Tag: struggle

10 Ways to Tell You Are a Member of the Sandwich Generation

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 5 Comments

As someone who is a card carrying member of the Sandwich Generation (well, not literally—there aren’t really cards…yet. But there is a secret handshake), I can tell you that it makes for interesting days. Though I’ve written before about the Sandwich Generation, if you are not familiar with the term, it’s one that describes a person who is raising a child at the same time they are caring for an aging parent. (Can you picture it? It’s like they are the bread and you are the turkey…well, that didn’t sound right. I mean whatever your preferred lunchmeat is…)

For me, it is definitely a major part of my Juggle Struggle.

For you…well, dealing with the challenges of caring for people at opposing ends of the life spectrum may or may not be the situation you are in…yet. But if you have kids and parents in your life, you just may need some examples to help you recognize what that will look like.

 

sandwich

 

Here are 10 ways to tell you are an SGer.

  1. You can easily rattle off both your kid’s and your parent’s birthdates and social security numbers, but when anyone needs yours, you have to really stop and think.
  1. When it comes to technology, you find yourself working to keep up with your kid while trying to teach your parent. The latter typically does not happen easily. You just may hear yourself repeating, “No, swipe here…no, not there, but here” a few dozen times. A day.
  1. Though you can easily put your child in a time-out or grounding, there are many days you wish you could do the same with the other end of the spectrum.
  1. You are bracing yourself for the day your kid gets his driver’s license as well as the day you have to tell your parent that it’s time to do the opposite.
  1. While of course you are a parent to your child, you walk the fine line of caring for your parent without making them feel like a child. How’s that goin’? Yeah, I thought so.
  1. You sometimes have to remind both to think before they speak. You consider adding to the cliché “out of the mouths of babes” to include “and senior citizens.”
  1. You find that you have to repeat what you say to both child and parent. For one because they aren’t listening and for the other because they are hard of hearing. (Can you guess which is which?) Actually, for the parent, often both reasons apply.
  1. Both your child and parent need your help. Both also resist it—and both for the same reason: they want to be independent.
  1. You are well aware that the issue mentioned in number 8 will have dramatically different endings. And so you deal with the emotions of caring for your child, knowing that your responsibility is to prepare him to ultimately leave home—while at the same time caring for your parent…to ultimately go “home.”
  1. Too often you forget to take care of the “turkey”—or whatever lunchmeat you chose to represent yourself. All this does is make it harder for you to take care of the entire sandwich. You know this, but you continually fall short. Something you are very used to doing. That’s okay. Love yourself anyway.

If more than a few of these apply to you, well then consider yourself accepted into Sandwich Generation membership. I’ll be happy to teach you the secret handshake.

In all seriousness, though, if you are someone who might have to face the reality that your parent may someday need caregiving, be brave enough to have the conversation now—or at least well before the time arrives. Both you and your parent will be the better for it.

 

All photos are my own.
Please note that there may be advertisements below via WordPress.com.
The presence of these ads does not constitute endorsement of the information, services, or products found in them.

Living By Candlelight

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 8 Comments

I’ve always been a pyromaniac, albeit a responsible one.

From as far back as the time my sister ratted out my five-year-old self to my parents about playing with matches (and somewhat smugly watched as I got spanked for it, I might add), I have been enchanted with fire.

 

matches

 

Like the times my mom used to run into the grocery store for a few things and leave me in the car (remember when that was okay?) and I used to use the car cigarette lighter to relight the butts left in the ashtray (see maybe that’s why it stopped being okay…)

And then there were the numerous times my friend Jen and I dabbled with fire…one of my favorites being how we set a fire in the concrete storm drain outlet (that way, it couldn’t possibly get out of control…See? I told you: responsible) and enjoyed it until it had burned itself out and I was called home to dinner. While outside, I was noseblind to my smoky smell, but when I walked into my house and got a whiff of myself, I panicked and went into the bathroom to come up with a “solution” to my fiery smell…The result? The brilliant choice of spraying myself abundantly with rose-scented Glade. I sat down to dinner in a stink cloud of smoke and canned rose…My mom must have thought that she was better off not knowing because she never asked any questions about that one. Ever.

Yes, I have a few stories that illustrate my love affair with fire. Some, I will never tell. (Jen—remember that one New Year’s Eve with the pizza box?)

