Shine Your Light & Stand Your Ground - a tribute to my dad

Shine Your Light & Stand Your Ground - A tribute to my dad

 

For those of you who’ve been on this list awhile, you might remember some prior postsabout my amazing dad.  It’s been almost 20 years since he passed away and I marvel sometimes how the ache of losing someone we love can still be present after all of these years.    Do we ever actually heal from grief & tragedy?  I believe it's really important to honor our emotions and simultaneously trust that it will get easier.  I  liken it to a hole in my heart, it never goes away, but eventually we learn to rebuild our world around it.

As I embark on this Be Your Own Kind Of Beautiful project,  I can’t tell you how many times I have wished he was here to offer feedback on the music,  help me with design or support me emotionally on this journey.  For those of you who don’t know, dad was a Senior VP at Arista records for many years.  Therefore, I think his feedback would have been invaluable!!  



As I consider the message of Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful theme, 2  important thoughts come my mind.

 Sometimes the darkness strengthens our light. 
The unfortunate reality is that we’ve all been touched at sometime or another with tragedy and pain.  One powerful thing that makes us each unique is our unique experiences and  it’s this story that creates our individual beautiful. Whatever our path has given us is responsible for the heart & spirit that we carry with us today.  This process doesn’t happen overnight – but as we allow ourselves to heal from grief & we slowly learn to shine again, it’s important to acknowledge our journey & our courage.  When we can embrace our darkness I think that this makes it easier to embrace our light.
Think about how loss, tragedy has given you strength and shaped places in you that you otherwise would have never found.  These become the places that enable our inner light to shine through :)

Learning to stand my ground
As the years have passed, I’ve also gained perspective about all I learned from him.  And there are so many attributes of his character that continue to inspire me.  He was a smart man and an incredibly hard worker- with no college education or connections he became a very successful businessman in the record industry.  Also, he was kind, generous, funny and cared fiercely for the people he loved.  (sometimes the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree ;) However, business associates also say he was an intense & demanding person to work with.   For me this piece is also inspiring, it’s a reminder to me that it’s OK to have high standards, boundaries and call people out when they don’t step up.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to stand my ground, so dad's tenacity is a powerful reminder to self for me! And it’s also a big piece of being your own kind of beautiful.   It’s actually the bridge of the song …

“Raise your head high if they don’t understand, you don’t need a reason to stand your ground,
The people who matter won’t ever bring you down”
 

So that’s 2 of the many wonderful things I learned from dad about being my own kind of beautiful :)
For me, remembering the amazing things we have learned from those we’ve lost somehow helps us to keep them by our side as we continue on.
May your light shine on my Beautiful Ones
Love

 

 

PS:  the photo caption reads …..
“For nearly 20 years he manufactured millions of albums and singles for us, while producing more memos than anyone could possibly read.  It was that kind of fierce dedication and everlasting love for his work and his company that we will never forget”