On Lessons from Pops

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

For those of you who don’t know, my father passed away on Wednesday. And for those who don’t know, my relationship with him was far from a beautiful “daddy’s little girl” type of scenario. I loved and hated him. I was afraid of him, yet I felt protected from the outside world by him.

My father was an alcoholic, mean, misogynistic, childish, and a bully. But he was also full of life, energy, and joy. He was strong—crazy healthy despite himself—and had the strongest work ethic of anyone I’d ever met. Just as strong was his play ethic: he worked hard and he played hard.

He lived a full life of ups and downs. He made money fast and spent it even faster. He loved drinking, gambling, and chasing women. He didn’t believe women should work or that education mattered. He believed you should take care of yourself and your family with food, shelter, and clothing in a basic sense. There was always enough, but always with the constant worry that maybe there wouldn’t be, the weight of bills looming.

From him, I learned a lot—what to do, what not to do, who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to show up in the world. This both served me and hurt me. The two main lessons I took from him were how to be productive and how to live fully at the extremes of emotion.

He hated the word “relaxing,” unless everything else that could possibly be done was already done. Before he came home, my brothers and I would scour the house for anything out of place, dirty, or unfinished. Yes, it was unhealthy—but it taught me to scan my environment, make lists, remember details, prioritize, and execute with whatever time I had.

This shaped me: I don’t know how to rest. I’m constantly doing, doing something, or several things at once. I am incredibly productive, and I think I like it that way. It’s a blessing and a burden, because I often don’t realize when I’ve pushed myself too far or taken on too much. My father, in an unhealthy way, taught me this.

Another word to describe him: loud. When the work was done, it was time to play and let loose. He had no qualms about body image, running around shirtless with his big belly. He sang at the top of his lungs, danced like a giant silly human without a care, and enjoyed food like there was no tomorrow. He loved sports—football mostly, the NY Giants in particular, but also soccer and basketball. Watching games with him was full of antics and superstition. The whole neighborhood knew if the Giants were winning or losing.

But with his intensity—whether excitement or anger—came loss of control. Things broke. People and animals got hurt, physically or emotionally.

Some of you who know me now might not realize that “loud” was once how I lived too. I still like to dance, be silly, and LAUGH—only now without the drinking and the overkill of noise.

Ultimately, I didn’t stick around to live like he lived or under his rule of thumb. I got the #$&* out of dodge and started a path of my own in the world.

I’ve learned over the course of the past 31 years that I struggle with boundaries. I was never taught them. I didn’t even know they existed. Particularly with extremes of work, play, and emotions—at first I had none. Everything was to the extreme. I’m now at a point in my life where I realize I can detach from those automatic reactions I was taught, and instead have healthier boundaries around rest, relaxation, and emotional highs and lows.

I am not perfect (who is?) and often struggle with doing too much without realizing it, or failing to recognize when I’m overwhelmed until it shows up as anxiety or panic. A lot of yogic work, mental health work, and a little medication have helped keep me balanced most of the time.

I sit here on my front porch on an August Sunday morning with my coffee and thinking about my dad.

There isn’t much rhyme or reason to this blog—just a moment to reflect on how my father shaped my life and who I am right now because of it. If I stay healthy, it’s not unreasonable to imagine living another lifetime beyond the years I’ve already lived (49). I can’t change the past, but I can absolutely change the future and how I choose to show up and react in it.

One day, those who are in my life when I pass will likely reflect on how I lived, what I taught them—whether it’s how they want to live, or how they want to avoid living. My hope is that whatever I put into the world, people experience it in a way that makes them pause—whether positively or negatively—and reflect on how their own experiences shape their behaviors and ultimately guide their decisions about who they want to be in the world.

And maybe, just maybe, that is the truest way my father continues to live on—through the ways he shaped me, both in what I carry forward and in what I’ve chosen to do differently. In that way, his life reminds me that even the hardest stories can become soil for growth, and that the future is always wide open for choosing a new way to live.

Seventh Floor, Going Down

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I know if I don’t capture the feelings now, I still might be able to later — but they will never feel as they do now.

Today.
My last day of work.
That elevator — the sound made me want to cry.

A hot day, not too different from today.
23 years ago.

5th Floor, Building 2 — right outside my door was the elevator bank.
Mary Susie Conti — the woman I was replacing — was loading up my head with all that I needed to learn.

I was paying rapt attention, but every so often I sussed out the environment. It felt so different to be in an office in the middle of the day instead of home with my two small children, who were now 45 minutes away in a new daycare. Every time I thought of them, my heart hurt just a bit, and I had to intentionally put it out of my mind.

The feel of the air with the open window (at a time when we were allowed to open windows — now I can’t imagine), the humidity in the office, and the sound of the elevator’s electronic voice blathering all day:

“Fifth Floor Going Down… Fifth Floor Going Up.”

Over the next few days and weeks, I slightly startled the 50 or so times a day I heard that electronic voice announcing the floor it landed on and which direction it was going.

Eventually, it became background noise and I didn’t hear it at all. But when I did tune in, no matter the day or time of year, I was transported back to being 26 years old and learning my new job from Mary Susie Conti.

For the past 8+ years, I haven’t come into the office much. I was on a reasonable accommodation and working from home long before COVID. But I have to say — it always felt like home when I did go in.

