Let It Be

Sometimes I find life quietly lulls along...it feels as if it's bobbing lazily along with the stream of my life. Of course, things are plodding along as normal, but those "shake you awake moments" seem to be sitting dormant and silent on the sidelines. And all at once, I seem to be whirling and buzzing with the bittersweet beauty of clarity...and those snapshot moments that I wish so desperately I could put on the inside of my deepest, most secret pocket.

Goodbye's. Or maybe those moments you realise something is, in fact, over...are rarely happy. October presented a chalk full 31 days. A television appearance...an unforgettable vacation, a car accident, 2 brilliant concerts, a double dose of goodbye...and a night spent with 2 children caught in the wonderment of Halloween. I can say the month didn't end without my heart brimming to uneqivocal overflow.

Those perfect moments of the month keep everything in perspective...and the good surely does outweigh the bad. But with honesty, the goodbye's are bruising. They leave dull, aching pain and reminders of when life was a little less complicated...and when the unknown was exciting, and not scary. Learning that things aren't as you thought they were...well, who is prepared for that?

Goodbye means change. Sometimes it means a reboot of sorts, and a chance to start afresh without the constraints of ankle weights holding you to the past. It frees both sides to grow...if they weren't meant to grow and intertwine together. It inevitably, administers relief to one, or both parties. Sometimes, amidst the release...there is still the unresolved, hanging in the air like wispy smoke. Sometimes...you choose to live with the "why"...because "why" lives in a place called 10 minutes ago...and it just doesn't matter anymore.

So, now 5 days into a new month...I look back on October with a grateful smile...a renewed sense of what I want for my one and only life...and a few tears that I won't wipe away just yet. I accept what is...and I will let it be...whatever that may be.

Fair Trade

Everyday we trade things. I began trading stickers in primary school. Two scratch and sniff stickers were fairly negotiated for a puffy Scooby Doo. I was an avid reader as a girl. Library books were traded and consumed over and over again. Global economies are upheld by a trading system of commodities and stocks, and our financial stability is waged on the culmination of good and bad, long term and short term decisions.

I traded 2 days of travel for an adventure between the Sea and Sky. I spent many hours in airports and airplanes, so to visit my incredible friends on the west coast, and one hell of an amazing city. As I flew across the country last week...over mountains and prairies, through cumulus clouds and time zones...I thought about the trade off.

If we place the highest worth on those things that are most precious and impossible to duplicate, then the expense of our time should have the highest trading value in our lives.

Sometimes we realise after a transaction, whether it was financial, emotional, spiritual or an increment of time, that perhaps, we made an unwise decision with our investment. As it may be, the pay off wasn't equal to the contribution. Or we realise what exists, was bound to change and develop...and the initial investment grows into a very valuable and strangely prismatic personal masterpiece.

We don't get our time back. Hopefully, we mindfully trade into those things and people that are going to provide a continual and flourishing return. A fear faced and conquered provides the most gratifying return on your trade. A fear faced and failed at, still provides valuable lessons and tools for the future. When we know better...we do better.

So think about what you're trading...your time..your heart..your money..your peace. Choose honesty. Work to follow your heart in your trades. Be fearless. Even if the only outcome you land with after the leap is clarity...I venture to declare, it was worth it.

“You have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.” ― Candace Bushnell

Keys

I am somewhere else. I am sitting in the apartment of someone I know, in a city on the other side of the country...and I feel somehow like a newer, more attuned me.

I found a key on the sidewalk yesterday... in this city that I don't live in...in a place I haven't been before. It's unusual, and like no other key I have seen before. It is slightly tarnished, and a shape that I am not familiar with. It's now on the inside of my red purse, and I will string it around my neck when I get home as a reminder of my vacation.

It somehow serves too, as an even bigger reminder that keys are falling in front of me all the time. That new things are being opened up to me as I step into life with just a whisper of faith sometimes...believing that those magic, crazy kismet moments I hear about...those moments that seem to happen to everyone else...well, they may just be springing up as my toes hit the pavement.

No one needed to tell me that there is a certain amount of clarity and calm exhale that comes from taking a break. I remember a break I took last year after the worst loss of my life...and truthfully, and with 100% honesty, that escape to another country and into the arms and company of my deeply kindred and most beloved best friend saved me. Being away and being home with her all at once, was more soothing and cleansing than any church I could enter. I found peace...protection, love and understanding in that hiatus from my chaotic life.

