Category: Relationships

Healthy Selfishness

Healthy Selfishness
Recently, I find myself less willing and sometimes overwhelmed with responsibilities to others that I always assumed was my duty. In the past that is the dynamic that I have put forth.
I thought I would share with you my thoughts from a different perspective about the new seeds that are springing fresh life into the old landscape of our attitudes and relationships. Selfishness has always been a negative word for me. It was only recently that the world received the good news that a degree of it is not only okay, but an important ingredient in living a full life and its presence-or lack of it-can make a difference in both the big and small issues in your life.

The true cost of self-denial is high. In failing to put our own needs first, we hope or assume others will give to us as we give to them. But they don’t always. And an unhealthy dynamic begins.
Many see healthy selfishness as a higher level of mental function that can help you reach your full potential. People who practice healthy selfishness have a zest for living, a joy that comes from savoring one’s accomplishments.
Healthy selfishness opens the door to a life of freedom-freedom from being ruled by the opinions and demands of others as well as freedom from the voices in your own mind, often left over from childhood.
Healthy selfishness involves accepting your weaknesses and imperfections without beating yourself up. It means nurturing yourself and loving yourself unconditionally.

Put yourself in control. Here are your options:
Small steps. (i.e.) Don’t offer your significant other the television remote right away when beginning an evening of television together.
Longer Strides. (i.e.) Don’t offer your significant other the television remote.
Life-changing leaps. (i.e.) Hide the remote in a safe place and then hold it securely in your hand and control it all evening.
Excerpt from Read Between My Lines by Sandra Hart Myartisansway Press 2007 copyright
(Sandra Hart is the former Ms. Sandra of the children’s television program Romper Room and is a working actress, award-winning author of Behind The Magic Mirror and Places Within My Heart and is a motivational speaker. She lives in New Jersey and South Beach with her husband and is “Nana” to four fantastic grandchildren.)

Copyright Sandra Hart  All Rights Reserved

The Mystery In The Old Shoe Box

DOES THE RECYCLING CYCLE HAVE AN ENDING?
As you know for the past week I have immersed myself in uncluttering – going through memorabilia and old photographs in an effort to downsize. My mother’s old photographs are in a huge handsome wooden box that my father made. That’s going to my son, the self-appointed family historian. The other photographs throughout the years I have half-heartedly made an effort to separate into different shoeboxes relating to each child, thinking about the eventual distribution.

That time has finally arrived. So now here I sit looking at this deformed mound of shoeboxes in front of me wondering if the cycle is ever going to be ended. In a way, while telling myself I am eliminating, I am just recycling and honestly not getting rid of much. I am passing these on to my children who will undoubtedly put them in another box somewhere in the back of their closet and then eventually when they’re doing what I’m doing, unload them to their children, my grandchildren. 

My parents lived from the evolution of tintypes to Polaroid. I have lived to digital and iPhone selfies, so I doubt if any more genuine ‘touchable’ photographs will be added to the boxes. And maybe, just maybe the cycle will end with my adult grandchildren who may not have a feeling for the family photographic connection anymore. It’s really hard for me to think about this life cycle ever coming to a conclusion, but it is a probable reality. 
So a sad farewell for me as I UPS three boxes to separate locations where my children have planted roots. The life I lived in my imagination with my mother’s family through her photographs and the life I lived with my children in real time may end with their children. 
Generations from now they will never know that you and I grew up in the best of times and were the luckiest and the greatest generation ever. These photographic memories, this life before death we, the ‘not-so-famous’ all experienced may end with our generation. The price we all pay as a result of rapid technological evolution? Could be. Time will only tell, but unfortunately, the proof might be lost in the nearest landfill. I hope not. 

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All Rights Reserved. 

