On Saturday as part of my role as a facilitator in the G2 portion of Choices, I was asked to take on a new role in training the coaches on the Purpose Process. It was my first time giving this section of the training and I was nervous.

My l’il ole critter was having a field day. “What if you blow it?” “What if you mess up?” “What if you…. blah. blah. blah.”

Now, five years ago, maybe even not that long ago, I would have given into the critter’s voice and made myself sick with worry about this new responsibility and how well I would or would not do.

I would have made it all about me.

Time can be a powerful ally. Over time, I have learned to disconnect from the critter’s nattering. It is not all about me. In that knowing, I have embraced the idea of beginners mind as the pathway to doing my best. In beginner’s mind, I do not have to have all the answers. I simply need to be open to the experience so that my best in that moment can shine.

I’d had ample time to prepare and practice that portion of the training, I was ready. I’d also had lots of opportunity to let go of fear, self-judgement, self-criticism and anything else that would stand in my way of giving my best because I know, in beginner’s mind I never have to be perfect. I simply need to be completely present.

My ego (aka Nasty Critter) would like me to believe there is no room for mistakes. There is no forgiveness. There is no grace.

My ego would like me to feel the angst of having to be perfect as the only path to accomplishing my goals.

My ego, and my heart, want the same things — they do not want me to fail.

The difference is, my ego believes I will, my heart knows I can’t.

My heart knows that doing my best is all that I can do. In that place where my heart is at ease, I am embraced with knowing that my best is good enough — and if I’m not accepting that truth, I’m making it ‘all about me.’

Letting my ego step in and take over would have set me up for failure.

Stepping back from ego to focus on my mission of inspiring each coach to know that their best was good enough and that they each had the capacity to step out of ‘it’s all about me‘ thinking. My purpose wasn’t to ‘look good’ in front of them. My vision was to awaken within each of them the knowledge that they had the power, the information and the tools to create a safe and courageous space for their trainees  to find the words to their purpose.

I gave my best to inspire their best. In that space of grace, where my best is good enough, ego chatter fades into the joy of being present, without worrying about ‘how am I doing?’, ‘what are they thinking about how I am doing?’ ‘do they like me and how I’m doing or are they sitting there judging me and finding fault with everything I’m saying and doing?’

Instead of focussing on me, I got to focus on the information I was imparting and how best to get it across.

Instead of making it all about me, I got to move into that space where I could listen and watch for signs from the coaches that signalled they got it, or something needed more clarification.

Instead of fearing the outcome, I took my gaze off of continually questioning ‘how am I doing?’ and focused instead on creating a safe and courageous space for learning to happen so that fear could fade away for all of us.

And, added bonus, I had my co-facilitator who has given the training many times, right beside me to catch me if I fell.

It was a great lesson in letting go of fear and my need to ‘be perfect’ to fall into that space where living my purpose was I all I needed to create better in my world.

I am an alive and radiant woman, touching hearts and opening minds to set spirits free.

I’m coaching at Choices  and off to be part of miracles unfolding in every heart.

Be back Monday!

Have a great rest of the week.

We planted flowers yesterday. We raked the lawn, tidied the hedges, swept the walk and laughed and joked and connected as a team and a community.

We were at one of the buildings owned by the Calgary Homeless Foundation to help out with spring cleaning. It was fun and fulfilling and, it was a break from ‘the office’.

And when we finished, we went to a local pub for a late lunch and laughed and joked and shared in the harmony of having spent some time outside working together.

A year ago, this was a problem location. The neighbours were up in arms. A group of citizens were banding together calling for the shutting down of the Foundation’s housing first programs in their neighbourhood.

We had meetings and talks and emails and phone calls. We worked together; the agency that manages the programming in the building and works with the tenants, all of whom have long-term lived experience of homelessness; the police who respond to calls and were concerned by the high level of calls from the building. We worked with the community, the businesses in the area and the Alderman’s office to find a path to common ground, to that place where the label ‘homeless’ doesn’t equal ‘criminal’, undesirable or any host of other names we throw at people whose lives we do not understand and whose condition often scares us.

This was our second year of planting flowers and gardening at the building. No one came out to help last year. No one came out to chat.

Yesterday, one of the tenants came out and helped us garden.

Yesterday, a woman sat on the front steps and shared snippets of her journey.

