“Sometimes winning means you have to quit; Sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy.  No matter how much time you have invested in the life and love you have now you are not destined to continue living it if that is the life you are not meant to live in the future.  If the metal around your finger starts to look more like a shackle holding you to the past rather than a circle promising the hope of the future then have the courage to untether yourself.  We cannot get to the life we are meant to live if we are too busy living the life we feel obligated to uphold…never underestimate the power of inertia and its ability to keep you in an unhappy relationship forever in exchange for the comfort of familiarity.  Never forget that he greatest loss you will incur is the loss of time you could have spent finding out that joy lies just on the other side of the comfort you’ve taken…The greatest glory waits for those who are willing to ignore the shame that others want you to feel when you quit what is not for you,” Anna Kai.  Kai discusses this in the context of limiting ourselves based on relationships but this is easily applied to everything in our lives.  It doesn’t matter the type of relationship or if this is about work or continuing on a path we stared and feel we need to finish it simply because we started it—even if it doesn’t feel right any longer.

I invested thousands of dollars in different ventures in my time.  Always trying to find the fastest way to find who I was.  One day I was interested in languages, then massage, then healthcare, then holistic care, then changing everything, then mental health.  Marie Forleo talks about being a multi-passionate entrepreneur.  I used to get frustrated that all of these ventures failed—or that I failed in them.  I thought I would never be able to run a business for myself because I had tried so many things and wasn’t able to manage it successfully.  I realized that all of the things I had been trying to do were part of my personality and I needed to find a way to puzzle them all together.  I wasn’t one thing—I was all of these things.  It didn’t matter what I had been doing before because I had learned lessons in each of the attempts at creating freedom.  I wasn’t tethering myself to a relationship, I was tethered to a belief that I was a failure and destined to carry the weight of someone else’s dream, sacrificing my own dreams.  It was time to let go of the obligation of what I created.

It can be a tricky concept to let go of what we had in order to gain something else—and for those of us who have tried and haven’t gotten the results we were looking for it adds another layer.  Will it work this time?  Do we even know if we really know ourselves?  The comfort we feel sticking with what we know or the guilt we feel for the energy we’ve put into something only to have it not turn out doesn’t mean that we can’t try again—that we can’t find what works for us.  It may take a different route but once we cut the weight of what was holding us back we are able to fly exactly where we need to be.  Sometimes we have to get to higher ground to get our bearings—the climb is worth it.  Forget what others think about our circumstances—we are responsible for living our lives, not living them for someone else.  People will always have something to say.  They will always feel a certain way.  Do what is right for us anyway.

The biggest green light we have is being entirely who we are—and that is a green light we give ourselves.  We have the least resistance when we are in the flow of who we are.  The world needs us to be that version of ourselves, the version we all have that tells us the right thing, that guides us by how we feel.  We all have it–we all do.  I always found it fascinating that some people were born with this thing in them that allows them to be so cool and able to go with whatever is happening around them all while maintaining their boundaries.  How they could be so willing to try new things and go for it no matter what people thought or if it didn’t work they would try again.  I always took the first no as final and it left me searching for additional ways to find who I was.  If I couldn’t do it the first time around, I didn’t learn how to adapt and try again.

This started to feel like a disconnect in my body because I knew I had this drive, this pull toward making things and doing things for myself but I had this malfunction if I couldn’t get it right so I would stop and have a fit about making it how I wanted it.  I never wanted to be under the command of someone else. I wanted to steer my own ship and pick up what I wanted to carry. The more it started to pull harder and harder it was to continue on the same path.  The path I was meant to be on became more clear.  I came from creators, I am a creator.  I had to allow myself to heal and allow the fullest expression of myself because my success is in my creativity.  We need to connect with who we are and let that version of ourselves out. So I slow down a bit and allow myself to connect with who and what I am. 

