I read a fact the other day that surprised me; it stated that Father’s Day wasn’t a holiday until 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed a bill introducing it into our American Hallmark world. The month of June and necktie sales haven’t been quite the same since then.

My husband died when he was young.  I was young.  Our children were too. It happened at Disneyland.

The other day, I asked AI to create an image of what I might look like at 80 years old. I'm not entirely sure what I expected, but I know what I would have done a few years ago. I would have looked at it, focused on every wrinkle and sign of aging, and probably deleted it within seconds.

Women spend an extraordinary amount of their lives thinking about appearance—how they look, how they compare, and what it takes to remain attractive in a culture that places enormous value on beauty and youth. For many, it becomes such a constant part of life that they no longer notice how much mental and emotional space it occupies.

The other day, I found myself thinking about money, not because I was paying bills or reviewing an investment account, but because I started wondering what life might look like if everything we value worked like a bank account. Not just money, but time, energy, attention, peace, and love. If we could actually see the balance of those accounts each day, would we spend them differently?

A few years back, I was in a bookstore and stumbled upon a book called The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way you Are by Dr. Kevin Lehman. I read this book cover to cover in one flight from Phoenix to Columbus, Ohio and concluded that Lehman was a genius. But then again, I was always looking for some kind of reason or justification as to why I was different from my sister, or anyone else in my family for that matter, and Lehman helped prove my case.

When you’re a woman, you can count on at least one thing—you’ll spend a good chunk of your life-giving advice. It’s like we’re born with an invisible sign that says, “Tell me your problems, I’ll overthink them with you.”

Homesick for Heaven

My writing muscle is a bit weak these days. Much like working out my abs or, God-forbid my butt, it’s a use-it-or-lose it scenario. I have found that the less I write, the less I am able to get words out of my head in a conversation, much less tap them out on a keyboard. How does this make sense?

Time is such an illusion. Revisiting memories feels like yesterday but forever at the same time. It’s sad when you can’t pick your babies up anymore. Or hold their hand.

Judge if you must, but what I learned from this unplanned experiment has changed my perspective on a lot of things. First of all, if you really know me, you might be thinking, “This really isn’t that much of a stretch, she wears black all the time.”  TRUE. However, I have never repeated the same outfit every day for a month. As for my favorite color, a few years ago I saw a meme that read, “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.”  I seriously wanted to hunt down the person who wrote it, because I was convinced, we had been separated at birth. 

Tuesday and Wednesday were really the pits - lower than low and I don’t know why. It’s been 27 days now and it seems like yesterday.  Maybe there are just too many unknowns, maybe because of not having closure with Don's death certificate, or maybe just because I am lonely.