SUBSTANCE

Letter: To My Boys

| Megan

Dickson Family 2015 Edited BW (Client Pics Color)-41Dear P and M,

It’s often while I’m choring– vacuuming, sorting or folding laundry, staring into the depths of a toilet with scrubber in hand– that I have moments to think about things. Life, love, and family. And often when I have this time my thoughts turn to YOU.

I am really grateful to be your mother. I hope it shows in the way I look at you, the way I hug and hold you, the kisses– eskimo, butterfly, and otherwise– I give to you. The sacrifices I make for you.

I also hope that my love shows in the chores you’re asked to perform, the homework your are encouraged to finish, the extracurricular activities you are supported in. I also hope my love shows in the cooperation, kindness, empathy, consideration we advocate you offer toward each other and the outside world.

Becoming a mother was not an easy journey for me. I don’t say that in the sense that it was fraught with physical hardship, or that I didn’t want to be or become a mother, because I did. Maybe it is more aptly stated that it has taken me a LONG time to understand how to be a good mother– not only what that meant to me, but what it looked like to my heart– and that I am definitely still working on it. Always will be.

What I mean is that being a parent is a challenging endeavor, and that is putting it mildly, not matter what your situation. No matter how much you’ve desired to take on the role, or not. No matter how much you’ve dreamed about the prospect of children, or the joy you imagined they’d bring, or the path you thought you would take, or not. There is no playbook.

There is always this motion involved in mothering built into every learning capsule, every growing situation because of precisely that– YOU– you are always growing, changing, learning, morphing. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually you– the child– are always and forever becoming a new kind of thing, a new person. And yet, there are pieces of you that truly do stay the same. Those core individualities that make YOU like no one else who has lived or who will ever live. It is at once astounding and staggering.

The learning curve is one of the steepest I’ve encountered– both becoming a PERSON and becoming a MOTHER. But lingering on the challenge won’t carry you very far in any aspect of life, instead you have to seize the opportunity with your hands, your feet, and sometimes your teeth! It takes grit to shoulder the responsibility and then watch with incredulity as the thing that was once so daunting and worrisome turns into something so beautiful and fulfilling.

Motherhood was and is that work for me, the hardest, most challenging, most beautiful, most fulfilling work I’ve done. Because being your mom is the BEST thing I’ve ever done. It is the MOST important project I’ve ever set my will to, and it is the HIGHEST calling I’ve ever or will ever be given.

I wish I could share with you in some way the joy you bring to rise and bare in me. I guess in family life we share that joy by showing love to each other. In fact sometimes it’s nothing more than your smile, a hug from you at the end of a long day, your mastery of a skill, or your hard work and effort as you struggle to perfect anything– walking, biking, writing, skiing, kindness, care, politeness, conversation, friendship, love– that cause the uprising of that joy.

Joy like a wave so strong it washes me anew with the deepest gladness, so powerfully sweet and good that I can practically taste it. And listen, I realize that some of these lessons are LIFETIME ventures– lessons we are each learning over, and over, and over again– so there will be trips and spills, scars and pain.

I wish I could conjure up a spell every time I thought, “Wow, YOU are INCREDIBLE, my son.” And that the spell would give you my eyes, and ears, and thoughts, and heart for just a moment. To see what I see, and hear what I hear, and feel what I feel– my unequivocal, uncompromising love for YOU. Always.

Love,

Mom

Dickson Family 2015 Edited BW (Client Pics Color)-18

Images: aubreighparksphotography.com

Letter: To All Presidential Candidates

| Megan

2016-presidential-candidates-cartoon-mckee

Dear Presidential Candidates,

Really?!?

Seriously?!!?

Are you kidding?!!!?

Are you a part of reality? Are you Americans? Are you The People? If you are part of us, then why are you so deluded, delusional, egotistical, bombastic, self-aggrandizing, so God-awfully fruit cake, just. plain. NUTS? This is the best that your disparate parties have to offer?

