Hi Bella Nonna, sorry I missed your birthday. I have been so depressed lately… time just
got away from me. I hope it was a happy one.
Oh Alisa sweetheart, I’m so sorry to hear that you are
feeling blue. What is the problem; is it
something I might be able to help you with?
I don’t know Bella Nonna… it is really nothing, I
guess. It is just you know…
Life… it has a way of creeping up on you Alisa and before
you know it you are lost in a sea of blue funk.
Come into the kitchen and sit at the table. I will make a pot of tea and we can chat. Maybe find you a life raft or something to
help you navigate your blue ocean…
sorry about the puns; old age I guess.
I love you Bella Nonna. You always have just what I need… a little tea
and sympathy with a generous helping of wisdom and cheesecake.
How did you know I
had cheesecake? You don’t have to answer
that… when don’t I have cheesecake!
We are all set Alisa, what has gotten you so depressed?
I guess I have what the Life Coaches call the middle child or the
forgotten child syndrome. I am feeling kinda misunderstood, invisible and unhappy.
Hmmm… this calls for
some of my birthday brownies. You pour
us some more tea and I will be right back with the brownies.
Bella Nonna you
amaze me… you have goodies stashed all over your kitchen!
Well I… yes, yes I
do! But these brownies are special…
BELLA NONNA I didn’t
know you…
These are not special
brownies you little ding bunny… these are brownies that are special to me. Get
your head out of California… marijuana is legal there… see a girl can be savvy
about the stuff and never tried it. You
are way too old for the just say no! talk.
Okay where was I before you accused me of baking with wacky
weed?
I was pouring tea and you were getting your… brownies.
Alisa, I bake a small batch of brownies every year for my
birthday to remind me of a life lesson I learned on my 40th
birthday.
Just like you I paid attention to all the excuses the experts allowed me to use for not living my authentic life. All of my
unfulfilled dreams were not my fault… I was a middle child… I had no
choice. Luck for me I didn’t realize I
was unhappy and misunderstood with oodles of unfulfilled dreams until I was
forty.
The night of my 40th
birthday I sat alone in the moonlight
eating all of my birthday brownies… because all of the loving and caring people
in my life had forgotten my birthday and didn’t deserve any … I decided to go on
a personal journey to discover me.
According to the experts I
spent my life prior to forty in La La Land doing for others and not for
myself. Whoa…I should be really
unhappy I thought and WHAM... instant depression.
I spent the next ten years
trying to catch up on all the unhappiness I missed out on while living my,
unbeknownst to me, miserable unfulfilled materially deprived life. I filled up three notebooks with all the
advice the experts offered to help me solve my horrible dilemma. I had page after page of advice on mindfulness, choosing reality
over fantasy and how to consciously vibrate at a high positive frequency rather
than a low negative one. I have filled
up Love Tanks, crashed through Blocks, kept a journal my dreams, contemplated
life’s schemes and relanguaged and rewritten my life experiences.
I searched and searched for the
answer; unfortunately I didn’t know the question. But that was okay because I developed what some psychologists call
‘monkey brain’ and with all the chatter going on inside my brain I umm… What
was I saying? Oh yeah, if you’re happy
and you know it don’t go looking for answers to someone else’s
questions. I did and all I got for my
trouble was writer’s cramp… and
a lot of kindling for the family picnic’s bonfire.
