St. Patrick lived on an island, the green island, Eire. He wasn’t from there. He came as a slave long before he became a Bishop and then a saint.

Today, the day of his death many centuries ago, is the day we celebrate his life with parades and wearing green and drinking green beer and dancing Irish jigs.

It is also the date of the death of my brother, George, and his wife Roz. They died, sixteen years ago on a long stretch of road that lay like a grey ribbon bisecting the snow-covered prairies on either side of their car as they drove away from their daughters into a destiny they could not imagine. Theirs was a fiery death. Small vehicle meets huge transport truck. The driver of the semi came away unscathed. At least physically. I don’t know about emotionally or mentally. I’m sure it was catastrophic to him. To witness this tiny compact car bearing down on his front end. To be helpless to avoid the collision that took the lives of two people he’d never met. Did he have nightmares after the accident? Did he wonder what he could have done differently? Does he still drive a semi?

It was so unexpected. Inexplicable. Such a loss. Was it a miscalculation? A momentary loss of attention or a desperate attempt to calm the turmoil and chaos that was unfolding around them?

We will never know.

What we do know is that we loved them. They were our family. They will always live in our hearts.

Rest in peace George and Roz. May you know it is only love you have left behind. Only love we carry for you in our hearts.

*******************************

I awoke on Thursday morning with the words to a poem writing themselves in my head as my dream slipped from memory. This morning, it happened the same way. Both are about my brother.  It makes sense. He’s always on my mind at this time of year.

Did You Know?       and     And Now You’re Gone

“It’s all too easy to sit back, observe what the problems are, and fall into a state of despair or cynicism. It takes spiritual courage to step forward and begin to take responsibility for the solutions.” Andrew Cohen

It has been a busy last few weeks. From meditating with Mark Nepo at the beginning of February to organizing a workshop for a 100 people on the 26th to producing a 15 minute documentary on Housing First and showcasing it at a Community Summit for 450 people last week, while also writing, February flew by leaving me breathless in its passing.

Time to slow down, breathe deeply and begin again.

Always begin again.

Perhaps that should be my mantra for 2013. Always begin again.

In the Bhagavad Ghita it is written that, Curving back on myself I begin again and again.

Curving back on myself I come back to this point where I must breathe, deeply, and settle into my being present, right now, right here in this moment. In this moment are all the moments that happened in the past. The nothing and the everything that ever was.

In this moment is all I have learned and experienced and known and been on this 14 billion year evolutionary journey to get to this moment right now. This moment where everything is changed from what it was before and everything will change in the moments to come. It is the way of the world. The way of life. The call of the eternal evolutionary impulse that has looked after the future of all since time eternal in its conscious desire to create better in a world of chaos.

The world around us is built upon all those moments, all those knowings and unknownings we have not yet made manifest in our world around us. And sometimes, in that knowing and unknowning I find myself hesitating. Sometimes, I fear what is next and cling to what is now in the hopes it will always be.

To move away from this moment right now where I can rest in what is, requires courage. It requires a commitment and willingness to participate in the evolutionary impulse  beyond my capacity to see and feel and know and be what is. It requires a willingness to let go.

I don’t like letting go. In fact, I resist letting go. I resist leaping. I resist undoing what is done so that I can curve back on myself and begin again and again.

I notice my resistance most in those times when I create such busy-ness in my life I do forget to breathe. In those moments, I don’t ‘let go’ so much as let drop. I let those things that require my conscious attention fall away so that I can focus on the task at hand without the distraction of the daily details of living interfering with my progress.

It’s a good thing — sometimes — it means I get the job done.

It’s not a good thing in others ways — because in my singular focus I can lose sight of not just the daily details, I can lose sight of the bigger picture, the greater context of being human in the 21st century.

I can forget my role in the evolutionary impulse.

Grounded in my timelines and outcomes, I forget to pay attention to how I am being in the world around me. And in my forgetfulness, I let myself slip into the confusion of believing I am not doing enough, I am not good enough, not enough. I fall into that disillusionment fraught space where I wonder…. ‘what’s the point’?  In that place, I don’t return phone calls, I don’t answer emails, I don’t turn up, conscious and aware of my responsibility to be present.

And in my lack of presence, I create less of what I want in the world.

Time to take a breath. Get present. Get back to what I know creates more of what I want in my life, and in the world around me. Time to let go of feeling the despair of having to backtrack and pick up the pieces. Time to fall instead into the grace of knowing as Deepak Chopra writes in his forward to Andrew Cochen’s book, “Evolutionary Enlightenment”, “The divine plan doesn’t need you in order to succeed. But you can choose to have it succeed through you.”

I choose to have it succeed through me. I choose to begin again, to open my consciousness and conscience to being fully present and aware of my role in living up to my higher truths and passionate desire to be part of the solutions to create a more vibrant, beautiful and loving world.

Namaste

My friend, Mark Kolke, has humbled me with an interview on his website, FACILITY Calgary.

I don’t know about you, but when someone writes about me, I feel very uncomfortable — and odd. He makes me sound so…. real and different, all in the same breath.

Thanks Mark for honouring me. For sharing your light to create a place for mine to shine.

May we all shine today in the brilliance of living wildly in love with life in the rapture of now (and that happens to be the theme of my Poem for today – a coincidence as I didn’t know Mark was posting his interview today!) — Living at the Speed of Life.

