The Year of Joy

Hmm, how long has it been since I have written? A really really long time. I must say that if you want proper grammar, don’t read any further. I want to blog for fun and for therapy, not to win any awards or to spend my time checking my paragraphs. So, there. You were warned.

I just put my Facebook account on hold. This was a big step for me. Huge. I mostly used Facebook as a platform to keep my family updated on my children. I am horrible at the phone. (I see eyes rolling from dear friends as they read this. I know you are a good friend if you have stuck around this long with my less than sufficient communicating skills) So, my answer was FB. Lately, however, I feel like I need to purge it as a whole and free up that time in my life. To be honest, sometimes FB makes me feel bad about myself, my being, my parenting. I have no idea where that stems from and that is why, when I opened a fortune cookie at Osaka that stated “Be happy with the person you are, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”, I decided to get rid of anything in my life that made me feel yucky. Anything is fair game. Facebook was one of the casualties, along with sugar, sweetners, some friends and the jeans I will never be able to fit into again but are still in my closet making me feel like a fat pig. Goodbye.

This is a great thing. It has only been 5 minutes, but look! I have brought back my blog, something that makes me feel great! Hot damn.

Although the title of this blog does not fit its original purpose anymore, I still think it is fitting. The past year has been a year of joy which I will get into later. I followed my dream and many tears, fits, laughter and dollars later I will see my very own clothing collection in stores all over the US. I think. I am still trying to figure out many things to get the collection produced, but it will happen.

So, every year is the year of joy because every day I will strive to live that joy. Hopefully, someday, I can live it effortlessly. Working on that. I am getting closer. I even stopped making my bed some days.

If you have read my other posts, you know that some of our most special times come at bedtime with the kids. Every night, we crawl into Neve’s bed and read books, talk about our day, say prayers, laugh and sing. Recently, I have been getting into a rut with bedtime and hurry through books and prayers in order to go downstairs and start my work night (Yes, I begin to work every night around 9.) Last night, however, I decided to give Neve my full attention and really listen to what she was saying.

It was phenomenal.

First off, Neve has gone from singing her prayers “gospel style” to rapping her prayers. HILARIOUS! The first time we did this Bob was on the beat, I rapped and Neve clapped and added her own back up vocals. This quickly morphed into Neve being the beat, or what she so proudly calls “adding the ‘hum choos’ , with Bob or me adding the words and backup. Last night she took it a step further and requested to rap the words herself- and I will forever regret not getting it on tape because it was unlike anything I have ever experienced… the look on her face when she started thanking the Lord for things in a freestyle manner was magical. It was almost like she realized, in that moment, that she was capable of more than she could ever imagine. She was blissful…

She finished the rap and immediately started to cry. She realized that she forgot to rap about Wally (our dog we had to put down this past year), Doggy Dog (her favorite lovey the first 2 1/2 years of her life… she didn’t go anywhere without him. We lost him in the summer)  and Grandma Pam (my mother who lost her battle to cancer when I was 20)  in heaven. I told her it was ok, you can say (sing or rap) as many prayers a day as you wish.. and so we started again. All of a sudden, she stopped mid rap, thought for about 2 minutes in silence and then this amazing conversation followed:

“Why is grandma Pam in heaven again?”
“Because she was very sick and needed to feel better”
“Why didn’t she just take medicine? You give me medicine when I am sick and it works.”
“Well, she did take medicine but it didn’t help. Nothing could make her feel better. The only thing that would make her feel better was heaven.”
“Hmmm.. you think now that she is in heaven and feels better she will come pick us up?”
“That makes me smile, honey, but the crazy thing about heaven is that once you go to heaven you can’t come back. She can see us, though, and I know, without a doubt that she loves you very much. I am sure you make her smile.”

At this point, Neve began to cry.

“I never got to meet her! Mama, I want to meet her!”
“I wish you could meet her, honey. We can just talk about her a lot so you feel like you have.”

She started crying again softly. I watched her as she laid there wiping her tears and thinking feverishly. A few minutes passed.. you could tell a lot was going on inside that little head.

“I don’t want you to go to heaven mama. You might get what Grandma Pam had just like I gave Shepard what I had. Plus, if you go to heaven I will never see you again and I will be so sad when I can’t find my mama…..”
“I’m not going to heaven right now, Neve. Don’t worry.”

Pause again with intense thought….

“Ok. Sounds good. But, if you do can you bring back doggy dog?”

hahaha.

And to think I almost missed that conversation by rushing out to work.

Today is February 6. Wow, time has flown. I often want to write on this blog but since I quit my job in August, I have been without a computer. I do have a nifty IPad my dear sister and family got us but for some reason it doesn’t let me write … so incredibly annoying. So, I stole my husbands computer for a couple minutes…There are too many changes to write in this short post but there is one constant… the blessings. Blessings all around. A very shortened list of recent blessings:

1. The birth of my adorable, incredibly chill son, Shepard.
2. My sister, Jess, and family moving 30 minutes away in Summerville, SC.
3. The ability to stay home with Shep and witness his beginning on this earth-something I was unable to do after Neve was born and something incredibly special for me.
4. The launch of Neve Inspired, the clothing line for children created by my husband, Bob and me.. I have been wanting to see it to this point for years now and we finally did it!
5. Working in the evenings with my husband, some of the best moments of my week.

