“When you tell stories, you become Gods,” Chris Pike.  There has always been something magical about the written word for me.  I have always felt at home amongst books, amongst the stories people shared.  I truthfully couldn’t explain why it felt that way but I was always enthralled and captured by the intricacy of stories.  I loved hearing about people’s lives and understanding what makes people tick.  And when I heard this quote, I suddenly understood what it was: there is power in the word, we are the creators of our lives and our stories.  We are the ones who direct the course of the story and in the world of the written word, absolutely anything is possible. 

Whether fiction or the story of our grandfathers, the written word is a powerful thing.  The pen is mightier than the sword is how that goes.  Look, I don’t claim to want to be a God, not by a long shot.  But the quote conveys the sacredness of telling a story.  Story invokes emotion like no other thing in the world.  There is an intense power, an intense connection that is formed when we share story.  I adore being transported to different worlds, I love seeing the technique of putting words together to create a shared experience and I also love how our experiences may impact how we interpret story. 

We can’t ever let the art of the story fade nor can we let the story be altered for our benefit.  Sure we can change the story anytime, we can change the trajectory of the tale to make ourselves the hero, the victim, or any other part in our story.  But what we have to remember is what I said above which is that there is power in words.  Choose the words and thoughts carefully.  Look at how we describe ourselves, our lives, and the characters that are with us.  Choose the roles we play and how we operate.  Choose the story we tell carefully because one day that story is all that will be left.

“The top 5 regrets of the dying: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself; I wish I hadn’t worked so hard, had the courage to express feelings, I wish I had stayed in touch with friends, I wish I had let myself be happier,”  Bronnie Ware.  When we look back on our lives we see how it all fit together.  We know how we got from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.  We see the losses and wins.  We see the struggles and triumphs.  We see the moments we got smacked upside the head with a 2×4 or wish we had been.  By the time we realize it’s over, it’s too late to go back and do any of those things listed as a regret.  The question is how do we ensure that we live a life without that regret?  We make sure we LIVE with no regrets.  Sure, it’s easier said than done.  Programming is programming and it runs deep.  It is locked in the cadence of our breath, our walk, what we share with people.  We are programmed down to the DNA for what we do and do not like and what we will and will not do along with our beliefs.  The purpose of understanding life, specifically the regrets at end of life, is that we are meant to figure out how not to be that way IN life.  We are meant to figure out the way to live while we are here.

All the moments we hold ourselves back for one reason or another shape the very mold of our minds which creates the reality we live in.  We can’t go back so why do we insist upon living the highlight reel over and over again?  Looking at all the beautiful gifts this world has to offer, why would we waste a second fixating on the garbage?  Pick it up and move on.  Again, I know this is easier said than done—it takes practice.  And sometimes that programming is still so deep we find ourselves behaving with old habits without even being cognizant of it.  Presence is a tough when the brain fights reality.  Yet the brain is our greatest ally if we let it be.  If we spend some time with it with deliberate intention, se start to reform the patterns we’ve developed over the years.  The reshaping feels uncomfortable and uncertain at times.  I’ve even fallen victim to the feeling that alignment is “too easy” and that it doesn’t feel right when things flow.  We aren’t used to calm in our minds or bodies because we’re trained to constantly go/be/do something creating tangible results to prove our worth.  We don’t get a lot of time here in the grand scheme of things—we are literally a blip on the radar of time.  That doesn’t mean we are insignificant.  On the contrary, sometimes those with a short presence have the greatest impact.

The cliché that you don’t know what you got until it’s gone hits home at the moment—or at least it resonates for this piece.  Nonetheless, it’s true.  We spend our days wishing for the next thing, the better thing, the newest thing instead of resting in the presence of appreciation for what we have.  This life is a gift and the fact that we have a say in what we do with our lives is incredibly rare.  We get to play choose your own adventure on the grandest scale and there are a lot of possibilities.  Take the chance because it’s often said we regret what we don’t do, not what we did.  If we reach the end of our days wishing we had done something else, lived a different way, then we have been living a half-life.  We will lever know what that other potential could have been, but the taste of regret is bitter.  Or perhaps it’s because we know what could have been that it tastes sour. All we give up in the name of something else, all the work we do for the fleeting bit of attention, all the energy wasted on peacocking the lives we’ve created but don’t live masks the truth: we know who we are and we know we can’t keep doing this.  We just don’t know hat else to do.  So m answer is this: DO SOMETHING.  Pick something, any of the dreams racing through your mind while you sit at work wishing to be anywhere else.  Then do something with it.  If it doesn’t work, who cares?  If you succeed, who cares?  We are just a moment in time but the point is that it is OUR moment.  So live without regret, live fully, live with love so when our time comes, we can approach it with a smile and peace of mind that we can sleep having lived a full life.

