On this Valentine’s Day weekend it’s good to remind ourselves of one simple thing… life’s about love. Pure and simple. But we get distracted and sometimes our journey through life makes us forget to think and feel this undeniable fact.

Sometimes our mind speaks to us much louder than our heart does. Yet most times it should be the other way around, when you have a choice between your head and your heart, listen to your heart. It somehow knows the way and wants to be part of your story.

After all, everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is The Sunday Series.

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The Sunday Series (138): Me Too

A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life. ~Isadora James

The tears still flow when she thinks about that day. For Julie Bondroff missing her sister’s wedding was a painful experience, despite it being just one day after one of the happiest days of her own life, the day Julie gave birth to her first child.

Less than 24 hours after Alexa’s birth, there sat Julie sat alone in her hospital room, while the world continued to rotate. “I remember looking up at the clock,” says Julie. “It was 7pm and I thought my god I’m here all by myself and everyone is at my sister’s wedding. I was hysterically crying. My best friend is getting married and I’m not there.”

Julie will gladly tell you her best friend in life is her sister Melanie, no doubt. Except it wasn’t always that way, and sometimes in life it takes a while to figure things out.

Let’s face it being an only child has its advantages. All the attention, all the focus, all the care. For Julie this was the first two years of her existence. Not only was she the only child of Betty and Norman Cohen, she was a world traveler to boot. Not long after the birth of his first daughter Norman had taken the family overseas in Japan.  A master of languages, Norman was drafted, sent to Syracuse for an intense program learning Russian and was then sent to Japan to be a Russian linguist, for all intents and purposes a spy! So for the first two years of her life Julie knew only her mom and dad, (and rice and fish), while the family lived in a poor fishing village in that country.

When it’s just you, life is easy. But while in Japan the Cohen’s conceived a second child and not long after returning to the states, Melanie was born. “My mom said I was out of sorts”, says Julie. “At two-and-a-half I was just getting back to the U.S., really meeting my grandparents for the first time, learning about life in the states… things as simple as riding on an escalator or an elevator, all the things we didn’t have or I didn’t experience while living in a poor part of Japan. I was just getting to know my life here.”

Then Melanie came along.

Melanie says Julie was jealous of sharing her time and her attention, and especially jealous of Melanie’s hair. “When I was like two I had white hair with little curls,” says Melanie. “Julie was like 4-and-a-half and she took cuticle scissors and cut my curls off. When I walked out I looked like a boy. She was definitely jealous, but meticulous too. She carefully picked up all the curls and tossed them in the trash. Our mom picked the curls up out of the garbage put them in an envelope and saved them.”

“Melanie definitely looked up to me,” says Julie, “but I didn’t pay her much mind. She was a late talker and even her first word was Julie, (or “goolie” as it sounded back then), but I was very independent and I wasn’t really into her. I knew she was really into me but it wasn’t reciprocal. I didn’t like dealing with her, I didn’t like her touching my stuff. I really wouldn’t let her be in my room or be friends with my friends. She was like a nuisance, she was my little sister, you know what I mean.”

Any first child reading this probably understands exactly what Julie means… in fact you might be thinking, me too.

You’re thinking it, Melanie was constantly saying it. Despite the somewhat physical distance Julie kept between her and her younger sibling, from Melanie’s side it was all about Julie. “I did whatever Julie told me to do”, Melanie remembers. “Whatever Julie would say I would say ‘me too’. In fact I said it so much my mom bought me a Golden Book titled, Me Too.”

While Melanie says Julie wasn’t into her at all, what Julie didn’t know is that every time she wasn’t at home Melanie and her friends were into her big sister’s stuff. “When Julie was out my girlfriends and I would go in her room and investigate and touch every little thing. We loved to play with her Barbie Dream House, the one with the elevator. Julie would never let me touch or much less breathe on. When Julie was out on a sleepover I was in her room, playing with everything, trying on Julie’s jewelry, trying on her clothes. The minute she walked out of the house I or my friends were in her closet and all over her stuff. Everything she had in that room I touched. But I made sure I put everything back to perfection, exactly where I found it. Julie never knew.”

Their life experience in high school was not much different. “I kept her friends separate from mine,” says Julie. “I even had a house party and I didn’t let her invite anyone because she had no idea it was happening. Melanie only found out I was having a party from a friend. We were really distant for a while. In high school we were disconnected, under the same roof, but the only time we really talked was in the morning when we fought over the bathroom. We really didn’t have a friendship. I went away to school, (college), and Melanie went away to school.