Each and every one of you believe that you are not only capable of being the “leader of the free world”, but qualified to act as Commander-in-Chief and the figurehead of foreign relations for the United States? This letter is not directed at ANY of you individually, but rather an open letter to ALL of you collectively.

I’ll be frank, as a member of the voting public I am appalled at your political peacocking. As someone who considers themselves a conscientious and informed part of the electorate, I am stunned, dismayed, aghast at the reality television lens I believe you have brought into Presidential elections. Indeed, you have left me breathless with your performances.

I mean breathless in the context of being gut punched– repeatedly.

Have any of you spent any amount of time looking in a mirror recently? Or any time watching any of your debates or public forums? I’m not talking about staring in the mirror while memorizing prepared speeches, or practicing pretend smiles. I mean have any of you spent time with a board certified therapist recently?

How has our pool of Presidential candidates come to this?

060415coletoon

Listen, I understand that this RACE this push to put yourself in power is CRAZY. So crazy, in fact, that no rational human being with even a lick of sense will participate in that which we call the race to the Presidential Election.

It really does take super-human strength to flip-flop according to your audience, to criticize and corrosively condemn every other candidate constantly, to talk and talk and talk and pander for an entire DAY-after-day and then wake up and do it all again.

Does it injure your integrity or your sense of soul to climb in bed with corporate sponsors and business affiliates who have little to no care for the wishes or future of this country? Does it hurt to support special interest so aggressively that you forgot that there are not just hundreds, not thousands, but MILLIONS of Americans who are forgotten, underserved, or even negatively impacted by your glad handing big business like they are individual constituents? Yes, those are questions.

How does it feel to have let the BIGGEST, BARREL MOUTHED, BILLIONAIRE Bull into the China Shop since that Mavericky Pit Bull who wore lipstick eight years ago, let alone the fact that she is now his personal spokesperson? Does it pain your good sense to hear that racist, sexist, alarmist, narcissistic, even mildly murderous (according to some latest remarks in Iowa) candidate call you out on stage?

I guess after reviewing this letter I don’t have many comments, only questions. Questions that root in my very pride to be American.

One of the most simple, straightforward articles I’ve read so far comes from NPR called Meet The Candidates In 100 Words And 60 Seconds.

In that vein, I’ve complied my own very simple, very straightforward list of all of the candidates that I’ve affectionately titled Meet The Candidates In Under 5 Words. With a total read-time of 17 seconds, it’s worth it.

BERNIE– TOO OLD, TOO SOCIALIST

TRUMP– BOMBASTIC VITRIOLIST, and frankly NUCKING FUTS

HILLARY– BOUGHT IN, and BOUGHT OUT

CRUZ– BEHOLDEN TO CHRISTIAN GUN-TOTING ZELOTS

O’MALLEY– MOB BOSS

CHRISTIE– WAFFLING RED TO BLUE

BUSH– THREE IS MORE THAN TWO, NOT BETTER

PAUL– LIBERTARIANISM KILLS

RUBIO– IMMIGRATION POLICIES AGAINST THE GRAIN

FIORINA– FEMALE IN THE RED FRAY

CARSON– ZERO EXPERIENCE, ZERO FOREIGN POLICY ACUMEN

HUCKABEE– MAKING TEA WITH THE BEST

 

In the words of one of my dearest friends, Michelle. A woman whose intelligence and political acumen are unsurpassed, a woman whose letter was infinitely more concise and clear than mine, “Dear Candidates, you all suck!”

Sincerely,

Megan

Letters: To Marilyn Sandpearl

| Megan

IMG_1718

Dear Mrs. Sandpearl, (to my fifth grade self Ms. Finder),

You are the Miss Honey to my Matilda, the Annie Sullivan to my Hellen Keller, the Caroline Duggan to my Keltic Dreams Bronx-school-kid dancing fifth grade self. I don’t pretend to be the exceptional powerhouses some of these students were, but I was a little girl growing up in a small town with big hopes and dreams.

