“Stop moving like you’re optional,” unknown.  We need to take the space we need for ourselves.  To be who we are meant to be.  We are constantly told that there isn’t enough room or enough resources for everyone to be who they are—that we need to fit into a mold. We didn’t journey into this world to play small.  We were not designed to shrink ourselves to fit into anything.  It’s amazing that as quickly as things change in this world, as many advances as we have for technology/communication/healthcare, as much as we’ve become accustomed to certain things that would have been inconceivable 50 years ago, that we move as slowly as we do when it comes to accepted norms of living our lives.  Some of the most outlandish ideas regarding thought and free will about who we are, are accepted but we still have this limit on what it takes to survive—the fact that we still think we have to fight for survival is laughable.  We’re focused on the wrong things.  WE let people make us feel useless or like we don’t belong and we still try to fit in instead of creating the space (or even taking the space) we need, the space we were meant to have.  We are all gifted with life and it is up to us to make what we will of it—if someone wants to treat us like we’re a choice, we have to remember we can make ourselves no longer an option.

I’ve written before that the nature of life is to expand.  We are here to create and sometimes to create we have to first break down the walls that stand in the way of what we know—especially if those walls surround our own hearts.  Those can be the hardest walls to break because we believe them about ourselves.  When we understand we are needed, our ideas are needed, and that we don’t need to settle for people who only call us when they need something, or who make us feel we don’t contribute something to their lives, we chip away at whatever reality we were sold and start building what we know.  It isn’t up to others to determine our worth—frankly their opinion is irrelevant.  They never went through what we did, our experiences are totally different.  When we had put ourselves together, survived the worst, and still chose peace, those were the moments that showed what we are made of.  We still seek peace.  We no longer need to get caught up in problems.  In spite of rough days,  remember we’ve beat them all and we will continue to land on our feet.  The fact we are here tells us we are not an option, we have purpose.  We already made the cut so to speak so no one gets to decide if we are supposed to be anywhere or not.  We are needed, our unique purpose is needed.  If we treat ourselves like an option people will make the selection when it suits them.  Feeling optional makes us people please, like if we aren’t chosen we are somehow less valuable.  We have to choose our own lives.   

When we’ve gotten through as much as we have—not only gotten through it, but thrived in spite of it—there is no space to feel like a third wheel in any circumstance.  If people make you feel that way, they aren’t the right ones for you. We don’t have time for the dance that seeks approval.  The body moves to the rhythm of its own accord.  Its own knowing.  When we try to move to the rhythm of someone else, the mind becomes confused and doesn’t know what to do. Soon we stop moving because we can’t hear the rhythm we’re supposed to and we only move when told.  We forget the sound of our own intuition.  We wait to hear the words telling us we are good enough, worthy.  But if we listen to what’s inside, we know what to do—we know our purpose and we never confuse whether or not we belong because we know we do.  Now, the truth is that we don’t belong in every circumstance.  We aren’t meant to be palatable to everyone.  We are meant to stir some people, to move some people, and to work with some people.  The wrong situations will make us question our very existence so it’s our job to make sure we make decisions from the core of our being, not from where people want us to be.  Above all, always remember to choose ourselves.

As of late I’ve been dealing with a little bit different of a different identity crisis.  Normally it’s around some degree of who I am and what I want to do and not knowing the next steps.  This is around a partnership and what it means when the person closest to you sees you differently than you thought—that all the time you’ve spent together thinking they saw you/understood you in a specific way (a way that allowed for partnership) is entirely different.  There is a degree of vulnerability in knowing how people see you—and they do say often (I’ve also written about it) that what other people think of us is none of our business.  I see why.  It’s one thing to put aside the opinions of those who we rarely interact with, those we pass by in the store or on the street or anywhere really or even those we have little interaction with like neighbors or acquaintances.  But it’s another thing to understand who we are in a relationship and have specific understanding of each other as a person only to find out that one person doesn’t view us that way—that our actions are still misinterpreted.  Relationships are never easy and life itself is set up for the possibility of misinterpretation—we see and do things differently and we see the reasoning behind it differently as well.  But I always assumed there was a degree of understanding between partners that needed no explanation.  So if we don’t have that does it mean we are missing something?  We haven’t had the smoothest relationship over the years and I’m curious if we still have this confusion—why do we when I know I’ve laid myself bare on the altar all this time?    

I’ve been the other half of this relationship for 24 years—I’m not sure we know ourselves outside that anymore.  I’m about to begin a new phase of my life, simultaneously gaining more freedom and going back to certain restraints—somehow both forward and backward at the same time.  I’m terrified of what it means but I’m excited at the same time.  It’s opening up a new facet of my identity.  And I have to let him go do that as well and, as selfish as this sounds, I’m afraid of what that means and what it looks like because I know he will go about it differently, he will find those answers in a different way.  I feel a reawakening in myself with this new opportunity and I love how it feels and I wouldn’t begrudge him that. My fear stems from the fact that he finds his triggers in different ways.  I’m afraid he will find someone who ignites him again rather than something.  That sounds awful- I WANT him ignited because I want to be ignited.  Finding that light is not what I’m trying to prevent. I want us to do that for each other.  I have no control over that and I know it’s my insecurity that tells me he would find those pieces of himself in someone else and it breaks my heart a little thinking that because I know I’m still able to find pieces of me in him—and I want to.  He is all those things I love (and loved) and more and I’m afraid he doesn’t want to share the best parts of himself with me.  It leaves me vulnerable to the possibility that I have exposed more of myself over the years and that he has held some parts of himself at bay, not putting forth the same effort or attention.  He’s always had a different view of relationships and how they work—they’ve always been one sided for him.    

What triggered this moment of realization of this discrepancy of my identity was when I saw he doesn’t see my worth, what I contribute, by talents.  I’d been struggling with some things around the house—we are going through some massive changes here and it’s been overwhelming with everything we have going on—this is totally common.  But I couldn’t hold up my end on a few things—tasks I had always been good at seemed impossible and I had to rely on him to help me in spite of all the work he was doing.  I’d been trying to take some of that responsibility off of him and I still needed him.  I’d complimented his talents on the work he’s doing here and he told me I’m talented at being his wife—like WTF does that mean?  I’m a manager, a boss, a force to be reckoned with.  I’m a mother and friend and I’ve taken him out of countless messes—yet my talent is limited to being a good wife?  What the fuck?  That right there tells me he doesn’t see me.  Not the real me.  I’m a writer, a mediator, an inspiration, a light to the entire fucking world—but I’m talented at being a wife.  I don’t take offense to being a talented wife, I know I AM a talented wife.  I’ve put up with nonsense for years and I’ve maintained a career and home and gotten us to this point in our lives.  I’ve taken us this far.  I KNOW that is where I’ve shown talent and reserve and power—but I am so much MORE than that.  And I need him to see that in me because my identity isn’t just as part of this relationship.  Perhaps that is what I needed to remind myself of.  The whole thing was an insecurity trigger for me and knowing he is working on finding himself as well led me down a spiral.  We can be so many things in our lifetimes, in the end none of it matters.  It’s how we see ourselves and what we do with it.  It’s easier to move along the path supported, but even without it, we are still who we are.  Don’t forget that. 

Messages are everywhere if we are open to receive them.  I just had a misprint while filling out my planner.  I was writing about faith as a daily reminder, and I wrote “Fait is a part of it”.  “Fait” is the conjugate of “Faire” which means TO DO in French.  Doing is about action–releasing, letting go of all the bullshit I believed and have been told, told myself and just DO what I know is right.  Faith/Fait/Faire—these words are all connected and I don’t believe they happened by coincidence.  We believe (faith) enough to do (faire) what we must to fulfill our destiny/purpose.  We are much happier being who we are than anything else and the soul knows it.  When we actively trust and act on what we know/feel, we are aligned and we know what’s next.  Faith guides us to do what we are meant to do, it asks us to take action.  Whatever it may be, trust.         

Today I am grateful for arriving at an understanding.  I had convinced myself that it was time to put certain things behind me and try to move forward with certain people in my life.  Let bygones be bygones so to speak.  And just when the moment arrived where I was going to suggest such a thing, the old behavior that made me question things in the first place reared its ugly head.  Thank goodness this was a sign when it happened because I would have found myself trying to please all over again, to be who they wanted me to be all over again.  Relationships are two ways and it shouldn’t always be about one person peeling away parts of who they are to make the other person happy.  It’s about what we get together.  It’s about how we operate together.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) the same realization happened with my husband at the same time and we have agreed that as much as it hurts to leave some of these people behind, it’s for the best.  Our family is what we have.  We still offer support for those who need it but they will no longer take priority over our family.

Today I am grateful for excitement.  I’m excited to try new things again, to do new things.  To live differently.  I’ve held myself so tightly bound in the very cage I kept talking about escaping that I didn’t realize I was tangled in it, unable to move forward.  But now I see the extent of the possibilities, the extent of being heard again, and I’m grateful to manage my life how I need to.  I had to take a step back in order to move forward.  I was sad to make some of these changes, hesitant to, because I wasn’t sure what would happen.  I wasn’t sure if everything would turn out how I wanted it to.  I undertook these changes to better align with who I am and what I feel and I am so happy for it.  I am finally able to look past parts of the sadness and disappointment of what didn’t work and now I am grateful and ready to move forward.  I’m excited to see things coming together how they are meant to.

Today I am grateful for seeing the truth and setting boundaries. I’ve let too many people around me violate my boundaries and I’ve let that obscure the truth of who I am.  I’ve disturbed my comfort and my principles for the sake of other people and I lost myself over and over again.  The truth is some people just won’t change, whether in our personal or professional lives.  It’s disheartening to believe a relationship is one thing only to find out the other person doesn’t feel that way.  It’s disheartening to believe people feel a certain way about your talents and abilities only to find out they don’t.  In both circumstances it feels like someone was biding their time with you until they could get rid of you or until you were tired of using your skills to benefit them.  Look, we all have to take care of ourselves, but we can’t ever let that turn into using others and we can never let that turn into people using us.  There is truth to the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and the fox in the hen house.  In both cases we need to get rid of that danger.  Some people just aren’t who they present themselves to be—and it’s up to us to either call that out or move on.

Today I am excited for personal work.  This isn’t just the mental landscape at the moment-although I could use some refreshing on that.  This is about my physical space.  I have never felt so determined and decided on what I want when it comes to my physical environment.  I’m not 100% sure what spurred all of this or made the timing align so that things would fall into place like this—but they have.  I’ve welcomed a whole lot of new in my life—revitalized health, new look, new style, new job, remodeling the house how we want it.  New priorities and beliefs.  Trying to be as healthy as possible in so many ways. Letting go of the toxic drains and patterns in my life including the people who use my energy to lift themselves up.  It’s amazing what happens when the outside starts to reflect the inside.  We are better able to do what we want to do, to do what we need to do to help others.  And it feels better because when it comes from that genuine space, it doesn’t feel like a strain on anyone.  Sure, it can be painful, but it is also a rebirth, an entirely new experience that awakens something inside—something we needed to remember. 

Today I am grateful for hope.  It’s been a while that I’ve felt the hope of something working out.  It was a scary path to give up what I had in order to jump to something new.  But I have wanted to create this life where I operate in my own space for a long time.  I wanted to get in touch with who I am for a long time.  I always allowed parts of me to shine through, my own little bits of style and flare.  This is a case now where it isn’t a show.  This is the comfort of becoming who I am.  And no, it isn’t the comfort of settling or seeking something safe—this is the comfort of finding what fits.  No longer feeling like I’m wearing someone else’s skin all the time, holding onto the scraps of what people give me and trying to mash it all together.  No, this is the full on integration, the alchemy of life where this just IS. The great IAM so to speak.  There is ALWAYS work to be done, this isn’t over, but to be on this path is a gift and I am both scared and excited and hopeful for all that is to come.  This opportunity to start over again is a gift and I intend to take it as far as I can.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

I can’t speak for everyone but I believe we all need reminders of faith every now and then.  I feel compelled to share a little bit about my spiritual journey at this point.  After such a tenuous relationship with faith, one where I didn’t trust myself, I see where it is a test.  I didn’t trust ME, let alone anyone else or a higher power.  But there’s something in connecting to that inner voice, the knowing that quiets the fear.  Just deciding.  In choosing to give up power/control, I’m gaining insight to the next steps. What I like. Who I am.  I’m working on accepting that’s what God wants—the surrender and trust that all is ok.  Instead of the mental/emotional/sometimes physical gymnastics of trying to contort myself into something I think others want, I just need to listen.  Be present.  Sit with the words and don’t worry about MAKING the words.  Like, we need to sit and hear what is being told to us rather than running with that inner voice where we think we are hearing guidance but really it’s the same drivel droning on that keeps us doing what we’ve done every day: fighting for control.  When we hear actual guidance, we understand that we are made, we don’t need to make ourselves.  We make the lives we are meant to have, yes, but even that comes from the gifts we are given.  So, I’m learning to make my life by hearing and healing and using the gifts He gives me.  It’s been a process to get here, and I feel it’s an important one to share.   

I’m still not a religious person.  No matter the controversy this may cause or how much I’ve learned on my journey, I still personally believe religion is man’s work, not God’s.  That isn’t to say I’m against groups coming together to share faith and belief and find connection to each other and a higher power—quite the contrary.  I feel all those things are entirely necessary in life.  It’s something I’ve sought in my life.  I never wanted to fear God and the truth is, as a child, I know I didn’t.  I had an innate knowing of my relationship with a higher power and I felt comfortable simply being myself.  It wasn’t until I was introduced to certain religious practices/beliefs of others that spoke of how bad we are, how sinful we are, how we need to beg forgiveness that I started to question the point of religion.  I never understood how someone could look at me and make those judgements—and it was judgement–because I NEVER felt that way as a kid.  I NEVER questioned if I was loved or if I was doing something wrong in the eyes of a higher power.  I always felt accepted.  I was taught to question that and it didn’t feel right.  It was other people who made me question not only my connection, but they made me question that belief as well as question myself.  It was those doubts that made me see the flaws in organized religion early on.

I loved hearing stories of faith and belief and knowing that there was an element of design in our lives that we had the ability to tap into at any time.  And if we managed to tap into it?  The entire possibility of creation, joy, love, and peace would be open to us.  I thoroughly believed in the concept of co-creation before I even knew what it was.  It FELT right to me.  I never believed I had to prove myself to God.  But once I started doubting that, I lost hope.  When things started getting rough for me and I couldn’t find that support, I lost even more.  The truth is, I have been witness and I have personally experienced enough  alignment in my life to know that it was more than just coincidence.  There are events in my life that can’t be explained as anything other than a miracle—there would be no feasible way for these events to have taken place without divine action.  So how did I continue to let myself doubt/let that doubt creep in?  Because I lost faith in myself.  I took up the belief that I needed to do everything on my own.  That if I made a mistake of any kind I wasn’t worthy of good.  When tough times happened or I struggled with something, I convinced myself I deserved it.  But it never failed that when I hit my lowest, even cursing God directly, something would happen to show me His existence—or that something existed.  That fact that I/we exist is enough testament to that as well.    

Little things demonstrate big growth in our lives.  The alarm went off an hour later than usual the other day– and I didn’t panic.  My mornings are busy like everyone else’s: working on my business, working on my writing, getting myself and my son ready for the day, lunches, snacks, feeding the animals, cleaning litter boxes etc.  All of that happens before 8AM.  I normally wake at 4AM to get that all in and I’m regimented to make sure I have time to fit in all the things I both want and need to.  I’ve had the alarm go off just a few minutes late before and it nearly derailed my entire day so the idea of an hour later than normal, an hour lost, would have absolutely sent me into a downward spiral.  Something in me that morning legitimately just didn’t care.  I didn’t give it a second thought.  I got up and picked up where I needed to.  Sure, I had to make some changes, I didn’t do everything I normally do.  But everything that needed to get done got done.  And the reminder I found in this was simple:  It felt good to let go.  It felt BETTER letting go.  Would I want to wake up unprepared an hour later every day?  No.  But did that ruin my entire life?  No.

Truth be told, I feared time because of what people would think of me.  I was raised that we are expected to be certain places at certain times and if we aren’t early then we are late.  That if we aren’t exactly on time then we have somehow ruined the entirety of whatever the event was.  The only thing that ruined anything by being late was the attitude behind it.  Now, do I think we should forgo all commitments to time?  No.  But are there times when life simply happens and if we are running late or if we have to change our course at any given time that it has nothing to do with anyone around us and is no real indication about who we are? Yes.  Before losing that hour would have ended with me berating myself all day, talking about how stupid I was to not check the time on my alarm before I went to bed, and likely snapping at people for no reason.  But carrying those tiny mistakes with us serves absolutely no purpose.  Carrying the tiny mistakes like that creates more of a burden than the mistake itself.

Experientially using the knowledge we have to break old patterns, no matter how small, is huge.  Growth isn’t always easy and change certainly isn’t.  When we talk about the deep rooted habits/fears and nuances we carry, we are also talking about the beliefs we carry about ourselves.  That is harder to change.  So when there are opportunities to practice new behavior, we learn to integrate new messages and beliefs.  Tearing down old foundational structures isn’t an easy process and we don’t really know what we’ve changed about ourselves until we face a similar (or the same) circumstance and see how we react to it now.  That alarm going off that much later than it was supposed to and me not freaking out showed me just how far I’ve come, just how much the work I’ve done to change has shifted my course.  The work never goes away, the responsibility to something never goes away—we all have those obligations.  The only thing that changes is how we view it, how we handle it, and how we feel about it.  If we don’t like one of those things we are the only ones who can change it.  Talking about it isn’t enough—we need to put it into practice.  And sometimes we don’t realize how far along we are until we are in the situation again and we behave differently.

Remember the sun inside.  We need a little reminder today: There is always light inside of us no matter how dark or gloomy it seems.  We are asked to call on that light when things feel most dark.  In following yesterday’s piece, that light inside shows us the vision we hold inside.  So often in life we let the clouds darken the joy of who we are, we shrink ourselves so our light doesn’t get too bright, we forget who we are/what we are capable of.  There are times we let people tell us who we are and let them make us feel as if we aren’t that bright or worthy of feeling that light—like we don’t have that sun in us.  The remarkable thing about gloom is that the sun never stops shining even when it’s raining: we just have to wait for the clouds to pass.  So even if it feels dark to us, just give it a little time and we will see the sun again. It never left in the first place.

This isn’t about views, it’s about vision.  The views are fleeting, the vision is sustaining—we carry the vision with us no matter the views.  The view isn’t necessarily indicative of where we’re going, it just shows us where we are in the journey.  If the view doesn’t match the vision, even if we need to stay for a while, we must keep working toward that vision because we will carry the overarching idea of the goal with us no matter what’s in front of us.  That vision is what keeps us going when things feel a little bleak or, even if things look pretty good, it keeps us moving toward our dream.  Vision is something we see others can’t because that unique vision is for us, not for anyone else.  It was given to us for a reason.  Sure we can describe it and talk about it, we can convey passion and belief about it, but in terms of actually achieving it, only we will know when we get there.  Only we know when we see what was in our minds the whole time.    

The goal can’t be about what we want to see in the end (how we look), rather it’s about what we see for the big picture.  Sure we need to know what we want our lives to look like but vision entails more than that.  It’s about how our actions impact the world around us.  It’s a long lasting thing.  We can change the landscape any time—but we can’t change the overall course of our lives.  Let me explain because we’ve also talked about moving the ship just a little bit every day until we are on the right path.  I believe the right path and vision call to us all the time.  I believe that when we are on the wrong path, the path that doesn’t align with who we are, we are able to change that course.  We always have the choice to stay on the wrong path and see that through, but we also have the choice to follow the path that directs us to the goal we have in our mind, what our soul calls us to do.    

There is another difference here and that is views refer to how something looks and vision refers to something as it is.  If we are more concerned with how we look than what we contribute, the view will change quickly and the vision will sour.  Making something look a certain way is fleeting—we can change appearance any time.  If the substance underneath doesn’t match, the appearance will quickly fade away.  Not everything is as it seems.  Don’t judge a book by its cover.  While perhaps cliché or trite, those aphorisms are no less true.  We can play Wizard of Oz and hide behind the curtain only to be revealed for what’s beneath.  Or we can actually turn ourselves into what we see and feel inside.  We had the power to make that vision a reality the entire time—we just had to be ourselves.  Perception is a funny thing because we all get something different out of the same experience.  Don’t let someone else’s perception sway us from who we are—and don’t let our perception of where we are sway us from the vision of where we are going.

“If you don’t stand still long enough to ask the hard questions, you’ll spend your life chasing the wrong answers,” unknown.  Most of us follow the same routine day in and day out, never really stopping to think about the why behind what we’re doing.  It’s what we are told to do, it’s what we are told the norm is.  We are told we are supposed to get work, to do a job, to work hard and often and produce and be productive in order to earn a life.  The reality is we consider making a living actually living.  The point of a living is to be able to live, not to get stuck in a pattern that sucks up our time and gives no meaning to life.  The fact we are alive doesn’t mean we are living—there is the phrase that says don’t live the same day for 91 years and call it living.  If we don’t take the time to ask if what we are doing gives us joy, gives us meaning, brings us peace and makes us FEEL good, then we will never know the value of our own time.  We will never know the real answer we need is.  We can’t know who we are if we are living someone else’s version of our lives.  

It is a hard question to ask.  It’s an even more difficult answer to hear.  And if we are brave enough to ask and then hear the truth, it can be an even more difficult pill to swallow.  We can create a beautiful life we feel no love or attachment for if we don’t ask ourselves the truth of who we are.  It can be by anyone’s definition successful and lovely but it can have no meaning if it has no meaning to us.  We never look at the   There comes a time when activity is just about activity—it isn’t about progress.  Movement for the sake of movement has its purpose, time, context.  But if we live our lives like that there is no way to gauge if we’ve moved the needle because we aren’t even sure where the needle is let alone where it’s pointing—and there’s certainly no way to tell where we need it to point.  We don’t want to ask the questions because we fear the implications if we get something wrong, if we have to start over. The things worth doing we would do over and over again regardless, and if we fear having to repeat the steps then we need to ask ourselves if what we’re doing is what we want to be doing—that in itself is a hard question.

We may not want to face the idea of starting over or readjusting or having to repeat an action, but if we don’t, we face larger problems down the line.  We lose opportunity to fix things if we don’t address an issue from the beginning.  The longer we ignore if something doesn’t feel right or if we’re not doing something right, the more difficult it is to change course down the line.  And if we never stop to ask, we can end up at the very end and miss the entire opportunity to do something we loved.  Facing the truth and course correcting is easier than carrying the burden of regret.  The goal isn’t perfection, it isn’t about getting everything right the first time—it’s about getting it right for us.  Sometimes we feel like we can’t stop, like there’s too much going on, like there’s so much happening that we can’t pause.  But how much we get done doesn’t matter if we’re going in the wrong direction.  So take the time to ask the question and be brave enough to listen and follow the answer—we’ve known it all along.

A few weeks ago I reflected on a very simple question: Are you happy with the life you made?  I looked at my home, the things I’ve accumulated over the years, the people I’ve allowed in my life, the entirety of my existence and started thinking about what this would look like when I’m gone.  What people would think of me based on what they’re seeing, what I leave behind.  I had a sense of melancholy with some of the last dregs of remaining turmoil from work, and I knew I was letting that cloud my thoughts, but this question about being happy with my life, specifically the life I made, hit me differently.  I questioned where I’d put my energy and if this was all how I envisioned things.  I knew the answer was no.  I felt a different kind of sadness come over me—like, we are responsible for our happiness and our decisions and I’m at the point in my life where certain options aren’t available anymore so why would I spend more time in an environment where I’m not happy?  Especially when I have so much around me that I’ve worked for, I have so much to show for what I’ve done, I have so much that shows me.  But is it showing who I want to be?  Who I really am?  That became part of this question as well.  I wrote the following piece thinking of these questions.

So, Am I happy with the life I’ve made?  Because all of these things around me, all of the things I do is a result of what I’ve chosen—this is all me, including how I feel about it.  I’m proud of it.  I’m grateful for it.  But I’m not happy.  I know that’s on me and my choices/thoughts/actions—it’s me who has created all of this, the good and the bad.  I feel like something still is fundamentally off.  Like just not right.  I don’t know if it’s timing—like I’m rushing things or if I’m behind.  Or is it an alignment thing?  Like I’m not WHERE I belong?  Maybe both.  But what I do on a daily basis isn’t bringing me joy.  That could be anxiety/depression/negativity bias—I know I’m trained to see the bad first.  And the challenges feel like a wasted effort because it’s like I’m fighting for something I don’t even want—I don’t know what I want.  My energy is ALWAYS divided and unfocused and I’m never settled, never rooted in who I am.  Why am I fighting for what I really don’t want?  Because I’m used to fighting?  My mind and body know little else.  I knew transition to a new life would be tough.  It would mean the death of what I knew/who  I was. I have to welcome the new and I get scared to say goodbye—that means it’s really over, admitting it didn’t turn out or that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  The chance to do certain things is gone and I need to make peace with what is.  Focus on the creation of the new. 

There ARE pieces that will fall away, we have no control over it and some things that fall away will be things we want to keep.  We will have to bury that too.  I have known that, I thought I did. But as things change, losing family, losing my mind a bit, there are pieces I held onto (am holding?) like a toddler afraid of wading in the water, holding their mother’s hand.  Some of those pieces are the pieces of dreams I had that will never be.  So it’s burying both what was and what will never be and we can be equally attached to both.  I was buried a long time ago thinking I’d be in bloom, and I am, but I also cut some of those blooms and buds ending some things before they could even grow.  So I guess with the things I wrote here, the thoughts, I have no choice but to surrender.  Which hits my faith.  Can I trust even if the worst happens that there IS a reason? Can I trust that I will find my way to the life I’m supposed to?  Can I trust that letting go is the right thing? That what I love, what is meant for me will find me?  Can I accept that I’m NOT a bad person in spite of mistakes?  Will I be carried through?  Will I receive the guidance I need?  Will I be strong enough to see it through? Will I find me?

I can’t carry what no longer works.  No matter how much I love it or thought I wanted it.  I have to admit there is no other way to solve this, to happiness, to help, to ME, other than to surrender all of it. Let go.  See the big picture and see that the best for all, to do the right thing, it’s ok to put myself first and to celebrate me.  I no longer want to confuse appreciation and gratitude with settling.  I thought I had to accept everything I got in my life from other people’s junk to their clothes, to the things that no longer fit in their lives but I didn’t want to erase the possibility it might work in mine as well.  I wanted to be grateful for every opportunity even if it wasn’t something that quite fit me.  I said yes to things I shouldn’t have and I tried to be everything.  I forced broken things to linger long past the time they wanted to lay down and be done.  I kept the things wanting to live at bay, allowing more time for those last dregs of hope to take root.  And now, there is this mish mash of things that have nothing to do with who I am, little pieces of all I tried to build that never really took off—and I’m grateful for it.  But I know in order to find happiness, it’s time to release it and say yes to what actually makes me happy.