Blessings = joy. Simple as that.

I know this post is jumbled, but I am excited to write more consistently about my journey to find TRUE  joy in my everyday life.

Till next time….

If you notice the dates on my posts, it has been 4 months, 1/3 of a year, since I posted something. Obviously, my journey to find joy everyday has not been translated onto this blog.  To tell you the truth, a few months were very hard and I was not ready to post my feelings for all to see.  May was my moms birthday (she would have been 64). Shortly after, we had to put down our dog, Professor Wally Snuggles, my personal spiritual leader. He was way more than a dog to me and his passing was devastating.

I know, I know, that is life. I  had many wonderful days as well and will write more about them in the coming weeks- finding out we are having a boy by accident, an incredible week long home exchange in Asheville, my daughter learning all of her letters and beginning to start reading little words… SO INCREDIBLE!!!!

Ahhh, life. I am learning a lot, everyday. I am finding joy and finding out my inhibitions to having that joy daily.

I’m a feeler. 100%. I feel everything, which I am sure others do as well. I often wonder, though, to what extent others feel. Sometimes I feel nutty at the extent of which I am feeling…

I feel so much sadness for the losing teams at the world cup. I feel incredible amounts of anger when I witness someone being treated unfairly. I feel love beyond words when I watch my daughter dress my husband up like a princess. I just FEEL. And, most of the time, the feelings are so intense, I do not know how to contain them. So, this is when I cry. I guess you could say I am a crier as well, then. When the Netherlands lost, I shed a tear just watching their faces. When the gentleman in front of me at Publix was rude to the grocery bagger, I shed a tear just completely sad that we humans still treat others in such a way. When my daughter put the dangly earrings on my husband, I shed a tear at the joy I was feeling… the beauty of their relationship and the tenderness of my husband.

Sometimes these feelings, though, are scary.

I recently went to lunch with a dear friend of mine. She was telling me about an experience she had where she couldn’t control her emotions…. she was feeling so much, her body basically couldn’t process what was going on and shut down. It was a very scary experience for her. This friend is a FEELER… which is a blessing and also, in this case, a curse. She had no idea why she was feeling what she was and why she was shutting down. I could relate. After a whole night of crying, she went to talk to a spiritual leader the next day.

The spiritual leader explained to my friend that everyone has a capacity for certain emotions. For example, person A could have a happiness level of 60%, a depression level of 30%, an angry level of 10%, etc. Person B could have a depression level of 70%, a happiness level of 20%, an angry level of 10% …. He went on to say that if a strong emotion comes out of you that you rarely see, you often do not know how to process this emotion. In fact, most people, at this point will say “why am I feeling this way, this is not me.. I am a happy person.” While this is true for the most part, you also have a percentage that is not happy and you have to own that part of you because it IS a part of you.

This struck me. I am honestly probably 90% happiness. So, most of the time that is what you see… in an extreme amount. I do, however, have a little percentage of anger.  And, when it appears, it is shocking. I mean, it scares me. Add that to being a feeler, and my anger emotion is EXTREME. Often, I have no idea how to handle it and when it appears I find myself making up excuses for my behavior and reactions to my emotions. BUT, THIS IS A PART OF WHO I AM AND I CANNOT DENY THIS PART OF ME. Wow, how powerful that is.

So, from now on, when I experience an emotion I am not used to, I am going to embrace it and learn more about myself through those feelings… one tear at a time.

On a different note, I thought I should share the best part of my day today…

While putting Neve to bed, I decided to sing our prayers in a gospel form instead of just saying them. This does not shock some of you, I am sure. I frequently burst out in song and am a firm believer that living your life in a musical form is far more entertaining. I had never tried this at bedtime, however, especially during prayers. I began with “Dear Lord, Thank you for Grammy and Grumps” (You have to try to picture this in a true “hallelujah” gospel singing voice at a rather high decibel.) I looked over and Neve’s eyes were huge. At first, I wasn’t sure if she was excited or completely terrified of our new rendition of prayers. The girl likes a routine and does NOT like when her routine is altered. Suddenly, however, she continued on, trying to emulate my singing and even adding a personal touch with hand claps. HAND CLAPS! BRILLIANT!  We sang and clapped our prayers like we were on Glee, both with huge smiles on our faces. When they were done, Neve looked at me and said ” Mama, that was fun. Prayers tomorrow?”

It was awesome. Completely awesome.

