What is the difference?

My friend gave me a necklace that states on one side “Love the life you Live” and on the other side it says “Live the Life You Love”. It is a beautiful necklace, one of these pieces that you can wear with anything from a t-shirt to a go out on the town with your best girlfriends in your sexy stilettos type outfits. A piece that you are so proud to wear because your best newest girlfriend gave it to you. I left for a six day trip to Mexico with nine other girlfriends all the while the thought of this necklace kept coming to me as I was cocktailing it up with the people that I love, waiting to go home to the husband that I love, and looking forward to calling my family that I love, this necklace kept coming into my mind.

Over the last six, seven, maybe even eight years that it has taken me to find this place in my life, I am thinking about how it came to be this, how did I find a life that I love? How did I come to love the life I had, and when did they both meet?

So the thoughts about this keep coming. When did they come together, I try and try, but I cannot find exactly when it happened. Maybe it was when I chose not to be unhappy anymore, maybe it was when I started living day to day, not month to month anymore, or year to year, or mainly not living in the past anymore.

Was it when I started living like I was important or was it when I stopped taking myself so seriously?

Love the Life you Live?

To me this is a sexy way to say count your blessings. Look at all the love in your life and wrap your heart around each part of it and never forget what this universe has already given you. No matter how shitty your life is there is something good in this life and if there is nothing in sight, look harder, look broader, and if it still lost turn around, go the other way. Look up to see the sun, down to see the flowers, east to see the sun rise, and west to see the sunset, there is beauty for all of us, it is the choice to see it. You have that choice and I believe that is “Love the Life you Live” it is the choice to see the beauty.

Live the Life You Love?

Unlike the choice to see the beauty, I believe that this is choice, yes, just more detailed. This is about careful subtraction and addition and in that order. Living the life you love means taking away the things that make you unhappy, even if it means the removal of people, expensive things, or a not so dreamy job. Subtracting unhappiness was hard for me, I thought that losing something could never be better than having it, completely untrue. I removed myself from a marriage that was not happy, I lived in the perfect no frills flat, and I quit my job for a less stressful one, I continuously get rid of friends that are not positive, and I must say that there has been more gained from subtraction than there has been from addition. Although, once I had all of these distractions out of my life, it was much easier to add the things and people that count. I realized that as I lived without the things I did not want, it was easier to see the things that I loved and wanted around me, especially with people. So I guess making the choice to “Live the Life You Love” means to make choices that let you be happy, you get rid of the crap in your life, and overall you choose happiness. For instance I realized that having a garbage disposal is important to me, so is having friends that care what is going on with my life, or having respect at work, of having a husband that thinks that I am interesting, who I feel the same about, these are the things I learned by taking all the distraction away, cleaning the slate, and starting with a fresh canvas….. I am Living the life I love…

I have been grateful for this necklace and I choose to wear it often…..

My Heart is With You on Your Journey,

Lizzy

I have written about breaking up, I have written about being rich over right, I have even written about being your best self no matter what people are trying to do to you, you know, taking the high road. I feel like I need to write further on these subjects but maybe in a harsher way.

Why when all is said and done, when you want out, when the fat lady has sang and sang to the point that she has lost her voice do we allow ourselves to react to some emotional blow from someone that we cannot stand any longer? Why fight? Why?

Stop the fighting. First and foremost get the whole “eye for an eye” concept out of your mind. To quote a great “An eye for an eye make the whole world blind”- Gandhi. That being said, this includes you. Payback is a bitch and no one ever wins, but if you choose to payback someone let it be at least something that benefits you remotely. Try this… Make your life happier than the other persons by learning to react positively to their negative behaviors. THIS IS NOT EASY. Completely doable when given the attention being positive deserves, but not easy.

I have a few friends that are going through break-ups, some reflect the famous “War of the Roses” movie that reminds us all that marriage can be very scary when not handled with maturity, or more importantly, getting out of the marriage with some grace and with self respect, and some are less passionate, but the thing I notice about these break-ups are the same, someone wants out.

