Category Archives: Aging Well

The Lost Traveler and her Wahine

My eye has been twitching and hip hurting since early August, but I had my “VBFQ” (very busy fourth quarter – 4 fun trips in a row) to look forward to, so I ignored what my body was telling me.  Then my 90-year-old Mom passed away gently in her sleep. Although her passing wasn’t exactly unexpected, it’s true that nothing prepares you once you become an orphan in this world.

“For in grief, nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.  Round and round.  Everything repeats.  Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often – will it be for always? – how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment?’ The same leg is cut off time after time.”

C. S. Lewis, “A Grief Observed”

This loop of forgetting then surrendering to the sudden and shattering memory of what has happened – the loss of my Mother – is my current existence.  I don’t know if this is normal, but several times a day, with no warning, I will experience what feels like a punch in the gut from Grief, and I will utter, “Mommy!” like I did as a child to summon her comfort.  The moment doesn’t last more than a few seconds – and I am able to return to whatever activity I was doing without much difficulty – but C. S. Lewis is right – “the death of a beloved is an amputation.”  I have to learn to walk in this world anew without her.

A few things really help soothe this pain.  1.  Puppy hugs (I recently adopted a new puppy whose presence in my home is like a steady source of dopamine); 2. A healthy routine (e.g., boring adherence to the basics:  enough rest, water, exercise, sunshine, good nutrition, conversations with family); 3.  Old friends – the ones I grew up with who knew my Mother best. Hearing kind words about my Mom and retelling familiar stories from my early days is of great comfort. Simply being in the presence of my oldest friends, I have found to be enormously healing.  

I am lucky to have a few such friends I have known since birth.  And each one reached out to me in my pain immediately to offer comfort, kindness and reminders of the great person my Mom was.   By sheer coincidence (or maybe not?), my oldest friend, Missy, and I had plans to spend a week together this Fall on her island paradise, Maui.  Missy gave me a chance to opt out of our plans until “a better time.”  It really felt like the perfect time to be in her presence.  After all, our Mothers were close friends and our Fathers were the very best of friends.  Between our 2 families there were 15 children, and we all grew up together.  Lots of comfort and familiarity awaited me. Exactly one month after losing Mom, I boarded a plane and headed off to the unknown.  I am not a good traveler nor am I particularly curious about “unexplored” places.  Wanderlust is not something that drives me.  But quiet companionship and a few reminders of who I really am, during this time when I feel so lost, is definitely what drove me to pack my bags and visit Missy.

When I arrived, she was hiding behind a wall with a fresh plumeria lei to welcome me.  I later learned the plumeria flower represents birth, love, spring and new beginnings.  In Buddhist culture, the plumeria represents immortality, because the tree will bloom even if it is uprooted.  Immediately, I felt like it had been the right decision to seek adventure with my old friend instead of staying home and hiding under the covers like I wanted. This could be a time of new birth. She kept using this Hawaiian word, “Wahine,” which literally translates to woman.  I learned it can also be a term of endearment for one’s closest female friends.


Every morning began with at least two hours of relaxing outside on her terrace overlooking a sumptuous garden with the sea in the background. In the background, the sounds of tropical birds I have never heard before, beckoning old friends to start the day in one another’s company, just enjoying the moment.  That’s what I enjoyed and appreciated most about our time together – there was no “daily agenda,” it was as slow-paced and relaxed as could be.  I knew there were many things on the island I would not venture out to see and this was fine with me.  I needed to move slowly, and Missy understood this. On those quiet early mornings happily tucked into her backyard paradise, my oldest friend Missy reminded me of several things and thus helped me heal the wounds broken open by Mom’s passing.  

In no particular order, here are the things my “Wahine” (Hawaiian for woman/friend) helped me to see and in her way re-ignited my spark for life:

I look great in red lipstick – Missy was surprised to see a more “subdued” look after years of sporting the brightest red lipstick I could find. When I told her several makeup artists scolded me due to it’s “aging effect,” she said that was bulls*** and I should go back to what I love (so I have);

I will publish my writing one day – One of her favorite publications has been on my “most wanted” list for years – she’s confident she’ll see my name in it one day;

No matter how broken I believe the world is today, there are many things in my life worth celebrating – a great family, health, sobriety, and friendships that have lasted decades for starters;

I am not alone in my sobriety (nothing tests your sobriety like loss – my dog of 11 years passed 12 days after Mom) – Missy decided before I even arrived to practice “Sober October” – more than anything else, THIS is what brought me to tears. Not that I am close to a relapse after everything that has happened. It simply felt like a major show of support and solidarity when my oldest friend on this earth quietly decided to join me sans alcohol for a bit.

The timing of the Universe can be perplexing and mysterious, especially when one feels like She is lobbing pain on top of pain for no reason.  It felt so good to surrender to the cosmic invitation to meet my old friend in my pain, on her beautiful island, and just sit quietly together drinking coffee for several days.  My pain subsided a little and our friendship grew a lot. It turns out I  traveled 4,000 miles to feel like I was right at home. Thank you, Wahine, for the gift of your time and presence when I needed it most.

Third Act

We’re all familiar with what happens in the third act of a really good mystery: the villain dies and the good guy is vindicated, and all is set right for the rest of eternity. It’s in this critical third act there is a small but very vibrant window of opportunity to cash in a lifetime’s collection of choices – and float effortlessly towards the sunset.

