Your Smile Melts My Heart

Pretty Girl

Choose Your Words Wisely

                                         Choose your words wisely

Everyone you meet…

…is afraid of something,

…loves something,

…and has lost something.

HOW TO BE HAPPY

“Happiness is choosing thoughts that make you feel good.” – Louise Hay

Can it really be this simple?

Louise Hay talks with Dan Gilbert about how we can control our emotions by what we choose to think. (04:27)

Watch We are what we choose to think on PBS. See more from This Emotional Life.

 

This is Irony

I remember as a child waking up at three in the morning to the sound of an old cast iron Singer model sewing machine.  Short rat-tat-tat-tat-tat machine gun like bursts of sound as threaded needle pierced through fabric, guided ever so delicately by the long bony fingers of my mother’s hands.  That sound became so familiar to me as a child, so ingrained in me, that I would often hardly notice the sound through out my day. It became background noise to me as I went about my day playing or watching television, like elevator music or the sound traffic on a Monday morning commute to work.

My father met my mom in Mexico, married her, and him being a U.S. citizen brought her to the States as his wife.  Eventually I was born, and a short time later my sister.  My father left my mom soon after my sister’s birth and I never saw him again.  She had the choice at that time to go back to Mexico, be with her family, and raise my sister and me as Mexicans, but decided to stay in the U.S. and give her children the best opportunity to have a good life.

My mom was then left to raise two children, my sister and me, by herself, in a foreign country, with minimal knowledge of English, only an eight grade education, and no marketable skills to speak of.  She borrowed some money, bought an old sewing machine and began to assemble pieces of fabric from home for a company that made shirts and other clothing.  She was paid 3 cents per piece.

For the next two decades or so, my mom became a slave to that machine.  It was a rare moment that I didn’t hear that machine and see my mom hunched over sitting in front of that thing, a naked light bulb glaring over her head, straining her bifocal-led eyes to make sure the tiny needle threaded two pieces of cloth exactly to company specifications.

I hated that machine, and I hated my father for leaving my mom.  I promised myself at a very early age that if I ever was to have children of my own, I would be best father in the world….

Feliz dia de los padres Mama!

I Guess I’m Not the Fighting Kind…

Inwavesitcomessuddenly

I’mcompletelyenvelopedevenbeforeIrealize

strugglingtoholdmyselfaboveitallweight

balancedonthetipsofmytoesneckstretched

strainedfacetiltedupnosejustabovetheline

I breathe

then     just as it comes

 it leaves      me           spent

wondering

when it will come again             

“…I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
To be fighting
Guess I’m not the fighting kind
Wouldn’t mind it
If you were by my side…”

One Year

I love you.

I never could have imagined 19 years ago that things would turn out as they have.  If I could go back, knowing what I know now, I would do things very differently…but I can’t…

What disheartens me the most is the pain and distress you must have felt  throughout your young life.  How alone you must have felt with a father that abandoned you, a religion that isolated you, a mother that left you, a step-father that wasn’t there, a narcissistic extended family that hardly bothered, and a brother and sister that looked nothing like you.  How alone you must have felt even when surrounded by others.  Everyone that should have mattered failed you.  I recognize and I will always know my part in your demise.   You were robbed of the life you should have lived by those that should have been there for you, starting with me.  You had no one by your side to help you understand the world and to give you the proper tools to navigate through life.  I’m saddened to think that you felt as if nobody cared about you, and I’m ashamed to recognize that in a sense nobody, including myself, cared enough.

So it’s not surprising to me that you clung to anyone that gave you the attention you desperately craved, even if it meant being kept in the basement by the person that “loved” you.  It’s not surprising that you tried different ways to relieve your despair…including drugs.  It seems that nothing else was working for you at the time.

Those that lose children to a drug overdose are different from other parents that lose a child.  Most parents that lose children have little if anything to do with their children’s death.  Cancer is cancer.  Accidents happen.  But drug addiction and death by overdose is different isn’t it?  It involves parent participation, or lack thereof.

You are the victim in this scenario…not me or anyone else.  If anything, we are the perpetrators.  True, I can be seen as a father that lost a daughter to prescription drugs, and on the surface that’s what I am.  But if I take a deep look beyond the surface of it all, I can see my contribution. Before I let any emotion arise in me that may make me feel as a victim, I consciously remind myself of my role in your despair and in your death.  I think about how I fell short of being a father to you, and how my absence affected your well being.  I have failed.  In this way, before I allow myself the privilege of any other emotion beside love, I feel shame…

You will always be in my heart.

I love you forever.

Mikhaila and Friends – YouTube

Back to the Future

“It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.”  –Vincent Van Gogh

What would you tell yourself if you had an opportunity to go back in time and speak to a younger you?

Although we may not be able to go back in time, we are able to communicate with our future selves.

What do you want to tell your future self?

Follow the “ohlife” link below to tell your future self something…

Which Way is She Turning?

Is she turning clockwise? Or is she turning counter-clockwise?  Some of us are able to see her both ways.  Most of us see her only one way…

What way is she turning?

It’s interesting how two of us can see the same thing in completely different ways.  Once we establish our view, it’s difficult for most of us to consider our neighbor’s perspective, especially if it contradicts our own.  There is truth in the adage that says, “first impressions are lasting impressions.”

Difficult, yes….Impossible, no.  See if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain’s current.  14% of the US population can see her move both ways.

This was devised at Yale University for a 5 year study on the human brain and its functions.