Yesterday, a woman chatted from her balcony and told us how pretty the flowers looked. Another man chatted from his balcony and eventually came down to chat some more and have his picture taken.

And as I was leaving, another man called out to me from behind his screen door. “Didn’t you use to work at a shelter?” he asked.

“I did,” I told him.

“I remember you,” he said. And then he shared what it was like to be housed. To have a home. To have a place to call his own. “It’s hard,” he said. “I don’t always remember how to be here.” and then, he laughed. A shy, quiet laugh. There was no nervousness in his laugh. No trying to hide some unnamed discomfort. It was an honest commentary on his situation. “It sure is better than living in a shelter and on the streets,” he added.

Later, at lunch, I chatted with the restaurant manager with whom the managing agency from the building and I had met last spring to talk about his concerns about the building and its tenants. “It’s been quiet since we met,” he said. “The agency has done a fantastic job of dealing with our issues.”

It is always the challenge of this work. Our perceptions. Our fears. Our misconceptions interfere with seeing there is a path to common ground. There is a way to live together in harmony. It may not be ‘normal’, but it can be better than living on separate sides of the equation, fighting each other for our right to stand our ground.

We say, not in my backyard, in the hopes that by declaring our sacred ground, we will not have to step across the line to see the view from someone else’s perspective. We hope that by holding onto our fears, we will not have to drop our guard to acknowledge that we each have a right to find our way home, no matter our condition.

To find common ground, we must let down our guard.

Yesterday, I worked alongside my team on the ground around a building that houses formerly homeless Calgarians.

It was a good day for community building.

“I owe it all to going to jail,” he tells me as we sit in the living room of his bachelor apartment on a Friday afternoon, the sun streaming in through the windows, the sound of traffic on the busy roadway outside a constant hum in the background. He has agreed to be interviewed for an article I’m writing for an agency’s annual report. He is one of the tenants they house with long term experience of homelessness. “I want to do whatever I can to help. They helped me.”

Life wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. But he’s alive and that’s what counts he tells me. Foster care at 12. The streets at 16. He ran with a tough crowd. Saw a lot of Canada but doesn’t remember much of it. “I was drunk a lot. Stoned too.” And then he adds with a shy laugh. “And then, I got lucky.”

Lucky was going to jail for eighteen months, he tells me. “Never saw that coming,” he adds. “Thinking that prison would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

It was in prison, he got diagnosed and started taking meds for a mental illness. “I owe it all to my mental health worker. She saved my life.” And he motions to the room in which we sit. The guitar. The training certificates hanging in a line on one wall. A child’s drawings on the fridge. “I’m here because of her.”

Here is a large one room bachelor suite in a building that is specifically for individuals with low income and lived experience of homelessness. He has lived here for 9 months. His plan is to keep living here, to keep gaining stability, to keep building his life. “As long as I stay good. I can live here. That’s my plan.”

Find value in all things.

For this man, going to jail is where he found the most value. It changed his life. For the better.

Another woman I interview tells me that four years of a debilitating illness was hard. Really hard. It took away her independence. It stole her self worth.

“I didn’t plan on getting sick,” she tells me on the day I interview her. “At first, I fought it. I thought I could keep working my way through it. But I was too sick and just kept getting sicker.”

Eventually, she lost her business. Her home. Her way.

“I was really lost for awhile,” she tells me. Her voice is quiet. Soft. Her eyes look away as though she can still see those days clearly. “I almost gave up.” And then, she got help.

“I never thought I’d have to reach out for help. That wasn’t me,” she adds with a laugh. In reaching out she discovered a world of possibility. It was different than the world she imagined, but it was there none the less. “I found all these people willing to help me. I used to think I was all alone. I wouldn’t change any of it, just to know that.”

Find value in all things.

It doesn’t matter if we judge something good, bad or indifferent. If we are experiencing it, there is value in it.

This week, starting on Wednesday, my youngest daughter and I are coaching together at Choices. It’s founder, Thelma Box, created the program 35 years ago to help women cope with life and divorce and everything in between. Many of the women who first came to the seminar were like Thelma. Single mothers. Divorced. Trying to keep their families together. Trying to keep themselves from falling apart. Thelma found value in her experiences by creating value for others.

