Living Happily Ever After
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Blog Articles

Better Than Spock

Date: November 25, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“My first crush was Spock. I thought it didn’t get any better than Spock.” (Selma Blair)

Selma’s wrong. It does get better. Donny TOTALLY beats Spock! No contest.

I know, because I met him. (It was work related, I’m in PR and he’s the spokesperson for my company’s product.)

I’m too old and sensible to have been starstruck when I first met Donny Osmond (or maybe it’s that I was too frazzled  to stop and think about the fact I was meeting a celebrity because I was late—just the kind of thing you want to be when you’re meeting a legendary entertainer, beloved by generations, for the very first time.) But I confess I found Donny absolutely professional, energetic, friendly, looking and acting much younger than his chronological age. However, despite his accomplishments and talents, I came away from meeting him for the first time convinced that his greatest talent may be his people skills—remembering names, calling people by their names, making everyone feel at ease around him, his friendly manner, etc…It was very impressive.

Not only that, Donny is wise: ”If you’re climbing the ladder of life, you go rung by rung, one step at a time. Don’t look too far up, set your goals high but take one step at a time. Sometimes you don’t think you’re progressing until you step back and see how high you’ve really gone.” So true.

Donny has values: “My father instilled in me the attitude of prevailing. If there’s a challenge, go for it. If there’s a wall to break down, break it down.” Go, Donny.

And he’s genuine: “I never smile unless I mean it.” :)

Although I interact with Donny in a professional capacity, I remain a fan. In fact, I’m an even bigger fan having met him and because I work with him. I also admire his humility. When he emails it’s “Hi Andrea, Donny Osmond here…” (as if I might not know who he is if he didn’t tell me!)

Yep, the unexpected life takes us down some very unusual paths. When my old life fell apart in 2009 and I thought my world had ended, or in those early days following my return to the workforce when I fled to the women’s restroom several times each day and cried over having to leave my children all day and work full-time for the rest of my life, I confess I never saw Donny Osmond in my future.

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Still experimenting…in the unexpected life.

Face What You Fear

Date: February 3, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

For homework, my middle son had to select a story and prepare to tell it to his school class. A few students from each class are chosen to tell their story in front of judges, and the school’s winners get to participate in the Timpanogos Story Telling Festival. (If I understand the whole thing correctly. Last year was a blur, I still consider myself new to Utah, so I hope that’s accurate information.)

As I helped my son with his story, I couldn’t help but give him a few pointers on how to tell it. (Sometimes I just can’t hold the PR&Advertising-trained part of me back. One of the few things I can do is give a presentation!) He wasn’t buying much of what I suggested he do, I think he was too cool for most of it. So on the off chance his story ends with his 5th grade class, I have to pass it on here. Because it’s a true one. From the life of my great-grandfather, Jerome Bradley Henrie and his mother, my great-great grandmother, Amanda Bradley Henrie.

When I first heard it as a little girl, it inspired me. It helped me stand strong. And as a woman, when I needed courage during tough times, it helped me do what I needed to with my head held high. Especially when I entered my unexpected life.

Here’s the story as my son will share it with his class today:

“Jerome Henrie grew up in a dugout on the side of the temple hill in Manti, Utah, more than a century ago.

Winters were cold. Summers were hot, and the heat was especially challenging because rattlesnakes infested the cool, darkness of the family’s dugout to escape the heat of summer days–which made home life VERY interesting, not to mention just a little bit dangerous!

But rattlesnakes weren’t the only danger.

There were Indians!

One day Jerome’s mother Amanda, finished her week’s baking. She took the freshly baked loaves of bread from the fire and laid them on a table to cool. As she stood back to admire her work, a huge Indian brave barged into her home! He gestured for the bread.

Amanda gave him one loaf, but he wasn’t satisfied. The Indian again demanded bread.

All of it.

Amanda was a tiny woman. She was terrified of the tall, fierce Indian standing in her home, demanding all of her bread. But she knew if she gave him her bread, her children would have nothing to eat.

