There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and noticed she had only three hairs on her head. “Well,” she said. “I think I’ll braid my hair today.” So she did and she had a wonderful day.
The next day, the woman woke up, looked in the mirror, and saw that she had only two hairs on her head. “Hmm,” she said. “I think I’ll part my hair down the middle today.” So she did and she had a grand day.
The next day, she woke up, looked in the mirror, and noticed that she had only one hair on her head. “Ha,” she said. “Today I’m going to wear my hair in a pony tail.” So she did and she had a super fun day.
The next day, the woman woke up, looked in the mirror, and noticed that there wasn’t a single hair on her head. “YAY!” she exclaimed. “I don’t have to fix my hair today!”
I don’t know where this parable originated, but I smile every time I think of it–and I’m reminded of the best advice I ever received: “Keep in mind that attitude is everything.”
In a recent VibrantNation.com interview with Ask Amy’s Amy Dickinson, the author and advice columnist talked about her forthcoming book, The Mighty Queens of Freeville, and offered this gem: “I feel we all deserve a happy ending, but it really, really helps to have a happy before.”
So tell me, what’s the best advice you ever received from another woman?
| Learn more about “Ask Amy” syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson: |
Thank you for sharing. I feel your pain and I shed some tears because I can relate to it all. Your story brought back memories of my first dog, Bear. I had to put him down at the age of 14 1/2.
My 28 year marriage ended just over a year ag
Yes, chatting, especially about anything sexual is cheating. If my husband was doing that I would consider him cheating on me. Be sooooo careful when meeting this man, people can be who they want to be online.
Yes I have thick legs with thick ankles, my Dad's! Tights the same color as the dress or bone shoes with bare legs. Not a straight skirt and never patterned stockings or leggings!
My mother told me at an early age to look for something good in every person I meet. I continue to take her advice.
Dawn Lehman
Best advice from a friend: Don’t lament what you wish you’d done in your 30′s. Get in touch with your inner 60 yr old self and ask what she’d have you do in your 50′s!
When I was working on my memoir, I gave my mother a copy of what I thought was the final draft. After she read it, she said she thought I was holding something back, perhaps in fear of what she might think. She said “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a woman has to stand in her own truth or her life is worth nothing. Go rewrite this, and tell your truth. Your father and I will find a way to deal with it.” My mother’s advice, and her courage in giving it, changed me as a daughter, a woman and a writer.
One of my good friends said when I was going through a difficult time that required some compromises I was struggling with, “It’s not forever, it’s just for now.” Somehow knowing that whatever decision I made wasn’t going to be set in concrete, but merely packed with a bit of mud, made it easier to make the decision I had to make.
Ginger
Some years ago I worked at a facility called Getting Well. This 28-day program was for clients with life-challenging illnesses. The daily sessions included one on Laughter and Play! I witnessed some remarkable changes in clients’ outlooks and outcomes who took this approach seriously. The advice from Deirdre Davis Brigham, the Founder and Director, to “play everyday” was some of the best I have ever received.
My name is Valerie. I married young, had five children and got divorced at age 30. It was a struggle, I’d been an stay at home mom, and after 13 years of physical and mental abuse I packed up our five children and left. At first I tried to find work and went to a work center for advice. I found myself unable to look the instructor in the eyes. He was a tall man with a deep voice and I was terrified of him. It was humiliating. When I’d gotten married I was only 17 and had gone from my mother’s thumb to my husbands. Here I was 30 years old and for the first time I was free. Well, I was as free as someone with five young children can be. For two months it was wonderful. We shopped together and for a very brief time were happy, except for my discovery that men frightened me.
The divorce I had started proceedings for one month before I left my husband was final. It was only a short time since the children and I had moved out and it was over. I was truly free and felt great. Three weeks or so after the divorce was final my girls came to me together. I could see they had something to say and that they were extremely agitated. What they told me took away all of the good feelings I’d found since leaving my husband. He had molested them and they didn’t tell me before because he had told them that something bad would happen to me if they did. They’d also been waiting to see if I would go back to him like so many of their friends mothers had done in their marriages. The news shattered me. I called a counselor I knew and told him and he took care of everything. It took us years to get over it and to be quite honest none of us have ever completely healed.