Then as it does so often along this journey, life happens.

As luck or life would have it when Melanie graduated from college and decided to go after her Master’s degree in public administration, she got accepted to NYU.  Since graduating from college her big sister Julie had been living and working in New York. Julie’s roommate was moving out, so their father suggested Julie and Melanie live together. The girls were now back under the same roof, but with years of maturity behind them and no Barbie Dream House to battle over, this time things were different. Learning about life in the big city created a bond between them.

“We lived in a 3-story walk-up railroad apartment,” says Julie. “We couldn’t escape each other even if we wanted to it was so tight. And when you live in New York it’s not so much about where you are working or where you are going to school, it’s about the city, we were experiencing the city together, whether it was the drudgery of where we were living, or doing our laundry at the laundromat, or trying different restaurants, theater, shopping… all these cultural and amazing things our parents had exposed us to and encouraged us to try. Suddenly it was me and Melanie and I couldn’t help but think, ‘WOW, my sister is awesome.”

Some might say it’s chance, some might say it’s fate, some might say it’s the simple realization as you move through life that those closest in your life matter, maybe much more than you ever appreciated. Or just maybe, consciously or unconsciously, you have remembered the simple fact of life… life’s about love.

The two girls even ended up working for the same company. They were now living and working together. The distance which had existed before, was now morphing into an unbreakable bond. Life had new meaning and purpose, as did Julie and Melanie.

“I realized Melanie and I were more alike than different,” says Julie. “Maybe I had not been so into her, but at the end of the day she looked up to me as her big sister and she was very easy to get along with, just smooth and easy. Our parents really raised us the same. I still remember when we were growing up and we would fight our parents would say you need to love each other, because one day we’ll be gone and all you will have is each other. We don’t have a big extended family, we really just have each other.”

When it was time to get married to her husband Shawn, Julie decided she didn’t need or want a big bridal party, she only needed to have one person by her side, her little sister Melanie. So when it was Melanie’s time and she was to marry Jason, she said me too, and returned the favor  – it would be only Julie standing by her side at the wedding ceremony.

Then life happened… again.

Julie and Shawn learned they were expecting their first child. The due date was May 5th, Melanie and Jason’s wedding was planned for April 29th.

You never forget your first, especially when it arrives 25 minutes before midnight on the day your sister is going to be married. Melanie still remembers the morning on that same fateful day: “the morning before my big day I’m going to the salon to get my nails done and Julie calls me to tell me she can’t go. She says, “I’m in labor’. I remember walking into my mom’s room crying, telling her she’d have to come get her nails done with me, because Julie is having her baby. I was in disbelief, this had to be a joke. The only person I wanted and had in my wedding party, my big sister, wouldn’t be able to make it.”

The next night it was Julie sitting in her hospital room, watching the clock as it turned to 7pm, and crying. She was excited about being a new mom, but also facing the very real pain of not being there at the wedding for the person, who just years before, Julie had finally realized was one of the great loves of her life, her little sister Melanie.  For all the things she never allowed Melanie to touch when they were younger, now it was Julie who only wanted to be there to touch her sister’s heart… she couldn’t be and it hurt.

Julie says it was her mom who helped put in all in perspective: “I was so upset, but before the wedding my mom said to me you are simply missing a 4-hour party. It’s just a party. You have been there to witness Melanie and Jason as they got to know each other, how he romanced her and you got to see their relationship blossom. Everyone will leave the party, but you will still be there with Melanie, you got to see the before and you’ll be there after.”

Julie now says she feels like she won the lottery when it comes to having a sister. “Melanie and I talk several times a day,” says Julie. “And it’s just about every day life, not even the big moments. Life can be hard and you are just trying to get through it. It’s so meaningful to have someone who cares and respects you and loves you – I just think how lucky I am and I appreciate it.”

Melanie feels the same. “It’s unconditional love,” she says. “Sisterhood is a bond that nobody, even the best of friends can know. There’s something so special about sisters. And I still look up to Julie for everything. I still value her opinion, I still go with what she tells me to do. When Julie says she wants to do something, or sees something a certain way, I still catch myself saying, me too.”