That self, that ten-year-old girl, that geeky stretch pant wearing, terrible perm-frizzed hair and buck teeth sporting girl still exists. She is me. I am her. We are all our small selves. Grown and learning– we hope– but somehow still the same. Your impact is carried in me, with me to this very day.

I am not alone in this, Mrs. Sandpearl. You have touched hundreds, probably THOUSANDS of kids with your love of learning, your vigor and lust for life, with your energy and care for your students. With your commitment to perfect cursive handwriting, and mad tap-dance skills atop desks from West to East, you awakened an entire generation to the joy of learning.

You taught us to thirst after knowledge and to look for learning opportunities in every aspect of our lives–inside and outside the classroom. You read to us from wonderful books and required us to apply our learning through projects and papers that cemented this link between learning and living for all of our lives.

Your attitude toward mastery, education, and learning was and is contagious. I would guess that your positive teaching mantras not only uplift and enlighten your students, but your fellow faculty members and the other staff at the schools you’ve worked with, as well.

I have come to believe that I, WE, you– the whole world really– ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS OUR TEACHERS. We are only as STRONG, INTELLIGENT, ENLIGHTENED, and INSPIRED as the ones whose job it is to pass that torch on every day in classrooms around the world.

I had an interesting exchange with a nurse-friend of mine, recently. This friend is STRONG, she is TOUGH. She is a marathoner, a kidney cancer survivor, a mom of three boys (like you), a compassionate and caring caregiver to those who she has ministered to in her chosen career of nursing.

I’ve always known that I didn’t have the STONES for the medical profession. I didn’t have it for the blood, the other bodily fluids, the stress of caring for someone’s needs in the most critical times of their life, the LONG hours and the low(er) pay (at least for many nurses I find this to be the case).

I was telling my friend how much I admired the work that she did, day in and day out. Taking the utmost care of the human race must be hard. I told her that I could never be a nurse. I didn’t have the courage, or the presence of mind, or the physical will.

I told her that someday, if life allowed, I wanted to be a teacher. She said to me, “I could never be a teacher. That is the hardest, most important job that anyone can have.” I was shocked. To put it lightly.

I was surprised because this woman in a profession that I know I could never sustain, never succeed in, a profession I admire and respect very much, was telling me that TEACHERS had all of her admiration and respect. TEACHING was a job she knew that she didn’t have the moxie for, and she honored everyone who chose that career.

I’m not a teacher, yet. So I can’t speak to the long hours, low pay, and skewed curriculum that teachers face day in and day out. But I can speak to YOU, Mrs. Sandpearl. I can say that I’ve watched you– up close as your student, and from far away as you’ve continued in teaching– and I know that YOU MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

You don’t simply have the opportunity to change and shape lives every day as every teacher does who steps into a classroom five or six days a week. YOU DO change and shape lives every day (let alone the lives of your incredible sons). You shaped those lives in a rural cow town in the middle-of-nowhere Utah then, and you shape those lives in a metropolitan contiguity of Boston now.

I honor you. I honor what you do. I pray that you won’t ever stop doing it. I pray that others will follow after you. I hope that Teachers will continue to recognize and embrace the power and opportunity they are given every. single. day.

Thank you.

Love, Megan

Looking Forward, Glancing Back

| Megan

DSC_0058DSC_0162 - Version 2DSC_0061 - Version 2DSC_0347DSC_0108 ShoppedDSC_0267DSC_0334DSC_0035DSC_0090DSC_0044 - Version 2DSC_0035DSC_0234DSC_0243DSC_0040DSC_0127DSC_0194DSC_0132

2015! What a year! 2016. What an opportunity.

It always takes me time to sink in to a New Year before I am ready to look either forward or back. Before I am ready to sum up what the past year meant to me or taught me, and what I have my sights set on in this new 365 days.

