Thanksgiving - aging parents, daughters, life and death

I'm not very quick to blog yet in this relatively new blog as Thanksgiving was several weeks ago and here I am writing about it. David and I spent 8 nights in a villa near Disney World. I'm from the Orlando area but as my parents are in a retirement home and have no guest room we would be getting a hotel anyway. This trip we invited David's daughter Vickie and my daughter Dara with her boyfriend Skyler and we all shared a 3 bedroom villa. This was the closest David and I will ever come to being a household with "our" children. As we met later in life, I have 2 grown daughters and he has 2 grown daughters. I sometimes wonder how we would have been as parents together and then reality sets in or I rationalize that had we done the raising of children thing together our relationship would probably not be as strong as it is as it seems something suffers when raising children, at least that was my experience, perhaps that is the reality I created....

Anyway, it was nice. It was only the 2nd time stepsisters Dara and Vickie met, the first time being almost 9 years ago. I wish his Rachel and my Aimee could have been there too. Everybody got along really well and we all went to Sea World together. Dara, Vickie and Skyler did roller coasters while us old fogies held their bags. I think Vickie missed Dara and Skyler when they left to go back to Chicago on the Monday after Thanksgiving. David and I were not nearly as much fun in Disney and Busch Gardens as they would have been!

My parents joined us on Thanksgiving day for the meal we prepared. Dara and Skyler picked them up and drove them to our villa. I can tell by talking to them on the phone every Sunday that age is catching up with them. (They are 84 and 86.) But seeing them in person which I only do once every 6 - 10 months now that I live in England, really brings the changes out. I really only made full peace with them and our differences when I moved to England 9 years ago. Now I adore them and know I will completely freak out when they die... My mother's memory is getting very bad. She has always believed she will get Alzheimers. I pray she doesn't and that this is just normal age related forgetfullness... When we visited my parents on the day we flew back to England they stood outside their apartment with their arms around each other and waved at us. I can't afford to return to Orlando again until September next year and my greatest fear is that I won't see them again...

Of course I believe in the continuity of life and that we don't really die but go where souls go in between lives and I do believe I'll see my parents again somewhere... if not in Orlando again in September.

My daughter Aimee just told me that her childhood dog Perry (belongs to her father and stepmother) just died. I was at a loss for the right words for her and she was very upset by it. She told me it was really her first experience of death. She's very close to my parents and will one day be very upset by that. I hope I'll be there for her but I'll be emotional too so how can I? I believe that experiencing death of someone we love is a heart opening experience and part of what makes us human and very vulnerable yet very powerful at the same time as our spirit/soul never dies. Words are failing me right now for all the emotions I'm feeling.

Without death there couldn't be life though and at the end of January David's daughter Rachel will be giving birth to our first grandchild. I'll probably cry for both joy and for the pent up other emotions that I've tried to describe here. Does this child's birth mean one other soul has died, or just that one soul has now left the interlife that some religions call heaven to join us here on earth. I hope this baby is an old soul and has a lot to teach all of us....

Will you believe it when you see it or see it when you believe it?

There are two types of people. The first type are those who require scientific proof and have the attitude "I'll believe it when I see it". My parents are in that category and therefore found most of my wild ideas just that, wild ideas. Thankfully my husband is the 2nd type of person who like me believes "I'll see it when I believe it". We represent the dreamers of the world, those who believe that our beliefs create our reality and not the other way around. More and more people are beginning to think this way thanks to things like "The Secret" and "The Law of Attraction". Of course I believe that my way is the right way, but I have learned to love my parents in spite of our different philosophies of life and to not judge them. I've found that when I don't judge them, they tend to not judge me and everybody is happier.

I do think though that when looking for a long term relationship, being like minded on this question is an important parameter as it really defines how you look at life. Having been married twice before I can say that it really helps to look at life from like-minded eyes for a relationship to be all it can be.....

Our "baby" came in the mail yesterday!

Yesterday when we got home from David picking me up at the train station after work he said we would be having a nice wine with dinner. Well that means we are celebrating something. He had already shared his business stories of the day which were quite good but I didn't think that was what we were celebrating. I suspected it might have to do with our book having finally arrived from the publisher but I didn't see it anywhere.

