Happy Graduation Boy!

You don't raise heroes, you raise sons.  And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.  ~Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

My son is graduating from high school in a few weeks. My boy, Mark. We actually call him boy. When Kelly, his youngest sister, was little she referred to him as ‘boy’ since he was the only boy around with three sisters it made sense and it stuck.

It is an exciting time in his life. Not on the cusp of becoming a man but full on grown up manhood. He is everything anyone could ever want in a son and I am so proud of the person he is.

When I was in high school one of my favorite books was The Great Santini by Pat Conroy. (It was also a great movie, perfectly cast!) I specifically remember when I read the letter that the main character Ben’s mother wrote him on his 18^th birthday that I wanted to write my own son a letter like that one day. It struck a chord with me then and as I thought about my boy graduating I remembered that letter. I couldn’t say it better than Pat Conroy so here it is…

"My dear son, my dear Ben, my dear friend who becomes a man today, I want to tell you something," the letter began. "You are my eldest child, the child I have known the longest, the child I have held the longest. I wanted to write you a letter about being a man and what it means to be a man in the fullest sense. I wanted to tell you that gentleness is the quality I have admired the most in men, but then I remembered how gentle you were. So I decided to write something else. I want you to always follow your noblest instincts. I want you to be a force for right and good. I want you to always defend the weak as I have taught you to do. I want you to always be brave and know that whatever you do or wherever you go, you walk with my blessings and my love. Keep your faith in God, your humility, and your sense of humor. Decide what you want from life then let nothing deter you from getting it. I have had many regrets in my life and many sadnesses but I will never regret the night you were born. I thought I knew about love and the boundaries of love until I raised you these past eighteen years. I knew nothing about love. That has been your gift to me. Happy Birthday, Mama"

It isn’t Mark’s 18^th birthday, that day has come and gone. And he is not the oldest either, that belongs to his sister. But as he embarks on the journey of his life as a man I am happy to say he embodies the qualities that as a 16 year old girl I dreamt my future son to have one day. Our dear friend, Ferdie Wandelt once said, “Mark has a moral compass the likes that is rarely seen on a boy his age.” (One of my most proud moments.)

So Mark, boy, I know you are not perfect and I know you have and you will make mistakes,(sometimes you are the biggest bonehead of all in fact), but I love that you are the champion of the underdog, and the defender of the weak. I love that you follow your noblest instincts and always have. I love your sense of humor, you can always make me laugh and you break my heart just to look at you sometimes I love you so much.

I am not under any false pretenses that we made you who you are. You were born with the heart you have. You are you and neither Dad or I can take credit for the man you have chosen to become. You did that all on your own. (and if things go south from here on out and you turn out to be a bank robber or something, that’s not my fault either.)

Enjoy this magical summer between high school and college. The world is waiting for you and everything and anything is possible. Keep being yourself no matter where you go or what you do. Even when we are not around, we are with you every step of the way. 

Amazing Women, Amazing Weekend.

You don't have to search to find out who you are, you have to get quiet and remember who you have been all along.

YogaFit level 5 training was held this past weekend in Longwood, Florida.

I have been to everything from a Yoga Bikini Boot Camp to a silent meditation retreat and trainings in between and have never been on a bad yoga weekend. Some experiences are more interesting than others, but I always manage to get something out of them even if it is in retrospect. This weekend was different right from the beginning. The required reading for the weekend was Deb Shapiro’s ‘Your Body Speaks Your Mind.'  About self-care and listening to what your body is telling you about your life and health. We also received Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of NOW’. How to identify your ‘pain body’ and cast it away to make room for the light that is already in you that your pain body cannot survive in, (Spoiler alert! You are the light!)

We were 19 women all together, 18 trainees and 1 trainer. The collective energy of our souls recognized what we had in this room before our ‘pain bodies’ did. Within an hour of coming together we felt comfortable enough with each other to share our stories on a very personal level. The room in the ballet school that the training was being held in was a cozy little Shangri-La and fears, competition and judgments were left on the steamy sidewalk outside.

Women of all ages, shapes and sizes welcomed, supported and gave helpful advice to each other over the course of the two days together. I hesitate to speak specifically of what was said because that belongs to the people who were there. The stories that were shared ran the spectrum of difficult times to unthinkable tragedy. We rallied around each other the way only a room full of strong women can do. (Pero), It wasn’t all Lilith Fair, we had a lot of laughs and I had a great dinner at the hotel with Janet our fearless leader, who shared a lot of her own personal stories of life. Using her own stories and encouraging us, (not that we needed encouragement!) to share ours in a way that related to the text at hand was an easy and enlightening way to understand the material on a deeper level. We can all relate to the human experience since we are all after all, human. Culminating this training into being the most personal one, for me, to date.

Of course during a guided meditation where we had to repeat affirmations it was all I could do at the end to not throw a Stuart Smalley in there and yell out, “And dog gone it, people like me!” But, I bit my tongue and giggled to myself. Someday I will be a grown up.

At the end of the two days we had listened, laughed, wept, danced and we were somehow transformed into someone else than who we were when we arrived there. We realized it is not what we learn that enlightens us but the pain from our past that we let go of LIGHTENS us. Amazing people, and a truly amazing weekend.