Acceptance

Home For the Holidays

/ Luanne Shernisky / 2 Comments

 

FullSizeRender
At Christmas, all roads lead home. ~ Marjorie Holmes

 

As I finish up the Christmas to-do list today, I’m reminded of the holidays of yesteryear and the people who were such an integral part of those celebrations. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors, many of whom are gone now. If we live long enough, we begin to lose them one by one.

I was saddened to hear of two families back home in Pennsylvania that lost a family member this past week. One, my former hairdresser, was 52 years old. The other young woman, a close friend of my son, was 32 and fought a tough battle with breast cancer. She leaves a husband and young son. The Christmases of both these families will forever be overshadowed with the devastating loss of loved ones gone too soon.

I continue to make the adjustment to moving 1,000 miles from home and family is on my mind. I talked about this in detail in A New Kind of December. While I’m grateful to be spending Christmas with my oldest son, his wife, and my daughter, I’m missing the rest of the family back home. This is the first Christmas without my dad, who passed away last March. The holidays can be difficult for many people for a variety of reasons. Losing people is at the top of that list. 

While all of these changes have me feeling somewhat blue, I’m grateful for:

  • my family, even if I can’t be with ALL of them for the holiday
  • that everyone is healthy and able to fully enjoy this time of celebration
  • that we have the basic necessities to live a decent life
  • that we have the opportunity to grow and change, when change is necessary.

That’s when it occurred to me: home isn’t so much a place as it is a spiritual connection to our past, memories, and the people who are/were a part of that. We can physically move far away from the place we were born, but the family history and connections always go with us. 

Tonight we’ll call home and everyone will have a chance to chat with the added addition of Facetime on the iPhone and Skype on the computer. I still remember Bell Telephone’s 1964 long distance slogan, “It’s the next best thing to being there.” Times sure have changed, but like all good ideas, they remain relevant throughout the years.

Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Mine Your Own Material

/ Luanne Shernisky / 7 Comments

The things we leave behind; there are so many. Some we leave happily by choice and others because we simply have to.

In 2006 I left the home that I raised my children in. I had remained in an abusive marriage far too long, but experienced mixed emotions about leaving. On one hand, I was desperate to get away from an alcoholic husband. On the other, I was leaving 18 years worth of memories behind. A lot of those memories were awful, but the ones of my kids growing up were priceless and far outnumbered the bad ones.

I knew for a long time that day would come, but nothing prepares you for the flood of emotions. Despite believing that it was the only healthy option left, I continued to second guess myself. I was anxious to make a fresh start, but terrified of the unknown. I knew that while familiar things can seem comforting, they can still be very bad choices.

There were so many things I wanted to take, but couldn’t. The roll top desk that we bought early in the marriage, the bookcase from my mother-in-law that housed my favorite stories, and the lighted Christmas village from my goddaughter. These were only a few items of a very long list.

Then there was the house itself. We worked long hours to get it ready and I invested my heart in preparing a nice home for my kids. My boys were one and three years old and my daughter wasn’t born yet. The marriage was already in trouble and I foolishly believed a new house would provide a new start.  Soon after moving in I realized this was pure fantasy.

After my departure, I managed to live without the house and all the things in it. I went on to make a new home that I grew to love, because it was truly mine and I found real peace there. However, it wasn’t until years later that I understood the connection to all the things I left behind.

Every item, large and small, had a memory attached to it.

They reminded me of a person, a place, or a recollection that had value for me. All these things together represented my past; my history.

Despite the bitter circumstances of my exit, I realized something important: we take our memories with us. Even though they’re often attached to inanimate objects, the invisible string that connects them is…well…invisible. It only exists in our minds, just like the memory. Although I no longer had these things in my possession, I could still feel the positive emotions they embody.

Now, when I drive past my old house, I don’t feel the intense sadness and loss that I did in the beginning. It’s just another home in that particular neighborhood. This change was possible because I took the happy memories with me and left the rest behind.

 

 

Decisions

/ Luanne Shernisky / 4 Comments

Well here goes nothing. Or something. We’ll see…

Starting a blog is the something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but kept putting off. I had all the right reasons:  I worked full-time, attended college part-time, and was helping with the care of my father, whose dementia was growing worse. Combine that with shopping, cooking, banking, laundry, apartment cleaning, homework, helping my mother with things  she used to depend on my father for, and I stayed pretty darn busy! What precious little time and energy leftover was spent with my adult children and significant other (when they were available), trying to relax and enjoy life.

This past year I graduated and my dad went into a nursing home (both of which provides plenty of material to blog about.) It also freed up time in my evenings and weekends. I promised myself the blog would be on my New Year’s resolutions list for 2015.

So, here I am. A fifty-something Baby Boomer with a newly minted Public Relations degree…and hot flashes. I’m in a transition period and menopause, all at once. Talk about fun! I’ve worked at the same company for 17 years and because there’s no room for advancement, it’s time for a career change. I want to find a job that fulfills me, while utilizing the education I’ll spend the rest of my life paying off.

I’m still trying to accept the recent changes that have occurred: the fact that my dad will never hang curtain rods for me again, among other things. My oldest son and daughter-in-law moved to Florida 18 months ago. They are doing very well, just bought a house, but I miss them a lot. My middle child (another son) is single, lives and works here in our hometown and is super busy. I don’t see enough of him and have concluded that it’s easier to get an audience with the Pope. My youngest, a daughter, is spending the upcoming spring semester in Washington D.C. completing an internship, and will graduate in May. She is a talented writer, a total introvert, and probably the only girl her age who wants to live with her mother forever. She thinks we should move to Florida to be near her brother and sister-in-law, who she feels will be starting a family soon.

“You will be near your grandchildren and we can be like Dorothy and Sophia on the Golden Girls,” she quips, referring to the popular late 80’s TV sitcom, featuring the mother-daughter duo played by Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty.

Decisions

Honestly, though….I’m in a tough place right now with some big decisions looming. What’s my next move?

I despise the western Pennsylvania weather and have wanted to move to a warmer climate for most of my adult life. Stringing Christmas lights in palm trees is my fantasy; living by the ocean my dream. The job market here isn’t promising either. At some point my mom will need assisted living and my brother and sister live out of town. The situation with my SO (significant other) is complicated. He’s a wonderful person and very good to me, but he has a lot of his own issues. Looking ahead I don’t see much outside of a dating relationship. If I had a great job, loved the climate, had more financial and personal security and living space, then I’d be content to stay (or would I?)

But I’m not content and once my daughter graduates in May, I will no longer be location bound. Her graduation has been my deadline for making the decision.

So, how does one decide whether to stay or go? How do you prioritize who and what matters most in a descending list? How can I make the right decision based on what I want when that also means sacrifices?

And what about fear? Yeah, I’m scared of the changes, but fear kept me stuck in a bad marriage for too many years. I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t ever want to forgo a truly meaningful life simply because change is scary.

Any suggestions?