The Write Life

       Good afternoon, here we are in June. April and May just flew by with lessons aplenty. What a wild beautiful world? Am I right? Where to begin, well by this time next week, I will officially be a grandma. My oldest is having my first grandchild. Her name is Paisley and we all wait with bated breath to meet her.

       The puzzle the universe sent me, this spring, has finally been resolved and I’m better for the lessons. It all comes down to doing the work. I’ve faced a few things and grown and learned more. The universe keeps sending me the same message over and over. Do The Work, Dig deeper. I hear it online, I find it in print. Well what can you do but listen right?

       Crazy events cummulated in some of the strangest events which led to my solution. I am more normal and yet not nearly so. Yes I am kind of speaking in riddles. I am still writing, but I have been so busy with these lessons that it’s been much more journaling than fiction.

       The upside to all this is I keep moving forward. Strange wonderful things approach and I can’t even begin to tell you how this excites me. As a minor example, I had a crow at work on Saturday land on a cart return and talk with me for a good ten minutes. He even cleared his throat. That actually means something important, but I haven’t been able to find where or what I read about it. Basically he was letting me know I am on the right track. Birds you know?  Trees too you know. Okay enough with the updating for now. I am working on a little piece of fiction even as I write this. Sorry for the long silence. I will be back again shortly with more crazy goodness.

       I’ve been quiet for a few weeks. Divine timing plays a part in all the weird events in my life. I have been trying to sell my car for months going back to October.  It just would not sell for love or money. It even played dead while Mercury was in retrograde. Well finally with divine timing it went on the next leg of its journey. While I appreciated it greatly and I was grateful to have a car, German engineering is not all it’s cracked up to be.

       So for a week and a half I was without a car. I walked to work again in the dark, but I knew this time. I knew the right car was making its way to me. So last week I found the car I had been imagining. This kind of thing illustrates divine timing, and I’m writing about it for a reason.

       I have a huge to me puzzle I’m trying to solve. Bits and pieces come to me as they will. But here’s the thing, I have to do the work to get each piece. Inside work, is some of the hardest. Living from a place of gratitude, not taking things personally, learning and relearning the same lessons, are just a few challenges.

       But, and this is the reason I’m writing this, seeing the results of each step are amazing. It’s like a constant ever shifting perspective of Oh…A new deeper understanding if you will. The serendipity and the interconnectedness of random events still catch me off guard. So that is why I have been quiet for a bit. Crazy things are afoot… Oh yeah before I sign off - HAPPY SPRING!

       Here I am with a new blog post. The year has started off with new lessons. The pieces have been coming from all over the place; I just follow where they lead. It’s been quite a bit of serendipity. I won’t tell you about the content, because it’s private and very spiritual. Lessons are like that. They ask us to get real, to show up, and to visit our deepest dark places, all while holding ourselves with compassion.

       As for writing, this year is starting off right as well. I have a little something that is almost ready to share. I’m still tweaking it to get it just right. I hope when I share it, you’ll take the time to read it. It’s rather different than my usual stuff. In getting back into writing, I’m brought back to the same lessons. The most important lesson is learning to trust yourself and listen to your own intuition. Advice is helpful and meaningful, but you can’t lose your voice in listening to others input.

       On a different note, I’m sitting in Starbucks as I write this, and I swear I just saw my mother’s truck. Keep in mind I sold said truck in January 2013. I know it’s a message, so now I am paying attention. Well enough for now. This is just a quick update. I have to get back to writing…

     So dear hearts it is the last few weeks of 2016. It’s that time, time to look back so we can plan forward. This year has been quite an amazingly good and bad year. We lost many of our favorite people, actors, and musicians included. So I am taking the official look back now. With Wednesday’s full moon I will release all the lessons, making space for the coming year.

     This last year I didn’t have specific ideas for the year. But the lessons came anyway. They always do huh? This year for me has been all about self-awareness, mindfulness, intention-setting, and gratitude.  Boy did I learn some lessons. The more I paid attention, the more I focused, the better the lessons became.

      So first paying attention, seeing the serendipity around me became huge. It really paid off in special ways for me. When I use the term self-aware I am referring to the idea of being mindful of one’s motivations and actions. Plus the fact that others actions may not reflect on me. This was a huge deal for me. It freed me from obsessing. Next came intention setting. In January I set my first intention, to find a job that I would enjoy and grow with. It took a few months to arrive, but I was still being readied for it. So the job began May first, and I have been working nonstop since.

