Life is What You Make It?

My backyard is a place many different kinds of wildlife frequent. There are bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, ducks, and lots of varieties of birds. This past weekend we learned it's also a place for four raccoons to eat. If you offer food and water, wildlife will come. It’s very relaxing to watch the activity through our large, living room window. The chipmunk scurries around from one spot to another, ever vigilant for doom. Birds flock in, like waves reaching a shore, then flock out to the trees behind our house. Sometimes I follow a single bird with my eyes as it flies into a tree beyond the fence. I imagine that kind of freedom, to fly, would be exhilarating.

This reflection is leading somewhere, just hang in with me.

I believe many of us long for a degree of freedom. Or we think we want freedom. Freedom from the daily grind, as life is often referred to, the routine of work, drive home, eat, sleep, do over. Freedom from bills and health issues and commitments. But we understand that life is like that. We understand there is responsibility and struggle. It’s a box of chocolates and you never know what one you’re gonna get, according to Forest Gump. We accept that life has rules and physical structure. It’s a tradeoff, some say. We adhere to the rules and structure and in return we get things and friends and vacations and safety, among other things.

But it can take a bit of damping down sometimes to live according to our beliefs and societies beliefs if they define for us who we are and what we can do. We may secretly believe that we can’t have freedom without paying for it by abiding by constraints of being human in a society.

There’s another saying I believe in. It suggests that life is what you make it. The playing field doesn’t seem to be equal and some of us see that there are certain parts of life in the world to which we don’t have access. Our goals accept this and we live lives accordingly. I understand this well. But to a degree, it depends on what you consider life is about, I believe. Maybe we can have it all, depending on what “all” is to us. It’s up to us as individuals to decide.

In my books, a theme underlying the rules is the concept that life is not what we think it is. Now, in my Fierce Hearts series in which were-lynx live, that would seem to be a fantasy. We all know there are no such things as were-beings. But it’s a concept I loved writing about because I truly believe life is not what we think it is. It’s so much more when individuals can find, not freedom, but spaciousness. In Always and Forever Love, the heroine opens up to a possibility that she can connect with her dead husband’s spirit. That’s something to believe or not believe in real life, but it is a metaphor in my book for letting go of the beliefs, judgments, opinions that help us feel in control but that keep us confined in old structure where life is a set of ground rules. When the heroine opens to possibilities, she finds peace from her grief and love in a new way because spaciousness contains so much more possibility.

Spaciousness is a limitless, clear blue sky. Inner spaciousness is freedom. It can free us to see a new world and be in awe of what we can make of it. Laws of physics tell me I’ll never grow wings and fly into the trees behind my house like the birds. But in a world where I make choices from spaciousness, life can be exactly what I make it.

Here's an excerpt from Always and Forever Love in which Lacey is having a crisis that asks her to expand.

Lacey sat back down beside her sister, her hands wrapped around the hot mug, and sipped slowly. The anxiety and loneliness of last night began creeping into her day brain. She closed her eyes and searched inside her mind for strength. When she opened them again, she saw Sterling staring at her.

“What’s up, sis? Tyler at camp getting you down?”

“Tyler being gone for a bit longer I can handle.” She cast her gaze around the room, but all the while she was casting around inside herself for direction. “I couldn’t face the empty house while Jake’s in a place where I don’t know if he’s safe,” she said softly, feeling as though speaking it would make it all too real.

Sterling put her arm around her shoulders. “Let’s take stock. Your amazing spirit husband goes away, actually disappears. You start to have wonderful but disconcerting feelings for Jackson. You get run off the road and suffer a concussion. Then the man you may be falling for goes away, too. Is that about it?”

Lacey dropped her head to Sterling’s shoulder, not knowing whether to cry or laugh. “I think that is about it. Life is stranger than fiction sometimes, huh?”

“Apparently your life is.”


I'd love to learn your thoughts about the phrase, Life is What You Make It.

This post was first printed in my newsletter, My Backyard. To subscribe visit Lynn Crandall Blog.

When Everything Falls Apart

I recently read a saying that made me laugh. It went something like this: Dear Whatever-Doesn’t-Kill-You-Makes-You-Stronger, Thank you. I’m strong enough now. 

Cute! But it started my brain thinking about what people do when everything falls apart.

Options are many. There’s always the “go to bed,” option. Just drop out of the world for a bit and let everything stop. Maybe there are tears and feelings of failure or loneliness to process or not. Of course the standard grab a cup of really good coffee, tea, or liquor offers a degree of solace when relationships fail or everything you’d planned, dreamed of, and worked toward falls apart.

