paintedpinkmountains

From the moment I began to think about my  guiding word  for 2016, I knew exactly where I would end up.  I still went through the process  Susannah  provides each year, knowing that there is always the possibility another word might speak to me more.  Besides, I love digging, analyzing and ensuring that I'm going from my soul.   2015 began with the word "Thrive" but quickly turned into "Presence".  That word was perfect for the year as I worked very deeply with being where ever I happened to be at any given moment.  It forced me to notice both inside and outside of myself.  It brought me a sense of calm. But as the last quarter of the year has come, I felt the unsettledness that I always begin to feel as autumn peels away the layers grown throughout the year to expose its depths.  Still keeping my presence, I truly saw my own naked branches for the first time.  My truths and my fears are uncovered and before winter e...

Tomorrow we welcome another December, and with it  Susannah Conway  brings her  December Reflections  back again!  I participated last year on instagram, and also in her  August Break  which brought my soul a much needed creative boost.  I often go through the motions of my day, from one job to the next, and forget to take time to stop and breathe in the beauty around me.  To be honest, it's not usually that I forget, but more that I just don't. 2015 has been centered around presence, and I'm looking forward to cultivating much more of it through this and other projects I continue to fill my days with.

Someone once told me one of the things that bothered them so much about me was how much I changed.  Not that I changed from who I once was to who I turned out to be at whatever given time, but that I was never consistent in my views.  One day I was vegetarian (actually that lasted for 3 years), the next I was eating a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit from a place that I always would complain about his choice to eat there.  One day I was trying to stop using paper towels, the next I had a package of them in the cupboard.  This always bothered me, because at the same time I was told how "rigid" I was in my ways, and occasionally I would put those "ways" aside and try to be accommodating.  Mostly I wanted to see if my being accommodating would, in turn, make him be more accommodating to me on occasion.  It didn't. We're much, much better as friends. In fact, we're pretty good friends, and great co-parents.  But we are totally different persons. And t...

So there's a full moon tonight.  And accompanying it is a side of PMS, topped with a night filled with a handful of five-minute intervals of sleep.  Needless to say, my insides are not a bursting ray of sunshine at the moment. Oh, and then there's the chocolate I've consumed today.  Not organic chocolate either.  And damn does it ever taste good, even if it is contributing negatively to my current internal swirling of emotions.  I can honestly feel it all.  And it is a bit of a struggle to keep from bursting at the seams today, but I'm managing to contain myself. There are many words inside of me begging to come out.  I've recently been tested, and I've found someone inside of me that has been begging for years to come out.  A part of me that I've spent my entire life suffocating under a blanket of emotion.  Yet, when she finally came out, I was happy to let her.  She is who I am, and who I've wanted to be for so long.  And I wo...

Being me is hard.  I am not merely one person with one simple set of rules, opinions, visions, or way of being.  I am complex, I contain multitudes of feeling and I find myself staring inside at the deepest parts of me sometimes, wishing I could pull them out and deconstruct them and turn them into something simple.  I do understand, however, that this is what makes me who I am.  It just sucks sometimes. I feel things so deeply.  I feel with such incredible intensity at times that it's almost unbearable.  My soul contains energy that just doesn't seem possible, or of this world.  And it's always there.  I can't contain it yet letting it out hurts almost as much as trying to dissolve it, because it continues to regenerate.  I wish my soul had an off button, or at least a pause button.  Even having a minute or two of space for me to breathe and not feel it so deeply would be a welcome break. But yes, again, I do realize that th...

Sometimes answers aren't meant to come just because you're looking for them.  Searching for clarity in situations that have not yet played themselves out just seems to cause more struggle which in turn makes it harder to know exactly what you really *should* do.  It's tough to dig down deep enough to let your true intuition guide you when you become distracted by outside opinions and perceptions.  Objective views are great, of course, but sometimes they lack pertinent information. I've struggled lately, looking for guidance and the fact remains that I am NOT at a crossroads.  Obstacles have presented themselves, yes, but I am still on the same road, and rather than take the hand of a force that I do NOT trust or even recognize and let it guide me, I am going to swiftly push the obstacle aside and continue on the road in the same manner that I had originally intended.  I'm going to keep walking in the same way that I had previously felt was right. I am going t...

It’s quiet in my house.  The sun is shining and I am sunk deeply into my couch under two vintage blankets that likely kept my great-grandmother warm on similar days as she sat in the same spot under the same roof.  There are many differences, however, as I reflect fondly on how it must have been in those days, how it was for the majority of my own life and how it has come to be now. My grandmother grew up with a house full of family.  Her grandparents, maternal and paternal, her aunts, uncles and many family friends, who may as well have been family, spent their lives here.  If they didn’t live here they enjoyed just as many dinners in my kitchen as those who did.  I can still feel that energy surrounding me, even though the only other breathing soul here belongs to my dog.  Not just the energy from the generations that were here before me, but the energy from 33 years of holiday meals I was lucky enough to experience. My grandmother was a bake...