This simple word substitution opened a totally different door in my psyche.

What do I want?

Honestly? After thinking about it, I want it all.

Life is a veritable, all-you-can-eat, smorgasbord. It all looks so appetizing my mouth waters. I want to taste most everything. I want to read the Better After 50 booklist. I want to learn how to knit a hat–I can knit a scarf. I want to join a cooking club where we take turns trying new recipes on each other. I want to take a writing class, a meditation class, a succulent wreath making class, a Spanish class, a typing class. I want to learn to use Facebook and Twitter like a 20-something-year-old.

I confessed my desire to my monthly women’s group telling them I want it all. I heard myself repeating it several times because it felt soooo good to admit. I want it all. I want it all. I want it all. Iwantitall. Jude suggested this was greed. Everyone in the circle gasped. Did Jude just call me greedy?

I didn’t feel offended, I felt interested. Am I greedy? Is this greed? Gimme- gimme-have-you-got, my mom’s voice chided.

I looked up the definition of greed; an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power or food. Hmmm. I thought about this. Lord knows I don’t want to be selfish…I have heard of what happens to selfish women…

I realized I felt more hungry than greedy, more interested and excited than insatiable. I just don’t want to miss anything.

I wonder if this is what happens after 50, after the kids are grown, the nest is empty, and the diaper money that morphed into soccer camps, that morphed into prom gowns, that morphed into gas money, has finally found it’s way back into my wallet? Do I want it all because I have more time and resources? Because it’s my turn again?

Sorting through my many wants, in any given moment, takes discernment. It also requires the ability to tolerate disappointment. I don’t always get what I want. Sometimes because it is too much money. Or too much time. Or my work schedule gets in the way. Or I have conflicting wants–I want to go to that event but I also want to spend time by myself.

Letting myself want is a tricky business. Not so easy after-all.

Yet, I am enjoying going after what I want. I am even having fun telling you what I want…I want to sit home all day watching movie marathons in my p.j.’s, eating popcorn and homemade soup. I want to clean and organize the garage, paint the spare room, have lunch with my son, volunteer, go shopping with my daughter, write more, nap often…

Hmmm…Maybe the myth of selfish women is untrue. Maybe when we look out for our selves, trust what we want, we are happier. More fulfilled. Content.

What do you want?

Marcie described the beauty of the location of the sanctuary, the plight of elephants, and the amazing 4’8” woman than conceived of, created and managed the place. Apparently this tiny woman also recused 200 dogs from the flood in Bangkok in 2011. Marcie said the dogs followed this woman around like the Pied Piper, as did the elephants.

I was enthralled. I was also busy doing mental math, robbing Peter to pay Paul to finance my trip. I had to do this. Elephants have always brought me to tears with their giant tenderness and sense of family. They have been one of my animal teachers.

Marcie detailed the responsibilities of the volunteers. She talked about the ditches they dug in the sanctuary; about the 45 minute trips, standing in the back of a pickup truck driving to the corn fields where they cut and baled the corn for the elephants to eat; how, after baling the corn, they lifted the bales onto their shoulders and carried them to the waiting pickup, heaving them into the truck bed. At the end of the 8 hour day, in 100 degree heat, the group rode on top of the bales back to the sanctuary. Marcie described the scenery, from her place high atop the bales, as magnificent. I felt worried that she could have fallen off.

My excitement had begun to wane. I pictured myself there. With the elephants, in the corn fields, doing these chores. Just thinking about it made my back hurt. I questioned myself if I would have the strength to lift corn stalks to my shoulder, carry them to a pick up bed and throw them in? I doubted my stamina to do physical labor all day in the tropical heat. I imagined how sore I would be at the end of a day. I was already sweating.

I began to feel old. Very old. And weak. Maybe I wouldn’t go after all.

I comforted my wounded self image by reminding myself that I used to I lift and haul like an Amazon woman. If a washer needed to be moved, wood hauled and stacked, a room rearranged, a house built, a driveway shoveled, or a septic systems cleaned, I was your gal. I did it all. I took pride in my physical strength and my willingness to do-what-it-took to get a job done. It assured me I was not my mother’s daughter, who was a pampered princess. As a child, her mantra to me was, be careful you, you will hurt yourself.