If we’re lucky, the third act is full of people we love and health to begin new adventures. The third act can be inspiring and intentional if luck allows us freedom from obligations we have honored in act two. This third act my husband and I begin today will be interesting, to say the least, because we are so very different. He is a careful, thoughtful planner. I am free-spirited. He has thought about “tomorrow” long before it occurred to me it was even happening. He even recently referred to me as a “kamikaze pilot”!

The one thing that we share that I suspect will be our third act glue? We both love surprises. I have driven professors and bosses to the brink of insanity with my “wild unpredictability.” My husband, though not personally unpredictable, cherishes and savors a surprise more than any human I know. So that will be our meeting place in this third act: finding joy together in the remaining mysteries life offers.

I have observed so many versions of third acts that I hope I won’t waste mine overthinking things. I hope I will answer whatever calls that come for joy, playfulness, creativity and meaning. I hope I don’t become “cemented” to my chair and routine. This is the challenge of maintaining that kamizaze spirit – the word translates in Japanese to “Divine Wind.” I’m here for it.

I forgot to mention magic. Hoping for lots more third act magic. For now, I am content sipping coffee and getting lost in the magical lights my “careful planner” unexpectedly sprang for.

Between my finger

And my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney



Noticing Season

This week began with a fantastic thunderstorm, with an especially gorgeous prelude of rumbling from the heavens, strong enough to awaken my son who was visiting from college. I excitedly went to the front porch to try to capture the majesty of the darkening sky amid the tall oak trees that line my street. A couple of hours later, my husband sent me this beautifully captured photo from his office overlooking a scene from our city awash in the storm and these words: “Enjoying my view in my descent.” Later our son remarked, “Dad is using that word alot these days – ‘descent.'” After 40 years of devoting himself to practicing law with a brief detour managing health care practices, the Dad my kids have seen suiting up for work day in and day out their entire lives is soon retiring (“descending”) and planning on finding ways to occupy himself from home. My hunch is, to everyone’s delight, we will all see much more of the guy who captures beautiful photos in the near future.

Suddenly, it hit me what season this is and many of the thoughts and feelings that have been roiling in my head and heart for months began to take shape. Each in our own way, my husband and I have spent the last 2 decades noticing things and anticipating a time when life slowed down long enough to make sense of what we’ve noticed. With retirement a mere several weeks on the horizon for Mike, that day is at last here. And because honoring my deepest desire to find time and space to write has always been a part of his plan (though I did not take notice of it until recently), I, too, have embarked on a sweet season of noticing. This time I hope to capture a little of what I notice before it slips back into oblivion.

Our story began with noticing, one early Fall morning in 1994, when each of us captured a poem written in chalk along the path of a lovely park we visited together. We mailed the poem to one another on the same day! Then life began and we got busy, absorbed in the work of making a living and a life for our children. I often felt frustrated at my limited ability to capture the things I noticed while raising our kids. I hope, in this season of noticing I feel beginning, I am able to recall the most poignant scenes and moments from their childhood.

Instead of writing while I was raising the children, I think I wound up just trying to live creatively and with an open heart. Oddly enough, this morning I came upon the perfect description:

The process of going deep within to access and then express the truth we find is the greatest of creative endeavors, whether it is formally recognized as art or not. Sharon Salzberg

My greatest hope is that my husband and I have raised 2 people who are unafraid to make time in their daily lives to notice and experience the fullness, richness and complexity embodied in all of the paths life’s journey will take them. Early in my High School education, I experienced a summer program at St. Louis University entitled, “The Academy of the Humanities.” I loved it. It was during this course that the instructor, Art Carle, introduced us to Socrates and his timeless wisdom, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” As I enter this season of noticing, with space to finally pour onto the page the memories that have made my life worth living, one thought keeps bubbling up to the surface: noticing is the purest form of loving.

Making space in my life for noticing not only invites creativity and playfulness, it sometimes inevitably will yield sadness. Author Susan Cain writes, “the mother of sadness is compassion.” To give someone the gift of being seen is to honor another’s humanity. Susan Cain argues in her book, “Bittersweet,” that the willingness to see sadness and be with another in this state leads to compassion, which can connect us all. Indeed, as my husband and I approach this season of noticing together, our thousands of shared memories raising 2 amazing children together can be very bittersweet. It hurts to think very long about that precious time being over and to notice my adult children entering their busiest seasons of life, just as their Dad and I are beginning to slow down and notice more. Like my own parents before me, my husband and I have become the “memory holders” for our children of their early lives. If we are blessed with grandchildren, I imagine we will enjoy sharing with them many colorful stories about their Mom and Dad growing up and these stories will serve as family glue, keeping us connected over time.

I am never more aware of time than when I visit my 90-year-old mother. This is my favorite photo of my parents from 24 summers ago. I was visiting home with my 4-month-old baby girl, and we all attended a wedding together. It was a very happy occasion, forever embedded in my memory bank. As the years go by, this moment increasingly feels like just a tiny “blip” on an expanding canvas of things to notice about life. But I won’t let that happen. When I look at this photo today, just shy of the ages my parents are in it, I am thankful for the life they gave me and the precious gift of this season of noticing. I recently visited my Mom who doesn’t remember or notice very much any longer. I carry sadness in my heart that never subsides, whether I see her in person or not. I was certain this last visit really had not made an impression on her, she seemed so out of it. And, by this stage of her life, those visits are more about me than her, if I am being honest. My sister told me something the day after I last saw Mom, however, that affirmed for me my Mom will always be the first holder of my heart and official “noticer” in my life. Mom told my sister after our visit, “I like Joan’s big smile.” That enormous and beautiful expression from my Mom is more than enough to sustain me for this new journey forward, into the noticing season.

Can We Talk About Amy Winehouse?

This week I watched a documentary about the brilliant and tragic Amy Winehouse. I’ve always been a fan of her music and, as a recovering alcoholic, I wanted to get a deeper sense of what led to her death from alcohol poisoning. Not surprisingly, there were people in this talented young woman’s path who had the opportunity to help – or harm her. And they did both. I’m not saying alcoholics and drug addicts are victims, but it is notable when following a person’s trajectory of self-destruction that they are often strongly influenced by people and events. In the rooms of AA they refer to “people, places and things” that can be triggers for addicts to do self-harm. The outside influences don’t create addiction entirely; a person who slips into self sabotage usually already has internalized beliefs about their value that sends them seeking relief through the numbness alcohol and drugs offer.

Ironically, Amy Winehouse’s hit single, “Rehab,” was pivotal to her rising success. Friends had been pleading with her to seek help before she declined too far. Like the song says, her response was “no, no, no” – and that was her father’s reaction to the idea of rehab, also. As a parent, learning this fact made me deeply sad. I started thinking about my early drinking days as a teenager. From the moment I took my first sip of alcohol, I was a binge drinker. The first time I got drunk, I could have died of alcohol poisoning at my friend Isabel’s sleepover in 8th grade when I woke up covered in my own vomit without a trace of a memory of what happened the night before. I was hungover (dehydrated) for 3 days, left alone in my room and repeatedly ridiculed by my Mom. This might have been a great opportunity to educate and support, I am thinking today, with 2,813 sober days. But alas, shame was the most useful tool my parents had – it had been “successfully” used on them throughout their childhood, so the tradition carried on with me.

The picture of me is from 2016, a year after I stopped drinking and declared myself “in recovery. If you look closely, I am wearing a crescent-shaped gold pin – a tribute to my all-girls Catholic high school in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. I happened to be driving back to St. Louis when I snapped this photo, thinking about my happy days as a student in what is consistently ranked Missouri’s #1 all female private secondary education institution. I was driving home to celebrate the life of a classmate who had recently passed away from cancer. She was a wickedly smart, quiet girl, I remember. And we shared a semester working together as a team in our school’s celebrated “mock trial” experience in Senior year civics class. We were the defense team and we lost. But not because Lori hadn’t worked her hardest doing research and writing legal arguments. I remember Lori doing most of the hard work and, because she was so introverted, happily allowing me to attempt to be the impassioned and deeply persuasive defense lawyer. Lori wasn’t angry with me when we lost, even though I felt I had let her down. All those quiet hours of research and work went down the tubes the minute my fast-talking opponent (who went on to become a lawyer) opened her mouth. I froze and stumbled. I was humiliated because it was one of the few things my Dad attended throughout my High School. He had been accepted to law school himself but never attended because of family obligations. As his 7th child, I was his last hope of producing a lawyer – and I really, really did not want to let him down. I don’t remember specifically drinking over the mock trial experience – but the message I internalized was that I did not have what it took to be taken seriously in any arena. I was 17.

You can imagine, carrying that heavy burden within oneself at such a young age, how the ensuing years unfolded. I went through periods of deep depression followed by binge drinking. But I could also go years without touching a single drop of alcohol. However, whenever I would return to drinking, it was always the same: binge drinking from the onset. I was 49 years old before I was ready to face the truth: alcohol was not my friend and removing it from my life completely was urgently necessary, for myself and my family. I hadn’t considered until age 49 that I wasn’t the only one affected by my drinking. They say addiction makes you selfish – but not in the “I’m going to be good and kind to myself and think only of my own needs” kind of way. Addiction made me numb and blind. Thank goodness, all the help I have received during recovery has helped me to forgive myself for it so I can show up for my family authentically (you know, with imperfections).

Driving back to St. Louis with only 1 year of sobriety, I was hoping to connect with the people who meant everything to me in my early days of high school. I was very proud of my sobriety and eager to celebrate Lori’s life in a safe community (emotional safety happens to be super important to alcoholics). But my High School Social Studies teacher had a different agenda. Instead of greeting me with warmth, she was eager to harshly remind me that I had shown up to a school function drunk (I absolutely wasn’t) and gotten away with it and that her husband, 35 years later, still spoke about it. Ah, there was the sting of that old familiar weapon: shame. Here I was, a grown woman with children and this long retired teacher used someone’s memorial service as an opportunity to slap me down. I have thought of the incident many times in the past 7 years, and I usually become angry, although I know I should either laugh about it or feel sorry for her for being such a self-righteous and petty woman she needed to take a cheap shot 35 years later. She did not know what I was fighting in 1982 nor what the path of addiction would do to me in the ensuing 35 years. She didn’t care, she just needed to scold and be right. And guess what, people! SHE WASN’T EVEN A NUN! The nuns showed compassion and grace. Shame, ironically, had not been the style of the Sisters of the Visitation I grew to know and love. So suck an egg, Mrs. What’s-Your-Name (fortunately, I cannot recall her name so I won’t be tempted to google her pathetic ass).

Last night my husband and I sat in our favorite neighborhood bar (yes, I can go to bars now and enjoy an alcohol free beer and not “awaken the beast” that wants to drink again) when 2 police officers walked in. My husband followed them with his eyes and told me there was a person sitting at the bar with her head down. The police awakened her and, when she realized what was happening, my husband tenderly said, “She’s crying now.” The police managed to help her stumble out of the bar as she openly wept in shame and God knows what else. “We don’t know what else she could have going on,” my husband said compassionately. I began weeping out of pain for her and still cannot stop thinking of her. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the first time this had happened. And I am damn lucky the same thing never happened to me. But I know it wouldn’t take much heartache and hard times to put me right back there. That’s why my heart aches with compassion for other addicts. And people who use shame can absolutely go straight to hell.

