I’ve never understood being told to stay out of situations that have universal implications.  I’m sensitive to this only because I believe communication is key.  I don’t understand being told I don’t understand when the discussion is about a topic that is NOT unique to a specific group.  When it comes to issues that impact women, those are women’s issues—that is the point of equality.  The point of equality is that we all experience the same rewards for the same effort or we are all impacted similarly so one group isn’t disparaged against.  When something happens on a public platform that changes the dynamic.  I will fully own that there are particulars in every case that don’t apply to everyone so the conversation does change a bit.  That is true of most things.  I will also fully own that not everyone’s experiences will allow for each individual to interpret things the same way.  That is just life.  But if we are looking for a way to encourage like-mindedness and inclusivity, something that happens in a public forum is not one groups to own.

Sometimes, as hard as it is to hear no matter what side we fall on, we have to turn down our sensitivity to other people speaking their opinions.  I can respect that some people haven’t had the same opportunities for expression and they need to be part of the conversation, but I will not support the idea that a witness to an event has no say in the matter.  That simply isn’t true.  Is one opinion valued over another—that’s a tricky area.  Yes, there are some areas where experts need to weigh in or someone with more experience needs to take the wheel.  But we don’t LEARN if we don’t have the conversation, and making someone feel like they aren’t entitled to an opinion that may elicit a different thought pattern is irresponsible and exclusive.

See, that is the real truth of the matter: we are too exclusive in our lives.  Shit, I dwindled myself down to a party of one at times because I didn’t feel anyone knew what I was going through.  Holding a razor blade to my wrist, or downing a bottle of pills—that’s not a unique experience but it isn’t common.  But we all know about loss and that was underlying the action.  We all know about wanting to end the pain we feel, we just seek different ways to numb it.  We know these things yet we judge each other and we hold each other up to ridiculous standards and THAT is what needs to stop.  In order for that to stop we have to stop cutting each other out of the conversation.  We don’t need to take everyone’s information to heart, we don’t need to exercise or act on it, but EVERYONE has the right to be heard. Contrary to what you believe, not everyone is seeking to control the conversation, they are trying to add to it.  I will acknowledge there is a time and a place and an appropriate means to insert said opinion.  But if something occurs in a public forum, it’s fair game.  No one gets to control that.

Until we are able to eliminate exclusivity and sensitivity and learn to actually receive information, process it, and respond (not react), then this will happen.  This is also why it’s so important to own our behavior.  This is why we need to take responsibility for who we are and what we consume.  We need to align with what our values are and make sure we are acting from that.  That we are speaking from there.  And that we are always honest.  Not everything is about us, no.  But we have to be open enough to share our experiences to learn from them and create a better experience for the next time around.  Let’s learn to communicate rather than cut people out.  Let’s learn to hear and find commonality rather than judge.  Let’s learn to embrace the idea that there is room for everyone.  If you want change, the conversation needs to include everyone.  It’s not about reciprocating privilege, it’s about leveling the playing field and cutting people out will not do that. So listen.  Invite.  Learn.  You never know what comes next.

The other day I had a complete melt down.  It was before my birthday and I was questioning even existing and feeling like all sorts of crap about myself.  I literally didn’t think I could last another second—totally dramatic, I know, but the depression runs deep some days.  Regardless, I had this meltdown in front of my kid and after the storm passed, I really thought about it.  I have no clue how to have fun.  I’ve born the weight of the heavy stuff and the responsibility in life since I was 11.  Every time I tried to have fun as a kid I was told to be quite or calm down, that I was too loud and too  much.  I was called a bimbo.  Any outlet I had for emotional release was looked down on so in internalized a lot.  In the midst of that revelation, I realized that I do the same thing to my kid.  I always try to keep him in line, even in instances when he doesn’t really need to be kept in check.  I felt like I was crushing him the same way I was crushed as a kid. 

I pulled him in my lap and I apologized profusely to him.  I told him some of this story, explaining that mommy was always told to be quiet when she was little but her heart used to beat so loudly she wanted to do everything.  It was so loud  and eventually she was told to be quiet so often that her heart got quieter.  And quieter.  And eventually it was so quiet that mommy couldn’t hear it anymore.  Now mommy doesn’t know how to hear it all the time even though she is trying to listen more.  Her heart is still really quiet and she talks more through feelings now.  But it’s still hard to hear.  And after doing it for so long sometimes it’s easy to fall into the same habits.

