“If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them,” unknown.  Timing is everything and this quote hit at the perfect time for me.  I had a beautiful conversation with my sister yesterday, one we’ve never had the depths of as adults.  I always had the impression that I was just the kid sister to her, someone who needed guidance and direction and I often felt unheard.  I had a story in my head for a long time that she wanted to hold her place as the oldest and I needed to be quiet because she thought I was just trying to stamp my feet and get my way.  We reached such a powerful understanding of each other by the end of the conversation that I feel our dynamic, our relationship has changed.  Truthfully I feel changed as well.  I felt supported and heard in a way I hadn’t before and I hope she did as well.  We are all looking for connection, more specifically understanding, but we all want to feel like we are heard and able to freely express who we are, to safely express a truth, and to bounce ideas off someone.  I am grateful that we had this conversation because that level of connection has been long overdue.  We are both strong-headed, stubborn people and we were both operating under some assumptions that weren’t true and were easily cleared up with a simple conversation.  I feel like I found more about myself too because we have way more similar emotions and thought processes than I realized.  I always knew we had a lot in common—we are siblings and that was why I was so frustrated at not being heard in our relationship sooner.  But during the course of that conversation, something else hit me: it is the understanding that we need to support each other that made me look at some of the other events in my life, specifically the relationships with people around me. 

I had two trains of thought when I read this quote: this is about expectation and we shouldn’t place unrealistic expectations on people but we need to hold up our end of the bargain when it comes to relationships.  Then I was thinking about the support of my friends as we’ve been experiencing a disconnect in our relationships lately—and I truly don’t feel like any of that comes down to me.  Yes, it always takes two, but hear me out:  I have felt myself growing and expanding and learning new things about myself and as I move forward, I have felt them retreat from me.  I have felt them try to dim me as I am trying to evolve and come out of my shell—specifically speaking ill of my business to others right in front of me and not respecting my boundaries when it came to my work, not doing any kind of deep dive into my work, making the story always be about them, not being emotionally available during crisis, and then literally not reaching out for events they partake in with each other.  I have felt their pull toward the negative as I’m working on other things.  I never asked that they believe what I do—they don’t need to understand it even, that isn’t their responsibility.  Even if they don’t understand, we can still be supportive of each other.  And I do not feel that support.  I feel their bond with each other increasing and more exclusion by the day while they look at me like I’m the problem. I am growing, in some ways I wouldn’t have been afforded the opportunity to grown without them and I am grateful, ALWAYS.  But to turn around and start demeaning the person I am because the real me is showing through is not the mark of a friend.  Remember: growth is never a problem and if someone requires you to stay in a shell too small or a box that they built in order to be their friend, that isn’t a friend.  If someone deliberately tries to break down your progress and finds ways to undercut your efforts, that isn’t a friend.  If they withdraw when you get a bit brighter when you create space in the spotlight for them as well, that is their choice and that isn’t a friend. 

So to the first train of thought: it isn’t up to people to live up to our expectations.  We aren’t here to dictate what someone must do for us as relationships and true support aren’t conditional.  Each person in a relationship agrees to fulfill a certain role for each other but it is formed from presence, being there for each other and we mutual respect.  There is the expectation that we at least like each other if we have agreed to  be around each other.  Even if we can’t reach an understanding about what the other person is doing, we need to at least create space to allow a person to be who they are and give them the same grace we would like to be afforded.  If the latter two points can’t be reached, then we need to ask what we are doing in that relationship.  If those things are too much then we can walk away knowing it simply wasn’t a good fit.  It is never asking too much of anyone to allow for the full expression of our authentic selves.  When we experience the difference between the two types of relationship—as I did in that conversation with my sister and understanding support and then thinking about my current state with some other people—we need to make a choice.  The choice always needs to be ourselves.  Our purpose is to be entirely who we are.  It isn’t so much about someone letting us down, it’s about upholding the boundary that if we are not equally cared for and respected, if those are things we need to ask for in the first place, then it is time to move on and we can do so with good conscience.  As we start off this year, I hope we always remember our worth and never settle for anything less than the total acceptance of ourselves—and if someone can’t do that, then have the courage to walk away.  Remember, it’s better to let someone else down than let ourselves down. 

“We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational and so disciplined they can be free,” Kavita Ramdas.  I love this in the context of moving forward, both as individuals and as a group.  Speaking of letting go yesterday brought to mind this idea of the people who have helped me move forward and break the habit of negative first impressions, and approaching things too timidly/with fear—lacking confidence, really.  First impressions aren’t always accurate—and neither are later impressions.  Sometimes the people we think are for us turn out to be the ones holding the knife and the ones we thought were out to get us are the ones cutting us out of the net.  People surprise us and we need to let them because we all deserve the opportunity to be who we are—and we need to afford them the same opportunity.  Sometimes we have something others need and sometimes they have what we need—and we will never know until we allow them into our bubble and start discovering who they are.  Sometimes in that discovery process, we learn more about who we are as well.

I have friends who think (and thought) they needed to take care of me under the assumption I would have no say in choosing how to move forward. While it was nice to be cared for, they didn’t hear what I said, they didn’t see who I was, they didn’t allow me to express the things I needed to or understand that I had more control of my situation than they thought.  They saw a few moments of weakness that they didn’t really even help with, and they assumed I was weak, that I needed a hero or that I didn’t understand something about life.  Rather than supporting me through those times, they assumed they needed to support me entirely and that they could influence my identity and who I needed to be to them.  While I have no issue helping my friends, I struggle with demands being made on how I am supposed to accept their help.  Or rather, I struggle with saying I need an orange and they give me an apple and I’m supposed to be satisfied or grateful because they gave me fruit.  Or being grateful when I say I just need someone to listen and they tell me their story repeatedly rather than hear mine so it becomes more about us taking care of them rather than mutual reciprocity.

I recently found out what happens when there is real support between friends.  When there is more than a common interest between people and they are actually similar.  There is power there.  There is amazing power in support that comes from shared desire and goals and interest versus a manipulative need for validation under the guise of being helpful.  Friendship is born of both mutual interest and shared goals and there are times in any relationship when someone can’t carry all the weight and someone does a little more work than the other.  That doesn’t mean one person is weaker than the other and if the other person is constantly making our struggles about them, that’s more exhausting than trying to solve the problem on our own because we end up doing the feeling work for that other person rather than working on our own issue.  Friendship that understands the ebb and flow, friendship that comes from relating to people shows reciprocity rather than letting one person always handle their issues on their own while also having to help the other party.  There isn’t a hierarchy where either side is trying to prove they are capable of all things, some sort of superiority thing. That relationship is about being collaborative rather than forcing someone to be something they are not or putting our issues on them.

A strong tribe is built of women who bring out the best in each other.  We heal each other and we work to move forward together.  We need a tribe, we need that support.  I have witnessed what happens when we are too independent and I have witnessed what happens when we are too dependent on others.  We either end up burnt out or disappointed because people aren’t meeting our expectations.  But there is a middle ground: when we find the right group of people we each play our role and we are stronger for it.  Certain relationships are meant to help us through a particular time—I will bring back the saying about a reason, a season, or a lifetime.  I assigned the wrong designations to some people, we all do, and we need to move on, knowing who we are, knowing what we are meant to do and what we need.  It’s ok to not be everything to every person.  We aren’t meant to fit in everyone’s mold and they aren’t meant to fit into ours, either.   But those who are for us will always find us at the right time, no matter how long they are with us.  To those who stick around and build with me, I am beyond grateful to solidify who I am with you.  To those who brought me to the real ones, I am beyond grateful because you chipped away the parts of me that weren’t really me.  To my future tribe, I welcome you, and I am proud to be part of you.  To all, thank you for the lessons—I carry them with me, always.

Today I want to share the lesson of letting go from my mother.  Maybe it’s more accurate to say the lesson of not letting go, specifically what happens when we don’t let go.  My mother is the queen of grudges and I absolutely learned how to do just that from her.  I remembered every nasty thing people said about me and how they treated me and how they made me feel.  I carried it with me as both a defense mechanism and excuse to not get to know people and as an act of martyrdom for when I still gave people chances.  Also a lesson from my mother—we thought it was forgiveness to a degree but the reality is we never forgot any of what happened.  The first impression was it and that is how I defined people moving forward because I learned from my mom that people don’t change and often one bad decision is who they really are.  I cut people out before I even let them in because of a first impression.  I’ve been wrong multiple times, especially as I’ve pointed out these last few weeks.  I was wrong about it with my husband, I was wrong about it with some people I truly now consider friends.  I had been super quick to write them off and after meeting them, I saw a different side.  It’s funny or ironic that often the people we make a judgement on are those who we share similarities with. 

This side of the lesson is about breaking the family pattern of writing people off before we know them.  I experienced loss early in life so I am no stranger to the knowledge once something is gone, it is gone.  Those losses haunted me and left me with a helpless feeling about life and a severe deprivation of faith.  During the holidays we spent a lot of time together with family and there is such a history there—so many dynamics and feelings.  Many of them are entirely justified and I understand the frustration, anger, and resentment.  But is there a purpose to it?  Holding onto that level of emotion for this long with no outlet hasn’t served any purpose other than to exacerbate the negative.  It’s holding onto the coal that’s burning the hand thinking we are going to one day throw it at the person who hurt us—we only end up burning ourselves.  I’ve witnessed first hand the choice to fixate on the negative and how it has taken a lovely evening, a great time together, and completely ruined it because we can’t let go of those feelings.  We want the other person to understand and feel what we did.  We want them to acknowledge their part in how we feel.  If we want to talk about a waste of time, this is it: expecting someone to feel/understand how we feel without explaining it.  I know even if we do explain it there is a chance that they won’t get it, but at least we made the effort and aren’t wasting time expecting people to be mind readers and being upset over something they have no idea made us angry.

We need to heal the past in order to move forward, even if that healing is reconciling that others do not understand or feel the same way we do.  There are things we may never get our due for, we will not get what we feel we are owed.  But holding onto that resentment serves nothing but to ruin the time we have now—and I will repeat it until I’m blue in the face—we never know how much time that is.  Why ruin all potential good times for the sake of holding onto one bad time?  Why allow those feelings or the feeling of one incident determine how we feel the rest of our lives?  And those feelings expand to all of those around us.  There comes a point we have to accept responsibility and understand that we are the one with the issue and we can either address what’s bother us or we can let it go, because holding onto it has done nothing but cause more pain.  Our martyrdom, our righteous anger, does nothing to the other person, but it weighs on our hearts and minds and can drag everyone else down too.  There is no point in making ourselves sink and blaming others for it—we are still the one who drowns.

I held onto things far longer than I should have–some of them were justified and some were not.  I made judgements on people that I shouldn’t have and I regret that because there could have been a great friendship formed much sooner.  There were stupid moments that honestly could have impacted the trajectory of my life had I put aside pride and just tried to understand.  And even now, thinking of that regret serves nothing.  We are here now and the only way to move forward is to move forward.  Cut the ties to what happened and understand that we are here now because of what we did and didn’t do but we can’t change it.  Learn the lesson and move forward, the biggest part of which is not making rash decisions about someone’s character or their intentions.  Don’t decide who we are before we figure out what works for us, meaning don’t write someone off because they are a certain way.  We may have more in common than we think and we just haven’t discovered it yet.  Whatever it may be, put down the coal, cut the line, and let go of the past, of what we thought hurt us and welcome the gift of time we have now.  As long as we have that time, we have the ability to make it better.  Don’t drown in a puddle, find our support and move forward.  Sometimes the person to help you forward is the last person you’d think—we may surprise ourselves as much as they surprise us.  Trust it, let go, and move on to enjoy the time we have.    

“I can’t see my way through.; Can you see your next step?; Yes.; Then just take that,”  The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy.  Ironic that this particular quote found me right after talking about the clarity of passion.  I approached my entire life with a certain level of timidity, afraid of ruining something to the point where I couldn’t fix it.  I kind of treated it like a video game on my last life: I knew there was no going back and no do-overs.  It led to fear because that meant I wanted to get it perfect on the first go around.  I didn’t understand this lesson, this concept of following what felt good or interested us, of exploring curiosity like I do now.  I thought those were things you did once you “made it.”  I didn’t see that you could follow those things as a means to make it.  I didn’t understand that sometimes you just needed to take that first step as a means to figure out the rest—I thought you needed to see each step in between, like life was entirely choreographed for us and we needed to figure out the routine.  I fell very easily into routine—it felt good.  And that feeling good was the trap—it was my mistake to believe that any routine was good rather than finding one that worked for me.  I didn’t even know that creating my own routine was a possibility.   

I initially heard this quote in the context of overthinkers the other day, but I feel like this is appropriate to finding our passion as we discussed yesterday.  Sometimes all we can do is take the next step, whether we find ourselves stopped because we are confused or afraid or something hasn’t worked out.  I understand the ebbs and flows of life, believe me.  We all have ups and downs.  It’s when we take the next step toward what feels right that we learn what feels right—as we’ve talked about many times, we become what we need to be by becoming what we need to be.  We simply have to “do.”  Waiting for things to happen will only leave us wanting and waiting.  Taking those simple steps, even if we don’t see the end, is far more productive than doing nothing.  At least with taking steps we see options.  We can always turn around or take another path or even create another path if we need to.  We can take a break and gather our bearings—and there are times we will have to do just that.  Life isn’t always easy, we have extreme highs and lows but the majority of our time is spent on the middle ground.  From there we can find the thing that sparks us and drives us to that uncontrollable emotion, and once we find that, the extraneous ignites and the entire path is clear.

Taking the next step is key in influencing the course of our lives.  It’s key in creation, not just of our lives, but in the sphere of those around us and how big that sphere can be.  Not every step will be perfect—there will be wrong turns that make it feel like we are at a dead end or drove off a cliff.  Then there are the turns that reveal the most beautiful expanses we have ever seen, like the entire world is laid out before us and we understand how we are simultaneously so small but so big in our influence.  We see our little place in this world and how important that place really is.  There are no mistakes, there are no accidents, and there are no coincidences.  We are exactly where we need to be, and  when we are lost, all we need to do is ask ourselves what feels right, what the next right step is.  We know.  We always know and we just need to remind ourselves of that.  We can trust that passion, that curiosity to guide us through the darkest of times.  Even if we do fall off the cliff, we see we can go in another direction—or sometimes what we thought was the bottom of the hill is the start of something much greater.  Let the passion guide us and show the way.  The universe never steers us wrong.  We always have a choice in what we do—let that choice be made of what feels right to us.    

“Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night,” Terri Guillemets.  Passion is defined as a strong and barely controllable emotion, characterized by an intense enthusiasm, dedication, and emotional connection to their pursuits which often drives them to achieve their goals and inspires those around them; usually with respect to a particular person or thing; ardent affection (Merriam-Webster).  I speak a lot about emotional control and managing our thoughts but passion is something that falls beyond that realm.  When it comes to our passions, these are things we are not meant to control.  These are the driving influences that bring us ever closer to who we are and to source.  While I still maintain we can’t fully let emotions run the show, we do need to understand their influence and their importance in guiding us.  Those things that feel good, that interest us, that create curiosity, the things we can’t stop ourselves from doing/being drawn to—that isn’t merely an emotion based off of a temporary feeling.  Those are the things that make us who we are and we are 100% meant to dive into them, to lose ourselves in them because they are part of us.       

I pull cards every day to begin with positive affirmations (I share these on Instagram) and today’s said “Feeling good will bring me far more than whatever I thought I needed,” deck by Gabby Bernstein.  With all the talk of time and what feels right and what calls us, it is important, especially this early in the New Year, that we remind ourselves the things we enjoy and the things we can’t let go of are what drives us to where we need to be.  We are meant to go after the things that feel good to us because the more we pursue them, the more we become the person who can attract them.  It isn’t so much about chasing, it’s about becoming and aligning with those things that call to us.  The fastest way to bring in what we need is to be what we need—become what we need, but the reality is, sometimes we don’t even know what it is we need and we won’t until we begin the journey of following that passion.  Feeling good is the guidepost toward what we are passionate about and those passions become the value and foundation of our lives.    

Think about the times we have been around passionate people. Think about how they speak, and act, and how they carry out their work.  Their level of engagement and understanding of life and work is on a different plane—time does not exist to them—they are simply of their work all the time and they love it.  Someone who becomes the master of what they love is someone who has mastery over themselves—their decisions are based on their scope of interest and how it impacts the world.  When we are passionate it goes beyond ourselves.  Just as a bad attitude is contagious but so is feeling good.  We influence our own lives and those around us so why would we want to or allow a negative influence of any kind to seep through? It’s important on so many levels to follow those passions and not let them fade away through ignoring them.  It isn’t so much about the chase rather than the following of curiosity and being authentic with our interests and desires and our drive. 

The truth is passion is as important as catching that last bus with one caveat: I don’t think our passion ever really leaves us—I don’t think there is a last bus.  I do think we need to take it that seriously because the more we ignore the passion, the more we will struggle to know ourselves and in that struggle we become miserable.  It’s a funny trick of the universe that the things we feel uncontrollable about or bring us to the brink of madness are the very things that can bring control to our lives.  They give us purpose and direction.  When it comes to time, I will continue this refrain: we never know how much time we have so there is no reason to not go after what we want whole-heartedly, to not find our desires and to try them out, to see what works.  What’s the worst that can happen?  We find it doesn’t work and we need to try something else.  That is an easier cost than regret and wishing we had done something differently.  Don’t be afraid of that passion, be curious.  Pursue it.  Those things that start off as feeling good, give them a shot and see what comes of it.  They can be the very things that reveal the greatest things about ourselves and what we can contribute to the world.    

Time has been on my mind a lot lately.  Time spent with family over the holidays showed me how precious time really is.  It amazes me how so many things feel the same but everything is different or how we have done the same things for ages but it isn’t the same anymore.  How things can change because of how they feel and how the reality around us can feel so different than what we see.  The absence of those we love at this incredible time of year, the opportunity to say what we want to say gone forever, the guilt and weight of things left unsaid so heavy, the weight feels like it will crush us.  The things we still can’t say—my Aunt’s cat sitting on my lap as I type this, reminding me heavily of how important our choices are. Wishing I had reached out sooner, that I had put aside my fear of her sadness and just said I wish it had been different, that I had offered to move forward together.  That we had put aside all resentment and acknowledged she didn’t deserve to isolate like that, letting her time slip away.  I’ve always feared time, it’s something I’ve repeated so many times, I’m sure it’s exhausting, but I’ve been so painfully aware of the “clock” and that countdown my entire life that it feels oppressive, and I share this, trying to reconcile that fear. There are pieces of those we love that remain—I have remnants from both of my grandmothers, from both of my Aunts, from our lineage from both my mother and father.  I fear the time I spend doing things I don’t want to do.  I fear time spent doing what I want to do because I am stuck in a different era in my mind.  And that is the funny thing of time, the two facets—what is here and what is in my mind.

We have this image of time as it is and of time as we think it is. There is an image of Time itself, tiring and slowing while TIME relentlessly marches on.  The weight of the natural thing, heavy but unyielding, unstoppable.  We can’t change TIME.  We can merely change who we are through time.  Who we will be, not who we were.  So let the weary version slow and rest.  While part of us stops and rests in that beat, while TIME moves on, we see life move around us and we SEE all that has been and will be in that moment. We aren’t meant to stop time, we are OF time, IN time, OUR time.  Two bits of time existing simultaneously, the TIME in the natural world and our time, frozen, perpetual, limitless.  There is nothing to fear of the beats and ticks, of the clocks we built.  We didn’t fear time until the machine started reminding us of the moments, counting the breaths for us instead of measuring them.  We let the machine keep track of our life instead of nature, waiting for the right moments as told by someone else instead of remembering the ever-present NOW.  When we were bonded to our nature, before we were bonded to man’s word.  We were never meant to fear or count time, we were meant to live in time.  OUR time.  THIS time.  Now.  While we know the clock still ticks, we must KNOW and remember. The clock never existed.  It still doesn’t.  Time is told by suns and moons, and stars and breath and winds and rain and cold and heat and tides.  We pretend we are in control of time with alarms and clocks and calendars and devices that tell us where and what to be and when, but time is to be felt and lived and experienced and loved.  Measured with heartbeats and laughter and tears and joy and hope and even pain.  So we always remember we are master of nothing but how we feel. We never know when the CLOCK runs out, but we always know the end/beginning is near.  It doesn’t matter what TIME it is, it matters how we feel in time.  What we do with it.

So I speak of time, and the distinction between the natural clock and man’s clock is important.  The universal clock is always ticking and, yes, we are on its countdown.  There is an inevitable end for all of us and we do not know when that is—we will never be able to stop that.  That is the time most of us fear.  The unknown dictates the most important thing for us: our existence.  There is something beautiful to that natural clock in spite of the morbid fact that it is limited.  Our clock is innate and knows what to do, and it always runs on time.  Its timing is perfect and divine and always runs exactly as it is supposed to.  If we live in alignment with that purpose, with that idea, that we are where we are meant to be and when, there is nothing to fear.  We live and we love and we believe.  Man’s clock is something else entirely.  I’m sure none of us would deny the utility of a mechanism allowing us to arrange for coordinated interaction that we don’t miss and that allows for better communication and connection.  But we have put man’s clock above the universal clock in ways that don’t align with the natural order.  Who says we have to be married and own a home with 2 children by the time we are 30?  I know people that just started a second marriage at 42 and had their first kid at 44.  Man puts this idea out there that his timing is superior and he knows better when things are supposed to happen.  The universe will either agree or it will laugh at us.  We only have the power to let things be and we can guide our thoughts and actions towards the greater purpose.  We have no choice but to go with it otherwise we fight something that will not change.

I do not take my time for granted.  I know I wasted too much of it already thinking things needed to look a certain way or I needed permission and had to make sure that my actions wouldn’t interfere with anyone else’s goals.  I finally understood that my ideas have merit and no one can give that value.  It is more important to live in flow than try to control flow.  Living in two worlds, with two definitions of time is scary and challenging.  We often have to go against the grain of what we are told to do in society and we are highly influenced by what other people think so doing our own thing is intimidating.  But once we settle into the concept that we truly only have one go around, we can’t get back what we lost, and that we are meant to make something of ourselves that matters to us, then we are better able to transition into the flow of our own clocks and follow the natural rhythm set for us.  It’s easier to grasp that not everyone operates on the same time and that is OK.  Our journeys will always cross and separate, the ebb and flow of life brining us where we need to be with the right people when it is meant to happen.  We find each other and we separate and we find each other again.  The most important thing is to find our own path and our own rhythm and then the other time, man’s time, becomes irrelevant because we know we are aligned with what is meant for us and we trust that nothing will derail us from where we are meant to be, what we are meant to have, and the purpose we are meant to fulfill.  

Today I am grateful for perspective.  I thought I always had to be serious to be taken seriously—as if being taken seriously was the goal.  Years of insecurity plagued me in relation to how I looked and ideas I had that were never allowed or fully expressed because people assumed I was younger, that I couldn’t possibly understand the big picture.  Or that I was somehow to delicate.  I ventured on a decades long quest to validate myself through proving what I knew and what I was capable of, how strong I was, what I could do on my own.  All that did was leave me exhausted and frustrated and yearning for more.  Recently I learned something about life: it doesn’t need to be taken seriously.  The only thing we need to remember is we live in the natural laws of the world and anything that comes outside of that, any conditions man puts on us are that of man.  We are fallible creatures and we are allowed to change our minds and make adjustments when things go wrong.  We don’t need to be validated for anything.  And we don’t need to take everything as a life or death situation.  I’ve met some new people who have shown me that we can take our business seriously, how we interact, and how we care for others can take top priority—but we don’t need to take ourselves seriously.  If we put too much stock in how we look and what we accomplish, we lose sight of our functionality and what our talents can bring to the world.  We miss connection and fun and creativity and joy.  It doesn’t matter how seriously people take us-we are worthy exactly as we are and we will find much more value and joy in our lives if we learn to enjoy them.  Life is short, we must do what we find joy in and that becomes a source.

Today I am grateful for recognition.  This isn’t usually one that I feel much gratitude for because even though I like being acknowledged for my accomplishments, I often feel funny about it.  I’ve had a particularly difficult client at work the last two weeks.  The most challenging part is that the issue this woman was having legitimately wasn’t with our company—this wasn’t something we could help her with on any level as the billing was done outside with a company we have no access to.  Regardless, it turned into hours of my time and my employee’s time and a lot of frustration as we repeated the resolution over and over again and new issues continued to raise as it was evident the thought spirals were getting out of control.  I came to find out that this patient had also approached administration and wanted to speak with our president—like she walked directly into their office without an appointment demanding to be seen.  As I was dealing with the last phone contact from this woman, I saw a call come in from someone I knew was in administration.  It turned out that this was the woman who the patient had ambushed trying to see our president.  The admin called me to thank me for all of my work with this patient and to commend my team and I for dealing with a really difficult situation.  I had been so incredibly frustrated with this patient that I was on the verge of quitting my job in all seriousness and the last think I thought I wanted was any form of recognition on the matter.  But hearing those words thanking me for my work actually did mean something to me.  I can’t say that it erased all feelings of anger and concern, but it made me feel better knowing that my best was absolutely good enough and that I knew enough of my work here over the years that I made the right choices with this patient.  It felt good to feel like I was in the right place for a moment, doing the right thing.  Sometimes that’s all we need—a little reminder we are doing the right thing.  

Today I am grateful for remembering fun and flow.  I didn’t talk much about my New Year’s Eve this past week but I want to share a few key reminders I learned that night as we rolled in 2025.  We had no plans for that evening because it was the middle of the week and my husband had to work on New Year’s Day but I received a text as I was finishing up my work inviting us out that evening for a last minute get together with some new friends.  We decided to accept and we went there for dinner and ended up staying until nearly 3AM.  We ate and drank and sang and played putt-putt and we told stories and laughed and had an amazing time.  I found myself in awe a few times as these people discussed their business and their standards became clear to me: it’s perfectly acceptable to go for what we want and to say no if that isn’t what we really want.  We must embrace life by saying yes to what we actually want instead of always trying to make things work.  And we should never be embarrassed for the things we want in our lives, we aren’t proving anything to anyone else.  We are meant to enjoy life.  As I said above, we don’t need to take ourselves seriously, we should take our business and our purpose seriously but the rest, how we get there is all a game.  So when we get those last minute invites, when we have that feeling that something sounds fun, we should dust off and go with it. Say yes to what we want in life and enjoy it and be grateful. 

Today I am grateful for life.  We celebrated our son’s birthday this past Friday and seeing him grow is a gift.  As a parent there are times I wish I could pause and just stay where we are and life in that moment forever.  As much as his birthday (and any birthday) is about celebrating the emergence of life into the world, I celebrate my birth as a mother that day.  I remember the before and after, finding out I was pregnant, the surreal nature of feeling a new life, the struggle I faced during that pregnancy, and then his arrival.  That unreal moment when we were no longer connected but still so incredibly entwined with each other.  Now I think of the time passed since that moment and it feels like a dream.  I think of the person he is now, how smart, how independent, how impulsive, how like me, how like his father, he is.  How I want to give him all I can and how much he means to me.  How he will never understand the depth of what he means to me.  When we become parents, we see life differently.  We value aspects differently, often we see how we value another’s life more than our own.  There is nothing I wouldn’t do for that child that would improve his chances of a good life.  My hope is a fulfilled, long, healthy, happy, and abundant life filled with adventure, purpose, joy, peace, excitement, faith, and follow through on his dreams.  My hope is to witness all that I can with him, to be present.    

Today I am grateful for connection and understanding.  This is a different one for me—not the gratitude for connection and understanding but the reason behind it.  I’ve become more in-tune with my instincts over the last few months and I know I am on the right path for several pursuits I have at this time.  2024 saw a lot of in-between and uncertain moments but that taught me to make choices and in making those choices I got more comfortable with who I am and what felt right.  I am one of those people who follows signs and believes they are there to guide us as long as we interpret them correctly—and if we do interpret them, we will receive more signs and so on and so on.  I’ve always had a connection with cats and I was devastated after the loss of my Maine Coon back in August.  Near immediately after losing him, two additional cats came into my life—one a local stray and the other my Aunt’s cat.  The stray had been roaming around us for a few months and we had decided to start letting him in because the only reason we kept him out in the first place was because Loki was sick.  The integration started off rough with our last remaining cat but they slowly started connecting.  The stray is incredibly friendly and affectionate so I knew it wouldn’t take long for them to become friends—our last cat had been wanting a more active playmate anyway.  Then we suddenly lost my aunt and we found ourselves with another cat—this one very different than the stray as he was incredibly timid and nervous and had just undergone his own trauma.  I really didn’t know how I was going to integrate these animals at first, but I did it.  All of my cats follow me like a real pride and I am honestly weirdly proud of it.  They are connected to me because I understand them.  I think they came into my life, two totally opposite little souls because I needed to break the fixation on the hurt of my loss.  Animals are a gift and I am so grateful to connect with them.  They make my heart feel better, and it’s another way to get out of my head.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The audacity of these weirdos to think you’ll sit around mourning them.  I’m focused on vibrating higher so I never experience this kind of foolery again,” Oasis of Serenity.  A short reminder that the things not meant for us apply to people too.  The storms we talked about yesterday will take out those who aren’t meant for us as well.  Those who hold conditions on our friendship, on our time.  Those who fail to support us when we need them, those who choose to misunderstand, those who never listened in the first place.  Why should we mourn those who merely wanted us to fit into their game in the first place?  Those who thought we were merely there for their entertainment or to achieve their goals?  Sometimes people come into our lives to teach us how to be better and some come in to teach us we deserve better.  It can be a tricky, slippery slope sometimes, thinking we know someone’s thoughts and feelings-we need to know our own.  It’s only then we learn to appreciate who we are and the magic we create.  We only have control over ourselves and we have every reason to say we will not tolerate certain things again, that we aspire for more, that we feel more than those around us would allow.  And then we realize they weren’t the ones to allow anything, anyway.  We allow and we decide and we live our lives.  Choose to let go because in letting go, we will achieve the highest frequency we can imagine. 

I was raised to be polite—and there is always room for politeness, there is validity in being kind.  There is no place for allowing someone to dictate your life or place conditions on friendship.  That isn’t friendship—the relationship that says we are fine as long as you do what I say and make me feel how I need to feel and if we do what I want to do.  The loss of a relationship like that isn’t something to mourn.  There are people who cause the storms in our lives because they don’t know how to weather their own or they would rather be the savior in someone else’s storm.  But causing destruction to be the savior isn’t truly saving anyone.  And we aren’t meant to save each other from anything.  We help, we support, we uplift, we care—but we aren’t here to dictate how people live, or to create drama to validate our worth, or exist on this codependent plane where we fear life without someone.  It isn’t our job to fuel a false sense of power in someone by allowing them to call the shots in our lives.  As we close out these first few days of 2025, remember the power we share, the power that is unique to us, and the power we create.  If we find someone feels they are the source in our lives, then we need to remind them that we are our own source and our worth is determined by no one.  We know who we are, we move forward, we move up, we find peace and we live in patience and gratitude and we know who we are.  Know our worth.

“If it can’t weather the storm with you, it’s not for you.  Storms pass and when you look around you see that some things won’t be there after the storm.  That hurts but that’s also, it could be a blessing in disguise.  What’s happening is these things are happening around you, all of this is conspiring in your favor, you just have to learn to let go what is not of you. You have to learn to let the storm do its work.  That’s why storms are so important in our lives.  It’s just a different perspective, a reframe on storms, chaos.  See it through that lens.  Let’s have hope.  You’re strong.  Storms got nothing on you but it will take out what isn’t for you which may hurt a little bit but it’s what’s meant to be,” JB Copeland.  This is another reminder to let go what we are trying to make work in our lives.  Those things we think we need, the constant reminders, the stories we tell ourselves—if they are trying to leave, let them.  While we may define ourselves by that narrative (or any narrative) if it isn’t telling the truth, then it no longer wants us to attach to it.  We need to leave it there.

So many of us are taught that storms are meant to break us and that if we weather it and we come through relatively unscathed, we have succeeded.  They feel the point is to beat the storm. Not many discuss the cleansing of a storm.  We know rains bring sustenance to the Earth and help the plants grow, we know that water that falls from the sky gives life.  So why do we deny the storms in our lives?  Why do we not trust that this temporary downpour, these moments of hurt or whatever it may be, are there to tend healthier soil for us to grow from?  When we let the excess wash away, we are left with what is necessary.  Sometimes all we need is what’s necessary.  We spend so much time battening down the hatches, preparing for any scenario that we don’t realize how we are burdened with the fears of what we may lose.  Sometimes we need to lose what we don’t need to appreciate and understand what we have.  We need to lose it so we use what we do need to the fullest.  Not everything is meant to last forever, as much as we wish it could.  Eternal only exists in the mind and spirit, not necessarily in the physical.

So when storms hit, instead of fearing what we are losing, appreciate what we have and what we are learning.  Know we will not be left empty even if our hands are barren and weak, even if the prospects seem bleak.  Strength isn’t about not breaking, it’s about bending.  It’s about getting creative, telling a new story, understanding in a new way.  Strength is understanding that there may be something we didn’t see happening and the washing of the weather is meant to take away that ick we don’t see.  It can hurt, as Copeland says, it can hurt to lose something we’ve attached to, but it hurts more to hang on to something we need to release.  We aren’t meant to stay in one place, meant to carry all things, meant to hold everything of every experience we’ve had all at once.  We need to let go.  We need to embrace the idea that we are part of something so much bigger and we don’t need to direct the sea, just our ship in it.  Let the storms come and go, let them cleanse our soul.  Let the hurt wash over and away.  It all fades and we see a new day and are left with exactly what we need, a little more flexible, a little wiser, and able to weather whatever comes our way.      

“Start paying attention to how your life feels to you, not how it looks to others,” Emma Davis.  This is a perfect goal for moving into the New Year.  In a society obsessed with how things look and wanting to control how we appear to others, our first concern is often how things appear to others.  We spend more time and energy trying to manipulate how people view us, how we appear to them than we do getting in touch with how we feel about our lives.  Often times the things that look good don’t feel good to us but we convince ourselves they are still good because they look good.  The more we distract ourselves, the more it seems normal to go for the things other people want—and some of those things are cool, no lie.  As we move forward, as we see the things that weren’t working before, we need to ask ourselves how we can make them work now and what we need to work in our lives.  I’m not suggesting we continue to try and make things work that have no business in our lives, I’m saying we need to take the time to find space for those things that feel right and spend more time doing those things.  Speaking from personal experience, when something feels right, it fits.

I got myself in the habit of finding what felt right and doing it for a bit and then stopping.  I never knew why I stopped but I think it has to do more with the old habits being more familiar than what I wanted to do.  We need to give new things enough time to become familiar and become routine, part of who we are before we stop them.  This year needs to be about space and grace and getting in touch with those parts of us that show us who we really are and allow us to strip away what doesn’t serve—what isn’t part of who we are but what we adopted as part of who we thought we were or what we thought people wanted to see.  The answers are always within how we feel.  The human instinct, intuition, are always present within us.  We just have to be aware of what our body is telling us.  Let’s take a silly example.  I’m a fan of a particular series that I know another person close to me enjoys as well.  I feed into it and I have never hidden the obsession—it’s fun, it’s truly harmless, and it’s inspiring.  This person enjoys it but restrains themselves and while we were together the other day, I offered them an extra of one of the items I have—and they were hesitant at first, but the more they looked at it, they decided they wanted it.  When we are honest about how we feel, then we allow what we love and what is meant for us into our lives.

While that latter point was a small example, the principle is the same: the more we allow what we enjoy, the more we enjoy.  If something that small, honoring and being honest with what we enjoy brings about such positive results, imagine what happens when we do it with our careers, with where we live, with who we allow in our lives. We align with a different frequency when we do what feels right.  When we do what looks right, we remove ourselves from what actually is right for us.  The more we practice doing what feels right, our life starts to look how we want it to.  We learn it doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as we understand what we are trying to accomplish and we enjoy how it feels.  Joy, the act of enjoying, having fun, and being aligned with who we are is a priceless feeling.  The possibilities that alignment open, are endless.  So rather than worry about creating an image, lean into what feels right and simply be who we are and do what feels right to us.  Learn to listen to our intuition, attract the life we are meant to have by being who we were always meant to be.  That is the greatest feeling in the world.