The past is not a place to live in. It is a place to learn from so that we can live in today and have hope for the future.
Casey Eagle Speaker

When I was a little girl, my birthday often got messed up into the Christmas festivities, leaving me feeling left out, not important, insignificant. You know, all those things children think are true about themselves because they don’t have the cognitive capacity to make sense of the world around them and see the world only through the eyes of “I am the centre of the universe so it must be all about me!”

As a child, I could not see that it wasn’t that my birthday wasn’t important or that I wasn’t significant or made a difference in our family. It was that my mother was often alone, had four children to tend to and was suffering from a great sadness that haunted her every moment.

Years ago, when I was a mother of young children, I asked my mother to tell me her life story. It was then I realized the great sadness that haunted her was not of my making. It had descended long before my arrival in this world. The tragedy wasn’t that she was sad. It was that over the decades she had not received proper attention for the darkness that filled her light and so drifted day to day through a haze of over the counter drugs she employed to soften the edges of her sadness.

As a child, my father was often away. I used to make up stories about where he was. What he was doing. Who he was talking to. Mostly my stories revolved around him saving the world because he was a super hero and had great things to do. In his absence, my mother would often threaten to tell my father of all the wrongs I’d committed. It worried me. Did that mean he was away because I was bad? I tried to be good. I really did. But my attempts were futile. My father stayed away. And so, I told myself stories of why he was gone so long and how it couldn’t be all about me, even though my child’s mind believed it was.

In reality, he was trying to make a living to support his family and was doing what he knew best to do when faced with challenges that threatened to overwhelm him. Run away. Disappear. Be silent and distant. It was all he’d ever known to cope with childhood trauma’s and a troubled past he could not understand. He too was doing the best he could. It’s just children don’t come with an instruction manual. How was he to figure us out?

The beauty of time and growing older is, the past is not as welcoming as it grows further into the distance. In its fading days, I am learning to be more present in today, more conscious of my now, more grateful for what I have in this moment, right now.

And I am truly grateful.

Yesterday was C.C.’s birthday. we celebrated with a dinner for two at home. A delightful evening of candles and music, wine and food carefully prepared with Love.

Today is my birthday. His kiss stirred me from my sleep. His birthday song awoke me.

What a delightful, loving, tender way to greet my day.

Oh. And Beaumont got in the mix too!  He stuck his nose in my face as I lay on the bed savouring the morning and gave me a great big birthday lick!  How sweet is that! (I guess now is not the time to tell him I don’t like doggie kisses! )

It is my birthday and I get to celebrate and be thankful for my life and all the years I’ve spent learning how to live it with passion, joy and Love.

I am truly blessed and very grateful..