I don’t ever want my kid to feel like he can’t listen to himself.  I don’t want him to develop the habit of mistrusting himself because he isn’t behaving how we are training him to.  And honestly, I don’t want to continue training him.  He’s a human being with feelings and thoughts of his own and he is so smart that he is acutely aware of what that means.  He just happens to also be five years old and still learning to control all of that.  I am working on hearing my own heart, but what helps me is listening to his and witnessing him follow his own intuition and guidance. 

So this is for all of us who have turned down the volume on our own hearts because of what we were told to do.  For those of us who were always told to be quiet or to settle down or to follow the same course as everyone else.  This is also for the child in each of us who is still trying to play with us, who is encouraging us to remember who we are.  To the child in us who sticks out their tongue when we say we can’t play because we have things to do. To the child in me who still needs to be heard and allowed to be wild and expressive.  To my child, who is all of those things. 

I just want to follow up yesterday’s post and talk about the importance of gratitude.  I know first hand how difficult it is to feel positive when your brain doesn’t allow it.  I know that voice inside that says it’s helpful when all it’s doing is planting seeds of pain and doubt and lies about who we are.  It tells us we aren’t worth anything, it tells us that the world would be better off without us.  That voice is so loud sometimes and it seems to find all of the “evidence” it needs to corroborate every shitty thing we say or feel about ourselves. 

Gratitude is that spark inside of us that won’t go out.  It reminds us that there is a reason for everything.  It connects us to the spiritual and universal truth that the mind lies and that we all have a purpose.  Keeping in touch with that place that says, “Thank you for this,” gives us hope.  And hope is such a cliché word at times.  I mean, there is absolute devastation going on in the world every day and we sit here and hope for some thing or another while others hope to survive.  But on some level that is the truth.  That is the point of gratitude: there is always something to be grateful for.

I genuinely hope there comes a day where we don’t have to be grateful for simply surviving. I mean, hell that’s a step for now because if you can be grateful you’re alive then you can find a purpose.  But I want people to really connect and level up.  We are meant to enjoy this life.  We’ve been given the ultimate gift in this universe: we have the ultimate playground.  We can change and create and make whatever we want.  I mean, we aren’t free from the consequences of that and there is always room for improvement, but we have every opportunity to make things what we want and we can make them good for everyone.  We have a real chance to come together and create a good thing for everyone.

Today is my birthday and I’ve been reflecting a lot about the last year lately.  Last year on my birthday, I lost my second child.  Nothing about any of my pregnancies was easy, but I never expected to feel as I did on that day.  I had endured two months of constant bleeding and a surgery to stop it, non-stop vomiting and nausea, infusions, and the baby was still having issues. There was no way to survive it—potentially for either of us.  So my birthday came and my doctor gave me the news that there was nothing else we could do and we couldn’t wait any longer and this was not viable.  The guilt felt like an elephant on my chest.  I felt even more guilty as the relief was immediate—as soon as I woke up, I could eat again.  I felt alive again.  I had color in me again.  As I lost my child, a new path was born.  I wouldn’t be birthing a physical being, but I could birth a new way of living.  And that guilt was heavier still because the life I was supposed to bring into the world would not be coming.

I made a choice after that to dedicate myself to my writing and creating a new life for myself and my family.  I knew I was meant to bring some creation to life, I’ve felt it in me my whole life.  At my lowest, when I couldn’t even play with my kid, I was still able to write.  There was so much to get out, so much feeling and emotion in a constant swirl, that I just needed to share.  That is what had been brewing inside of me my entire life.  If I couldn’t make myself feel good, maybe I could help others to feel good.  Maybe I could give them some of the encouragement I needed.  I’m not perfect by any means, I’ve screwed up a ton and I felt that the world needed a dose of humanity on the realist level.  So I’ve done that.  I’ve published hundreds of posts and I’ve been working on networking to spread the message further.

So this birthday is very different.  I’ve been sad since January with the revelation of how my siblings view me.  With the revelation that we are essentially alone.  I’ve been sad a lot lately because we’ve been approaching this anniversary and because the things I struck out to do haven’t come to full fruition yet.  I’m proud of what I’ve done, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I was also disappointed—things just don’t feel quite right.  Over the last year, I’ve shared so many things.  I’ve made a ton of decisions and I’ve been given opportunities I didn’t think I would have.  I’ve gotten closer to learning who I am and I am not the person I was a year ago.  The irony is that, on some level, I know I’m the same, but I don’t feel like who I was. I still feel the need to be validated and appreciated and to feel like I’m wanted—but I can say that’s what I want now. I’m getting to the point, I promise.