I honestly believe one of the reasons I got the job is because of that “home”-like feeling.

When I interviewed for that first job, I went through a series of interviews back to back.
Martha Shea was the first person who interviewed me.

Right off the bat, she made it known that if I didn’t pass her muster, the two doctors I would soon interview with would take her consideration into account.

She also made sure to tell me she was prior military and instantly started off by asking about my own military experience.

I was slightly intimidated, but something about her already felt familiar. She was my kind of people — I could tell.

I don’t even know how I wasn’t prepared for the question:
“Why do you want to work here?”

I mean — for heaven’s sake — if a person can’t answer that, they shouldn’t get the job!

Martha asked me that question and my truly unprepared, but terribly raw response — when I looked around — was:

“Because it feels like home.”

Martha cracked a genuine smile and asked me why.

I looked around, asking myself the same thing to understand why I had that feeling.

I saw the government-issued 3-month calendar, where you save paper with the months on both sides. The chairs. The carpet. The signage. The halls. The overhead pages. Men with military regalia ambling down the hall. The feeling I always got crossing from a state line onto federal property.

So that is what I said.
I first pointed to the calendar on the wall, then the chairs. I mentioned something that was broken in a corner and talked about how it all felt familiar.

I didn’t think about puffing everyone up with “helping veterans,” giving back, stories of grandfathers who fought in wars — or all the other things I subsequently heard over the years when I eventually became the interviewer.

My answer was candid and from the heart.

If my interview were a cartoon, Martha would have started off in a knight’s costume — complete with armor — to intimidate me.
Then it would have fallen off, and you would have seen her heart literally melting.

She proudly walked me down the hall to the person who would eventually become my first supervisor at the VA.

With a hand on my shoulder, she introduced me in a way that made it clear she liked me and wanted to take me under her wing.

I already felt protected — and that I was with my people.

Today, I drove into for the last time.

The sunrise down the street from me. A new dawn to a brand new type of day for me.

I saw people parking, taking out their bags and lunches, putting on badges.
These people were donned in suits, scrubs, lab coats — and everything in between.

I vividly remembered those early days of parking in that same lot. The uniforms, cars and smells were so unfamiliar at the time. Now they are all second nature. All these years I have been taking the same steps into the same building and heading to the elevators —

“1st Floor, going up.”

Today, I ran into one of my coworkers walking into the building.

We got on the elevator together, and I heard that same electronic voice, unchanged in all these years.

I asked him about his two young girls. He filled me in and then asked how old my children were now.

28 and 26.
My youngest is now as old as I was when I first started working there.

I worked there for their entire lives.
In some ways, I missed their lives because of that place.

I don’t know who I am without it.

Some people would say I worked there a lifetime (23 years).

Others, who have 40, 45 years in the government, would still consider me a newbie.

It’s all relative. But for me — between the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs — it’s been my whole life.

I had jobs in different buildings and offices. Not too many were close to an elevator bank.

Today, as I left, it was:

“7th Floor, going down.”

It felt like:

“Esterina, now going down and out — into the wider world.”

I sat in the parking lot for a long time.
I read the cards I was given, sitting in my car with the air conditioning blasting.

I felt nostalgic — but very excited.

Driving away was the hardest part.
No tears, but a large lump in my throat.

A piece of my heart will always be there — in those buildings, carpets, walls, files.

And just like that — “7th Floor Going Down” — one chapter closes, and another begins.

The rest of my life. Day 1

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

Nothing feels different, but everything feels different.

Chapter 2 is what I am calling this.

I sit across the breakfast table from my husband, but my personal laptop is in place of my work one. There still feels like there are a million things to do. But honestly, not a single one of them really needs to be done.

Was it always like this? Meaning, did anything really ever need to get done?

My heart is beating and I’m racing against the clock—stuff to do… I have to remind myself that there is nothing to actually really do. Today, there will be no sound of bings and chimes to notify me of new emails, Teams messages, or upcoming meetings.

Each of those bings is accompanied (was accompanied—gosh, this will take getting used to) by a spike in alertness and heart rate. At this time of the morning (6:15—YES, Six Flipping Fifteen), my heart rate and anxiety were probably elevated a handful of times.

Whoa, writing that out sounds so unhealthy.
It is unhealthy. But I’ve been doing this for years.

Even when I was physically going into the office, I’d wake up around 5 a.m., and just thinking about the day ahead would spike my anxiety. Sometimes in a productive way, but often in a storm of worry about how to plan the day to squeeze the most out of it—for both home and work.

The drive in would be filled with thoughts, worry, plans, more plans. And once I had two kids—then suddenly four—that planning hit a whole new level: kazillion mode.

Things have been quieter in recent years with the kids out of the house and me working remotely. But the anxious habit stuck around. And so did the bings, dings, and mounting pressure of the average workday.

Not that long ago in a land not faraway

I remember back in 2002, my boss gave me access to her email because she found it overwhelming—she got up to 50 emails a day. I was floored. Fifty! I was getting maybe 10, mostly forwarded from her.

Now that number sounds almost quaint. If you get only 50 work emails a day in this era, you’re lucky.
Managing email has become its own professional skill.

Most of it? Nonsense. But stressful nonetheless.