A LOVE LETTER TO ALL MY DOO BEES

“Romper, Bomper, Stomper ……”
(Yesterday I went for my annual checkup with my primary physician. At the end of my visit he looked at me and smiled, “When you looked into that Magic Mirror and said my name, bet you didn’t know you were making your doctor happy!” Honestly he was right. At the time I had no idea the impact the TV show Romper Room would have on the 60’s and 70’s children. To add to this resurgence of Romper Room thought, last week on my Facebook feed there I was with 176, 602 thousand likes and growing by the minute. The Do You Remember site posted a picture of me while doing a Romper Room Show back in the 70’s. Don’t know where they got the picture, but that posting reminded me of an article I wrote several years ago for an Internet magazine that has been reprinted over 5 thousand times. Never realized there were so many Romper Room fans out there!)
A LOVE LETTER TO ALL MY DOO BEES
It seems as though in the last few years all those terribly terrific children who grew up with us on Romper Room are now ruling the world and moving and shaking in all-important circles of life.
Those who grew up in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s are today’s power brokers of influence. The are now the bankers, brokers, directors. writers, rock stars and CEO’s of corporations. But they all have the Big Question for me when I am lucky enough to meet one of them. “Why didn’t you say my name in your Magic Mirror?”
When the January 23, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone revealed to the world that my son, Emerson Hart, lead vocalist and songwriter of the band Tonic, had a mother who was the Romper Room lady, I could no longer hide in anonymity. I was dragged from underneath the rock I had been hiding since the 70’s. Since then I have been forced to account for my sins.
Some of these wonderful men and women I have met at my son’s concerts, either thank me, or admonish me for not saying their name in my Magic Mirror. When I explain to them that I tried my very best to name each and every one I could in the short time allotted at the end of the show to ‘see’ all of my Do Bees, but because of the volumes of mail I received each day, I couldn’t acknowledge as many as I would have liked, they pretend to understand, but they are still not satisfied. So if you are reading this and I didn’t say your name, please forgive me.
‘Romper Bomper, Stomper Boo. Tell me, tell me true. Magic Mirror, tell me today did all my friends have fun at play? I see Michelle and John and Bill and…oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you all these years. I see YOU!”
Excerpt from Read Between My Lines by Sandra Hart ©  
(Sandra Hart is the former Ms. Sandra of the children’s television program Romper Room and is a working actress, award-winning author of “Behind The Magic Mirror” and “Places Within My Heart”and is a motivational speaker and blogger. She lives in New Jersey and South Beach with her husband and is “Nana” to four fantastic grandchildren.)

How To Make The Most Of Your Mothers Genes

Now that I am on the far side of over 50, most of my life is made up of memories and stuff. In the past few weeks after my return from Florida that’s exactly what I’ve been doing – going through stuff that is bringing back memories. If you’re my age you probably either already have done this, or plan to do this in the near future. I’m intending once and for all to let go of physical memories that I can’t carry with me any more. 

 If you’ve been through this please have empathy for me because you know that it’s not easy to get rid of material things that are evidence that you did have a life and lived it and it mattered… at least to you or your mother. Yes, I still even have the things that my mother saved about her life and about the lives of her children while we were growing up.  

I was at that point today where I was so frustrated that I just decided I was going to close my eyes and start dumping all ancient report cards, essays, letters with old stamps on them, birthday cards and pictures of people that I didn’t know when I came upon a small bundle of folded papers secured by a faded blue ribbon. 

What I found on those papers actually broke my heart. You see my mother was one of the most creative beings I have ever known yet, as a woman in the 30s and 40s she was a housewife, always ‘just’ a housewife. She was caretaker of all that she loved and secretly put her creative dreams in a box somewhere for her eyes only.  

Throughout her life Mother’s need for creativity came through her interior decorating in our home and as the years grew and she had more leisure time, she satisfied her creative genes by working on small oil paintings and crocheted so many quilts and scarves for us we didn’t know where to put them. 

That was my mother, or so I thought until I found her secret bundle of papers. I gently opened the yellowed papers and began to read. …”The Little Naked Tree”……as I read on I was finding beautiful stories in rhyme that she had written. They had her signature at the end and her return address beneath. It looked like Mother had possibly submitted these for publication, probably to one of the women’s magazines of the day. Or maybe she wanted to, but never got the courage to follow through with her dreams of being published and most of all, had kept her secret compositions from us.

So as her daughter, a published author and writer, I am giving my mother’s dream life. Here is one of her stories that I have copyright for in her name. This is for you Mother. Thank you for my creative genes.

THE LITTLE NAKED TREE

I am am a little naked tree 

People on their boat pass by 

And make fun of me. 