And now, in this moment, I am in a city that boasts sea and mountains, and houses some amazing people I am lucky to call friends. I am renewed again. I will head home in a few days, and somehow feel rejuvenated and wildly excited about the next chapters of my life...new beginnings as I step off an airplane headed East, and home...

and a key to remind me to always chase new beginnings to open up my own happiness.

Not Me

I used to bask in the naivete of youth. There was a quickly fleeting belief in the unbreakable chords binding my safety. The long list of things that happen to other people was neither read, nor considered by me to have any capability of impact on my life. Funny enough, the list included both good, and bad things...unconciously, perhaps my expectations of life were low, and high, all at once.

Surely, no one in my immediate family will ever experience a divorce. We aren't that kind of family. Coming from a long heritage of Godly and strongly moral people, this concreted my belief that it would never impact our family. But it has. It is in front of my face daily as we, the unequipped due to lack of experience, wade through that which is so unfamiliar and chaotic. The lessons learned already are many...the blessings too many to count...we are sheltered by an incredible network of praying family, friends..and strangers. One persons selfishness ripples out from the initial strike...but that which was intended to harm, debilitate and destroy only makes us stronger...and we are thankful for the beauty that rises out of ashes.

Surely, I won't lose someone I love in an untimely manner. Surely, those I love will live to be old, and we'll live out our years with health and prosperity and all die in our sleep. Surely, if an untimely death is to occur, it won't happen as a result of suicide or addiction or a raging disease. Of course..it's knocked on my door, time and again...deeply kindred friends...beloved family members, parents, children and siblings of those I love so much. Not me, doesn't apply. The unparalleled joy of loving people is far greater than the fear of losing them...we are blessed to love each other and to share our lives...no matter how long we get with each other.

Surely, I won't have a house...children in my life...my dream job, my dream car...or someone to cherish me. And of course...I do. They've all come to me at different times in life, but each one has arrived at the right time, when I was ready to receive. Having enough presence of mind to recognize the value of each good thing has humbled me. While I feel undeserving and somehow unprepared at times for the life I am in fact, right in the middle of...I know it's all working together for my good. Those are His promises. So for all of the good things around the bend, I am cautiously optimistic as I raise my hand. The response is no longer, "Surely, not me", it whispers confidently in my ear:

WHY not me??

Full Circle Life

I didn't know. When life was flying by like a milkweed on the fragrant wind of my youth...I wasn't thinking of the future.

The sidewalks I skipped down...the cracks I leaped over so to not break my mothers back... they all absorbed the imprint of my childhood. The towering maple tree in the front yard of our familes house that has a well worn branch from our tire swing...it's still there. I wasn't thinking then about what I was leaving behind, I was powerlessly flung into my future and somehow feel like I woke up in my mid thirties...back where it all began.


Resistance to the familiar and to your own history is pretty normal, I like to think. Most people want to spread their wings and venture towards the unclear horizon...and towards where they think their future lies. I have always wanted to go out and find life...make big things happen, and quietly, and introspectively marvel at quite humble beginnings. This has perhaps been with the notion in mind that surely, I won't come back to where I came from. I will escape and close the chapters of a biting, bittersweet past...and I will be done.


And here I am. Back in the city that taught me all I needed to know..about life, about family...about joy, disappointment and resolution. It's all here...and I am conscious of the peace I feel right now, to be home. No street is unfamiliar. I see people I know regularly. My memories live between the earth and the sky here...airborn and landing everyday like they were waiting for the moment I returned.


I am watched over by a deeply kindred spirit. I think of him...and feel him present on the pavements here like nowhere else. I sometimes think if I look closely enough I will see his footprints fade in front of me, like watery impressions on a sandy shore ..and in every Tim Horton's drive thru between here and the highway. He is here...and I feel like I have more of him closeby now as I drive past the indelible imprints of our friendship in this city, and can look out my bedroom window to a church he frequented.


Back where I began. I am watching Treehouse with my niece and nephew...and banana muffins are in the oven...the air is cool, the sun is setting into lavender and coral ribbons, and tomorrow is a school day. A well placed quote, to sum up my life in this moment,


"The wheel is come full circle." William Shakespeare

The Jingle Dancer

Everyone should find pride in who they are. With strengths and weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and quirks...unashamed beauty and fractured self at times.

