Sonia Marsh - Gutsy Living

Life's too short to play it safe

Memorial Day and what it means to me

by

My son during parent weekend at New Mexico Military Institute

Memorial Day has taken on a whole new meaning in my life. Let me explain. Like many Americans, I believed it was a holiday signifying the start of summer barbecues, beach days and a vacation on the horizon.

But now that my seventeen-year-old son enlisted and started a nine week Army Basic training program, I have developed a new appreciation for what young men and women go through, and what other service men and women have done for us, and continue to do for our country and our world.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have often taken our freedom for granted. If only we lived in a peaceful world where every single person on our planet could fall asleep without the fear of being killed, raped, and had a  safe place to live.

For the next nine weeks, my 17-year-old son, like all the other soldiers during Basic training will learn the following Seven Army Values:

* Loyalty
* Duty
* Respect
* Selfless Service
* Honor
* Integrity
* Personal Courage

“These values form the basis of your soldier character and they sustain a soldier in times of both peace and conflict.”

His daily training schedule will be the following:

Army Boot Camp 5 a.m. – Wake up
5:30 a.m. – Physical Training
6:30 a.m. – Breakfast
8:30 a.m. – Training
Noon – Lunch
1 p.m. – Training
5 p.m. – Dinner
6 p.m. – Drill Sergeant Time
8:30 p.m. – Personal Time
9:30 p.m. – Lights Out

And finally, let’s not forget the gas chamber training:

As explained on the basic training website: “The gas chamber is probably the most mentally challenging exercise you will have to overcome at basic training. Recruits have to breathe Ortho-chlorbenzylidenedimalonitrile. Wow, that sounds scary. Actually, it is just the active substance of CS gas. You might recognize the name better as the common riot control formula called tear gas. Now, the bad news is yes, you will have to go into an isolated room and breathe this gas in your lungs and it does sting a little bit. The good news is as soon as you walk outside, the exercise is over.”

For those of you who have fought for our freedom, and for those families who have suffered the loss of a loved one, please forgive my lack of understanding. I finally grasp the sacrifice that your son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, lover, friend, cousin, uncle, aunt, or other relative has gone through. No words can express the gratitude that I now feel.

Should we raise our children without gender identity?

by

You’re pregnant and can’t wait for the ultrasound that will finally reveal the sex of your child. You have a desire to bond with your baby and to prepare for the arrival of your bundle of joy. You look through baby-name books and make a list of the ones you like for boys and girls, depending on the sex, or…..wait a minute… you don’t believe in gender identity?

I’m not talking about choosing Michael for a boy or Daisy for a girl, nor do I mean dressing Michael in blue and Daisy in pink. I’m talking about raising your kid to be genderless, like the Canadian parents of Storm, a four-month-old baby, who refuse to reveal the sex of their baby in the hopes of curbing sexual stereotyping.

Kathy Witterick, 38 and David Stocker, 39, are the parents of Storm, their youngest child who has two older brothers, Jazz 5 and Kio 2. Only the brothers, the two nurse midwives who helped deliver Storm at home, and a very close family friend know whether Storm is a boy or a girl. What prompted them to do this with baby Storm? They say to offer “their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females.”

The grandparents, although supportive, resented explaining this lack of gender to friends and co-workers. “They worried the children would be ridiculed,”  and furthermore, most people said “they were setting their kids up for a life of bullying in a world that can be cruel to outsiders.”

According to Michele Angello, a U.S. psychologist, “There is little hard, scientific data on exactly what does make people feel and act like a boy or a girl, but some evidence points to gender identity being hard-wired.”

I’d like to refer to the book I mentioned in a previous post called, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein, where she says that when her daughter, Daisy, was born, “I was committed to raising her without a sense of limits: I wanted her to believe neither that some behavior or toy or profession was not for her sex.”  Orenstein then explains how on Daisy’s first day of pre-school at age two, she wore her favorite “engineer overalls” and her Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox. “All it took was one boy who yelled, ‘Girls don’t like trains!'” and within a month, Daisy knew the names and gown colors of every Disney princess.

