Revised Passions List

On second thought, I decided to edit my passions list. I feel strongly about and get lost in activities related to the following passions:

(1) Health: Cooking allergy free food, promoting CD and food allergy awareness, learning to eat intuitively (start when hungry, eat foods my body needs, and stop when satisfied), and even activities like walking, biking, tennis are all related to my passion for improved health and well-being, after suffering years of misdiagnosed gastrointestinal symptoms.

(2) Clothes: Shopping for, modelling, sewing, altering, wearing classic, sometimes fashionable, but always flattering garments.

(3) Sunny, warm weather: I live in Seattle. I prefer to live in Maui. Need I say more? LOL

(4) Birds: Besides feeding crows and coots during daily walks, my husband and I maintain 5 feeders, a birdbath and 2 nest boxes. However, I'm also a penguin 'freak' and collected stuffed penguins and other penguin related memorabilia until I started telling everybody 'no more penguins' LOL. Nevertheless, my husband still calls me 'Queen Penguinea' and refers to stuffed penguins as my loyal subjects.

(5) Music: Besides playing the piano, I love listening to music while I sew, and prefer a contemporary praise song oriented worship service at our church. I previously sang in church and other choirs, but now I just sing during long walks, hikes, bikerides or whenever I need to motivate or energize myself. I also love to visit musical instrument stores and try other stringed instruments (besides piano).

My husband often says that we most want as adults what we most missed as small children. That may explain some of my passions:

(1) HEALTH: As a child I hated what my mom cooked for dinner, was forced to eat it anyway, often threw up during the night, had chronic eczema and constipation (which were related to undiagnosed celiac disease), had 'sinus allergies' which I later traced to dairy allergy, and was teased for being 'fat', because I had a 'fat' stomach (which was I later learned was 'bloated' due to food allergies). My original college major was honors pre-med. Though I later switched to psychology, I continued to read health related books and magazines all my life.

(2) CLOTHES: When I was very young, I wore my older brother's hand-me-down clothes. When I was older, my mother often told me that she would buy me nice clothes when I was thin. She also told me how she wished she had a pretty little girl whom she could dress in nice clothes. (I interpretted that to mean she got me with my bloated tummy, instead of the 'pretty little girl' she wanted.) After I lost enough weight in college to look 'thin', I began and never stopped wearing flattering clothes.

(3) SUNSHINE: I grew up in Eastern Washington (Spokane) and Kansas. We moved to gray, rainy Seattle in my senior year of high school. Seattleites go crazy when the sun comes out momentarily. I hate being inside when the weather is sunny or outside when the weather is gray. I have full spectrum lights throughout my house and 2 special SAD light boxes in studio and breakfast bar (where I eat 2 meals a day). I love my Seattle home and neighborhood, but after my husband and I married in Maui, I would prefer to live in Lahaina, Maui.

(4) BIRDS: We had (3 or 4) parakeets when I was young. I still love visiting pet stores and talking to cockateils. As a child I often had 'flying' dreams. I have read 'flying dreams' signify a desire for freedom, which for me was freedom from an abusive childhood.

(5) MUSIC: I took piano lessons when I was in grade school, but my mom always showed me how she could play much better than I ever could. (She also ripped up and resewed my homec sewing projects.) My parents constantly played LPs from those great musicals from the 50s and popular classics. My favorite early memory is sitting in my dad's lap and listening to classical music. I sang in an 'all city chorus' during junior high. Even though my parents didn't attend any church, I found a nearby church, attended VBS and then regularly attend Sunday School until we moved across town. Then I attended a church, where my cousin also attended. I never forgot the hymns I learned to sing at those 2 churches.

We may never be able to 'go home again', but we may carry pieces of our childhood in our hearts as we pursue our passions.