Today I am grateful for inclusion.  I’m talking about the kind of inclusion that doesn’t revolve around any type of title or belief or appearance or stigma.  This is the kind of inclusion where there are no criteria whatsoever to acceptance—you just ARE. There is no greater feeling than being understood and being able to explore all facets of personality deeply and find connection.  But there are some people in our lives, perhaps we’ve crossed paths before earlier in life, who don’t need any explanation of who we are or what we are—that doesn’t matter.  We could have known versions of each other from long ago and there is no gap in time.  There is no explanation needed about where we are now, the door is just quite literally open.  There is no greater feeling than not having to say a word because it isn’t about who is doing what, it’s about BEING present and aware and simply enjoying the moment.  That type of inclusion is a gift and something I strive to offer people.  If the door is open there are no expectations or qualifications—I’m doing it to learn about you, to understand you because there is no point in learning another fake version of someone.  We don’t need to add names to our lists, we need to add quality to the relationships we have and we do that by simply creating space.  I know it feels wonderful to be on either side of it—to have your intricacies welcomed and to be the one to make people feel welcomed. 

Today I am grateful for creativity. Oh did I open up a can of worms for my brain.  A few weeks ago my sister sent me some pictures from a night she learned how to make wreaths. I fell in love with what she made and it making wreaths was something that had been on my mind for a while but nothing I ever pursued.  When she sent that picture and I told her it was something I would love to do, she invited me to come with her.  I fell in love with it.  This is a side of my creativity I don’t often see because I’m working on so many other things AND I know my personality that once I start something like that it will very easily snowball into something bigger.  Regardless, I agreed to go because I really wanted to learn.  I felt parts of my brain awaken and it was such a needed reminder that we need to spend some time doing things just because we like to do it.  We need to feel our way to a connection with something that we don’t often do but still speaks to us.  There is beauty everywhere and we need to find ways to connect with it as often as possible.  I am so grateful she invited me because of what I got to learn.  Taking a craft and forming a connection is so important because it’s a connection to ourselves through creativity as well as other people and their ideas.  Any way to keep the brain going is key and it opens up new areas to ourselves.  

Today I am grateful for connection.  This is sensitive at the moment because this connection came from totally different places.  As a kid I often hung around my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin.  I met her sister in law (my uncle’s sister) many times as a kid but we never spent a ton of time together.  My Aunt passed about a year ago and my sister spent a lot of time working with her and it developed into a relationship built on old connection as well as the trauma of losing our Aunt.  We learned to make the wreaths mentioned above from her.  It was a beautiful reminder that, while we lost some family, we still have family in unexpected places.  Not only were we dealing with losing an Aunt, she was dealing with losing a sister in law.  The family’s are intertwined and that connection is still there in spite of the loss.  It was wonderful to be able to keep the connection alive while not fixating on the sad parts, to know that we could still find ways to connect and keep traditions alive even if a person was missing from the table.  There are seats we will never be able to fill, pieces of our hearts that feel empty, but there are ways to carry forward and remember the moments and people that matter.  That is how we keep people alive. 

Today I am grateful for connection.  I’m repeating this one because it is connection in a different context.  Relationships become contentious when we aren’t fully honest or open with our communication, that includes the things we hold back about.  Hearing my partner’s honest opinion and concerns (something I’ve asked for for a long time) has been a game changer.  I knew it would be and I am so happy that we’ve gotten to the point where we understand that the next evolution in our relationship is about that type of honesty and open communication.  We recognize what we need and what we want and we have learned how to share that with each other in a new way.  I don’t need to be overbearing or belabor the point and he doesn’t need to keep everything inside.  There is a middle ground and sharing those feelings never should make the other person mad—it’s a way to find out more about who the person is inside.  I’ve been with my husband for 24 years total and we’ve had amazing conversation and communication along the way but there is something so valuable about introducing new facets of our personalities to each other after this much time. There is always something to learn about ourselves and the people around us and it is that flexibility and creativity and understanding of each other that makes for a healthy relationship.  Connection and understanding are key.