I felt like I had to walk into each day in full armor, machete in hand, clearing the overgrown weeds before they even had a chance to stop growing. 90% of emails went straight to Trash. Of those, maybe 10% were actually important—but wading through the digital clutter? A waste. So I created workarounds, tasks, and filters.

OK—seriously, I’ve digressed. But wow. It’s all so absurd.

Getting Anyone’s Attention

You can’t count on someone seeing your email. Depending on how someone organizes their inbox (and I’ve seen some truly wild systems), they may never even notice your message.

Urgent? Tag it with an @? Add the exclamation point? All overused. All part of the noise.

So we escalate:
Teams. Work phone. Personal phone. Desk phone.
And all of it—every single one of those tools—comes with a sound, a vibration, a ding that makes your chest tighten and your focus scatter.

But Now…

I closed the door. I shut the laptop.
I walked away.

That’s why I’m sitting here this morning, coffee in hand, at a different computer.

And now I ask myself:
How long will this feeling of impending doom last?
(Not actual doom, of course—nothing I ever did was life-or-death. But that tight-chested feeling… it’s real.)

How long until I can simply be present?

I Want to Be Present

I want to be present in my life. I only get one.
And I’ve spent 49 years rushing through it.

I’m safe now. I don’t need to stress myself out daily.
If I live to be 100, I’m only halfway through.
How lucky is that?

I feel so grateful. So blessed.
And I don’t want to recreate the stressful life I just stepped away from.

It’s funny—I only found out a week ago that yesterday would be my last day of work. I didn’t dare dream about what’s next, out of fear I’d jinx it.

And now? The urge to plan the “what’s next” is already kicking in. But…
I don’t have to figure that out right now, do I?

There’s no rush.

I have the rest of my life—whether that’s a few hours or another 50 years.

Peace,
Esterina

On our Clothing Donations and Ghana Beaches

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

If you don’t know about the issue of clothing waste on Ghanaian beaches, and you have a moment, stop here and look up “clothes in the ocean off Ghana.” What you’ll see is not exaggerated. It’s real, and it’s disturbing.

The clothes we give away to thrift stores or place in donation bins come from a place of good intention. And there are people who benefit from those donations. But there are not enough people in the world who need clothing at the scale we are producing and discarding it.

I’ve seen a version of this myself. Back in 2017, my husband and I traveled to Africa for a few weeks on an overland safari. Twice we passed through the town of Maun in Botswana. It was one of the only places we saw with shops and street vendors. And what were they mostly selling? Clothes. Racks and racks of them—many clearly from first-world countries like ours.

Most of us have heard about the issues in the clothing industry—sweatshops, low wages, poor conditions. I remember learning about it decades ago, and yet the problem seems to have only grown. And if I’m being honest, knowing all of that hasn’t stopped me from participating in it.

I’ve tried. I shop consignment more than I used to. I’ve made attempts at keeping a capsule wardrobe. But somehow, every few months, I still end up with an overstuffed closet and find myself purging clothes, shoes, and jewelry—keeping only what “sparks joy.”

And then I do it again.

Something as simple as needing a pair of black leggings turns into a spiral. I’ll start with the intention of buying just one pair. I type it into a search bar, and suddenly I’m scrolling through endless options—capris, patterns, odd cuts, things that aren’t quite right. Minutes turn into more minutes. Then I find a three-pack. Do I get all black? Or the one with red because it might match something I haven’t even worn yet?

Before I know it, I’ve bought more than I need.

They arrive quickly. Sometimes I don’t even try them on. Sometimes I do and don’t like them. Either way, I usually end up wearing the same simple black pair over and over until they wear out, while the rest sit untouched.

Eventually, I donate them.

Clothes that were barely worn. Clothes that didn’t “spark joy.”

And I know exactly where they might end up.

Even when I try to do better, I still fall into the same patterns. Convenience wins. Time feels limited. It’s easier to click than to spend hours digging through racks in a store. It’s easier to tell myself I’ll do better next time.

But next time looks a lot like this time.

And it’s uncomfortable to admit that I am part of something I don’t agree with.

This isn’t just about leggings. It shows up in other ways too—small purchases, quick replacements, things that don’t last. I don’t need to list them all. I know they’re there.

I don’t have a clean solution to this. I don’t suddenly shop perfectly or live without impact. But I do have awareness, and maybe that’s where it starts.

Not with perfection. Not with guilt.

Just with seeing it clearly.

Because once you see it, it’s hard to pretend you don’t.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On Why I Clean Everyday

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

First – why do you care? Haha, but really… if you care at all, why do you? How does it affect you?

When I was 22 years old, I moved to Cape Cod. I was entering the Active USCG Reserves while transitioning from a military member to a military spouse. My new home was located on a military base. It was not my first home as an adult, but it was the first home I set up alone.

This period was a transitional time in my life. Before then, I went straight from high school into the military. I was married just over a year later and unexpectedly pregnant 6 months after that. My life was busy, and I had not truly actively planned anything until that point.

As I looked around at all the boxes and pictures to hang, the disorder around me was affecting my mind. Or was it the disorder in my mind affecting my outer world?

I quickly went to work setting up home. While I opened boxes and organized the outward disarray, the disorder in my mind started to unravel into digestible thoughts. How do I gather all the college credits I accumulated into applying for a degree? Do I quit smoking? Have another baby? What do I want to be when I grow up?