 

Until next time thanks for taking the time,
(Happy Valentine’s Day)

Mark Brodinsky

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Everyone has a story. What’s yours? Welcome to Stoop Storytelling.

Stoop is easily one of the coolest events held every couple of months in Baltimore.  Look I love this stuff, I’m biased, because I love to hear and then tell stories, (The Sunday Series), so Stoop is right up my alley.

But I’m not alone… and I mean big-time. Obviously people care what your story is because every few months they pack, and I mean pack,(nearly sell out), the Senator Theatre in Baltimore to listen to real people get up on stage with a spotlight shining in their face and let it all hang out. These stories are not memorized, not read, not performed. It’s simply ordinary people telling their stories. And the people there to listen just love it.

 

I mean what’s more interesting or courageous then getting up and sharing your story with about 700 of your new friends?  I didn’t even know this existed until about two years ago when I did a Sunday Series on Erin Mandras and she later contacted me to tell me she was going to share her story on-stage at a Stoop show in Baltimore.  I was like, what’s a Stoop?  It was later another friend of mine bought me a ticket, now I’m hooked.

Come to find out the Stoop Storytelling Series is the brain child of Laura Wexler and Jessica Henkin. These two smart-and-funny women created this thing back in 2006 and since then Stoop has featured the tales of more than 1,000 people onstage. Hearing other people share their stories is inspiring, comforting and it’s necessary so we all become more tolerant of each other. (The shows used to be performed at Center Stage before moving to the Senator because of renovations at the former location.)

 

Last night’s theme was Sex, which was exactly what you thought it would be, but was also surprisingly poignant, touching and even heartbreaking. That’s the beauty of Stoop, you never know what you are going to get. People are literally starved for good, honest stories… it makes us all realize there’s a big world out there and you have absolutely no idea what’s going on in other people’s lives, (only what the news media chooses to tell us), but we all starved for more… because every life is interesting, every life matters.

I’ve been to three of the big Stoop shows now and don’t plan to miss any more. I’ve seen shows where people talk about their fears and challenges,(Fight Club), share their holiday tales, (Die Hard Holiday Show), and then last night they talked about the intimacy, funny and not-so-funny tales about sex. The Stoop series is also held monthly at smaller venues all around town for other story-telling opportunities and open-mic nights. There’s even a Stoop podcast so you can listen to Laura and Jessica and hear some of the best stories Stoop has to offer.(http://www.stoopstorytelling.com/).

All I can say is this is really cool… and if I’m late to the party in finding out about Stoop, well then that’s just part of my story.

Everyone has a story. What’s yours?

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark Brodinsky

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Life is full of bright and vibrant colors, but sometimes we feel trapped in the black-and-white. We see only the straight lines instead of the curves, the narrow path before us instead of the tiny trail which could lead us to wide and expansive places.

Part of that is faith, it simply has to be, for without faith we can’t see the colors or the way to wonder. It doesn’t have to be some grand circumstance or bold move, most times it’s simply a thought which inspires us to take action, however small, which leads us to have faith in ourselves and in turn to answer our heart’s desire.

If you feel lost and don’t know which way to go, then listen and learn from those who have found their way and are willing to share their story.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is The Sunday Series.

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The Sunday Series (137): Behind The Mask

When we reveal our humanity, we give others permission to be human. – Matthew Kelly

Forever it seemed the answer was “I don’t know.” For most of her life Megan Burak was unsure, unsettled and keeping to herself. Although she had – as she describes – a great childhood, she didn’t have direction.

When Megan was only four her mom moved the family from Pittsburgh to the small town of Berlin on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, to be closer to the beach and the ocean which her mom adored.  Sometimes the inspiration of the sea can provide answers and enlightenment to some of life’s biggest questions, but for Megan, even as she approached adulthood the question still lingered, what to do and why.

“Even as a child I didn’t have any real answers when people asked me what I wanted to do”, says Megan. “I was really introverted when I was little. I was heavier when I was a child and of course I was bullied a bit which hurt my self-esteem. I always had trouble expressing myself.”

When the time for college approached Megan enrolled in Salisbury University, not far from her home, but still a great distance from her destiny. “I went to Salisbury, but with an undeclared major”, says Megan. “I had no idea of what I wanted to do and it troubled me. I took some drawing classes, mainly for the credits, but I got some good feedback from the professor. It turned out it was the only class I enjoyed doing and I started taking painting classes.