When the phenomenally talented Amy Winehouse died at age 27 from alcohol poisoning, she had experienced brief periods of sobriety followed by dark relapses (listen to “Back to Black” – it refers to a relationship she was addicted to in which she believes her only choice without is to go “back to black”). I think it’s the urgent neediness an addict feels when faced with reality is what gets me. In those brief moments leading up to an alcoholic’s first doomed drink, we truly believe that this time it could be different – the warmth of a numbing drink could actually give us what we need this time without harm. Amy must have thought that as she took her last drinks. And the young woman in the bar last night probably never guessed her evening would end being escorted by police into custody. She just wanted momentary relief from her suffering.

Today, as I reflect on the incident with Mrs. Told You So in 2016 that caught me off guard and produced profound shame, it stings far less than the clarity it gives. Now I know how to comfort and protect that bright and beautiful young woman who believed she didn’t have what it took to succeed. Now I know I’m truly at home with myself, however imperfect I may be. I wish Amy Winehouse had had the opportunity to live 57 years like me. And I pray the young woman from the bar meets the right people and lives into a time where she can find peace and comfort somewhere gentler than a barstool.

When a Single Rainbow Will Do (but you get a Double)

I am a big “marker of events” – when I recognize they are happening, that is. I say this because it is pretty easy to fail to notice something significant at first. We have to make a commitment to “notice” the important people and things in our lives. Otherwise, it’s just too easy to remain mired in the ordinary details of day to day life, reminding oneself “I will celebrate that victory later.” Sobriety has given me a sense of urgency to recognize who and what matters the most in this moment. It’s a beautiful gift I try to cultivate daily.

Yesterday was not an ordinary day for my husband. Yesterday, he said out loud the words he has quietly prepared for the past 45 years. “I’m planning to retire soon,” he told his colleagues. For this man – once completely blindsided by betrayal and financial disaster – to calmly walk in a decade later and announce his forthcoming retirement – is noteworthy and significant, indeed.

If you only recently met my family, it would be easy to believe we have always been lucky and lived well. Both are true, of course, relative to the rest of the world. Our well-being has not come without a cost, and a hefty one to my husband and our marriage. My husband is a very careful and thoughtful man – he likes to weigh every possible alternative for several months while thinking about any big change or financial decision. Planning and preparing are his superpowers. 17 years ago, several unforeseen circumstances began aligning to set in motion a decade of financial and personal turmoil no planning or preparing could have prevented. That’s why yesterday is one of the sweetest, happiest days we have ever known. We’re happy our misfortune also came with many morsels of wisdom to share with others.

When the recession of 2008 began, our family was nestled into a life we intentionally chose, “untethered” by the headaches of a big city law firm. We were living on 34 acres an hour outside of Wichita, Kansas. We thought we were comfortably situated for the rest of our children’s upbringing (they both had middle and high school in the immediate future). Mike left his big law firm practice and started managing his friend’s medical practice, less than a mile away from our home. Our lives were perfect. Until everything began to unravel.

One by one, each facet of our carefully and intentionally chosen life began to crumble. It felt like Mercury was in Retrograde for 10 years! We promised ourselves to stick together, no matter how hard things got (and they got really, really hard). We also promised to share our story to help others one day. People who know our story marvel over the fact we were able to stay married and raise two exceptional human beings. Honestly, ignorance and the ability to block out most of the terrifying details and just live one day at a time is what saved us. Mike is also a really smart man with a tireless work ethic. That saved us, also! I’m just going to highlight a few of the pressures squeezing the joy out of our lives that we survived. If you are experiencing 1 or more of these, my heart goes out to you. Please remember my family is living proof that things can change and you will ultimately be able to achieve your goals.

Business partnership/friendship When the thing you uprooted your family and moved 200 miles for stops going well and becomes something you did not expect. I watched my husband navigate a deeply painful and uncertain period with dignity and in virtual silence (so contrary to my personal style!). The difficult lessons changed enormously the way we saw the world and trusted in relationships but made yesterday’s retirement announcement much sweeter. Mike would say he got there quietly, working diligently and intentionally. If I’m being truthful, I would say our family got through this with a lot of embracing the unknown. I often asked God for an open heart and mind to allow the lessons and gifts from the pain to reveal themselves. And they did.

Homeowners Association Litigation When the majority of your time in a place is tarnished by ugly feelings between neighbors, it can become hard to live in the moment and enjoy something beautiful while you have it. And we did have something magical, if only for awhile. We wanted to give our children a carefree childhood with lots of land to have adventures on. Our neighbors believed some of that land should belong to them. So they made life uncomfortable for many years. We tried to ignore them, which mostly worked. But there were many times the ugliness bubbled over and I thought our whole lives would forever be consumed by ridiculous fighting. Since that chapter is long closed, I have the happy moments as memories to keep me warm and their petty grievances have faded. That’s a true gift of time. We both agree every time the subject comes up and we ask ourselves, “Would we do it all over again?”. Yes, we both would 100% do it all over. In spite of the horrible neighbors (a story that has been hinted at in the past and I will surely write about again in the future).

Side Business Disaster It wasn’t a great idea to purchase a gas station and hire a virtual stranger to manage it. We had more than enough on our plate raising our children, fighting the neighbors and dealing with a business partnership that was riddled with drama. For some reason, our fate was to deal with this additional stress at a time when we were already beyond our ability to handle the other stressors.

