture should be?? Is it the presentation of your most treasured possessions whether they be an expensive piece of artwork or a drawing of a lion your son did when he was 4 years old? What is it exactly that makes a house a home?      

        Dionne Warwick famously sang that “a house is not a home, when there’s no one there to hold you tight.” And Diana Ross said, “When I think of home, I think of a place, where there’s love overflowing…” So is that it? Is it the love? Maybe that’s all you really need to make a house a home. 

       I recently was lucky enough to go with my really good friend Karen to her childhood home in England & see where she grew up. It was one of the most special experiences I’ve ever had. If you ever get the chance to just go with a friend to where they “literally” grew into the person they are now, I absolutely encourage you to do it. Whilst there, I not only got to see Karen’s home, but got the chance to visit family friends Maggie & Dave.

       It occurred to me after how amazing it is to be so welcomed in to someone’s home with such open arms. From Maggie’s incredible cooking to Dave making his warm, toasty fires in the fireplace. I had the most wonderful time. The thing I noticed about both the houses I visited in England was the wonderful memories & love that lived in both houses. From the quilt Maggie spent years making to the sugar pot Karen found tucked away under the cupboards from years and years ago. I was also lucky enough to not only make some wonderful memories while I was there but some friends too! Carol, Bridget & Rachel are three of my favorite ladies hands down!! 

    So you see, it doesn’t have to be YOUR house that makes it a home. It just has to be A house. And there definitely has to be love. And food…really good food. Perhaps Judy Garland said it best when she said, “There’s no place like home”. It’s where the really “good stuff” is.

         

      Sometimes when I’m just driving around I put on the radio and just listen to whatever is on. There was an interesting program I came across where the topic was something about “if you could ask a women who is no longer living a question, what would it be and why?” So I got to thinking maybe I would change that up a little bit & make my own scenario up.         If I could ask five women who are no longer living to come together for maybe, a tea party who would they be and why? 

      So it got time to pick the five women and I thought to myself right away, “Jackie Kennedy. She would be my first pick.” I would love to know what it was like to be there that day. As horrible as it was to lose her husband in such a public manner, she showed such enormous strength and composure. I’d also like to know what it was like to live the life that she led after her years in the White House. She was a wonderful mother who fiercely loved and protected her children. I have always admired Jackie and I would just love to share a cup of tea with her and tell her that. 

     My second pick was Eleanor Roosevelt. I would love to know what living in the White House was like. I suppose she and Jackie until both have that in common, so that would make for some great conversation of course. Eleanor was such an intelligent woman yet I read somewhere she said if she had one regret it was that she were not prettier. I think she was a beautiful woman, certainly from her strength of character alone. I would love to know what lessons she would choose to share with me. 

    Three was Joan of Arc. She always seemed like a real special gal to me. I like her & I would like to have her come to the tea party too. She must have some stories to tell. Girrrrrrlllll!!! She may have only lived to be 19, but she sure packed a whole lotta punch into those short years. Plus, there is the whole sainthood thing that kinda gives you that “legendary-status” if you know what I mean. 

     The fourth I think would be Amelia Earhart. First, I want to know where she went. Plus, she just seems so amazing with all that she did both as a woman and an explorer in her time. Truly a neat lady. How much could she contribute to the conversation? 

    And then came time for my fifth woman. Who would be my fifth? That’s a big spot to fill with a lot of responsibility. I got to thinking about the criteria…they just had to be no longer living and a woman. So I thought maybe I would invite my Grandmother to tea. She was a very intelligent lady & she would have a lot to add to the conversation. She studied at Cornell and had a variety of skills that any one of these women would be envious of. Yes, I would invite Marjorie Holloway to tea with Jackie, Eleanor, Joan and Amelia. 

    There were my five ladies…all of them from the past all, of them full of experiences to tell & share & hopefully teach to one another and to me. I encourage all of you to do this exercise & pick five women from the past & choose why you would invite them to tea. What would you hope you would learn from them & what you would talk about? What questions would you ask them and what do you still want to know? The more I think about questions like these the more I hope someday somebody picks me to be on their list to invite to tea someday. Because I think I have something worthwhile to say & hopefully they will think I have something that is worthy enough to contribute. I’m really looking forward to my tea party because after all, good tea is just really, really “good stuff”. 

