Trauma doesn’t die with the person who experienced it, it imprints on the DNA.  There was a study done on mice where they were exposed to a particular scent (jasmine or sage or something floral) and when the scent was introduced to the room, they were given a jolt of electricity.  Soon the same jump/fear response would be elicited just from the scent alone.  Through subsequent generations of these mice, scientists found that introducing the grandchildren or great grandchildren of the mice exposed to the shocks also demonstrated the fear response when exposed to the smell even though they had never been injured or experimented on.  The implications of that are huge.  This is the very definition of generational trauma.  While my heart bleeds for the little mice involved in this experiment, the results are demonstrable proof that the things our forefathers dealt with are indeed passed on to us—specifically emotional trauma.  Have you ever encountered a behavior in someone that wasn’t rude or problematic but it automatically set you off without knowing why?  What innate fears do you have that you can’t explain?

While these are mild examples, we need to look at the even bigger implication: the fact that we repeat the same patterns as those before us is quite effectively embedded in who we are.  The ideas we have repeat, we seek safety and comfort in the same ways.  We essentially live the same life as those before us because it feels familiar.  It can be painful for people to break patterns—and it often does feel that way.  Breaking patterns doesn’t even have to be related to a previous trauma, it can be something as simple as a desire for a certain food.  I share this because I know I’ve been a big proponent of changing our lives through changing our mindset and the relevance of this experiment to me is that breaking these patterns can be more complex that we thought and we need to give more space and grace for it.  We’ve talked about simple v. easy before and this is another great example of that.  Learning to trust ourselves is a challenge if every generation before us was afraid to go for their dreams.  Learning to break unhealthy habits feels like losing a part of who we are because we haven’t felt what it means to be healthy before. 

I think the most important part of all of this is to learn to appropriately question things.  If we have fears or any other emotion we deem inhibiting, we need to learn to peel back the onion and ask the question: why am I feeling this?  Admittedly this is not an easy process because we have to be ready to make distinctions and take ownership and we have to be willing to change.  We have to discern what feelings actually belong to us that we’ve adopted as our own, and we have to know what we want to feel and learn how to take responsibility for it.  I find that this is actually pretty comforting because it demonstrates we are able to make changes and that we can change into anything we want to/need to.  We are able to break patterns, create new ones, or simply learn to live in peace.  We don’t need to be afraid of what we don’t understand, we can learn a new way to live with it and we can pass down new lessons/mindsets about being open to curiosity and creating new things.  We also open the door to understanding how difficult it can be for some people to change things—if they don’t even understand where it came from, starting is nearly impossible.  Have a little patience, but start asking the questions.       

“She quietly removed herself from the drama, built her own lane and lived happily ever after.  Free, alive, and never looking back,” Kelley Webb.  A little over a week has passed since I lost my aunt and I wanted to write a piece that honored her.  A lot of the hurt in this situation comes from the fact that my aunt walked way years ago.  I never held any resentment for that decision, I actually applauded her for it.  I just never thought that she’d include us in that in regards to not speaking to us as well.  We found out she was going to pass 24 hours before she did so after all the years, it was a sudden thing to hear this.  There was a lot of anger in the room, a lot of frustration, and a lot of helplessness.  And, yes, that actually did surprise me.  My family had made their choices and decided where the blame lay years ago—but those choices excluded my siblings and I from the equation as well.  So while I felt bad for their grief as well, I felt sorry more than anything.  My siblings felt more anger. 

While I saw my aunt in that condition, I felt my own guilt and sorrow, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  The things left unsaid, the last conversation we had, the good times we had and the good times we would never have together.  The fact that she didn’t want to reach out to us because of what happened with her siblings.  The fact that we could have done more to reach out.  The resentment that this information was kept from us.  The last words I heard her say were, “I missed you.”  I missed her too.  But with all of this, I knew at the end of the day, I knew when she made that decision to walk away years ago, she had made the right choice.  See, she had been the punching bag for too long.  She had been the one to try and resolve things, she had been the one who lost herself trying to fix it all.  She had made herself weak trying to stand up over and over again, and when she found the truth of what had happened, she couldn’t take it anymore.  It wasn’t a big production—it was much like the opening quote—she simply decided to walk away.  She found a place where she felt better, where she was happy, she let go of the expectation that she would fix anything, she released the weight of “doing the right thing for the family”, and she lived her life. 