As I unpacked and moved items—and then moved them again into better places—I made notes: call the education office, look into the local college, schedule that physical, reach out to neighbors, ask about pediatricians, talk to my spouse about a new baby while this little guy was still young so he had a playmate.

The act of outwardly organizing was helpful. I was making progress on something important, but also the monotony—combined with the active thinking of where we would most easily grab a plate—was just enough active and inactive brain power to keep my mind focused on the next phase of my life.

When the house was all set up and arranged just so, I missed the act of taking care of it. So I cleaned it really well. Again, the repetition and combination of active and inactive thought helped organize my inner thoughts, as they were all I had while doing this type of work.

I learned then that I very much enjoyed cleaning. All these years later I would label what I was doing as a sort of meditation, but at the time it only felt like cleaning.

I started to clean every day in various ways. There was everyday picking up—dishes, laundry, diapers, trash, wiping the table—but also things that needed to happen often but not daily: washing floors, laundering sheets, cleaning the bathroom. I put the non-daily essentials into a schedule for myself the way I learned in my years of cooking and meal planning, basically transferring my work skills to my home.

Then I moved these things outside—fix the fence, mow the lawn, ask about the grass seeds that are supposedly free.

I met my neighbors. They were all lovely. The one who was the friendliest lived across the street and worked on the base as a cleaner for the military houses in between family transitions. I don’t remember her name, but I will call her Melanie.

I asked Melanie what she did when she cleaned these empty houses, and she told me all about the floors and the blinds and the walls and corners—all the checkboxes she had to complete. Surprisingly, her house was quite a mess and she didn’t really enjoy cleaning. But she did comment that she saw me cleaning often.

What?

Saw me cleaning? How?

“Through your window,” Melanie replied.

Now I was embarrassed—but intrigued by what she told me. I hadn’t thought about cleaning blinds or paying attention to ceiling or floor corners.

A day or two later, I decided to tackle the blinds. As I was doing so, Melanie waved to me from inside her home across the street. I was slightly embarrassed yet again, but continued to clean the blinds as if it were a normal everyday occurrence.

The next time I saw Melanie, she commented on my cleaning again. That became the standard. It embarrassed me, so I often waited until I didn’t see her mini-van in the carport to clean anywhere near my own windows or outside.

Nonetheless, from there I continued a lifelong habit of cleaning nearly daily and scheduling various cleaning tasks throughout the week.

Through the years I’ve had to explain and defend my cleaning to partners, neighbors, kids, step-kids, and friends who comment—sometimes with annoyance—that my house is clean. I was always trying to hide it, clarify where I saw dirt or oils, negotiate with the kids to just vacuum that room—yes, on this setting. It was exhausting. I loved to clean when no one was home so I didn’t have to explain it.

Which brings me to the point of this blog.

Why did anyone care that I was cleaning in the first place?

I didn’t really ask for help. The kids’ chores—table setting, dishwashing, cleaning their own bathrooms, and scooping the cat litter of the cats they wanted—were not the demands of some Nazi clean-loving freak.

The cleanliness of other people’s homes doesn’t affect how much I enjoy visiting them or their company in any way. I’m not judging those who don’t like to clean. I know I’m unusual in this particular way.

So why does anyone really care what other people do? How they take care of their home, how often they cut their lawn, their hair, their fingernails? How deep into my life do you care about what I do—and why does my lawn count but my fingernails not so much?

At what point does what I do truly affect anyone else? Or does what I am doing make others reflect on what they are doing—and is that really my problem?

I did hide my real self for a long time worrying about what other people thought. That was not healthy.

This question grows from me into a larger scale. Why does anyone care who anyone loves or how they use their body to please a lover? How do the spices someone uses in their cooking matter to you? Why does it matter how other cultures cook, pray, love, dress, and take care of one another?

Yes, there are things that affect other people, but not as many as we think. Maybe the one house on the block with the overgrown lawn can bring down property value. There are things you can influence—like talking to that homeowner and maybe even offering to cut their lawn because they are a single parent short on time—but perhaps also accept how things are if that person doesn’t respond the way you’d like.

You cannot control other people. And just because you don’t like something they do—or don’t do—doesn’t make them wrong or crazy. Why waste mental energy on something you cannot control?

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just offering the suggestion to ask yourself why you might care and whether that energy is worth it. There is a locus of what you can control, what you can influence, and what you have no control over.

A diagram illustrating the Circle of Control, featuring three concentric circles labeled 'things I can control,' 'things I can influence,' and 'things I cannot control.' The innermost circle highlights personal thoughts, actions, and decisions, while the outer circles include factors like other people's actions and external elements such as the economy, traffic, and weather.

I clean all the time. I like it. It clears my mind. For me, the house doesn’t need to be very dirty to clean it—most people shower daily even when they aren’t that dirty. It is something in this crazy world that I feel I have control over.

I like the way I feel after moving around and taking care of the animate and inanimate objects that I own—my bed, plants, and pets. I like the way my surroundings look.

The question I asked myself when I was 22—whether the disorder of my environment affects my mind or if it is the other way around—is irrelevant to me today. Both matter. And this is one of my ways to care for both.

But why do I need to explain that?