In spite of all of this, I AM grateful.  We are given chances everyday when we wake up, and I’m working my hardest to get through.  But I want to do more than get through—I want to love my life.  I don’t believe that we are meant to be here to endure misery and simply survive.  I don’t believe we are meant to carry the weight of the world and then die.    I’ve been dealing with my trauma rather than addressing it and I think the connection I’ve been looking for needed to be internalized rather than sought elsewhere.  I needed to find me again.  I didn’t realize how hard it is to pivot at times.  Ironically, in the moment it feels right and you think you’re on the right rack—or that you’re fine.  And then, like a silent mist, it starts settling on you and you see you’re not.  Again, I’m still grateful because I know there is always the opportunity to turn it around.              

As I’m writing this a puffy Robin is sitting on the fence outside.  They symbolize a fresh start in life, rejuvenation, a fresh perspective.  So I’m grateful.  I’m grateful that I get to keep going.  That I get to wake up.  That I get to write and be creative.  That I get to play with my kid and spend time with my family.  That I get to support and repay those who helped me get here.  That I get to change things up again and go for what I want.  That I get call the shots.  That I don’t have to be who I was and that I am always a work in progress.  I am grateful to be alive and I know I am, not just because I am sitting here, but because I get to feel the entire range of emotions that I’ve described to you.  I’m grateful that life shows us the way, in its own way in its own time and that it all somehow works out.  I’m grateful to choose again and to share again and to remind us all of that connection in side of us.  I’m grateful to be.  Happy Birthday to me.

“Can you let people be wrong about you?” Brooke Castillo.  Let people think what they want to.  It’s their prerogative.  There is no way that you can control the perception of anyone in this world.  That is based on their experiences and context, so to some, you will be the villain.  To others you will be the hero.  But the reality is, all we have is what we are to ourselves.  How authentically we are who we say we are.  How authentically we honor who we know we are by getting in touch with that person.  How aligned we are with that definition we create.  I know I’ve talked about not putting ourselves in boxes, and I stand by that, but the truth is we have to take some responsibility and pride in defining who we are.  We can create that person and we will be much happier if that person is who we really are over an image.

It’s also a letting go of ego.  I used to snap on a hair trigger if something was off or if someone got critical of a decision I made.  In full transparency, I still do at certain times.  But if we are able to let go of what people think and if we know that we are aligned with who we truly are, then we have done the best we can.  That is all we need.  People will determine what they think on a dime regardless.  They make snap decisions because that’s how the human brain works.  No matter what we do, other people’s perceptions have nothing to do with us. The ability to allow others to go their way is a remarkable talent few have.  It goes against all of our instincts to not defend ourselves. 

There is remarkable freedom in being who we are, however.  More appropriately, there is remarkable freedom in letting go of what we think people think we are.  That’s the irony of this as well: often we behave a certain way because we think that is what people want of us.  We are interpreting our perception of their interpretation.  Do you see how magnificently twisted and complex the brain is?  It is in our release of these ideas that we allow and that is when the magic happens. It isn’t so much about not caring what people think, it’s about not letting our idea of what they think hold us back.  It’s allowing your authentic self to shine through regardless of what you think someone will say.  We create so many stories in a day and nearly none of them come true.  We fatalize most scenarios because we like to think we are on top of it.  It’s all a STORY! 

When we let people be wrong about us, we allow our real self to come out.  We become who we are meant to be.  We release the pressure we feel when we enter a room and have to decide what face to wear that day.  Suddenly we know who we are and it is consistent across the board and the pressure of the story we need to tell goes away because we suddenly ARE that person.  Learning to let go is tricky, I won’t deny that.  But the feeling of being alive in our authentic identity is irreplaceable.  So learn to not carry the weight of someone else’s imagined opinion (or even their real opinion if they express it to you directly) and simply be.  Even if there is negative feedback, let it be.  It’s more important to be aligned with yourself than with the wrong group.  You will find your place as soon as you find yourself.

