Bright Pink Lipstick

Six years ago today, and to be honest I try not to remember that day.What I like to remember, all of the reasons that my mom put a smile on a face and still does.

One of the best memories was a tradition that carried on from my childhood until I was 18, the year I lost my mom. I was watching her while she was getting ready to go out and I had had a terrible day. I was maybe 13 years old and the girls at school were making fun of me. Truth be told I was a late bloomer, but my mom always made me feel like I was beautiful, and she said that no matter what happened to never lose my sense of humor and my smile.

Well my mom was a natural beauty, but there was one piece of makeup she always wore, red lipstick. So as I'm sitting there talking with her about my day and she told me to come up by the mirror with her and pulled out bright pink lipstick, and put it on me. I asked why I couldn't wear what she was wearing and she told me "because lindsay lou, you are meant to stand out, and no one should make you feel otherwise."

That night she cancelled her plans, we ordered in pizza and sat in our jammies her with her bright red lipstick and me with my bright pink lipstick and ate ice cream from the carton. We talked, we laughed and we fell asleep in a mini campground we had created in our living room. From then on, we would have our date night when my stepdad was traveling for work.

To this day, I still wear my bright pink lipstick even in the middle of corporate america, because something about it just makes me smile remembering the good things.

Don't get me wrong, I try to always be the strong one about it all and be positive and I have learned to work to make sure that I get one day a year to just let it out. In the end I was there with my mom and saw things I would not wish upon my worst enemy, so it's not always easy to just remember the good, but that doesn't mean I don't try to.

 One thing I do always remember: That my mom loved me with all of her being, and although she didn't win her battle with cancer she fought, and the reason behind her fight was that she always wanted to be there for me.

I think sometimes we all need a reminder and today is mine: There is always something to be thankful for. ALWAYS

Odds

Sometimes they're for you and sometimes they're against you, but in my opinion the odds play a larger role in our lives than we give them credit for.

We always hear "What are the odds of that happening" and typically we view them as a bad thing. A big fan of the discovery channel and nat geo I compare this to the typical odds I see on there: the odds getting attacked by a tiger shark (shark week is a national holiday for me), the odds of getting stuck in a tsunami and so on and so fourth.

BUT what if we looked at odds from a different point.

There are some odds that are a given (not to all, but generally speaking) what are the odds I'm going to have my morning coffee, or go to work every morning (you could set your watch to the fact that these will happen), and there are some odds that are a shoot for the stars, lightening strikes twice kind of odds.

I've realized its the odds that make life exciting. Maybe its the things that are against the odds that we really look forward to, the things we appreciate because we never saw them coming.

But hey...  what are the odds of that happening right?

Everything Happens For a Reason

I've never liked this phrase...NEVER

In fact, I have despised it. When my Mom passed everyone told me that everything happens for a reason, and to be completely honest I wanted to say BS to every single one of them. I will never understand the reasoning behind that.

But in the past month I have learned that maybe this statement does hold true to a point. But instead of everything happening for a reason, I think its: EVERYTHING SERVES A PURPOSE

 Maybe sometimes you just have to have a little faith that there is a purpose behind what's happening in your life, and looking back on my recent job experience I believe this did happen for a reason.

After working for five years in the marketing field, I begin life back in the corporate office next week (and couldn't be more excited).  This job is exactly what I was looking for, somewhere where we were growing a business and busting our asses to do it. I like having skin in the game and personal relationship to the businesses I market. It pushed me that much harder. But getting to this point taught me more than I realized.

In early July I moved from my previous marketing specialist position into a consulting position. It was a big step in my career, and it took me a few days (and glasses of wine) to catch my bearings again. I had always taken care of myself and worked hard to ensure I could, so this was me putting everything out there, and to be honest taking a large, life-changing risk.
 

Over the next few weeks I was experiencing an uncertainty as a marketing specialist I had not before. I was use to knowing to be at the office at 7:00 and leaving at 4:00, and knowing I would be there every day. And through all the uncertainty I was happy. Why? Because although it was scary, it was a chance for me to push myself out of my comfort zone and see what I could really do. Even more importantly it made me take a step back and look at all of the great people I have in my life and appreciate each and every one of them for their unique beings.

Everything has a purpose, the hardest part is waiting to discover the purpose and make sense of it all. And most of the time, the only way to do it is through hindsight.

I mean it is 20/20

Photo Credit: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Purpose-320078457

Remission

Temporary relief ... from disease or pain

After fighting for two years, a ten pound tumor and cervical cancer later we got the news that my Mom had entered remission. Even after this declaration from a team of certified specialists, we still worried and the previous shock from the two years prior stuck with us all. We could try and forget about it, but we all knew that each one of us had some sort of fear and damage from everything we had undergone. 

She spoke at a survivors dinner, her hair had started to grow back into a Twiggy curly pixie cut, and slowly life was returning to normal (whatever that means). But life doesn't owe us anything nor (as previously mentioned) is it fair.

I was two hours away experiencing my freshmen year in college. My mom had met another one of her goals: to be there to move me in, and send her daughter onto her next phase in life. I returned home before winter break and my Stepdad and Mom said we needed to talk. Immediately I knew. We had had this talk before, with the same tone, same setting it was the worse case of Deja Vous a person could experience. The cancer had come back, and had settled in her brain. I felt sick. That deep down sick to my stomach, but we beat once, so why couldn't we do it again? Something in me knew that this time was different. 

I feel like from every traumatic experience in our lives we make it through and experience remission, a temporary relief from pain. We may feel like we have made it through, but all it takes is a song or image or something that brings us back to that exact moment, and it all becomes real again. Even after the remissions in our lives, many times the experience's will continue to somehow effect us or in my case, shape our paths in life. From this, we have the choice of learning and growing from these negative experiences or to let them bring us down. 

I chose to grow.

Photo Credit: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Love-Life-333602435

That's Not Fair...Life's Not Fair

When I was younger I used to respond to every "you can't do that" or "no" with "THAT'S NOT FAIR"

Unfailingly (my own terminology) my Mom responded with "Life's not fair honey." To preface this my mom was "the mom." The woman who would stay up until midnight with me because I had no ability to sew my home ec project and basically the reason I am today, so this response was about as blunt and (what I thought at the time) as rude of comment that ever left her lips. Until my junior year in highschool these responses somewhat made sense, why I couldn't go on a date with a guy two years my elder, or why my curfew was midnight not one o'clock like everyone else's.

Then she got sick. And suddenly, although she had told me a million times that life wasn't fair, it was what she wasn't telling me: Life's not only not fair, but it doesn't owe us anything and at times it doesn't make sense.

I remember that day like it was yesterday (cliche I know). My stepdad and mom sat me down and explained to me that my mom had cervical cancer and a large tumor and they were going to do everything to beat it. It all didn't seem real, like I had jumped into a Lifetime movie or teen melodrama.

And it continued to seem like a sick joke until the day my mom came home, still beautiful as ever, with a her clean shaven head and that symbol made everything sickeningly, punch to the stomach real. All I remember is crying and we looked at each other and said the same thing "Life's NOT fair"

My Mom and I