      I find myself writing this feeling incredibly lucky I still have a mother. A mother who is my best friend. I am so fortunate that I get this wonderful time with her to just sit and cuddle up on the couch at night and watch Netflix with her and just continue to make wonderful memories. I wouldn’t trade this time with her right now for anything in the world.     I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again life is extremely precious and we never know when it can be gone in just one single breath. 

      My heart is filled with a mix of emotions today. They range from sadness, reflection, empathy and gratitude for my dear friend Rachel. Rachel is one of the bravest, kindest, most pure, beautiful souls I think I’ve ever met. And she lost her Mom on Friday evening to a long battle with Alzheimer’s. I can’t imagine her journey. She never stopped fighting for her Mom and always made sure until the very last moment that she knew how much she was loved. 

     As I write this, I am recalling the many friends I have spoken to recently about their own mothers. Each had interesting little tidbits and facts that I picked up on. Karen was deeply affected by the passing of her Mum 10 years ago, as was her sister Rachel, and yet, together they soldiered on, and still carry the many life lessons she instilled in them to this day. Kym is incredibly close with her Mum & is looking forward to going back to Australia for “Chrissy” (Christmas) this year. Anna’s Mom is a wonderful gardener who is incredibly strong, both in personality & fortitude (& she just adores her twin grandchildren). Maggie lost her Mum when she was far too young. Janet’s Mom came to live with her for a month when she had her last baby. Candice’s Mom is from North Carolina. Amy’s Mom is Denise. Oh Denise. And Rachel, Rachel’s Mom loved to listen to music. 

     And my Mom? I have a wonderful mother. She sings like a songbird, clear as a bell. A mother I cannot fathom being without one day, and yet, I know some day, that time will come. But as my most wonderful, amazing mother would say, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” For now, I’ll cherish the time we have together, and remember that every moment is a blessing. Every hug should count, every memory created should have meaning and every “I love you” said as if it were the last. Motherly love is as real as it gets, & that is just “the good stuff”. 

   

      Home is a strange, wonderful place. They say, “you can’t go home again”. But they’re wrong. You can. And I did. 

    It wasn’t easy, in fact, it was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life, but it was also the best. It was ultimately where my heart belonged. 

    When I first graduated college, I found a burst of courage in me from somewhere way down in the depths of parts I didn’t know existed and moved from Upstate New York to San Diego, CA just weeks after graduating. It was a bold move to say the least, & sometimes it frightens me when I think about it to this day, because I don’t know where that young girl found the gumption to pack up & move 3,000 miles away from everything and everyone she loved. 

      I loved CA & my experiences there too. I made some lifelong friends & memories there. But the most amazing thing that happened to me in CA was finding the Cardiology team that was finally able to diagnose & treat my cardiac condition that I had since birth. When I finally left CA, I did so with a pacemaker and a whole new lease on life. I truly believe that sometimes we are put in the places we are meant to be for a reason. 

    Had I not decided to randomly move to CA and get a job working in a hospital, would I have passed out literally at the feet of one of the best heart surgeons in the field of electrophysiology? Maybe, maybe not. But I’m thinking it’s pretty doubtful. So you see there is a plan for all of it. 

    And then it came time to come home. I didn’t realize how much I missed my family or how much I was truly “spinning my wheels in the mud” after my accident, until (sadly) far too long after I moved home. But it was time. It had been time. And it finally took my brother & my Mom to come out there & say, “enough is enough”. The gig is up. Time to go. And it was. There is a phrase my friend Nikki told me in college once, “if you don’t leave a town when you’re supposed to, it can find a way to kick you out.” I didn’t want that to happen, so I left. And I discovered something magical in doing so. 

    Sometimes home is not only where the heart is, but it’s where your heart belongs. And that is “just good stuff”. 