I stayed single and raised my kids. There was a lot of counseling. I went to parenting classes and tried my best to be a good mother. It was difficult and I know I fell short of what I wanted to achieve. When the two youngest were closing in on adult hood I found the courage necessary and went to college. I was terrified. Yet it did not take me long to realize how much I loved taking classes. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was done, but I knew that it would involve helping women and children.
At age 43 while still in school I started to connect with the opposite sex via the computer. I made sure that anyone I communicated with lived far away…usually on the East Coast. After a couple of years of chatting with a few different men I dared to go out on a date. It was frightening and yet exciting at the same time. I was lucky and the first man I went out with was charming and kind. Afterwards I dated a few other men and when I was 47 I met someone who connected with me in a special way. A year later I moved from Duluth MN to a suburb in the Twin Cities. To say I was frightened about that move would be an understatement. I’d heard so many stories about the amount of violence in the bigger cities compared to Duluth, which is much smaller that I was nearly paralyzed with fear. It took over two years to find a job and in the end I found work as a Vista (Americorps) Tenant Organizer.
Now my time as a tenant organizer is nearly done. For two years I’ve worked with tenants and learned a great deal about organizing. It’s time for me to find a job. Yet the economy is at an all time low and literally thousands are being laid off. My fear has been building for weeks now, knowing that soon I will not be able to contribute to the household.
A friend of mine, Deb, who was once my supervisor when I was an intern, told me, “Valerie, remember, think back to what it took for you to leave your husband, to finally leave that situation. Remember how you did what you had to do, that when times were tough you made it by never stopping, even in the dark times you made sure that what had to be done was taken care of. Remember how frightened you were at the thought of going to college, yet you went and succeeded in getting a degree. Remember how scared you were about moving to the Twin Cities, and how you for the first time in your life got your drivers license, and over came your fear of traveling on the buses around the Twin Cities area. You’ve come too far to stop now. You told me once that you made it because you connected with people like myself. Well, now it’s time to do it again. Reach out and you’ll find there are a lot of people who will only be too happy to help you. Be strong and believe in yourself. I know you can do this and I’m only a phone call or email away if you need to talk.”
For me the best advice I ever got was from a woman who told me to keep moving, never stop, and to reach out to others…to believe in myself and to remember where I came from.
Quite a story, you should be very proud
What an amazing life you’ve lead. Truly inspiring. Thank you for sharing your story.
When times are difficult as they are for many of us right now I ask myself “Is the glass half empty or is it half full?
I was 6 and my brothers 5, 4 and 3. Great Aunts’ Bessie and Gertrude (she never married) came to visit on our farm. Mom and Aunts were sitting on couch while brothers and I played with cars on hard wood floor. This was 1956. Aunt Gertrude stood up in her long dress and said “Kids, can you do this?” Then she did a somersault of the hard wood floor. Instantly I thought, this is the way I want to be a woman when I grow up! Aunt Bessie yelled, “Now Gertrude, you quit that!” Aunt Gertrude was 90! That is the most inspirational moment I can remember as a child. What a woman! She still holds the key to life for me.
I love this story!!! I want to be Aunt Gertrude, too!
hoooray for GERTRUDE, I hope i have the same huumf when i am 90.
My best advice is sort of backwards: My mother’s advice was: “Whenever your husband wants sex, you drop everything and give it to him, otherwise he will get it on the street!”……It took me about 7 years of marriage before I realized what a crock that “advice” was, and had the epiphany that I could say NO!!! Needless to say, the marriage didn’t last much longer………..but I continue to remind myself every day that I can say NO, to anything, whenever I want to, whenever I need to.
Towanda!! Nina Aguilar
This question brings many wonderful women to mind, including a good friend who advised against the “scarcity mentality.” People with this mentality believe they’ll be diminished in some way if they compliment or say good things about others. But just the opposite is true. We become better people and feel better about ourselves when we look for and recognize the good in others.
I love this. In my experience, I have heard teachers dismissive of a respected colleague’s methods. I now respond that there can be lots of good teaching styles and methods. Obviously, the ”scarcity mentality” is often at play in those instances. Such a good term. As Wendy says ”People with this mentality believe they’ll be diminished in some way if they compliment or say good things about others.” Complimenting a collegue or co-worker does not diminish the one handing out the compliment.