This brings me back to Storm’s brothers, Kio and Jazz. Were others told their sex and why have they both chosen long braided hair? All I can say is they must have incredibly strong personalities to stand up for themselves at school, as I am sure other kids have made hurtful comments.

Kathy and David state, “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …),” they said.

And David believes, “If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs.”

What do you think?

Are parents raising their kid to be genderless right or wrong?

I can’t wait to get a Gutsy discussion going.

Where are girls and women heading?

by

You have probably heard of Sheena Upton, the California mom who claimed to inject her eight-year-old daughter, Britney, with botox to improve her chances of winning a beauty pageant.

After child protective services took her girl away to investigate the case, Upton claimed she fabricated the entire story for compensation. She was in fact paid $200 to hold a syringe with a clear liquid, and in her video stated that she didn’t even know what botox was.

So why is there a video of her injecting her daughter with a syringe? And why did Upton justify this by claiming that other moms give botox treatments to their daughters in order to play the tough beauty pageant game?

In one of the interviews which you can view here, her daughter said, “I just, like, don’t think wrinkles are nice on little girls.” She also said that it “hurts,” and that her mother also waxed the hairs off her legs and when asked why, Britney answered, “It’s not ladylike to have hair.”

The concern is how this will impact Britney psychologically, as well as any other girls who are going through the same loss of innocence.

I find it so depressing to hear about all the pressures girls seem to be going through today, especially after hearing Britney say that she puts up with the pain of botox injections to look “beautiful and pretty.” I am deeply saddened, as are most mothers and grandmothers. I wrote a previous article on what is considered a beautiful woman in different countries around the world which sparked several comments.

This topic relates to a book I am reading, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein, where she states,  “According to a 2006 survey of more than two thousand school-aged children, girls repeatedly described a paralyzing pressure to be ‘perfect’: not only to get straight As and be the student body president, editor of the newspaper, and captain of the swim team but also to be ‘kind and caring,’ ‘please everyone, be very thin, and dress right.’ …They now feel they must not only ‘have it all’ but be it all: Cinderella and Supergirl. Agressive and agreeable. Smart and stunning. Does that make them the beneficiaries of new opportunities or victims of a massive con job?”

Orenstein then continues, “It is as if the more girls achieve the more obsessed they become with appearance–not dissimilar to the way the ideal of the ‘good mother’ was ratcheted up just as adult women flooded the workforce.”

So where are girls and women heading in the next ten-twenty years? Any thoughts on this topic are welcome. I’m particularly interested in what men think?

Answer These 5 Questions to Have a Satisfying Retirement

by

Although many of us may be far from retirement, we need to start asking ourselves these 5 questions before we retire. Bob Lowry from Satisfying Retirement, kindly agreed to share his expertise on this subject. You may recall his previous post on my blog entitled: “4 Important Keys to Prepare for a Happy Marriage After Retirement.”

Answer These 5 Questions to Have a Satisfying Retirement
Guest Post by Bob Lowry
from

There is nothing simple about retirement. Everyone has a different path and a unique set of circumstances to face. But, there are some basic decisions that must be made. If you can answer these questions you are well on your way to a successful retirement.

1). When do I want to stop working? A goal without a timetable is simply a wish list. You don’t need to pick the exact day at some point in the future. But, you do need to commit to something: late spring of 2013 is fine. Now you can visualize the finish line and do what must be done to get ready.

2). Is my financial house in order? If nothing else the last few years have made many of the “rules” obsolete. Even the wisdom of owning your own home is up for review. Take a fresh look at all parts of your financial plan. Is the 6% annual rate of growth you were counting on realistic anymore? Is there a chance Social Security payments will be means-tested in the future? Once you retire, it is a little late to ask these questions.

3). How are my health and health coverage? Both will have an important impact on your life. Do you have health challenges now that might limit you in some significant way? Does your spouse have a disease that is chronic? How about your insurance? Do you keep full coverage after you stop working? Can you afford Medicare Part D or supplemental coverage? If you need to buy a new policy will anyone sell you one at a rate you can afford? I believe the costs and direction of our health care system will have a bigger impact on retirees than anything else on the horizon.