You have control over your thoughts about why this, or anything, matters. Are you wasting your energy on something you want to waste it on? Do you have control over it? Influence? Neither?

I’m going to clean whether anyone likes it or not. I hope you collect your gnomes or pink socks or do whatever it is that you like—as long as no one is getting hurt. Don’t worry if I like it. I love you for being you and doing what you love.

Make sure you are doing no harm—and then do what you love without shame, question, or worry.

Be the change you want to see. Be what you wish the world to be.

It’s all you can do.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On The Story We Think We Hear

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

There is a story has come up for me in various ways over the past few weeks. I’ve been referencing it in thought and in conversations. It feels rich with many lessons, but the one that has stayed with me most is clarity in communication.

The story, in short, is about a well-meaning teacher who sends his colleagues a message about handling negative emotions—comparing them to storms that come and go, and suggesting mindfulness as a way to navigate them. The message was intended as helpful. However, the other teachers interpreted it as criticism. They became offended, reacted emotionally, and completely missed the original intention of the message.

That alone was enough to stop me in my tracks.

This week alone there were at least five occasions at work and three at home where I was listening intently to another person and either during the communication or shortly thereafter realized there was more than one way to interpret what was being said. Yesterday I interrupted an ongoing written chat to suggest that it’s difficult to get what is inside one person’s head into another’s and asked if we could verbally communicate instead.

Since reading and discussing this story, I’ve been picking up the phone and turning on my camera far more often than before to make sure I am actually on the same page as the other person.

This reading also opened my eyes to how often there is a disconnect between what is said and what is understood. I just hadn’t noticed it before. It becomes even more apparent when communication is in writing.

Something else struck me when discussing this story with others. A member of my writing group pointed out the phrase “well-meaning teacher.” A simple question was asked: would the story have been interpreted differently had those words not been there?

My answer is yes—absolutely.

It made me realize how much intention matters, but also how invisible it is. As a third-party observer (the reader), we can see the teacher’s intent clearly. But when we are inside the situation ourselves, we often cannot. We fill in the blanks with our own assumptions.

I would like to say that in the past I always considered multiple perspectives and intentions neutrally, but that wouldn’t be honest.

I know I often tried. I know sometimes I put myself in another person’s shoes. And occasionally I imagined both sides of an argument. But in everyday communication, I assumed I understood—and that I was being understood.

Something about this story flipped that assumption for me.

Recently, I’ve been approaching communication with the opposite mindset: that I probably don’t fully understand, and I’m probably not being fully understood.

So what does this mean?

It means we need to pay more attention—not just to what we are saying, but to how we are listening.

At this point, I can imagine someone saying:

“That sounds complicated. I don’t have time or patience to think about everything I say or how it might be interpreted.”

And honestly, I can’t completely disagree. What I’m describing does take more effort and more time than I used to give it.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize how necessary—and worthwhile—that effort is. It’s an investment in saving time, building trust, and fostering peace.

This next part might sound like a shift, but it’s not entirely separate.

Over the last year, I changed my political affiliation to unaffiliated. I came to realize that most people are not as far apart as it seems. The majority of people don’t want violence, suffering, or division. But we reduce complex issues to quick labels and assumptions about each other’s intentions.

Aligning and dividing becomes the easy solution.

And much of that division is based on misunderstanding.

What I am describing is a very human response. But that doesn’t make it helpful—and it certainly doesn’t foster peace.

We are not really taught how to listen with the intent to understand.

It takes effort to consider how your words might be received. It takes even more effort to sit with a point of view you don’t like, or to remain engaged when something makes you uncomfortable.

But avoiding that work—responding quickly, assuming intent, or retreating into our own perspective—only deepens the divide.

What struck me most about the story is the irony: the teacher’s message about emotions was completely lost because of emotions.

Instead of exploring the idea—that emotions come and go like weather—the focus shifted to perceived intention.

And that happens all the time.

We miss the substance of what is being said because we are reacting to how we think it was meant.

It’s a new year. I gave up on New Year’s resolutions a while ago, but I will never give up on wanting to be a better human and leaving the space I take up in the world better than I found it.

If you’re looking for something to work on, perhaps consider this:

The next time you find yourself in the middle of a conversation or conflict, try stepping outside of it—just for a moment—and imagine you are the reader of the story, not the character in it.

What might you see differently?

And perhaps, when you feel a storm coming on, you might even remember the original message that started all of this.

Happy New Year.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On Your Hometown

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I read a lot. When I veg out alone with the TV, I often watch documentaries. I don’t really know how I find these things (Amazon, Netflix, Kindle, etc have me pegged as a certain type I guess); but what I do know is that there are common themes. Mostly ones that would apply to a middle-aged woman.

One of the common themes is a main character who left their hometown after high school graduation and never looked back. In my books/shows that person is usually drawn back for some innocuous reason like a wedding or funeral, and  then find themselves entangled in stories, immersed in the past, and unraveling a mystery in which they are the hero or heroine of the story.

In the end they come back to their town.

I watch with intrigue but never imagined ever wanting to go back to my hometown. For the record I still don’t, but for the first time in my life this last weekend – I was intrigued by visiting and putting my toe in what always seemed like a waste of time to dabble in.

Like the characters in my stories there is an element of a painful past I’d rather escape. But in the mix are really, amazing happy memories too.