We don’t live in a society that allows us to go easy.  We are told that we have to hustle and we have to attain and acquire and accomplish 24/7 and when you’ve done enough of that, THEN you can rest.  Then it’s enough and you’ve earned the right to go easy.  We’ve tied our worth to what we can produce and I don’t think we’ve ever really looked at why we still do that in this day and age.  It’s also always stuck me that we have this weird dynamic where we idolize people like Kim K. who do absolutely nothing of legitimate value, yet we put pressure on the single parents who can barely afford to put food on the table to do more.  We have a standard that it’s ok for some people to be innately valuable while others need to earn their worth, and we redefine who is worthy on a daily basis.  And the unfortunate truth is that we are the ones who will have to rewrite what that looks like.

Many people, especially the people pleasers, live under the impression that they even have to earn time with other people.  They feel the compulsive need to find acceptance in nearly everyone they meet, whether that is a trauma response or a different compulsion.  They won’t go easy on themselves because if they make one mistake they fear it means rejection from the whole.  And society feeds into that.  There are people who prey on other people like that.  They use them for their own purposes and let them go. We are trained to do this because we are taught there is more value in things than there is in people.  We’ve created these societal rules that dictate who is worthy based on an image.

We need to remember the universal truth which is we are all inherently valuable and worthy.  We all deserve a fulfilling and purposeful life—not a life of frivolous waste and nonsense, but a life of priority, passion, and purpose.  Just existing allows for that and we get to decide what it looks like.  The idea that we need to earn our stripes so to speak, that we need to earn our way every day while we allow others to be handed their path is where the standard needs to stop.  And that stops with each of us, first individually, then collectively.  The more we set the standard that there is no prerequisite for life, the easier it becomes to express who we are.

Start shifting the mindset from lack and believing you haven’t done enough to acceptance.  Understand that you’ve done your best and start asking yourself questions like, “Have I set realistic goals or standards in the first place?”  If you haven’t then it’s time to re-evaluate.  Then you can move on to other questions like, “Am I really working toward what I want or what I’m told to want?”  And then the real toughies like, “Am I aligned with what I really want?” and “Am I surrounded by people who support me on this journey?”  Not everyone is on your team, that is simply a fact.  Once you have done the inner work and then created a supportive environment, you will create the ease you’ve been looking for.  It will come naturally and you will see it isn’t an earned state: it is a state of being available to all of us.

So be a rebel.  Take the time to be yourself and love yourself and don’t let others tell you what you’re capable of or what you should be doing.  Don’t let others tell you what you’ve earned.  Your capacity to achieve is great but don’t waste it on letting someone else tell you when you’ve done enough or earned enough.  Learn to set the standards for yourself.  Be who you are meant to be.  It IS safe to dip into ease as long as you can shut out the noise from other people questioning you.  The truth is they probably wish they could do the same.  Rewrite the story of your life and be who you are meant to be.  Go easy with abandon and live your life on your terms.    

“Identify what stops you from being your ideal vision of yourself.  This is a core part of personal growth work,” Dr. Zwig.  The part of this work, this journey to finding self that isn’t talked about in the nitty gritty is the underbelly of what you feel when you find things.  You’ve/We’ve become so accustomed to shoving down everything we perceive as “bad” or “shameful” that we think we can ignore it.  Repression of self is the standard and that is why we often feel lost.  We are taught to ignore the things we feel.  We are taught that our sense of self is bad/wrong and that we need to conform to what we are told both to be accepted and to feel normal.  When we build our lives within the parameters set for us, it’s easy to lose sight of who we ARE and that creates anger because there is conflict between what we are expressing and what we really feel.

Humans aren’t designed to control emotion.  We are designed to feel it, express it, reconcile it, and move on.  What we are taught is to grab the emotion we aren’t supposed to feel, repress it, and express a flat façade.  Let’s be clear, I’m not professing that we all need to run around yelling and screaming at each other, or punching someone in the face.  No.  But I am suggesting we stop carrying the weight of what we are feeling by dealing with it in the moment.  Why on earth do we need “coping techniques”?  Why do we need to “release pent up anger”? Such things didn’t exist for a long time.  People duked it out and then had dinner together.  We started feeling like we had to control those emotions when we wanted to manipulate others to get a certain outcome.  Ah.  THAT is a different thing altogether.

We will never be able to identify what stops us from being our ideal selves if we continue to ignore or if we continue to teach that we need to ignore what our very soul is saying.  I have experienced ostracism for expressing the truth.  I have been looked at as a trouble maker for simply finding the middle ground and a solution over a band-aid.  For whatever reason we like to sit in our misery and bring others with us—it’s easier to create a scenario in our heads and bring others to be miserable with us than it is to take a situation as it is and be honest about it.  We are so engrained that honesty is dangerous that we don’t innately feel we can express it.  Why do we ever stop our children from telling the truth?