A couple of brush strokes helped bring the color of Megan’s world to life. Finally, she had answers. “Once I started taking art classes I really loved it”, Megan says, “it gave me a way to visualize my thoughts and ideas. I pursued it and declared an art major.”

Find your why and find your way. But the way is never easy, or without challenges, so your why must drive you and keep you moving forward, even as you’re falling back. For Megan her fall was literally to the floor. Shortly after beginning to pursue her passion, Megan fainted…in front of everyone. The introverted little girl just starting to express herself as a woman through her art was now facing a serious health challenge.

“When I was a sophomore I fainted right in the middle of painting class. I couldn’t finish half the semester, I was diagnosed with Neurally Mediated Hypotension.” It’s also known as the fainting reflex. The condition presented serious challenges for Megan. “Basically it’s a low-blood pressure disorder. When I stand upright the blood doesn’t evenly dispense, it pools to my legs and doesn’t go to my brain. I’ve fainted multiple times, about three times in public.”

The health condition became inspiration for one of Megan’s earliest works, the Faint and the Anxiety Blue paintings. Megan explains: “The Faint picture was that feeling of having this happen all the time and having this feeling of you being pulled way from yourself into nothingness. Anxiety Blue was at the same time period, the height of my anxiety, hiding parts of me, my face, my breasts, but the rest of the exposed body is the vulnerability, the worry and anxiety about fainting in public.”

 

The condition was brought under control with Megan monitoring her sodium intake, taking salt tablets and drinking plenty of water. And her ability to express herself through her art was back on track. Last year Megan graduated from Salisbury with a Bachelor’s Degree in Art and a concentration in two-dimensional art.”

Although in a number of her paintings Megan uses herself as the subject, she says she is not thinking about the “me”. “I use myself because I’m readily available”, says Megan. “But when I’m painting I don’t look as if I’m painting myself, I’m painting another character. I’m using myself, but it’s really my way to comment on the cycle I have observed with people in my generation.

For example, it’s not Megan’s story in a recent series of paintings which were recently part of her own showcase at the Ocean City Arts Center. It’s really the story of what happened to a friend, yet it still includes what was a major theme of Megan’s early works – remaining partially hidden to the world, behind the blindfold, under the mask.

There are actually five paintings in this series, Megan describes them in order:

“The first one is the man and woman on the motorcycle. What I was trying to do was capture the care-free and go-lucky girl, but still naive and blind, that’s why she has the blindfold on. The man is more rigid and he’s damaged internally from past relationships, which is why he’s wearing the mask.”

“In the second painting you can see the man is no longer around. The woman’s dress is tattered and she’s holding the blindfold in her hand. She been hurt and realized the man is not the person she thought he was.”

“The third painting in the series is called Cold, it’s the woman washing away her former self. She’s left cold and it’s because of what happened between her and the man.”

“In the fourth picture the woman is getting ready to surface again, but you can see the mask hanging expectantly on the mirror. The hollow darkness of the painting represents the world closing in.”

“Then in the final painting the cycle has come around. The woman is the damaged one now and she will probably go out and seek to do the same damage which was done to her.”

Megan says she is using her artwork to help comment on the cycle she has seen develop in her generation and the masks help shield at least part of her identity. “I’m scared of revealing all I’m about. In school I wasn’t 100-percent comfortable with everything I was doing. It seemed most of the people in my major knew what they wanted to do for a long time and I felt like I had fallen behind. I didn’t connect with many people in my own major and I guess I used the masks to consciously hide that part. When you use the mask you don’t see the whole person, so you don’t really know the whole person. Plus they are fun to paint and they still reveal the eyes, because the eyes are always extremely expressive.”

 

Moving forward with confidence and building her skills, Megan has slowly been shedding the mask and revealing her feelings and the expressiveness through all the artwork she creates. Her more recent works are other people and photos, experiences and images she finds interesting and strange. Megan says she’s drawn to the colors and the “weird” photos, people who might be odd, or unique, but that’s what Megan believes is beautiful. Plus she loves if people talk about her craft.

“I want people to think about my paintings later, not just leave the gallery and say, ‘oh that was nice’. My dream is to keep broadening where I’m showing, to get into juried shows where you can get awards. I’d love to show in a renowned art gallery in New York, which is really the art capital of America and I would love to go overseas and show in Italy, that would be amazing.”