     

     Life can hit us when we least expect it. A punch to the gut. Who knows what’s coming around the corner. There is an expression “live every day as if it’s your last”. Sometimes those words can ring more true than we know.     I was recently visiting a loved one in the hospital when a critical trauma patient came in to the ER. When that happens, given my own personal history of medical traumas, I always say a little prayer for that person and hope for the best. Who knows the circumstances surrounding what might have accompanied that particular patient. Were they, like me, in a car accident? Did they suffer a bad fall? Was some act of violence committed against them?? In the end it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that their life has been drastically changed and so have the lives of so many people around them. The tentacles of trauma are far reaching and there doesn’t seem to be one inch they don’t touch in some way or another. In that same spirit the power of prayer is a miraculous thing and also, incredibly far reaching. I used to say, “if you could plug in all the prayers people were sending me at one point, you could surely power a Tesla”. But you don’t have to be religious & just “send prayers”. You can send other things too. Well wishes, love, light, positive energy and good thoughts amongst other things. They all work and promote healing and better outcomes for those in need of the healing & strength. They also just mean a whole lot to the person receiving them. 

    I also find, by channeling all that positive power (of prayer, of light, of good will), whatever you want to call it, you only strengthen your own inner being. It’s two fold. You give what get, and you get what you give. Sometimes it takes something like a tragedy to remind us just how lucky we are to have the blessings we are given on a daily basis. And sometimes, we are lucky enough to just know that we are loved and feel that love surrounding us from the far corners of the world. 

       A dear friend of mine, used to say, “Miranda, nothing is for certain, I’m a tumor surgeon. My job is save people’s lives, but folks get hit by buses every day and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.” So just hold on tight. Say “I love you” every chance you get, give that extra hug and remember to compliment someone on their shoes just because you can. It’s just a nice thing to do. And it makes a difference. And the prayers, love & light….well they truly are what that “Good Stuff” I’m always talking about is. No day is a given but what we are given is the capacity to love one another. And spend our time on this Earth being good people. And that is “just good stuff”. 

      I recently read about this project called “Light The World” which is a Christmas initiative encouraging people to serve others. It was originally started by the Mormon church but people all over the World and of all faiths are adopting it as a way to do acts of kindness for one another.      The basic idea is simple: in celebration of advent, the first 25 days of December, each day you do an act that selflessly serves others. 

    What I most love about this idea is the spirit it invokes. Service, giving, and kindness. It has always been my belief that the old English proverb “kindness begets kindness” couldn’t be more true. There is nothing that inspires kindness more than when someone does something unexpectedly kind for you. 

   Just the other day, my dear friend Emily was traveling to Tanzania on what was to be a 48 hour journey. She was met with delay after delay and finally had just reached her breaking point, & went to a corner of the airport and just wept. Who could blame her? A very kind couple around the same age as her parents approached her and just kindly talked her through the situation and offered her a hug. Sometimes that’s all you need. Someone to reach out and take a moment to say, “I see you”, “I’ve been there”, “You and your feelings matter right now.” 

    Emily made a point to say that after that experience she was very inspired to remember what that lovely couple had done for her & be sure to return to favor someday if she ever found another “lost soul” in need. 

     And while hugs and encouragement are wonderful, there are other fantastic ways to serve this season. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or a food pantry, offer to read to the elderly at a nursing home or to children at your local library, stop in at your local ASPCA and see what their needs might be for the animals there. Sometimes an extra set of hands to clean a cage can make a HUGE difference in someone’s day.

     But your acts don’t have to be big, grand gestures. Something as small as paying for the next person’s cup of coffee behind you in line can absolutely make a day. Or buying a gift card at Subway & asking the checkout person to give it to the busy Mom with her hands full so she doesn’t have to get today’s lunch. 

    Paying it forward can be a wonderful way to light the World with faith, hope, charity and love. “And of all these things, the greatest of these, is love”…and that is just good stuff. 

http://www.boredpanda.com/random-acts-of-kindness/

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865666890/Light-the-World-2-Church-announces-2016-Christmas-initiative.html?pg=all

     There is a beautiful line in the Pulitzer Prize & Tony Award winning musical “Hamilton” “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” We all need that person. But do we all have it?       I got to thinking today as I turned on the news and saw there was yet another “active shooter” situation (which turned out to be a person with a concealed weapon) on Ohio State University’s Campus. Who remembers your name? Who tells the wonderful things about you if you don’t survive? It made me think, “who will tell these stories for these wonderful people if the worst should happen?”

