I’ve been sharing my daily musings here for several years. Today, my daily musings will celebrate my meeting one of my favorite fellow bloggers and muses, Lisa, also known as DailyMusings.
Yesterday, Lisa and her musing and amusing husband Alex traveled into New York City to muse away the morning with me. If you’re curious about how Lisa mused about our meeting, see here.
Our two hours of shared musings about work, family, therapy, health, blogging, music, travel, love, the past, the present, the future, and other topics flew by. My daily musings now include the hope and wish that we will see each other (in person and not just “in blog”) again, very soon.
Something I like to think is that reading my blog is something you like.
Is seeing this photo something you like?
Something I like is singing in front of people to the best of my ability without fear. Something you might like is that I absolutely did that, yesterday, at The Voice tryouts in New York City.
I didn’t get a red card for a callback and getting a callback is something I like. However, here’s something I like almost as much: I let go of disappointment immediately, because
I knew I sang great,
I can’t control what The Voice is looking for,
My increasing confidence is going to help me sing more in public, and
There are so many other somethings in my life that I like.
Is there something you like in my other photos from yesterday?
Something I like is singing my tryout song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” a capella, like these guys (here on YouTube, if you like):
Is Acapella Soul something you like? What about leaving comments?
One more thing I like: sharing some things I like with you, every day.
Today I’m in New York City with my son, Aaron. This afternoon, I’m going to say “Hello” to a bunch of people at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, singing for 45 seconds at an open-call audition for The Voice.
I’m not sure how that hello is going to go, but here are some hellos from yesterday.
There are a lot of different ways to say “Hello,” aren’t there? Did you notice that one of those photos showed a NYC cupcake bakery’s top 10 reasons for saying “Goodbye”?
Here are the Beatles saying “Hello” and “Goodbye.”
If you’ve said hello to any of my other blog posts, you might know I like to say goodbye with gratitude.
Last night at a therapy group, people’s heads were filled with so many feelings and thoughts that my head was filled with a new idea. The new idea filling my head was this:
Draw an outline of your head and add words and images of what’s filling it. Then, draw another outline of your head and fill it with what you would like it be filled with.
Here’s how I filled heads last night at that group:
Ready to have your head filled with my other photos from yesterday?
What’s filling your head, here and now?
Since I’ve been filling my head with the sounds of the musical Hamilton, here‘s what’s filling my head as I create this head-filling post:
What’d I miss?
Now, my head is filled with
hope that you’ll share what’s in your head in a comment below and
On September 21, I’m having open heart surgery in Minnesota, which will most likely interrupt my voice here on WordPress. However, my boyfriend Michael’s voice will continue my unbroken streak of what will then be over thirteen hundred consecutive daily blog voicings.
Today, there will be a phone call containing the voices of my long-time cardiologist Dr. Deeb Salem and the Mayo Clinic cardiologist Dr. Carole Warnes — both of whom hold my heart in their hands.
Yesterday, I heard Dr. Salem’s voice say this at Boston’s Tufts Medical Center: “You’ll feel like you’ve been hit by a truck” after September’s valve replacement surgery — a voicing I appreciate much more than all the voices I’ve heard lately downplaying how invasive this operation actually is.
Sometimes I’ve judged my own voice as too soft, too loud, not strong enough and not good enough. I feel more secure in my own voice, every day.
Judgment squelches voices.
I value authentic voices.
Yesterday, I heard many voices at two different hospitals, near Fenway Park, and at a PetSmart. Can you hear any of those voices in my photos?
Do any of those voices resonate with you, here and now?
Here are some voices evoked by this post (on Youtube here and here):
WTF! I hope I hear many of your voices in comments about my blogging voice today.
I shall now voice my gratitude towards all those who helped me bring together all the voices in this post and to you — of course! –for your valuable, authentic voice.
It pains me slightly to realize, here and now, that I have never, ever written a blog post with the word “pain” in the title during all my twelve hundred and sixty-one days of uninterrupted daily blogging, before today.