I decided at an early age I would be strong.

Listening to Marcie I began to feel my physical vulnerability for the first time. Had I become my mom? I stewed on this for a few days. It occurred to me that I haven’t mowed a lawn in 4 years — and am really okay with this. How Tom insists on carrying the heaviest of the grocery bags into the house and I let him. How, sometimes, I even ask him to open the pickle jar because I don’t want to re-injure my hand.

OMG. Have I become a wimp?

I decided I would make myself go to Thailand. Maybe for two weeks. I would prove to myself I could still survive hard work…and misery.

Then it occurred to me, like a light bulb turning on as you open the refrigerator door — What if I didn’t want to do heavy lifting any more? What if the question was not, could I, but, did I want to?

My wattage increased with the brilliance of this question. I was so busy not being mom, that I never asked myself, Did I want to be an Amazonian? Perhaps sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.

Marcie assured me I would be physically able to do the work she described.

The question has now become, “Do I want to?”

I said, “Excuse me,” to her, paused momentarily, and then stepped between her and the much needed salad box. As I pulled the top box from the stack, she said, “Well, pardon me.” Accent on the WELL.

I felt the agitation in her voice. She was telling me I had rudely moved into her space. I held my breath and felt my own irritation with her as I recognized this as a choice point. How do I choose to respond? Do I apologize for my perceived affront or do I assert my intention? I took a moment.

I often base my decision, in these awkward moments, on my mood at the time. I am not proud of this method of determining my next move. I know I should base it on the highest good for all man and woman-kind. I should engage with her and explain myself. I should be nice. I should be relational. I should. I should.

Instead of what I should have done, I went with my tired, pissy and in-a-hurry mood. I responded with equal exasperation. I spoke over my shoulder to her, “I said excuse me.” Accent on the SAID.

She responded,”Well, I didn’t hear you.” Accent on the WELL, I DIDN’T HEAR YOU.

By this time I was half way down the first side of the salad bar. I had my spring mix, grape tomatoes, peas and was scooping-up some chick peas, answering her in my head, “Well, is it my job to make sure you hear me? How am I supposed to know you didn’t? Why didn’t you just move when you saw me headed for the salad boxes?”

I was working myself into a fit. How dare she!!!

Another choice point. Do I say any of this to her? Do I share my grumpy disposition further? Or do I save it for later when I need to I argue with Verizon about this months’ bill? I wasn’t sure I wanted to unload on a random woman at the salad bar.

As I was contemplating my next move and heaping coals on my defense, her friend came quietly up beside me. “Please let me apologize for my friends behavior,” she said, “she has dementia and this is not a good day for her.”

I was mortified with myself.

I looked this woman in the eye and told her it was really okay, I understood and thanked her for telling me.

I was ashamed. I was also extremely grateful I kept my indignation to myself; fully aware that my silence was not due to my niceness but to my indecisiveness.

I finished making my salad. Quietly. Humbly. I began to judge myself, telling myself what an awful person I am for being mean to a woman with dementia. Why couldn’t I just be nice? What was the big deal? So she said something snarky, couldn’t I have just risen above it, been my higher self?

As I moved toward the 10-items-or-less check out line, I stopped at the baked goods to bag a chocolate chip, pecan cookie, not that I deserved dessert after my bad behavior, and found myself standing next to the same two women. I overheard their loving interaction with each other. I was touched. I noticed how the woman that that approached me took care of her friend. They, too, were after something sweet.

In that moment of feeding our mutual sweet tooth’s, I felt our mutual humanness and fragility. I recognized how our humanity is sometimes the good news and other times the bad news.

I realized I can, or will, be my highest self…unless I am not. But, it is my job to take responsibility for both. Most of us are really trying doing our best. Everyday. Sometimes our best is lovely. Sometimes our best is not so great.