Mariah was a different kid.

15.

Strong.

Inspiring.

Motivated.

Fragile.

She danced the Jingle Dance as part of her Chippewa heritage. That native dance costume was a reflection of Mariah...brilliantly coloured, flowing like an accomplice in the dance...and free to the wind and to the skies. Great meaning is placed on the sacred garment as explained by Evelyn Thom...a 76 year old jingle dress dancer:

"It is a gift to be able to dance. The jingle dress was a gift from the Creator. It is important to carry that healing vision to the people".

Complex. Aren't all teenagers? I don't think there is a parent out there who is raising, or has raised a teenager who wouldn't tell you that escorting a young girl from childhood into adulthood isn't a tireless job. But if you knew Mariah...you might say her mother was luckier than most. She effortlessly achieved good grades, brilliantly expressed herself through art, and volunteered her time with seniors in the evenings. She was a different kind of girl.

But she was the same too....she was in the throws of her first love. She loved Jersey Shore and found herself plunked on the couch when it was on...bumpit in place and a room full of GTL companions. She loved MAC makeup and Coach handbags...and she loved her family...immediate, and extended.

Mariah has inspired a movement. The circle that has started adds new members everyday...hand to hand, arm to arm, in the battle against teen suicide. No one is immune to this. Everyone will know someone either personally, or second hand, who has lost a sister or brother...daughter or son as they have died by suicide. Don't look away and ignore the obvious.

This circle aims to surround those battling depression...young and old, wildly successful, or just getting by...Mariah's Mission aims to shield and guard those most vulnerable...those who want to harm themselves and don't see a reason to live with the pain anymore.

So dear sweet girl...tonight we gather, and honour you for your 16th Birthday Bash. We will laugh, and I am sure shed more than a few tears...and we will carry on your desire for advocacy.

Dance on, beautiful jingle dancer....and we will carry out your mission of healing to the people. xo

Clover Honey

The mission is simple.

Be real.

Repeated attempts to conquer it are far too many to number. Because truly...what does being real really look like anyway?

I had a very honest conversation with a good friend a while ago, and for some reason truth spilled like clover honey...thick and heavy and consuming. The overwhelming results of my actions in life up to this point were mirrored in front of me. I was faced with the weight of my dissatisfaction with life and my anxious frustrations about the future. A revelation filled me to overflow...I am living in the aftermath of a closed life.

No one intends to be closed. To be guarded and protected. I find it hard to believe that anyone conciously decides to shut down, and build walls. But with brutal honesty...I did it. I did it a year ago. I had a monumental heartbreak and swore never again...NEVER. It's hard to admit. It's risky to admit defeat...and to admit you're not as strong as people believe you to be. So...the walls have armoured soldiers on the perimetre and you assume the post of commander...and swear you'll never hurt again.

My friend challenged me. The conversation hurt. A lot. I don't know why he said the things he did. I don't know why in that moment I was ready to hear it...but I was. Perhaps it's because he knew my Michael...which changes everything in my heart. Michael breaks me open...and I know if someone loved him...then they might just get me like he did. It left me unsettled and angry...tears flowed in frustration because I knew he hit the bullseye...and so began the process of breaking me open. What a journey that is.

Living authentically is hard work. It's respecting your own boundaries, but confidently sitting atop those parametres and looking at a life that is aching to be lived. Atop the wall life presents like a parade...beautiful and invigorating to watch. The choice to watch it from inside your safe place is not uncommon...spectating is a fairly benign activity.

But to march. To be part of it...to be on the inside and look out and feel the satisfaction that you're exactly where you should be...that's the beauty, isn't it? It's a real, concious, mindful and voluntary behaviour...and it inspires the soul. Because life is too short to not let people inside the fortress...it's too damn short.

So...my friend sparked something in me. He helped me realise just how much is going on out there. He didn't assure me it's a clear mission...or that it's not risky...but he told me it's worth it, and more importantly..that I'm worthy and deserving of more. Guess what? I don't have it all together. I'm like you, trying to find my way. But now, my toe is dipped in the stream, and I am cautiously contemplating wading in...and apparently I have always known how to swim, I just needed a well placed friendly nudge.

Thank you TE...it meant a lot.