Finding courage to write about your daily experiences is hard, especially when the experiences are in connection with your very personal self journey. How do I express what I am feeling when I don’t even know what I am feeling? Kind of tricky, but I am just going to write, aware that some of these posts will not make sense… It might make this blog a little more entertaining. Also, I am in no way a writer. This means my grammar will be wrong and I am ok with that. So, suck it up.

I am quickly learning that the ability to find TRUE joy in life is much more complicated that I originally thought. One can’t truly have personal joy without knowing who they are. Although it sounds like I would know who I am at 28, I have realized this week that I am far from knowing my real self. This discovery has been exciting and incredibly emotional for me. Here is a chance to declare who Kristin Leigh Warfield Galmarini is today! How incredible! At the same time, however, I have to think of how incredibly sad it is that years have gone by with me not even knowing my true likes/dislikes, even if they seem small and insignificant. What is even more sad is that I didn’t know that I was unaware of these things.

This whole discovery came about last week when I was at the gym. I was going 100x a minute on the eliptical when I suddenly realized ” I frickin’ hate the eliptical.” This may sound silly to a lot of you, but this was a big moment for me.  I mean, I HATE the eliptical. Yet, you will find me rockin’ out on one at least twice a week. Why the hell do I do that?  Why? Well, because I never thought about not liking it. I never really let it enter my mind. Before this verbal declaration, I would race to the eliptical to sweat it out because that is just what I was supposed to do. This was the first time I realized that NO! I didn’t need to use that machine. I, instead, could burn the calories in a way that made me happier. I actually felt liberated as I immediately hopped off. In my mind, my fists were pumping the air in victory.

Thus, the catalyst of me realizing the other things in my life that I never admitted or realized I didn’t like.

Yes, these are small things, but by doing things on a regular basis that I truly do not like (and have a choice of doing) it makes it hard to have simple joy. Does any of this make sense? (Sometimes I wish my best friend, Jamie, could take my thoughts and write them… it would be much clearer, let me tell you.)

Other things that I pretty much hate that I never let myself know I hated:

1. Baking

2. Making new gluten free recipes – ok, yes, my daughter is allergic to gluten, but I strongly dislike trying new recipes for her. Does this make me a bad mother, maybe. But, so be it. That is how I feel. I WILL continue with attempting some since she is my kin but will no longer appear to be the mom that loves to cook new things and come up with new recipes for her child, which I spend a lot of time doing. I would rather be playing outside, ok?

3. Washing pots and pans- they will be going into the dishwasher from now on if they fit. I know that is not good, but again, I don’t care.

4. Reading magazines with substance

5. Coloring. Again, horrible parent. I just can’t take it. I truly can’t take it.

6. Running more than 5-6 miles. I can’t believe I just wrote that. I never declared this one out loud. Damn, that was scary. I spend A LOT of time doing this as well. I always think I need to challenge myself. Do I?

I, Kristin Leigh Warfield Galmarini ,declare that I HATE the eliptical but LOVE step aerobics. I, Kristin Leigh Warfield Galmarini, declare that I would rather stab myself in the foot than hand wash pots and pans but find GREAT JOY in loading the dishwasher just right. I, Kristin Leigh Warfield Galmarini, declare that I do NOT have a desire to be a “perfect mother” by accomodating her daughter’s gluten allergy with homemade recipes but DO have a strong desire to continue sharing lunch dates to Your Pie with her (the pizza place that has gluten free pizza). I, Kristin Leigh Warfield Galmarini, declare that reading a magazine with actual articles makes me nutty but reading US Weekly makes my heart smile. I, Kristin Leigh Warfield Galmarini, declare that I will continue to put effort in discovering my likes/dislikes.. for no matter how big/small they are, they make me who I am.

Baby steps, Kris, baby steps.

Well, it was my goal to start this blog January 1, 2010.  It is now March 24th. I kept procrastinating b/c I would erase everything I wrote. Why do I do that?  That is definitely not helping me on my journey to find pure joy in everyday life. There is no joy in second guessing your feelings and how they are expressed. I tend to do that a lot. I mostly second guess my artistic side which has hindered my true passion of creating. Not good. I become too self critical and hyper sensitive to my creative work. How can I find true joy when I treat myself that way?

If you read the “about” page, you will find out why I declared this year THE YEAR OF JOY. I am determined to bring back the simple joys and truly appreciate life for all that it is. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this means I am not happy in my life. It is quite the opposite. I live a fabulous life… I am completely in love with my husband. I mean, sickening high school like love. I also am in love with my gorgeous daughter, Neve. I have a great job, a great home, a wonderful family, fabulous friends… the list goes on and on. I just feel that as adults we lose the ability to really live in the moment and find true happiness in simple, everyday activities. The worries are always in the back of our minds, the “honey-do” lists are always playing like a broken record. I want to change that for myself and hopefully others. I want the ability to turn that record off and truly focus on my day and my happiness.

Watch out worry, here I come. Stand back self doubt, I am armed and ready for you. Get ready, laughter, I am calling on you to be my BFF.

And so my year begins…