So it’s no surprise that the chilly days of this past weekend made me quick to want to light some candles…and it got me to thinking about the simple beauty and power of candlelight.

As soon as I lit a candle in the late afternoon gloom, the room felt different. Warmer. Cozier. Just a single candle cast a glow that made a difference.

 

candle 1

 

It brings back thoughts of songs I was raised on, like This Little Light of Mine and Pass It On. Songs that drive home the point of the power of one little light or how a spark can be the beginning of something much bigger. And, of course, with those songs, the emphasis is on sharing the love of Jesus—how our little lights should shine brightly because we have the Light within us.

 

song

 

And while this is absolutely critical to a faith-filled life, I find my thoughts rippling out further. I think about the flash of a camera—how it too is a “little light.” But while the flash is powerful, it is also brief—and it can often be blinding and disorienting to those who are near when it flashes.

But the consistent flicker of a small flame offers comfort and hope. One small light amidst the darkness can be powerful enough to help you find your way home.

 

candle 2

 

I don’t want to live by flash, but I must admit that all too often I see myself have a brief burst of “illumination” of some sort…and then it is over all too soon.

Instead…I want to live by candlelight.

I want to burn steady and consistently, and I want my actions to reflect the Light within.

I want the results of what I say and do to glow with warmth and perhaps push away some of the gloom of a melancholy day.

 

candle 3

 

A challenge of living by candlelight—to extend the metaphor further (yea!)—is that my light can be all too easily blown out by the winds of the world. Thankfully, though, that’s not the end of it because the Light is there ready to reignite when needed. The Source remains eternal.

The idea of living by candlelight is simply a reminder of the power and beauty that one little light can bring into the darkness…and that if we do choose to shine, we will make a difference, just like that candle did for me in the pall of a gray evening.

The pyromaniac in me smiles at that.

 

All photos are my own.
Please note that there may be advertisements below via WordPress.com.
The presence of these ads does not constitute endorsement of the information, services, or products found in them.

Perfect Imperfection

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 2 Comments

It may be fair to say that I have a teensy bit of a tendency to be a perfectionist. It may also be fair to say that the older I get, the more I realize what a futile situation I create for myself in striving to do things perfectly.

I have, however, found one thing I am absolutely perfect at: imperfection. I’ve got it nailed. Fall short every day? Check. Lack discipline? Check. Disappoint people? Check. Miss the mark? Check. Make mistakes? Check.

I’m all over this imperfection thing.

If I would have known how perfect I could be at imperfection when I was in my 20s and 30s, I could have saved myself a whole lot of struggle.

As life turns knowledge into wisdom, I have learned that the desire for perfection is actually quite evil. It is what undercuts effort due to fear of failure. Creative sparks die in the wind of perfection. Dreams get minimized if they seem unattainable…and minimized dreams are not dreams at all, but consolation prizes.

To be clear, I’m not embracing purposefully doing things poorly, but I am embracing the idea that fearing you might do something poorly is no reason not to try. I’ve failed a lot lately, and…I’m still here. That alone speaks to the myth of perfectionism. Perhaps perfectionism is just ego wrapped up in a pretty package.

 

No longer perfect, but still serves its purpose
No longer perfect, but still serves its purpose

 

As I think about this, I am reminded of my days on my college softball team. Now there is a lesson in embracing imperfection.

To set the scene just a bit, the transition from slow pitch to fast pitch for girls’ softball happened when I began high school. That meant that until I was a freshman, the only softball I had ever played was slow pitch. When I went to the orientation meeting for my high school team, I was so put off by the coach that I decided I didn’t even want to try out for the team…so I never learned to play fast pitch. (By the way—deciding to let the coach’s personality be the reason I didn’t try out was a stupid, short-sighted decision on my part. Ah, youth…)

Fast forward to college. Some girls from the school’s softball team were encouraging me to try out for the coming season’s team. I told them that I had no experience with fast pitch, but they said it didn’t matter—that no one would be cut from tryouts because they simply needed enough girls to form a team and let the university fulfill its Division I status. No risk in that, right? So I decided to go to tryouts…where there had to be at least one hundred girls attempting to make the team. So much for no cuts.

