April 10, 2024 Brenda writing for future generations

 How would you characterize your values, your beliefs

Do you ave family stories events that illustrate these?

Family sayings?

Make a list of what comes to mind. 

Do you want to include this aspect in your Legacy Writing?

Five minutes: values or beliefs: if you can’t say anything nice. Hard work. Education above all else. Self reliance, you can fix anything, if you can fix it don’t hire someone else to do it. If it isn’t broken don’t fix it. Make it last. Use up everything. Don’t waste. If you lend something to someone don’t expect it back. Don’t waste. If you can make it yourself don’t buy it made. Waste not want not. You can grow anything you need. Work hard. Don’t borrow from others because you might not be able to pay them back. Keep it to yourself. If something comes up in the family, drop everything, except school or work. If you can, do it. If someone in the family needs help, drop everything to help them. Don’t be mean. Don’t be sarcastic. Say what you mean. Don’t say too much. Don’t tell anyone what you make at work. Don’t share anything personal from the family. 

My dad and his pet crow, borrowing something from the neighbor, mom’s stories about her kids. 

Consider what is important in your life, what you really values

Things you value might include your family, your faith, your job, music, art, sports, reading or spending time with loved ones.

Pick three things and in 10 minutes write a couple of sentences about why they a re important to you.

Protect your brothers and sister. As the oldest I was responsible or at least felt responsible for my younger siblings, and also at fault for anything they did. I couldn’t complain about them because what they did under my care was my doing by implication. This translates into grand parenting. I am having a hard time understanding the jealousy and acting out of one of my grandchildren. Part of it is not wanting to enable his behavior, feeling like I should be able to anticipate his meltdowns, which seem to be related to anytime I pay attention to anything else, or if he perceives that I am paying more attention to anything else, As though it ends out taking something away from him, and he then seems to last out as if something was actually taken from him.

If you can make it don’t buy it. Painting and writing a book, making a garden, etc. 

Say what you mean but don’t say anything personal, don’t be frivolous. Learn everything you can. I have a hard time with sarcasm, which is perceived as wit in some circles but makes me cringe. 

THIS I BELIEVE.ORG

1. TELL A STORY ABOUT YOU (VALUES STORY ABOUT YOU)

2. BE BRIEF (GET TO THE POINT), 3 MINUTES

3. NAME YOUR BELIEF (IF YOU CAN’T NAME IT GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD)

5. BE POSITIVE, NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT

6. BE PERSONAL

A reading a part of one. TITLE. Lauren Brown. The Power of Potstickers. I believe in my mother’s cooking. Ever since my Mother realized I would have to cook by myself in college. Whether it was garlic, pressure cooker, potstickers, cooking more an art than a hard science. Pour rice without measure int, something’s won’t be perfect, so have to see what had to do to recover the dish, and saw what she had to do in life. Straight forward writing, grounded in her life, positive. 

CaPTURED MOMENT

This I believe, or this person I believe in. I’ve always believed that the truth will show up when you need it. I’m thinking about this now because a few days ago, my little brother showed up at my doorstep. He was on his way to tree the Solar Eclipse and said it was on his way to drive to Grand Rapiids on his way to southern Illinois to see the eclipse. I have to admit I didn’t really understand it, but my little brother has said things over the years that have struck me as meaningful, like when he was 16 and made this statement about the meaning of life, and really I was in such a turmoil that I never thought about those things. But when he said it, it was just the right thing at the right time when I could stop and think about meaning in my life. So I did, and made sure that whatever I was doing had some meaning to it beyond just day to day survival. So of coulrse a 900 mile trip to Grenada Rapids followed by 1200 more miles before he made it home made sense. And in the process he reconnected with other friends who showed up to my house, one of which is took care of for three months when she was only 11 at the time, and he was only 20 and had never watched children or taken care of children, and actually worked a night shift, and thus experienced single parenting of not one but of three children 11 10 and 6. Actually I didn’t know that had happened and if all of those people hadn’t shown up to my house at the same time, I never would have known. He never would’ve had resolution to his decades old question of “What happened to those children, did they turn out ok, was my fatigued daytime parenting damaging to them” They were fine, one was a psychologist and now started a summer camp for special needs kids, one was a high profile tech guru and that problem solved large systems and wrote programs and the other an international financial adviser. He was relieved to find all of that out. And I had the confirmation that once again my little brother and this time the universe in the form of a solar eclipse had brought all of the elements together to make sense of some kind of an experience I knew nothing about, and left me again with questions to be answered: what was my role in all of this? I can’t wait for another eclipse, but my brother who keeps almost everything “to himself” is now sharing his experiences in a way I would never even know how to ask. So, I guess I remain open to possibilities, and ways to be in the world that perhaps will never be predetermined and perhaps never scripted by me. But Open to Possibilities when you least expect them. It left me with questions, but I guess insisting on answers in this moment will not result in the kind of resolution or clossure I might think I need, but waiting for the unexpected moment will give me much more. 