If I keep that in mind, I will be gentler with your humanness…as well as my own.

A lifetime of fear of his physical and verbal aggression lives in my cell tissue. I am undone every time I encounter his hostility toward me. I end up mad at myself for giving him such power. I fantasize my ability to square off with him, face to face, and with no quiver in my voice, tell him, “Shut the fuck up.”

Instead, I have jello legs, my heart beats out of my chest, and I can’t breathe. I hate him and then myself for responding like a wimp…again. My body responds to the danger by shutting down when my head wants me to either take him out or run away fast and quickly. My head and my body are at odds with one another.

After my encounter, Tom and I headed back to our hotel, stopping on Hope Street (how appropriate) to browse in some of the cute shoppes we had driven past for the last two days. Tom went into the men’s shoppe, I found PB&J’s, a woman’s boutique. It seemed a bit high end for me, but touching the soft fabric soothed me, doing something mundane, like shopping, helped me feel normal.

Then I saw it. A coat. Not just any coat. A great coat. Hanging there, against a wall, so beautifully displayed in it’s isolated simplicity. I knew, as I walked toward it, hands outstretched like I was headed toward the Light, I did not need a new coat. But again my body and mind begged to differ. My feet walked toward the coat regardless of my recent decision to reline and revamp my favorite 10 year old alpaca overcoat.

“Oh, what the heIl,” I cajoled myself as I tried it on. In the mirror looking back at me I saw a grown up, not the frightened child quivering inside. In this well done, cheetah faux fur coat, I felt powerful…dangerous even. Now I am not usually not an animal print person. I think it looks sexy on other women, but I feel a bit pretentious when I wear it. But, this coat was different. Wrapped in it I felt sleek, tall and not afraid. My nervous system calmed. The good enough to eat saffron satin lining sealed the deal. I felt carnivorous. “Don’t mess with me, I will eat you!”

I pulled out my Visa and bought the coat. Thanks to an after Christmas sale it was 25% off, even better. Tom, who had wandered into the store to find me, foolishly asked if I thought the coat would be warm? “Warm? Who cares?” I responded. I left the store, with my totem coat casually draped over my arm, feeling like Audrey Hepburn in her understated glamour.

Yesterday, I shared my weekend with a dear group of women friends. I cried with them as I told them about my terror. I admitted adrenaline was still running through my veins making me forgetful, easily startled and exhausted. They listened and loved me as only wonderful woman friends can. They soothed my self loathing by assuring me it was smart to trust my bodies reaction of terror when facing my brother’s disowned malevolence. They said when someone is being terrorized they are supposed to feel terrified.

As I prepared to leave, throwing my coat over my shoulders, they shared my excitement in buying a powerful, sharp clawed cat coat to made me feel safer. Stronger. And run faster.

In 2011 I changed it up. I resolved to sign my name neatly, every time, after I swiped my credit card through the payment pad in the drug stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, I frequent. My thinking…it would slow me down in the check out line so I would remember to breathe at least once that day, as well as, act as an experiment, of sorts, determining if I could, by the end of 2011, master the art of legible touch screen signature signing. I did rather well with this, 2011 was one of my more accomplished years, resolution-ally speaking.

In 2012, I know I made some, unfortunately I don’t remember what they were.

I have been wondering what promise to shepherd into 2013. I composed some birthday declarations earlier in December, so I feel a bit resolution redundant.

However, I just read an article http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/good-news/chain-reaction-tim-hortons-goodwill-183517438.html that gave me a possible idea for a new, never before done by me, New Year’s intention.

Once a week I will pay a kindness forward.

(If this were a movie and you were listening to the soundtrack, a needle was just pulled across the vinyl record. EEECCCCCHHHHHH)

All my failed New Year’s resolutions pass before my eyes. Unfulfilled promises to myself. Disappointments felt as I reread the lofty list, written by me, a well meaning, albeit naive, woman on the last night of the year. High hopes not reached. To further my shame, if I tell all of you I am going to commit to this weekly practice and I wimp out or forget or just don’t want to do it anymore, my ignominious rout will be public.

