A Love Letter...

Dear Friend,

You are an amazing individual. Your presence is irreplaceable. You have unique talents and gifts to offer the world. You are a special, beautiful, significant component in an ever-unfolding puzzle. Your contribution to the pattern is essential. No thread in the tapestry is meaningless. Your life is not trivial or small. It is interconnected to all of life in the universe. You are an example of life manifesting itself. Your consciousness is a tool for acknowledging your worthiness and unlimited potential.

Your experience is personal, but you are NOT alone. We are all together on this crazy, exhilarating, fear inducing, joy conjuring, awe inspiring, often perplexing, always extraordinary trip called life. We all start out without a map and only a few near and dear ones to steer us toward our destiny. But ultimately we have all the answers already. Deep within us in that place that drives our decision-making, and informs us of “right and wrong”.  We all have the capacity to BE great. You are made up of the necessary “materials” to “create”...  A better world… A truer vision… A kinder species… You have much love to give and to receive.

Open your heart and free your mind from the oppression of fear. You needn’t fear life. Live life with a joyful spirit. It is all temporary and the trials and tribulations that make you doubt and fear are fleeting. Trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be and use that trust to connect you with your deepest sense of serenity. Allow it to propel you through your life with confidence and ease.

You are one of a kind. You bring something irrefutably precious, exceptional, and instrumental to this lifetime. You are here because you were called to be here at this very moment. There are no mistakes only opportunities. You are important. You matter. You have a purpose. Trust your instincts. Follow your heart. Believe in yourself. Be the person you hope to be and inspire others to recognize their own potential through your example.

I am honored to share my “Earth walk” with you. You bring an infinite amount of joy into this world by the sheer grace of simply being who you are. Knowing your spirit and mine have chosen this moment to exist simultaneously in this place at this point in history is profoundly meaningful to me.
You are special and your irrevocable magnificence enhances this world. You are loved.

-Love.

Processing...

 I have been considering a couple of things lately… Maybe my insights will help someone else who struggles with similar concerns… Or it may just help to know that others struggle too, in their own ways.

One thing I am trying to do is recognize when I am making decisions based on guilt as opposed to need or desire. This is proving to be incredibly challenging for me as it seems I cannot always differentiate between guilt and desire.  Now, one would think that would be an easy distinction, but for me (as it turns out) there is a bit of a blurred line. So much of who I am, who I choose to be, revolves around making others happy. I want that. I feel good when I can make other people feel good too. This creates an obscurity in recognizing what I do for the sheer purpose of bringing myself and others happiness and what I do out of some perceived obligation.

The next thing I am beginning to recognize is my further need to work on caring for myself. (This coincides perfectly with the guilt topic.) By taking care of myself, I do not only mean eating right and exercising. I mean recognizing my own needs, being compassionate toward myself, forgiving myself for imperfections, assisting myself through adversity with supportive thinking, and stopping the constant barrage of critical thoughts that seem to inevitably accompany hardship of any kind; be it a hard day, a difficult interaction, a simple misunderstanding or something more serious. I am now becoming more aware of my thoughts and taking more responsibility for my own happiness. This is not a new concept for me. I have been working on this for years. I did some major self-examining ten years ago and came out of a crisis with a newfound set of skills and understanding. I now recognize a deeper level of needs I have been neglecting.

A dear friend, someone whose insight I revere immensely, asked me the other day how is it that I can have such a great understanding of love and compassion, yet not offer that to the most important person of all, myself. I didn’t know what to say to her. My first thought was to laugh at the ridiculousness of the thought. Of course I love myself. I felt irritated and defensive at the idea of needing to “love” myself. That gave me pause to think. Maybe I am not caring for me as well as I could be. I have never been a very patient person, least of all with myself. I became very self sufficient and independent around the age of 12 and I think on some level I may be stuck in that adolescent mentality where  I don’t offer myself a whole lot of understanding and consideration. So… I am working on it today. I want to be happy; I want to make others happy. Life is a learning experience, and I am sharing mine with you!

Love yourselves today!

10 Things You May Not Know About Me...

So, I totally stole this concept from a friend. (Thanks Theresa!) Seemed like a fun game to play, though most people who know me know most of this stuff anyway. It was really hard to come up with 10 things people may not know about me! Like my husband said, “Yeah babe, you’re kinda an open book.” Yep, I guess I am… Here it is anyway!

1.       I am a terrible liar.

2.       I quit smoking 10 years ago.

3.       I lived in a tent when I was little.

4.       I cry when I am angry.

5.       I am a little bit psychic.

6.       I have suffered with debilitating anxiety.

7.       I write poetry.

8.       I HATE commercials.

9.       I want to foster children.

10.   I can’t do push ups.

:-)

Valuing our resources...

I am drawn to the idea of change. A global alteration, which would acknowledge the value of women and elevate their contributions to a level of reverence in which they are honored and cherished for all that they do and all that they are.

Living in a world that does not honor women is a travesty. Just knowing that somewhere right now a mother suffers unnecessarily, while caring for and worrying about her family, breaks my heart into a million jagged pieces. They slice and pierce my sense of well being, a constant reminder of an insufferable reality.

As a mother of daughters, I am fortunate to have been born in a country, at a time when women had fought for and won equal rights. Yet I am fearful and ashamed to have my daughters learn of the unthinkable horrors that are unjustly barraged upon women the world over. The atrocities of humanity’s shortcomings never fail to astonish and incite me.

The very idea of a world in which people are treated fairly and equally, where a child in Asia or Africa is every bit as much a person and as important to the web of life as a child in the U.S. (your child, or mine) is utopian under our current thought paradigm! It is inconceivable and must become widely accepted if we are ever to rise above this oppressive mentality.

There is a pressing need within my heart to express this concern. I long to impart to everyone how very, very, critical this issue is to our planetary evolvement.  We cannot call ourselves civilized creatures while allowing the imbalance of power and greed to infect and destroy so many. Particularly women, need to be protected and cherished, they need opportunities to use their capacity for love and compassion that are readily available within their hearts, to participate in and affect real change in the world.

I could start going into the financial injustice, the global misuse of funds, which encourages a world of fear and war instead of a world of love and peace… I could sit here all day and discuss how as a species we must decide to put “life” before “profit”… Perhaps I’ll save that subject for another day! J

-Love