While her decision ultimately cut us out as well, I didn’t feel anger for that part.  Sadness, yes.  Anger, no.  Her decision and ultimate follow through on walking away instead of killing herself trying to fix something so broken was quite frankly inspiring and liberating.  She had never been the one to stand up for herself and then she did—and even if we weren’t there with her, I like to think that she had real moments of happiness.  That she lived the last years of her life happily and at peace doing the things she loved.  The thing I remember the most is her smile—and she smiled a lot even though she felt like shit most of the time.  I hope in that time apart she was genuinely happy, following her heart, and experiencing joy.  I hope she felt freedom and release and relief at deciding to put it all behind her.  I will honestly regret missing out on that part of her life for a long time because she so deserved it and it would have been nice to see her that way.  I can only imagine it now, but I hope that’s how it was.  She is an absolute inspiration still, and a reminder to live my life in a way that works for me no matter what that means.  It isn’t about making anyone else happy.  It’s about living as we are meant to. 

Today I am grateful for learning.  I’ve always loved traditional learning.  There was always something satisfying about taking in information and connecting it to how things are, learning about people and what they did—I always loved the stories of people’s lives.  I also truly believe that we never stop learning.  We are meant to live in a constant state of growth and expansion and learning comes from so much more than traditional settings.  Learning to live in confidence and accept happiness and joy, learning the things I need to unlearn to move forward in my life, learning to love again—both myself and others, learning to stand assuredly in who I am, learning to embrace the idea that I can live in a different way—and going for it.  All of these things have been a learning experience.  I’m grateful to learn to develop myself more and to figure out how to continue the expansion of my life.

Today I am grateful for steps.  Specifically I am grateful for every single step I take each day toward something new.  This goes along with the learning—sometimes we have to leap and others we have to learn to find our footing before we can make the jump.  I’m happy to find the footing and to embrace the process.  Trusting myself, trusting that all would work out in the end has been a long journey for me, one that I still work through every day.  I learn a bit more every day about my capacity, my capability, my adaptability, where I need to pivot, where I need to focus more, where I need to let go more, and where I need to lead more.  The most fulfilling part of this has been seeing it through.  It has been knowing that I am shedding layer upon layer, discovering what was mind to process and what was mine to break.  Learning about my family and seeing the bold steps taken before me and understanding the steps I can take next.  It’s all an amazing journey.

Today I am grateful for honesty.  Oh, I’ve spoken about this a bunch of times but it still remains one of my favorite things.  I’ve had a large dose of reality lately and it has shifted my perspective.  There has been a long series of events that came to a head in several arenas, personal and professional that literally made me flip the switch toward a purpose.  This is the first time this amount of loss has hit me as logically as this has.  I still feel all the fear and sadness, but it does not consume me.  This is where honesty has kept me objective and allowed for better understanding.  Being honest has led me to making different decisions with my career, with my business, with my family, with my health, with the people I surround myself with, how I move in the world, with making decisions for both the day to day and the long term.  It has been empowering.  If we need to make any type of decision, we need to practice being honest, especially honest with ourselves. 

Today I am grateful for support.  I spent so much of my time doing things on my own, being responsible for everything, carrying weight that I didn’t need to that letting go and reaching out was always difficult.  Like I never did it.  I was that stubborn.  As I’ve embraced the changes in my life and stepped toward what I want to do, I see this new network evolving in my life.  People are there.  People surround and embrace me as well and it really feels good.  I mean, it was completely awkward at first and I still have moments where I feel like I put my foot in my mouth or I’m socially awkward, but knowing there are people I can lean on and they actually show up is a gift.  I understand now the idea behind things “taking a village” to complete.  I mean, I still need my alone time, but it is nice to have people around me who complement my energy and who I can return that support to as well. 

Today I am grateful for confidence.  The ability to believe in self and trust that self can do anything is a remarkable thing.  I heard something at one point about needing to have a delusional belief that anything can happen, that we can create anything in our lives. I think it was from Jim Carrey.  Regardless, there is truth behind that statement because our thoughts, feelings, and energy determine so much of our outcomes.  If we think we can do it, we likely will.  Even if we don’t get as far as we want, we will certainly be further than the person who doesn’t believe in themselves enough to even begin.  Aim high and we will certainly gain momentum.  Learning confidence is a skill I wish I had a long time ago.  It isn’t ego, it’s assurance and trust and faith.  It’s powerful enough to move mountains—and if it can’t move the mountains, it shows us how to blaze a train around or over them. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead! 