I’ve struggled with that.

It’s only in the past few years as I’m inching up to the age of 50 that I can see the value in looking upon the past as just what it was. It doesn’t have to be all bad in my mind as my brain probably made it out to be in order to cope and not get sucked back it. It’s a healthy reaction to trauma.

But truth be told, I had far more good times than bad. And it’s only now that I feel healthy enough to look at it all without negative emotion clouding all the good memories.

I lived in Brooklyn until I was 12, but those 6 real formulative years where you transition from child to adult I spent in Long Island in a small town often nicknamed “Mistake Beach”.

For good or bad, it is a large part of what made me who I am. There is nothing wrong with embracing what is and loving it all as part of life.

I have  been thinking about my hometown all week and today put together a little video.

I truly feel like I am in a place that I love every good and bad place I’ve ever been, any good or bad thing that ever happened to me or that I did. Because it all brought me to here where self-inquiry and self-reflection have a meaningful place with 47 years of experience to draw upon to be a better and healthier person for the second half of my life.

I’m grateful for all of it. Today in particular I’m grateful for Mastic Beach – my Hometown. No more hiding from the past.

On Making your Bed

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I am told a good life starts in the morning with making your bed.

Do you make your bed?

I’ve heard all reasons of why folks do or don’t make their bed. It is a personal decision. But research shows that people who make their bed are more successful, productive, and happier.

I make my bed. I feel energetically better when I do. The room appears neater, and I don’t feel schlepy when I crawl back in it at night.

I have also heard people say, “Why bother? It’s only going to get messy again.”

There is truth to that. But your body will also get dirty after you shower. Most of us don’t skip showers for that reason.

A lot of people tell me they don’t do yoga or meditate because they aren’t flexible, their minds don’t work that way, or they aren’t in shape. As they say in the yoga world:

“Saying you don’t do yoga because you aren’t flexible is like saying you are too dirty to take a shower.”

Taking it a step further would be to say that you are too out of shape to exercise.

I hate to break it to you—we are all the same. Our bodies and minds need maintenance, and when we don’t maintain them, we get a monkey mind and fall out of shape. It’s really that simple. Yes, there are exceptions, but almost all of them can be overcome.

We can skip cleaning our spaces and making our beds (or weeding our gardens—literally and metaphorically)—but while we are at it, why not skip that shower too? And why bother to exercise? Won’t we become atrophic again when we stop?

To live is to maintain. To live well is to maintain what supports us—our health, our habits, our homes, our finances, our pets… and even our minds. They can all go to pot if we skip the maintenance and lose sight of their health.

Yes—this takes up a lot of the day. But it’s worth the clean and clear space, because what you see around you directly affects what you feel inside you. You can feel it in your energy if you quiet your mind and get in touch with it.

So make your bed.

See what changes.
Namaste.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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On the Perfectly Curated Scene

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

This morning I sit in a beam of sun with a light breeze and the sound of water lazily lapping against the boat. Blue water and gentle waves surround me everywhere, rocking the boat to & fro. The slightest poofs of wind pop against the dark navy blue Bimini every so often, adding a different sound to the nautical melody that plays upon my ears.

Finally, I am relaxed for a few minutes and enjoying a cup of freshly pressed coffee while it’s still warm enough to enjoy—but not so warm that it is creating more heat than I want so early in the morning.

It’s not too cold or too hot today, but the constant rocking in Vineyard Haven harbor woke me up at 6am. It is actually dry this morning, so I didn’t mind coming up top into the cockpit with some blankets to temper my body just right. It’s already 7am, which means I have an hour before we dash off to the next place, in which I will sleep about 90% of the trip—and my life away.

It’s already 7am, which means I should start to hurry. Start putting away things that will move during the passage, and take a truly nasty, rocking and slamming dinghy ride to some of the sketchiest streets Martha’s Vineyard has to offer—just to walk the dog.

What at home takes less than a minute to get the dog outside for a walk (or even faster when we open the back door) turns into a 3x-a-day, at least 10 minutes each way (60 minutes total) event involving a dinghy that I still can’t figure out how to use. Add walking past dozens of warning signs about not allowing a dog in the made-up looking “pristine” spots amongst ship garages, the smell of diesel on a hot summer day, and tools strewn about. Dog pee on that small grass bed would of course ruin the whole scene.

So it is at least another 10 minutes per trip—or longer, since I actually like moving my body more than a few steps at a time. This makes walking the dog eat, at the bare minimum, 2 hours a day.

When I crash (and I mean crash) into bed every night, I wonder what the heck I did all day. I brought pastels to do art with. Yarn to knit with. A yoga mat. Books to read. But somehow day after day passes, and I’m happy if I just walked on land for more than a few minutes.

Yes, I am happy. It really is nice to appreciate small things like stretching your limbs by taking full steps on solid land. Or the feeling of a cool breeze (or any breeze really) when you are hot.

Or the art of doing nothing.

No—I lied there.

There is no doing nothing. Just living is all we do. Preparing something to eat, washing the dishes from it, cleaning up, changing my clothes. Even washing my face and brushing my teeth seems like a lot of work—and a lot of time. So much time that these things kind of take the whole day.

Some people refuse to boat with dogs—too much hair, too much pressure to get them on a walk. And they are absolutely right that it does consume your time. But I love my dog that much. His excitement makes bringing him so much more worth it. But he is a time suck.

