The power of love

Yesterday was a particularly heavy day for me. Every limb in my body seemed to be tired. Every thought scattered. Concentration out the window. There was something in the air that I could not quite pinpoint. Disbelief in the tragedies that have occurred in rapid succession of each other. All in the beginning of a new year. A beginning started with so much possibility than quickly changed into one piece of tragic news after the other.

People are sick and some are dying. Norovirus in Canada and England. Worst flu epidemic in the US. And still we are not slowing down. Still we are chasing after what may not even be ours. Still we are seeking more than what we may need. When do we ever learn to just be? To wait. To be patient. To take time to love. To appreciate. To enjoy all that we have in this present moment rather than projecting into the tomorrow that never comes anyway.

Why do we think we can cheat the hands of time? When what we should be doing is enjoying every second, minute, hour of time that we get. There are so many of us that overlook the power of love. That which wakes us up in the morning and soothes us to sleep at night.

Last night I was reading through the tributes for my dear friend, Perry, and his lovely departed wife, Penny, and all I could think about was love. So I wrote these thought down about what love felt like to me last night. In tribute to my friends, Perry and Penny, and to those to whom these thoughts may resonate:

Love never dies. It remains in our hearts. Forevermore.

Even when we never see our loved ones again.

They are always with us. A part of us.

Because they are us. As we are them.

Grief sometimes challenges our belief in love. Our capacity for love.

Threatening to shut us off in the darkness.

Close our hearts to love. So we will not feel the pain of love when it is yanked away from us.

So violently.  So unexpectedly. Without warning.

But imagine if we never knew that love. Never felt that love. Never tasted that love.

How pointless our lives would be

So it’s better to have loved

Than never to have loved at all

Even when it hurts so bad. Even we feel so sad that love has disappeared without a trace

Love is what hold us together…Forever

Even when we can’t see our loved ones

They are forevermore etched in our hearts.

Full of love. Unconditional love. Hope. Faith. And trust that we will meet again…Soon.

Love endures forever. Love.

And once I wrote this, my whole being shifted from one of heaviness to one of love and light. Possibility and gratitude for having invited love into my heart. Into my life. Into my soul.  There is nothing greater than the power of love. Nothing more enduring than the power of love. Nothing more satisfying and healing than the power of love. Namaste.

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Endings and beginnings

Endings and Beginnings. Beginnings and Endings.

This has been a weekend of endings for many of my friends.  Parents having to bury their sons. Friends having to say goodbye way too soon. Husbands having to say goodbye to their wives unexpectedly due to sudden illnesses. My husband coming to terms with the fact that his father may be nearing his end.

Sadness abound for the weekend yet the weather was crystal clear and beautiful showing the dichotomy of life. Saturday was particularly heavy for me because I knew friends were experiencing what no parent wants to experience having to bury their child while the rest of us were going about our every day chores and errands. Illustrating how life ends but it must go on at the same time for those that remain. A beginning of some sorts without those who have departed. Difficult to grasp but true.

While I had another friend who was sitting by his wife’s side praying for her to recover only to discover she was deteriorating rather than getting better. This after a sudden collapse. No warning. Not time to say all the things they wanted to say to each other. Grief and shock beyond words. For him. For her. For them. For us.

Remembering how angry I felt when my mother died and people were going about their normal day while I was having to close the coffin on my mother knowing I would never see her again. The grief so deep I thought I would not breathe again. That I would never live again. Her death too soon. Too sudden to make any sense of. Too fast that I never got to say goodbye.

And for each of my friends this weekend the same was true. A son killed in an accident. Never giving them the chance to say goodbye. A friend whose wife went to work in the morning fine and then collapsed at the end of the day. Again never having the chance to say goodbye to the way their life was.

It is so difficult during times of grief to look up and see the light. So difficult during times of grief to hold onto faith. It is so difficult during times of grief to feel that it is possible to laugh again, enjoy life again without feeling guilty. But it is these times of grief that help us to become stronger people, more compassionate people, more loving people and also people that know firsthand that life can change in an instant and we must be sure to tell our loved ones we love them. To live our lives as fully as we can because tomorrow really is promised to no one. That life is a gift and is very short and it is up to us to treat it as the present it really is.

To every ending there is a beginning. When I drove past the hospital today I thought there is a family grieving in there for a lost life and at the same time there is a family rejoicing for the beginning of a new life. Sadness mixed with joy.  Signifying that there are always endings and beginnings even when we think the doors of life have been shut in our face. As long as we are breathing there is a beginning every single day when we awake and an ending every single day when we close our eyes and go to sleep. The same faith we have that we will wake up in the morning is the faith we must have that we are here for a reason. And we have to live it. One step at a time. One day at a time.