     The lessons continued as I was guided again and again to pay attention. I began setting goals and intentions each morning, as I sipped my coffee before work. A practice I still do because every day I see the results. It’s astounding I tell you. Now how to explain the gratitude?

     It’s a mindset. I let go of ego, of wanting more, needing this or that, and being happy with the very simple, yet profoundly important things. A cup of tea in a favorite mug still brings a huge smile to my face and warms my heart. While this may sound cheesy it’s true. I learned throughout the year that listening to that tiny voice that most people tune out you will find the things that bring you joy. I am now kind of excited to welcome in 2017 and all the lessons and joy that it will bring. And I hope it will bring us much less death...

     So I have been quiet the last two weeks with good reason. So here is the story, the Saturday after Thanksgiving I awoke in a strange new mood. Reality was kicking my butt. So we began to prepare that morning.

     The madness continued through Monday.  I’ll get to what we were preparing for in a moment. We sorted stuff and began the craziness of you’ve probably guessed by now… We moved on Tuesday. The crazy part is we had nowhere to move. We packed everything we owned into a twenty-six foot U-haul and parked it for two days. Luckily we all had a place to stay.

     Thursday it came together, and we had a new home. Keith and I spent our first night in a partially unpacked apartment. I have since been unpacking and sorting stuff. It’s weird to go from a three-bedroom duplex to a two bedroom apartment.

     So my lesson now is letting go of stuff. Which I have never been a hoarder or a minimalist either, but I think it’s a good lesson. The important part of this post is not so much us moving, but the things I learned.

     I luckily have a car, and I had a place to lay my head thanks to some very generous people, but beyond that I was essentially homeless. On Thursday as I sat in my car waiting for things to come together, I was terrified by the notion that so much could go wrong. Thank Goddess it didn’t.  I can only imagine how a truly homeless person without help feels, but I am certain that I came damn close and that’s terrifying. Not for me myself, but because others’ were counting on me to keep that from happening.

     If you know me in real life, and need our new address, feel free to email me and I’ll update you.  So I still don’t have internet. I have been frequenting Starbucks to use theirs. I am still here and I still keep moving forward.

This is my 100^th blog post. Pretty impressive you say? Well yeah kind of…I guess. I wrote on Live Journal before I started this blog. I’ve officially been blogging and writing for over a decade.

What does that really mean? It means I am still caught off guard by which posts get lots of views and comments. While others get little and go practically unnoticed, it’s a constant surprise to me.

I’m fighting some crazy battles right now.  I am struggling with finding employment. I am struggling with feelings of utter failure. I am struggling with feelings of being less than enough. 

I have so much to say but the words trip on my teeth, and stick to my tongue. My mouth is overflowing, with no way of knowing how to say what I need to.

So I want to take this very special blog post and talk about it. I had to get a food box today. While it wasn’t bad, it really was. I hadn’t been there since 2000. Yes they keep records. That means my youngest was a baby the last time we were there. She’s now heading into her sophomore year in high school.

If this were just my struggle, it might not be so important, but I have three teenagers counting on me to keep a roof over their head, the electricity on, and food in their hollow bellies. Lol, I am sure many of you know how much teens eat.

They also count on me as a leader, to hold this family together. Since everything fell apart in 2009, I have fought day and night, tooth and nail, to prove that we stay together as a family; that families don’t give up on each other, they don’t walk away. I truly believe teenagers need this lesson most as they grow up and head out into the world, and form families of their own.

Today I applied for more jobs, including Big Lots. I hope to hear from at least one, but so far that isn’t happening. People close to me are helpful and they tell me when places are hiring, they also keep me grounded in knowing it’s not just me. But it sure feels like it in this moment as it all falls apart.

Thanks to the food box, I have a nice roast in the oven, and we will eat. But even as I went through their system of collection, and they said take what you need, I held back. Truly because I know there are people out there that need help as much if not more than I do.

I’m sharing this because my life lesson right now includes vulnerability mixed with letting go of control. I am trying to own it. I can’t control everything. It also scares me very much to write, and share this. This pushes my boundaries, in case you are wondering. I am wiping away tears as I write it. But it is my truth, and it heralds my other two lessons. Live your truth. I am trying, and will continue to fight valiantly.

Lastly the most important lesson lately is this. Learn to be a luminary of love and light. I am trying hard with this lesson as well. I am a hand to hold in the dark, a light along the path, because I truly know the dark. I’ve battled it and continue to do so daily. My tools are compassion, kindness, and genuine affection for people. So here’s to 100 posts and hopefully one hundred more…