'Tis the Season of Becoming

Your heart speaks your truth. ~ Unknown

We had 2020 all planned then along came "Rona."

From quarantine lockdowns and social distancing guidelines, mandatory mask ordinances, sickness, suffering, and death she has proven herself a most formidable challenger. Sadly, at her hand, many will end this year with less resources and fewer loved ones.

As a result, the year 2020 has been revelatory and no matter the philosophical reality we choose to live in, the days of Rona have uncovered how we behave in the midst of a crisis we cannot bend to our individual will.

This year made transparent the "concept" of feeling interconnected as a community, country, and world at large.

"Rona" proved to be a great revealer of hidden fears and anxieties cloaked in the belief of societal norms that when shaken translated into anger, obstinance, hatred, and contempt that seethes just below the surface at the hint of an unwelcome but necessary sacrifice in routine. 

From this season of trial emerges an unveiled version of self as individuals, as countrymen, as human kind; and we are each our own most compelling truth witness of what lives in our heart space to be revealed about us on the stage of life in present and future trying times.

What truth has your heart spoken this year?

Who have you become in this difficult season of sacrifice, challenge, and change?

New Year's most glorious light is sweet hope. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan

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Wound Therapy

"If you are healing and breaking all at once, do not fear, this is growth." ~ Q. Gibson

There are several options for treating wounds that prove difficult to heal. 

In negative pressure wound therapy, stress is applied to draw out any infection. As swelling decreases blood vessels can repair and new healthy tissue growth can occur. 

Physically, this sounds like a painful, uncomfortable process but the "hurting" always comes before the healing.  

So it is with our emotional and spiritual wounding.

When the fear of the "hurting" interrupts the course of the healing, the alternative is an unattended trauma worsened by avoidance tactics that leave us with a half sick version of self desperately in need of repair. 

Meanwhile infecting others with an emotionally communicable flu, convinced that we can be made whole by drawing energies from those who most certainly are struggling with their own pain. 

Before long we become part of a walking wounded zombie apocalypse of epic proportion. One individual as broken as the next impacting the overall physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being of the collective.

Our wounds are our own responsibility. 

To burden another with our unraveling is an imposition that unfairly draws their attention away from their own needs.

Focus your awareness inward and embrace your own therapeutic clearing. Welcome the journey to abundant peace without fear. Your wholeness awaits in a space far from the familiar pain of your recycled experiences. 

To heal or not to heal is the question we each must answer for ourselves.


Are you able to acknowledge your untreated wounds?
Have you been carrying an emotional flu and infected others with your pain?
What prevents you from taking responsibility for your own wound therapy?

"The fear of pain is greater than the pain itself ... push through your fear." ~ Julie Reed

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B.Y.O.J. (Bring Your Own Joy)

"Thoughts become things. Choose the good ones." 
~ Mike Dooley

Free will is a unique defining element of the human experience.

A trick of the psyche is that we have no control over most of our outcomes. Facts speak to the contrary. Though we may not always like our options, nevertheless, options always exist.

As life takes its normal twists and turns that translate into things not going our way, we can be quick to lean away from the empowerment of choice into the complacency of blame.

The big wheel of life takes its natural course and circumstances can be introduced out of nowhere and sometimes, things can and do just happen. Yet, because most experiences begin and end with our pattern of thinking, we are often just one decision away from the distraction that threatens to spiral our lives off kilter. 

Truth is, the mind is not the leader it is the follower.

We determine how we think and how we process our experiences. Accepting responsibility for what we invite as a disruption to our own happiness is a challenge we must commit to overcoming. 

Our choices predicate our consequences.

"Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results." ~ Willie Nelson

As each chapter of life unfolds sometimes gracefully, sometimes not so, we must connect the vision of our outlook to what we are co-creating by way of our thinking. Each experience, joyful or otherwise, depends on the way in which we focus our thought energy upon it. 

Intention set upon a glass half empty ideology directs every experience from the perception of impossibility. Whereas, maintaining a glass half full philosophy, leads us to the places where possibility lives.

Our joy in life is born of our thinking. 

Just like a B.Y.O.B. event, in the party of life, you must B.Y.O.J. 