I write books — some that encourage people, some that irritate other people. You’d think that years of having controversial books in print would have given me a thick skin, but it didn’t happen. That is, until one day I was speaking to my dear friend Melissa Harding. Melissa spent the last 17 years of her young life in a nursing home, abandoned by her husband when her muscular dystrophy became more than he could “handle.”
As I was figuratively crying on her shoulder about a cutting remark someone had made about me personally, she stopped me.
“Not everyone is going to like you, Latayne.”
Just having someone say that to me was enormously freeing. She was so wise.
Latayne C Scott
http://www.latayne.com
http://www.novelmatters.blogspot.com
I have to admit that my advise is hard to follow some days, but it’s this….
No matter how bad something seems, there is ALWAYS something positive in it. Look for the silver lining in that storm cloud. If you can find it while you are going through the bad time, it will help you find something positive to focus on. If you have to wait until after the “event,” then you will have something positive to focus on next time. There is ALWAYS something positive to think about. You have to CHOOSE to think about the positive, though. I choose to smile instead of cry. I choose to “think past the pain” instead of focusing on what is making me hurt. I choose to think about the end of the situation and that it will end – just hang on; even if you are only hanging on with your fingernails!
I am not one of those smiling people who have nothing going wrong in their life. I have had many, many challenges, but I still think positive.
Remember, your friends will like to be around you more if you think positive also. Who wants to be around someone who is constantly complaining? It’s much better to concentrate on the good things that are going on in your life. If the only thing that is going good in your life is that you are breathing on your own, concentrate on that. Be thankful that you are not on a breathing machine. Be thankful for the things that ARE going good, and concentrate on them. The bad things WILL eventually pass. Hang in there!
This is so so true. It’s difficult so many times…and often I have thought, “Am I ever going to be able to feel positive again.” , but thankfully…it must be part of my nature…or of long practice….positivity comes back!
About 25 years ago, a wise woman named Charlotte Kasl said “Whatever another person says to you is really far more about them than it is about you.” Sounds simple, but it has saved my sanity so many times. I want everyone to like me and if someone says something hurtful I just crumble…or used to! Now I remind myself of Charlotte Kasl’s wise words.
What you said is sooo true. I had a reunion Saturday with some co workers from 25 years ago. This one woman Sharon made sure that she told me that I was mean to her for not asking her to be in my wedding. My wedding was 25 years ago. I can’t understand why she would make me feel bad now. Another good friend pulled me to the side and said that Sharon was always a jealous narcissistic person. Everything had to be about her. I too want everyone to like me. I actually felt bad and started to cry on the way home. But, I remembered what my friend said about Sharon. So it was really Sharon’s issue and not mine. It is just funny how people can hold grudges for that long.
This is so very true. Once I noticed this normal human trait I became much less self conscious, less hurt by things people said and I sure understood what was going on around me so much more.
People (including myself) DO think of everything in terms of “themselves” first and foremost. When the schedule comes out at work and someone starts ranting I used to start to feel the negative energy building up in me as I wanted to join in the ranting. When in actuality it wasn’t something that affected me at all, it was the other person’s problem.
I think by the time I learn all I need to know about humans, I’ll be just about to keel over from old age!
MY LATE GREAT AUNT MARTHA ALWAYS TOLD ME TO FOLLOW MY HEART AND NOT LET ANYONE INFLUENCE MY DECISIONS. I HAVE TO LIVE WITH WHATEVER CHOICES I MAKE. SHE ALSO SAID TO KEEP MY FRIENDS CLOSE AND MY ENEMIES EVEN CLOSER
My mother has given me a lot of good advice. But one thing that keeps coming back to me is “Remember, no one’s indispensable.” I think that women tend to stay in bad situations longer than they should, whether it’s a job we don’t like, a relationship that’s gone sour, or whatever. Either we’re too stubborn to give up, or we’re too hindered by guilt or fear to do something about it. So it’s helped me to remember that even if I leave a situation, there’s someone else who can probably do it just as well (and maybe even better)!
One of the best bits of advice I have ever received came from my yoga teacher. She told us to “Live in the moment. Let go of the past and don’t worry about the future. The only place you really exist is the present. Live in each breath.”
Yoga taught me to take these principles and apply them physically as well as spiritually.
My sister told me, on the day of my first wedding, to always make sure I had my own money – money unbeknownst to my husband. If I hadn’t done this, we’d never have had a family vacation!
