Don't Worry Be Happy...

“My name is Monica, and I’m a top-notch worrier.”

I used to worry. A lot. Trivial things bothered me. I was proficient at causing more misery. Anxiety propagates anxiety. I even worried that I worried too much! Ulcers might develop. My health could fail. I could have a heart attack, or a stroke. I was afraid that the burden would become too heavy and my health would give too much of itself to pick up the extra load. My finances could deplete to pay the hospital bills. I could lose my house. I could end up homeless… Good Grief!

A comedian once said, "I tried to drown my worries with gin, but my worries are equipped with flotation devices." While not a drinker, I certainly could identify. My worries could run, jump, and pole vault!

"Monica, you need to learn to wait to worry." I said that over a year ago when I was rudely awakened by a jab to my self-esteem and decided to live by those words.

The average worrier is 92% inefficient. Only 8% of what we worry about ever comes true. I decided that I would wait to worry until I actually had a reason to worry something that was happening, not just something that might happen before I worried. Until I know differently, I refuse to worry. And I don't (I’m still working on it). Waiting to worry helps me develop the habit of not worrying and that helps me not be tempted to worry.

I love Bob Marley’s simple lyrics. There is so much wisdom in the lyrics, ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’. “In every life we have some trouble, when you worry you make it double, don't worry, be happy… cos when you worry, your face will frown, and that will bring everybody down, so don't worry, be happy…”

"Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength."

As of this writing, I am proud to say my husband admits there must be something to all this non-worrying. With some resistance, he is implementing the practice of waiting to worry and he is finding out, life is happening a little less stressed. Smile and be well!

Elephants in the room...

One day we took off our rose colored glasses and saw its big ass planted in the middle of the room. I lost track of how long ago that was. Years, I think. Before we knew what happened, the squatter became incredibly comfortable with its surroundings and the perfectly controlled environment we provided, rent-free. We went about our daily routines learning to dodge that thick-skinned pachydermatous as he adapted to its new home. Oh yes, it was an excellent player, one of the best I’ve ever seen.

On a good day, the rascal stood in the corner and we actually saw clearly for a moment or two and enjoyed some great conversations, then the mischievous imp extended its leg causing us to trip again. Most of the time, it stood smack dab in front of us. It blocked our perspective and dared us to make it move. We were anxious and fearful to share our concerns about our resident guest. We ignored it as it gained a great deal of weight since its arrival long ago. We didn’t want to hurt the poor thing’s feelings, so we whispered and talked behind its back. He heard us…we saw it look over its shoulder with tears in those big heartbreaking eyes, but all we did was stew in frustration until our spoiled houseguest went to sleep or we went to bed tired of playing the waiting game.

We gently tiptoed around it and didn’t talk about how we were going to get rid of it. It made us anxious and afraid to say anything to each other while it dominated our space. We’ve discussed our plans to get rid of it with others, hoping they would help us find a solution for our problem. Many of those “others” had their own houseguest and didn’t have a clue or their techniques didn’t work for us. It was controlling, it conditioned us not to talk about it while it’s in the room. Surely, it would lose its temper, erupting the perfect impression we’ve tried to nurture since its arrival.

Company came and went. A few mentioned a glimpse of something trying to hide behind the oversized tapestry chair in the corner. We were experts on denial. No one dared to mention our houseguest, I’m sure they didn’t want to embarrass us when they saw us trying to conceal its robust behind in the hall closet.

We’re in early negotiations with our unwanted stranger and we believe it’s sincerely trying to listen to our terms. We’ve had enough of its unsettling behavior and together, I am pleased to announce we found the nerve to face our obnoxious visitor and are gradually coercing it out the door. One day at a time…

Finding my way...

Have you ever listened to a song and as the day went by you couldn’t get that song out of your head? The song just keeps playing over and over on that turntable in your mind until it wears a grove in the vinyl and you begin to sing something foolish out loud like, “Mamma’s little babies like shortnin’ bread…” or “If I only had a brain…”

Have you ever started to think about something that didn’t make you happy, and the more you thought about it, the worse it seemed? In a matter of minutes, you are consumed with so many miserable thoughts and the situation seems to be getting worse. The more you think about what made you unhappy, the more upset you get.