Even when I wrote about the important concept of “absence of pain” two months ago, that post did not include “pain” in its title.
I shall now take pains to speculate why I have avoided naming “pain” in my blog titles.
My work as a psychotherapist centers so much on people’s pain.
The news is always filled with pain.
I avoid, whenever possible, taking medication for pain.
I suffered a lot of pain when I was in the hospital as a child.
I worry about future pain.
Because I’m a mother, I fear the possibility of my son experiencing pain.
In almost every therapy group I facilitate, the common themes include “physical pain” and “emotional pain.”
Pain – even though it’s an important warning signal from our bodies blah blah blah — sucks.
Here are all the photos I took yesterday, in a world of pain and hurt:
It pains me to think of a world without personal power or without love.
It also pains me to imagine dealing with pain without music. Here‘s Sting and The Police performing King of Pain:
When the sounds of murderous gunfire ring out on American soil, I listen, again, to the sounds of Australian-born comedian Jim Jefferies and his monologue on gun control:
While the sounds of that comedy routine (recorded in my sound hometown of Boston and now sounding on Youtube here and here) include many obscenities, I passionately believe that the assaulting sound of gunfire is much more obscene than the sound reasoning I hear there.
Here are over seven minutes of important sounds about the 49 people killed in Orlando on Sunday.
As always, I yearn for the sound of your voices, in comments below.
I hope you can hear the sound of love, in my heart, for you all.
Yesterday morning, I was moved by a workshop presented by Bette Freedson, LICSW —The Healing Wisdom of the Mind, Body, and Soul: Intuition, Compassion, and Connection in a Group Setting.
What moved me, at that workshop?
Bette and I move with our therapy patients in very similar, moving ways.
During a guided meditation, I asked my very unusually moving and confused heart what it wanted, and my heart movingly told me it needs heart valve surgery (even though it’s very frightened).
During a moving meditation, I visualized a beautifully colored flag moving upwards in the wind, and I was moved to a sense of safety and peace of mind.
Bette Freedson was moved by that flag imagery of mine.
She told me that whenever I see a flag moving between now and my upcoming heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic, I would be moved to remember how movingly everybody else in the workshop was moved to wish me health and success with my operation in September.
Two hours later, I moved on to another moving conference activity —Music, Movement, and Moments of Meeting: A Group Experience, presented by the moving and wonderful Suzanne Cohen — in a huge ballroom at Simmons College in Boston. As I was moving freely and joyfully among 42 other dancing and moving group therapists, I moved my head up and saw a moving sight:
A world of flags, which moved me so.
What moves you? And which of these moving tunes would be the best theme song for this post?
If you are moved to suggest another moving tune or anything else in a moving comment below, move it!
What is moving me, right now, is the realization that I’ll be participating today in an all-day demonstration group, SE-Informed Group Psychotherapy: Moving Beyond Trauma to Embodied Relationships.
So I’ve got to move it!
Moving thanks to all who helped me create this moving post and to you — of course! — for moving yourself here to read it, here and now.
Can you picture yourself in the future? What do you see?
This picture is in your future:
If you picture yourself in the future, is it more likely you will have a future? Many past and present experts picture that as true. For example, when I encounter people who are expressing desperate thoughts and feelings, their prognosis for survival is much better if they are able to picture the future. In the psychotherapy biz, we call that “future-oriented thinking.” Also, a good attitude about the future helps people deal with scary, difficult events.
Picture this email — with the subject “Picturing my future” — that I just sent to my past-present-and-future cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem:
Hi Deeb,
Since you’re going to be talking to Dr. Carole Warnes from the Mayo Clinic on Thursday about my future, I would love to have a meeting with you on Wednesday. If you can picture that in our future, I’m available any time Wednesday afternoon. Can we make that work?
Your inquisitive, future-picturing, and grateful patient,
Ann
.
Here’s the automatic reply I then got from Dr. Deeb Salem:
I will be out of the hospital until Tuesday March 29th Deeb
.
Since my calendar is picturing today’s date as June 11, I wrote him back, as follows:
