How is it possible for an object, as simple as a table to get a person so emotional?

I’ve suddenly realized… It is easy for the table to make people remember because it has all the history scratched around it, every single one of them tells a different story…

All those memories of the past 40 years, who knows how many years, flash as if they happened just yesterday.

Couple of days before the day a gorgeous young woman marries this handsome young lad, they decide to buy this big dining table and place it in the cosiest corner of their home. Young boy spends their first wedding night at this table and spends hours and hours to get rid of 5 year old niece of his bride to be able to send their first night together as a couple, tries to convince her that she can come back tomorrow, with the help of a smiling face he drew on a big green pear.

They meet their first daughter, and then the second one after few years, all happening around this table. The 5 year old niece from the next door grows up together with their daughters, her new sisters from another mother, and one day she starts to sit around it every day for every meal with her son in her belly. It is now this new baby boy’s turn to growing up by running around it.

This table helps this young couple to become a family, it witnesses every day, every moment of their life together, accompanies them to grow their family bigger and older. It knows every member of that family, cherishes all gatherings of every occasion, sometimes just to have a laugh together, some others to shed a tear, shares all the joyful moments and the sad ones, listens to the little chats, giggles, eavesdrops to some entertaining gossips, enjoys the laughers, participates the cries, meetings and greetings new friends waiting to be selected to become a part of this family, if they are lucky; welcomes the old ones almost every night; knows that some are just passengers. It thoroughly observes potential boyfriends, sees some becoming husbands. Witness goodbyes as well, some forced by nature accompanied with raised glasses and a broken smile, some others are just happy waves and very few are just for the passengers.

The table is simply a part of this beautiful family and it is a big, spacious part of it. It will stay there as long as it gets but it’ll get hard to picture it with the seat left empty by the half of the couple who started this huge, loving, cosy family. You keep standing still table, your family will keep gathering around you, sharing joys and tears with you as long as you welcome us…

It is a very delicate balance to set. There can and always be your beloved ones or others in need of you, in need of your time, support, compassion, understanding, love… To be able to be there for others;

First INVEST IN YOURSELF

Spend enough time for and with yourself

Take good care of yourself

Listen to your needs and respond to them

DO NOT DARE TO FORGET that YOU are your OWN person, and you are responsible for your own life, so BE ALWAYS AVAILABLE FOR YOURSELF. Thus you can keep giving others because there always is and will be some wounds to be healed only by your giving.

I never walk away from new people, instead, I choose to collect people because I know each person passing through my path brings me something new; some brings joy, some brings lessons, some other new experiences… some become unforgettable, and some become indispensable so that I keep walking on my path with different colours all around me, always accessible whenever needed.

I collect experiences, try to live each of them thoroughly, to learn whatever lesson they want to teach me. I try to walk every new path that I find on my way, I’m sure that there will always be new trees to see, new flowers to smell, new voices to hear.

I always listen to the new sounds, and I collect the good ones to be able to listen to them whenever I want, because music is my favorite charger.

However, I reject to be defined with one word. I collect identities as well… I’m a mum, I’m a partner, a daughter, a friend, a best friend, an auntie, a buyer, a consumer, a category manager, a life coach, a swimmer, a voyager, a reader, a scuba diver, an insatiable learner…. I am also lots of new things to be so yes, I can also say I am a real collector.

So tell me what do you like to collect?

We are born and we learn walking, this is our common ground as human beings. We take our very first steps with the loud cheering of our parents. Here we go, we know how to walk for the first time in our lives.

After these first steps, our paths grow apart as we do. We start taking steps in our own ways of our own lives. We fall in love, we break up, and we experience our first heartbreaks. No matter how long it takes, we stand up again and take another first step (probably to find a new love or the one…)

We graduate and start taking steps in the real world, we bump into new, unknown obstacles. And then we take another new step and we learn how to walk in these new roads.

We lose, as we grow up we face our parent getting old and grey, and finally, we take another new step without them holding our hands. So we learn how to walk again.

We grow apart with our partners or somehow we find our hands left alone in an unexpected time and in an unexpected way; the way that we were living our lives is not the same anymore and the significant other is not that significant anymore, so we take another step and learn to walk alone or maybe with some babies to take care of.

Yes, we reproduce and we take another first step in the parenthood land. So we learn how to walk again in this new world and this time we also teach how to walk to our juniors.

We can even have some physical issues, accidents, surgeries, treatments and we literally need to take the first step again and learn how to walk.

Year after year we learn to walk over and over again every time we find a new path to walk, we face new obstacles to jump over, a new feeling to deal with.

WE JUST DO NOT GIVE UP!

Life is a journey that we need to walk on our own. If we are breathing then there is still always another step to take on or even a new one.

I am not done with learning how to walk over and over again. There are still targets to achieve, goals to accomplish and thankfully new first steps to take.