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What a difference a day can make

What a difference a day can make. Health teaches us this more than anything else. We take our healthy daily bodies for granted. It’s only when we are sick or debilitated that we realize just how fortunate we are when everything works. I woke up this morning feeling almost like my old self. My stomach is still in knots but nowhere near as angry as it was before. I feel a little stronger than I have in the last few days because I managed to eat some food last night and most of it stayed in.

I feel rejuvenated and fresher than I have for a few days. My illness showing me what a difference a day can make. That each day I have grown stronger. Each day I have felt a little better. Illustrating that sometimes in life we have to take small steps to get to where we need to be. That life is not a race. It is a wonderful journey particularly when we slow down allowing us to see all the treasures that surround us each and every day.

That when we are patient and have faith, everything works out as it should. I woke up a little later than usual today allowing my body to rest and when I did, I woke up to sunlight streaming through my windows. A silence without the sound of wind rushing past my windows. A sense of peace and serenity mingled with the sound of birds chirping and realized today is the dawn of a new day. A day where how horrible I felt yesterday, the day before, and the day before that has now ceased and is replaced with liveliness coming back into my form. Just as the sunny day has replaced the grayness and gloom and wind of the days before.

Reminding me that we must not take our health and functioning bodies for granted. Instead we need to take care of our whole selves. Listening to our bodies, minds and spirits telling us what they need to be healthy. And when they do and we take heed life ends up being  beautiful because we appreciate every part of ourselves.

This morning I stood outside my bedroom door and inhaled the freshness of the new day inviting it into my mind, body and soul. Exhaling out all the darkness that had been in my body. Appreciative of my recovery albeit slower than I would have liked but definitely on the road to being me again. Allowing me to thank the Universe for my bout with food poisoning because it reminded me to not take anything for granted and to appreciate all that I have.

The peace of this morning light replicating the growing peace in my mind, body and soul and for this morning and my recovering body I am truly grateful. 

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On the road to recovery

I woke up this morning feeling better than I did yesterday and even better than I did the day before. But still I’m not 100%. My body feels defeated and my mind feels tired after a bout of food positioning. So the debate in my mind is do I go back to work this morning or do I give myself today and the weekend to fully recover.

It’s amazing how guilt can come into play and make us feel we need to get back to work as soon as possible even when we are not 100% then we end up worse off than we were before. Food poisoning is  funny thing because just when you think it’s out of your system then you put something  in your mouth, it all starts again. So what happens is you don’t want to eat which compounds the tiredness because you are not fuelling your body.

So maybe what I will do today is stay at home experiment to see what I can and cannot eat without feeling off again and get myself ready for the full work week next week.

We all need to learn to treat our bodies like the temples they are. Listening to our bodies when they tell us to take care of ourselves. To heed the warnings that all is not completely well. And to learn the only people we need to prove anything to are ourselves because if our bodies, minds and souls aren’t together, we won’t be either.

So signing off again with a short post because I need to take care of me today to get me back to the 100% I am meant to be. 

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I am being led

Interesting way to start the New Year with food poisoning but I guess it’s the Universe way of telling me I need to rest. To take some time to rejuvenate. Get rid of all that Christmas mess I ate. So my blog will be short and sweet today as I need time to rest today.

The other night when I was contemplating life, the following thoughts popped in to my head so I am putting it out there today:

I am being led right now

Led by a force greater than mine

By a hand that wants me to see

That this life, this journey

Is not about me

It’s about all of us

Journeying together

To achieve the best

The greatest

We can all be

So that collectively

We can create, inherit

And give back

A much better place than

What we found

That when we reach out

And help our fellow brothers and sisters

To be the best they can be

Not by hiding,

Not by lying,

Not by stealing

But by sharing

Believing and having faith

There is enough for all of us

More than enough

Abundance

I am being led because

I am accepting of the Whole

Understanding I am

A part of the Whole

A part of the Infinite being

Divided we fall

United we stand

Accepting

I am being led

A task I gratefully

And gracefully

Follow and accept

Because I know it is for my better good

Which in turn will be

For the better good

Of us all

Amen

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Starting the New Year work week with Gratitude

First day for going back to work in the New Year. I could grumble and feel depressed. But I won’t because I am starting the New Year on a positive note. Harnessing all that is good. All that I have to be grateful for.  Reminding myself of how fortunate I really am by making the decision to reflect on 2012 not on what I was disappointed about but rather focusing on all I had to be grateful for and still have to be grateful for today.

1.       The World did not end on December 21

2.       I woke up this morning

3.       My children and husband

4.       Our health

5.       Love

6.       My marriage making it to 20 years

7.       Finding my passion by writing every day and producing this blog 6 days a week

8.       Accepting I am an imperfect, flawed woman living an imperfect flawed life

9.       Accepting I am where I am meant to be

10.   Learning to let go and go with the flow

11.   Learning the concept of balance is meant to change just as we change

12.   My brothers and sisters here and afar

13.   My dad

14.   My inlaws

15.   My extended family

16.   My home

17.   Spending  wonderful family time with my husband and two children whether here at home or when we are on vacation together

18.   Friends that remain

19.   Friends that have gone

20.   Doing the best I can with the resources I have

21.   Not pushing myself to be something I am not

22.   Forgiving people who have transgressed me

23.   Forgiving myself for transgressing others

24.   My compassion growing each and every day

25.   Practicing gratitude every single day

26.   Making meditation a part of my daily life even if for 5 minutes

27.   Deepak Chopra for helping me to see meditation does not have to be for 45 minutes

28.   Everyone who reads my blog

29.   Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday on Facebook on Sunday mornings

30.   Every person that crosses my path because you are here to teach me more about me

31.   Life itself

32.   The trials I experience

33.   The triumphs I experience

34.   Spreading love and light as best I can by embracing it for myself first

35.   For being me

36.   My choices

37.   Having a job

38.   Gratitude itself

I am setting the stage for a wonderful 2013 whatever may come my way. Let’s reflect on the New Year with all that was positive in our lives for 2012 and carry that feeling of goodwill, promise, hope and faith with us into the New Year. Here’s to my golden year. And to yours. Namaste.

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Happy New Year - the Dawn of the Golden Age

Wow, it’s the first day of the New Year. January 1, 2013. 1/1/2013. A prime year my husband and son like to say. A number that is only divisible by the number one and the number itself. So is 2013 meant to represent a year of strength, of unity? Nothing to divide us but ourselves? Interesting thought.
But we later discovered from my brother that 2013 is divisible by 3 and 671 both odd numbers within themselves so we decided that 2013 was going to be a year onto its own. Each of us finding our own sense of strength building into a global unity. United we stand, divided we fall.

We spent New Year’s Eve together as a family with a wonderful family and some new friends.  The children were in one wing of the house entertaining each other while the adults had the other wing of the house so we could freely talk about a range of topics. Sometimes challenging each other but in a spirited way.

Once the clock was close to midnight, adults with champagne in hand and children gathered to ring in the New Year. The New Beginning. Couples finding each other first to wish each other the best and to toast in the New Year. Then each couple finding our children to hug them and wish them the best. Then everyone finding each other to wish each other the best. Spreading a feeling  of unity and togetherness and love.

Fireworks bursting in the sky in the distance adding to the festive feel in the air. Feeling so privileged to be bringing in another year, another dawning of a new age with my husband, my children and friends. Feeling so full of promise for all that is to come. Feeling like there is great hope for me, my husband, my children and everyone if we keep our faith strong. If we allow faith to carry us through our darkest hours.

We left our friends’ home in great spirits. And as we walked through our own front door, one by one my husband kissed each one of us and wished each one of us well - allowing and inviting the promise of this new year to come with us into our home. Filling our home with hope, love and possibility.  So when I woke up this morning to this beautiful new day, with a slight wind, the air crisp and fresh, and full of light,  I inhaled the joy and possibility I felt. Exhaling the memory of the dark morning of the end of 2012, I felt in my heart that 2013 is the beginning of a fabulous New Year.

I felt the Universe asking me to cast aside my initial trepidation about the New Year ending in 13. Thinking about how the number 13 always conjured up dark images in my mind. Yet I felt so light this morning without the heaviness I thought I would feel. I decided to ask my son why the number 13 is his favorite number. To which he answered because it’s the coolest number ever.  Schooling me on the fact that 13 is the number of the alchemist. The early chemists who were trying to turn base metal into gold. So maybe that’s what this year represents - turning dust to gold. Turning whatever comes our way into gold. Particularly since the start of this new day, this New Year is so beautiful. So picturesque. The air so fresh. Full of hope, possibility and promise.

Allowing me to accept and appreciate that this is the Dawn of the Golden Age for me and my family and may I not forget it even when I am feeling like everything is a pot of coal rather than a pot of gold.  Present moment living yielding all the gold I can find. What a present it will be and is. Here’s to the Golden Year – 2013.

#HappyNewYear

#2013

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