I’ve never felt this practice set me back or behind. Last year my resolution was simply based in one word– LOVE. I felt as though I needed to love more and better.

I am still unpacking and evaluating my progress. This pursuit for understanding and acting in true LOVE will almost certainly take a lifetime, so I’m not going to prognosticate or pontificate on the subject now– give me 30 to 50 more years and we’ll talk!

I can say that I was so lightened, enlightened, uplifted, and LOVED by my little family this year. I felt as though I came to better understand what it meant to love my children and my husband, and I felt that my understanding allowed me to realize that for as much LOVE as we send into the world, we often receive a return on that love that fills us ten fold.

One of the other goals I hit hard in 2015 was Refined + Rugged. I didn’t begin my blog until February (in keeping with surveying my field of life and looking at what I wanted and needed). I am so pleased with this little space of the internet. I can’t believe how far it has come!

I remember the beginning when every step seemed agonizing due to my low level of Information Technology knowledge. I still have a LONG way to go in terms of making this site more interactive, user friendly, and adding in some of those fancy widgets I’ve always dreamed of using (like a little bottom bar of my shopping picks, etc.).

But I am not sitting idle. I am working out kinks here and there every day. I am producing better and better content, working on my photography skills (that might take a class!!!), and hopefully continuing to refine my writing and my voice here on this page I call my own.

Though the page is mine, it would be little more than a grainy closet log, boring travel diary, personal recipe reminder, and staid workout recorder without my husband. My husband takes nearly all of the style photos for Refined + Rugged, and he continually inspires and supports me in this endeavor.

This page also wouldn’t be anything without YOU! Thank you for the support, care, enthusiasm, interest, conversation, positive comments, and encouragement. It means the WORLD! I am so grateful for YOU my friends and readers for your engagement and involvement.

In this past week-and-a-half as the New Year has begun I have written down a couple of personal goals:

Yes to LOVE, Yes to Speaking Kindly

No to SHOPPING until March

Yes to Gratitude, and Yes to Letter Writing

No to Eating Out

Yes to continuing in Family Dinner, and Yes to Moderation in Treats

Yes to Working Out and Biking and Being Active Daily

Yes to tackling an understanding of Budgeting and Personal Finance

Yes to Writing and Creating and Blogging with purpose

There you have it. In as streamlined a way as I can state it for now. The great thing about resolutions and goals is that there is no reason you cannot morph and change them as you see fit, as you journey further in to your new year.

Do you all make goals and resolutions each year? If so, why? If not, why not? If so, how have you seen progress, success, or improvement in yourself in the areas you’ve resolved to improve?

I hope you go roaring into Monday like you mean it! Whether you have personal goals to tackle or not, I hop you feel loved, enlightened, and uplifted! Let’s do this!!!

XX, Megan

Brotherly Love: Compassion, Mercy, Goodwill

| Megan

Dickson Family 2015 Edited BW (Client Pics Color)-4

This Holiday season has been a time of warmth and wonderfulness for myself and my family. We are so blessed. So very, very blessed. In the most simple and most important ways.

But I do not believe that God shows His love through means– through comfort, money, objects, and material goods– through MORE. No I am not more loved than my sisters and brothers. So how do I find myself in such bounteous circumstances?

One of the answers to this question lies at the heart of the misconceived idea that if someone is more comfortable, more gifted in physical substance, more rich it means that they are better than the other humans around them. (This can be applied to talent, skill, and intelligence as well, but I find most often most looked at are our physical commodities.)

It also leads to the false conception that to be given MUCH in terms of physical substance– money, food, clothing, comfort– must mean that the particular human in question is more good.

That their more, their much must mean that they are not simply more superior to those around them in their accumulation of wealth, power, and stuff. Their bounty must mean that they are more right, more golden, more loved than their fellow men.

This simply cannot be true.

In fact, are there not good and wonderful humans who live without? Who struggle to find and provide these physical comforts for themselves and their families all the days of their lives. Because they are without, are they evil? Defective? Wrong? The underbelly? No.