It is not my intention to share some kind of “don’t get married” message of course, because I think everyone should do whatever he or she likes. It’s up to people to decide how to live their togetherness. On the other hand who am I to give any kind of advice or messages? I just try to ask the right questions and try to find my own answers and in the meantime I try to help you to find your own answers. So here is the question of the day; of what we should consider when we choose our significant other?

Let’s start with – when is the very first moment of a relationship? Could be the first look or the mutual attractiveness. If you take the first few steps then it can bring you to discover more, like your common pleasures, your similar point of views about life, your personalities so that the relationship grows mature. But when can we decide if he/she is the significant other, the right person to spend the rest of our lives together? In my opinion if this partnership grows in to a concurrent close friendship then it is the right time and right person to take another step with and decide to move in together or to get married depending on the couples choices.

With whom you would like to spend the rest of your life? Who can be the perfect choice other than your BFF that you can’t get enough laughing or sleeping together, or can’t stop being jealous of, can’t get tired of listening or telling the same stories over and over again and keep laughing as though it was the first time you’re sharing it, the person who you can’t stop supporting or being supported by, or whom you can’t give up on or being given up by?

Oh… there sure will be unpleasant times waiting for you, you will need to take care of each other in sickness, you’ll need to keep loving even during the most miserable times, who knows maybe you will be changing adult diapers of or mouth feeding each other. What’s gonna happen when you will need to survive the bad times after all the good times you’ve had? If you are in a friendship over and above the partnership then I’m sure you wouldn’t be thinking of any of these questions and you will just welcome the bad times as you did with the good times and you’ll survive together as you were doing before. What could be more beautiful, meaningful than being in a friendly, passionate, full of love, respectful and compassionate partnership? You just need to take good care of it and be thankful for it every single day. Easy peasy…

Woman is your sister,

Woman is your daughter,

Woman is your lover,

Woman is partner,

But most importantly woman is your mother.

We are stronger than you can imagine,

We are beautiful than what your eyes can see,

We can be softer than a pillow when you need consolation,

We can be warmer than sun when you need to be loved,

We have the biggest heart which is able to nurture, and believe me we can nurture more than one of you at once.

We have the ability to look after your kids, to take care of our parents and most of the times, your parents as well, to feed everyone in the family without asking for your help, to make the house you live in a home day after day, to go to work, to look beautiful and at the same time even to look after you and help you look like, and also, to become a “Man”.

We don’t ask too much you know, just try to see us as who we are and value us for who we are. If you think you are physically strong then protect us; if you say you love us then stop saying it but just LOVE us; if you care for us make sure that you’re making us happy as much as we make you happy. And if you don’t, never mind… We can be enough for ourselves and we can/will be there for each other as women.

BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP KILLING US!!  It’s simple, just remember … YOUR EXISTENCE IS OWED TO A WOMAN! WITHOUT WOMEN YOU WOULD BE EXTINCT!!

I’m not saying that every mother is the same or mothers are the most precious things in the world. What I’m saying is if we are lucky enough to have Real Mums, who love / loved us even when we were thoughtless teenagers, who nurtured us without any expectations, who were always there even we were acting out of their understandings or beliefs, who have never stopped caring for us even we were different generations of grown-ups with our personalities, jobs, mentalities, believes, genders, sexual orientations we are not allowed to forget; because they know that they did a good job and we turned out to be the good ones. Therefore we have to keep being the good ones also by remembering and by carrying on the responsibility and trying to raise our kids to be the good ones.

So get your daily dose of chocolate, go on and give a big chunky hug and a smooch to your mum while you can even if they have to be On-line ones!

Happy Mother’s day to all chocolate mums, but especially happy Mother’s day to my Choccy Mums, aunties, moraks, kergins, tantiks, cousins, nieces, sisters and to all my friends who grew out as great choccy mums. We all rock ladies!! Love y’all!!

Isn’t it true that the eyes can tell much more than words? It is also true that we can give a huge hug just with a big broad smile on our faces without using our arms, we can totally give a kiss without touching but just filling it with love by sending it from our hearts from thousands of miles away, we can support/comfort each other with nice, smooth words, we can love each other no matter the distances between us and we totally can socialize without getting physical.

So let’s not get physical but social more than we ever were, because we need each other, we need to love and be loved, we need to listen and be listened, and most importantly we need to share.

We can survive anything as long as we have each other and take care of each other.

Do you really want to feel old because of your wrinkles or your grey hair or your years? Instead, why not realize that you’re still alive, there are so many things you can still do, so many goals you can still achieve and so many things you can learn.

Life tries to teach us constantly, our main duty in to learn how to learn and embrace whatever life is teaching us. What about, instead of wasting our time by counting our wrinkles, greys, years to start making our endless list with the things we want to do and start accomplishing them today?

Let’s never give up on learning. By the way I’m still growing up…