Yesterday is what Daren called maintenance day. We got fuel and water. We did laundry and grocery shopped. It was Saturday. Seems like a good day to do those things. But other than sailing from Cuttyhunk to Martha’s Vineyard (which, for someone who doesn’t know how or like to sail, is sort of like throwing hours of your life into the sea) and having dinner with our friends (and dog walking, which I slept through the first iteration of), we did nothing else.

What would take maybe an hour or two for chores at home consisted of at least 6 hours of what shouldn’t be (especially on a “vacation”) labor-intensive work. The level of exertion in doing the smallest of things, combined with the lack of exercise, leaves my body feeling like a total pile of mush.

No lounging, no reading, no art, no exercise, no catching up on shows, no knitting—just keeping ourselves and the dog alive and fed.

We have and will see some absolutely stunning places. I’ve been vlogging the trip. These do not take a lot of work. I take short clips all day, and in my years of work experience with technology and multitasking, I can whip these together throughout the day rather efficiently.

Look at this perfect photo! These are not hard to capture—they are everywhere. I picked those flowers from wild areas by the fire tower while on a run in Cuttyhunk. Cool, huh?

But the vlogs and photos only show the beautiful stuff. I crop—or if I can, never capture—the many unsightly things right out of the crafted, curated scene. You don’t see the dumpsters everywhere. Us taking out our stinky trash or figuring out how to get pumped out. Recycling is an issue that we are temporarily choosing to ignore.

The surroundings of boating areas are often filled with broken lines and lobster traps, utterly despicable bathrooms, sparse maritime stores that look like a sad mini version of Home Depot, and slimy barnacles growing on everything you might need to touch during the day.

I like this, but I also dislike it. I miss being able to freely use water or taking a real shower. I miss not worrying about how and when to charge my devices. This is all very nice, even without modern conveniences—but not for a “vacation.” I don’t want to work so hard during my time off.

If we were retired and this was our life, I would be all in for a month or two a year.

Being on a slip vs. a mooring or anchor is better in that at the very least I could go for a run without being charioted to land on a dinghy. I ran a total of one time. I had 45 minutes before I had to meet Daren and ran with the flowers that are in that great picture most of the way.

At a slip on the dock, we can use water and electricity without conservation. But it’s still cramped and hard to cook and shower. It’s still a hike past the “no dogs” signs. The marinas and boatyards are often still very sparse, smelly, and ugly places. Not to mention the heart-stopping average rate of $8–10/ft per night during the summer.

I do love seeing places by boat. I truly do. I love Koji’s excitement when we get in the dinghy and he has no idea where we are going, but he is excitedly up for anything because he is with his owners. I love being with my dog and husband, and when we get to—friends—doing a little of nothing but existing.

However, it’s not just the curated shots and video clips it looks to be.

I have worries too aside from this pretty great trip. I feel guilt sharing them because my problems seem small in a world where stable food, shelter, and clothing are not a given. But I refuse to be another number out there using social media to only highlight the good stuff in my life too, adding to the fluff of it all.

I don’t want to feel guilty for telling the world it’s not all perfect here either. I am real, and I do not have a great day every day. More than that, I don’t want to be a part of the social media problem. I don’t mind sharing the not-so-great parts of my life because I’m a real person with real feelings, and most of my life is not the perfect pictures posted.

This is the first time in 9 days I’ve had 45 minutes to just sit and think and write. It was quite lovely. The scene was perfect. But my coffee is now cold, and it’s time to get up and do all those ugly things. Time to charge my phone again, which mysteriously uses battery power 4x faster about 10 feet from the shore.

Maybe I’ll have time like this again before I go back to work in 8 days. Or maybe I won’t. What I do know is that while I do enjoy this and I am having a lot of fun—this really is, for me personally, a far cry from a vacation.

It’s a beautiful, perfectly curated scene in which you can choose to ignore the ugly, focus only on the ugly, or find a medium in between.

I’m toeing the in-between line—but I haven’t been swayed to ignore it.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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On Taking the Crutch

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

My father is 72 years old, and his health is drastically failing. He was released from a two-month stint of back-to-back hospital and nursing home stays just last weekend. He is now staying with one of my brothers because he cannot be on his own. While he is home alone most of the day, he refuses any licensed home care. Why?

Most of us grew up with the important message that it is vital to be independent and to do as much as you can on your own. It’s a great message. We should learn as early in life as possible to care for ourselves—do our own laundry, prepare meals, provide for our own food, shelter, and clothing. Relying solely on anyone else for the long term is risky.

What we have interpreted is to not take the crutch if we don’t need it. Walk on your own two feet.

But when is the message taken too far? When should we take the crutch and lean on others?

Example—

Back in 2014, when we first got our dog Koji, he was an exuberant, wild little 28 lb plaything fresh off the trucks from the south. I hadn’t had a dog in over 25 years, and I could count on my hands the number of times I ever leash-walked a dog. My husband and our children had never had a dog. We put a leash on him, and I instantly realized I couldn’t control him. So I purchased a harness.

Before that harness arrived, we had an electric fence put in, and the installer/fence trainer told us we would have to take control or the dog would control us. This applied to walking, eating, crating, drives in the car—basically everything. When that harness arrived, I was embarrassed to have ordered it and put it in the back of the new space I cleared out in what was now the dog’s cabinet.