So she grabbed a poker from the fire and gestured her own invitation of departure! She chased that Indian out of her little dugout home and he never came back! It must have been quite a site to see a big brave running from a tiny pioneer woman! Yet Amanda’s courage to stand strong even in the face of what she feared, is an example to me.

Ovid said, ‘Happy is he who dares courageously to defend what he loves.’”

I’m not advocating we run around in the 21st century brandishing pokers, but I do believe we have to stand for what we believe is right (regardless of how we’re judged by others), we need to move forward even when we’re terrified and we need to see our challenge through to “the end” (without giving up) until we conquer it!

“The triumph cannot be had without the struggle.” (Wilma Rudolph)

Neither can the unexpected life.

Life is SOME Book

Date: October 30, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.” (Mark Twain)

I began college as an English major. Somewhere along the way, I realized I just wasn’t deep enough (make that insightful enough) to compete with my peers; and at the same time, I realized they were ruining literature for me.

Here are just a few examples.

One class required we recite a poem. I opened a book, picked one that began “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night…” (You’ve probably heard of it, it’s a pretty famous one.) I was prepared to recite it, but I confess it sounded comparable to how an elementary school student might have done it.

I knew I was in trouble when a young woman in my class stood to recite her poem, and began, “I’ll be doing such-and-such poem in a Meryl Streep, ‘Out of Africa’ accent because…” She went on to explain her deep rationale, but I completely missed her poem because I was so blown away by the fact she had even THOUGHT to do an accent! And that she COULD do an accent! And that she was up there DOING an accent, and didn’t appear to be mortified at all!

Other times we read poems and other literature as a class and discussed them. The things my peers inferred from what appeared to me to be an ordinary story about an ordinary event made me realize English wasn’t for me. Where were they getting their deep thoughts and all of that meaning? I had spent my life getting lost in stories, and simply enjoying the escape into whatever book’s reality I was reading at the time, NOT looking beyond what was right in front of my face for…meaning. Their “meaning” began to ruin it for me.

I found myself beginning to dislike the classics because of the analyses that took place in my college English courses. I started to dread reading (something I’ve always loved to do–I never dreaded reading, reading assignments or writing research papers. I had always enjoyed everything associated with reading and writing.) So I knew it was time to make a change.

I got out. I changed majors.

I tried interior design for a semester because I liked decorating things. Little did I know how much artistic talent was required for a career in that, and unfortunately, I had zero practical art background and no  skill. (I drew like a preschooler, and still do.) THAT was a tough semester, with a very benevolent end, when my professors basically gifted me with “C”s–as long as I promised to change majors!

About the only thing I did somewhat decently as an English major was write. As often as not, my papers would be returned to me with lots of red markings and notes by my professors encouraging me to submit the piece to a magazine or newspaper for publication. I finally took an aptitude test. It recommended public relations. I’d never heard of such a thing, but I was told strong writing was necessary for that career, so I signed on. And I never looked back. I had found my thing.

It was very unexpected.

One of the most valuable things I gleaned from my PR education was the counsel, “Don’t be afraid of getting fired.” Fired? I’d never been fired, but I knew enough to dread it and consider it a failure. Instead, my professor taught us getting fired can be the best thing that ever happens to you. In fact, he encouraged us at some point to “fire ourselves” if no one else ever did. He said it was good for every career, and every person, to make a big change at least once in their life. He said oftentimes, the situation you end up with after being fired (voluntarily or involuntarily) is often better than your previous one.

I never forgot that. And I’ve been amazed how well it correlates to the unexpected life. Especially mine.

I was living life, loving being a wife and mother, serving others in my own small ways and trying to contribute to the world…and then one day the bottom fell out of my world. Shawn Merriman revealed the lies and crimes he had been perpetuating for 15 years, he went to prison, and I was left alone to provide for and raise our children; forced to re-enter the workforce. I got fired from my life. And had to find, or create, a new one.