Here I stand with lovely green trees all around 

Tiny squirrels scamper on the ground.

There a lot of things they don’t know about me. 

I am a friend, companion, too, for a lot of animals that you see.

The fishhawk sits on the very top.

He makes makes a wish 

Then swoops down to catch a fish.

The mother squirrel has made a retreat.

 She stores her food so nice and neat.

 Down near my roots there are some holes.

 Snug and cozy for little moles.

Near the trunk there is a nest.

Mother Robin lays her eggs to rest 

And soon the eggs are hatched out.

Little robins flutter about.

So now you can see, 

Why did they make fun of me?

Just because I am different as can be?

You may have friends who are not like you 

But they may be very nice

And have purpose, too.

So always remember on life’s way 

Be very careful what you do and what you say 

Always be kind and nice to all you see.

They could be just like me

The little naked tree.

V. Atkinson© Sandra Hart© All Rights Reserved.

It’s So Nice To Have A Man Around The House

( I recently received notice that a small article I wrote for an Internet magazine has been republished about 10,000 times. What a shock! This  is just a small article in which to my embarassment  every word is the truth. But he is sweet and handsome)

“It’s so nice to have a man around the house,” as the old song croons. It has been years since I could boast that plus in my life. Oh yes, I have been married to Mr. Wonderful for 28 years now, but he can’t do a thing and he doesn’t want to pay anyone to do it for us. So guess who is the lucky handyman around our house. ME.
Just in a 24 hour period he broke our sun umbrella spoke while trying to open it. This morning while making coffee he lost the little do-hickey at the bottom of the filter cone and the coffee now runs everywhere except into the coffee pot. Not to mention that this is the second coffee maker he has so destroyed.

 

One afternoon I opened the microwave to find this mysterious carmel-looking stuff all over the inside of the unit. On closer inspection, I saw that it continued on to the glass top stove, and even went further onto the floor. Knowing my husband was guilty, I finally got him to admit that he was trying to loosen the cap of our big Gorilla glue in the microwave and it exploded! An attempt to get it out of there resulted in it permanently adhering to everywhere it landed.
A friend of ours got us a can of acetone that has been sitting in the kitchen for a year now. My husband has not yet tried to see if it will remove the hardened glue! So I have gotten used to my carmel-spotted microwave insides and daily pick at the drops on the stove to no avail. I refuse to acetone on my own!

 

My children say I deserve angel wings because of my Mr. Magoo husband, but who would want him if I send him packing with an instruction book for the next owner? Young girls would not understand the manual and old independent gals like me would understand what goes with him and put him back on the shelf. What to do except understand that I have a six year old in a grownup’s body. Oh well, guess I’ll go for a swim and let the endorphins roll in and hope the house is there when I get back.


Sandra Hart’s Blog© Sandra Hart  Sandra is the former Ms. Sandra of the children’s television program Romper Room and is a working actress in both film and television, an award-winning author and a popular motivational speaker. She is a member of the National Leadership council of NARSAD (National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression).

Facebook – Today’s Diary

As a young girl each Christmas I would find  a new diary with its own lock and small key in my stocking. This is how girls of my era would secretly put their most intimate thoughts at the end of each day, that lock assuring none of our nibby siblings could peek into our treasured observations and dreams.  It was a way of unloading our thoughts, hurts, wishes, joys and disappointments within the privacy of our bedrooms.  In retrospect a very healthy method of emotional release for most of us young girls trying to cope with our lives while growing up and facing life as it was opening to us. We could bare our most secret thoughts and desires without outside judgement. 

My faithful diary postings subconsciously were the beginning of my love for writing and putting my thoughts and feelings into words, never thinking that someday I would be sharing those feelings with anyone other than myself and my diary.  