Megan understands it’s not pure talent that will get her there, there’s nothing more common than unrewarded talent or genius, it’s practice and persistence. “The most important thing is to keep working and honing in on my skills”, says Megan.  It’s really like a muscle. People say, ‘oh you must be so lucky to have this God-given talent’. But you have to have the passion. It’s really a muscle, you must exercise it every day to get better and better. I paint every day and only take three-to-four days off a month.”

It helps to have family as well who are supportive of what you are doing to express yourself to the world. Megan has her mom and dad and two brothers who love what she is doing, and she has the love of her life, her fiance’ Jon. The two have been together since they were 14, nearly a decade. Megan says Jon is her best friend and she’s excited about the prospect of getting married, having her own home and her own studio, and as Megan describes it, “have that whole life.”

 

Megan also says she has learned to overcome not only her internal challenges of anxiety and overcoming her tendency to be introverted, (she’s telling her whole story here!), but also the challenge any artist faces…competition. “I feel like as artists we are naturally hard on ourselves and our work”, says Megan, “especially when we see another artist in our concentration who is “better” than us. What I’ve learned to do is to be inspired by them instead of intimidated by them. It now inspires me to get better and to not give up on it. It’s essential to my work and how I keep going and I want other artists to know that too.”

“I love art and I’m passionate about trying to make it work. I love the challenge. I feel like it’s going really well. I’m doing some commission work which keeps the income coming in and I want to keep painting, entering shows, take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and keep building my skills. I want to ask questions, draw the eye and make an impression. I want to leave something that’s lasting.”

And perhaps by doing so over time Megan will reveal all the beauty of the artist and the woman behind the mask.

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark Brodinsky

To see examples of Megan’s work or have her commission a painting for you, visit http://www.meganburak.com/and e-mail her at meganburak18@gmail.com

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Imagine for a moment I gave you a photograph, a still picture from your favorite movie. Not the movie, just a photo. Then I asked you to take that photo into a crowd of people and try to convince them that still picture was the whole movie. I mean point to the photo and say, “Wow, look at that movie, what a great movie right?” When the person told you it’s just a photo and not a movie, you would exclaim again, “no… look, I’m telling you this IS the movie!” They in turn would probably disagree and it would be hard, despite your conviction, to convince them that this one single picture could be the entire movie.

Yet this is what we do with people’s lives every single day, by hearing their opinion and passing judgement. The “movie” of someone’s life is about 70 years, the average lifespan of a human being on this planet. Yet we meet them on one day, in one moment, they make one statement, offer one opinion – we then judge them, box them, categorize them, and if we don’t agree…we dismiss them, they’re done.

You take the 70 year movie of someone’s life, seize on one photograph from that life and pass a lifetime judgement on that person. Amazing. We all do it, or at least I used to.

I have been listening to the “7 Levels of Intimacy” from Matthew Kelly. On that recording he tells the story above, which I have taken the liberty to paraphrase. When I heard this it made me re-think certain things about myself and about those around me. And with everything going on in this country and around the world – its seems timely and appropriate.

Whatever your opinion, the reality is this, everyone you meet, every single person is going through something, never forget that. On top of this, they had their own form of education or lack thereof, grew up in their own environment and most likely had different life experiences than you. Their opinions are formed by those experiences. How could we possibly not think, any of us, that their opinion might be different from ours. And how can we pass judgement on someone in that one moment… never to hear what they have to say again, or argue to the death that they are in the wrong. As Matthew Kelly relates, “what people say is interesting, why they say what they say…fascinating.”

I’ve resigned to not let other people’s opinions sway me in how I view them, or how I wish to help them, or if they are so angry at me because my “opinion” might be different, and if so, not to engage, but seek to understand, to accept and to respect the movie of their life.

Opinions don’t really matter. Everyone has one and so many are different. But we all have this movie of life and photograph after photograph after photograph make up what I hope is an award-winning film of each person and their time here on this planet. I sincerely hope the movie of anyone’s life is the greatest story ever told, it’s certainly possible for anyone, but if not, then what can I do to help them make it so. That’s the work of life. Because in the end, life’s about love.

That’s just my opinion.

Until next time thanks for taking the time,

Mark Brodinsky

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