I’m not naïve, most people think it’s a terrible idea to be 100% honest all the time.  The conflict comes because it’s isolating to be honest but we know we need to express ourselves.  Call me selfish, but I would much rather bear the weight of isolation than not express what I need to (within reason).  For example, there is no reason anyone should have to tolerate blatant demeaning behavior or discriminating behavior anywhere.  NONE.  No one should have to jump through hoops for a peer because of a perception the other person has.  I will not be someone’s punching bag or live under their scrutiny when they have their own job to do.  THAT is something I will confront.  If my neighbor doesn’t like the outfit I’m wearing, I don’t care, that’s like water off a duck’s butt. If you’re taking every single .

None of this may resonate, and that is ok.  There are many things that we can identify that hold us back.  Things from a particular past experience and how we think about it, things like our perception of how people receive us, or just an engrained belief that we can’t do certain things.  In my experience, I’ve found I couldn’t express myself openly and that was one of the first things that held me back.  I hid who I was in order to be accepted and it still didn’t gain me acceptance—it made me a door mat.  As soon as I shifted out of that position, the people who were so happy with me playing their game disappeared.  There was no reciprocity or care for my well-being: if I wasn’t fulfilling their purpose, they had no use for me.  So my foundation consists of respecting and honoring what I’m feeling and expressing myself—even if I have to take time to think about it.  Don’t let your fear of anything hold you back from being who you are.  Get honest with what your soul needs.  Get honest with what you’re feeling and don’t be ashamed of it.  Once you stop hiding, that is when the real you shines.

Let’s talk about honesty for a moment.  SO much of what I’ve shared over the years has been about embracing self and learning self-acceptance.  If we are going to profess accepting others, then we need to learn what that looks and feels like and the way we can do that is by accepting who we are.  I was listening to some music from my high school days and a lyric struck me.  “And you should know that the lies won’t hide your flaws,” Stewart, Humprhey, Weigemoed.  I feel like so often we are told things that are meant to help but can be harmful.  The whole premise of fake it ‘til you make it.  I 100% agree it can give you the confidence to go after something you may not have been comfortable doing before.  But if you are putting yourself in a situation that you’re not comfortable with or that you know isn’t you, then what’s the point? You will never get the results you’re looking for staying in a situation like that.

Staying in a situation that isn’t for you can lead to the belief that you’re not good enough when in reality, you’re a fish trying to fly.  It will never happen.  That has nothing to do with how good you are or the type of person you are, but the fact is a fish will never truly fly.  If you measure yourself in that manner, you will always be less than and never measure up to anything good enough. That requires a depth of insight into who you are and accepting that you’re a fish.  You can be the greatest fish out there and accomplish amazing things, but you can’t change the fact of what you are. 

Radical honesty isn’t about cutting yourself down or feeling bad about what you can’t do. It’s about working with what you have to get to where you want to be.  Using our friendly fish again, they can’t expect to move the same way an animal with legs does.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Putting on fake legs as a fish won’t get you anywhere because you have no context in how to use them.  But you can swim faster than anything else out there.  Don’t view who you are as a flaw.  Embrace and love that person with all of your being and see how much further you can go.

The point of radical honesty is also to create space for other people to do the same and deconstruct ideas of what is right based on what we were told.  We spend a lot of time believing what we are told and working in a framework that was created under different circumstances sometimes centuries ago and then we are told we are bad if we can’t make that work for us.  We can turn that around.  Accepting who we are and making that space for someone else to do the same creates a fire throughout the world.  We can get honest about what works and eliminate habits that don’t work because we held onto them for no other reason than hubris.  Be who you are meant to be and allow others to do the same.  It’s easy to go with what we’ve been taught.  It’s much harder to go with the beat of your own heart at times because we aren’t sure if we will be heard.  I guarantee as we ignite the sparks in everyone throughout the world, we will see that we are far from alone.  Don’t be afraid to get vulnerable and honest about who you are.  That is where the magic is.  Hiding yourself won’t do you or anyone else any favors.       

“Get comfortable with saying “This isn’t going to work for me”,” Lisa Bilyeu.  People pleasers cringe simultaneously.  In a world where we all have expectations put upon us from how we should behave to the jobs we have to how many children we should have and by whom, it’s hard to know which way to go if you don’t have a solid foundation in self.  The idea of letting anyone down for any reason can be daunting because we fear that they will cut us off or that we hurt them.  I like this quote because it reminds us that it is ok to let others down every now and then.  There will absolutely come a point in all of our lives where we will have to make the decision to continue making other people happy in the hope of reward or if we will follow our own path into what we know works for us. 