Eight years ago, I sat in the seminar room for the first time and wondered, “what’s the value for me in all of this?” I had just spent 3 years rotor-rooting through my soul in a desperate attempt to find my answers so that I could help my daughters heal from the relationship that almost killed me. When I stepped into the seminar room I figured I had it all worked out. I was there because my best friend asked me to go. “I need you to go for me,” she said. She had helped save my life. It was the least I could do for her.

Little did I know that by stepping into the seminar room that first Wednesday as a trainee, I would find a lifetime of value that continues to inform and enrich my life, and my daughters lives as well. It wasn’t that I needed fixing. It was that I needed a safe, loving environment to be who I am without fear of being judged, challenged or dismissed. In that loving space, I grew to accept me, just the way I am. And, my daughters and I grew to know and accept each other, just the way we are. In that place, Love connected us and forgiveness and caring and grace became our field of engagement.

I didn’t know what value there would be for me in that seminar room eight years ago. It doesn’t matter. Sitting in that room, being in it again and again as a coach, the value I find far outweighs the time and energy it takes to continue to be part of the program.

And in my commitment, my daughters continue to explore its value in their lives. And what could be better than that? To know that they matter. That they are magnificent. That they have tools to live their lives outside their comfort zones.

There is value in all things. Our job is to find it and live it for all we’re worth.

I love the month of May! Eleven years ago this month on May 21st, I was released from a relationship that was killing me. At 9:14 am two RCMP officers walked into a room where I had been hiding out with the man who had promised to love me “’til death do us part” and was taking the death part way too seriously, and arrested him.

It was a miracle.

On February 26 of that year, 2003, we had driven west, out of the city without telling my daughters, family and friends we were going.

I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t care. I belonged to him. I did what he told me. Did not question him. Did not speak up. I was his.

He told me he would let me go when he got out of the country. I was terrified if he let me go, I would die. I was terrified if I went with him, I would die. And still, for all my terror, the only thing I really wanted in those final months was to die. I kept praying he would make it happen, sooner. I kept imagining ways I could make it so. I kept telling him ways he could take my life and still, nothing happened.

As the days mounted into weeks and then months and he still hadn’t found a way to get out of the country, I knew it would be only a matter of time before he killed me. I was his albatross. His dead weight. His inconvenience. These were the things he told me and I believed him. I was conditioned to believe everything he said. To not question his lies.

I wanted to let my daughters know where I was. I wanted, desperately, to hear their voices.

He told me I couldn’t. He told me I was selfish. Inconsiderate. Stupid.

I believed him.

I stayed silent.

And then he was arrested and I got the miracle of my life and was given the gift of healing.

These are the things I learned upon my healing journey.

1. Life is a miracle. Look into the mirror, look deep into your eyes. See the miracle you are and say, “WOW! What a miracle I am!” Do this everyday of your life.
2. Surrender all fear and fall into Love. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, how far you’ve fallen, how deep you’ve sunk. It is fear that keeps you there. Accept yourself just the way you are and love yourself, beauty and the beast. And, after you say, what a miracle I am! say, I love me! Do this everyday of your life.
3. Learn from the broken places. Life is filled with moments that lift us up interspersed with moments that confuse us, tire us, hurt us, bring us down. There is something to be learned in every step of the journey, no matter how hard. A broken heart is an open heart and an open heart is a loving heart. Don’t be afraid of the broken. Hold yourself lovingly in those places where it feels like you can’t breathe, and breathe. Deeply. And ask yourself, “What do I really want in this moment?”
4. Listen to your heart. This one goes with Learn from the broken places. Our hearts always know the answer. Listen. Deeply. Don’t give your mind room to talk your heart out of what it knows to be true. Give your heart free rein. Know that a loving heart cannot be broken because it is always open.
5. Forgive. Freely. Joyfully. Continually. People will hurt you. People will do the inexplicable. The unbelievable. Believe it. They did it. Forgive them anyway.   Forgiveness doesn’t mean they aren’t accountable for what they did, it just means you aren’t holding onto what they did with anger, pain, fear. And while you’re at it, forgive yourself. Doesn’t matter how angry you are, or how hurt you feel, nothing gives you the right to be cruel or unkind, especially to yourself. Holding onto unforgiveness hurts you. Forgive and remember to surrender your fear. Forgiveness feels so much better than unforgiveness. Forgiveness sets you free.
6. You are magnificent. Seriously. You are magnificent. You were born that way. It’s just life and happenings, and all that jazz got in the way of your remembering your birthright. To shine. To illuminate. To live in the magnificence of the beauty of who you are when you let go of your disbelief that you truly are an amazing, miraculous, magnificent human being.
7. Love is the answer. No matter the question, no matter your predicament, your fear (which you’ve let go of anyway so it won’t matter), Love is the answer. Whatever is happening right now, ask yourself, what’s the most loving thing I can do for me right now, and then… yup… listen to your heart and do that thing that your heart tells you. And, just in case you’re trying to kid yourself, your head does not hold the answers so when it tries to tell you to do the opposite, to take the old path, don’t listen!
8. Live in the rapture of now. Joseph Campbell coined that phrase. It’s easier said than done. Do it anyway. Get out of thinking about what will he say, she do, they think and live in the wonder and awe of being totally present right now. In this place, your heart knows the truth — you are magnificent. Live your truth.
9. Life is a series of teachable moments. It’s constantly delivering up fascinating moments to grow and dig deeper and learn and stretch and expand your understanding of who you are and how you are in the world. Listen deeply to life’s teachings, find the value in all things and shine!

