April 29th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Why did we wake up at 4 a.m. to watch the pre-game festivities?

 

I woke up before the alarm went off. I wanted to be part of a worldwide celebration of love, romance and beauty.


I wanted to be there rooting for William because his mom wasn't. Didn't it just tug at your heart to see those boys so grown up and realize how much their mom missed?

 

I wanted to see the world cheering for joy. There are so few occasions the entire world is gripped by good news. When was the last one? When Diana and Charles married?  Usually when all countries and continents are glued to the TV, we are watching a disaster unfold, a shooting spree at a school, an assassination of a leader, a terrorist attack. Think about it: Today we all gathered around the globe for love.

 

It was like watching a Disney movie, the carriage, the gown, the cheers, the flags waving so fast they looked like confetti in the crowd.

 

I loved the hats. Hats! Hats that looked like lampshades and giant plates and centerpieces on a table. Some had so many feathers, I wondered how many birds were harmed in the making of them. 

 

I loved the wild cheers over a simple kiss on the balcony.

 

This weekend I'm going on a retreat. I'm taking with me the quote by Saint Catherine of Siena that was mentioned in the wedding sermon:

 

Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire. 

 

April 28th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Once all the wedding hoopla stops the marriage begins.

 

Weddings often overshadow a marriage. The endless details about the cake, the band, the hall, the food, the flowers, the gown. I can't imagine what it will be like for Prince William and his bride Kate to settle into a marriage after the giant wedding and reception are over.

 

In some ways, they're no different than any other couple. They will have to learn how to be someone's life partner and know when to put their spouse's needs and wants ahead of their own. 

 

Here's what I've learned in 15 years of marriage: Consider them 15 Life Lessons for Happily Ever After:

 

1. You can agree to disagree. No one has to win or lose an argument. You can have different opinions and views and come to honor and even celebrate your differences.

 

2. When you find you are both stuck, pause and reboot. Leave the loop you're stuck in. Go for a walk. Wash your face. Listen to some music. Take a breather. Do something to reboot yourself and the relationship.

 

3. Take the aerial view. How important is this in the scheme of the entire marriage? Can you extend your view of the person to see all the good they did last week, last month, last year?

 

4. Remind each other, "We're in this for the long haul." That got us through a year of cancer treatments. A marriage might have some rough moments or months. Keep telling yourself and each other, "We're in this for the long haul." Recommit to those wedding vows.

 

5. If a relationship has to be secret, you shouldn't be in it. If you can't tell your spouse about the lunch you're having with an old lover, cancel the lunch date.

 

6. Withholding the truth will hurt you both. Honesty isn't just about telling the truth, it's also about not withholding it. Don't withhold information that is important for your spouse to know.

 

7. If you don't ask, you don't get. Speak up for what you want. Don't expect your partner to read your mind on Valentine's Day, your birthday or even on Tuesday. You won't get everything you ask for, but if you don't ask, you've already given yourself a "no."

 

8. Use your words, and use them kindly. Edit yourself. If you think an unkind thought, it doesn't have to tumble out of your mouth. You aren't a gumball machine.

 

9. Enhance each others lives. Every morning, ask yourself: What can I do to enhance my partner's life? My husband brings in the newspaper every day to me. Small, but sweet. I pick him up sushi or a coconut bar for a treat.

 

10. Listen without your toolbox. Sometimes people want your presence, that's it. They don't want you to fix the problem, they want you to listen and understand. That's all. Sometimes that's everything.

 

11. Lead with love. Is what you're about to say kind, loving or helpful? If not, maybe it doesn't need to be said.

 

12.  Ask yourself: How important is this? Will it matter in five minutes? Five months? Five years? Most of us trip over the small stuff. Release and relax.

 

13. When you're wrong, promptly admit it. Take the high road. Admit to your part. Clean up your side of the street as soon as you see that it needs sweeping.

 

14. Any time your feelings don't match what just happened, your childhood button just got hit. In any marriage there are six people, you and your spouse, your spouse's parents and your  parents. We bring U-Hauls with us into the marriage. Deal with your past or it'll deal with you. Unpack the U-Haul once and for all. Get counseling if you need it. Release the past, the unresolved issues with mom and dad.