Today I am grateful for progress.  I’ve had to refocus a lot of my projects lately.  I tend to start things and get scattered in the wind with what I want to do or I pivot a project and it doesn’t quite work out so I let it sit.  But I’ve gotten better about that over the last few months.  The things I want to do won’t do themselves and taking steps forward has been a solid reminder that the things I was overwhelmed with and the things I wanted to do but felt I couldn’t are achieved by taking a step.  Take one small action in the right direction and it is either one step closer or it is the momentum we needed to get things done.  Sometimes it’s both.  We move forward one step at a time and there are moments we have boosts that push us further down the road—but no matter what the key is the same: we have to put one foot in front of the other and take action.  Change isn’t easy and it doesn’t always look how we thought it would.  So staying the course and making those little baby steps eventually leads to great strides. Eventually we turn around and we don’t see the starting line anymore, we’ve moved beyond what was holding us back and the only way through is forward.  So keep going.  Make progress no matter how small.  And always remember that we will get where we need to be through those small actions every day. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Remember how important things seem at the time?  And we laugh about it now?  Can’t we imagine that it could apply to everything else as well?” Jack Lawrence. Following up on yesterday’s piece and how we build things up in our minds, this hits the nail on the head.  Whether it’s fear or the build up, like I said yesterday, we find that most of what we have on our minds isn’t that important in the long run.  Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time in fear and regret, I will 100% attest it’s a waste of time.  I remember and replay the incidents of my early teen years, things that wounded me so deeply at the time and I still feel that impact.  Yet I know every person involved in those stories has moved on and most of that crap is long forgotten.  For me as well—I’ve lived an entire lifetime since then filled with amazing things.  Why in the hell would I choose to stay stuck in the shitty moments that were indeed merely moments?

I can only imagine that we build the importance of specific events in our minds because the human mind is aware of the fact that all we have is now.  Even with the greatest imagination it can be difficult to fully envision  what the world has in store for us long term.  Life throws some curveballs—there is always the next thing.  Everything changes—good or bad, it all changes.  Every moment passes to the next one and we can’t stop it.  So rather than lament it or try to make everything we do perfect, simply LIVE.  Do the things we want to do and relish in life while we have the opportunity.  In the end we see it’s not that big of a deal and understand that we’d rather take the chance than not.  We can’t go back, we can only move forward and that doesn’t just apply to the moments that stand out to us—that is life. 

“Remember life is happening right now and most of what we do or what we’re scared of is just bullshit,” Jack Lawrence.  The fear is bullshit.  It’s that simple: what the mind tells us to be afraid of outside of legitimate life and death situations is only in our minds.  Most of what we’re afraid of is entirely in our heads and if our minds can’t tell the difference between thought and reality, then we have made ourselves captive to imagination rather than allowing that imagination to live and breathe with something far better than we could even imagine.  Fear keeps us small.  Remember that in the long run, most of what we do really doesn’t matter.  This is a giant playground that we are meant to figure out how the pieces work and what they can do. 

The truth is we are looking for meaning, both immediately and long term.  What we often forget is that the meaning of life is to live it. Legacy is a beautiful thing, we learn from history, we have that long lasting effect on the Earth. Sometimes that legacy and meaning comes in the present and we have to remember that we are learning new rules and ways to do things that teach those after us.  Sure it’s nice to sit in the shade of the trees we plant but it may very well be the case that the fruits of our labor feed those who come later.  And that’s ok because our presence is what fuels the now and creates that ripple effect.  Fear is imagined just as much as the good is.  What we focus on is what appears so why not choose the good?

Life comes with no guarantees of any kind.  We aren’t promised anything up to and including our purpose.  Just because we have a birthright doesn’t mean we fulfill it.  The only way that happens is with attention and intention.  We have now, that truly is it because the only guarantee is that we don’t know everything that’s coming and we certainly don’t know how our stories end.  Wasting time afraid of anything cheats us and the future of anything good that comes from taking the chance now.  Fear is in the mind.  It’s all in our minds so choose our focus wisely.  Choose awareness now.  We may have to climb some hills and we may have some losses along the way, but what we gain from action and learning is invaluable.  The risk is work the experience.        