Namaste.

I am often asked, “How did you do it? How did you go from such a broken place to seeing the world with such joy and wonder today?”

It was my choice, I reply.

And it was. My choice to heal in Love. To not allow anger, fear, regret – anything-  steal from me the awe I felt at having the miracle of my life in that moment of release from the relationship that was killing me.

It wasn’t that it was hard, or easy. It was what it was. It is what it is.

What is true for me today is that going through that relationship was not my life. It was a time in my life. A period of time. It was not my whole life.

I am blessed.

I wanted to awaken. And was struggling to find my truth.

I found a path that forced me to wake up. It wasn’t the easiest path I could have chosen — abuse is not easy. But it is the path I took.

I cannot change the path I took. I can change how I see it from my vantage point today.

And today, I see it as the gift of awakening.

Awakened, I step fearlessly into being all of me without hesitating on the edge of fear that I will never be all of me.

I can only be all of me — whether I am fearful, joyful, sad or happy. I can only be all of me. It is in my denial of all that I am, beauty and the beast, that I run into trouble. When I deny my light, and my darkness or my shadow, I am resisting all that I am.

And as I type, I watch a squirrel trying to run across the street in front of my window.

It can be a busy street at this time of the morning. There are two schools in the next block and the bell is about to ring.

The squirrel leaps out into the street only to dart back when a vehicle approaches.

He tries again.  Runs out. Darts back.

Again.

Again.

And then finally, there is a break in the traffic.

I watch him run across the road to the nieghbour’s lawn. He races over to the base of a tree, runs up the tree and disappears into its branches.

Mission accomplished.

And I think about my life. How so often I saw what I wanted on the other side, would move towards it, grow afraid and then dart back into the shadows, fearful of the path to where I wanted to go.

things appeared on the path. Obstacles rose up. Craters opened. I darted and leaped and raced and circled and dove into and under and around, continually wanting to reach the other side.

And then, one day, I had to make the choice. Get there, or stay stuck.

I crossed. Breathed. Accepted I was where I wanted to be and began to adjust to being there. It didn’t matter the obstacles I’d overcome in my journey to there. what mattered was I was there. Being there, what was I willing to do?

Being there/being here is not a static place. It is fluid. Filled with possibility. Filled with opportunity. Filled with all that I want, all that I need as long as I accept that it is here that I am all that I need, all that I want, all that I can be when I let go of the fear — I am not where I want to be.

If this is not where I want to be, why am I here? Why am I holding onto this place. What is it that is keeping me here? What is it that is keeping me from letting go?

If this is not where I want to be, why am I holding onto being here with such ferocity?

There are always places to go, things to see, to do, to have, to get.

But there is only one place I can be where I am always enough. And that is within me. It is all of me. It is who I am when I let go of running to, away, into anywhere other than who I am when I breathe and accept I Love all of me, warts and all, Beauty and the Beast.

The patio at Bonterra

My youngest daughter and I are sitting on one of my favourite restaurant patios. I had called her earlier in the afternoon and asked, “Do you know what day it is?”

She thought for a moment before exclaiming, “Oh my! It’s May 21st! Happy Freedom Day!”

I had forgotten.

Completely.

The date had entered my mind some weeks ago. I’d noted it and then carried on. And now, on the actual date, I’d completely missed its significance until a young woman made a comment about an emotional outburst she’d had the week before at a workshop we’d both attended.