Do you feel empowered by your freedom to choose?
Are you owning the outcomes of your current patterns of thinking?
Can you decide to bring your own joy to your life?

"Loving myself and thinking joyful thoughts is the way to create a wonderful life." ~ Louise Hay

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Judge and Journey

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another." Charles Dickens

We each have our own ideas about how life ought to be lived. 

The internal compass of right vs. wrong guiding our individual choices is rooted in our upbringing and personal experiences.

However, no matter how invested we may be in our own belief systems, it is important to maintain a spirit of openness to the energy of transformation; ours and that of others.

Seasons change as do people. We must keep in mind that our way of being "right", may be "just right" for us, but a whole lot of "just wrong" for someone else.

Distracting our attention from the messiness in our lives with the business of someone else's can be tempting. To fix our gaze upon the journey of another, however, does not eliminate the need to work toward improvement in our own circumstances. 

Our primary focus must land within our own journey. As my granddaddy used to say, "if you can't help, don't hinder." 

"Never look down on someone unless you are helping them up." ~ Jesse Jackson

If you feel you must address another individual's growth challenges, do so with grace. Showing compassion, not cruelty must be the currency of our intention.
  
Don't make someone regret having shared a secret with you in confidence. Don't leave someone lamenting that they permitted themselves to be vulnerable in your presence. Be careful not to brag about overcoming in the midst of a dark valley experience someone may be immersed in. 

While helping someone to claim a victory is not the time to celebrate your own.

We must learn ways to offer support in a spirit of love and understanding that heals, transforms, and increases peace. 

Hand hold without being haughty.
Assist without shaming.
Provide guidance without aggrandizement.
Counsel without condemnation.

You cannot judge and journey well.

There is a danger in judgment. One can make a fellow traveler fearful of reaching out for help when most in need of it.  Grant the assurance of knowing you will be waiting with open arms as they come through a trial triumphantly on the other side.

All have fallen short and none of us is perfect. None of us has all the answers, but we can explore the questions along the path to the discovery of our better to best selves.

Check your intention to help or to hinder. 

Have you been a help or a hindrance to the lives of others?
What is your intention when you question the growth challenges of a fellow traveler?
What aspects of your personal journey are most in need of your undivided attention?

"Counting other people's sins does not make you a saint." ~ Unknown

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Motherhood Seasons

"Who you are is enough for me. I look at you and all I see is the champion I knew you would be." 
~ Brittney Brady

My firstborn earth light, my Daughter, graduates high school in a couple of weeks and come August, she will be off to college.

Truth be told, I had not envisioned being a mother. 

The wanderlust world of dance, novel writing, and the lure of other lands tugged at my fiery energy much more than settling down to grow a family.

Fast forward to my daughter's wide-eyed emergence; a single cough announcing her arrival. 

I should have known she would be curious, vocal, and strong-willed. 

I could not have known the overflow of love that tiny precious bundle of potential would invoke; that past the pain of labor would burst forth endless opportunity to experience ever increasing joy and wisdom of purpose. 

Nor could I have known she would become a mirror of transformation every time I looked into her eyes. That through her I would learn to give beyond conditions, confront my fears, and dream bigger as I sang possibility to her in each lullaby.

"You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors." ~Toba Beta

As I prepare her for the big day, I reflect upon my own high school graduation. 

Having been supplanted in a new town among strangers; the only constant was my family to cheer me on. 

That was several years ago. 

Most of those who nurtured my spiritual nest so profoundly have since crossed over into the ancestral plane. I take comfort in knowing they are still present, still cheering as another daughter meets her first major academic accomplishment; one few of them attained themselves. 

As her graduation day approaches, I encourage her to remember the faces of her friends first, her family foremost.

Like all mothers and daughters, she and I have had our challenges, but I hope I have tended her wings well enough to send her soaring. I pray I have given her more hope than fear, more wisdom than doubt, more encouragement than despair.

So my Dear Daughter, carry on as your brilliant, beautiful, fearless, compassionate self. It is all yours to design and you are well equipped and well able to create and live out your vision.

Don't look back, look up. 

And never be afraid to fly.

"But I am never really without you,
You're on my computer,
in my briefcase,
at my desk,
around my neck
and on my mind."

~ Pamela Hall

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Respect the Process

"All living things must grow, evolve, adapt, or die." 
~ Alvin Conway 

We are all ever evolving.

Unlike the one time transformation of the caterpillar as it molts into a shiny chrysalis casing, we are subject to varying cycles of continuous change over the course of a lifetime. 

Calls into evolvement while seeking higher levels in divine order and purpose are inevitable. 

It is important that we move through each course the journey presents in preparation for the next steps in our spiritual development. If the evolvement through each lesson is interrupted maturation is stunted.

The challenge lies in overcoming our fear of change enough to permit the process to be completed naturally and individually. 

Our ego mind introduces fear of growth and change, causing resistance to the process; our own and those closest to us. Too often, we intervene to interrupt the necessary evolvement of another in efforts to control situations and outcomes in favor of our comfort. When we do this, we delay another's expansion and refuse our own. 

Just as we endure our transformation challenges with patient endurance, we must yield to the molting process of our friends, family, and fellow travelers. Allowing the individual growth of those who move in and out of our personal experience is necessary and everyone's process should be respected.

It is not our place to make attempts at ordering another's transformation process.  Often we hinder the progress of others to impose our own agenda upon their lives. 

When those we care about find a new circle of friends, go off to school, take a new job, decide to relocate, or choose love with someone else, the temptation to engage in behaviors that interrupt their process to suit our comfort can threaten to overtake us.

"Evolution is nature's creative way of pushing living organisms to higher degrees of complexity. We adapt up, not compromise down." ~ Alvin Conway

Uncomfortable stages will be presented, however, we must learn to resist the urge to order the transformation of another. 

Breaking the shell of someone else's chrysalis has the potential to destroy valuable steps in their transformation. To crack open the chrysalis of another means we pierce that of our own.

As we grow and increase in wisdom, we will learn the danger of engaging in this practice. We must master the art of quiet, patient support as we encourage another on to the higher levels. 

My greatest challenge in this area has been in my relationship with my children, especially as I look to send my daughter off to college in the Fall. Needless to say, I am still growing.

Exchange the fear of the ego mind to rest easy in the expectation of joy-filled expansion that awaits on the other side of the chrysalis for all in your circle.

Invite your personal evolvement and allow others to complete theirs without interruption. It is not yours to order. 

All of our proactive energy should be focused upon our own evolvement.

Respect the process.

Do you resist your chrysalis of transformation experiences?
Has fear of change and need for control made you disruptive to the growth process of others?
What limits your focused attention on the completion of your own evolvement?

"We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." ~ 2 Corinthians 3:18

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Getting To Know You

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Getting Out of Our Own Way

"Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action." ~ Ralph Ellison

In just a few short weeks, Spring will have sprung. 

Having made it through a brutal cold and flu season, people, places, and things are coming back to life all around us. 

When the sunlight meets our eyes and we take that first huge stretch, ebb is shaken from our limbs and replaced with flow. 

Those who like me tend to take hibernation seriously, emerge from our warm and cozy caves refreshed and renewed for inspired action. As we reflect upon the success and disappointment of the past season, empowering our vision for change is the next step in our co-creation. 

The frequency of possibility is calling and it is our time to answer from the space of revival and the sound belief that we can create even better from what we have been and Spring is the perfect time for changing course of direction. 

"You'll never get a new ending if you keep starting with the same tired beginning." ~ Lisa Daily

As you stroll through the garden of your mind's eye, take note of the returning blooms and the baby buds blinking slightly in the sunrise.

If change is the only constant, the only option available to us is the decision for growth or stagnation. 

Choose new life and determine to progress. Open yourself to the energetic flow of the possibilities alive within the power of co-creation.

Come out to meet the Sun again and be encouraged! 

It's a new season!

What important lessons about self have you learned during your hibernation period?
Are there important challenges in your life you are still facing?
How do you plan to take inspired action toward new goals and new ideas?

"The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go." ~ Shannon L. Alder

The BreakUp Call
Learn To Be Your Own Bae
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Now Available on Amazon!
Unfolding With Joy
Recover Yourself
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Coming Soon to Amazon!
Rediscover Yourself 
and 
Getting To Know You

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