“Elevate consciousness, choose a source, the sooner we do that the sooner we will awaken to the matrix and ascend,” Richard Miller (Richard readings).  I liked this take on ascension and stepping up into who we are.  When we have a guiding light, it’s easier to make decisions because we know the direction we must go.  That guiding light is when we choose to follow our hearts and let go of what we have been told we need to do.  We are meant for more, we are meant to do more.  It isn’t about being better than the generation that came before us—it’s about applying what they new and expanding on it.  This universe is meant to grow us and evolve who we are—meaning we need to grow and evolve with it.  Our growth is contingent on taking what we know and questioning it, thinking of ways to improve it, or really taking the time to understand all the implications of it.  We can’t do something new by repeating old patterns so it’s our job to determine the new path—that implies doing something new.

The patterns that we are so familiar with are illusions of what we think needs to be done because they worked for someone in the past.  We create this idea of who we are based on what others tell us first—there are a few lucky ones who are able to confidently step into who they are from the time they are young.  They have an unshakeable awareness and they are here to grow themselves and others from the beginning.  Most of us take some time to figure that out.  Breaking patterns is never easy—it takes bold action, often unknown steps, and certainty in ourselves/our faith to walk into that.  We aren’t meant to be replicas of the times before, we are creators of the time to come.  We honor those who did their best and we improve on it for ourselves and others. 

At the simplest level, consciousness is an awareness of our actions and the impact of those actions.  It is the ability to make a discerning decision considering the outcomes.  It isn’t an all-knowing thing, it’s an all feeling thing.  We step into a different awareness and we maintain a different perspective.  Things lose their jagged edges and they no longer seem to be directly pointed at us.  We understand the actions even if we wouldn’t react that way.  We don’t judge what happens, we process it and we move forward with it as is.  It’s an acceptance—not a condoning, but a realization that it is how it is.  Once we see that all things fall together as they should, we can release our hold on the outcome, the attachment to the way we think it should be—that’s ego.  We can find presence and awareness not by controlling the outcome, but by understanding it as it is.  Once we operate with that level of certainty, fear slips away and we begin to elevate.  Find our guiding light and we find the way on our path.  Don’t be afraid to follow that—there is no wrong way.

“Transformations are painful.  You dissolve your old self and rebuild your new one.  Your eyes reform with a new ability of seeing.  Your brain is connected to new pathways that you don’t quite understand.  You step into the light, unfurl your wings and fly for the first time,” Richard Miller.  Life changes whether we are ready for it or not and we often fear that change when we aren’t sure what’s going to happen.  We have an innate fear of the unknown, so knowing who we are is key.  One day we wake up and we are no longer children, we are the drivers of our lives.  We will lose everyone at some point so it’s even more important to value the time we have while we are here, to love those we have while we are here, to love ourselves enough to show our authenticity and form connections.  That way when we dissolve in the goo of our lives and we aren’t sure we are able to do it, we will remember that it’s safe to let go.  We will release that fear and we will allow those changes to take place and we will emerge with our wings. 

Transformations take many forms.  We are going through the transition of loss right now, witnessing the death of one of my aunts.  Naturally at the end we all think of the lifetime that went before it.  We remember the smile, we remember the laugh.  The fights, the drama, the pettiness no longer seem important.  Life doesn’t always go how we think it will and it runs on its own agenda.  It will not wait until you are ready to reconcile before taking someone.  It moves and it will take what it needs at any time.  Life runs according to its own plan on its own timeline.  Make sure to take the time to appreciate what we have now.  Truly, no matter how long we have here, it will feel short in the end.  There is never enough time to do what we want to do until we learn to make time for it.  There are events that happen no matter how hard we try to stop them—time moving, losing people, evolving into new versions of ourselves are some of these things.

Transformations can be painful but they are beautiful things.  They are necessary things.  Part of transition is accepting and integrating new information about how we viewed things before.  It’s like removing a veil and seeing the truth.  It’s putting aside the fear and doing what is right for ourselves without fear of repercussion.  It’s allowing ourselves to see the fragility of those we thought were always strong and seeing the strength in someone we thought was weak.  Strength comes when we embrace who we are and we learn to fly on our own—that is the point of transformation.  Time moves forward regardless of what we do—we need to spend it in what is important to us, in what brings us joy and love.  Strength comes from walking away from what we thought we needed/what we thought we knew and trusting ourselves to become what we are meant to become.  Embrace it and allow the old to dissolve and rise into the new.  