I’m the first to raise my hand. I am guilty of these things. My life is reflections of many dominate thoughts because it was what I experienced. I am learning to quit complaining, because I seem to find more things to complain about. I don’t want to hear other people complain, because I focus on their problems and I don’t want to attract more situations for me to complain about. By the way, if I start complaining, I wish someone would tell me to shut up too!

I didn’t believe it, when an old friend (she’s not that old) told me she didn’t want to be around people who exhibit negativity. She is attracted to, and only wants to be surrounded by positive people with positive energy. “It’s conducive to creativity,” she said. It made sense to me, but it was hard to put into practice for my own life when some days it was more than an effort to get out of bed.

The technique was simple, but the implementation was not.

The first thing I had to learn is to get rid of all my negative emotions like resentment, jealousy, dissatisfaction and if I continued to feel ungrateful for what I have, I would never bring more into my life. I concentrated on what I have, instead of what I don’t have, then the positive thoughts started to out-weigh my unhappy thoughts. I no longer wanted to be dominated by friends or family members who made me feel inferior. The people, who in their personal opinions, knew what was best for me, and I didn’t have the heart (or guts) to tell them, “leave me alone. It’s my life.”

Secondly, I wanted to be free of my past and the positive thoughts helped me find forgiveness. I quit thinking I had to sacrifice myself to be a good person because those thoughts only led me to feeling more resentment. My priority was making myself feel good and leave behind the feelings of unworthiness and undeserving. I am responsible for my own happiness.

The third thing I focused on was, I want to love life. I want to be surrounded by the people and things that bring purpose to my otherwise, “set in someone else’s ways,” kind of life. This is what I’m working on. I’m stopping to see what I have been missing by running too fast…The swans swimming on a back road pond, the hiking trail that led to a waterfall I passed a hundred times and never took the time to stop, the aromatic cedar mixed with jasmine in the woods after a rain, another ocean view, roads to undetermined destinations, laying in a field of flowers looking at cloud formations, seeing long lost friends…

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
~ Helen Keller

Today's Confession...

Secrets…

Look, who’s in control now? The pain is an indiscriminate mess of hurt that has no future. It is the darkest secret that will eat away at your consciousness until there is nothing left. Frenzied thoughts plague every fiber of your being telling you, you’ll never win…you’re destined to always lose…and life as you knew it no longer matters. These are the beliefs of someone who is contemplating suicide…

When I was fifteen, I almost successfully sliced my wrists. I still have the physical and mental scars to remind me. Something told me not to. Something as real as a human whisper told me to keep on living, find out what you want and what you are about. I did. Rape in any extreme is an embarrassing and shameful experience. I was left hurt, alienated and thoroughly exposed…I kept it to myself…I was afraid people wouldn’t like me if they knew. I refused to let people know me well, because I was afraid of what they’ll think about my dark side.

On my side was my strict religious upbringing. It painted an ugly version of what happens to those who commit suicide…my soul rotting forever in purgatory, the closest place to hell. I was already in hell, what was the difference? I was betrayed and it kept me closed up. My family never knowing my pain pegged me as a moody teen and left me alone. If they suspected, they kept it to themselves, whispering...I kept it to myself because I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to relive it…IT…they all had an answer to why I was such a “problem”.

I searched for truth and understanding when love found me. I never saw it coming. He stood by me and gave me the gift of enormous generosity of spirit and unequivocal love. I longed to be known fully and still be loved. It didn’t come overnight, nor day, weeks, months, but many years later.

My admission of my own inherent vulnerability, my weakness, my tenderness of skin, fragility of heart, and my overwhelming desire to be relived of this burden, to be forgiven of my ultimate aloneness and to forgive my aggressors has finally come. Freedom comes with forgiveness and "butterflies don’t carry rocks"…

And life as we know it… goes on…

Picture Perfect...

When I write, I think in images or snapshots of my characters. I am not the only one who does. A fellow writer and good friend recently told me, “People think I’m crazy when I tell them I see my characters as pictures in my mind.” She was shocked when I told her, "I do too." No, we are not seeing dead people! But how else would do you connect with your characters and make them real, unless you did?

I love taking pictures, I love getting pictures, and I especially love the old sepia and black & white photographs…

Nearly a year ago, my sister gave me a scanner that scans slides and negatives. I started scanning some old photo slides my husband and father-in-law took. Many of them I had forgotten or have never seen. They were negatives of the proofs my husband had taken when he had side photography business in the 80’s. Smiling faces of people, I didn’t recognize, all of them having their pictures taken to commemorate a special event. Among them were graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and sideline action sports shots taken for the local paper. Many of these faces are no longer with us. Some of them are still celebrating wedded bliss, while others are long divorced. Babies grew up with families of their own and the local jocks, if they still stayed in that small town are more than likely, over stressed workaholics trying to survive. I have never thrown away a picture, nor will I these, and I can’t even say I’ve cut someone I disliked out of one. Generally, those pictures end up in the bottom of an old shoebox, forgotten…

Today, we took one of our typical motorcycle outings to the mountains in search of a few new antique shops opposed to those we generally frequent. I roamed through the quaint little shops until something buried in a corner or pushed to the back of an old wardrobe cried out to me. I did not hear any voices beaconing to me today, but I was and am always attracted to old pictures and albums. My husband doesn’t ask me why I bother looking at old albums anymore, instead, he asks, “did you find something interesting?” He knows of my fascination with images and lets me amuse myself. “How sad,” I would say as my fingers touch the old photographs and try to find a connection with the pensive faces looking back at me. Did I ever mention how much it drives me crazy not to know the back-stories on many of the images I find? I love knowing the little details of human life and I am saddened why theses photos of families wearing their finest clothes were tossed. In the past, I have even purchased old photos because I felt a particular attachment to it, letting me be their surrogate family member.

I lingered a while longer looking at these photogenic faces and became conscious how fast the years flew by since women had no amountable rights. I smiled to myself and wondered how these thoughtful faces would react if they saw a middle aged woman wearing boots, a leather jacket and jeans, was staring back at them…

Butterflies don't carry rocks...

“Butterflies don’t carry rocks.”

The sun is shining, it's almost 85 degrees out. I woke up today…Smiling. I wake up smiling on most days when I have more than six hours sleep. I am blessed to know I can share some of my most inner thoughts with people I will never meet and possibly make a small difference in someone else’s life.

Someone wrote to me recently and asked about a quote I posted a while back, “Butterflies don’t carry rocks,” and where the quote was derived from. Well, it’s a long story and a very personal one that dates back over forty years. The saying is an old philosophy in a new time that I try to live by each day soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning. I am still in the healing process from some vicious physical and emotional wounds that have plagued my entire adult life. There are many people and things to consider and as of these writing, I’m not sure I want to stand here in front of everyone in my full nakedness and thoroughly expose myself.

What I will tell at this writing is, I have a couple very special people who have come back into my life through strange circumstances. If you believe in Divine Design, and every thing has it’s time, then you will understand what I’m talking about. These special friends have become my inspiration, and have opened something within me that has been locked away for many years by sharing their own personal diaries. Their stories helped me open the suppressed memories and experiences that I locked away in the furthermost-cobwebbed corner of my mind. When we communicate openly, my senses flow, from my heart and my mind, hence, healing is taking place.

So, in response to the question, here is the answer—Butterflies are beautiful, fascinating creatures. If they carried rocks, they would never be able to fly free.
If we continue to be burdened by our troubles, we will never know our true potential and thus, never soar!

Peace, everyone!

I Will Send No Flowers...

This Mother’s Day I Will Send No Flowers
By Monica Sharpe


I watch the deep furrows of her forehead soften with each stoke of my fingers, I sense she knows I’m here trying to reassure her like the countless times she comforted me when I was sick. I sit here beside Mama in her hospital bed looking at her jaundiced, cancer ravaged body praying to our good Lord God to please release her from all this suffering. “You know Mary, I don’t know if I can wear yellow, it’s never been my favorite color on me, but I have always prided myself at being different, and now I certainly am!” We laughed when Mama made this comment after my sister’s wedding...

Four four days after Anna's wedding, Mom’s test results revealed what I’m sure she already knew, cancer was imminent. What type of cancer it was, would only be determined by more tests. Dr. Rosa almost immediately delivered the dreaded diagnosis after a series of tests; cancer of the pancreas and liver. Surgery was scheduled and dreaded, we knew what the surgery would reveal. What we didn’t know was to what extent the cancer was devouring her, and how long I have left with the woman who had become my best friend...

How undeserving. This gracious woman who raised six, generally unappreciative children, including myself, was finally able to enjoy life when four days after the youngest leaves home she’s burdened with the knowledge she almost certainly has some form of incurable cancer. Three to six months to live was the most time doctors predicted Mama would have left after the first surgery. Time…the greatest healer. Not this time…all the sand was drained from this hourglass...

Dying, she listened to the hospital nurse read out the dinner invitation. Tubes in her arms and tubes in her nose, her body ravaged with pain she still smiled, “Oh, I think I’ll definitively be there.” Even when pain made her momentarily old, you could still glimpse the woman she had been, a great beauty, strong and proud, a woman ahead of her time. She had the endless spirit to help others, ironically, as a child I remember sitting under her sewing table playing with the scraps of fabric she used to make ‘cancer pads’ for hospital patients. What started out as an individual way for her to ease someone’s discomfort ended up with her organizing dozens of women all sewing a array of assorted items for cancer patients and for the veterans hospital in our church’s activity room...

Mother adopted ailing plants the way some people adopt puppies or abandoned kittens, nursing them back to health. She could of gardened in old teacups and did, “Don’t throw away that cracked bowl,” she would say, “It’s just right for starting that philodendron slip, just turn it around and no one will ever see the crack.” On our frequent visits she always made sure there were some freshly baked cookies with a pot of tea. Mama was never too ill or too tired to fix her nails and set her hair. She had courage, the kind of courage I don’t know that I could have demonstrated, “I had a wonderful life, a good husband and six fine children who have their own families now,” she said at the end, “I’m ready to go. There’s nothing terrible about going.”

My self-seeking reasoning that maybe Mama’s entire life was raising children and that life without Dad, now with my sister married, would only be a lonely excursion. After all, her life was her family, but where was her fine children now? Each of my brothers living in different states, my sister, a newlywed with her own hand of dealt problems, all consumed with their everyday issues. Where were her brothers and sisters? Where was her Mother? For all the people she cared for, where was anyone now? This austere hospital room should be overflowed with more than her “Mary Sunshine”...

My unselfish reasoning is that Mama deserved so much more from life. She should finally be able to go on a date, a cruise, spend time with friends and family at her leisure. She should be able to grow old and have the love and attention of her children and grandchildren. Not lying here unconscious with this disease devouring her body and spirit and her daughter singing her the same lullabies she so long ago sang to her as a child...

This year and every year from now on I will send no flowers. My mother died young. I will always remember her gifts to me. My mother was my first and best teacher. She would be gratified to see how well her lessons took. Just yesterday, I made several mistakes on a project at work, I redid it over and over and still the outcome was the same. I put it aside for a while, and begin again. My mother moves in me still. “Is this your best work?” she would ask. Whether the object was an English composition or sewing a simple doll’s dress, she rarely criticized directly. “If you used a ruler, you could keep the columns straight.” Or, fingering a rumpled garment, “The seam is puckered; maybe you could baste the pieces before you use the sewing machine.” The pressure was subtle, a combination of this is how it’s done and I’m sure, you’re not satisfied with that, and so I discovered by degrees, the singular pleasure of work well done. A beautifully finished garment, a perfect German chocolate cake, a beautifully set table, flowers planted in a garden that the colors off set each other, joy in rightness is my mother’s legacy...

What else did she teach me? Practical things, like how to slip a plant and know whether the cutting would root better in water or soil. How to lay out and create a pattern when there isn’t quite enough fabric. Whenever I cut shortening into flour for pie crust or bathe my children, her hand guides me...

My mother had no conscious philosophy of life or child rearing. But her attitude and beliefs were so consistent, so strongly expressed in her actions that I followed as if reproducing the steps of a dance. I learned from my mother that there is always something to do, the ideal being two things at once. When mother waxed the basement floors, she wrapped old towels around her shoes, a little extra footwork kept them shining. She watered plants and emptied wastebaskets on the way to other tasks. If a friend stopped to talk, she reached for her crocheting. Until the last days, I have no image of mother just sitting. Is it any wonder that I, stretched out on the lawn, always find weeds to pull?