I pulled some cards today and they reminded me that guidance is always available.  We just need to slow down and connect with spirit.  I’ve been receiving a lot of signs and hearing a lot of discussion around intuition, meditation, and connecting with self lately.  I’ve often wondered if that was part of the issue with the world today.  We are so easily accessible to the world with the click of a few buttons and we can watch anyone anywhere any time—but we never take the time to connect with ourselves anymore.  I think we have distracted ourselves away from being who we are meant to be.  We can only find that authenticity in connecting with spirit and the truth of who we are.  We operate at a speed that isn’t sustainable and it certainly doesn’t allow us to connect with others—there is no real connection to others if we aren’t connected to ourselves.  If we want that green light, that universal go, then we must go with what we are called to do.

Today I am grateful for every step toward clarity.  This is establishing my freedom because it’s allowing for a definitive direction.  I recently realized that the things I thought were working for me really weren’t.  Shocker.  But what I mean by this is little things like the way my office was set up.  The things I was saving in random piles under the pretense of eventually doing something with them or simply the fact that I couldn’t part with them.  The feeling of trying to hold on to so many things.  I started with what I thought were small changes like rearranging the office and cleaning stuff out and suddenly things felt better.  Space opened up differently.  It didn’t feel so cluttered and crowded and once I started I couldn’t stop.  As the space cleared and I organized and tackled things I was too afraid to address, I noticed I could think.  It wasn’t easy but I started to let go of even more things that I had been holding onto—and I admitted how much stuff we still have.  I started to see possibilities again.  Instead of finding ways to make things fit, I started finding ways to let go.  We can’t move forward if we are holding onto everything else.  It’s too heavy.  Moving through the process of letting go of the last round of 20 years of stuff allows the next 20 years to flow in because I can see what I want versus what I thought I had to hold onto. 

Today I am grateful for intuition.  I can’t talk about clarity, the ability to think, and purpose without intuition.  Throughout this entire week I’ve been getting multiple signs telling me that my intuition is sharpening and that I need to follow my intuition.  It’s 100% true.  As I worked through the steps above and started to feel heightened clarity I noticed that I felt more like me.  It wasn’t just about seeing possibilities and options, I was now feeling like I had power in my life again.  When we know what we want and set the wheels in motion there is no stopping us from getting there—we just need to start.  The heart, mind, and soul know what we need.  We just need to feel our way through it to get to it.  I held onto so much stuff from the past as a crutch all the while I was telling myself that I needed it for in case, for if I ever had to prove anything, so I could always remember.  I’m a record keeper.  But having all of that information blocked the way to what was really important: who I actually am.  We can handle so much more than we think if we stop picking up what isn’t ours or what we really don’t want in the first place.    

Today I am grateful for creativity.  We are looking at alternative ways of living our lives and feeling that connection toward intuition and power, I started to feel something new for the first time in a long time: the feeling that I could do it and knew what I wanted.  I felt the drive to work my ass off for a specific thing.  It felt like pieces of the puzzle were snapping into place—the picture I’ve been trying to build was totally in focus.  I’ve pursued many ventures in my life, spent a lot of time/energy/money trying to get things in place, things I genuinely thought I wanted.  There are moments I wonder if I’d had more support how those things would have turned out—but in the process of connecting with self, I’m seeing that isn’t anything to lament or be upset about.  I needed to go through those things to discover that there are ways to put things together that no everyone sees.  We have a vision that works off of our intuition and if we are connected to it enough, that intuition will tell us how to put that vision to work.  There are so many possibilities in this world.  All we need to do is learn how to work with them and how to understand what is for us.  Creativity is meant to do that: create alternatives, create ideas, make the intangible tangible.  We aren’t meant to just use that creativity to day dream.  We are meant to put that to action.  If we think it, it’s for a reason.  If we feel it, it’s meant to be no matter what other people think is possible.  Create with that power, fuel it.  Say yes and watch it all nfold. 