Perhaps I should simply pledge to put gas in my car each week and have another successful year.

The good news, or the bad-not quite sure sometimes-is I am not one to turn away from a challenge. I have thrown the resolution quantlet at my feet. I accept my challenge.

In 2013, I will pay a kindness forward, I will offer random acts of kindness, I will attempt to make someone’s day more pleasant…at least once a week. And I will keep you all posted on my progress…or lack thereof.

Would any of you like to join me by sharing your resolution for 2013? Putting it in print  certainly ups the ante. (Again the good news and the bad.) And if you do, I won’t feel so “out there” by myself…nothing like a little New Year’s guilt.

I remember, sitting on moms bed as a young girl, watching her get ready to go out with my dad, putting on dresses that are now back in style, admiring her sartorial chicness. I would dream of being old enough to dress up…and stay out late.

As she accessorized she would tell me, “Someday this will be yours,” pointing to her mother’s diamond ring, or holding up the string of pearls she brought back from Japan while my she and my dad were stationed there. I couldn’t wait.

Now they are mine. It is a bittersweet acquisition.

As I don the pink and white, two tiered, strand of beads, that are so retro today, I feel as young as my mom was when she worn them in the early 60’s. When I slip on the large gold signet ring my uncle left to her, I feel the weighty presence of the family legacy. As I admire the diamond sets from my grandmother, too small for any of my fingers, I wonder if I should have them reset into something contemporary, hesitant to disturb their antiquity but sad to leave them sitting in a drawer.

My uncle, a Col. in the Army, traveled all over the world. He returned home for visits gifting me with a doll from the foreign lands he visited. I looked forward to his visits and the dolls. When I reached adolescence, he switched it up. He started a gold charm bracelet for me, so instead of dolls he brought me charms from his travels. As a discerning 12 year old I wondered what in the world was he thinking? The bracelet was designed with heavy links of solid 14 carat gold, not suited to my young wrist or adolescent sense of style.  Besides, I had no place to wear it.

Mom decided it suited her wrist and her taste, so she began to wear it on her dressed up evenings out. Even though I wasn’t consulted, I was willing to share, my silent generosity making me feel older. After wearing the bracelet several times she complained that one particular charm, a large sword fish, a token of my uncle’s catch on a deep sea fishing trip…glad he opted for a charm instead of stuffing and mounting the poor thing, was poking her with it’s nose…sword.

Her solution? She took it to the jewelers and had the nose cut off. (Her maxim, if it pokes you, cut it off…imagine how my dad felt.) I couldn’t, and still can’t, believe she did that. In todays market that nose is worth a small fortune.

Each time I wear the bracelet, resplendent with it’s swordless fish charm, appreciative of my uncles foresight in choosing a bracelet with my 55 year old wrist in mind, instead of my 12 year old wrist, I remember the argument my mom and I had when I discovered the maimed fish. I was appalled. I felt sorry for the butchered fish and became it’s advocate, ever so slightly too late, telling my mom she had no right. Mom didn’t see it that way.

All of this comes back to me as I unpack her jewelry boxes. I feel heart wrenched and soothed, both feelings jumbled together, like a mishmash of tangled necklaces, difficult to separate but doable with enough time and patience.

For my birthday this year, my husband gave me a rich, blue leather jewelry box. It is spectacular with it’s drawers, ring holders and travel jewelry box tucked within. I feel like a grown up each time I open it. He said I needed a special place to store my families treasures.

My mom’s story has a new home.

Last year my x husband’s fiance announced during a dinner, celebrating my daughters opening night performance in a college play, that she wanted the Friday after Thanksgiving as their family tradition time so they could all go shoot sporting clays as a family. The words tradition and family spoken in the same sentence, to my children, by a woman I had only met that night struck me as odd. Odd is being kind. I thought it was presumptuous, inconsiderate, thoughtless and just wrong.