 

15. You are CEO of your own joy. Don't put the burden of your joy on anyone else. Light your own inner sparkler. No one can snuff it out but you. Feed your own soul and you'll never go hungry.

 

April 27th, 2011 by Regina Brett

People from all over the country are emailing me pictures of the paperback version of God Never Blinks in stacks at Barnes & Noble bookstores all over the country. It's fun to see the books displayed in New York, South Carolina and Arizona.

 

The paperback has those magic words stamped on the cover: The New York Times Bestseller. Wow, that's my book?! A big thanks to all of you who bought the book and have passed it along to countless friends and family. Thanks for sharing it and spreading the life lessons around the globe.

 

My publisher updated the paperback to include a blurb from Publishers Weekly, Redbook and various bloggers. It's cool to see their words of praise.

 

The best part? The paperback is more affordable for people at $13.99. Last night I was at the Mentor Public Library giving a talk and people were buying extra copies for graduation gifts.

 

I hope it helps all those new grads find their path and to know that the detours could just be the best part of the journey.

 

 

 

April 25th, 2011 by Regina Brett

We were sitting with hundreds of people at the dedication of the Seidman Cancer Center when this tribute video appeared on jumbo screens under the big tent.

 

Tears fell as soon as I heard my own words, saw my own bald head, saw my daughter's wedding dress, saw my little grandson. I cry just thinking about all the life I've squeezed out of life in the 13 years since hearing the dreaded C word. 


Cancer scares the life out of you. Then it scares the life into you. A new life. A new appreciation for your spouse, your children, your siblings, your parents, your entire world. You never take growing old for granted. Or the next snowfall or shower or chance to hug your grandson.

 

God bless Lee and Jane Seidman for donating $42 million to build a new cancer hospital. Every cancer survivor will tell you, it's a place we hope we never have to use, but we're eternally grateful to have it right here in Cleveland.

 

April 24th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Just got home from Mass at the Carmelite monastery in Cleveland. Standing room only, as it is everywhere on Easter.

 

Father Howard Gray, a Jesuit, celebrated the Mass. He said if he had one last sermon to give, the most imporant message would be to tell people about the love of God.

 

We make God harder than God is, he said. We make God unloveable.

We are loved. We are beloved.

 

"God has so fallen in love with us," he said. 

 

It made me wonder how we'd live if we truly believed that we are loved with every fiber of our being in every fiber of our being. Then Fr. Gray said something profound, "I stake my life on the love of God."

 

Can you? Can I?

 

His message from the pulpit was to love. My message from my pulpit was to hope. What Easter tells us is to place our hope in love.

 

April 21st, 2011 by Regina Brett

Nothing you want is upstream.

 

Those words by Esther Hicks are changing my life. My friend, Meg, gave me a CD called "The Power of Emotions." I'm wearing it out listening to it.

 

Hicks says that life is the river that we're all in. The river never stops and it's never going to stop. You can grab your paddle and try to row upstream, but you won't get far for all that struggling. Best thing to do is relax and go downstream.

 

"Nothing you want is upstream," she said. Those words made me laugh out loud. So many times I set out to combat something, to win, to force, to resist. I expend lots of mental, emotional and physical energy fighting the current of life.

 

I know better. I've been whitewater rafting a number of times and every time, I've fallen in the river. The guides always tell you, if you fall in DON'T RESIST THE RIVER. The river will always win. It is always stronger. Just tuck your head in, point your toes downstream and enjoy the ride. 

 

Practice it. Every time you get a negative thought, a yucky emotion, a tight fist feeling in your forehead, a sick feeling in your gut, instead of grabbing an oar and battling the boss, the colleague, the spouse, the diagnosis, the guy in the SUV in front of you, let go. The flow will carry you along.

 

Life is a trip. Enjoy the ride. 

April 14th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Gino tossed out the word carelessly as school bullies often do.

 

"Retard," he yelled at Coty.

 

If Coty could have jumped out of his wheelchair, Gino would have been hurting that day. Coty has cerebral palsy and absolutely hates the word retard.

 

He and Gino are now great friends. What happened? A teacher transformed their relationship. She wrote a play about that awful moment. The two teens star in it this weekend. 

 

You can read more about it in today's Plain Dealer.

 

We need more teachers like Lauren Persons, teachers who are willing to creatively handle problems, who take the time to turn an ugly moment into a teachable moment in a way that invites, not forces, students to become their best selves.

