Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: hope


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A heavy morning

I haven’t been watching the news. I had a busy week and weekend, including our community band holiday concert just yesterday afternoon. So last night when my husband told me about Brown University’s mass shooting and then we began hearing about the Australian mass shooting I was horrified. And when I turned on the news this morning in order to learn more about those events I was even more sad to see the story about Rob Reiner and his wife Michele.

It’s a lot, isn’t it, so much horrific news in just a few days. It’s hard to pile the sadness of each news story on top of the sadness already carried about the news story before. It seems there is so little good news anymore. Though I know that’s not true.

I remember being a student at the University of Michigan when the Virginia Tech mass shooting happened. And how, ever after that (and I should have felt this way before, after all Virginia Tech was not the first) I would plan where I’d go if a shooter entered a classroom I was in.

Today I listened to a Brown University graduate student describe seeing the gunman enter the lecture hall in which he was studying. How he texted his love to his family, how he held the hand of another student who had been shot. My eyes filmed over with tears. Two students dead, nine injured.

Today I watched the footage of hundreds of people fleeing a beach in Australia, people who had been there celebrating the first day of Hanukkha. The Jewish menorah represents light and hope but it’s hard to process that in a world full of hate. At least fifteen people dead and dozens injured.

Today I heard the news about Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, found stabbed to death in their California home yesterday afternoon. I sort of met them in St. Mark’s Square in Venice back in 2006 when Mrs. Reiner asked me to take a family picture of the four of them. I didn’t know who they were until after when my husband told me. But that’s another story. So many classic lines from movies he directed that we use regularly. “I’ll have what she’s having.” “You can’t handle the truth.” “Have fun storming the castle.” (A favorite of my family.) Such a loss.

Today I learned of the three US service members killed in Syria. I know there are people being killed all over the world. Gaza. Ukraine. Haiti. Somalia. And more, so many more. Still, US service members killed by terrorists leaves a special and deep hurt on our hearts.

It’s hard not to feel such a hopeless, heavy sadness in the midst of so much hate. Maybe it’s always been this way. I suppose it has. But for years now we’ve been seeing it in high definition color and it takes a toll. And not watching the news only means that when you do turn it on you’re overwhelmed by it all.

But also this morning, on the news, I heard a part of the 2025 Heisman Trophy winner, Indiana’s quarterback Fernando Mendoza’s, speach. He addressed his mother, remembering her lessons as he was growing up. ““You taught me that toughness doesn’t need to be loud, it can be quiet and strong.” And that, right there, gave me hope and a smile.

I’m turning the TV off now, on that smile. If you’re feeling heavy, too, I send you a virtual hug. A real one if you’re close by. Let’s process the bad news, and look for the good. It’s the only way to get through these days.


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Another year flies by

Somehow we’re headed toward the new year already. Day after tomorrow will be the first day of 2024, and nothing I can do will stop it.

Time is moving so quickly, it’s all a blur.

It hasn’t been easy, 2023, and part of me is happy enough to see it go. But it’s all moving so fast I wonder, if in a week or so, I’ll be welcoming 2025. 

We all need to spend more time sitting still and listening.

It seems I blink and whole months have evaporated. I’m almost afraid to blink again.

Here’s hoping 2024, an election year in the US, encourages us to work together rather than against each other, helps us find new ways to connect with each other, and highlights the good inside so many of us.

Santa has headed back to the North Pole, now it’s on each of us to find our own joy.

I am hoping. But maybe I should just blink us into 2025.

We can hope.

Happy New Year everyone. I’ll see you in 2024. 


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Deep breath

I woke up this morning feeling so wistful. Even before the sky lightened I was watching the trees silhouettes through the window blinds and remembering other holiday seasons, years and years ago, when as a kid I was excited for some time off school, for big fancy meals with family favorites, for lots of company and grownup conversations.

I haven’t felt that excitement for a very long time. Maybe you haven’t either.

Joyful color waits in the melancholy mist.

Mostly holidays seem like extra work and grownup conversations leave me frustrated and sad. And though I realize I can’t get those childhood days back, I wonder….how do we bring a little bit of joyful excitement to our lives these days? What small things could we do to experience a tiny bit of the wonder of the season?