But so it goes with divorces and re marriages. I told myself I had better get used to it, that it could’ve been worse, she could be lobbying for Thanksgiving Day. I reminded my self I used to have to do my x husbands bidding and now Patty (yes, my x is remarrying a woman named Patty, who lives in Boswell, PA. Just too weird) is speaking for him.

I would not have been as offended if he had made the request, parent to parent, since in my book of etiquette, parents have equal rights to holiday requests. Future step mothers do not.

Last Thanksgiving came and went. I prepared all the foods my kids had come to love over the years. My father’s family’s Alabama corn bread stuffing, my mom’s creamed onions and cranberry bread, my x sister in laws garlic green beans, the table lovingly set with grandma’s china that I grew up eating holiday meals on, with Mama B’s hand crocheted ecru tablecloth providing the foundation for the feast.

A beautiful, exhausting day. A week’s worth of prep. An hours worth of eating. I am not the first mom to experience this imbalance, nor the last. I will live to do it again and again, gracefully for as long as I can.

As these holidays approach and I begin to make plans, the juggling begins. I can’t help but feel bad for the kids. I remember all the running between families when I was newly married and there were no step families involved, just in laws. Leaving one holiday table, to feign hunger at the next full course meal, thankful that my young metabolism could mange all those mashed potatoes and homemade pies and cookies without increasing my pants size come the new year. (Not so anymore…I really feel bad about that!)

This conglomerate of blended families at the holidays is challenging, at best, to navigate. With expectations building the compromise begins, again.

Happy Holidays!!!

So three weeks later, I gasped when I saw, in my email inbox, a cryptic Facebook post from my daughter about life and relationships, ending with, “RIP grandpa.”

For some reason whenever my daughter does anything on her Facebook page I get an email about it. In some ways I like receiving these frequent slices into her life. I feel included. Sometimes, however, it is as they say, “TMI.” Now I am not a Facebook aficionado so I don’t know how this happens or how to stop it. I do plan to learn though-for two reasons. One, because I was told it is necessary to use Facebook to draw readers to my blog. Secondly because I was told if you keep learning new computer skills it helps prevent Alzheimer’s.

I clicked on the link on the email to get the whole story. I read the comments from her friends. I looked at the endearing picture of her and her grandfather, arms around each other, cheeks pressed together smiling for the camera. Lower on the page there was a picture, that I remember taking, of Jena and her grandpa when she was young. They are facing each other, looking directly at one another, Ed’s hands on her sides stabilizing her. A bit of drool on Jena’s chin… It has always been one of my favorites.

I was in shock. Ed had died. I always liked Ed. Unfortunately, in laws are often a causality of divorce. Our divorce was no exception. Memories of Ed’s warm hugs and sage advise to me when my dad threatened not come to our wedding flooded my thoughts.

I didn’t know what to do. What is the protocol here? What is the social media etiquette in this case? Is there any? I read through the many comments of condolences and wondered, “Should I comment too?” Dear Jena, So sorry to hear about your grandfathers death. Love Mom. How weird would that be?

I felt like an eavesdropper.

I felt hurt.

I was really confused about what to do.

My rule is when in doubt…do nothing. I decided to follow my own advice until I could make some sense of this. I talked with my friends Debbie and Susan and they agreed. (They don’t even have Facebook pages.)

The next day my X husband emailed me telling me his dad had passed. His telling me directly seemed to grant me permission to know. I then knew what to do, I called my kids. Strange how that worked. Or at least used to work. Bad news was passed from the family to an inner circle of specific people which they then shared with the larger community. It seems social media is changing that. At least in this case.

This all makes me wonder about how we use Facebook. On one hand, this was Jena’s way to share her news. She was able to tell her 566 “friends,” in one easily typewritten sentence, the death of her grandfather. In return, probably instantaneously, she could receive heartfelt warmth and sympathy. Instant compassion.

On the other hand is Facebook the acceptable way to inform others the intimacies of one’s life? Does social media replace deliberate sharing to a chosen few? Does It afford, in some cases, a welcomed distance when sharing difficult news?

What are the social mores of social media? Are there any? Maybe we can come up with some. Any ideas?

I have one:

1. Call your mother concerning any death in your family before posting it on Facebook.

Spending the week in Shangri-La also had a dark side, and mine showed up big time. I began comparing my life circumstances to that of my friends. I tormented myself with, “Where did I go wrong? What if I had gone to a better college? Maybe followed a different career path.”

Then I moved into what I call Cinderella questions. These have to do with a man rescuing me. “Should I have married a rich man, someone who could have provided paradise?” And if so, “How come I didn’t?” My answers were not pretty. My inferiority was in full bloom. She straight-out informed me that I could never have landed a rich man. I am not good enough. Not smart enough. Not pretty enough. (I’ll end here if you don’t mind; this is depressing.)

I thought about my middle class family of origin and how I learned limits. How not to expect more than there was. How to be happy with what you had. These are lessons I respect but as I wandered the rooms of this magnificent home, I began to challenge them. What if I expected more? Wanted more? What if being dissatisfied led me to more? Would this be my house?

The onslaught of questions left me uncertain of me. I was knocked off my center. However I knew, from past encounters with my darkness, that these shadow sightings are often a good thing…in the end. I trusted if I could stay present to myself long enough, listened to my self judgements until they were hoarse and was honest about this predatory side of me, I would land back on my feet with a greater love and trust for myself. (At least that is what I told myself.)

This was risky business-listening to me compare myself to others. I noticed how comparing myself never ends well. When I compare myself to people who have more I feel less than and when I compare myself to people who have less I feel guilty. It is a lose/lose proposition.

Returning home to my no longer newlywed husband I find myself feeling satisfied as I look around my surroundings. I feel at home in our space. I love our 7’ x 9’ deck overlooking enough trees that one might think it is woods, but it’s not. I like the simplicity. I welcome the familiarity. And I adore the man I picked, and would pick all over again.

So perhaps in the end it is all good. Both Shangri-La and middle class are wonderful gifts to be fully enjoyed.

It is comparing yourself to others that limits what you can love, mainly in yourself.

Ms. Burner went on to ask the women in the audience, if they felt comfortable doing so, to stand and acknowledge having had an abortion.  Apparently women stood up. Tentatively at first, then as momentum built and courage spread, women throughout the crowd stood in admission of the abortion they endured.

Ms. Burner then asked all of those in the audience who supported the women standing to join them. Everyone in the room rose to their feet.

As a woman raised by a stay at home mom in the late 50‘s, who was told I could be and do anything I put my mind to but who was refused a credit card at 23 because I was not married (but was working) I applaud Ms. Burners challenging the war on women.

However, I want to ask the audience a different question. I want to ask the men in the audience, if they are comfortable doing so, to stand if a partner they have impregnated has had an abortion. If my math is correct, if over fifty-million women will have an abortion then over fifty-million men have too.

This is not a war that is gender exclusive. This “war on women” needs a voluntary draft of Baby Daddy’s stepping up to the bassinets and fighting with women to preserve reproductive rights. As they say, it takes two to tango and it is time the other half enlists.

When the women in the audience of the Netroots Nation session stood, an email went out by Digby, John and Howie and the Leadership of Blue America. They commented on the shame women feel in admitting an abortion by writing, “That’s not an easy thing to do in this culture, even among friends. The right has made it a dishonorable, solitary act, borne in silence, subject to fear and social stigma.”

This stigma seems to be placed on the shoulders of the mother. I see bumper stickers that say Choose Life…Your Mother Did. Come on folks, unless it is immaculate conception their dad too. Since Freud, moms are blamed for everything. Believe me. As a “seasoned” therapist and a mom of adult kids I know this is true.

The Center for Disease Control reported in 2008, 84.3% of all abortions were performed on unmarried women. The Guttmacher Institute states nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended; about 4 in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion.

Has a woman’s right to choose morphed into the convenient belief she is solely responsible and therefore the enemy in a war against her?

We need to remember behind every aborting woman there is an aborting man. Fifty-million to be exact and it is time they stand up too.