Why do you keep going?  This is the question we need to ask ourselves.  Life isn’t designed to be easy, even in its simplicity as we discussed yesterday.  When those moments get hard, we need to know the reason we keep going.  We need to know what it is that keeps us on track and why we keep moving toward the finish line when there seems to be every reason to stop.  The truth is no matter what we do, the world doesn’t stop, time doesn’t stop.  It all keeps moving, and if time moves regardless of what we do, then it seems pretty important to have enough understanding of self to figure out why we do what we do, to give ourselves purpose.  There are many times in our lives where it seems the sensible thing to stop what we are doing.  Maybe it feels like we need to give up.  But in those moments, if we have that voice inside telling us not to give up, then we must keep going. 

This is a difficult question for me to answer because I still operate with many irons in the fire.  Keeping all of that going at once is a challenge.  There are days it feels so overwhelming that the truth is I know it would be easier to simply stop.  If I had to put my why down, it’s like this: life is a beautiful gift and I spent too much time wasting what resources I had.  I move forward now, I keep going now because I have a lot to give, a lot to be grateful for, and a lot more to return.  I love my family and I know there is a better way to do things that is both fulfilling personally and allows me to share my gifts.  I keep going because I don’t want to believe that I’m here to be miserable and I would choose to find the bright side in everything anyway.  I keep going because I want to show my son what it looks like to go for our dreams and how amazing it feels when we achieve them.  I want to be able to provide for my family while doing what I love and create freedom in my life. I keep going because the healthy me is the productive me, the me that can handle the world and keep going.  The me that knows my work can make an impact.

I keep going because I want to encourage other people to keep going as well.  We all have so many things we can contribute to this world, so many things that can fix what is broken, that can make the world better for everyone, so many things that can bring joy and inspire joy.  The more we inspire each other, the closer we are to who we are meant to be.  We light each other’s candles and suddenly the world is lit anew.  We are meant to shift the world, to change the world, to make the world better simply by being ourselves, not by fitting in.  We need to encourage each other because we aren’t meant to simply repeat patterns until we die.  We aren’t meant to be fuel for a system that doesn’t care for us but benefits from us.  The why is the reason we use to break those patterns and habits.  The why is what builds something new.  We keep going because we know there is more on the other side. 

“Biggest lie we are told is that it’s not that simple.  Do the thing and get it done and you will see it is that simple,” from the movie “Bleed for This” (2016).  I talk a lot about the need to follow our path and to keep a positive mindset, to not be afraid.  I’m not sure what part it is about the human experience that ever decided to believe we have to make things difficult for them to be meaningful or important.  I’m not sure what made us think that we are meant to struggle in the day to day.  I do know that there certainly were many people who benefitted from others believing this—if others thought they would be rewarded for hard work, they would work even harder.  If they thought it was complicated to be equals, they would delay being equal.  It was about power rather than the actual difficulty of it.  They systems we put in place perpetuated that and people believed it. 

The truth is life is simple—it may not be easy, but it is simple (I wrote a piece on that as well 😊).There are certainly things that require patience, and patience isn’t always easy.  There are things that require skill and that takes time to develop.  Even in those circumstances, there isn’t anything difficult about it—it just takes time, focus, and doing the thing.  We are in such a rush to move things forward that we forget what we have right in front of us.  We are so power hungry that we lose sight of what our actions mean to others (or do to others).  Life is simple, we complicate it with the details and the emotion we put in the way.  Part of it is the primal instinct for survival—we perceive competition in everything we do.  But we have the capacity and the ability to shift that.  While we may survive if we fight on our own, think of the expansiveness that happens when we work together.  The difficulty in life comes when we think we have to do it all on our own or that we need to achieve a certain status to have/produce anything meaningful.

Ask ourselves who benefits if we think life isn’t simple.  It certainly isn’t us.  We can simplify life to our purpose and we can follow it.  We can learn anything with time, we just need the patience and the persistence to keep going.  When we start following and trusting our instincts, we see that doors open we never even saw there in the first place.  While making the decision to follow those instincts can be scary and it may not be easy to take on that level of change, it doesn’t mean it’s hard.  Make a choice and follow through.  It gets hard when we stop part way through and have a million open-ended projects waiting for us to make a choice.  When we start and don’t finish, we leave doorways partially open and never really focus on the task. Pick a direction, do the thing and get it done, one step at a time, and you see that we have the power to make it simple.  We tell ourselves stories about how difficult it is, we can tell ourselves stories about how easy it is as well.  Shift the perspective and watch what happens.     