I had approved the e-proof on the 25th of September and it was a very long and frustrating process for this first version of the actual book to make it's way too me. I knew that it could actually finally arrive any day, but wasn't totally prepared for it to be that day. David was really frustrating me as he had obviously hidden it and I really wasn't in the mood for hide and go seek! He told me to stop looking down and to start looking up (what a metaphor for life and the bad day I had at work that is). So I looked at the ceiling where it obviously wasn't. He asked why it was either black or white, up or down for me, is there not a middle ground (another good metaphor for life). Where do we put nice things we receive like cards? I then realized that would be the shelf above the fireplace, I looked up at that and there it was our beautiful book! The cover is glossy, the paper is nice and it actually looks like not just a book but a really nice and good book!

Go away self esteem demons! I am worthy of having a really good book that people will enjoy reading and owning. As I know that our beliefs create our reality I must really really believe that from every cell in my body. Well, it will help when a few people who don't know us buy the book and make really good comments about it. But why do we (me anyway) seek this approval from outside of ourselves? I'll leave you with that as I work on that one myself. I don't work in my day job on Fridays and one of the things I'm doing today is answering the publisher's press release questionnaire about the book. It really is a good book, a great book in fact!

thoughts on my "brand" the enchanted frog

David and I attended an internet marketing course yesterday. After all, as the book is self published through Trafford, online will be the way the book is purchased until we are able to get it into bookstores.

At this course anybody who wanted to could go on stage and promote their "brand" for 30 - 60 seconds. Well, as more people than they had time for wanted to do this I got maybe 40 seconds so couldn't say everything I wanted to but this is very good material for a blog that other people can add their thoughts to.

So our brand for the book "Some Day My Prince Will .com" is an enchanted frog with a crown on his head, sitting at a computer and with a magic wand above his head with fairy dust coming down and enchanting him (after all, he was writing to me on match.com). To me, he represents that love can be fun (both finding it and after it has arrived), it represents that the fairy tale can be real and that we all need to live our lives in a state of enchantment, hope and inspiration and to always see the glass as half full. It represents to both David and I our belief that anything is possible if you keep an open heart and an open mind.

Another thought occurred to me with the concept of fun and thinking like a child. When a child falls off the swingset in the playground, they might cry for a few moments but then they usually get right back on it. They don't spend years being wounded or afraid to try another swing. Why can't adults be the same way? When we have heartbreak in love (and who among us hasn't), we tend to close our hearts at least for awhile. What if finding an enchanted frog, or ruby red magic slippers, was just as easy as getting back up and believing we can? As Obama says "yes we can!". In life, "shit happens", but why must a person lose twice or more by reliving the pain and closing their heart.

Our book (I am the main author but David has contributed close to 50% of it in either his emails or the chapter that is devoted to him so I do call it ours), tells the story of how we both opened our hearts to find each other. My hope is to help others find this enchanted way of looking at life and relationships.

So....this is a blog, a new one just started on Friday. I would love to have contributions and thoughts and stories from other people.

1st blog 9 October 2009

Hello world. It's Friday night here in the UK and I'm enjoying an at home evening with my husband David. We both have our laptops in our lap and are comfortably doing our own thing on them with the tv in the background. It's a peaceful loving relationship although we both can be unpleasant when we are overtired and stressed. We do try to always stay in gratitude for our relationship and our life.

I won't write much tonight, this is just to get this started. My book "Some Day My Prince Will .com" will be available online probably within the week and I'm both excited and scared. I/we have put our story out to the world with the hope that other people will open their hearts and their minds to the infinite possibilities that exist for a real soul mate relationship.

We met on the internet, hence the title of the book. I was in Florida and David was in England. It was 1999.

I'm very sleepy as I often am on Friday nights so I'll leave you with our website to look at www.somedaymyprincewill.com.

I'll be sharing my insights, David's insights, and those of others, and I'm hoping that old friends and new will add to this blog with their own stories of love, life and relationships.

More later friends....
with love
Dianne