 

mitt

 

As long as I was there, I thought, what the heck? I’ll give it a shot. Thankfully, my old abilities came back to me, and my fielding skills were pretty tight. But next was batting…

Since tryouts were in late winter, they were indoors. This meant that the batting portion of the tryouts was a pitching machine firing out whiffle softballs…and…I crushed them. I mean…I impressed myself. Piece of cake, I thought. Maybe this fast pitch wasn’t so hard after all.

And then spring came.

My first at bat in the lovely outdoors went something like this: I stood in the batter’s box and waited for the pitcher to throw the ball…only she already had. It was so fast, I barely computed its whizzing by me. And whizzing by me. And whizzing by me. I would try to swing and be so behind the pitch it was laughable—except to my coach. He looked at me with a “please tell me you aren’t seriously this bad/how did you get on the team/there is no way I can remediate you at this point” look on his face.

I did, however, achieve perfection that season—a perfect .000 for my batting average. The coach did use me as a utility player when he needed one, but if my memory serves me correctly, I struck out every time at bat. Every. Time.

 

bat 2

 

At tryouts, I had no idea how poor of a fast pitch batter I would be. I had no idea how quickly I was barreling toward gaping imperfection. I had no idea how humbling it would be to go from a worthy player to one who pretty much accidentally made the team.

But I survived, and so did the team. And we had a whole lot of fun that season.

And I would do it all over again.

Of course, back then, I didn’t have the perspective of this lesson of imperfection. I just had the frustration of sucking at batting. But it was an important piece of the puzzle that would help me to eventually realize that I would have rather been on the team and struggled than not have been on the team at all.

Being perfect at imperfection is freeing. It takes the pressure off. It opens up possibilities because you know that if you strike out, you’ll live to play another day. And who doesn’t want to play another day?

In fact…I think a brand new game is starting…

 

All photos are my own.
Please note that there may be advertisements below via WordPress.com.
The presence of these ads does not constitute endorsement of the information, services, or products found in them.

Reclaiming the Other F Word

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 10 Comments

“Oh, you’re one of those…” is a phrase I hear more often than I would ever expect to in this day and age. See, I’m a hyphenator. I chose to hyphenate my last name when I got married, and according to the kinds of responses I sometimes get, that makes me “difficult.”

That’s right—I wanted to keep my family name along with taking my husband’s last name. Pretty crazy, I know. But I never thought that that choice would carry with it a judgment for some people—and a negative one at that.

While women may have “come a long way, baby,” we still have a lot further to go. As I was thinking about this today, I decided to YouTube the old Virginia Slims commercial that made that phrase so popular. Ironically, the expression that came to symbolize women’s progress is merely trying to capitalize on making women want to smoke feminine cigarettes and be sexy while doing it. Progress indeed.

In my lifetime, I’ve learned that I better be careful in calling myself a feminist. That in doing so, it made me “anti-male” and bitchy. Though there may be a small contingent of women who call themselves feminists and claim that women are the superior gender, all I ever wanted was equality—as most feminists do. The only “anti” I am is anti-discrimination. If men were making less than women, having laws telling them what they can and can’t do with their bodies, being restricted from education in parts of the world, or dealing with the pervasiveness of sexual assault, I would be against that, too.

I am so happy to see the movement toward taking away the negative connotations of the word feminism and reclaiming it as the movement toward gender equality.

Emma Watson—the woman who brought the amazing Hermoine Granger to life—spoke so eloquently on this to the United Nations (that’s right, the U.N., baby!) As the U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador, she is launching a campaign called HeForShe where the goal is to empower both women and men to be who they are and to be treated equally. Simply put, she’s awesome.

The video is over 12 minutes, but…if you’ve got the time, it’s definitely worth a listen.

 

 

Another campaign that strives to empower young women is Always’ Like a Girl campaign. If you haven’t seen the video, check it out:

 

 

It shows the subtle—or not so subtle—undercutting of gender that happens without thought…and how young girls and boys can get the message that “like a girl” means “less than.”

I experienced a real life demonstration of how this message gets absorbed by young women over the summer. Every year we go to a beautiful place in the Northwoods of Wisconsin where we see other vacationing families every year. Because I only get a glimpse of these folks annually, it is fun to see how the kids grow from year to year. But this past summer disturbed me a great deal. Girls who had only last year been happy to take to the softball field in a boys vs girls game and give it their best effort were now acting incapable and flighty. One girl let a ball roll right by her and said she didn’t want to break a nail…seriously. And, much to my dismay, that kind of behavior was consistent throughout the week.