Life is a desire, not a meaning.  I heard this in a clip on social media the other day and I really got to thinking about it because, at first, it sounded like a delicious spin on how we look at life.  The more I pulled it apart, I considered the second part stating that life is not a meaning.  While I agree that there isn’t a definition of what life is supposed to look like because life encompasses many things and looks different for many people, I do believe there is meaning to life.  I think when we try things and they don’t turn out how we want them to, or when we pick ourselves up only to fall again, we become disheartened and it’s easy to feel like there is no point to it.  There are times when we need to understand that we are meant to learn and other times we are meant to put that into action. So I would amend the original quote to say that the meaning of life is desire.  We have the impulse to create in so many ways, we are meant to create so we act on that impulse of desire to create. I believe that we cannot create without desire.  If we don’t have that passion for something, what can come of it?  We cannot approach creation with luke-warm feelings.

The beauty in life, all of the greatest works we see and appreciate came from passion.  The need to express these things inside, the need to give life to something only we can see/feel/understand, the joy of joining groups in song, theater, discussion all come from passion and desire to learn or create.  The act of life itself is creation.  Creation and desire are hard-wired into our being.  Looking at it now, it amazes me how good of a job we do suppressing that creativity in our lives.  We train our children to do things a certain way, to follow a certain pattern.  When they comply enough and become part of this homogenous group, we suddenly tell them it’s time to grow up and go make something of themselves when all this time we’ve punished or taken away any chance at creativity and they no longer know how to use it.  They need to get familiar with that side of themselves again, to learn it.  Now, I know this isn’t true for all people-some are just self-aware enough that they stand on their own two feet no matter what goes on around them.  The point is, we lose trust in our instincts and we lose our familiarity with passion/purpose/desire if we follow that path and we have to find it again.

I know I am happiest and most aligned when I step into creative flow and the ideas seem to pour out of me.  It doesn’t matter if I’m following a recipe, writing, coloring, painting, singing, cleaning/reorganizing, sharing information, telling stories, planning, teaching, coaching, exercising—any of those activities puts me in an amazing mood and it feels like life flows more smoothly.  That is the feeling, the desire. That is the meaning of life—to find that passion, to create, and to connect.  The more we tell ourselves to follow those instincts, the more we hear the voice telling us to do something else and to have fun with it, the more we listen and take action on those feelings, the closer we get to that aligned feeling.  It isn’t something to fear, it’s something to celebrate.  We just have to trust ourselves enough to follow through, to not be afraid of the feeling and to allow that desire to stoke up into something so big we have to bring it out.  Trust that instinct and stop hiding.  Become passionate about creation, follow your path, and bring forth everything that you are meant to share with the world.  It’s a gift.            

“You don’t even realize that some people look at your madness and see nothing but brilliance and grace,” Stephanie Bennett-Henry.  This is a reminder that our actions have impact and people are always watching.  What we do may feel clumsy and rocky and imperfect, but for someone witnessing those moves, it may be exactly what they need to find encouragement to make their moves.  Life is hardly about perfection—life is perfect as is and all we need to do is exist and allow who we are to shine.  Yes, I’ve said that a million times and I completely get that it can still feel a little cliché.  But that doesn’t make it false.  We are social creatures and we are meant to cooperate and communicate with each other, we are meant to build community and function in a way that complements our natural talents.  We are meant to see the beauty in everyone and we are meant to find our purpose and our soul group.  These are facts and it has been proven the value and power of authenticity thereby allowing authentic connection. 

What looks like a mess to us may be demonstrating the courage for someone else to take their first steps.  What frustrates us demonstrates the power of persistence to someone who feels stuck.  The steps we take with ease and the things we face may terrify others—but witnessing us do that takes away a bit of that fear and armor and gives them belief in themselves.  None of what we do is meant to be on display as THE way to do it-we have to learn to take in what serves and what makes sense to us and discard the rest.  We have to learn to be ok with differing opinions and other ways to do things and know that what makes sense for us will come—and what makes sense for others doesn’t have to be for us.  The human mind is a creative force and the more we can ignite that creativity in others, the more ideas we have to expand with. 

We can also be that sort of inspiration to ourselves.  When was the last time you thought about something you’d done or have been working on and felt proud about it?  When was the last time you faced a struggle with something you really wanted and gave yourself credit for how far you’ve come instead of being upset about where you are?  When we learn to stop and take stock of where we are and what we have done to get where we are, we will tend to see a trend of all the things we have either overcome or the things we have planned and executed, we can se the work we have done and where it has led us, and we learn some degree of appreciation for ourselves and the work we do.  Never give up on that effort.  Always remind ourselves that what we do always gets us closer to where we want to be.  And when we evaluate our current position, if we aren’t where we want to be then we are graced with the opportunity to choose again. Start a new cycle—because when we encourage ourselves to keep going, someone else will find the will to keep going as well.