     I was that person for 3 wonderful people. Laura was the first. She and I grew up together from birth and like she knew she wouldn’t grow to be old, she entrusted me with her life’s story. From the very start, I knew it all. So when it was time to tell it, & time to break through the grief & tears with laughter and smiles, I was prepared & had the ammunition in my arsenal. I told her story. I lived, she died, & I told her story. The prom dates, the hijinks in the neighborhood, the sleepovers, breaking into her grandma’s house with her sister on a repeated basis. It’s all there for posterity in her life’s story. 

     Next was Jen. Jennifer was beautiful & too young to go. But her Mom wasn’t ready to be the one to tell her story, she had to tell her husband’s only 6 months later. So I learned Jen’s, and I loved Jen and her beautiful soul as her body gave out and she passed on from this life to the next magical one. And I’ll proudly tell her story again and again. The house in Pacific Beach, CA. The handsome boy she longed to go on the date with “someday”, the Justin Timberlake concert she held on to the memories of, the group of girls she adored from school, her sister Stephanie she cherished so very much, & how she knew Steph was going to have a little girl and that little girl would know her “Aunt Jen” long after she was gone. 

    Then there was Matt. Otherwise known simply as “Brunson”. Just his last name. I spent most of his 49th year with him learning his story and knowing how he’d prefer it to be told. How he wanted his family to know how he truly felt…about them, about death, about being sick. About how the arts organizations he supported were his true passions. How he was so proud of his early work in the field of pancreatic transplant surgery and colorectal surgery, but the Tumors…those were his real bread and butter. We discussed how we would write it all down. A blog maybe…yes, Miranda…maybe you should look into starting a blog. Get this ship sailing. You’d be “good at this stuff”. 

So who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Only you decide. And me? Well I guess I’m just getting good at telling this “GOOD STUFF”. Maybe it is MY bread and butter… and that would just be “the good stuff.”

     

    So I lost my smile. I didn’t lose it like you lose your house cat when it slips out the screen door for the first time & goes on a walk about through the neighborhood [maybe] never to be seen again. But I lost it just the same. I had a great smile. It was symmetrical & bright. My teeth were perfectly straight (thanks to the TWO go-rounds of braces I was fortunate enough to have as a teenager, even though the second go with them began just before my senior year in high school). I never appreciated my smile until it wasn’t mine anymore.      

    One day, I woke up in an OR holding room & had spotty nightmares of a drunk driver hitting me head on & desperately tried to ask my then boyfriend what happened but had the terrifying realization I couldn’t talk because my teeth were impacted in my sinuses. He handed me a small notebook & thus began our back and forth correspondence about the state of my “smile”. I still have the notebook & have looked at it on a few occasions to refresh my memories of that day for one reason or another. 

     Aside from the severe pain I was in when I first came to, & following the initial surgeries, I knew the damage to my face must have been pretty bad because they moved my room 3 times in 24 hours and each time were careful to not put me in a room with a mirror. I finally was moved to one where there was an adjoining bathroom to another hospital room, & although it may sound really creepy & wrong, the patient in the other room was in a coma but she had a mirror in her room. So I went into it & just quietly tried to absorb what my new face looked like. I had broken every bone in my face. I was [not so] quietly sobbing when the realization that my tear ducts were so swollen no tears could come out. The audible noise I made finally made from my sobs drew a nurse to the room who just slowly walked me back to my bed in my adjoining room. 

     It might sound superficial but I remember thinking to myself, “how long will it take before I look like me again?” I didn’t recognize myself & feared no one else I knew would either. My Aunt & my younger cousin came to visit me in the hospital & my cousin had to leave the room because it was so shocking to see my face. She “dug deep” & eventually got to the point where she would be washing my hair for me in the bathtub in between reading her English homework out loud to me in the tub while I soaked. An amazing 14-year-old girl who acted incredibly selfless when I needed that kind of support. 