Now, 13 years after all the aforementioned challenges and setbacks, we can both truly say it has been a wondrous journey, filled with unexpected joys, blessings and friendships. We’re proud we didn’t let the myriad little things turn us away from each other or our family. It feels fantastic to have been able to build a life we enjoy from the pieces we picked up that had once been shattered. The double rainbow pictured was only visible for about 5 minutes on a recent trip to the beach. We might have easily missed it, but we did not. And that perfectly encapsulates how I feel about this moment in life: I would have been happy with just one, but upon closer examination, I noticed I was given two! What a blessing it is to notice, isn’t it?

Looking forward

Hometown Pause

Last night, we had a dinner conversation with our adult son about our time in the country when he was very young. I have promised to write more about it after my kids were old enough to understand and that time has come. The lessons we learned from our experience relocating to a Southern Kansas small town at the height of my husband’s legal career are many. We learned about courage and risk-taking; slowing down and integrating into a rural culture; trusting the wrong people; honesty, integrity and resilience; true friendship; humor and love; and finally, the absurdity and injustice of Homeowners Associations and local politics. All in an 8-year span in which we vowed to “slow down and simplify” in idyllic small town America. Our lessons began immediately.

Now is the time to share with our children because underlying the decision to make the dramatic lifestyle change was a rebellion against a life in constant pursuit of “upward mobility” ingrained in our generation. My husband was literally killing himself at his law firm, rarely home for the most important parts of our young children’s routine. I called him most afternoons around 4:30 and held up the phone to the sound of our young children’s wails (then 1 and 3 years old) and sarcastically asked him, “How’s YOUR day?” before slamming the phone down. Couples with young children today have “family leave” to allow the family time to nest and cement their new lives together. We had the frazzled, frenzied “corporate ladder” lifestyle- Mike literally left the recovery room after an hour or so of each child’s birth to get back to work – and the constant bitch of “billable hours.” We did not know anything different, it was just the way it was. My family was 4 hours away and Mike’s parents were already deceased. We didn’t have a support network to fill in those terrible hours when the whole family needed a break. Mike didn’t feel like his efforts at the firm were rewarded as quickly and lavishly as others around him. The lure of moving to small town America where Mike had a close friend became attractive.

This background is so important for understanding all our motivations for making such a drastic move. Looking back (20 years now!), we had such a perfect, sweet life: a darling home in an affluent Kansas City neighborhood, many close and supportive friends, a great job. I had a good reputation in my profession I put on hold to care for my children. We even belonged to a nice church. We had everything that people in their 30’s and 40’s with young families worked so hard to attain. The world just was moving so fast. We wanted to enjoy our children and slow down a bit. Mike wanted to explore a career outside of private law practice that would give him the space to be home more with our children. When the opportunity arose to uproot and start a new life 216 miles South to a town the size of our suburban neighborhood, we really only deliberated a couple of days before deciding to leap. “Don’t ever go into business with friends,” my Dad warned from the beginning. He knew what he was talking about. That’s a totally different story but coming soon, I promise!

We had purchased 34 acres of undeveloped land that had been part of our friend’s subdivision a few years before deciding to move there and start a life. Our country life was waiting for us! No sooner had we arrived that the local Sheriff visited Mike at work serving notice of a lawsuit against us by the Homeowner’s Association of Thomas Canyon Estates, the subdivision the property we owned belonged to. They wanted their “park” back, which was included in the land we bought from our friend. Lesson 1: We should have been much more astute about this potential conflict but we weren’t. We had no appreciation for the underlying anger and resentment between the residents of this small town “luxury” development (the average home price at the time for properties outside of this subdivision was in the mid- $40,000’s) and the developer, our friend, a really nice guy. We trusted a couple of really nice guys but didn’t fully appreciate, from a small town perspective, how their past behavior and reputations could impact our family. In the city, no matter what “type of guy” you are, there isn’t the level of public scrutiny/condemnation that can permanently ruin your life. There is always someone new to do business with or start a friendship with. But small towns have long memories. We learned about invisible walls of judgment that played out like silent stares in restaurants or at sporting events. I used to joke that I would be more comfortable in the most dangerous neighborhood in any city than within the suffocating confines of our judgy small town. It took years to understand and overcome it. But that’s really one of the coolest things about having survived it all.

So back to the HOA conflict. It raged on the entire 8 years we lived there. They dropped their lawsuit because Mike went into lawyer mode and responded with convincing challenges that would have led to expensive litigation (and thus a financial burden on individual households). The first HOA meeting we were invited to, Mike and I arrived and were quickly escorted to a homeowner’s basement which was packed with people from the neighborhood sitting in a circle waiting for us. They had clearly been there for quite some time and our “meeting time” had been designated to be after their pre-meeting. So juvenile! It was the last thing I expected. All eyes were on us as we were seated and the arrogant HOA President aggressively waved a stack of papers in front of my face encouraging me to “read the covenants.” Actually, their covenants stated that the park would be turned over to the homeowners as common land once 2/3 of the lots had been purchased. This magic number was not triggered until we purchased all remaining lots from our friend, the nice guy. Hence the legal showdown: did our purchase make our friend’s promise to the homeowners obsolete? Funny how he never warned us or prepared us in any way for this looming conflict. But still such a nice guy.

The HOA had tried to asses us 23 times ($2300) at one of their meetings. So Mike insisted he have 23 votes! They immediately changed the bylaws to state “one vote per owner.” I was dismayed at the ugliness and frequently urged Mike to “just give them the park,” but he refused to back down to bullies. I mean, he is a litigator! The next tactic was to go to the City and officially replat our land, which had included 23 lots in the undeveloped part of the subdivision, and make it our own separate subdivision. We named it “Tango Canyon,” in honor of Mike’s father’s side of the family from Argentina.