While lunching with some friends this past weekend, one of them made a comment to the effect they don’t spend time with people who make them uncomfortable.  She explained the course of her week and how busy it was which left her with Saturdays.  “Saturdays are precious to me,” she said, “I won’t spend time with someone who makes me uncomfortable.”  I loved it when she said it because it was a reminder of the choice on how we spend our energy.  We have the choice in what we do and who we allow into our live.  We have a say in who influences our energy and that means we have a say in who we allow in our sphere.  How we spend our time is completely within our control.  When we know what matters to us it makes those choices easy.  We don’t bother with what doesn’t serve.

There was a time I thought that was a cold way to live because it seemed too cut throat.  I wanted to be liked and I figured people wanted to be liked as well so I left a part of myself open even when I knew I shouldn’t have.  In those moments I felt incredibly raw because people weren’t as open with me, they weren’t as careful with me as I was with them.  And that made me need to shift how I saw it.  Being selective isn’t cold—it’s necessary.  That doesn’t mean we need to build walls, it just means we need to be careful with our energy.  So when we see time as precious, our energy is precious as well.  When we start making better choices about our use of time, it becomes easier and easier to recognize what we are willing to take into our lives—what matters. 

“Freedom doesn’t always feel like freedom.  At first it feels like loss; Is He breaking me or is He breaking me free? What you called a breakdown was God breaking you free from what was breaking you down,”  Jay Douglas.  I feel the breakdown of so many of the systems in my life right now.  It took a long time for it to occur to me that things weren’t working because they weren’t meant to work anymore. We spend a lot of time fighting things that God has a different plan for.  The reality is it doesn’t just feel like loss—it IS a loss.  It’s a loss of what we used to know and a loss of the preparation we’ve had.  It’s a loss of knowing what comes next.  But if it wasn’t meant to be for us then we are putting ourselves through nonsense.  There’s a good chance that we picked up something  that wasn’t even ours in the first place.

Life has weight no matter what you do. Do we carry the burdens of others in solving their problems or doing the work for them?  Do we feel their emotion?  Do we feel the weight of our choice to do something that isn’t quite aligned with who we are or what we want?  Do we feel the weight of choosing ourselves over an old pattern? Make no mistake, there is a certain weight to freedom. It’s the weight of responsibility for ourselves. It’s the weight of our own choices.  While the choice is our own, we do not bear it alone.  I’ve asked WHY billions of times in my life.  I never wanted to admit that sometimes that answer was, “because you keep doing this,”.  We are stubborn creatures and we want things to go a certain way but there is no amount of will that can force something that isn’t meant to be to happen.

IF we feel lost in the midst of a change, even a change we asked for, take heart that there’s a good chance the weight of what is being removed or blocked is lighter than the burden of the experience.  The things we love aren’t always good for us, even the things we’ve cultivated and tended to for years.  Loss sucks no matter how long we’ve had something or how long we’ve worked for something.  I’ve recently had to relinquish a project I’ve worked on for 6 years and it felt like pulling teeth.  I had to come to accept that it was no longer for me and that was no longer part of my story.  The very thing that I equated to my livelihood was the thing that had to go and I had to cut all ties with it.  I had to set the boundary that you couldn’t take something from me and come back to me when you needed something.  It was breaking me down and it was removed from my life and I have to do my part to keep it out.  Freedom is a funny thing.  We all seek it but we don’t necessarily know what to do with it.  So consider carefully that we choose our path but we have to trust what comes our way along with what is taken away.   

“It might take some friends and a warmer shirt, but you don’t get thick skin without getting burnt,” Tyler Joseph.  I shared a bit about what’s happening with some relationships with people I considered friends recently and I want to share this next stage of the evolution in that group.  And this is where I’m at: the burning is done.  There is no more active fire on this situation so it’s a bit less reactive and the wound is no longer spreading.  That’s in large part to the realization that this is just a stage—a matter of building thicker skin.  People will be who they are and it’s on us to believe them when they show us who they are.  I let them in, I shared with them.  And it hurts to be let down in that manner but the beauty of it is that it shows the people who really care.  There’s no acting, there’s no pretending, there’s nothing forced about being a certain way with certain people. There’s freedom in walking away from anything that doesn’t serve but there is a particular feeling of walking away and into what is right.  It suddenly fits and makes sense.  It becomes easy.  I know that at times when it’s easy we tend to not trust it.  We are so used to difficult that we second guess it.  Life has challenges, but it’s never meant to be so hard we can’t move.