Today I am grateful for seeing patterns.  Clearly I’m on a theme here, but as I was cleaning this go around, I came across some decades old writings and my heart sank.  I’ve been very candid about sharing my repetitive thoughts and feelings and fears here, but this was something different.  Around 18 months ago I went through a large purge in the house and I was so proud of myself.  Earlier this year I took some of the remnants from that purge and got rid of more and then organized the rest.  Each time I went through layers of crap I felt more and more power, more and more clear.  I had the sense of “This is it! I finally see the way!”  And then I found this writing.  It said EXACTLY the same thing I’ve been talking about for years.  I found the SAME goals I have written in the recent years.  And it nearly broke my heart.  I realized that I’ve, yet again, been running circles.  I had this moment of intense sadness that 1. I haven’t accomplished what I set out to yet and 2. All of the effort and progress I thought I made were still keeping me rooted right here.  This is where it’s different this time (because this is not the first time I’ve had this “revelation”: I stopped myself from getting attached to the emotion of it.  I accepted that it happened and that it’s time to cut it out.  The surge of energy and power I felt from connecting with creativity, intuition, and clarity pushed me past getting stuck in feeling bad about the patterns. I no longer have to stay that way.

Today I am grateful for next steps.  I’ve read/heard/written that people often overestimate what they can do in a day but underestimate what they can do in a week—feel free to substitute any length of time you want in there.  The neurodivergent mind operates differently in several ways the least of which is we see all things, all options, at once and we will try our damndest to do all the things at once.  When it doesn’t work out we tend to get frustrated and/or bored so we walk away and won’t touch it again because we’re moving onto the next thing—until we realized we didn’t finish it and we hyper-focus on it again.  So much of what I’ve missed out on, what I haven’t completed, what I lost touch with was because I got bored or angry that things didn’t work out right away.  My brain saw how it “should” work and when it didn’t it couldn’t cope, the world ended because it was never meant to be, and I went onto something else until that wasn’t meant to be either.  I’m older now and I have a son who deals with the same type of brain function so it’s crystal clear to me that I didn’t give certain things enough time, I didn’t give enough focus to it, I didn’t try enough ways.  And if I’m totally honest I hadn’t been close enough to my intuition to determine if I really wanted it so it was more about proving I could do it rather than wanting it.  Breaking the pattern means giving myself the time to connect and evaluate what I need/want.  I know I can take the next steps and it will be aligned because I’ve taken the time to get out of my own way.  The next steps are steps toward success.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

I pulled my cards this morning and they were: The universe powerfully responds the instant I realign with love, Thank you universe for helping me see beyond the limits of fear, thank you for expanding my perception so I can see the highest good, when I move my body I feel empowered, cleansed, and strong.  I said this in response:  Align with love and clear fear to see the highest good.  We move our bodies to clear that fog and find how we want to feel and suddenly the fear is erased and we understand what we are meant to do, who we are meant to be. Love and movement is power.  The Earth, the universe do not stand still.  While we find balance in the quiet and stillness, it is in finding our rhythm that we become who we are.  Ther is no fear in that wholeness.  How can we love a bit more today?  How can we find more joy?  Respond to the rhythm of our heart.

The irony that this happened on the same day that I was writing about Green Lights in a moment of inspiration about movement (and I have a full piece on Green Lights from a couple of years ago) that these cards pop up and talks of movement and following our hearts.  I took it as a sign to move and follow my desire and creativity.  I then listened to one of the tarots and he spoke of Green and Gold—the heart and solar plexus and moving forward and following our inner light.  The next tarot spoke of serendipity and seeing the highest good.  All of these things intertwined on the same day making it clear that this was the message meant for me. 