Lately, maybe because of my age now, there are children involved in these relationships or break-ups, what ever you want to call them. Me, coming from a “broken home” (thankful for it) has some insight for you parents out there. 1) Children are better off in two happy homes rather than one stressful unloving home. Please believe that children may not know how to drive, they may not know how to balance their check books yet (I really can’t do that either), and they may not know how to do all the things that “adults” do, but they know at birth what happy feels like, and you are doing an injustice to a child’s soul by making them feel uneasy, unhappy, and like their parents hate each other. For what? So they can see these unhappy people 24 hours a day. I’ll say it, since they don’t know how yet “No thanks Mommy and Daddy, if your sticking around for the kiddies, admit right now that it is for your own selfish reasons, not for them”. 2) I do not care if you caught your husband or wife sleeping with your best friend on your grandmothers embroidered linens that you got from her estate that she especially willed to you because you were her favorite out of all the grandchildren, this is no reason for you ever to put down your ex (or soon to be) in front of your children. My mother refused to talk about my father in front of me as a child, my dad however ran my mother down, guess whose side I was on? Don’t make your children defend their mother or their father, hell, it is your fault that they have them as a parent to begin with, not theirs. What you are truly saying in  their eyes is that the only reason that you are stuck talking to this monster is because of them. It is immature and you look like the asshole. 3) No matter what you both have a job to do and I know this is going to be hard to swallow, it has nothing to do with your happiness, your job is to be good parents to this little person that you chose to bring to the world, if that is not a valid reason to put down the guns, I cannot imagine what is. The Roses had one thing over you guys, their children were off on their own. If you have these kids, you have a common purpose, it is to be good parents, this does not mean you have to be good parents that reside in the same home. Period.

Divorce can be expensive, exhausting, and ego smashing, and that is just the surface, it can be heart breaking and failure gathering, it can make you think of doing things that just a few years ago you couldn’t imagine yourself doing, but the one thing (unless you are a Rose or a Peterson) it won’t do is kill you. You will live on, the sooner that you can look to the future the better, start living today, don’t wait until it is over, hell you never know what is going to happen tomorrow. Laugh a little, laugh at the fact that you failed at your marriage, you are not the first, you are not the last, but you did it, at least made the choice to marry the wrong one, or you can look at it the way I do, a learning experience, a good learning experience. Your children may not be thrilled at the fact that Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to sleep in the same bed, but sometimes you know what is best, and happiness is the only thing that we seek that separates us from the animals. You do not want to set the standard for your children that they stay in something that they are miserable in. Do you? If you answer yes to that, it is more than this “blog” that you need, like counseling. Which is the last thing I will say… Get some counseling, or at least have a weekly coffee with someone that has been through this, talk about it, a lot, and then talk about it some more. You will find that once you start talking, you start to feel better.

My Heart is With You on Your Journey,

Lizzy

Julie/ Julia Project

I have been reading this book this week, quite different than I expected it to be. It is about a lost 29 year woman (who has not gone through that if they have found their 29th year, Geez) who does not know whether or not to have kids, follow a career, or what the hell she is doing in her life. I have definitely been there, as have all my friends. It was particularly enticing to me since I have a blogging project of my own here, one I have ignored for sometime. Julie in the book decides she will be making every recipe out of Julia Childs, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Then she will blog about her experiences with it. While this experiment is interesting in its failures and successes, I found that her self development was where this book really shined. Maybe we all should take on something like this to get to know ourselves. Why not? What are we doing? What have we done that makes no sense to anyone, but ourselves?

I am searching for a project now…. I will get back to you when I find it…..

Until then, I recommend this book. It is certainly not the most spell binding book I have ever read, but the message is, get to know who you are by taking on something that you will have as many failures as successes, and maybe, just maybe, be a better human for it.

My heart is with you on your journey,

Lizzy