Well I grew up and had a life. A life that was interesting, unexpected and one that I eventually would feel compelled to share beyond my diary and onto the printed page, then through blogging and eventually, Heaven Help Me, Facebook.
Initially, my teenage grandson friended me, but quickly ‘de-friended’ me when he realized I could see everything that he was posting with his friends on Facebook.  Undeterred, I marched on connecting with family and friends I hadn’t seen in years and joyfully making new friendships with those who entered my life through my blogging.  
Facebook has become my ‘life over 50’ diary.  My life is no longer a series of cursive pages. It is now filled with finger typing and 🙂 faces and anything but private revelations.  As addicted as I was as a young girl to my diary with its lock and key, keeping the world out of my thoughts, I am now addicted to Facebook without emotional locks and sharing my open life on a daily basis with those that matter to me, my Facebook Friends and Family.
Funny how life turns out isn’t it?
PS. My grandson at 21 has just ‘re-friended’ me.
Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All Rights Reserved.

If I Am Important, You Are Important

If I Am Important Then You Are Important
“I just don’t know …… my grandkids get me, but I can’t understand my son.  He just doesn’t get it.”
And so went the conversation I had about a year ago with a good friend of mine who is about my age and is also a grandmother. She only has one child, a grown man now, a doctor, and somehow he still wants her to be the mother and grandmother of his imagination, even though his mother-in-law, the other grandma, is young enough to to be her daughter. He just can’t accept her flamboyant bangles and bright red lipstick and allow her to be the human being with a kind and giving heart she has always been throughout his life; he evidently never really saw, appreciated, nor thought about his mother as a person until he became successful in his head and had children of his own. 
She told me she feels he sometimes shuts the good things in his life from her, the grandma with the panache and red lipstick his children love. The woman who constantly gave to him, asking little if anything in return now has her nose pressed against the window of his life from the outside while others are welcome to enjoy the good life my friend helped him achieve as a young man.
My final thought to her was that maybe that’s the problem. Maybe  she should have asked for more from her son along the way instead of just always giving.  Perhaps she has perpetuated a relationship of one-sided giving that will be hard to change. I certainly hope not. 
As usual in most of my blogs this conversation has stayed with me and recently started my brain thinking in-depth more about being a mother and grandmother, whether it is a different relationship with daughters than it is with sons, what it means today and what it means to me. Mother’s Day has just passed and it kind of fits in right now. 
I am fortunate to have two daughters and a son, so I have experiences with mother/daughter and with the mother/son relationships.  I can’t speak for other parent/ child relationships, I only know mine.  In my experience each has been different and evolved into opposites in adulthood. 
I’m trying to think that when I was raising my children if I actually demanded as much from my son as I did my daughters. I know they all had to do chores on Saturday. The girls would vacuum, clean their rooms and help with the house chores, but honestly, I don’t ever remember asking my son to do anything around the house. except try to pick up his clothes up off the floor.  (As a matter-of-fact I was reminded recently by one of my daughters about the picture we took of my son sitting on top of a pile of clothes – a mountain – in his room.) 
 So in my friend’s case, I am finally realizing, I, too, am guilty of treating my son differently. Boys go off and leave their mothers, girls stay.
An old proverb states, “A son is a son until he takes a wife. A daughter is a daughter for all of her life.” Knowing this, is that why we sometimes don’t demand for fear of breaking that bond too soon? 
 I always made my daughters accountable and never minced words with advice when I thought necessary. I never questioned it would weaken our bond or make them love me less. But for some reason I never did the same with my son. Is that normal? 
Our best mother’s dream for our sons is to be able to have him find his soulmate that will love him and share his life’s ups and downs long after we are gone, so why did I tiptoe so much until that moment? 
“Mothers who are ‘important’ convey two main messages to their sons: If I am important then you are important; and I am important so I am worthy of your kindness, which I will affirm,” she said.

“This second message, which is often dramatically overlooked in the child development literature, is perhaps the most important ingredient to helping children develop into wonderful adults,” said Dr. Stone Fish.

Mothers can serve as good models of how to treat a woman with respect, according to Dr. Coleman, a psychologist in private practice in San Francisco specializing in family and parenting issues.

“However, mothers who can comfortably learn to set limits with their sons and act in a healthy self-interested way produce sons who are better friends and partners to women,” explained Dr. Coleman, who is also on the training faculty of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group and has served on the clinical faculties of The University of California at San Francisco/Mt. Zion Crisis Clinic and The Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology.  