I learned from my mother to improvise, make over, and make do. She would create a table out of an old fruit crate, and make small stool out of juice cans. She bought flour in sacks and used to bleach the sacks to make dishtowels so strong that I still have them. When sheets were worn, she made me soft camisoles with lots of lace out of the good spots and new iron board covers out of the old. What was left, she saved for dust cloths. She could extend by years the life of a special garment, by taking in, hemming or adding special added touches. When the garment was beyond extending, she removed everything salvageable, zipper, buttons, bias binding. My mother saved not just because we were hard up, but because waste was detestable to her...

My mother’s most powerful lesson was a distillation of all the others. Life is doing. I still, most every morning make a list of things that have to be done, people to contact, work to complete. Often, as I do so, I have a vision of my mother in old age, visiting me and staying in bed to avoid interfering with my morning routine. When finally when I would appear with her morning coffee, she would ask, “What my dear have you accomplished?”

Beyond all lessons, beyond the model she provided, my mother gave me a parent’s ultimate gift. She made me feel loved and good. She paid attention, she listened, and she remembered what I said. She did not think of me as perfect, but she accepted me without qualification. Today’s books concerning parenting emphasize the importance of telling a child he or she is okay. No doubt, that is helpful, but when I think of how my mother made me feel okay, I realized it was not what she said. It was her pleasure in me, visible as “sunshine”. It was the way she brushed my hair around her fingers to make the ringlets that were my six-year-old pride. It was in her radiant look when I ran in from school and in her touch when I snuggled next to her...

A quarter of a century later, in a hospital room, waving away the food a nurse urged her to eat, she said, “I’m not hungry. I look at my daughter and I am full. She is my sunshine and is what keeps me going.”

I am no one’s daughter now, only a mother now. Carrying her gifts, I think about my mother and my children with love, gratitude and resolve...

This is a picture of my mother and my daughter taken a few months before she passed away. This excerpt was taken from a tribute I wrote for her on Mother's Day, four months after she passed away in January, 1981. She's been gone for thirty years now and she still guides my hand. No matter how old I am, I will always miss her...

"What's Love Got To Do With It?"

It has been said that when a friendship is in trouble you need to change the rhythm of how and when you see each other. I suppose this applies to marriage too. I am still in the process of eliminating the ghosts that have filled my space…

I was cleaning closets and drawers and underneath my nightgowns, I pulled out the stack of cards and letters from my husband and reminisced through each occasions with absolute clarity. I sat on our bed and neatly sorted them by years. I never found it comfortable to receive…not gifts, compliments, sex or even attention. It’s astonishing how quickly we fall into a cycle of withholding. Somewhere along the way, I began to believe that the real problem was not my ability to receive, but the inability to give what I needed. The lack of trust intensified the problem and forced me to hold myself from the one I loved. I learned I was the only person capable of taking care of my happiness, and my life…and without each other giving and taking, our love would not have survived.

While I was tripping down memory lane, I heard Tina Turner's scratchy wail on the radio, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” and thought, what does love have to do with it? What does love have to do with a long-term marriage? I couldn’t come up with an immediate answer, but I do remember some old chemistry that made us gel, and a whole lot of hopeful projections about who we thought each other was to the other. Here we are today, rapidly approaching thirty-nine years together, still separating our differences making something new everyday out of the old stuff.

We were once those golden people but we are not any longer…not better nor worse, only different. Certain experiences leave a mark on you. You look back and think, I’ll never be that way again. Like everyone before us and around us we are, have been, and are being tempered by life. These pictures and mementos I hold dear to my heart feel dreamlike, as if the experiences didn’t happen to me, yet it was my life and I did live it.

“Never, never again,” says the poet Kathleen Raine. “This moment, never, those slow ripples across smooth water, Never again these clouds white and gray…The sun that rose from the sea this morning will never return, for the broadcast light that brightens the leaves and glances on water will travel tonight on its long journey, out of the universe, never this sun, this world, and never again this watcher.”