Are you an Adventurer? Engage in the small ways and build to bigger ways you can nurture yourself. You’ll be amazed what you discover.

Prescott Girls - can you tell we're sisters?

July is Family Reunion month, but we don’t have to wait for a special occasion to celebrate those cherished memories. Family photos are everywhere in my house. Boxes of prints and hundreds of slides reside in my drawers and closets. Now that I’ve graduated to digital, computer files populate my hard drive. Polished and posed for special events  – graduations, weddings, and baptisms family and friends return my gaze in my personal gallery along with lop sided grins and bunny ears at family gatherings. Candid moments and orchestrated tableaus tell the stories of my life. How wonderful to be able to revisit what was then with the perspective of who we are now. Happy travels…

Let Freedom Ring

July is all about freedom. From the obvious celebrating our country’s independence with 4^th of July festivities to the obscure Social Wellness observance and including the borderline ridiculous National Drive-Thru Day. It’s all about recognizing the beauty of our glorious options and opportunities to change. The freedom to stop and stick our toes in a stream, river, ocean, or under a sprinkler attached to the garden hose. The freedom to smile at our reflection in the mirror (which is all about Social Wellness) and to know we have the gumption to follow our dreams. The freedom to choose our Authentic Selves.

July comes smack dab in the middle of everything. The middle of the year and the middle of the summer. We’re at a tipping point for all sorts of options. Is it time to re-evaluate or goals? On the other hand, is it time to celebrate being alive and seize the opportunity to play when it presents itself.  

When the calendar page turns to July for children, if they bother to notice the calendar at all, it may mean summer camp, trips to the beach/lake/mountains, or days filled with sweet unstructured hours. As adults, July may mean mid-year reviews/quarterly reports to be completed before a long anticipated family vacation. The freedom to be a family united in their quest to navigate a new hiking trail and tell the best ghost story around the campfire.

Our family vacations were more like Sunday afternoon outings because farmers with animals always have morning and evening chores. We were fortunate enough to have a boat and live in the Midwest where there is lots of water for the boat. My childhood summer memories are full of fried chicken picnics, feeling the mud squishing between my toes, splashing in the shallow water, fighting with my brothers about whose turn it was with the inner tube, feeling the wind in my hair when Daddy “opened her up” and drove the boat fast when we went around the lake. I also remember the smell of Noxzema and suffering with red arms, backs, and legs after many of those outings.

If your July plans keep you close to home, there’s still plenty of creative ways you can claim the freedom to choose to be your Authentic Self. Take a tall glass of your favorite ice-cold summer drink and a blanket out to the back yard. Lie down and do some serious cloud watching. Your whole body is allowed the freedom to down shift and relax as you observe the white wisps consolidate into dogs, bunnies, flowers, faces, even dinosaurs. Now that you’re in the back yard, are you thinking about the garden you meant to plant? You can still go to the garden center and pick up all the elements necessary to plant a beautiful flowerpot in no time at all! Want to get away from it all for an afternoon? Escape into a movie with lavish landscapes and gorgeous costumes, or visit an exotic art exhibit. Try your hand at pottery painting at a do-it-yourself pottery shop. Discover the soaring experience of flying with an introductory flying lesson. Take a bike ride and feel like you are 10 years old again. Watch the sun go down and wait for the fireflies to come out. Pick up a brand new notebook, some magic markers, or colored pencils, find a shady spot and write about your favorite summer vacation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a vacation you’ve already experienced, or one you plan to someday. Write about it right now. Relive the experience, or anticipate the adventure. Let freedom ring…

Writing a journal entry about a specific accomplishment or milestone is a major self-esteem booster. I’ll share one that has been seven years in the making. I have volunteered for several years for The San Francisco Writers Conference (www.SFWriters.org), a prestigious 3-day conference and the brainchild of legendary agents Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen. It features blockbuster keynote speakers, award winning workshop presenters, and attendees in the hundreds from all over the world. The first year my comfort level only allowed me to babysit the purses in the Volunteer lounge. This year, I was invited to chair the “Book Doctor Panel.”

Mary counseling a writer at SFWC

This is a conference-long marathon event where attendees spend five minutes one-on-one with Independent Editors. I am no longer content to relegate myself to the shadows. As the Book Doctor Coordinator, I claimed my position as a professional sharing my expertise with eager attendees, and as a peer with other writers awash in the wealth of knowledge shared at the conference.