What suggestions do you have? Let’s share with each other and spread a little hopeful joy around. Tis the season after all.


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Contemplation on this historic day

I’ve been pretty distracted while waiting on election results. Day after day with seemingly little movement.

It’s been a dark and stormy process.

I’ve been trying to stay out of the fray on Facebook and twitter. Once in awhile I’ve weighed in with my opinion that the reason it was taking so long was the inordinate amount of mail in ballots, the record level of turnout for this election, and the care that ballot counters were taking to get it right.

But to be honest my nerves were frayed.

Everyone is feeling a little prickly.

I know that a good portion, maybe even more than 50% of my friends are from the other side of the aisle. I know that today, when the election was finally called, they feel the same gut punch I felt 4 years ago when I woke up to a result I didn’t expect and didn’t like.

Bits of sky show the promise of sun.

I know it will take them a few days, maybe longer, to process the results and decide how they’re going to move forward. I know they are just as scared about the future now as I was four years ago.

Most of us have some inner soul searching to do.

And I know that we will continue to be friends, and I hope, as the physical evidence of which side we’re on, those pesky yard signs, are put away that we can move forward together.

The winds of politics are changing.

The world won’t have changed so very much after January 20th. We’ll still have covid, economic hardships, climate change, world squirmishes, racial tension, job insecurities, and probably some stuff we don’t even know about yet, to deal with. If we work on these together life will be easier.

If you need a hug, I’m available.

Here’s hoping there’s a big table somewhere that everyone is invited to as we begin the work.

Lean toward the light.


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Sharing the light

On this last night the Jewish Hanukkah I wanted to share an image:

I borrowed it (with permission) from Daily Musings at A Day in the Life.

I share it with hope that we can all become more tolerant. I believe that all religions are variations on the same theme and that we are not so very different.

Let this year be the year we begin to objectively listen to each other.


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Red bird

Aunt Vi’s funeral was Tuesday. She looked beautiful, and though I know she was no longer there, I have to think she’d have been pleased by how pretty she was.

Pink was her favorite color.

She was so ready to move on to her next chapter that I could only feel relief for her. Still, it was hard walking past her for the last time at the end of the service. “I’ll see you soon,” I thought, words I’d often used as I left after visiting.

It was hard, too, to leave her at the cemetery, amid the piles of snow scraped from the ground to make room for her pink casket.

It was so cold that day.

She hated to be cold, and at the last nursing home she took advantage of having her own thermostat to keep her room toasty warm. Tropical, I used to tell her. “Are you too warm dear?” she’d ask me. “No, I’m just fine,” I’d tell her as sweat ran down my back.

It felt wrong to leave her in the cold now.

I knew she wasn’t really there, that she was already celebrating with family and friends, someplace filled with light and music and love and completeness. I knew this, but still.

A beautiful resting place for a beautiful lady.

And then, during the luncheon, all of us sitting in the rec room of the apartment building she had lived in for over twenty-five years, someone across the table from me exclaimed “Look! A cardinal!”

Sitting in a tree just outside the large windows sat a lone cardinal, staring intently at the goings on inside.

“You know Vi really loved cardinals,” I remarked. “She called them red birds.” The red bird outside moved to a different tree, still watching the people inside.

Maybe…just maybe.

The next day Katie-girl and I headed to Alabama in an effort to get away from the snow and cold. Midway on the trip we stopped in a tiny little town in Kentucky at a riverside park to stretch our legs. I took a short video of us walking along the river and posted it on Facebook. A nephew noted that he heard a cardinal in all the bird chatter I captured. Hmmmm…

I stopped by the cemetery on my way out of town the day after the funeral. The flowers hadn’t frozen.

And today on our final day of driving, at the last rest stop of the trip, Katie and I were walking along the top of a ravine. The sun was shining and we were enjoying it’s warmth when a cardinal swooped down low to a branch very near us and began to sing.

“OK!” I said, under my breath. “OK! I believe you!” And then the bird flew off into the trees. Mission accomplished.

She said she’d try to send me a sign that she was alright. I’d say she got her message across.

Loud and clear.

Buddy and all her birds are with her now.

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