     Skip ahead to over a dozen surgeries on my face and mouth later & the realization that my smile had packed up and gone for a permanent vacation. Unfortunately this happened right around the dawning of Facebook & selfies. I couldn’t dodge pictures fast enough. Which was SO totally the opposite of me pre-accident. I had never met a camera I didn’t like, & the camera (surprisingly), liked me too. It must have been that symmetrical smile I had. So now, I would duck, dodge, bob & weave through every flash bulb I could see to the dismay of many of my friends & family, sometimes just flat out refusing to be a part of things when pictures were involved. My once “happy, perky” persona was starting to fade & the lights were dimming. It was a sad place to be. 

    Admittedly I wasn’t doing all of this because of a mental perception of how I looked, I was feeling a fair amount of pain & tightness in my face. Almost like someone had shoved some packing peanuts into my cheek & mouth & just left them in there. Then there were the teeth implants. The bridge that got screwed into this newly created jaw & cheek bone. 

     To say I felt a bit like a cross between Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky and Humpty Dumpty after he’s put back together again would not be a gross understatement.

     I remember listening to Kanye West’s “Through The Wire” and thinking, “Wow, this guy has been through EXACTLY what I have.” Now I’m not exactly a fan of Yeezy’s politics, but he sure summed up the feelings of having your face destroyed in a car accident pretty epically in that one song. It was cathartic to listen to and still is for me. He got that one right on the money and I’ll give credit where credit is due. It’s frequently on shuffle on my phone to this day. 

    Fast forward 6 years. I was in Texas with my brother at our grandmother’s house and I looked in the mirror and can remember thinking “I HATE MY SMILE!” It was nothing like I looked like before and I just felt hopeless. When we got home I remember talking to my Mom & saying that if I ever got married, I probably wouldn’t have a photographer because I hated the way I looked in pictures so much. It made her so sad to hear this. She always loved seeing me smile, but what could she say? 

      Then we had a family friend come to our house for dinner. I can remember her telling me how inspirational my story was to her. That after all the different journeys I’d been through I was “still smiling”. But I wasn’t. Not really. I felt like a phony & a fraud. So that night, I remember it “clear as day”, I began the fight to get my smile back. I figured I’d done everything else they said I couldn’t or probably wouldn’t do, & I could do this too. My whole face had feeling. The entire facial nerve had woken up, I had all my muscle control back, I had my vision restored back to 20/20 (it had been severely compromised in the accident & for a short while, I was seeing triple vision, which is nauseating to say the least). But my eyes, my mouth, my nose…everything had essentially healed as they should have despite great odds against it. I was even able to do a fishy face when I tried really hard. So before bed that night, I designed a series of “exercises”. Basically facial stretches I would do, like saying the words “PLEASE” & “CHEESE” really exaggerated & squinting my eyes up as I did them so I could feel the full stretch of the words on my cheeks and mouth. Then after that, I would massage & rub my cheeks & eyes with clean hands and sometimes a little moisturizer (sometimes just clean hands) and alternate circular motions & light percussive tapping on the areas that felt really tight and in need of release. I figured if I did this religiously, at some point, something was “bound to give” (no pun intended). I also began the process of “selfie-gate” where I took selfies nearly every other day to track my progress & see how I looked & how my face was responding.

I can remember the day that I actually felt it “give way” and things shifted. Sept 14th, 2014. I’m not sure what happened that day, if it was a culmination of months of hard work, or just a day that things finally moved like plate tectonics but there was a noticeable shift in both the comfort & appearance of my face & smile. It was also the day I started posting selfies on social media more regularly. One of my best friends from college, Mel simply wrote in comment on one such photo “it’s been a long time since we’ve had a good Miranda photo shoot. Nice to have you back.” And there you had it. I was “back”. Because IT was back. I had reclaimed it. My smile. It was different. I’ll always have a big scar that runs down the middle of my bottom lip from where it was ostensibly almost torn in two, but I look at it as a badge of honor. A reminder of how I fought for a very long time for the right to be happy again and have my face to “surely show it” as the wonderful children’s song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” goes. As difficult as it was, this journey was one of the most important and incredible ones I’ve ever been on. Because to find your happy again, when you nearly lost it once, is a gift we are not all given twice. It definitely gives you a reason to smile…and that right there is just good stuff. 