I have often said to my children that being a mother is the best job I have ever had in my life and if I had a ‘do over’ In hindsight I could have done better.  I know without a doubt am so privileged that ‘part of the way, you were to walk with me.’**

**To My Children – Sandra Hart

©Sandra Hart 2015. all Rights Reserved

SoulCycling Grandma

Today’s spinning grandmothers has nothing to do with spindles and wool. They say today’s 60’s is the new 40’s.  We are healthier, more nutritionally informed and educated about the mind/ health relationship to longevity. We have the advantage of advanced medical care and preventative medicine. Statistics show that normal life expectancy for the Millennials may be into the early 100’s.  Great news, yes?
Maybe for some, but along with this focus on youth and the ability to stay physically fit longer into the ‘grandma years’ is the slowly eroding Norman Rockwell’s image of Grandma and Grandpa. Perhaps a sad farewell and a bitter pill for those who want Grandma to still be round and cuddly and let’s face it – comfortably ‘old-looking’ like most of our real Grandmas looked in the 1940’s.
My 1940’s grandmother was a bit overweight, wore neatly ironed house dresses and her gray hair in a bun on top of her head. She was warm and snugly and wore an apron when she cooked. Grandma looked like all of the other grandma’s I knew as a child.  But the sad reality is that my grandmother also died in her late 50’s of angina from her fatty cooking and hard work slaving over the stove and caring for her ten children.  I would say, honestly, not so great for snugly Grandmas in those days.
The 1940’s WW II women and soon to be grandmothers of the 1960’s were emancipating themselves. No one would  ever have accused my mother or her sisters of slipping into the gray ‘grandmother background’ as their mother’s generation did.   Mother looked like all of the other women in the 1950’s who were still homemakers, but younger looking, interested in homemaking, but just as interested in fashion and looking good. The 1960’s grandmothers were slowly inching their way out of the stereotypical image of grandmas past.  They, like most grandmothers of their era, loved their husband, children and grandchildren first, but keeping up with fashion and beauty trends came a close second.  And a job outside of the home to keep busy after her children were emancipated was not frowned upon either. (As a matter of fact I owe my career to my mother.) Grandmothers were beginning to not live in the shadows of ‘old age’ and were still having a life in their second chapters.  
The Millennial Grandmother. This is where within the timeframe you and  I jump in, and I am a little confused about my role as both mother and grandmother post childrearing, too. Not confused at my overwhelming love and undying support for my children and grandchildren, but confused about who they might expect me to be.  I am not my mother. I am not my grandmother and maybe I may not be like the average over-fifty woman. I am me. As a woman I want to be honored as relevant and accepted for who I am, warts and all, and appreciated for what I have contributed to their lives. We are all trying our best by trial and error. 
Women of my generation, for the first time, are more free to be ourselves, always evolving perhaps, but not forced to be put in boxes with labels. We are women first. We don’t have to be ‘old’ in our thoughts or actions.  We mothers all have always had needs and wants stored on the back shelf while our energies were dedicated to focusing on getting everyone out of the nest equipped with the greatest survival kit we could put together. But those personal needs and dreams of ours never died while sleeping. Our grandmothers and mothers may have dared to dream a life of their own, but few could live those dreams beyond their jobs as mother and caretaker of those she loved most.
Perhaps the label ‘Mother’ is so strong that our children grow up not knowing who we really are after we take off our ‘Mom’ hats and we each begin our own lives. News flash children of ours. We are the same person we have always been.  The same people who wiped your bum and kissed your scrapes when you fell down. The same people who cheered at your football and basketball games and dance concerts. We haven’t changed. But you have, and by doing so, sometimes you expect us to still be wearing the ‘Mom’ hat and not allowing us to be free to be who we always have been before you and I were introduced. 
Every birthday I am reminded that my diary only has so many pages left and how much the conflict of my and my husband’s needs and my desire to spend as much time as possible with my children and grandchildren is a reality.  In this age of family diaspora, the juggling act never ceases it seems. I am sure we are no different than most. 
In the end, I am so grateful to be living in this time – in the NOW, because my generation of women, mothers and grandmothers, as I noted before are usually younger physically and mentally than our chronological ages. Due to this wonderful phenomena of being able to live a full life after raising our children,  I believe we are sometimes a shock to our children.
 Well, mothers unite this Mothers Day. We should have a message for our children.  They are going to have to get over it, because our grandchildren are cool with it and most of us well over fifty don’t want to be other than who we are and comfortable in our own skin. 
As long as we can have ‘forever careers’ if we want-or not, go to Vidal Sassoon, wear MAC lipstick, do yoga, SoulCycle, Tweet, text, WordPress, Instagram and have Facebook friends, humor us.  We mothers and grandmothers are in this life on your side for the long haul and are just being the women we have always been hidden under the ‘Mom’ hat. Could it be you were too busy living your own lives that you just didn’t take the time to see?  
©Sandra Hart 2015. All Rights Reserved.
  