The people we invite into our circle matter just as how we do our work matters.  Where we direct our energy matters.  When things get hard, we have to change. We have to shift that focus.  And sometimes the hardest things to do are the things we KNOW we have to do.  We have to let go of the familiar because we know it’s suffocating us and taking away from what matters.  The things we know have become too small for us and that includes the people in our circle.  If that circle isn’t advancing us then we must ask ourselves what it is for.  Above all, healthy relationships don’t burn us.  The people who love us don’t hurt us.  Love doesn’t hurt. It’s perfectly reasonable to walk away from something that hurts.  Every human being goes through some level of learning this lesson, that’s unavoidable.  But as I’m entering a new era in my life, I see that I’m less and less tolerant of it.  I’ve always been fairly intuitive of people and their character and I used to deny it.  I used to talk myself out of what I felt only to be proven right.  I’d tell myself over and over again that I’d trust myself the next time only to fall back into old habits and give someone the benefit of the doubt.  The simple truth is this: we aren’t for everyone and not everyone is our friend. 

Relationships are tricky work and the dynamics change constantly.  Even the strongest of relationships go through trials and changes—that’s how we grow together.  Some relationships grow apart.  Some relationships make us grow up.  Keep the saying about people coming into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime and know that everything has its purpose.  The last couple of years taught me about strength in a way that nearly broke me and I have promised myself that I will never let myself get pushed to that point to learn a lesson again.  It’s only recently that I’ve truly understood the depth of my programming and how damaged I’ve been.  I didn’t know any better until I was given this opportunity.  The things I endured felt like shit and I knew they were wrong.  I knew I was being used every time it happened and through some sick sense of self-worth I felt like I deserved it and I never felt strong enough to stand up to it effectively without losing my cool.  Now that I’ve gotten a taste of genuine appreciation and been given the chance to live a life conducive with what I wanted, I don’t understand HOW I put up with it that long.  I can only believe it was my training.  I’m proud I broke free of that pattern and have learned that I don’t need to be chocolate and have everyone love me.  I am me and the right people will accept that—so I will too.  Thick skin to deflect the crap, open heart to learn, and intuition to know the truth.  That’s how we put the fire out.

“Whatever you’re feeling it will eventually pass.  You won’t be sad forever.  At some point you will feel happy again.  You won’t feel anxious forever.  In time you will feel calm again. You don’t have to fight your feelings or feel guilty for having them.  You just have to accept them and be good to yourself while you ride this out.  Resisting your emotions and shaming yourself will only cause you more pain and you don’t deserve that.  You deserve your own love, acceptance and compassion,”  Lori Deschene.  One of the first steps toward finding our purpose is the complete acceptance of who we are.  Every single one of us is flawed so I set a reminder here that perfection was never and will never be the goal. We will feel it all with the experiences we have, and as I wrote about a few weeks ago, going through it is simply part of the process.  I never said it felt good all the time.  Self-discovery/acceptance is raw and painful.  But it’s also cathartic and healing and transformative. 

We are allowed to feel what we feel but we are not meant to stay that way.  Some of us were taught that we were burdens, that our feelings were too big, that we were irrational for feeling what we did or that we couldn’t trust what we knew in our bodies.  So we need to understand what it is to love ourselves and fill in those gaps we all have.  We have to understand that those gaps aren’t a bad thing—the human experience is varied and deep and beautiful in all it brings.  We have to take it all in so if there is something we perceive as a “bad” thing, we have to ask if there’s a chance to reframe that.  That’s where the ticket is: the reframing. That is where the mind is the most powerful.  For every negative, we can create a positive.  It won’t last forever because this life isn’t forever.  We are here as part of this grand experiment we really don’t know the purpose of so we can stop taking things so seriously.  Have some faith in ourselves and enjoy.  This is a moment—life is one grand moment.  Relish it, appreciate it, love it.  Don’t take it for granted and don’t waste it getting stuck in something that won’t matter in the end.  It’ will all be ok.  It always is.