There were three of us standing chatting at the time. They both work for United Way and I am an impact speaker. We were waiting to present at a corporate function and were talking about the workshop we’d attended last week together. At the workshop, the young woman had shared a story and broken down into tears. Confused by her emotional outburst, she’d shared her feelings with her mother who had reminded her of the significance of the date. “My grandfather died on that date two years ago and I hadn’t connected it,” she said. I listened and we kept talking until a few moments later, the significance of the date hit me.

May 21.

When I get back to my office I call my youngest daughter and she too has forgotten.

We need to celebrate she says and make a date for later that evening. It promises to be beautiful, so we agree to meet on the patio of Bonterra.

I arrive early to ensure we get a table on the patio. My daughter won’t be there for at least 45 minutes later, so I come equipped. I have a brand new bright red moleskin notebook. I have decided. I will write in it everyday for the next year.

I haven’t kept a written journal consistently for awhile. I use this space as my ‘write it out’ place mostly and have let go of my practice of nightly journalling. I like the idea of diving once again into the discipline of writing my day out every night. I like the process of filling a page with random scribblings. Ideas. Writing bad, good or simply silly and inconsequential.

I order a celebratory wine and savour a few sips as I pull out my brand new journal, unwrap it and crack it open. I look around at the other diners. Little sparrows flit through the vines that hang suspended from the pergola above, their tiny buds bursting with promise that a few more days of heat will coax open. Waiters flit between tables. There is laughter. Chatter. Clinking of cutlery and the muted hum of traffic beyond the patio’s high protective walls.

At the table next to me, a woman is complaining, first to her dinner date, then to the waiter. Service is slow. There is no lemon. This is too salty. In the 45 minutes that I sit by myself, the woman and her dinner partner have had a glass of wine each, an appetizer, their main course and a desert. They leave without once smiling at the waiter, or anyone else. Though at one point, he does laugh at something he reads on his cell phone while they sit together not speaking to one another.

And I wonder. Is it because she has had to fight for everything in her life? Is it because she feels unseen, unknown? Has she felt attacked throughout her life for being a woman, for the colour of her dark skin or any other host of unseen differences that she feels the need to protect herself always?

I wonder about her journey and write my thoughts in my journal. When my daughter arrives I share my wonderings and she teases me and says it’s not nice to eavesdrop.

I wasn’t eavesdropping I tell her. I was observing. 🙂

And then she tells me the thing that makes my heart sing. On this day when 11 years ago she and her sister awoke not knowing if their mother was alive or dead. On this day when after almost four months of not having heard from the mother who had loved them so much and then betrayed the sacred trust of being their mother by disappearing, my youngest daughter told me that she will always be grateful for the lessons I’ve taught her.

“T. (her boyfriend) said one of the things he likes most about me is how I am kind to everyone,” she tells me. “It doesn’t matter who, I always talk to them and treat them with respect. You taught me that mom. Thank you.”

It was eleven years ago yesterday, at 9:14 am that I was given the miracle of my life when a police car drove up and two officers got out and arrested the man who wanted to kill me.

It was eleven years ago yesterday that I awoke to the truth. I did not deserve to be abused.

It was eleven years ago yesterday that I began to step into the truth. I am worthy. Of love. Forgiveness. Joy. Freedom. Life.

It has been an amazing journey from those dark days of abuse into my life today. From tiny, baby steps of hope, I have taken leaps and bounds into the wonder of living my life in freedom. And in that journey, I have been blessed with the love and support of my daughters, my family, my friends. Of strangers and so many people willing to share this amazing journey with me.

I am so blessed.

I am grateful.

I am joyful.

I am Love.

Years ago, (in my 20s) I wrote a a book of poetry I called, “Footprints in Melted Snow”.

It was an out-pouring of my sorrow, confusion, angst, grief, fear, hope…. of not knowing who I was, what I wanted, why I wanted, how I wanted, or even if I deserved to have whatever it was that I wanted, in  my life.

I had married young. It didn’t last. I knew even before I stepped into the church that marrying this man, even though he was a good man, was not the right thing for me to do.

And I did it anyway.

There was a lot of pressure to do it. To commit and though deep inside I knew I wasn’t in that space of making such a lifelong commitment, I succumbed to the pressure.

Months later, I was sick with unhappiness and worst of all, I hated myself.

What is wrong with me, my critter kept asking. Why can’t I be happy?

It wasn’t about him. It was all about me.

One evening, just after I’d started a new job and was working late on my first really big project, my parents and brother and his wife arrived for a visit. My parents lived in Europe at the time so having them come to visit was not like they could just drop in anytime.

But I was hurt.

They had arrived two weeks earlier and gone to visit my one sister’s in-laws who lived an hour away and not come to visit me. They had gone to visit my brother and his wife, and not come to visit me.

And then they announced their arrival and I was working.

I told them where the hidden key was and that I would be home as soon as I could get away. I told them I had steaks in the fridge and all the fixings and to make themselves at home.

When I arrived home, they were sitting around the dining room table eating take-out and drinking.

My father and brother loved their scotch. So did my then husband. We always had a bottle of the ‘good stuff’ in the house. It was almost empty.

My mother and sister-in-law were sharing a bottle of wine and I arrived in the midst of a conversation about… me.

What I was doing in my life that they didn’t like. How I was thinking I was so uppitty and better than everyone else.

I was taken aback. Stunned. Surprised.

Why did everyone else have so much to say about my life? What had I done to any of them to make them think I was such a horrid person?

And I said nothing.

I sat for awhile and listened because they told me what they were telling me was for my own good. Eventually, I told them I was going to bed. I had heard enough.

But even in bed, I couldn’t drown out their voices so I got up and told them that they were welcome to stay but they were not welcome to keep talking about me in that way. I didn’t deserve that and if they wanted to keep doing it, they would have to leave.

They left.

And thus began my journey into discovering “Who am I?”

I couldn’t understand why my own family didn’t like me. I didn’t understand what I had done to hurt them all so badly.

I left my marriage shortly after that. There were a host of reasons for my leaving but mostly, it was because I knew that when I stepped into it, I didn’t know who I was and I most definitely didn’t love myself. In knowing that, I knew I had to find me before I could drag someone else into the mess I saw as my life.

I learned a lot through that process. I learned about self-love. About inner strength, inner truth and beauty.

And I learned about compassion.

I long ago let go of having to forgive anyone for what happened back then. Not one of us set out to intentionally hurt they other. We were simply acting out from where we were at. And we were all carrying a lot of pain. In letting go of telling myself I had to get to a place of forgiveness, I was freed to move into the truth of what I found.

It is as Eleanor Roosevelt said so long ago, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

I have started to work on a new book. It is called, “If I Had Known Then.” It was inspired by my eldest daughter who read my list of “10 Things I would tell my 10 year old self‘ and said, “Mom. It’s so beautiful. You need to make it into a book.”

I like the idea.

I have started working on an art journal using each of the ‘things’ as a theme for each page.

And, I went back to the poetry book I wrote so many years ago and am going to use some of the poems as touchstones to connect me today to the me I was back then and the truth I’ve found in living my life now in the beauty and wonder of all that I am when I speak my truth fearlessly in love with all of me and the world around me.

This is my life. It is a journey through Love. Hope. Joy and Compassion.

I’ll be sharing poems from the book as I move through it and wanted to share this one with you today.

Namaste.

Listen to the Moon

©Louise Gallagher

I painted a picture
of time
but couldn’t find
the words
to describe
impressions
of moments
Cast upon the sand
Shifting.
Sifting.
Drifting.
Sunrise exploding horizons
Bursting waterfalls
cascading
through time.

Listen to the moon
rising
and you shall hear
yourself.
Listen to yourself.

This is my holiday day style blog…. Three things and a question for this holiday Monday in Canada.

The question first — why do we celebrate Queen Victoria Day in Canada?

Queen Victoria was known as the Queen of Confederation — though her birthday was celebrated in Canada long before Confederation. According to that source of all things needed to know to be in the know, Wikipedia, Victoria Day is celebrated on the last Monday of the month before May 25th to commemorate the current reigning monarch’s birthday and… unofficially, the first day of summer in Canada. (I’m still kinda waiting for spring!)

Or, as my beloved’s brother-in-law Steve Nease shared… (Steve is a syndicated political cartoonist – his website is here)

Cartoon by Steve Nease
http://neasecartoons.com/

The second thing…

Two weeks ago, I was the keynote speaker at a Women’s Conference in Claresholm, a small city an hour and a half drive south of Calgary. Last week, a friend sent me the article from the Claresholm newspaper. I made the front page!  🙂  You can read it by clicking here  (page 1) and here (page 2)  I have to spend some techy time figuring out how to get the link for page 2 into the first page!

