Today I am grateful for vulnerability.  I share a ton here so it is no mystery that I often jump into my own vulnerability.  I believe we need to get their so we can strip away all the noise and distraction of this world and really see who we are.  I fully appreciate that vulnerability isn’t easy for everyone.  It takes a lot of honesty and acceptance and we have to remove some emotion out of it so we can see the truth of the situation rather than just how we feel about it.  And expressing that feeling is also a vulnerable thing.  We feel risking the truth leaves us exposed and we can be hurt.  That may be true: showing that side of ourselves can hurt.  But finally hearing the truth and seeing how someone really feels breaks through so many barriers and we create understanding.  Humans are weird and complex creatures where we create these stories in our heads about how people feel about us and when they think/feel etc.  If we don’t get information or input to the contrary then we believe those stories.  I am so happy that I finally did get additional information from someone close to me that supported how they said they felt instead of what they’ve shown.  They were too scared to show the truth because they thought it would hurt them.  Now that I know that, I personally feel more trust toward that individual and it’s an amazing feeling. 

Today I am grateful for standing up for myself.  Oh, I could write pages and pages on this one based on events over the last few months.  I took a huge risk this year and completely turned my life upside down because I knew I wasn’t getting what I needed professionally or in my personal relationships.  I wasn’t the person I wanted to be and I was tired of wearing different masks to make others happy/comfortable in the hopes they would accept me.  People wanted my help and input and I was overly available and the pattern is that very few were there in return.  They expected me to expend my energy solving their problems but weren’t willing to do the work and they certainly didn’t want to help me.  In making those changes and finding alignment with things I actually liked, getting in touch with the real me, expressing the real me, I found my authentic voice.  Things I would have accepted before were off the table and rather than try to make my concerns palatable or not that big of a deal, I voiced what was wrong.  There were some who completely jumped ship at that point and I realized I didn’t care that they did because they were clearly not interested in being part of my authentic life—they wanted me to play a role for them and when that didn’t fit any longer, they had no need for me.  I continued to fight for what was right and press the issue when it came to a home project we’ve been struggling with.  Normally I would be afraid to go up against someone like this but I have continued to have the discussion, realizing that it doesn’t matter if they like me or think I’m easy to get along with—they need to do the right thing.  So I am grateful that I found enough worth in myself to use the same energy I would use to defend others to do the same for myself. 

Today I am grateful for stubbornness of the universe.  I have fought and screamed for years that I wanted things to be a certain way because I knew what was right—that we were all accountable and needed to do the right thing. I insisted on moving quickly because I knew what I needed and wanted and I was always pissed at anyone who got in my way or slowed me down.  The entire time, the universe has been finding ways to slow me down and I never understood the reason.  If I’m entirely honest, the universe is still sending me the message because I’m equally as stubborn and still see no point in waiting for what’s right…I digress.  But I am grateful the universe has continued to send me this message regardless of my frustration and anger about it because I think I finally understood something: the concept of time that I’m working with is my own—the timeline I’ve created in my own head is just that: in my own head.  I am the one who chose to pull myself in all these directions, I accepted all these projects and ideas, I am the one who put them all forward at the same time because I got so afraid of running out of time to do what I wanted that I thought I had to do it all at once.  But the universe persisted and kept telling me to slow down, to take things one at a time and trust that all will unfold in its own course.  That I could trust and allow and learn to be present.  In all that rushing and being stopped, the universe was trying to tell me I have all the time in the world and it’s ok to just breathe sometimes.  We can’t control the chaos but we can control how we respond to it.  Even if we are being delayed unnecessarily, we can trust all is as it should be and we have to understand that we don’t have to do as much as we think we do.  We have a lot of time as long as we are aligned.    

Today I am grateful for releasing.  My home is still in sheer chaos as we are finishing some renovations and it has been driving me insane.  Things have been torn up since February and I am getting desperate to finish things up because I want to move forward and there are things I literally can’t do with the house in this condition.  But I am grateful for releasing control and the unnecessary crap around the house.  We accumulate and accumulate and I can’t tell you how much stuff I have found that I can donate and remove from my house.  I don’t need to create space for things that I don’t even use, for things that no longer serve a purpose in my life but may be of use to others.  So I’m looking at this chaos and thinking that perhaps it’s for a reason.  Perhaps it’s to show me what’s really important and to learn how to let go of the rest.  Life is about letting go and I don’t think I ever understood how much we need to let go of.

Today I am grateful for the small moments.  Life is so fleeting that we really do need to learn presence and joy in the little things. I appreciate every small gesture, every small moment, every smile, every laugh, every cuddle, every discussion we have.  I spend so much time trying to avoid the silence because my  mind is CONSTANTLY moving and I feel like I need to prove myself and that I always need to be DOING to earn my existence so to speak.  It also frustrates the hell out of me thinking that all this time is misspent and I will expend energy with no result.  So the more I am present with the small things and take the time to appreciate what life is—the life in the every day moments—the more life we have.  It’s ironic that the faster we go and the more we try to cram in the less time we have.  Suddenly when we slow down, we have all the time in the world.  I don’t need to jam a million things into my days to make them worthy.  It’s ok to get done what gets done.  It’s ok to spend a day at the zoo or an evening bowling—and we don’t have to fit it all in on one day.  We don’t have to relegate fun to specific moments where we shove it all in our two weeks off a year.  The every day is where it’s at, where it matters. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.