I share this because the universe often has messages and I stopped believing that for a while as recently as three weeks ago.  My mind was/is exhausted from an entire summer spent in limbo with so many things happening at once and some not happening at all.  Not getting a job with a huge opportunity to secure us a bit more, my father blessedly coming through his procedure, then so unexpectedly losing my soul cat.  I saw no reason for any of this.  The truth is I still don’t see a reason for it and I still ache every day wishing I could change those losses.  I wouldn’t give up the wins, and I know we can’t win them all, but this summer had some tough new realities and changes.  But here we are, the summer almost over, and now I see these reminders that there are still signs.  There are still messages.  There is still life to live—even if it looks and feels different.  Sometimes it isn’t how we thought it would be—but there is always more.  So I pause as the world keeps spinning and I wait for my next green light and realign with the love that is still here.  It never left.

Spin stories, tell stories, use words to help and teach. Love fully.  Let go of fear.  Have fun—it really isn’t that serious.  I thought I had to behave a certain way—remnants of a 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s upbringing (the previous generation taught me that).  Reminders of a time gone by.  Always trying to fit in and be acceptable instead of just being accepted—or accepting.  The world changes and us in it as well.  This is why we share stories.  Telling of times gone by—loves had, lessons learned.  People coming together and falling apart.  The beauty in every day life, in humanity, in tradition, in what works and is passed won, in learning, in creating, in exploring—in LIVING.  I was recently reminded of the flow, of the go when I saw an article about Matthew McConaughey.  McConaughey talks of Green Lights—there are those moments where it feels like the torrent, the flow of life has been released after being stopped.  But I’ve realized that all of life is a Green Light.  While certain things may slow down or be stopped, life itself does NOT stop.  We are a go from the moment we are born.  We may need to pause and evaluate and redirect– but this life never stops.  So I learn to focus on one thing.  Complete one thing at a time and keep notes on the rest.  There is a lot of world to see, so while we can’t see it all at once, we live and see it when we are meant to. I am meant to explore, to write, to travel, to love, to create, to unite—to tell the stories we need to share.  Stop getting caught in the muck and live fully: don’t stop. 

“I think we spend too much time being afraid of our own mediocrity.  We don’t want to sing too loud in case anyone finds out we don’t have a voice like glass.  We don’t write music because we aren’t Mozart, we don’t paint because we aren’t Picasso, we don’t tell people we love them because our voice might shake when we say it.  We try to be pretty criers, we don’t dance because we aren’t that good.  The reality of our humanity is that we are all a little bit average at a lot of things.  The truth is that we are all not that good so stop holding yourself back from enjoying the things that you love because you’re not a prodigy at everything.  Scream the song at the  top of your lungs, and confess your love and let you voice be shaky, cry big ugly tears and dance really badly because life is too short to be scared of being human,” Whitney Hanson. 

As I’ve been talking about the last couple of days, we need to find our own greatness even if we don’t see the immediate result.  We need to be fully who we are because we never know the ripple effect of our actions and how others respond to what we do, what actions we’ve encouraged in others simply by being ourselves. I will say it a million times if I have to—this life isn’t about being perfect.  Perfection is an illusion.  I am not saying settle for mediocrity but I am saying we need to learn to be ok with it as a starting place.  No one begins an expert—we all have to learn.  Even the greats.  Yes, there are levels of innate talent we are born with, but in order to be great and really know who we are and develop ourselves, then we must be ok with being a novice.  We have to be ok with starting.

Think of all the time we waste wanting to be good enough to show who we are when we simply could have shown who we are and learned the rest along the way.  Think of how many times we would have known the answer or we would have won had we simply gone for it.  Who knows that if we had allowed ourselves the initial experience that we may have learned something more and become the example we thought we were never good enough to be in the first place?  Sometimes we need inspiration and other times we need to remember that we are the inspiration.  Grow, try, fail, learn, and try again.  Mediocre isn’t a bad word.  It isn’t a matter of settling, it’s a matter of understanding and becoming who we are meant to be.  Be that person, that version of ourselves that has the courage to go for it.  Be the person we strive to be—don’t be a copy of someone else’s genius—create our own genius.