4). Where do I want to live? This is a biggie. I strongly urge you to not make a move soon after you retire. There is too much upheaval in your life as it is. A move away from friends, family, and the familiarity of the area should not be undertaken lightly. You may be sick of winter and snow. Your grown children and grandchildren may live quite a distance from you. Throwing away your winter coat sounds heavenly. Being closer to the kids would be wonderful. You may be absolutely right. But, being far from everything that gives you roots has its own costs. Don’t rush this decision. It will have a major impact on your happiness and health.

5). What will I do to stay busy and motivated? It is the rare person who can answer this question with much assuredness before retiring. You will have ideas and wishes. But, until actually living the life you won’t really know what might unfold. My suggestion is to make plans. Get excited about doing the things you have not done during your working years. Then, remain flexible. Be prepared to make corrections in your direction. Be OK with deciding one thing you thought you’d love isn’t the answer, but something new you just discovered might be.

From Building Your Satisfying Retirement-How To Make The Most of This New Phase of Your Life

You can download Bob’s free e-book, on Satisfying Retirement. 

I find Bob’s questions 4 and 5 easier to answer, what about you? 

(I could see myself living 3-4 months out of the year with a view like this. A pier on Ambergris Caye, Belize. A great place to inspire writers.)

Please leave your comments below for Bob to answer.

Are you a creature of habit?

by

Before we get started, I’d like you to answer the following questions.

1) Do you plan the same meal every Monday night? Tuesday night? Wednesday? etc.
2) Do you go to bed at the same time?
3) Do you always try to get the same seat on the bus, in the movie theater, in church?
4) Do you stop at Starbucks, Peet’s,  (name your coffee store) on your way to work every day?
5) Is there one thing you do every day and feel like it’s missing if you don’t?

If you answered “yes” to all five, you are probably a creatures of habit. So what is a creature of habit? The definition is: “one who is extremely used to their own habits and does not function well without them.”

The question is to what degree, and does it really matter?

Most of us thrive on routine which is why our bodies go on strike when we travel. You know what I mean. You’re tired, not used to foreign foods, your digestive system slows down, you feel out of sync with your body.

Four reasons why it’s great to be a creature of GOOD habits:

1). You provide structure and discipline to your life.
2). You get things done, even the mundane stuff.
3). You get results by being consistent.
4). You feel good about yourself and can spread this feeling to others.

But sometimes we become so used to routine that we rarely stop to question what we are doing. Just doing repetitive things everyday, without changing them or questioning why? can make us stagnate. You see our brain starts to rely too much on our unconscious behaviors preventing us from seeing all the choices available to us.

Why it’s important to take a few risks and become Gutsy.

Research shows that the brain “loves” novelty. It likes it when different neuro-transmitters are firing, not so much when the same pathways turn into ruts. We are meant to exercise our brain and see new things and experience different environments. As with most of life, we need to find balance. If we become too rigid, we find ourselves doing “this” every Monday, and “this” every Tuesday,

A few ideas to plan something new.

So why not plan a weekend trip away? Time to see new things, get your brain all fired up. If you say, “I can’t afford it?” then decide to do something completely out of the ordinary for you: a new hike, a new type of food for dinner.
For example, a friend of mine gave up her car for a month. She used her bike, the bus and trains. Now that’s a huge challenge in southern California, but she managed, and ended up losing weight, (which she wanted anyway.)

Or plan a trip abroad. So this costs even more, but here’s a wonderful thing to do either alone or with your spouse. Pick a country, city, island or any place you’ve always wanted to visit. Research it in detail. Pretend you’re going, even if you can’t afford it right now.

  • What do you want to see there? (make a list)
  • What do you want to do? (make a list) Visit museums? Hike? Scuba dive?
  • How long will you stay?
  • Will you travel around or stay put?
  • Check out tours?
  • Are you staying in a hotel or renting a place? Check out VRBO (Vacation rentals by owner, anywhere in the world.)

When our lives become predictable in too many areas, maybe it is time to give this “creature of habit” thing a rest!

It’s just as important to plan your dreams, as to make them into a reality.
Do you consider yourself a creature of habit? What about your significant other?

Latest from the blog

Top Posts