I never miss the Oscars, which I’ve been watching through all my aspirations and careers, including film school student.
Last night, I watched the Oscars without our late cat Oscar, who always deserved an Oscar for best supporting cat. For many reasons, watching last night’s Oscars just wasn’t the same.
How many Oscars do you see in today’s images?
Here’s the best all-round acceptance speech from last night’s Oscars:
Yuh-Jung Youn definitely deserves an Oscar and much more.
I have no Oscars to award today but just gratitude to all who help me create this daily blog, including YOU!
Yesterday, when the wonderful hands of Mia from MiAlisa Salon were giving me a hands-down fabulous haircut, Mia told me about a beautiful way she has been self-soothing during these hard times. She holds her own hand.
Mia said that she held and held her mother’s hand in her hand while her mother was dying, and she misses her mother. Now, when she clasps her own two hands together, she feels powerfully comforted, settled, and anchored. Mia said holding hands with herself also helps her fall asleep.
I told Mia that I have been encouraging people in my Coping and Healing groups to give themselves hugs and that I will add clasping their own hands to the self-soothing repertoire.
And I am happy to report, this morning, that holding hands with myself helped me sleep through the night for the first time in months!
My sleep is also being helped by the growing certainty that my country will soon be in better hands. For the past four years, the USA has been in the hands of a toxic narcissist.
Speaking of hands, if anyone wants to see me play the ukulele with my own hands tomorrow evening, please sign up to be in the audience before the end of the day today using this link:
Because grief for the loss of our principal cat Oscar is a principal ingredient in my life right now, I have only a few new photos to share today.
Since I caught the coronavirus at a group therapy conference in NYC the first week in March, my husband Michael and I have not been able to find my keys. Apparently, my keys are not a principal ingredient, because I haven’t needed them.
Other principal ingredients are courage, honesty, dignity, decency, and respect, so here‘s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s recent speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:
Principal ingredients of this blog are your comments and my gratitude.
I’m also focusing on “dealing with change” today because next week I’ll be conducting a version of my Coping and Healing groups for staff at the major Boston hospital where I work. That’s a change for me and I’m going to focus the group topic on dealing with change, since we’re all dealing with so much change, especially in the health care industry.
One way I deal with change is to blog here daily and to share my photos from the day before. Today’s photos feature
Julie, the lovely woman from my high school who helped me deal with Hillel’s death by inviting me to stay at her place Tuesday night and go to Hillel’s funeral together,
Julie’s pets, including two cats and a dog,
Julie’s beautiful home, inside and out,
the cemetery where Hillel was buried yesterday, and
the delicious meal Michael served me when I finally got home last night.
If you want to change the size of any of those photos, just click to enlarge.
traveling to attend the funeral of my friend, Hillel, tomorrow,
love,
appreciation,
sorrow,
memories,
being in the moment,
hope for the future,
me, and
you.
Today it’s all about the photos I took yesterday to self soothe in the midst of loss.
Today it’s all about missing the cats and Michael but it’s also about appreciating the lovely woman from my high school who is welcoming me into her home this evening so we can drive together to Hillel’s funeral tomorrow.
If you watch that video about Rashad Jennings‘s book, you’ll hear how he got off the sidelines of his life, stopped blaming people, stopped making excuses, and started taking ownership and responsibility.
If you were to write a book about your life, what would the title be?
If I can find an appropriate photo, I’ll end this post with gratitude.
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 