Today I am grateful for connection.  I tend to fall into distraction a lot and when my mind starts getting carried away, it’s easy to fall into my old habits.  I know I’m not alone when I say that I have the best intentions to follow through on my plans and to stick with them yet I get distracted and don’t always follow through.  One area that tends to get neglected is my relationship with my family and another is my home.  I have so many projects going on because I’m still an over-committer, that I still fall into the habit of checking things off the list rather than focusing on the purpose behind them. It’s not that I take them (my family or my home) for granted, it’s just that sometimes it’s easy to push things off until later. Doing that makes some of the easier tasks overwhelming because what would have taken a few minutes out of my day no takes longer because more of the same task has built up.  But what I’ve found is taking the time to connect, listen, be present, and really hear what the other person is saying creates more value than ignoring and pushing past anything. Hearing others and understanding is key.  We all need that reminder every now and then.

Today I am grateful for surrender.  My relationship with surrender both as a word and concept is complicated to say the least.  I guess it’s complicated for most people because at our core, the human psyche/ego and survival instinct don’t like being forced to do anything.  The concept of surrender implies a giving up and any of you who’ve read my work over the years knows how much I hate that. I’ve come to realize that a lot of my distaste for the word has to do with the tendencies to not finish things.  I see the projects I’ve started and stopped and the concept of surrender reminds me of the things I’ve wanted and gave up on.  But right now, if this world has shown us anything, it’s that there is very little we can do in the way of preventing circumstances that are simply meant to happen nor can we force something to happen that isn’t meant to be.  People have to learn their own lessons as well and we have little say in swaying someone from their path—it’s their journey.  So surrender can suck, it can leave us feeling helpless.  It can also free us because we can arrive at the understanding that there is no alternative than what’s happening in front of us.  Surrender can take the pressure off.  There is no forcing anymore.  Sure, it means we may have to give something up but it can also be about letting go and clearing the way of what prevented us from getting what we wanted.

Today I am grateful for awakening.  There is a coming to my senses feeling as I type this.  It feels like a film is being removed from my eyes and I’m seeing clearly.  I’ve lived under the impression that we can control anything we want to.  I need to be clear about this: I still fully believe that we can achieve whatever it is that we want but I want to clarify that we can achieve that which is meant to be.  We need to have some purpose/skin in the game and those things we’re doing just to check off our list won’t hold the same meaning as something we are meant to do.  We aren’t meant to control everything and we aren’t meant to be everything, we aren’t meant to do everything.  The world is open to us and we all have options and we have the prerogative to change our minds and pursue other things.  That means we also have the opportunity to see things as they are and see the reality before us.  It really is a bit like The Matrix where we’ve been living in a simulation building these lives when the reality is we are functioning as a source for something greater.  But even serving as a source, we aren’t meant to be blind.  We are meant to work in conjunction WITH that source.  We are meant to be aware and to be aware is to be awake and to live with intent.  It feels raw at first, like every nerve is exposed, but that’s how we know we are seeing what’s real.

Today I am grateful for authenticity.  A continuation of all the pieces of today’s gratitude is authenticity.  Through connection, awakening, and surrender, we find authenticity and it is in authenticity that we find connection, awakening, and surrender.  The world is simultaneously far less and far more complicated than we make it.  Perhaps not complicated but intricate.  Things get really simple when we live our truth and when we accept ourselves and others.  That acceptance is one of the hardest things to do because we are constantly told to be something, anything different than what we are. We were made to be who we are, not who others tell us to be, not who others want us to be. The path of free will is available to us all and that means we can choose the versions others lay out for us or we can stick to our own destined path.  It also means that sometimes we have to watch people choose things we wouldn’t.  All we can hope for is that we wake to find what is right for us.

Today I am grateful for the reminder to love.  No matter what happens in this world, all we have to do is operate in love.  Believe in love.  It can be painful to watch someone go down a path you know is hurting them but knowing we all awaken in our own time, knowing we have free will, we must also know that the same applies to those we love.  Love is a presence that says, “I’m here.  We don’t have to do anything, but I can sit in this mess with you.  I can sit in joy with you.  I can sit in the chaos or calm.  And I can let you sit alone when you need it.”  The idea of being alone has scared me for years so I scrambled to keep those I love near, to have them behave in ways I thought were safe.  But their safety wasn’t always my responsibility and some people aren’t meant for safe—they are meant to care for themselves and they push the bounds of their reality.  Sometimes that care can turn to suffocation if we don’t relax the grip a bit.  Love what we have and enjoy it while it’s here.  We will never be this young or old again, all we have is now, so love.  Love big.  Love plainly.  Love freely.  Love life enough to connect to that source and trust we cross paths for a reason.  Breathe. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.