Today I am grateful for pain.  We had an unexpected loss in my family this week with the death of my aunt, and it brought about a lot of old emotion, some realizations, and opened some wounds while healing others.  I am devastated by the loss for different reasons.  Yes, it’s heartbreaking that we lost my aunt and I hate that her physical presence is gone, but her death was a bigger implication of what we lost beyond her alone.  We lost time with her (something that I can’t get into yet), we lost time with the family, she was evidence of the choices certain family members made, we lost a lot of “what could have been”, we lost a giant heart and a very open and gentle soul, we lost love, we lost one of the last links to the family.  But all of this loss has still made me grateful.  For all of my obsession with time and fear of loss, I never really did anything about it like reprioritize what I want to be doing.  I still try to find pockets of time for the life I want—and I know how quickly life moves.  It’s time to prioritize what matters.  There doesn’t need to be anymore loss to awaken that.  This pain can be used for good.  We can learn and reawaken the love, put aside any bullshit, and just love.  This loss doesn’t need to be meaningless. 

Today I am grateful for support and clarity.  The universe works in some pretty amazing ways.  It doesn’t always seem straight forward, but it always works out.  Sometimes there are things we need to do that we hesitate or fear to do, but once we do it, we see it wasn’t what we had built up in our minds.  Rather it was simply the next step.  The human mind is a wonderful thing but it creates exactly what it sees so if we see fear, we feel fear, we produce fear.  If we learn to channel that with clarity and intention, we are able to see what the next steps are toward our goals.  All the universe needs is our decision and conclusive action.  The rest will come together.  We simply need to decide and do.  I’ve been witness to things coming together quickly.  Even if it took time to get to that point, it suddenly seems to align and there we are, ready to take the next step.  It’s like a lock opening the door. 

Today I am grateful for trusting my intuition.  I spent so much of my life doubting what I thought and felt, never trusting that I’d be able to follow through or achieve anything because I wasn’t taught to believe in myself.  I felt that I could do it, but more often than not, the people around me would find ways to diminish that confidence.  Like, I’d know something I’d produced was good and someone would still find a way to tear it down.  Or they’d encourage someone else around me rather than recognize my talent.  Or they would focus on a negative about my appearance implying that how I looked somehow diminished what I did.  But my intuition has always told me that there is something more for me, something that I can produce that will spill over into the world.  It starts with love—love for self and a steadfast, firm belief that the opinions of others don’t matter.  Love greater than fear pushing forward to achieve goals in spite of what anyone else says.  Intuition is there to guide us and to help us find our way—it isn’t in us to make other people believe what is meant for our path alone.  I’m learning to let go of what others think is enough for me and to use the precious time I have to create the life I want, following my heart.  It has never guided me wrong. 

Today I am grateful for endings.  The endings I’m grateful for are the endings that take away the things that no longer serve.  So many of us spend our lives hoping for things to go another way, living in fear and uncertainty, waiting for the world to tell us what we are capable or worthy of.  If we are attentive to the signs and willing to look past the fear of things changing, the universe also shows us exactly where we need to go.  It will take away the things that hurt us.  While it may be a loss or initially feel scary, the truth is not everything is meant for us and if we don’t have the strength to walk away from what hurts us, sometimes the universe will step in and take it away for us.  Not all endings are bad things.  We feel the most relief from the endings we feel coming but are too scared to complete on our own.  Sometimes the universe just needs to give us that final push to walk away.  It’s ok to recognize when something isn’t working and to make a decision to walk away.  Not all endings are bad.

Today I am grateful for presence.  This has been a packed weekend with multiple events each day, multiple things to do.  With the loss of my aunt and the emotion behind that, I was afraid that I’d be too emotional or lost in it to really focus on all of the other stuff we had going.  Keeping myself going proved to be key in some healing.  We need to honor what we lost but we also need to pay attention to the time we have right now.  My son had an event at school and it was amazing—we even participated in the trunk or treat event and decorated the car and got dressed up and played with animals and played some games.  The whole time we were with friends and simply having fun.  Connection is really the most important thing, it is the best way we can possibly spend time together.  There is nothing like the presence of people who care to help remind us of what we have in front of us—it’s nothing to take for granted. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead!