I fell a little more in love with this progression than I did last year. Poetic...from screaming and demanding to a place of rest and introspection...solitude and quiet confidence....determination and resolve. Impending change. Beauty.
2010 was Carpe Diem and Moxie
2011 was Possibility and Brilliance
2012 was Trust
2013 was Imagine and Allow
2014 brings Quiescent and Sanguine.
This coming year, I have things to do. Concentration required. Steadfast determination and single minded resolution. My nest is empty. My life is unrecognizable to me but looks remarkably the same to anyone who would care to look. There are adventures and changes looming on the horizon but for now, there are things that need to evolve in their own space and time. Without rush or expectation. Without agenda. It's an odd feeling...to feel aimless and anchored simultaneously. Turning inward, being still and quiet just feels right.
I started searching for my word and immediately thought of Gloaming...that magical time of day when everything has a cast of supernatural magical amazingness. Twilight. Dusk. Crepuscular. These words spoke to me. I imagined purple and orange skies giving way to inky glittering star filled nights. Fog. Mystery. I thought of Fall and how the earth goes dormant, all signs of life seeming absent but so much going on beneath the eye's sight...how the earth is warm to the touch despite how it looks. I thought of butterflies in chrysalis form, that soul soup of enzymes bearing no resemblance to the beauty that will eventually emerge. I toyed with Crepuscular and Chrysalis. I liked those words but I wanted them to go deeper...into silence and stillness. Tranquil. I wanted serenity spiced with optimism and hope. A strong communication of the confidence that comes from the knowing that Fall always gives way to the newness of Spring. I'm embracing twilight and dusk and protected mystery.
It takes all four words.
Trust me.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Monday, October 28, 2013
Joy, Incognito.
I woke up this morning with Danielle LaPorte's question on my mind...What does joy look like to me?
The weatherman had predicted rain. As sleep faded and awareness snuck in, I waited for the signs...the smell, the sound, the crispness. Definitely crisp and chilly but no rain. I had started thinking that joy would look like a steaming cup of peppermint mocha coffee on my back deck, protected from the rain but experiencing it...in one of my last days among the pine trees. I pictured my dog at my feet, fuzzy socks and hours stretched ahead of only doing what I most desire. No rain, and my picture of joy dissolved with only remnants of a feeling remaining.
I shifted, got out of bed and hugged the dog. Put on the fuzzy socks. Made the coffee. I daydreamed. Joy. Joy! Joy? Maybe looking at the Milky Way from a treehouse on an island, sitting on the lap of someone who fascinates me, cocktail in hand and a night of storytelling and frolicking in the immediate future. Mmmmm. That sounds juicy and joyful. I googled "Milky Way Treehouse" to find some images that might capture this joyful thought. I found, instead, a couple of amazing treehouse vacation destinations. One that offers an exclusive excursion by the hosts to a place where you hike to "the top of the world." There, the sun casts your shadow through the mist and forms a rainbow halo around your shadow on a cloud. I imagined this hike with my daughter, my active athletic daughter who only recently has shifted back to appreciating time with me. My heart expanded. This, I thought, is Joy with a capital J. But she is in school right now and there are pressing obligations on us both in the near future. We can plan this, for certain. But for now? Joy existed in that moment of imagining.
Joy. C'mon, joy...you constant companion so elusive to capture in word or image. I have a task at hand, cooperate please!
I abandoned the active part of my task and started passively looking for indications of joy around me. I found joy in dreaming. In imagining. In talking about it and having conversations about joy~full things we could all do together. I found joy in connection to my loves and hearing about their joy. It was in my heart and in my belly and it came from so many different places for so many different reasons. There was joy when my dog thought I was talking to him and acted like he was trying to talk back. There was joy in knowing that my boy is moving into the world with big enthusiastic dreams. There was joy that my Grandma is continuing to set the badass stubborn playful example, charming the staff at the hospital and being matter-of-fact about serious matters of the heart, literally. There was joy in getting it right at work in a complicated mess of things by just being present and honest and connecting. There was joy in dancing, moving my body while surrounded by people who I know love me exactly as I am. There was joy in my coffee cup with its peppermint schnapps or peppermint creamer. There was joy in my car streaming Pandora to my heart's desire driving through amazing countryside because I live in a beauty~full corner of the world. There was joy in my house with these creatures who share it with me and the way we move and live and laugh and love here. There was even joy to be found on my computer where I am connected and challenged and can explore and dream.
Joy isn't elusive to experience, but it is proving to be a bitch to describe or explain.
For me, joy is a laugh, a tickle deep in the gut and all around the heart. Joy is a moment, a lifetime...a moment that feels like a lifetime. Joy is feeling small under a huge sky and feeling protected and snuggly on a rainy day. It is the recognition of heart strings that have no understanding of distance or time. Joy is the aliveness of each cell when a song comes on the radio that resonates or when things fall into place like a secret plan that finally reveals its magnificence. Joy is truthbumps and twirling and the acceptance that you can't catch it with words or images but you can live it right out loud.
I'm filled with joy, especially in this moment...connected to you.
The weatherman had predicted rain. As sleep faded and awareness snuck in, I waited for the signs...the smell, the sound, the crispness. Definitely crisp and chilly but no rain. I had started thinking that joy would look like a steaming cup of peppermint mocha coffee on my back deck, protected from the rain but experiencing it...in one of my last days among the pine trees. I pictured my dog at my feet, fuzzy socks and hours stretched ahead of only doing what I most desire. No rain, and my picture of joy dissolved with only remnants of a feeling remaining.
I shifted, got out of bed and hugged the dog. Put on the fuzzy socks. Made the coffee. I daydreamed. Joy. Joy! Joy? Maybe looking at the Milky Way from a treehouse on an island, sitting on the lap of someone who fascinates me, cocktail in hand and a night of storytelling and frolicking in the immediate future. Mmmmm. That sounds juicy and joyful. I googled "Milky Way Treehouse" to find some images that might capture this joyful thought. I found, instead, a couple of amazing treehouse vacation destinations. One that offers an exclusive excursion by the hosts to a place where you hike to "the top of the world." There, the sun casts your shadow through the mist and forms a rainbow halo around your shadow on a cloud. I imagined this hike with my daughter, my active athletic daughter who only recently has shifted back to appreciating time with me. My heart expanded. This, I thought, is Joy with a capital J. But she is in school right now and there are pressing obligations on us both in the near future. We can plan this, for certain. But for now? Joy existed in that moment of imagining.
Joy. C'mon, joy...you constant companion so elusive to capture in word or image. I have a task at hand, cooperate please!
I abandoned the active part of my task and started passively looking for indications of joy around me. I found joy in dreaming. In imagining. In talking about it and having conversations about joy~full things we could all do together. I found joy in connection to my loves and hearing about their joy. It was in my heart and in my belly and it came from so many different places for so many different reasons. There was joy when my dog thought I was talking to him and acted like he was trying to talk back. There was joy in knowing that my boy is moving into the world with big enthusiastic dreams. There was joy that my Grandma is continuing to set the badass stubborn playful example, charming the staff at the hospital and being matter-of-fact about serious matters of the heart, literally. There was joy in getting it right at work in a complicated mess of things by just being present and honest and connecting. There was joy in dancing, moving my body while surrounded by people who I know love me exactly as I am. There was joy in my coffee cup with its peppermint schnapps or peppermint creamer. There was joy in my car streaming Pandora to my heart's desire driving through amazing countryside because I live in a beauty~full corner of the world. There was joy in my house with these creatures who share it with me and the way we move and live and laugh and love here. There was even joy to be found on my computer where I am connected and challenged and can explore and dream.
Joy isn't elusive to experience, but it is proving to be a bitch to describe or explain.
For me, joy is a laugh, a tickle deep in the gut and all around the heart. Joy is a moment, a lifetime...a moment that feels like a lifetime. Joy is feeling small under a huge sky and feeling protected and snuggly on a rainy day. It is the recognition of heart strings that have no understanding of distance or time. Joy is the aliveness of each cell when a song comes on the radio that resonates or when things fall into place like a secret plan that finally reveals its magnificence. Joy is truthbumps and twirling and the acceptance that you can't catch it with words or images but you can live it right out loud.
I'm filled with joy, especially in this moment...connected to you.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Apocylapse. Now.
She's at it again...this bodacious badass with the questions that rock and roll and lullaby and break everything wide Wide WIDE open.
"How do you feel about destroying what must be destroyed in your life? You know — right this very minute — what’s not working in your life. You don’t have to think about it for too long. The question is: How do you feel about destroying what must be destroyed in your life? "
Not a second had to pass for me to know from a place way deep inside. The knowing was like fireworks in a night sky complete with that burning celebratory smell that speaks of independence, confidence and connection to the universal yes.
I know what's not working, what's holding me still and holding me back. What I hold onto consciously because I want to be held here, where it's safe and easy...and what I allow to hold me because letting go means certain dreams fade, wither and die...even, no...especially those dreams whose dying is long overdue.
The question divides into two for me right here. It turns into How do I feel about destroying what must be destroyed in my life and Am I willing to experience that feeling by taking action?
Imagining, I feel frightened and empowered simultaneously...full of jittery, excited energy that tells me that I'm doing something GREAT that will leave me changed in ways that I've been hungering for. It feels like letting go of a balloon holding me up and an anchor holding me down...like the time to fly, float or sink in the direction of my own choosing has come to pass. It feels terrifyingly liberating. It feels like melancholy-tinged badassery as certain hopes, dreams and beliefs are tied to that balloon and other fears, obligations and dogmas to that anchor.
Taking action will mean I will encounter misunderstanding, assumptions, blame and shame. I will be misunderstood and I will hurt someone's feelings without a doubt. I will change. Things will change. Relationships will change. Some people will withdraw their love, others will come closer. I will grieve the loss of people and the possible future I thought was a foregone conclusion. I will set free the part of me that stayed small to hold on when holding on was no longer serving me or you or that or them.
What's amazing is that just the question...entertaining the possible answers starts something wonder~full.
I'm not the same person I was before I started this post.
Destruction doesn't have to be brilliant and devastating. It can be a quiet destruction that happens in a heart when the heart is ready. It can be a letting go that is not a dramatic, in-your-face firey explosion of burning journals, quitting a job, breaking up with a lover or telling off of someone who has had it coming for way too long. It can be a balloon that quietly floats away until it can no longer be seen or an anchor that stays in the darkness of the depths with its broken chain coiled around itself.
The answers is: Yes, I am ready and chances are it's already happening.
"How do you feel about destroying what must be destroyed in your life? You know — right this very minute — what’s not working in your life. You don’t have to think about it for too long. The question is: How do you feel about destroying what must be destroyed in your life? "
Not a second had to pass for me to know from a place way deep inside. The knowing was like fireworks in a night sky complete with that burning celebratory smell that speaks of independence, confidence and connection to the universal yes.
I know what's not working, what's holding me still and holding me back. What I hold onto consciously because I want to be held here, where it's safe and easy...and what I allow to hold me because letting go means certain dreams fade, wither and die...even, no...especially those dreams whose dying is long overdue.
The question divides into two for me right here. It turns into How do I feel about destroying what must be destroyed in my life and Am I willing to experience that feeling by taking action?
Imagining, I feel frightened and empowered simultaneously...full of jittery, excited energy that tells me that I'm doing something GREAT that will leave me changed in ways that I've been hungering for. It feels like letting go of a balloon holding me up and an anchor holding me down...like the time to fly, float or sink in the direction of my own choosing has come to pass. It feels terrifyingly liberating. It feels like melancholy-tinged badassery as certain hopes, dreams and beliefs are tied to that balloon and other fears, obligations and dogmas to that anchor.
Taking action will mean I will encounter misunderstanding, assumptions, blame and shame. I will be misunderstood and I will hurt someone's feelings without a doubt. I will change. Things will change. Relationships will change. Some people will withdraw their love, others will come closer. I will grieve the loss of people and the possible future I thought was a foregone conclusion. I will set free the part of me that stayed small to hold on when holding on was no longer serving me or you or that or them.
What's amazing is that just the question...entertaining the possible answers starts something wonder~full.
I'm not the same person I was before I started this post.
Destruction doesn't have to be brilliant and devastating. It can be a quiet destruction that happens in a heart when the heart is ready. It can be a letting go that is not a dramatic, in-your-face firey explosion of burning journals, quitting a job, breaking up with a lover or telling off of someone who has had it coming for way too long. It can be a balloon that quietly floats away until it can no longer be seen or an anchor that stays in the darkness of the depths with its broken chain coiled around itself.
The answers is: Yes, I am ready and chances are it's already happening.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Love Letter to the Lost
There's something about forgiveness that is blissful. It's that expanding of your heart, character, integrity and capacity for love that is so heady and intoxicating.
Forgiveness has been hovering, shaking, aimed at my heart like the point of an arrow on a bow that's stretched to capacity. It's felt ominous and inescapable lately. I've tried to stave it off with righteousness and outrage and anger...unsuccessfully.
If I would have known it would feel like this, I would have surrendered much earlier.
When I forgave YOU, you lost every iota of power you have or ever had over me. That was intoxicating.
But...
When I forgave ME, I gained every ounce of power in all the galaxies combined. That is fortifying and liberating.
My heart is peace~full and my past mistakes no longer define me...those stories are about some other person in some other time, surviving as best as she could. I've nurtured that girl and loved her into evolving so far past what she was and the mistakes that were hers to make.
I highly recommend it. Nurture. Love. Forgive. Evolve. Rinse. Repeat.
Namaste.
Forgiveness has been hovering, shaking, aimed at my heart like the point of an arrow on a bow that's stretched to capacity. It's felt ominous and inescapable lately. I've tried to stave it off with righteousness and outrage and anger...unsuccessfully.
If I would have known it would feel like this, I would have surrendered much earlier.
When I forgave YOU, you lost every iota of power you have or ever had over me. That was intoxicating.
But...
When I forgave ME, I gained every ounce of power in all the galaxies combined. That is fortifying and liberating.
My heart is peace~full and my past mistakes no longer define me...those stories are about some other person in some other time, surviving as best as she could. I've nurtured that girl and loved her into evolving so far past what she was and the mistakes that were hers to make.
I highly recommend it. Nurture. Love. Forgive. Evolve. Rinse. Repeat.
Namaste.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Birthday Love Letter, Prequel to the Sequel
Last year, when I sat down to write your birthday love letter, it was with love wrapped in regret and a hint of sadness...more selfishness than I can stand to see in black and white.
It's amazing what a year can do.
This year, I wish you adventure. More than your imagination could even begin to believe is possible. I wish you deep connection to those who love you...who remind you of why you do the things you do and help you now as much as in the past to be the man you are. I wish you laughter and brilliance, new discoveries and the shattering of beliefs that no longer serve you. I wish you discomfort...cold toes and an empty belly, overtired Monday mornings, blisters and sore muscles...from being places and doing things that push you to live life right out there to the edge of possibility. I wish you moments of staggering beauty that take your breath away and make you wonder at this life in ways that knock you on your ass. I wish you belly laughs and naps and moments of deafening silence to reflect on all the amazing that surrounds you. I wish you soul freedom in intoxicating quantities.
I love you. I'm so glad you were born.
It's amazing what a year can do.
This year, I wish you adventure. More than your imagination could even begin to believe is possible. I wish you deep connection to those who love you...who remind you of why you do the things you do and help you now as much as in the past to be the man you are. I wish you laughter and brilliance, new discoveries and the shattering of beliefs that no longer serve you. I wish you discomfort...cold toes and an empty belly, overtired Monday mornings, blisters and sore muscles...from being places and doing things that push you to live life right out there to the edge of possibility. I wish you moments of staggering beauty that take your breath away and make you wonder at this life in ways that knock you on your ass. I wish you belly laughs and naps and moments of deafening silence to reflect on all the amazing that surrounds you. I wish you soul freedom in intoxicating quantities.
I love you. I'm so glad you were born.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Finding my rhythm
My core desired feelings are making me fall completely totally in love with my life and all those who touch it. That's you, reading this. Yes, you.
I'm getting better at this business of running my thoughts and actions through the filter of "how does this make me feel?" Does this make me feel: Succulent? Magnetic? Magical? Awestruck? Entrenched?
The answer is almost always yes. I'm not quite sure if it's that I lead an unbelievably amazing life or if it's that the eternal Pollyanna in me can find or create succulence, magnetism, magic and be completely caught up with being awestruck and enthusiastically connected in solidarity through a vivid kaleidoscope of communion with every person as a soul friend in this wild daily adventure (my definition of entrenched). Either way, HELL. YES!
So, I've found myself all over the place this past week...in places both mentally, emotionally and physically where maybe those core desired feelings aren't commonplace. Most strikingly, there was some fear and anger. Vulnerability. Procrastination. Good old fashioned dirt.
Breathing into the fear, I realized that it only comes from having such amazingness in my life that any threat against it is frightening. Succulent. Awestruck. Entrenched.
Pressing into the anger, I knew that the other person's actions were only because I am succulent. Magnetic. Magical. And by that definition above? Entrenched, for sure. That left me awestruck.
Standing, crying tears of joy in a hallway full of people who depend on me to hold it together. Crying from the deepest most tender part of my soul and feeling my vulnerability pull those around me closer. Entrenched. Magnetic.
Curled up on my momma's couch reading a book with twenty other things comfortably simmering unattended on the back burner. Self care, self love. Succulent.
Sweaty, hair stuck to my forehead and filthy hands...but smiling and sunkissed because I wasn't only feeling Succulent and Magical...I was BEING both. Resulting in magnetic.