 [Side note: I will forever be grateful to my incredible Aunt Sandy, Uncle Bill, Cousins Emma & Ethan & dog Herman for their amazing care & compassion after my accident. They are truly what “the good stuff” is all about.]

   

               

    So I’m at a slight disadvantage on the topic of raising strong ladies and kind gentlemen as I’m not ACTUALLY a parent, but as the “honorary auntie” of at least a half dozen small children currently in my life, I take my child rearing duties pretty seriously. It’s got to be scary as heck to bring a kid into this World these days. With outside influences like TV, internet, social media, & the presence of bullying & cyber bullying being so much more of an issue than I can ever remember it being when I was young, you almost feel like you’re starting off with both hands tied behind your back. But just because the struggle is real doesn’t mean we give up. No, we soldier on, move forward, instill values, manners, ideals and hope, pray & maybe do a little rain dance to ensure that our kids don’t turn into little assholes. 

    One of the most import life lesson I learned was from my Second Grade teacher Mrs. Brady. It’s something I take with me to this day. Five words put together to form a very simple mantra: Be Kind, & Work Hard”. That sentiment set me up for life. It’s not a difficult concept.    

     Be kind: treat others as you’d like to be treated. Show some grace. Have empathy when someone is having a bad day. Just be nice to be nice. It’s so easy to get sucked into the vortex of negativity that exists in our day to day lives. Everywhere we look, from the the Television to the magazine covers in the supermarkets, the message of kindness gets lost. We spend so much time tearing each other down and focusing on the things that make us different that sometimes it’s actually easier to just marinate in your own bubble of nasty rather than fight through to the kindhearted place of acceptance. But going for good is always the right thing to do. Kindness is always the better option. It’s always the Winner. Like the saying goes, “you get farther with honey than you do with vinegar”, you get will always go farther by being kind and compassionate than by being a grouchy pain-in-the ass. 

    Now part II of Mrs. Brady’s mantra: Work Hard. Working hard is hard work…it makes sense if you think about it. But really it’s not. You just do your best. Give it your all, 100% of yourself as much as you possibly can. And do in it in every aspect you can. Work hard in your job, but also work hard at home. Be a good spouse, a good friend, a committed plant owner. Just do whatever you do with conviction. Trust me, I get that there are times when you don’t have the energy, stamina or wherewithal to give everything you have, but if you work hard to just try & do your best each day, and give what you know in your heart you can afford to give, you’ll feel really good. And that’s where the kindness comes back around. It’s so much easier to be kind when you know you’ve worked hard. Not everyone does it, but if they did, can you imagine what this World could become? That thought right there is just “the good stuff”. 

    

   Faith can be a heavy and oftentimes loaded subject. I find myself reflecting on this subject quite a bit lately around the holidays, and with so many different faiths being represented in so many beautiful ways around the World. 

     Faith comes in so many different packages, shapes and sizes. It can be the cornerstone of your existence or just a small pebble on your rock wall of life. It can be stuff that wars are fought for, religions are based, households are run and marriages are built. Private and religious schools are still allowed to separately assemble based on their different faiths, & you certainly have to tow a different a line than you did once before when it comes to things like praying in schools. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is up for debate over God’s place in it all. 

    But where does this leave the rest of us? Those of us who don’t run on “blind faith” but don’t go around evangelizing to every Tom, Dick and Harry we meet about “The Second Coming” either? 

     George Michael said in his song “Faith”, “before this river becomes and ocean…I’ll reconsider my foolish notion, because I’ve got to have faith”. 

     Is there a place for us all to exist peacefully and pray or reflect, chant or bow to whom ever it is we choose to put our faith in? I’d like to think so. The answer is not to exclude and divide, but to include, and inform. Learn, teach, love, and remember that in the beginning it all started with two brothers. My World is certainly big enough for it and hopefully yours is too. And that is just “the good stuff.”