HOPES: Brainstorm

What role do your hopes playin your Legacy Writing

Do you know what they are

Consider your audience:What do you want to say to them

Make a list of your  hopes.

Hope to connect with my family. Hope to share the love my family has shown to me, in a way that they can feel that love. I want to say to them that  I  love them all and that my prayers are for healing, love and meaning in life in every day. LIST: connect more, love more, be healthy enough to share that love.

I  can I will

Carol and her prayer of thanks to God and her family and life in general.

Pick three and take notes for future in depth writing 5 minutes

I wanted all my writing to be about LOVE and now I realize that is only what I want to write about. The love that has surrounded me over my life, and wanting to give that message to my daughter and her family, and my family. Just plain unabashed love. It is overwhelming, like what Carol said, to wake up in the morning and be so grateful to Life, God, The Day, The World, The Universe in a way that is really quite unaccountable, difficult to explain without a note or undertone of the negative. I guess that is what I want to write about, stories of love, unexplained, spontaneous acts that surround me on a daily basis. I realize that this may not be as esoteric or sophisticated as a metaphor of love, or metaphor of connections but that is who I am and have been. And this writing would be a way to respect that part of myself that I have dismissed as too mushy, maybe too soft to share without being trite. So that would be the best of writing of me, when all was said and done. 

WRITE A LETTER FOR THIS  I BELIEVE LIFE LESSONS, CERTAIN DATE IN THE FUTURE. CAN CREATE MULTIPLE LETTERS. SOMEONE IN GENERAL, SOMEONE IN  MIND.

DEAR WHOEVER ABOUT THE HOPES YOU HAVE FOR THAT PERSON OR THE WORLD

Story about you, be brief, name our beliefs, be positive, be personal.

Dear Maia,

You once asked me to write about something real. Something about me, not about some fictional person. Now that I have had some time to think about it, and have taken writing courses, so I know a way to format it I am sending you this letter. When you were first born, I hoped to write everything down on a daily basis, I was so in wonder of this delightful being, you, that had brought love into my life in a way that I had never experienced before. It was so much love, I felt I could love the world and everything in it because it seemed more than I should be allowed to experience. There really isn’t anything that has compared to that, but I now realize there have been moments in my life where I saw love around me or recognized it in others, or saw that what I was doing was an act of love. So this is the content of what I am writing for you. A series of storie, perhaps letters, perhaps essays that reflect what I perceive as the concept of Love. Since grandchildren have become part of my life, I have started to see that love again, and so I am writing this for them too, if you want to share it.

LOVE AS A PRAYER

On March 30, 2024 at 8:30 pm at night I attended the Easter Vigil at La Iglesia de San Isidro where there is a Shrine of the Virgen Guadalupe. It started with a bonfire on the patio in front of the church. All of the lights were dimmed in the church and the patio was filled with people, the priest dressed in white, the communicants in white, the about to be baptized children in white, the nuns in white and blue. It was cold, and the fire didn’t offer any warmth, but the priest seemed jubilant, with flames flickering he poured the blessed oil on the fire and the sparks floated in the air, I still have the small burn hole in my pants! He read as the words were held in front of him, first in Spanish and then in English and jubilantly lit the candle that he would carry back into the church, now a blessed flame to light the rest of the candle the hundreds of parishioners held for him. The church filled, the lights were brought up the reading were read and the whole church was jubilitant and cheering as the almost floating image of Jesus was described as ascending into heaven.  The music became more rhythmic and the congregation sang and swayed and almost danced as the priest led them in songs of praise. I loved it and realized that the three hours we that I spent there were filled with joy and happiness, this story of a man willing to take the burden of the world into heaven was inspiring as so many stories of religious leaders are. I loved it.