Like networking in the business world that leads to job placement, I didn’t find my new life on my own. I was blessed with tender mercies, miracles and a friends (old and new) who stood by me, encouraged me and helped me begin again.

And now, on this side of it, just 18 months later, I wonder if my unexpected life isn’t one of the best things to ever happen to me? Not because it’s easy, it’s not. Not because it has been fun, it hasn’t always been–especially in the beginning. But because of all that I have learned, the many ways I have grown and the good things that have come to me and my children because of it.

An unexpected life is an abrupt plot twist filled with antagonists that threaten to overwhelm. Sometimes it seems its chapters goes on far too long. Yet if you keep pressing forward through the drama, you’ll make it through some difficult chapters, and the NEW story directions that come unexpectedly into your life can amaze and overwhelm you, this time, in a good way. I believe you can actually end up with a story (and a life) better than it would have otherwise been.

Life is SOME book.

You just can’t put it down.

And like the few special books that have touched me deeply, enough to make tears roll down my cheeks as I read them, I think I’ll cry when it’s over.

“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!’” (Robert Browning)

The Unexpected Life.

Good Men Aren’t Jell-o!

Date: August 21, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“There are much easier things in life than finding a good man–nailing Jell-o to a tree, for instance.” (Author Unknown)

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of good men out there, I’m just thinking that many of them (most of them?) are already married! Thus the “long” list of bachelors I’ve compiled in my quest for a happy ending.

I’ve met some good men along the way. I’ve learned something from each new friend I’ve made. And interestingly, I even think most of them have helped me on the path to healing in one way or another, some much more than others.

However, after just two months of dating, I was tired of it. I had absolutely loved being single the first time. In fact, when I married in 1989, a part of me was sad to leave my single life. But not the second time around. Although I had determined to make the most of the situation I had been thrust in, and tried to look for the positive and attempted to make myself like it, after a couple of months I realized it wasn’t working. Given the choice, I would have chosen to be married to the right man rather than be single. The newness of it all, the “excitement” (if that’s what you call being unexpectedly single and forced to meet new people in your new life) had worn off.

I was simply a divorced mother of four who had never planned or expected to be in that position.

Now, many months later, the dreaded “I’ve gotten used to it” has transpired. Just what I didn’t want to have happen! But I guess you can say that about many aspects of the unexpected life. It is who I am. I don’t cringe when people realize I’m single (and divorced) and wonder what they’re thinking about me any more. I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m divorced. It is what it is.

I’ve had to completely leave my comfort zone and face life, and everything else, alone. I’ve learned to socialize by myself again. I’m happy. And believe it or not, there are even things I’ll miss about my single life should my situation ever change. I NEVER expected to say that!

I’ve also learned that life goes on. I don’t advocate divorce by any means, and I am a strong defender, despite my experience, of marriage and family. But I’ve learned the world doesn’t end when a marriage does. I still have my own little family. And despite the scar of divorce, we’re doing so well and feeling so whole, that on the infrequent occasion when someone refers to my family as “broken,” it surprises me. I don’t think of us as that way. Different than we once were, but NOT “broken!”

Yet I keep pressing forward in dating despite being tired of it. I tell myself I’m lucky. After all, not every woman gets to meet new people (handsome men), date them, and everything else attendant with the unexpected and single life. (That’s the PR spin I put on my situation for myself to motivate me not to quit or give up too soon. I just have to keep telling myself I believe it, too!)

So, in the spirit of pressing forward, let me tell you about another man.

Bachelor #5.

And I’m pretty sure he is NOT a fan of Jell-o.

Thoughts From THE Drive

Date: March 10, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

As the miles ticked past, thoughts continued to flood my mind.