 In my books, Dancing with Detective Danger and Always and Forever Love, about the Private Investigator sisters, Sterling and Lacey Agar, the sisters suffered much and early. Their world, consisting of their family, crumbled away in degrees. They each found ways of soldiering on, but they also each built coping mechanisms that kept them going into adulthood. Coping mechanisms are survival tactics, but they also can become outdated and destructive.

For Sterling, the younger sister, the loss of her father and mother and family as she’d known it prompted her to build walls that would keep her safe from getting close to anyone again. When her sister’s husband was killed, the walls got stronger and she broke up with her lover and detective, Ben. Here’s an excerpt in which Ben pushes her to try love again.

     Ben dropped his hands to his sides and stepped off the elevator. Thoughtfully, he rubbed his thumb against his chin. The rasping of his thick beard stubble sounded crisply inside Sterling’s head, drawing her in like a bee to honey. 
    “We found Jerry’s fingerprints on a glass in the bathroom,” he said, eyeing her as she stepped out into the night. 
     Sterling cleared her throat. “So they were enjoying a little early morning tryst. That would explain why there was no sign of forced entry and why the dog didn’t attack the killer. The dog must have known the killer. It seems pretty open and shut, huh?” 
     “Maybe,” hedged Ben. “Maybe a little too neat?” 
     “Yeah. But then, what’s wrong with neat? Well, here’s my car,” she said, stepping several feet away from Ben. Sterling pointed her remote key toward her car and put her hand on the door handle. Her hands still trembled, despite her efforts to calm herself. Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Ben standing on the other side of the lot. 
     “You know, it seems like you’re always walking away from me,” he said, his voice low. 
     Instantly, Sterling pivoted. “Don’t do that.” She faced him with as much composure as she could muster. 
     “Don’t do what?” A few succinct broad strides and he closed the distance between them. 
     “Don’t keep referring to the past.” 
     “I can’t help it, Sterling. Maybe that’s because what we shared isn’t really in the past.” 
     Standing close, he looked down at her with such sorrow, she wished she could reach out and hold him, tell him everything would be the way he wanted it. With strong emotions seething just under her skin, it would be so easy to tell him things could be the way they used to be. 
     Instead, she backed away. 

Like her sister, Lacey’s worldview was shaped by the loss of her parents. But when her husband died, she wore the grief of his death like a heavy mantle. That is, until her dead husband, Nicholas, returned to her as an embodied spirit. With him back in her life, and visible only to her, Lacey centers her life around him, repressing any desires for more. She fears the return of the terrible grief if he leaves. But what she doesn’t know is that Nicholas has come back to help her move back into the world and develop a new relationship, without him nearby.

     Brought out of her reflection by the sound of a car horn nearby, she realized Nicholas’s remark was part of a developing pattern he’d been presenting lately, and she wanted to nip it. “Jackson Carter is a snake who comes from a long line of snakes. I want nothing to do with him.” Initially she’d felt self-conscious about talking to Nick in public, but he’d suggested that most people didn’t notice because they were busy with their own thoughts, and she’d found out he was right. She glanced at the passenger side and smiled. “How long have you been watching, Nick, my love?” 
     “Long enough. I wanted to see Tyler off. But stop changing the subject.” He set his eyes, the color of crystal blue quartz, on Lacey. “Tell me about Jackson.” 
     Her heart clenched. “I don’t want to talk about him. The only two men in my life are Tyler and you.” She wanted the traffic driving by to distract him but she suspected his attention was elsewhere. 
     “You forget, I’m dead. I’m just a ghost. I can’t even keep you warm on a cool summer evening.” The wind flowing in through the open window lifted strands of Nick’s ash- blond, wavy hair. His face turned to savor the breeze, and he looked every bit alive enough to Lacey. 
     “You make me happy. It’s as simple as that.” She reached for Nick’s hand. He took hers in his, brought her fingers to his lips, and brushed them with a kiss. She savored the feel of his lips, never taking his very solid presence for granted. 
     “You deserve more, Lacey. You’re young, you’re alive. I’m not. Not in the same sense you are.” 
     His pressure on her to consider different options than the perfectly lovely and satisfying one she had with him made her stop breathing. “Stop.” She let out her breath as she turned into the parking garage across the street from the Aegar Investigations office. “You are alive. Just not in a way anyone would get. I do. And I get you. And if that means I get you as a ghost, as you put it, I’m grateful.”

The defenses the sisters have in place are not far from what people do in real life when tough times hit and call into question how we’re going to go on. When a book project is rejected, many of us go through the routine of reassessing our ability as a writer and consider quitting. I’ve done it many times when a reviewer has rated my book anything less than a 5-star. Reassessing can be helpful. So can going to bed and grabbing a hot coffee, talking with a good friend, or really processing the sorrow.

Then what? It’s up to you. Because as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”

What do you do when facing a hard situation? Do you have any sayings that give you strength?