A Mother’s Thoughts

So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the judgment thunders split the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place—
Held the long purpose like a growing tree—
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Lincoln, Man of the People – Edwin Markham

The above stanza by Edwin Markham has always resonated with me because I think, even though it is about Abraham Lincoln, it symbolizes Life itself. I recite it often when I’m challenged by circumstances. We all struggle through the ups and downs and whether or not we can remain steady, or not, differs with each of us, but the reality is, it is a part of living – these hills and valleys that we incur just by being.  
The stumbles used to be easy when I was young.  I would get off of my bloodied knees and continue on, but the older I get the reality is getting up again it’s a little harder. It’s not that I am mentally or even physically weak, it’s just that I know the time I have to recover and open another chapter in my life is getting nearer and nearer and perhaps drawing to a close. The last chapter used to be so far down the road that I couldn’t even see, year by year, the door slowly closing on me.  I love beginnings I just don’t like endings. I never have. 
I don’t like when the book is finished and I have to start over. I don’t like when the theater run is finished and I have to start looking for another job. I don’t like it when the movie or television show is finished and I have to start again -looking. 
The thought that someday there will be an end to who I am and what I’ve experienced in this life is still not something I’m willing to except.  I want to find that miracle eternity pill that I can swallow to keep me around for a long, long time.  They say the next generation, if they take care of themselves,  may live past 100 on a regular basis. I would like to hang around and have that magic life.
Mother’s Day is less than a month away and I think the thought I want to share with my children is to enjoy every single minute of your life and to live it, really live it. Drink in and savor every single moment that you are alive. 
Step outside of yourself, close your eyes and just listen.  Listen to the birds, listen to the traffic, listen to the noise, listen to the energy that is completely swirling around us every single day. Drink that energy in and use it to make yourself a better person. Hug you children and those you love everyday, including this dear old mother. Because the reality is one day the universe will blink, I will disappear, you will be gone,  and it will be too late to live the life that both you and I were meant to live.
Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All Rights Reserved

PESTO’S UBER TALE

IMG_1182

On Monday after his morning walk our sweet rescued Pesto became paralyzed in an instant. After our vet recommended a neurologist within an hour he was headed to the MRI and resulting disc surgery.

During all this drama our car was in the shop so I had to rely on the car service Uber to get us back and forth the veterinary office.

The trip we made to pick up Pesto after his operation, Uber sent us a very interesting Egyptian driver, an accountant by trade, who had been in this country about two years. He met online and married a woman living in Miami from Honduras.

Before coming to America he said he never could understand how Americans could feel so strongly about their dogs. In Egypt dogs wander the streets and they are never incorporated into the family unit, but he added that his wife has a little Yorky and he has fallen in love with her. She greets him with all of her wiggles as soon as he opens the door and makes him feel loved. It has taken this experience with the little dog to change his whole life’s mindset about the relationship between animals and human beings. He said that indeed they do have souls and they can love. An admitted revelation he never would’ve experienced had he not come to America.

To me this has been a learning experience, or lesson in cultural understanding, that if we could take this on to a bigger picture and walk in each other shoes, then maybe, we could understand one another much better. The curious custom of loving a pet and regarding them as a part of the family could only be understood by him until he experienced it.

As we arrived home my husband told Ahmed how much Pesto’s treatment cost. He threw up his hands in dismay. “Do you know in Egypt I could get married, have a big wedding and buy a house equal to that!”

Pesto do you really know how lucky you are to live in America ?!

Copyright Sandra Hart 2015. All rights reserved.