And the third thing…

Well, it is a long weekend, and today is officially my day to get into the garden and beautify it for the summer. But, it’s not very nice or warm out and I have a project to complete and I know that many of my readers are not here in Canada, so…. whatever you are doing today, I’m sharing a song to help you enjoy your day!

Have a good one. I’ll be back to regular programming tomorrow! 🙂

A friend asked me awhile ago to join her and other women in creating a book of wisdom for a niece who is turning 13. Of course, I want to participate, I told her. And promptly got busy on the many other things on my plate.

But it has been sitting in a corner of my mind. The wondering of what would I tell my 13-year-old self about life, love, living? What wisdom do I most want to share to inform her journey?

I let my mind float. Let it empty itself of conscious thinking and sink into the reservoir of known but unseen wisdom within me.

Ten Things I would tell my 13-year-old self if I could change her life.

1. There is no such place as forever. Nothing is forever. This too shall pass. Whatever you are experiencing, the trauma, the angst, the joy, they are all illusory. Transitory. Ride whatever is happening hands free, barefooted, body wide open to the experiences of life. Now is not forever.
2. You’re okay. More than okay, you are amazing. Just the way you are. There is no fashion too out there, no style too wild if it is what you want to wear. You are not too fat, too skinny, to short, too tall, too under-developed, over-developed. You are who you are, how you are. And that’s amazing.
3. You are worthy. This is a tricky one. Your mind wants to steal this one away and hide it because to know your worth, you must risk — the unknown. the perceived impossible. You must risk the ups and downs, ins and outs, overs and unders of life. To know your worth, you must know there is nothing, noone, no way anyone can steal it from you. It is your birthright.
4. Believe in you. Really, really believe in you. Don’t question your right to be. Don’t question you’re right to go anywhere, do anything, anyway you choose. Be you. Everyone else is taken. Wear your hair up, down, wild, straight. Colour it pink, gold, orange or green. It’s your body. Your hair. Your skin. Your life. Your right to believe in you and be you just the way you are.
5. Be kind. People will say mean things. Do cruel things. Be kind. Like you, they struggle to know their worth, find their place, feel their feelings. Like you, they are taking this journey of life without a manual, unable to control and predict everything life will throw at them. Like you, they are sometimes scared, sometimes silly, sometimes confused, sometimes wise. And like you, they too are looking to fit in, to belong, to be part of something bigger than themselves. Be kind, no matter how they act. Be kind.
6. You don’t have to find your meaning. You are your meaning. Live it with your whole heart wide open to life. Your meaning is not in wearing the latest fashion or having the coolest stuff. Your meaning is found in how you approach every moment, engage every person from that place where you know, no matter what you think they think about you, you think and know you are amazing, just the way you are.
7. Seek magnificence. Don’t go looking for mediocrity. Seek to be known through your magnificence and seek always to know others through theirs. Don’t look for fault, seek the lessons, seek the knowing, seek the value in all things.
8. Risk often. Life isn’t a predictable series of events over which you have ultimate control. The only person you have control over is yourself – and even then you’ll sometimes doubt just how in control of yourself you are. Risk anyway because, if you’re involved with others, there will be lots of messy, sticky, unexpected and sometimes painful things happening on your journey. They’re just things. It’s all just stuff. You are amazing  – I know, I said it already – it’s true. Believe it. Risk living from the place of knowing you are okay, you are amazing, you are magnificent. Risk living as if it’s true — because it is.
9. Smile often. Laugh lots. Dance always. And when you cry, cry out loud. When you laugh, laugh out loud. And when you see injustice, ask what can I do to change it, and do that thing with your whole heart and know, that is enough. You are enough. You don’t have to have all the answers, you only need to learn the one’s that will allow you to make the difference in the world you want to see and be. And that’s enough.
10.  Get creative. Don’t go looking inside boxes for the recipe for life. Live it not knowing what’s next. Live it expecting the unexpected. Live it free of holding onto hurts and pains, sorrows and regrets. Live it up. Fill it with joy. and always, always SHINE! Because you are amazing. You are worthy. You are magnificent. And that’s the only truth you need to know to live your life fearlessly in Love with all of you.