What is your impact?  I saw a reel about a teacher who had a nonverbal student and in an effort to connect and encourage the student to speak, the teacher left the student a sticky note with a little cartoon on the student’s desk every day.  There didn’t seem to be much progress as the student remained nonverbal for the entire school year in spite of multiple interventions and different tools to assist the child.  Two years passed and the teacher received an envelope with a single sticky note in it that said, “I saved all of your sticky notes.  Thank you so much, you helped me more than you know.”  The teacher goes on to say that we never really know what our impact is but even the small things make a difference.  Story from Matt Eicheldinger.  We hear things like this all the time and we lose patience with ourselves when we don’t feel we are making an impact or if the impact we want isn’t visible, but it is sometimes a bit later when we see the results of our actions.

In a world that is constantly on, connected, and moving, it’s difficult to wait for anything.  It’s hard to believe that something is happening if we don’t see immediate results.  But our human nature is aligned with the nature of the universe and understands that sometimes (all the time) things operate in their own timing.  Most growth is unseen.  The vegetable growing under the Earth, the iceberg under the water, the treasures buried within.  So if all of those amazing things are unseen, why do we have the expectation that our greatness will always be on display?  Perhaps the question is why do we have the expectation that the greatness of our impact will be on display?  It isn’t—and it isn’t meant to be.  We are meant to do our part, play our role, and sometimes that is simply to be a catalyst.  Sometimes that’s to be the stone that initiates the ripple.  Other times we are meant to hold center stage.  And other times we are meant to pass the torch.

The point is we are meant to play our part and that is it.  It’s great to know what we’ve done has reached someone but no matter if we are afforded that opportunity, the truth is we need to simply operate in silence, do what we are doing, share our gifts.  The laws of energy and the universe state that all of that energy will come back to us.  It may not look the same, it may not feel the same, but we will know that it came from us.  The point isn’t to get that recognition—it’s to be the person we need to be so we can encourage others to be who they need to be.  The point is to play our part to the best of our ability and always do the best we can and expand who we are.  That’s enough.  The magic will happen no matter what we do as long as we are aligned.  So don’t worry if we aren’t sure about our growth or impact—keep writing the sticky notes and someday someone else can hold that pen because they saw you write.

“Walk in your greatness for the doors to open, stop being what others want you to be and just be yourself.  Have the courage to be yourself—unapologetically.  Walk in your greatness,” Aletha Crimmins.  I think we need this reminder right now.  This world is in the midst of so much change and upheaval, and we need to learn to focus on what is good.  We need to focus on the good in ourselves, in our lives, in each other.  It isn’t for narcissistic or selfish purposes—it’s so we can develop who we are and become a tool for good in this world.  We need to walk in our light, in the greatness of who we are so that we can share it.  I like Crimmin’s point regarding having the courage to be ourselves.  Over time we have consistently lost the ability to feel comfortable being who we are.  We wear masks, we behave how we are expected to behave, we know the norm.  As we develop our skills at self-acceptance, we learn to see more and more of what we can do.

The universe surprises us at times.  Just when we think things will never be the same, suddenly they all work in our favor.  Or suddenly that one step we needed is clear, the one piece falls into place.  It’s easy in a society that moves too quickly and that has lost the ability to see true value to devalue ourselves.  It’s easy to see where we don’t fit in over the space we can create. We see value in how we fit rather than in how we move and how we shape.  In order for doors to open that fit who we are, sometimes we have to build them to suit.  This life isn’t supposed to be one size fits all—we are supposed to know who we are and the world we create comes from within. I think over time we’ve built these boxes because we’ve misconstrued what greatness is—we’ve also misconstrued what we do with the power of greatness. We must find who we are not to lord over people, but to help them advance as well.