 

 

 

April 12th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Pat McKisic knows how to celebrate life all the way to the finish line.

 

I met her in Cincinnati this past weekend at a retreat I gave at the United Methodist Church Armstrong Chapel. Pat lost her husband in 2009. They were married 59 years. Instead of lamenting the loss, she celebrates the life they shared and the friends who saw her through the loss.

 

"I could feel God's arms around me giving me a hug," she said.

 

She put her house up for sale and the first person who looked at it offered her more than she wanted. She held a garage sale. She sold an old toy from the attic. The person who bought it returned days later and gave her an envelope of cash. He sold the toy on eBay for so much money that he wanted to give the money to her. She declined it, but he insisted.


Then -- and this is the best part -- for her 80th birthday, Pat did something on the wild side. She went to a tattoo parlor. She got a tattoo. She now has a turtle on her back near her shoulder.

 

Next stop? She wants to volunteer at an orphanage in Africa. What if you get sick there, her friends asked. She figures it doesn't matter where she dies.

 

"The Lord is with me all the time," she told them. All the way to the finish line, which is nowhere in sight.

 

 

April 5th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Come to an Akron Aeros baseball game and you can order The Screamer, a five-pound ice cream sundae on top of a one-pound brownie and four bananas.

 

Or try out the Wonder Dog, a half-pound hot dog that comes with up to 40 toppings including peanut butter and jelly.

 

The most extreme food of all is the Nice 2 Meat You Burger that weighs 1 1/4 pound and comes with a half-pound hot dog and a quarter-pound of bacon.

 

I hope they have defibrillators in the dugout.

 

It makes me cringe to think of kids watching mom or dad or the guy next to them eating this. We wonder why more and more kids are obese. Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST on "The Regina Brett Show" on WKSU 89.7 FM, we're talking about how to create healthy children. You can listen by podcast or join the show by calling in at 888-957-8897.

 

I'm all for "take me out to the ballpark" and peanuts and Cracker Jack, but with a menu like the above, the family might have take a detour to the cardiac care unit.

 

April 4th, 2011 by Regina Brett

What do you pack to go off to war?

 

The mundane, the necessary and the sad, according to Bob Bateman, a lieutenant colonel in the Army who is deployed to Afghanistan.

 

He wrote about packing day in The Plain Dealer on Sunday:

 

"Your helmet and body armor are in there, ammo pouches and tourniquet and blood clotting bandages, a camelback and the things you need to keep your weapon clean. You toss in some uniforms, lots of underwear and a huge number of socks.

 

"Then the professional things you need for your job -- things that are not on the private's packing list, but that you need to do your job just as clearly as he needs some specific things to be a rifleman or a machine gunner. You pack those, too.

 

"And then there is that last little space. You pack yourself in there."

 

It's a moving essay that reminded me of Tim O'Brien's packing list in the book, "The Things We Carried."

 

O'Brien wrote about what they carried when they left and once they were at war:

 

"They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear, Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself. Vietnam, the place, the sod -a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.

 

"For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't. When they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die.

 

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing -these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to"

 

 To all those at war and their loved ones left behind, we carry you in our hearts. Be safe and Godspeed.

 

 

 

 

April 1st, 2011 by Regina Brett

Marie Curie. Meryl Streep. Margaret Thatcher. Mother Teresa. Maria Callas. Elizabeth Taylor. Coco Chanel. Joan of Arc. Ava Gardner.

 

What strong women inspire you?

 

I just saw a movie called, "With Love, From the Age of Reason" at the Cleveland International Film Festival. It comes from France and Belgium. It's the fictional story of Margaret, a Type A+ businesswoman who sells global-warming power to the Chinese but is losing her inner power.

 

She keeps a drawer full of photos of powerful women to give her courage. It works. When a woman in the office challenges her and snaps, "Do you want my job?" Margaret answers, "No. I'm aiming much higher."


You gotta love that kind of spunk.

 

Margaret ends up getting a pile of letters from herself. When she was 7 she wrote herself letters and had them mailed to herself on her 40th birthday. The letters take her back to her childhood, take her deep within to the child still alive in her and helps her discover who she really wants to be.

 

The message of the movie?

 

Become who you are.

 

 

 

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