What had happened in a year? Somehow they got the message that being strong and athletic was not feminine or desirable. It broke my heart because I knew that it had only been the previous summer that they were embracing their strength—and now they were not only downplaying it, but denying it.

When I see homecoming photos posted on Facebook of lovely groups of young women—all wearing pretty much the exact same barely mid-thigh dress, give or take the color—I realize how strong the pressure must be to meet society’s current expectations of the popular woman. Good luck trying to find a dress for that age that strays from the “standard”—and the question arises as to whether it is a case of supply and demand or demand and supply. What’s available in stores “teaches” us what we should look like.

In 2014, the fact that girls are getting the message that it is their fault if they get raped because they were drunk should be inconceivable—but it’s not. So strong is that attitude that the White House has launched a campaign to fight against it:

 

 

We’ve got to not only raise our girls to stand strong but raise our boys to embrace that strength and respect it.

Anything less isn’t right. It just isn’t.

People should be paid equally for the same work. People should have sovereignty over their bodies. People should have the opportunity to be educated. People shouldn’t have to worry about being sexually assaulted. People should be respected for who they are and what they do. People should be encouraged to reach their potential. People should be loved, accepted, and valued for who they are—not what they look like.

Replacing the word “women” with “people” makes it really hard to deny, doesn’t it?

That’s the true heart of feminism. That’s what we need to reclaim. That’s what both women and men—what humanity—should strive for. Anything less is just fear trying to keep others down. And we’re better than that, don’t you think?

Well, we should be.

Please note that there may be advertisements below via WordPress.com.
The presence of these ads does not constitute endorsement of the information, services, or products found in them.

Blindsided

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 14 Comments

Have you ever been driving merrily along when out of nowhere, a car smashes right into you? I have. I was the front-seat passenger in a car that was hit on my side—in fact, for a split second, I saw what was coming and yelled, “We’re going to get hi…!”

WHAM!

 

warning

 

Thankfully the impact was just behind my door, but we were propelled through the intersection—doing a huge donut and landing yards away. My head slammed into the window, but mercifully the glass didn’t shatter.

The whole experience left me shaken and in a daze.

That’s what getting blindsided can do to you.

It’s like when an anvil falls on Wile E. Coyote’s head and the little birdies tweet around him while he tries to re-inflate and shake off his stupor.

Rarely do you get a glimpse of it heading toward you (as I did with the car crash), but even if you do, it’s not enough to prepare you for the impact. For the shock. For the damage. For the hurt.

 

hazard

 

Whether it’s an accident, a devastating diagnosis, a breakup, or a job loss, getting blindsided hurts in more ways than the obvious. Not only do you have to deal with the initial trauma of the incident, but there is the ripple effect of life being different from that point on.

Even when the blindsiding has less of an overall impact, it still leaves its mark. Thankfully there were no significant injuries in the car crash I was in, and the damage was mostly financial. But the way that I flinch whenever a car comes too close has never left me. The insurance may have helped rebuild the car—but my mind still has residual damage.

 

mirror

 

Major blindsidings ripple even more. Things that you believed to be one way are now another. And because the blow comes out of nowhere, there is no chance for goodbyes to what once was. It just is. In a split second, the world as you know it is very different. One way Monday, and then heartbreakingly different on Tuesday.

And there’s no going back. No reclaiming of the pre-impact reality. You just have to find a new way to navigate. To get back up. To heal. To let the little birdies swirling about your head fly away and hope for some clarity to settle in.

 

books

 

At the start of summer last year, my husband came home from work in the middle of the day, and after saying a quick hello to our son, he gestured for to me to follow him into the bedroom. I laugh now to think that the thing that crossed my mind then was that he was excited to share good news with me…a bonus? Vacation? After all, we really needed some good news. My mom had just come back home to live with us after a debilitating illness, and we were now grappling with how to care for her. The anticipation built within seconds, and then he said…“I just lost my job.” I thought he was kidding. As far as we knew, everything was going well in that realm—there was nothing that even intimated that his job was less than secure. But no…it was real.