The HOA’s next tactic to punish us was to file a petition with the City to condemn a building on our property, “The Dairy House.” The history of the land dated back to dairy farming operation and there remained 2 outbuildings on our property used in the 1940’s and 50’s. During the years after the dairy farm sold and the land became a neighborhood development, the buildings had fallen into considerable disrepair. We thought the Kansas limestone foundation cottage (the basement was used to milk cows with a small apartment above) was charming.

Who would have thought that a historic dairy house would be the “mountain we chose to die on” in our small town experience? We learned a lot, thanks to Sally.

The HOA argued the building had a “blighting effect” and we should be compelled to demolish it. We were hauled into a City hearing over it, only for them to discover my husband was one step ahead. He had legally designated the property as an “outbuilding.” We painted and secured it to keep out “riffraff” (local teenagers up to no good). The building remained but our conflict raged on.

I could go on for several thousand more words to detail other dramatic parts (and I will in the future) of the small town HOA drama. In the end, they won. We were forced to basically give all of the replatted land to the subsequent landowners when we sold our home because the Title Company’s position was that the subdivision covenants, and not our own legal replatting, governed the sale of the property. We would have had to have had 2/3 of the HOA members permission to sell the bulk of our land. Not only that, the Title Company required us to pay several years of previous assessments upon the sale of our land. We could have fought the matters in court (and lost because we were at a serious hometown disadvantage being “city slickers”) or do what we ultimately decided to do: cut our losses and move on.

We were looking for and expecting easy and simple and we found conflict. I was personally bitter for many years, believing myself to be the biggest victim as I tried to navigate small town life as a full fledged, respectable member of the community with and for my children. Mike and I were at odds over this because he saw it mostly from the perspective of a litigator. It took me several years to put the resentment behind me. And the beautiful thing from all of this twisted story is this: now all that remains are wonderful memories of how much our family enjoyed our land and our home while we had it.

In spite of the conflict, looking back, Mike and I are proud of what we did. We had the courage to walk away from a comfortable life in pursuit of a simpler one (even though it became much more complicated and very difficult to disentangle from ). Coming back to Kansas City with a 4th and 6th grader was no small feat, either. In fact it was damn hard. And isolating in its own way. Our children were used to unstructured time and lots of land to roam freely on. In a sense, we had to “tame” them to adapt to suburban conventions. This was painful and challenging. We have learned that those formative years in our small town where we searched for the “pause” from a complicated life, our children experienced the same kind of freedom we both had as children. While there was a price to pay financially and professionally for us, our children benefited greatly from the essential parts of a small town life we wanted to give them. They know the beauty of wide open skies and the innocence of looking forward to the county fair each summer. We met and stay in touch with some extraordinary people who became friends are really are “nice people.” And I venture to guess that hometown HOA has never had more exciting times than when the Tamburinis were in town.

What matters most to me when I think of the petty infighting over an insignificant parcel of land that represented a broken promise between our friend and the HOA is this: the land originally belonged to the Osage Indians. Any casual stroll within the canyon that ran several miles behind our home could yield arrowheads. Our friend’s land adjacent to ours had a stagecoach landing and kiln. There was rich history outside the confinement of silly HOA covenants our children were exposed to and delighted in on countless walks and adventures.

When we did return to life in the Big City, we realized, in hindsight, all the mess we had been embroiled in our small town life had somehow insulated and protected us from the state we observed some of our former friends to be in. They were richer but much less happy, many of them in disastrous marriages with children who had been over scheduled and managed from the minute they started preschool. Some had “nannies” who performed the daily household tasks I had proudly and contentedly overseen for our family. What we had lost financially from the gamble to take a “hometown pause” we gained by building a close family without constraints of too many tedious commitments. It was clear to us that we were far poorer but much happier than many of our consorts.

This whole story began with a dinner conversation led by our son last evening. Our dining room was cozy with a fire roaring as the wind and rain pelted our windows. He began talking about his earliest memories in our dining room in the big house in the country. “And every day this time of year, you could just look outside and there you’d see a buck running across our front yard.” I’d accept a decade worth of ridiculous HOA pettiness to hear him share that memory.

3 Things My Mom Taught Me About Love, Friendship & Cake

Celebrating with cake was always a Killion tradition

Like most women in their mid 50’s, hardly a day goes by I am not reminded of something important my Mom taught me about life but didn’t recognize at the time. She came to my rescue after a terribly bad break up when I was only 24. I was so busy taking care of this idiot, I neglected my life and my Mom found the perfect way to bring this to my attention. She wrote me several affirmations about not giving my power away. I still have her handwritten affirmations in a box and every so often I will pull them out and remind myself what she did for me. “Never give your power away!” is the one I remember the most, especially since I am now a parent of young adults. I was so busy chasing after the idea of “love” with the wrong people, I was willing to be whomever they wanted me to be. Mom often repeated this phrase, “Does he cherish you? Because you deserve to be cherished.” Maybe it was just luck, but I think also this guidance from my Mom that led me to the love of my life who does, in fact, cherish me.