Walking in our greatness with awareness of who we are and what our goals means we have self-possessed power, not power over others.  We don’t need to make a safe space for people to tolerate us or to understand who we are.  We need space to break free and be who we are.  Not everyone will fit in that space, nor will they be comfortable or understand it.  Our space isn’t meant for other people’s comfort—it is meant to be representative of who we are and what we do.  We do our best for others when we do our best for ourselves.  Others don’t need to hold the door for us—sometimes we open the door for ourselves to find that the space we had been looking for was simply waiting for us as the key.  And instead of trying to find what makes us feel worthy enough for someone to open a door or even trying to be strong enough, we learn that there is another the magic—when we are truly, fully ourselves, the doors open all on their own.  Get close to your heart and listen—it knows the way.

“We can embrace the moment [that happened] even if it didn’t turn out to be what you thought,” NickiMarie.  How many of us look back at our lives/a certain moment/a scenario with regret or, at the very least, the thought we wish we could do it differently?  How many moments do we have where, after some time has passed, we can still appreciate the moment for what it was even if it turned into something else in the end?  Nicki shared the above quote in reference to a particular concert she was about to go to.  The concert was a symbol, a reminder of her ex-husband because the singer she was going to see is what essentially brought them together.  She had to reconcile something she loved (the music) with the fact that while it started something beautiful and wonderful, it was over.  She then had to come to the conclusion and acceptance that even though it was over, it didn’t make it less beautiful than it was at the time.  The experience still happened and gave her clarity, and no matter how bad it got, it still gave her the good that came along with it.

When I look back there are so many things that I wish I could change.  I spent a lifetime dealing with the regret of not doing things differently.  While they always say hindsight is 20/20, that gave me no comfort. I didn’t know how to deal with the pain of not being able to change what happened, especially the things that happened as a result of someone else’s actions—or the things they did to me that I couldn’t undo.  I never understood how people could be so callous with someone else’s emotions.  But as more time has passed and I’ve begun working on the things that bothered me, the things that I could control, I came to a similar conclusion as Nicki: just because one bad thing happened, it doesn’t mean that it’s all bad.  We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak (I’m probably dating myself with that expression).

We can learn to appreciate what happened even if there were some bad parts.  There is usually still some good that comes with the bad—a lesson, some shining spot.  The point is to start looking at those shining spots and creating enough light around the rest that the dark doesn’t even matter.  We can’t allow ourselves to be bitter over the ending of it—and I know that’s hard because there is always a part (at least for me) that feels like it “should” have gone a certain way.  Like why didn’t it go as planned?  The truth is we never know all the reasons things turn out as they do.  Sometimes we simply have to embrace that they did.  It doesn’t take away or negate the joy (or whatever else) we felt during the experience.  The experience was still real.  Don’t look at the end as an indicator that something went wrong—look at it as an indicator that it has served its purpose and we are ready to move onto the next step.  We are allowed to mourn the loss, and we should mourn it.  But we are allowed to celebrate what was in spite of it turning into something else.  We control the narrative, we assign the meaning.  Make the story mean something that matters, make it all matter.            

Today I am grateful for gathering.  I’ve always been pretty independent and autonomous—I’ve had to solve a lot for myself so I developed a mentality where I didn’t need a lot of people.  But the truth is I don’t think I understood how much I actually did need people.  Community always felt like a shackle to me because I felt like I had to give up all sense of who I am either for the collective good or to support the goals someone else had set for me.  I thought I lost myself in community because they didn’t want to hear or see what I had to contribute.  The only way I could make myself heard is to agree with what they said.  I heard recently that the light has been blocked out by others, others have intentionally held us back because they didn’t want us to shine.  So it wasn’t so much about what community did or took from us so much as it was about finding the right community.  We need to be with the people who value our contributions and opinions rather than those who make us adhere to theirs or believe that their opinions are the only ones of value.  Find the ones who brighten our light instead of block it.  Community is a beautiful thing if we are with the community that values us.  Don’t mistake company for understanding and camaraderie—the company needs to match the intention we have and the vibration we have.  Then our voices all harmonize together, each complementing and assisting the others to be heard.  We each have a part.  So we gather with those who understand us and that is how we thrive.