Not in the least. The truth then, is that their lack of comfort, means, and MORE does not correlate to their goodness, rightness, or to God’s love for them in any way.

Just as someone with MORE is not more loved by God, the individual with material means may in fact be evil, defective, hateful, cruel, and all-around bad regardless of their physical comfort and station.

The other insidious fallacy centers around the idea that because someone finds themselves in abject circumstances they have somehow been more prepared or are more equipped to deal with hardship. The idea that being hungry, cold, heartsick, or just plain sick and homeless is easier for one individual than it is for another is a vicious untruth.

What has prepared them to be okay with going hungry, with lacking the means for proper medical care, with the literal cold that someone on the street faces without shelter? Nothing.

These trials, these hardships are not endured more easily by one than another. They are struggles that could cause any human to buckle, to bend under the too-heavy burden. And it is not our place to discuss the merits of attitude in dire situations such as these.

If you don’t believe that there are those in our country who really have lived and spent time on the streets without a home, without shelter, have a listen: https://storycorps.org/embed/46901/

So how do we address the have and the have nots honestly. Herein lies our OPPORTUNITY. It is given to those who have been given MORE to give MORE. We are the hands that reach out with abundance to those who are in need.

For example, I received this text from a good friend just last night, “It is that time of year when we ask our friends if they know of anyone struggling at Christmas– needing help putting presents under the tree for the little ones. If you know of a family in need, please let us know. We would like to help, no questions asked. :)”

As my family gathered around our Thanksgiving table and my Uncle Floyd offered the Thanksgiving prayer, I could not have been more grateful. I could not have felt more whole and filled and loved.

My little family of four, we are happy, we are healthy, we really are warm in a well-heated home, with food in our bellies and clothes on our back. My children have access to good educational opportunities. We have access to well trained doctors and medicine when needed.

We have a secure job and happen to live next to some of the most wonderful neighbors in the world, people who are no longer just neighbors, but true friends.

We have a beautiful group of friends and family who we are perhaps more distant from geographically, but who we feel supported, and loved, and uplifted by them despite the distance.

We have a supportive surrounding community with qualified teachers and coaches, activities and sports of every description. We live at the feet of the mountains that boast the greatest snow on earth. (Come on snow! 😉

But this season I cannot wrest the feeling, the urge, the desire to share not simply the blessings I have but more specifically the LOVE that surrounds me– more powerfully, meaningfully, and deeply with others.

I must take the opportunity to share my bounty with others. One of those ways is to physically give of your time and substance generously and without question as my friend has chosen to do. Yes.

And are there other ways to share and show God’s love this season? To offer real LOVE to the human family we are a part of?

How do we do that? I mentioned in my Thanksgiving Prayer, that often the world seems– looks, and feels, and is portrayed– as if all of humanity is in schism. As if all the world, all of humanity is so very deeply divided, broken, fractured into countless pieces of hatred and false judgement. The very opposite of this love I have felt, and seek and search after.

I have a faith, I have a religion, I have a history and a culture. I am made of so many diverse pieces of past and present. We all are. But how do we so easily forget that, if we choose, we may all sit down at the table of HUMANITY. We may all sit down at the proverbial table of Brotherly Love.

Sitting down at this table does not erase our good pieces, the pieces of us that comprise the whole. It does not magically wipe away religion, politics, gender, race, culture, history, and other differences. Hopefully we will learn to sit around the table with diversities so great and far reaching and look into one another’s eyes with honest care.

I recently came across a quote from Vincent van Gogh who said, “I feel that there is nothing truly more artistic than to love people.” May we practice the art of love. May we feel it towards our neighbors.

May we pray to feel love for our enemies. May we have the faith in our shared humanity enough to sit down at that great table, the table of shared existence, shared being, shared life. The table of brotherly love, compassion, goodwill, mercy, kindness.

To start, we must open our hearts.

XX, Megan