Seriously, God? Hadn’t I just prayed to you a night or two ago that I didn’t know how much more I could handle? Is this your answer?

WHAM.

None of it made sense, and it hurt like hell. The sense of betrayal was strong, as someone he considered a friend had given him no warning before he turned our lives upside down. It wasn’t just the loss of income that hurt, but the loss of faith…the trust of believing that if you were loyal and worked hard, you would be treated fairly. Gone in an instant.

 

tire

 

Time passed, we caught our breath, and the little birdies eventually flew away. And after much thought and prayer, we believed God was pointing us toward my husband opening his own architectural firm. And that’s how this particular Phoenix rose from those specific ashes. Though the business is still gaining traction, we feel it was indeed our next right step to take. (And if anyone needs a wonderful architect…I have one for you!)

And as you may have guessed from the timing of this post, the little birdies are swirling about us once more.

Another experience extremely similar to my husband’s work situation…but this time for me.

WHAM.

Life has taught me that we will eventually catch our breath and figure out our next right step. But for now, I am in the midst of trying to shake off my own daze from the blow and wondering how it could happen to us again. How what I thought I could have faith in, I no longer can.

I’ve never been one to think I have life figured out, and time and again I get reminders of that very truth. All I can do is have faith that God has something better in store for me, and then look to find it.

For a while, though, I may have to put some sunflower seeds out for those little birdies swirling about me, as they don’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.

 

All photos are my own.
Please note that there may be advertisements below via WordPress.com.
The presence of these ads does not constitute endorsement of the information, services, or products found in them.

Shut the Door and Teach

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 4 Comments

Do you ever feel like some days life is really just a big dodgeball game and you’re the only one left on your side of the court? Balls flying everywhere and all you can do is run around like Phoebe from Friends until the inevitable happens and you get pummeled from numerous angles?

 

dball4

 

Okay, maybe it’s not that intense, but too often outside forces can lead us to lose sight of our true purpose.

When I taught, my fellow teachers and I had to deal with an onslaught of issues from the administration. It was, quite frankly, often hard to swallow, as those who were telling us what we needed to do in the classroom had either never taught before, or had a year or two of teaching physical education under their belts before moving over to administration. I’m pretty sure a surgeon wouldn’t be thrilled with a first or second year resident telling her how to operate. But I digress.

 

 

With the swirl of outside forces clouding my vision, I used to tell myself this one thing to remember why I was there:

Shut the door and teach.

After all, that was my true purpose. I didn’t get into education for the politics of it all—I became a teacher because of my love of learning and wanting to share that with my students in the hopes that they, too, might also fall in love with it—or at least fall in like with it. Ever the realist, I am.

 

bookd

 

Just shut the door and teach—because that is why you are here. This is your purpose, your calling—and don’t let yourself get mired down in the morass of what is flung at you from those outside forces.

Along my life’s journey, I have had other callings, and still the same mantra holds true. While I’m no longer in the classroom, I still need to remind myself to shut the door and teach, in whatever adaptation that means.

 

door

 

No matter what my purpose is, I need to shut out the (often negative) distractions and zone in on what I can do to make a difference.

Even within our personal lives, we need to remember to shut the door and teach, so to speak. After all, we can really rip ourselves apart when we lose sight of our core purpose: to love one another.

Really…isn’t that just it? God calls us to love him and one another. Period.

 

verse

 

We are not called to feel poorly because our house isn’t just the way we want it or our kid doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that seemingly everyone else does. We are not called to be caught up in the “stuff” of this world.

We are not called to be the answer to every unfolding drama that comes our way or every problem dropped in our laps. Sure, we are to do our best and take responsibility appropriately, but it needs to be in keeping with our purpose—not derailing us from it.

Just shut the door and teach…and love.

Of course, this doesn’t make the distractions and negatives disappear. We all know better than that. After all, the administration kept right on with their form of educational dodgeball. And bills won’t pay themselves. And crises still come our way. Life will still send us ducking and dodging, but we are hopefully more fulfilled because we keep our focus through it all. (Or at least on most days. Still the realist.)

So for all of us who from time to time feel pummeled by the world around us, I hope you are able to do your own version of shutting the door and teaching…of remembering your calling and keeping those that have a habit of putting obstacles in your way in their proper place.

Remember what you came for…and then do it.