Mom always had a lot of friends with a vast and colorful array of interests. She made friends easily and was often that friend who made the plans and initiated getting everyone together. The planner, organizer, reasonable “sounding board” friend. She treated her friends well and as she got older, I noticed she put effort into cherishing them. When she belonged to a quilting group, one time she brought every friend a flower and told them she wanted to tell them how much she enjoyed them while they were alive and together. When she saw someone she thought would be a good friend for me, she would tell me, “I would cultivate that friendship if I were you.” She cultivated a very important friendship for me that has sustained and brightened my life. A cousin I had never met reached out to her many years ago because she had questions about our family and she trusted Mom to be open and honest. When she asked Mom which daughter she thought she would get along with best, Mom pointed her in my direction. So my first cousin, (named after my Mom), began periodically writing to me. Today she is one of my closest friends and I cherish her. This is solely due to my Mom. Another gift I will have for the rest of my life from her.

Finally, my Mom instilled in me an unabashed love for cake. I cannot think of a time I visited her these past 35 years since I moved from home when cake was not a central part of our celebration. Her New York cheesecake was phe-nomenal! I recently made a cookbook for my children with many of Mom’s notable recipes so they will have them to cherish and pass on to the next generations. Dad often marveled at how much Mom could eat (he loved it!). When she made one of her cakes, however, you had to get in line behind Dad (this was simply understood by everyone in our family). Today, I am proud and grateful my Mom passed along to me a healthy appetite and appreciation for home baked desserts. Wasting time on food shaming is pointless. Mom taught me to cherish myself.

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Last year, I had a remarkable opportunity to change my life and I took it. I reached out to a friend I had once volunteered for, asking her if her organization was accepting volunteers during the pandemic. I had decided not to return to my full-time job as a middle school paraprofessional and was looking for something to do maybe 2 times a week. She responded quickly, “No, but there is a job opening that would be perfect for you.” JOB, I thought? As in, 5 days a week with responsibilities, deadlines, stress, conflict, exhaustion at age 55 kind of job? To be honest, an unexpected opportunity is the way every wonderful thing has happened in my life. As scared as her response made me, my gut instinct was to move forward and maybe take the leap.

I became a Rehab Assistant in a Pediatric & Adolescent Medical Rehab with absolutely no significant knowledge of the types of conditions the patients have or the therapies they receive. I only knew how a Mother’s heart would communicate with the children and families and support the therapists providing the services. It’s been the greatest professional experience of my life. I work with wonderful, dedicated people who spend their lives working to make life easier for children with disabilities and their families. As part of the team, my role in the pandemic is managing communication between caregivers and therapists. I greet the families outside the gym where the children are treated, listen to their concerns and bring them to the therapists back inside the gym at the beginning of the day. The Covid-19 pandemic has created a communication barrier between anxious families and their children’s rehabilitation therapists and my role has been to provide a sort of “Momma Love Glue” in the situation. At least this has been my interpretation of my role this year- and nobody has complained yet.

Who else can say they actually get paid to love? To my delight, in spite of the enormous challenges of working in an intensely physically and emotionally draining environment, I go home each day with a deep satisfaction from giving everything I have and know to help people inside and outside the gym succeed. And that’s where the original thought for this post comes from: my daily journey between these two worlds. Outside the gym, where families are sitting with their concerns and perhaps taking a few minutes’ respite as their children receive treatment inside the gym. Inside the gym, where rehabilitation professionals labor to make progress each visit with patients who are sometimes sleep deprived, cranky and uncooperative.

Last week, as I reached to assist a boy with cerebral palsy walk into the gym, his Mom offered a gentle reminder: “Remember: Be good. Work hard. Have a good time.” Her son repeated his Mom’s words enthusiastically as he set off to join his friends in our summer day camp. 12 hours later, after tumbling into my bed exhausted, I woke up, tearful, as I often do, at the memory of that precious scene I had the privilege to witness the day before.

Inside the gym, on this same day, I realized I had created a mess of our schedule by overlooking a couple of teammates’ vacations. Suddenly, because of my poor organizational skills, we were scrambling to make a plan to provide a safely socially distanced and supervised lunch for our patients. Inside the gym, our daily challenge as a team is to solve problems quickly so therapy can continue moving forward. We pivot a lot! So much my head is spinning sometimes (I literally have vertigo this summer). In all these pivots that sometimes my oversights have caused, NOT ONCE has a teammate judged, harshly criticized or humiliated me. My friend, our social worker, smiles and says to me, in my frustration, “Use your resources, Joan.” And that I have.

Last week I got to plan a tie-dye party for some of our adolescent patients. My husband dug out a tarp from our garage (he’s been a silent part of the team!) and I gathered some pillowcases and t-shirts for the kids to choose between for their colorful creations. Fortunately, I had a young volunteer who calmly accepted my plea to read through the instructions and provide the kids some structure (not my thing!) so they could finish the project in less than an hour. When it was over, and each kid had their project properly labelled and put away for the weekend to dry, I was flooded with another rush of awareness that my job has been to bring love and fun in an otherwise intense situation for children and families. Tomorrow, I get to be there to enjoy the scene as the kids take the rubber bands off their tie-dye projects. Tomorrow I get to love again.

6 “I Can” Statements for 6 Years Sober

6 years ago this week I walked into a noon Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at Unity Temple on the Country Club Plaza, burst into tears and said, “I think I am an alcoholic.” Immediately, that community supported me and over the next 12 months I began to understand that “there is another way to live.”

As anyone who has struggled with alcohol addiction will tell you, the worst part is the period of time leading up to admitting you are powerless over alcohol. In the 2 years leading up to that day in 2015 when I finally walked into an AA meeting, I spent more and more time bargaining with this insatiable beast that was taking my life and everything I cared about from me. In the search for temporary relief from anxiety, insecurity, worry and fear, what I found was just an enormous emptiness. I was ashamed of my inability to simply stop hurting myself and others. Alcohol was on a mission to destroy my life yet I continued to open that bottle of vino fino tinto every afternoon at 5 o’ clock, the witching hour.

