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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Accentuate the Positive

On May 21st it will be my 53rd birthday.......... I won't lie about my age. I'm feeling pretty awesome that I got this far. But what I'm noticing is that there are struggles on a daily basis for things that used to come easy. Some of them are physical and some of them are emotional.

When I was a young girl of maybe 18 years old, I struggled with an eating disorder. I never ate, and when I did it was not nutritious, and if I ate something healthy and full of calories that were important to my body, I punished myself by not eating for days afterward. I never told anyone in my family, I just quietly didn't eat. My mother used to say to my dad, 'look Alex, she eats like a bird. '  I did....and I was proud of it for some weird reason. I struggled with self esteem, I wanted to be blonde, I wanted to be skinny and I wanted to be accepted.  When I got older, I struggled in my first marriage. I was miserable and unhappy with an abusive husband. I struggled to then raise my children alone. I struggled between balancing work and home. Every day, was a struggle.
     
Now, I have a beautiful life, but I still have my struggles although they are not as tragic or enormous as my struggles when I was younger. Now I struggle to get up from a kneeling position. I struggle to focus when I thread my needle on the sewing machine. I struggle to maintain self confidence in an aging body.  Even though I have my small struggles, I realize that they are not life threatening and I am grateful. It is hard to be negative when you are thanking God for all the blessings that you have. There is an old song from way back when, and the words are, " accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative......" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZUmAbi0Vm4 )  I don't have time any more to focus on anything that isn't bringing joy to my life. In order to be happy, you need to focus on all the things that you have, instead of all the things that you WANT. Suddenly you realize that you have alot of things. Are you saying, 'she's nuts! I can't see! I can't walk! I can't I can't.......'   true, maybe you can't do some things, but I'm sure you can do SOME thing....so be thankful for speaking, if you can't see. Be thankful for singing if you can't walk.....focus on the wonderful things about yourself.  Start the morning with a prayer of thanks...and suddenly you realize how small your struggles are...........
  1. AC-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive
  2. You've got to accentuate the positive
    Eliminate the negative
    Latch on to the affirmative
    Don't mess with Mister In-Between
    You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
    Bring gloom down to the minimum
    Have faith or pandemonium
    Liable to walk upon the scene
    To illustrate his last remark
    Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark
    What did they do
    Just when everything looked so dark
    Man, they said we better, accentuate the positive
    Eliminate the negative
    Latch on to the affirmative
    Don't mess with Mister In-Between
    No, do not mess with Mister In-Between
    Do you hear me?
    Oh, listen to me children and-a you will hear
    About the elininatin' of the negative
    And the accent on the positive
    And gather 'round me children if you're willin'
    And sit tight while I start reviewin'
    The… Full lyrics on Google Play





  3. Rose Ellen Moore
  4. www.rcmooreunique.com
  5. 1729 W Tilghman Street
  6. Allentown, PA 18104
  7. 610-740-3820 
  8. https://www.facebook.com/rc.moore.7

Monday, May 11, 2015

people you meet in the NYC subway

My father always had a saying, 'if you look for the bad in a person you will see bad, if you look for the good, you will see good.'   Maybe that doesn't make sense to alot of you, but for me, I lived that. I love NYC....there's something that changes about me when I emerge out of the Holland Tunnel. Something comes over me, I'm home. I never grew up there....I have just a handful of my relatives living there, but for me I am home. Why? I never feel different, I never feel out of place. Because in a world of people that point the finger and stare, in NYC.....EVERYONE is different and EVERYONE just deals with it, tolerates it, and adjusts. The world would be so much better if everyone everywhere would do those things.

Many times I take the bus into NY and get off at Port Authority. Many times we drive in. It doesn't matter, as soon as I'm there I feel better about myself. I especially love the subway. People who ride taxis just don't know what they are missing!   Where else but on a NYC subway can you find a Russian woman and a Nigerian man who don't understand English , but they both speak Italian (why? I don't know) and luckily that is how we communicated. When you enter a subway the first thing that hits you is the smell of urine, and the sight of a homeless person or two huddled in a corner sleeping. You may hear some terrific music even better than  the famous singers we know today. Every one of your senses will be stimulated. And also, every one of your emotions. You will see lovers, you will see poor, you will see tired, hungry, young and old. It makes me humble, it makes me thankful, and it makes me wonder what it's like to walk in other peoples' shoes.

I though about writing this immediately after seeing Claudio Musajo's photograph of a young man and his child sleeping on the subway. ( https://www.facebook.com/claudio.musajo)   Riding a subway train is a lesson in life.  Just as life is a journey.  Look for the good and you will see good, look for the bad and you will see bad. No matter what you look for, it's all there, in the NYC subway.........


     

the following photos are courtsey of Claudio Musajo photographer







Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Happy Mother's Day

This weekend is mother's day. I don't always follow what society says and celebrate days because THEY SAY I have to. We should celebrate Christmas every day. We should celebrate mother's and father's day every day. Every day is a reason to celebrate, right?  Of course~  But this time, I must pay a tribute, because I feel that I have to share the pain and breakthrough that I experienced.