In the piece on boundaries from earlier this week, I discussed the guilt I felt at both saying no to my child and in only taking on what I could reasonably do at work.  In the moment I felt like I let everyone down.  I felt like if I had shuffled things differently, maybe I could have done more.  But the more I thought about it, the truth is that these people haven’t stopped what they are doing to bring my teams up to speed so I have the time to help them.  That isn’t to say they haven’t helped me before—they absolutely have.  But I’ve respected their limits and this was a moment where they weren’t respecting mine.  The fact that they didn’t take the time to address the issue where it belonged (a mistake with IT), they assumed everyone would jump in to fix it. 

Now that a week has passed, I am more comfortable with what happened.  I am more comfortable approaching the group and letting them know that we need to look at these situations differently.  I am also more comfortable standing on my own two feet and letting them know exactly where I stand with my teams.  I was thrown into the fire with 2/3 of my teams because I was NOT hired to oversee them.  I had to dive in and learn their roles and learn how to lead them—and I did it.  I’ve learned these groups from the ground up and I don’t need to defend what I do.  If it isn’t logistically or physically possible, my peers can be angry.  That’s on them.  I will no longer seek to find the time that doesn’t exist in the day when I have other people who need my support.

We all know we are only human.  We also know the expectations placed upon us aren’t realistic at times.  I love the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that says, “Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”  It’s beautiful because it reminds us to keep our aspirations high.  The problem is when those aspirations become standards that we can’t meet and, even worse, when that becomes someone else’s expectation.  We aren’t here to perform for others and we aren’t here to fulfill their expectations.  We don’t need permission to say that something is out of our scope and we need to remind each other that everyone’s experiences are different.  We also don’t need to continue to perform, trying to make other people think we can do so much with less.  I’m not diminishing our resourcefulness, but there has to be a monitoring of those expectations.  So set the boundary.  Admit what will and will not work and don’t be afraid to stick with it.  You will feel all the better for it and with more practice it will become second nature.

Yesterday was the anniversary of my grandfather’s birthday.  He passed away when I was 11 years old and that was one of the single most impactful losses in my life.  I remember the profound sense of helplessness, the dropping through the hole, clawing at nothing to stop yourself from falling out of control.  I remember as a child believing that I would never lose him.  I remember feeling his quiet strength and just thinking he was somehow invincible.  When we lost him, that was the first time I saw my father cry even though it was my mother’s father we had just lost.  My grandfather had an incredible impact on people and a sense of security and certainty about him that just calmed the situation.  Loss is a tricky thing for kids to navigate and it’s traumatic so losing someone with that type of presence cuts deeply.

I started thinking about where I’ve been, especially amongst the unease I’ve been carrying for a few days.  It got me thinking about where I’ve come from.  I was incredibly close with my grandfather.  I believe in a spiritual and astrological connection (feel free to disregard if you don’t).  He was an Aries, I’m an Aries, and even my father’s father who I didn’t get to meet (he passed just before I was born) was an Aries.  It’s the symbol of the fighter and we are strong.  We are driven, we are leaders, we are visionaries.  And even though I don’t have these gentleman physically with me, I feel their presence loud and clear in my veins, in the things I am driven to do. 

I think it makes sense that I’ve been off kilter a bit lately, because the things I’ve been working on are incredibly focused and I haven’t taken the time to focus as I should.  I’ve been doing the work I can every day, but it isn’t the work that I know is going to move things forward.  I’m working to get myself stood up and clear on what I desire.  And that is something I know my grandfathers both had in common: there was no mistaking what they wanted to do.  There was no mistaking their goals or where they stood.  Not that they were ruthless or heartless in their endeavors, far from it. Just that they were clear in their boundaries and focused on their tasks.  Family meant everything to both of them.  Relationships meant everything to them. 

It’s hard to believe it’s been close to 30 years since I’ve lost him.  I look at his picture in my office and wonder what things would have been like if he had stuck around a bit longer.  I wonder what we could have done and what he would have said to me. It’s a strange thing to lose someone like this at a young age because your perception is that of a child, but their presence was so key. It’s easy to romanticize the idea you have of someone, but I feel good knowing that most of my stories were corroborated so the image I have of him is pretty right on.