{"id":1723,"date":"2013-08-21T10:53:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T17:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisathorpeartist.wordpress.com\/?p=1723"},"modified":"2013-08-21T10:53:32","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T17:53:32","slug":"happy-birthday-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisathorpe.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/21\/happy-birthday-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to Me!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1724\" style=\"width: 442px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/lisathorpeartist.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/156-bd.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1724\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1724\" alt=\"This is my birthday breakfast.  Made lovingly this morning by my husband who knows my favorite is always Eggs Benedict!\" src=\"http:\/\/lisathorpeartist.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/156-bd.jpg?resize=432%2C323\" width=\"432\" height=\"323\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1724\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is my birthday breakfast. Made lovingly this morning by my husband who knows my favorite is always Eggs Benedict!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I am fiftyonederful today and glad to be alive.\u00a0 Thanks to my family and friends and you dear followers who have joined me in this journey round and round the sun, I am truly blessed.<\/p>\n<p>This morning I went for a walk with my dog Lucky pondering <i>birth<\/i>-days. I got to thinking about that newborn self &#8211; that pure, sweet, unhindered self.\u00a0 As a baby we are a sweet elixir, a pure sip, a true soup of self, simple and raw flavor unlike any other fruit on any other day of our existence. As years pass and birthdays come and go experience and happenstance, effort and luck add to the mixture.\u00a0 More sweetness when love comes like ripened fruit, spices both sizzling and subtle get sprinkled in with lose and lust and labor.\u00a0 Sometimes ingredients are added in fistfuls and overwhelm the recipe, in times of great strife or loss these ingredients can add a bitter or sour flavor to that pure baby elixir that poured forth on our first day. But with consciousness and sometimes great effort we can change the course of our life\u2019s recipe we can let the savory salty sweetness of life shine through, the sour and bitter inform but don\u2019t overpower the broth. It seems to me that life is an accumulation of flavors and we are adding and adding with each day, somewhere along the way, a cooking down, a condensing begins. I\u2019m not sure when this starts is at 50, 60 70? earlier? later? I suppose it\u2019s different for each of us, but our soup of self begins to simmer.\u00a0 And over the years we are cooked down, the volume reduced but the flavor enriched.\u00a0 We boil and simmer and stew until another elixir emerges, related to that newborn broth but different. I saw this in my own two grandmas, very different women, very different pasts, and paths and choices unique.\u00a0 One was sweet and creamy the other salty and often sour.\u00a0 And as they aged (they each lived deep into their nineties) their broth of self cook down to a thick consomm\u00e9. In the end the sweet was sweeter, settled and satisfied; the salty one struggled, the sour flavors adding fear and fretfulness to her later years. I want to acknowledge that dementia can be a cruel cook and one doesn\u2019t always have control over the cooking process but I like to think, I want to hope that we have some choice, some power of selection, some jurisdiction over the recipe, how hot the flame, and vigorous the stirring. And so today, my 18,360<sup>th<\/sup> day of existence, I rededicate myself to the flavors of my purest self, my baby elixir, I pledge to added ingredients thoughtfully, stir gently, simmer slowly and let the recipe evolve as it will with each rotation of the earth each revolution around the sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am fiftyonederful today and glad to be alive.\u00a0 Thanks to my family and friends and you dear followers who have joined me in this journey round and round the sun, I am truly blessed. This morning I went for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[37,88,96],"tags":[115,180,259,487,497,705],"class_list":["post-1723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-inspiration","category-spiritual","tag-aging","tag-birthday","tag-cooking","tag-life","tag-love","tag-soup"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Happy Birthday to Me! - Lisa Thorpe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/lisathorpe.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/21\/happy-birthday-to-me\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Birthday to Me! - Lisa Thorpe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am fiftyonederful today and glad to be alive.\u00a0 Thanks to my family and friends and you dear followers who have joined me in this journey round and round the sun, I am truly blessed. 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