Happy Day After Thanksgiving November 23, 2007

On the day after thanksgiving what do you do?  Do you run out with the masses of crazy people shopping the hyped up sales but actually spending more time in line than actually purchasing?  Do you simply sit at home waiting for the appropriate time to be able to eat the leftovers?  Or do you finish cleaning up the turkey decorations and start putting up the December holiday ones?

This day after Thanksgiving, I did none of those.  It didn’t help that I was battling a cold and was losing.  But I never do the shopping thing because I know that they same sales they are offering today will be there next week.  However, I do admire others that go out there and do battle to shop.  I know some families have that as a ritual and it truly is a testament to this great nation that the thing we do after giving thanks is go out and buy more stuff.  However, after a day of being with family and giving thanks you might need a little shopping therapy.  

It seems to me that the holidays are all just blending into themselves.  We used to have at least a month before we started seeing the decorations for the next holiday, but not any more.  It almost feels like Thanksgiving is going to get pushed out of being a holiday altogether with the hurry of the advertisers to get Christmas up on the boards.  I am sure most of us would agree that the commercialism of the holidays has become extreme.  I mean I am so sick of carols and holiday ads that I could throw up once December 24th actually rolls around.  It’s sad because I really used to love the Christmas holidays.  The smells, traditions, lights, cold weather, wrapping presents used to fire me up for the holiday and its accoutrement.  Now I find myself feeling a bit bah humbug, why is that?

It appears to me that getting older has something to do with that.  The magic of the holidays seems to dim as we grow older.  We recapture it a bit when we have children, but once they too start to age, the bliss of holidays seems to grow tired and just another thing we have to do.  So how do we recapture the joy that the holidays hold?  

This year we are going away for Christmas.  A change of scenery always seems to help with the tedium of the known.  We’re going to enjoy snow this holiday and I am looking forward to throwing some snowballs.  Living where snow is not the norm, I thought that having something new would be a great way to rekindle some spark of the holidays.  I picture snow blowing outdoors as we stomp in from making a snowman only to find hot cocoa and marshmallows waiting for me.  It sounds very picturesque, doesn’t it?  Will it end up like that?  Who knows, what I do know is that even if I am older and the magic of childhood doesn’t live on, the magic of happiness does.  Therefore, how do you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year?  By being happy.

Tall order you might say.  True, it isn’t always easy to be happy about where you are in your life.  It isn’t even easy to be happy about who is sharing your holidays with you.  But what you can do is find the moments.  When you look at a holiday in a lump sum then of course it seems daunting to make the whole time joyous and festive.  But if you look to just the small moments of feeling that snow crunch in your hand.  Or actually tasting the hot cocoa as it touches your lips, then you can find the joy of the holiday season.  As usual in our lives, we make the holidays like another chore we have to do.  You know a checklist of what we need to do.  Make extra money -check.  Get presents – check.  Wrap presents – check.  Make cookies – check.  Spend time with family – check.  Smile and be joyous – check.  See the Nutcracker for the 15th time – check.  

So this holiday season, starting with today the day after Thanksgiving, I am going to look for the small moments and not begin this holiday season with the big picture spoiling the joy.  It’s the day after Thanksgiving, that means you have a day to do what you want…so what will it be for you?  Because the idea of the holidays is love, joy, and giving.  That doesn’t mean just to others, but to yourself as well.  Make sure you put your own holiday needs on your shopping list and that you actually make that present to yourself.  It’s important for us to feel that joy comes to us in ways we gift ourselves, that way we are not let down if we only get an ugly sweater with Santa on it for a present this year.  We can smile and know that the gift that we gave ourselves made up for that. 

Gift yourself….and start today.  Because we all know that there is no time to give to you than the present!

When Fairy Godmother’s Blog! November 19, 2007

What do you get when a Fairy Godmother blogs?  Recipes for magic dust?  A way to keep your wand shiny?

Well, this Fairy Godmother is going to tell you practical pointers for being a Fairy Godmother in the world today.  It isn’t always easy.  Often times people laugh at the wings you have fluttering behind you.  They most assuredly question whether you are sane or not.  And always they think, well that’s all well and good for her but I live in the real world.

Several years ago I found myself faced with many cataclysmic events occurring in my life.  Loss in the form of death, desertion, callusness, and deception left me in a world that I didn’t create.  The landscape of my world was where everyone else decided who I should be, what I should wear, what I should eat, and how I should act.  I was a full grown marrionette with lots of strings attached to me.  When my mom died of cancer when she was 54, I said, “Enough is enough.”  My mom was young and I knew that if I continued along the way I had been for the past few years, I would end up in the same position she had.   It was time for change.

It’s funny how when you just let that idea form in your brain The Universe hears the bell go off and they throw all the plans they had formulated for you into action.  Before you know it you are facing the biggest fears of your life, becoming a strong and amazingly agile adapter, and jumping off the treadmill of life for lands unseen, unknown, and uncharted.  It’s a dazzeling display of truth and uncertainty rolled into one.  And what a ride it becomes.

I remember the day that I started on my journey.  It was after losing my mother to cancer that I decided that mediocre marriage was not okay for me.  While being alone was the biggest fear I could ever conceive of it turned out that being alone was exactly what I needed.  Being alone taught me that I was bigger, faster, and braver than I ever had imagined.  And while I stumbled into a temper tantrum or two along the way, as I grew courageous I saw endless possibilites.

Possiblities, we so often discount this word as something we will never attain.  “It’s possible”, we say but we don’t really believe it.  Possiblities rest on the shelves of our mind collecting dust.  They are sitting right next to “if onlys” and “what ifs” so they are in good company, however, they end up haunting us instead of behaving themselves and fading into the deepest recesses of our mind.   For me I took this zag in my life’s path as the perfect time to take those “possibilities” off my shelf, dust them clean, and see where they could take me.

It’s been a ride through joy, pain, love, honesty, truth, deception, beginnings, dirt, bliss, vodka, and laughter.  But what a ride it has been.  And lucky for me, the ride is just beginning.  It is just picking up steam!  Boy, I get excited when I realize that those “possibilities” really knew what they were talking about.  They really had a handle on what this life is all about.  And even better, if we let them, those possilities will step right up, grab your hand, and take you along with them for the most amazing ride that is your life.

So that is what a Fairy Godmother blogs about tonight….how it started.  It’s a beginning and lucky for us every day is a new one of those.  Every day is filled with possibilites both big and small.  And as a Fairy Godmother it is my responsibility to make sure that not one them is ignored.  That is something a magic wand comes in handy for.

Welcome to my blog November 19, 2007

Welcome to my blog.  Here you can read about issues and recommendations around woman empowerment, traveling with Fairy Godmothers On The Go, health and wellness.