The Hat

I have to say I was surprised by the reaction to this photo, basically because it was on my professional page and I removed the photo change notice from that page to not draw attention to it, but I guess it showed up anyway. When the Universe speaks, I listen, so I'll take this opportunity to share the lesson I learned around this photo.

First off, this was the day of my daughter Katie's wedding, This particular shot was a selfie shot in Tusa, Sicily, after the ceremony, before we boarded the buses to the reception. My daughter was married in the same church that her in laws were married in in a little mountain town...right out of a movie.....so beautiful…. but a different conversation. As I coach people to do....focus on yourself....this pic has significance to me, as Patty, not just the mother of the bride, but to me, a 50+ y/o woman, a widow, a mother of 4, a sister, an aunt, a friend, the bold American in a small town in Italy, the crazy lady with the three big dogs on Roosevelt Island.....

During the lead up to Katie's wedding, I was in a soul sucking job. Everything about it sucked. It was a toxic environment for me and I hated what I was doing. My responsibilities were totally not aligned with anything that fed my soul and my colleagues were not my friends. During this time, I did a lot of personal growth stuff to make sure that I stopped contributing to the toxicity, and I eventually left, but leading up to this amazing day, it was a daily soul sucking, tortuous experience that totally whittled away at my self esteem. I would walk my dogs in the morning and spend a beautiful hour at our dog park by the river, trying to reconcile how my life was so amazing yet I had to go to this miserable job every day.

The dichotomy between my personal life fulfillment and my professional life complete failure was exhausting. Enter the hat….

I was so distracted by my own misery that I could barely participate in the planning, and honestly, the wedding was all done by Katie, in Italian, in Italy, I honestly didn’t have much to offer in way of help…and my daughter Yaya took care of absolutely everything else as the most amazing maid of honor ever. I started to feel completely disconnected.

I had found a back up dress for the wedding. $99 at Saks of Fifth lol. Katie and Yaya were with me when I tried it on and approved. Not a typical mother of the bride dress, but I'm not typical. Anyway I never got around to finding "the" dress…how horrible is that???? My daughter was getting married and I wasn't shopping for a dress!!

All of a sudden, three weeks before the wedding, two weeks before I was leaving for Italy, it dawned on me….I need a hat! I always wore hats although I hadn't in years. After a Saturday morning Alanon meeting my friend Anne came with me and I searched for a hat. I was a woman on a mission. I found this hat and loved it and left the store without it. The hat was 3 times more than my dress! Still less than what my friends all paid for their dresses for their kid's weddings but….it took me three days and my kids and all my friends hounding me, sick of hearing about it…to convince me to go back and buy this hat!

This hat made my back up dress THE dress. The story of the shoes that went with it are a whole other Universe Speaking to me moment…I felt FABULOUS in this hat….. the hat helped me celebrate me….celebrate that I'm worth it and no one or no situation should ever make me forget that...I may not have been able to contribute a ton to the planning of the wedding, but I raised the people who planned it so exquisitely and created the most amazing experience for everyone that was blessed enough to attend. It was my daughter's wedding day but it was a day of affirmation that I had done ok. That I raised amazing adults that I could be proud of and actually like to be around. And I love the people they chose to be part of their lives, their friends, their significant others, all of the people that continue to grace my life. ! Like holy shit….they made it to adult hood ok…every parents most basic hope.

I say this not to celebrate myself, I say this as a call to action to all of us. We all deserve to be celebrated! God, if we made it through 2020 that's cause enough to celebrate!!

You are amazing! You have accomplished so much! You can still accomplish so much! Celebrate all you're proud of without cross examination! I'm thrilled I got all my laundry done on Thursday!!! That's a big deal to me! Look at all you've done!!! The daily stuff and the epitaph worthy stuff…all of it is what makes us each amazing! It's the stuff life is made of! Celebrate it!!!

Celebrate you! Be kind to yourself, you did your best. Be confident in yourself, your best can get better if you think it needs to! Be bold, we only have one life, go for what you want! Get the tattoo, give up the toxicity, embrace the joy, buy the fucking hat…you deserve it…no matter what you can beat yourself up over, you deserve it!!!