~sigh~
Awestruck. All the time.
I'm getting better at this business of running my thoughts and actions through the filter of "how does this make me feel?" Does this make me feel: Succulent? Magnetic? Magical? Awestruck? Entrenched?
The answer is almost always yes. I'm not quite sure if it's that I lead an unbelievably amazing life or if it's that the eternal Pollyanna in me can find or create succulence, magnetism, magic and be completely caught up with being awestruck and enthusiastically connected in solidarity through a vivid kaleidoscope of communion with every person as a soul friend in this wild daily adventure (my definition of entrenched). Either way, HELL. YES!
So, I've found myself all over the place this past week...in places both mentally, emotionally and physically where maybe those core desired feelings aren't commonplace. Most strikingly, there was some fear and anger. Vulnerability. Procrastination. Good old fashioned dirt.
Breathing into the fear, I realized that it only comes from having such amazingness in my life that any threat against it is frightening. Succulent. Awestruck. Entrenched.
Pressing into the anger, I knew that the other person's actions were only because I am succulent. Magnetic. Magical. And by that definition above? Entrenched, for sure. That left me awestruck.
Standing, crying tears of joy in a hallway full of people who depend on me to hold it together. Crying from the deepest most tender part of my soul and feeling my vulnerability pull those around me closer. Entrenched. Magnetic.
Curled up on my momma's couch reading a book with twenty other things comfortably simmering unattended on the back burner. Self care, self love. Succulent.
Sweaty, hair stuck to my forehead and filthy hands...but smiling and sunkissed because I wasn't only feeling Succulent and Magical...I was BEING both. Resulting in magnetic.
~sigh~
Awestruck. All the time.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
My Bitter~sweet Birthday...
I turned a year older today. It's been an amazing couple of days. I floated the river with my lovely, munching on local fruit and drinking super~sized Bloody Marys on a raft built for two. I napped and was fed dinner by a witch. Denny's gave me a free breakfast. I ate it with my three favorite people on the planet. My babygirl gave me the gift I so desperately needed...to be heard. My boy hugged me extra hard. I was invited into the forbidden zone where I was offered a strawberry made even sweeter by eating it in that place which I thought I had lost forever. I hung out with my momma then hung out in my hammock. There was a long bath and a book that I haven't set enough time aside to read lately. Dozens of facebook messages, texts, calls and an email offering up pieces of a soul I also thought I had lost forever. My soul sister called me after way too long that then felt like no time at all. I made my list of things to do before my next birthday...after evaluating last year's...and fell a little in love with where I am today, this crazymazing life and the future too.
Through all of that, I had to keep reminding myself that it's okay to be happy today. My birthday this year falls on Father's Day...and I felt myself slipping often into that risky, tricky place of sorrow and regret. I miss him. I grieve the lost opportunities and I regret the missed ones...the missed words as well. It's been a bitter~sweet day and the only saving grace has been that there are beauty~full things going on in this family...in his legacy...that he would be incredulous about and delighted by if he were here to see them.
My greatest gift this year has been that of family, gifted to me by a father whom I didn't get to know nearly well enough. My greatest gift this year has been my sister opening her heart to me and a man raised by my father but with whom I share no blood...who called me "family" and burst my heart wide open.
My New Year/Birthday List:
Go to them. All of them.
Say things. Lots of things.
Listen too. Lots of that too.
Salute the sun. A lot.
The moon too.
Hug.
Kiss.
Hug some more.
Map my desire. Follow it.
GET THAT DAMN PASSPORT.
Through all of that, I had to keep reminding myself that it's okay to be happy today. My birthday this year falls on Father's Day...and I felt myself slipping often into that risky, tricky place of sorrow and regret. I miss him. I grieve the lost opportunities and I regret the missed ones...the missed words as well. It's been a bitter~sweet day and the only saving grace has been that there are beauty~full things going on in this family...in his legacy...that he would be incredulous about and delighted by if he were here to see them.
My greatest gift this year has been that of family, gifted to me by a father whom I didn't get to know nearly well enough. My greatest gift this year has been my sister opening her heart to me and a man raised by my father but with whom I share no blood...who called me "family" and burst my heart wide open.
My New Year/Birthday List:
Go to them. All of them.
Say things. Lots of things.
Listen too. Lots of that too.
Salute the sun. A lot.
The moon too.
Hug.
Kiss.
Hug some more.
Map my desire. Follow it.
GET THAT DAMN PASSPORT.
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