Over the course of this last year or so, I’ve shifted to dancing throughout our home for a thirty-minute exercise routine. Some days, I’ve asked Siri to start an indoor walk and done loops around larger stores and our local mall, which contains unique specialty stores along with larger chains and offers a fun route. Occasionally, I’ve ventured to the park, which was closed for months on end when all of the parking lots got repaved. Last year’s July’s flood and its scars on our neighborhood have receded, but other losses make strolling on one street too hard.
It slowly dawned on me that I no longer feel unease for missing my longer outdoor walks. Although both of my knees can handle our neighborhood’s small hills, I felt no guilt for missing the long walk challenge since I almost never missed closing my exercise ring with other activities.The journey to and from the park on Saturday convinced me that I need to focus on this longer walk, and other sweeps through our neighborhood, again.
For this next month, I set the challenge of trekking at least a mile each morning. I must to return to that mind space where missing my walk tinges my day with a shade of guilt. The routine and ritual, lost to me because it was easy to slip into tricking myself into believing all exercise is equal has to be mentally reset.
June’s Mission proves simple—outdoor walks. If I want to add a dance to my favorite songs, or tack on an indoor walk within a shopping trip, that’s just adding flavor to the mix. A long morning spent in the yards doing gardening gets counted only after my mileage goal is met.
Every June morning starts with a mission to pound pavement—rain or shine!
Slick sidewalks and more rain ahead!
Ditches filling up!
A little rain doesn't hurt anyone!
Copyright 2026 Elizzabeth Abrams Chapman
IOUNIO's "Dancing in the Rain" is the perfect piece to listen to once you finish today's blog!
Have you added IOUNIO to your SUBSCRIBE list yet? Have you dropped a COMMENT or hit LIKE & SHARE? These are all easy way to help musicians and artists promote their work!
Hour after hour, I pour though old letters, emails and texts searching for clues of your true essence. You shared triumphs and tribulations through a narrow lens, allowing me to see only part of who you are and what you believe. Snippets of your life, like photographs, revealed only what you thought would match my own life. In hindsight, I realize how much of yourself you kept cloaked under sharing only specific parts of your life with me. The paths of your youth diverged slowly. Our commonalities of being young wives with young children diverged many years ago. You simply didn’t let me know.
My career in education spanned thirty years. I shared with you all of the hardships and rewards with detailed descriptions. Your lifeline of sanity, warmth and kindness tethered me to hope even as Mom slowly died from Huntington’s disease. You never missed a holiday or birthday. That generosity made me feel special. Sometimes I carried guilt because I couldn’t reciprocate with anything more than words. Long letters and emails that pulled you into every aspect of my world. All I had to give was myself.
Imagine my pain and loss to learn that you let me into only the parts of your life that you thought matched who and what I am. Not who and what you truly are. Did I fail as a friend? Did you believe I would turn my back on the person you’d grown into?
Had you shared with me more of your true self, I wouldn’t grieve as I do right now.
Copyright 2026 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
Feeling "Isolated" as I deal with lost relationships. Thought I'd listen to this song today--
Many years ago, I attended a birthday party where for entertainment a woman read our fortunes. I stood in fascination as she described the lives and futures of various friends and family members. I could barely wait for my turn. The woman did her card shuffle and looked at me with a sad smile. “You work,” she said softly. “Yes,” I responded and waited for her to reveal some future travels or adventures as she had for everyone else. She shook her head and glanced down at her cards again. “No. That’s all I see. You work. You work all the time. There’s nothing else that I see.” Tears blinded my eyes as I moved off to the side for her to take the next person in line. I rounded up my husband, son, and his friend and told them I wanted to leave. I couldn’t get into the car fast enough. Sobs shook me the second I closed the car’s door. “What’s wrong?” my husband asked. “You heard what that woman said,” my words drowned by tears. “She saw nothing but work.” That casual observation by a party entertainer punched me in the gut because it resounded with truth. At that time, I taught high school English. I slipped into my classroom an hour early every morning and stayed almost as long most days. My evenings and weekends involved chipping away at an endless mountain of essays, journals, and projects that never dwindled no matter how many hours I graded. With the time that remained to my day, I did house and yard work. Rarely did I do anything just for pleasure. Amazement filled me if I heard about friends taking off for evenings or weekends with “the girls.” How did they find the time? How could they simply leave their jobs and households for a few days at the beach? Guilt over spending that much money and time on myself would make the intended respite stressful for me. In my mind, I’d fret over all the stuff I wasn’t getting done. Over the years, I don’t think I’ve learned how to play without donning a layer of guilt like a second skin. For the last two days, I’ve had no substitute jobs because the openings have been at high schools, middle schools, or schools that are too far from my home. This year, I limited myself to only doing elementary schools within a ten minute drive from my house. I grab jobs at the high school campus that’s walking distance from my house, too. Yesterday, when nothing opened up, I convinced myself that the budget hit wasn’t too bad. I changed out of my work clothes and found my rattiest t-shirt and oldest pair of shorts. I headed out to the back yard and did three hours of yard work. In other words, I worked. With today off, it means a harder hit to my extra income. I almost talked myself into taking a slot at a middle school where I could possibly have a totally rotten day. I battled back and forth on the importance of the $78.65 I’ll net VS the Middle School Madness of students in May. I decided to stay home for a second day, but feel guilty about not taking that slot. As I sit at keyboard, my mind drifts to the hedges out front. My work ethic primly points out, “You should use today to trim those bushes.” Another voice, distant and faint, echoes in my memory. “You work. You work.” Maybe today I’ll step away from my overdeveloped sense of responsibility and enjoy an unexpected and unplanned day off—and do nothing at all.
