Fly me to the moon
I am in Kona, Hawaii. I landed late and was greeted by the blood moon in the night sky. What a thrill! When I woke this morning at 6am and went out to the lanai, I was greeted by that very same moon setting over the ocean.
This is the first solo trip since Bill passed wherein I am not meeting up with any friends. I know no one on the island. Given that, it is somehow comforting to be staying in the vacation rental condo of dear friends. They’re not here but this home is a reflection of them. The neighbors are their friends and therefore can be counted on if I need them. Somehow all this helps.
I was thinking this morning about how weird it feels not to have someone to wrap my day around. There is me. People say, “This is your time. Be good to yourself,” and I wonder how to do that. When Bill was ill, I spent a lot of time doing whatever I could to make his days easier. When my girls were growing up, I thought about their needs. Now that it’s my time, I guess the place to look for how to do it is to consider my modus operandi when it came to them. How can I adapt what I so naturally do for others, to the needs of that person who looks back at me in the mirror every morning?
So my week on Kona (and I am here to write, not just to play) will be experimental. Every morning, when I sit down with my cup of tea, I will have pen and paper nearby and answer these two questions:
- “What will make your life easier today?”
- “At the end of the day, if you feel it’s been a good day, what will have happened?
I invite you to join me. Let’s grow together. Let’s find out what it’s like to take care of our own needs as well as we do the needs of others. Some of you are far ahead of me in this process, others are where I am right now and still others are thinking, “What the heck is she talking about?” Wherever you are in the process, I invite you to get up ten minutes early each day to do this exercise.
It will be fun to see what happens.