My mother.........I look like her. I idolized her. She wore big hats and had a fantastic sense of style. She also was very talented. She could touch anything and for whatever reason, it would work. Whatever outfit she put together, whatever decoupage artistic thing she would hang in the kitchen, ceramics? forget about it, she had that covered. Knitting, crocheting, sewing, designing, interior decorating....she had the gift. As far as solving a crossword puzzle or a cryptoquip, she was THE BOMB! My mother could grow an African Violet from a leaf....houseplants, macrame, ANYTHING......she was extremely gifted.

As I grew, I just trusted her that she knew exactly what I should do. She knew the best thing, she knew the right thing and I trusted her word as law.  As I got to be 17, 18, 19....we started to grow apart, because I had a thought and an opinion. I was growing and becoming an adult and our relationship was not growing. She still wanted to be in charge, unfortunately she can't be in charge of an adult when I had a husband and children.    Welll......my husband and I did not work out. He was abusive and out of respect for my children I will say no more...., neither marriage number 1 nor marriage number 2 worked out. I had 4 children and my mother was embarrassed,humiliated and PISSED that I didn't listen to her, and 'why oh why couldn't I be normal?'   Well, what is normal?  I was an eccentric person with a very different view of the world. I knew what I wanted in life, unfortunately I didn't have it with either partner. My mother and I started to fight all the time. She hated me. I was convinced.  Then when I had met my husband (yes, husband number 3...and three times is the charm!) my mother went ballistic! I really thought her head was going to pop off! 'what is everyone in Berwick gonna say?'  who really cared!  It was foreign to me that she would care about everyone in Berwick but not about me or my life or my feelings or the welfare of my children. She just wanted me to be normal.

So...we stopped talking. One day she did something so terrible to me, that I was devastated.  I literally stopped talking to her, and I ran away. I moved 60 miles away...it wasn't far enough. I started to have heart problems, I was hospitalized 3 times for a valve issue. I cried in my sleep. Nothing could fix or stop the pain I felt in my heart. For years my husband tried to compensate for the pain I felt from the loss of my mother in my life. Truthfully, I saw her in the mirror every day and I missed her. After 9 years, I returned to Berwick to see my mother. It was if I never left her. My message to all on this mother's day is this............................sometimes things are hard to forgive. But forgiveness is about YOU not anyone else. All my gifts that I have, every talent is from my mother. from my dad, I got my great sense of humor and wit, and from my mother I received all my talent as an artist. I am grateful I had the parents that I had. I am grateful to my mother. I wish her views on things would be different, but sometimes we have to agree to disagree. And the beauty of this is, she is here to see all of the wonderful things that she has created, now through me.  She can enjoy all the fruits of my labor, and she instilled them in me. So, thank you Ma........for my gifts. And my gift to you is showing you all the gifts you gave me.

Love, your daughter, Rose Ellen  
 Rose Ellen Moore
www.rcmooreunique.com

 My mother (Sophia) June, my grand daughter GinaRose and my son Ezio

My son Matthew, my mother Sophia (June) my son Ezio


me at 6 years old, my mother and my sister, Susan

my mother and I in 1997

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

OPINION

Everyone has an opinion about something. From our President of the United States, to our religions, and different events on the news.

This week there was an incident where a teen mother threw her baby off a bridge and then jumped herself in a murder/suicide attempt. EVERYONE had an opinion. ' she should be hung' they said,.....
she should go to jail for life...' they said....I watched as everyone condemned her for getting pregnant in the first place, why didn't she get an abortion? why didn't she...blah blah blah..................

The world has such hate.....the human race is the first one to point a finger, to blame and ridicule. Really, does everyone think this young woman hopped and skipped to the bridge to kill herself and her child? What kind of mental anguish was she in? of course she was not right...but what kind of society are we if we have no compassion? Why didn't she feel there was no where to turn?  Why is everyone assuming that she WANTED to be pregnant? was this a product of rape, incest, birth control failure.....why is everyone the judge but no one is the problem solver? Shame on us as a human race................

Facebook, instagram and other social media has made it easy for us to body shame, blame, force our opinions and talk some BIG TALK with anonymity being a shield to hide behind. Everyone's opinion on Baltimore and Freddy Gray has made me wonder what kind of people are we? or....maybe we are just animals...we would kill each other, just to make a point.

I am only 1 person of insignificance. I make hats, costumes, and things to make people feel good about themselves. In the grand scheme of things, I realize that there is nothing I can do as a woman, a person to make people realize how hateful a society we have become. All I can do is keep trying, keep thinking, maybe if I have tolerance and compassion....eventually it will catch on. Or maybe we will kill each other off by then........................



Rose Ellen A Moore
www.rcmooreunique.com