Monday’s Pen to Paper: Growing Hip
Honey 1919-2015
I’m trying to grow hip as I grow older. My husband always tells people that he wants to be like my grandma, Honey, when he is old. “She was HIP,” he explains and then goes on to talk about how she was current with news, sports and of course politics. (She and my grandpa leaned to the left, which I loved.) She stayed relevant with her grand and great-grand kids, up until she was in her late 90’s. Her great-grands loved her, chatted with her, played cards with her (She played a mean hand of Bridge or any card game for that matter) and learned from her until she was gone, and that is cool. HIP.
Honey wasn’t perfect, but she was darn close. She was an amazing grandmother to me, and just one of the things I loved about her was her ability to stay up with the times, and it is one thing I want to emulate and fold into my life. My hip won’t be like Honey’s, but I’ll do my best to live my life to the fullest, try new things, stay current with the world and stay positive despite some of what might be out there in the news. To look for the good and pass on the good to those around me.
Isn’t that something worth striving for as we grow older, to be hip and relevant? I don’t mean dress like a teenager. (Though Honey always looked sharp while being age appropriate) but just staying up with the times. Reading and learning. Being open and living life.
Writing prompt #1: How will you stay hip throughout your lifetime?
Monday’s Pen to Paper: Tidying House & Soul
Bags of stuff to donate
I’m on a mission. Over the past several years my house has gotten cluttered. I can usually keep the main level livable but the rest is getting overtaken with stuff. Anytime we have company, extra things get tossed in my office. I can’t even work in my office anymore, it’s much too crowded. When I write I go to the kitchen, it’s open, has lots of light and is relatively uncluttered, but it would be nice to be able to use my office if I felt like it.
So the daunting task is underway. It started a couple of weeks ago when my kids and I cleared out their rooms. We sent bags of clothes to Goodwill, and then I hit my closet and did the same. This week I focused on my office, the worst room in the house, where now the floor is covered in piles of paperwork. Personal and business bills and invoices to be filed, coaching notebooks and paperwork from the last five seasons and summer camps, miscellaneous books, leftover graduation preparations and photos from my daughters graduation last spring, you name it, this is the spot where every extra thing lands. But not for long.
Because when I started this job of clearing my space, I also decided to listen to a book. And the book that popped out at me, as I was figuring out how to download an audio file to my phone (I was used to checking out CD’s from the library), was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Condo. It was meant to be.
It was nice to have support and ideas straight from the book to help in my tidying process, because it’s not happening overnight, and though […]
PeaceLoveBasketball Friday: The Power of Positive
I love quotes. I use a couple of my own from time to time and I love finding quotes that fuel me.
If I talk to one of my kids before their games I always end with, “Play hard and have fun!” When I sign my memoir I use, “Always believe in you.” And when I was coaching I searched out quotes to encourage and inspire. Our locker room walls were covered in quotes, my coaches and I would text quotes to the players and I would use quotes in my pre-game speeches. Our team was surrounded with positive energy, added fuel to the fire of our intended goals.
During the five years that I was head coach, I watched the energy change with our team. My final year, we were in no way perfect, but we grew as a team and placed 6th in State and more importantly, we grew as a group of young women who learned to stay positive in the face of a challenge, and positive quotes were one small piece of the puzzle.
What are some of your favorite quotes?
Monday’s Pen to Paper: Change Is Life
There have been a lot of changes going on in my life, and though basketball and writing are still priorities for me, it’s been, and will continue to be, a challenge to settle into a new path.
Last spring I left my position as head basketball coach at the high school in my neighborhood and started closing out my PeaceLoveBasketball business because I was ready for a change. I decided to focus on my writing and put energy back into modeling (and catch up on projects that I had let go over the last 5 years). Then summer hit and so did even more change. The usual sports camps and family vacations took place of course, but then my daughter had heart surgery, our dog had two surgeries, and I lost my grandmother just as my daughter was headed off to college.
A lot of change.
Fortunately, I have learned over the years that change is a part of life. And what I experienced this summer is not much different than most people experience throughout their lives. Loss is a part of life, leaving jobs, sending a child off to college. You follow a path, make a plan, but it often gets uprooted. This might make you cry, or laugh, or feel lost for a while, but there is also hope and better times. Change is life.
Yes, I’ve felt lost and sad at times, but I’ve also had some of the best times with my family and friends this summer. So I continue to remind myself to enjoy life and do the things I love and to believe that change will keep me moving forward and help me to find my way.
Remind yourself to search for the good in change.
WRITING PROMPT #1: Write about changes in your life…
WRITING PROMPT #2: Beverly […]
Meet Sonya
Meet Sonya
Sonya Elliott’s memoir, Back on the Court: A Young Woman’s Triumphant Return to Life, Love & Basketball, is her story of finding hope in the wake of tragedy after she and her fiancé were hit by a train. She blogs about writing, basketball, and life and is currently working on a Young Adult Novel and a Non-Fiction Coaching book. Stories of her career as a fashion model are woven through her memoir, as both the Soloflex and Easy Spirit Shoes commercials were filmed during that time period, and this unique and intriguing business continues to be a part of her life.
Sonya played basketball at Eastern Washington University and was a starter for the Big Sky Champion team that went to the 1987 NCAA tournament. She coached for almost 25 years and was voted Seattle Times Coach of the Year, Seattle Officials Women’s Basketball Association Coach of the Year, and twice voted Metro League Coach of the Year. She loves the game of basketball and is thankful, not only for her husband and kids but for her ability to continue to get back on the court.
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Monday’s Pen to Paper: Dare to Be Different
On Thursday, while writing with Jenny, we designed a crazy prompt for ourselves, and when our fingers hit the keys they started flying and didn’t stop. Sometimes prompts peter out for me, an idea gets convoluted in my mind somehow and I think too much instead of just writing what comes. This happens to me more than I’d like to admit, but on those days when I can’t stop, and the words just flow, its magical.
Jenny and I are both working on books, so often we simply start working when we are together. Sometimes we write a quick catch up letter about our week (so we can visit but not talk too much), but Thursday we decided to write about our week differently, we wrote a story about our week that was told in third person. Our ten-minute […]
PeaceLoveBasketball Friday: Believe and Receive
I talked about believing and receiving at the Beyond Pink event last week, about how important it is to believe in ourselves, and in life, and how important it is to be willing to receive help from others. This second piece, receiving, has never been easy for me. Being independent, I have always felt like I didn’t need help, but after I was in a debilitating accident where I was hit by a train and left unable to care for myself and without my best friend and fiancé at the time by my side, I needed help.
From the doctors and the nurses who helped to save my life, to the friends and family who supported me when I didn’t want to go on living, I had help. And it was the seemingly little things that made […]
PeaceLoveBasketball Friday: Defense wins the games
I was watching some young kids play pick-up basketball the other day and I was amazed at how often they played just one end of the court, the offensive end. Both teams were letting three-pointers fly and they made them a lot, but it was hard to watch the rest of the game. There was almost no defense being played. Players were just looking for the glory shots, the three-pointers.
Does it really matter if you can drain a three-point shot, if you can’t, or often won’t, play defense on the other end of the court? I don’t think so. In fact, the ability to hit three-pointers tends to make a lot of players lazy. They assume the ball is going in and don’t follow their shots.
Of course as a shooter, you should think that you’re going to make your […]
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