Taking my cue from the sunflower, I follow the Light, when I’m not being stubborn and trying to go it alone, that is.

Yes, all too often, I look away from the Light entirely and become distracted following myself around in circles, not getting anywhere at all.

Somehow though, I always end up back here at this place – of remembering –
that the only way for me to live a life in which I am ACTUALLY living, is one in which I am Connected.

The Somehow of which I speak is, of course, the lovely . . . Grace. Grace, Who brings me back again and again when I’ve wandered off thinking I can do it by myself. [continue reading…]

I used to feel like starting over so many (many, many) times meant I could have, and should have, done better before. But I’ve grown to realize that I’m never actually starting out from the same place as before. It isn’t possible to do that.

There is always growth.
Did I learn something about myself,
how to *be me* a little more than before?

Then I’m starting from a new place.​​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​​Starting over with a new perspective, more experience, greater self knowledge, and hopefully a little more compassion for myself, is a gift.​​​​​​​​
 

My parents built a box for me to live in.
Four walls, a floor, a roof.
My teachers, family and friends, my experiences, the world
Decorated it for me, decided how it would look. [continue reading…]

“Leave it,” my friend says to her dog over and over as we walk. Because the dog picks up a scent, or hears something running in the woods nearby, or just wants to follow any old urge to take off running in the direction of something enticing.

“Leave it,” my Friend says to me over and over. Because I, too, am picking up scents all around me that I want to chase – like the worry over this or the habit of thinking along these lines. Temptation to chase my way down a thought path I’ve been on again and again that’s never gotten me anywhere but that I’ve gotten so used to following, I barely even notice it’s what I’m thinking about. [continue reading…]

Off to tai chi class I go, not knowing that I am about to take away something completely unexpected. Yes, I’ll be learning a form that I have wanted to learn for a really long time, and I’m eager for the experience, but what I don’t know is that my teacher will say, on day one, in our very first interaction, something so simple that he’s said a thousand times before, that I’ll take away and manage to turn into my very own practice. [continue reading…]

Iwent to the ER during my first panic attack. Yep, picked the sleeping baby up out of his crib, strapped him into his car seat and my husband drove us there. Because, of course, I thought I was dying. It might be nice to say that I haven’t been there for a panic attack since, but I have. Several times. And then for me, panic ended up looking like countless appointments, tests, doctors, xrays, a surgery even. Because – panic doesn’t always look the same. And it moves around, the bugger, so it’s sneaky and it’s hard to figure out – always, always to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. [continue reading…]

Because I’m incorporating art making as a daily practice this October, I was eager to find this list I wrote in my journal the last time I was doing a daily art challenge. Dare I admit that it was in June 2015 and that I stuck with it for three whole days? Well, even that is part of the process, I remind myself.

24 life lessons learned through art: [continue reading…]

Pandora’s box swung wide open on the night I had my first panic attack, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could just not stuff back in what had come up for me.

What on earth was going on with me? I had no idea at all. I was 30 years old with a one-year old baby and was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. [continue reading…]

I wonder . . . what DO they hope to achieve,
leaping around at the tippy top of the tallest trees in our yard?

Are they
practicing?
showing off?
playing?
pushing themselves to the very limit of what they are capable of?

Well they certainly aren’t quivering on the ground, or filled with fear up there at the possibility that they’ll leap and plunge to their death. In fact, nothing in them says that this is even a possibility. In their minds it isn’t, and so – in reality it isn’t. [continue reading…]