Today I am grateful for acceptance.  Normally this is something along the lines of self-acceptance but this time I’m referring to situational acceptance.  Things are very different than they were last year at this time.  We are preparing for back to school (our school doesn’t go back until after Labor Day) and we have a party every year for the kids to get together and blow off steam for the end of summer.  We invited a large part of the class and then some so everyone feels included—last year we had a huge group of people come throughout the night.  This year things have changed in the group and timing was a bit off so we didn’t have as many as before.  We also had different excuses than before and the atmosphere with those who did show up was different.  See, as I’ve been working on self-acceptance, the things I tolerate from people have changed.  I made it clear the door was still open for those who had decided not to come but I didn’t beg them to change their minds.  We had some tense moments related to boundaries and I didn’t let it bother me.  I allowed it to be as it was.  Acceptance allows clarity and we all still had a good time.  We all survived.    

Today I am grateful for seeing patterns in myself and in family and friends.  We can grow up in really different situations and still develop the same patterns—different causes can create the same reasons for protection.  Seeing the patterns objectively has shown me what needs to break for the next generation.  I have seen first had that many of the patterns I’ve adopted over the years do not work.  I’ve learned to take on some new patterns and start defining my own way of dealing with things.  Breaking those patterns has led me to treat certain relationships differently and to not allow certain things—it’s allowed me to better identify patterns in other people.  Friends who need to be the star of the show, friends who need me to feel for them, friends who need me to solve things for them (and who only come around if they need something), things that make me shy away even if I need to step up, things I need to maintain boundaries on.  The people we thought would be around us forever don’t always stay and sometimes we find those who help us through a time and see they aren’t there forever.  It’s ok to get what we need and it’s ok to get what we want—it doesn’t make us selfish, it makes us aware.    

Today I am grateful for those who pay attention.  I’ve struggled my entire life with time.  I’ve also learned that in order for me to feel safe, secure, unrushed, if we have something coming up then I like to take little steps to prepare leading up to it rather then do a huge rush to get ready the day before or the day of.  I struggled this past week because I was trying to finish up work and I work longer days than my husband does, so I had an expectation of what would be done in his free time.  I frustrate myself to no end in these scenarios and I know this—it’s a pattern I need to break.  But putting things together yesterday and being with people who support us showed me that it does come together in the end and that some thigs don’t require as much preparation as I thought they did.  I also saw as the night went on that people were bringing up the changes I’ve been going through physically as I’ve been taking better care of myself.  I appreciated the compliments people have given me, especially as I feel I’ve plateaued a bit with my efforts because of the events of the last 6 weeks.  Sometimes our efforts aren’t seen or noted immediately but as we keep going on, we feel different and we see we are an inspiration for others.  I am grateful to those who pay attention because they do keep me on the right track.

Today I am grateful for the ability to help and give back.  I loved seeing how much fun the kids had here yesterday.  I loved seeing them swim and run and be free and then change their minds and go to the park and walk independently and run around the yard and all of the games they were making up and riding the bikes with each other, giving each other peg rides like we used to when we were kids.  The spirit of being a child is universal and it is a beautiful thing to witness.  These kids wanted to come in the house and watch TV a handful of times but we told them no and watched them take up the challenge of being outside and present with each other—and they did great.  During the past week I’ve had to work on a challenging relationship with a friend and colleague because there was a lot of emotional cross over and we needed to set boundaries.  I could see that I had set this individual off (unintentionally—I had adopted my pushing behavior thinking this person was ready to move onto the next level and making excuses) so we sat down several times and worked through where we each were at and what was next.  That night I received an email asking be to be a stakeholder in the next round of decision making for the system when it comes to our department.  Being able to give back is a powerful thing, and I used to think that focus on what we were good at would limit what we could return but I’m seeing that it’s a power source for it—it amplifies what we are capable of. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.