Fast forward a year—I was walking Koji one morning before work and, as usual, having trouble controlling his pulling with his now 70 lb body. A squirrel ran by, and he pulled me down forward while the leash came out of my hand, and he ran off into the woods.

This became a regular occurrence. I stopped wearing flip-flops to walk him. I had my cell phone close by in case I needed to call for help. I often had pain in my arm from being yanked, and my right hand and lower arm were perpetually red from wrapping the leash around so many times. Being pulled down and sliding on my belly a few feet was a regular occurrence that I lived with.

It took another TWO years when one hot summer morning Koji saw a squirrel and I was pulled down again that I saw the area was safe from cars, and I just let go of the leash.

At this point in my life, I was in a 30-day mental health outpatient treatment program and going to be late if he didn’t come back soon. I didn’t want to walk in with my legs and tummy scraped up. I only imagined what they might think. And that is when I realized that they would think I needed to walk that dog with a harness.

It was like the clouds parted as I lay on the ground watching Koji happily bouncing back from across the street that I remembered I still had that harness somewhere and that there was no shame in using it. I saw plenty of people with large and small dogs alike using harnesses. I didn’t think any less of them, and even if I had—who cares? They are using what they feel comfortable with to live alongside their furry companions.

Later that morning, while I shared my morning dog walk story with my group during check-in, I tied it to a tool we had learned just the previous afternoon. It was about adjusting our expectations to be able to live alongside others by accepting reasonableness versus reality.

I don’t want to digress too far down the rabbit hole, but this does tie in.

The previous afternoon, our group lesson therapist made the connection to the reasonable/reality tool while one of the younger male participants was complaining about what a poor role model his father was. Our therapist asked him if it was reasonable for him to want a father he could look up to, and the young man said yes. He was then asked—knowing the reality of how his father behaves—if it was a realistic expectation to have of his father… the answer was no.

I didn’t like that answer. I was sort of struggling with it the previous 24 hours up until I was describing my morning walk with Koji. Was it reasonable for me to want to walk a dog with just a leash and a collar around his neck? Yes, it was. Given my dog’s size and lack of professional training, was it realistic for me to do so? OH HECK NO.

I went home and took out that harness and never fell down since.

This is now a famous story I tell when teaching yoga and my students are in pigeon pose. As I lead the student to the pose, I encourage them to grab some props around them—a blanket, bolster, or block. As I walk them through the pose, I demonstrate where to use the props should they need them. Most do not touch the props. As we lower our foreheads down, I often see students struggling as they attempt to take their bodies to places their body is resisting.

A woman practicing yoga on a mat with blocks, in a seated posture, smiling peacefully.

Pigeon is a pose that is held for a while. As your body adjusts to the new position, the worried, clenching muscles loosen and the body is able to go deeper into the stretch. I tell the proverbial crutch/dog walking harness story and how there is no shame in just accepting what is reasonable to want and realistic to accept. More often than not, a few students will reach their arms around and find a prop to help support the pose.

There are many tools I have forgotten until I heard them enough and ones I scarce use from that outpatient mental health treatment and other forms of therapy I’ve participated in before and after that. But the reasonable vs. realistic one has stuck to me like a welcome new invisible and incredibly helpful limb. It has allowed me to take the proverbial crutch and adjust my expectations in the healthiest of ways.

There is a part of that initial ingrained message about doing it without help that is important and shouldn’t be forgotten either.

Example—

I had toe surgery in January and knew I would be non-weight-bearing for at least 6 weeks. I knew I would get crutches, but I know how much I dislike crutches. I knew I would have to depend on help with driving the entire time and doing almost everything, particularly that first week when my foot had to stay elevated all day.

I took the crutch. I accepted my husband’s help.

But I took it further in both directions.

I purchased a knee scooter and one-legged half crutch so I could be arms-free.

I got up off the couch and crawled to the floor to stretch when I could.

I took my third shower alone while my husband was working. I tried out the half crutch and performed every movement slowly and mindfully. I knew he was close by if I needed help, but I attempted to do it alone.

Taking the crutch doesn’t mean taking advantage or giving in. It means using what is available when it’s needed, but not using it if it’s possible to do without it.

It’s about taking only what is needed.

It means accepting what is reasonable vs. what is realistic.

It means using props in yoga until you no longer need them. Should it be one minute later when your muscles relax, two years down the line, or never… it’s all okay and the way it is.

I often tell students in pigeon that my left hip is inflamed (which it is) and demonstrate using the blanket to cushion that side.

I will often see a smile break out as I then tell the dog harness story. I see their bodies soften, visually communicating the acceptance they feel toward their body and personal abilities. I tell the story often and premise it with, “If you’ve done pigeon with me before, please bear with my story as I tell it to the ones who haven’t heard it.”

I hope, like me, that hearing the same message several times helps it to stick. I hope they take the message off the mat like I took a lesson hot off a therapy session and can apply it to other areas in life. I hope they create their own stories of taking the crutch and sharing it with others who struggle.

We all struggle. We all remember a lesson or two that has stuck. I’d love to hear what has stuck with you—as it might help me too!

Love to all. Namaste.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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