My daughter told me once, (about 17 years ago, and she was 15) after I made some probably not nice or uplifting comment about her Boyfriend.. She said to me.. “Mom, not everyone is like you!” She said it with no anger or fury, just a statement. And it is one of THE best things she could have said to me.. And I remember it to this day. It does pop to mind on an ‘as needed basis’.. Thank you Jennifer for teaching me such a grand lesson in life as it has also helped me with things other then someone’s BF. Love ya Honey!
HI Marilyn
I received this advice from my mother, I was 16 and quit school (I was a straight A student but had a falling out with my headmaster – his words to me were “You will regret this for the rest of your life and will amount to nothing”. My Mum’s words to me were “You are a smart and beautiful person and never let anyone tell you that you cannot do something, always walk with your head high and for those who offer scorn just smile and keep on walking.”
I have told the exact same thing to my 3 daughters who have each grown into beautiful, successful women.
Here’s to a wonderful travelling life
Anne
My grandmother told me years ago to “never do anything you wouldn’t want printed in the morning paper.” Believe it or not, that advice has served me well for my 50+ years!
My husbands grandmother, at our wedding ,said to me, as I sat on a chair next to her , holding her tiny hand,”Natalie, you better eat steak now and enjoy it before you can’t chew or swallow.” She was a quiet woman. When she spoke , her words stuck. Natalie Caine
”keep your girlfriends!” Never give up your girlfriends for a man, for men may come and go in our lives, but our best girlfriends are forever. I am so grateful for the wonderful women friends in my life ~ they become more dear to me every year! (and I’m grateful for the man of 32 years that encourages me to go have fun with the girls!)
Gail
When I was in high school our youth minister’s wife told me “Don’t date anyone you wouldn’t want to marry.” I thought that was absurd at the time. What’s the harm in a casual date if you just want something to do? But then I learned that it’s easy to fall into a relationship without meaning to or even wanting to. Later I wondered what kind of experience in her own life that advice came from.
The best advice I ever received came from my grandmother. she alwyas used to say “waste not, want not”…………..simple but true!
I think my best advice was from my Mother who is now almost 86 years old – “If you can’t beat ‘em – join “em.” My husband is an avid football fan and former high school referee. I complained to my Mom that I got tired of football and didn’t understand the game. She told me when she got married she didn’t like to go fishing and my Dad did – so she learned to fish and they spent many hours together happily fishing. I learned about footbal by asking him questions and went to games my husband was refereeing and now we enjoy watching it together. c ouldn’t beat him, so I joined him and am happily married now for 30 plus years.
A friend told me when I started to get silver hair that each one of those beautiful hairs was a badge of teh things that I had aomplished in my life, and that It showed I had also learned from my mistakes and that I was ready to tell others how they could benifit from my experiences and share them with others who were more apt to listen for a change. She also said don’t hide the color as it is a visible sign of maturity and that you have grown up and have earned teh right to speak your mind with out the conmsequences being swo harsh. But most of all it showed the world that I too was capable of parting something wise for those who came into my life
Thank you all for your wonderful responses. DCC’s comment represented the last winner in the book giveaway, but we’ve got a GREAT list of advice here. Keep it going!
From one of my friends….”Just be yourself………there is no one like you, in the whole world. How can you go wrong? God doesn’t make mistakes.”
The best advice I ever received from a friend was years ago when my Oldest Daughter was a teen. Anne told me that God gave parents the teenage years so that parting would not be so painfull. I guess she knew what she was talking about because I was so attached to my children that it was the worst pain I ever felt then they slowly one by one left. Thank you Anne.
What a sweet way to think of teenage years. Thanks,
In the throws of homesickness my sister once reminded me that “nothing lasts for ever.” That also means the good times but is a helpful manta when life overwhelms you. She told me that when I was 21 yrs old and those words have gotten me though again and again. It helps me cope becuse when bad times are here I know good times are just around the corner.
Very good words, indeed!
The best thing another women ever told me was as long as I had GOD in my life and heart that everything else will fall into place. Life hasn’t been perfect but with GOD it sure is better than without him!!
Amen, sister!
When I was much,much younger my aunt told me the secret to happiness for any woman was…”go to a good school (college) and marry well.” I followed her advice and have shared it with many young women over the years. Perhaps it is not PC but it worked for me!
Patricia Grace
CEO, Aging with Grace