Successful writers confident in their literary skills intimidate me. Many speakers and workshop presenters over the weekend impressed me. I made up my mind to show up in my life and go after my dreams rather than stay in safe situations. This year, instead of  wishing I were brave enough to be like the speakers and presenters, I sat up front, engaged with them during their talks, gave them positive feedback, and asked for advice. Do you know what they did? They gave me advice and thanked me for showing up!

Let’s all keep showing up!

Ross and Mary in 1972

But look at us now! We’ve survived so much. Losing two jobs because the companies folded resulted in two major moves. Thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I think we’ve thrived because of it. We’ve travelled and seen so much:  Hawaii, London, Paris, Rome, Venice, and Florence. We’ve been blessed to live in three beautiful parts of the world:  Minnesota, Colorado and now California. We’ve left a little piece of our hearts in each of them. Creating life anew and starting over has been challenging and exhiliarating.  Comparing, contrasting and constructing a new routine made our little family unit more appreciative of the little things that were familiar as well as delighting in new discoveries.

We went out to dinner and had a good time, but what I savored more than the wonderful meal was spending time with my life’s companion talking about our time together. Laughing about how it was the hottest June they’d had in Rome for over a decade the summer we visited. Or the time the cab driver in Paris pushed the car to get it started while we sat bewildered in the back seat not understanding what was going on. More recent trips were up and down the 5 visiting our daughter in college. I think we just barely spent equal amounts of time with her as we did on the road! Thankfully, we ‘ve had each other for those long trips and for all the trips in our foreseeable future.

Happy Anniversary for everyone celebrating milestones. Savor the moment now!

Allen, Gale and Mary Fall 1960

We attended a small parochial school run by Franciscan Nuns whose brown habits covered every inch of their body, except for their hands and faces. We only saw their long slender fingers and faces framed in starched white wimples. No matter what the Midwestern weather, they were always calm and collected under all that wool fabric. Classrooms and teacher were at a premium, so I spent five out of my eight years at Sacred Heart Elementary School in the same classroom with my older brother. Back then school supplies didn’t get more high tech than a mechanical pencil. Kids today may be required to do not only research on a computer, but also turn in a document in Microsoft Word format and hot off the printer. And with all the texting and e-mails, our younger generation feels they don’t have to learn spelling or grammar. As long as the message is received and understood, they are satisfied. Well, I am not. That’s not an adequate method of communication and it’s up to us as adults to set a better example.

I love language. I love how words comfort and soothe, excite and ignite, invite and entice. Children’s literacy appears to be a priority, but when Story Hour consists of popping a DVD into the computer and sitting the child down in front of the monitor I feel sad for both the child and adult involved. I grew up in a little farming town, but I knew the world through books and reading. And I learned to love writing. Writing in my journal has been a safe place to vent, a confidant, and where I work out my problems. Writing in my journal helped me to cope with challenges as catastrophic as being diagnosed with breast cancer, to the annoyance of developing an allergy to fragrance at the advanced age of 50.

“Wow!” a young boy in a green t-shirt and baggy shorts commented on all the notebooks in my cart. “How many kids do you have?”

“Actually,” I smiled as his mom looked up from the pile of red notebooks in her hand, “these notebooks are for ladies like your mom. I like to have lots of them on hand to offer to the ladies who come to my Creativity and Simple Abundance Close-to-Home workshops. They use them for class notes, or as a place to record their thoughts, hopes and dreams. I like to use them as journals and sometimes I decorate the covers with collages, colorful papers, fabric or even paint.”

“Oh, cool,” said the soon-to-be 3rd grader.

“Interesting,” said the woman who recognized she was being acknowledged as her own person rather than a busy wife and mother of 4 children less than 10 years-of-age.

“Way cool,” I said as we finished selecting our notebooks and headed for the check-out.

While I had no illusions about making anything so grand (Miss Lowe gave me a D in the sewing section of Home Economics class), I knew that one day I’d make something beautiful too. And I have. I’ve made lots of beautiful somethings. I’ve sewn everything from curtains to costumes and lots of clothing in between.

Now when folks are talking about ways to economize, sewing has become popular again. I think it is inspiring and exhilarating to be able to express yourself with a needle and thread. Starting simple and small with a pillow or curtain is a great beginning. Who knows, maybe I’ll see something of yours at the fair.