In between offering cheerful comments to my children about, “Isn’t it going to be GREAT to live in Utah?  Are you guys as excited as I am to live in Utah?  Think how LUCKY we are to get to move and make new friends!  We are going to have a fabulous new life!” and silently wondering how, beginning the next day, I was ever going to leave my children all day and work full time in another city, and how I was ever going to live through the next 50-60 years, much less ever smile for real again, I marveled at my ability to say one thing and think another!  Must be my public relations expertise and crisis training.  Lol.  (Just kidding, my fellow PR professionals out there!)

As if my heart weren’t broken enough by all that I’d already lived through and had to endure, the giant cherry on the largest ice cream sundae of the grief and devastation that had become my lot in life was knowing I was spending the last day of my life as a “homemaker” (totally ironic–didn’t I just break my home up when I got divorced earlier that day?) and stay-at-home mom driving.  Not the memory I wanted to make the last day before I’d have to leave my two youngest children, for the rest of their lives, to go to work to support my family.  THAT had certainly never been my plan.  I never dreamed I’d be anything but a stay-at-home mom.  But again, I tried not to think about that as I continued to head west.

As a younger woman and younger mother, I’d made this same drive to Utah 6-8 times each year to stay in touch with family.  As my children had gotten older and their schedules had gotten busier, I’d driven it less.  And suddenly, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made the drive alone.  And then it hit me.

It was the day my mom died.

In that moment I decided I HATED the drive from Denver, Colorado, to anywhere in Utah.

That day had started out like any other.  Get up early, exercise, nurse the baby, get the other kids off to school, straighten the house, return phone calls, take care of the business of the day, etc…Oh yes, and that day I was supposed to host a church function for 20-30 girls and their mothers for Mother’s Day (totally ironic, now that I think about it) so I was gathering decorations and items needed for that night, and making desserts.

And then my brother called.  Totally unexpectedly.  His words changed the course of that day.  The ensuing events changed the rest of my life.

“They found mom this morning, unresponsive.  They think she’s had a massive stroke,” he said.

“What?  I should come right away!  Let me gather my stuff, I’ll jump in the car and come there,” I offered.

“Lets not jump to any conclusions.  Why don’t we wait and see what the MRI shows,” he said.

Relief flooded my soul.  That didn’t sound as serious.  Thank goodness, because my baby had the stomach flu.  It would take me HOURS to make the drive to Utah, by myself, with a sick baby.  So like an idiot, I continued to complete my tasks for that night and actually took the time to finish baking the desserts and called a good friend to substitute for me and take over the hostessing duties of the evening. (And in my defense, it is how my parents raised me to be.  Serve others, go the extra mile, NEVER drop the ball on anything you have committed to do.)

A few hours later, the baby was still throwing up and the phone was ringing.  It was my brother calling again.  He was crying.

“The MRI shows a massive stroke.  They’ve given mom 24-48 hours to live.  How fast can you got here?”

Eight hours to drive.

More proof I really must be the Queen of Denial:  I didn’t even pack a dress for a funeral.  What was I thinking?  That’s right, I wasn’t thinking.  I threw some stuff in a suitcase, pulled my 5th grade daughter out of school to tend the baby as he threw up so I could keep driving, and headed to Utah.

It was an eight hour drive.

Plenty of time to think.

And my brother called every hour or so to ask if I was almost there.  My mom was fading fast.  All of my siblings were together, holding her hand and saying goodbye.  I was alone.  Driving to Utah.

About three hours into the trip I had an experience that was unusual enough I noted what I felt and the time I felt it.  I didn’t have cell service at that moment, but as soon as I did, I got another phone call from my brother.  He managed to choke out, “She died.”  And somehow I managed to not crash but to keep driving through my grief.  (Little did I know how expert I was to become in that over time.)  And sure enough, I  knew the moment in time my mom had died.  I had felt it.

She hadn’t made it eight hours.  So I cried and I drove.  I drove and I cried.  Maybe I should have appreciated it more. Because the next time I made the drive, in 2009, I wouldn’t have the luxury of tears.

Keep driving, Andrea.