I think my path to successful sobriety has been primarily about 2 things: learning to manage discomfort and reclaiming my authentic self. I wish I could hug that sad woman and tell her that in exchange for hangovers, her future would be full of authentic connections, better health, flourishing young adult children and the most fulfilling career imaginable.

Living a sober life has given me many tools for navigating the scary world of FEELINGS. I used to hide from my feelings behind a big glass of red wine, but now I address my problems, if not with confidence, at least with purpose – to find a reasonable solution that does not compromise my values or boundaries.

To celebrate my 6th Sober Birthday, I want to share 6 “I Can” statements I work on constantly:

I CAN…

  • Create a life I love built on new beliefs about the person I am and who I choose to be going forward;
  • Live with discomfort, knowing that in the end what is meant for me will happen at the right time;
  • Tolerate the disapproval of someone I love, knowing that compromising my authentic self in exchange for another person’s affection or approval is self-destructive;
  • Accept contradictions of all kinds without the need to debate or argue;
  • Seek support rather than comfort when the need arises;
  • Support others without expecting anything in return.

Every sober breath is a gift. I have had 2,190 beautiful days in recovery. Thank you for celebrating with me!

A Formerly Cool Gen Xer Aging in Place

I can’t believe I am having conversations with friends now about “Aging in Place.” 34 years ago this weekend, I packed my Subaru XT Coupe, popped in my favorite “Bob Marley” cassette tape, and moved to Kansas City to start the next chapter of my life. I started graduate school and earned a certificate in gerontology studies….an abstract concept I never expected to really experience personally (at least so soon). I would sit in mind-numbingly boring gerontology classes learning about the “Plaza Relocation Project” and Medicare, only halfway connecting with the stories I heard about the negative impacts on aging Kansas Citians when the Country Club Plaza began transforming from an aging-friendly urban oasis to a collection of upscale boutiques and restaurants to attract tourists. There used to be a substantial drug store and grocery store on the Plaza, conveniences enabling residents to comfortably transition into their later years at home instead of “care facilities.”

Beginning in the early 1980’s, long-time aging residents of high rise apartments were swiftly upended as part of a larger “plan” to make the Plaza less residential and more commercial. As a graduate student, I lived in one of the last remaining high rises near the Plaza in the sweetest studio apartment (forever my favorite) among aging residents. It had a restaurant and nail salon and was a community of people on the brink of extinction. A few years after I moved out, The University of Missouri tore it down (Twin Oaks Apartments, then dubbed “Twin Croaks” by the UMKC students because of the frequent EMS visits) to build student housing. I used to ride the elevator with visiting actors with the Missouri Repertory Theater and was often greeted by a Humpty Dumpty character getting off my 11th floor telling me, “I’d like to ride in your car!” It was a colorful life but not sustainable according to the local community planners.

Today, I think about aging in place every day. In fact, my husband and I recently tried to watch the film, “I Really Care” (Rosamund Pike portrays a corrupt legal guardian who deftly divests competent and financially stable Dianne Wiest of her decision-making rights and locks her “in a home”), and quickly turned it off in disgust and horror. That’s less than a decade away for us! Could it be us? Surely not. We have friends making decisions all across the board about retirement: one couple recently decided the Midwest wasn’t for them and moved to Florida to become boat repairmen in a coastal town. Another friend dropped her second child off at college and began her dream nomadic lifestyle of full-time travel writing and speaking. She meets up with her adult sons a few times a year at Airbnbs. In shock, I asked her, “But WHO will get the same china and tree out for Christmas each year?”. She laughed at my absurd question because she had been planning for this transition and shedding possessions that weighed her down for many years.

I know where I fall on this very important question: I am staying right where I am as long as I can and giving back to the community that has given my family so much. I will be open to new friendships with people of all ages. I will volunteer for organizations like CASA and Big Brothers Big Sisters. And I will continue the work I recently began at an outpatient medical rehab for people with disabilities for as long as I physically can. Eventually, I hope to write and publish a memoir. My husband wants to get a lab puppy and “tinker” around the house. We both want to learn Spanish. He has a huge treasure trove of family photos he plans to cull, organize, restore and possibly publish. We won’t be bored. Hopefully we will have grandchildren and we will walk with them to the creek in our neighborhood and get ice cream in a neighborhood creamery.

Imagine my delight yesterday when one of my close girlfriends who has always planned to retire with her husband on the West Coast confided, “We are going to age in place.” Immediately, I imagined us as old women visiting the Nelson Atkins Museum and dining at Rozzelle Court together. Or riding the train at the Kansas City Zoo with our grandchildren. A fellow “ager in placer ” has emerged and I am overjoyed!

At our age, my husband and I are starting to watch people shed their professional lives and chase their dreams, sometimes taking them far away. I can’t imagine living anywhere else but the Midwest. We once owned 34 acres but did not have much time to enjoy it. There may be a future acre or two with a pond and an old farmhouse also, who knows. My friend’s announcement over lunch yesterday gave me hope and inspiration for the not too distant future we have waiting. According to “Blue Zones,” a longevity research project, people who live longest move naturally (e.g., walking outdoors, gardening) and have strong social/community ties. They also eat a plant-based diet fortified with lots of legumes and nuts. I look at it this way: if I have to move my body and eat healthy foods, I’d rather do it in Kansas City with the people I love most. Happy Aging in Place!