While I’m not writing here every day, I am still (mostly) writing a poem a day on my poetry blog…

A Poetry Affair… a poetic guide to living in the rapture of now.

Blessings to all.

AS THE BLOOD COURSES THROUGH THE MAP OF MY VEINS AS IT JOURNEYS TO THE HEART, I KNOW THAT EVEN THOUGH THE ROAD IS LONG IT’S MAKING IT WHOLE AGAIN.

~ Alexis McDonald, The Wunder Year Blog ~  

My daughter has an eating disorder.

There. I’ve said it. Publicly.

And the sky didn’t fall and the earth didn’t rattle and my heart didn’t stop beating. Though, there have been times in this journey with her that it has felt like it would stop and break in two. There have been times when it felt like there was not another breath left for me to take as I struggled to wrestle under control this disease that threatened to take her away from me.

My daughter has always struggled with being here in this world. As a child she once threatened to go back to heaven. When I asked her, with a smile, “How do you plan on getting there?” her reply made my heart stop beating before it sped into overdrive as my mind tried to grasp how a five year old could even understand the concept of suicide. “I’m going to go into the kitchen and get a knife and stab myself to death. And then you’ll be sorry,” she added with a toss of her curly dark hair and a stomp of her tiny foot where she stood at the top of the stairs looking down at me.

I have taken that proverbial knife out of her hands countless times since that moment 21 years ago. I have rescued her from the edge, pulled her back from the precipice again and again, believing each time that this time she would get it, this time she would see the beauty and wonder that I see in her.

But she didn’t. See what I saw. She saw only the darkness within her. That place of deep regret for being born, that place where her fear of the darkness of oblivion overshadowed her longing for the light.

I was a master at talking her out of the darkness. Talking her back into her senses. There were times when she was a child that I would sit quietly on my bed as she thrashed and screamed and yelled obscenities about life and living, about herself. There were only two rules I insisted she follow in those emotionally charged moments; she was not allowed to leave the confines of the bed until she’d spent her emotions, and she wasn’t to speak out against her sister.

“I don’t love you anymore,” she would cry, and I would respond, “And I don’t love you any less.”

We were a masterful duo. She knew that in her darkest moments I would be the voice of reason, of loving acceptance of who she was, exactly as she was in that moment.

And in our delicate dance, I believed my calm acceptance of all of her, beauty and the beast, was powerful enough to overcome the darkness.

I was not that powerful.

I could not stop her from vanishing before my eyes. Pound by pound. Inch by inch.

I knew it was happening. I knew she was disappearing. And I was helpless.

The disease was stronger than my capacity to call her back into the light. This child whom I had carried in my womb and birthed into being, whose every breath made my heart skip with joy, was lost to me.

It would take my letting go for her to discover her own strength. It would take my letting her walk out the door to set her free.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I told myself. I wasn’t supposed to have to let her walk away leaving me fearing for her life.

But it didn’t matter how I thought it should be. It was the way it was. We were where we were and I had to let go and trust in the universe, trust in Love, trust in my daughter that she would do whatever it took to find herself – where ever that would be.

“I can’t do this for you anymore,” I told her that night when she pronounced for the umpteenth time she wanted to end her life and I knew I had no words left to convince her to stay.

“Do you have a concrete plan?” I asked her.

“No!” she cried. “I’m going to check myself into emergency. I need help.”

“Yes you do,” I replied. “And I am not the one to give it to you. You need to do this for yourself.”

And she walked out the door and in that action claimed her power to reach out for herself. And in reaching out, she found the strength to keep taking a step forward, and another, and another.

That was a year a half ago.

She has done a lot of healing and counselling and reaching out and speaking up and taking steps in the right direction since then. Sometimes she’s fallen down.

“I can’t stop your falls,” I’ve told both my daughters. “But I can be here to help you when you choose to get back up.”

Today, my daughter is choosing to get back up. She’s choosing life over the disordered eating that almost took her away.

It isn’t easy. I watch her struggle with body image, with the voices in her head that would have her believe she is not worth fighting for. I watch her and stand-by, quietly holding space for love to consume her. And when she reaches out, I reach back. But not until then. I cannot do it for her. Reach out. To do that would be to deny her right to know her own power.

It has been a difficult lesson, this lesson of letting go to let Love be my guide. To accept that all my love cannot prove to her she is loveable. Only she can do that. Believe. In her own worth. All I can do is hold the space for her to fill — with Love, with joy, with laughter and acceptance.

My daughter has an eating disorder. The sky hasn’t fallen, the earth hasn’t quit turning on its axis. And, no matter how much I assert, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way”, I cannot change her or this disease. I can only Love her, exactly the way she is.

I am grateful, today my daughter chooses life. I wasn’t always sure she would, but today I know that whatever choice she makes, she has found her truth and in that truth is Love filling every breath she takes.

*****************February is Eating Disorder Month in Canada. I wrote this blog to support my eldest daughter Alexis, who is one of the most courageous and beautiful human beings I know. If you would like to connect with her — if you have an eating disorder, or fear you or someone you love has an eating disorder, she writes daily about healing and celebrating life at her blog, The Wunder Year

I know it’s not Sunday, but I re-found this Ted Talk I had listened to some time ago, and posted about on my Recover Your Joy blog in March 2010. I was re-watching it today and thought…. I have to share it with all of you as a ‘let’s make it a fresh start Monday!’

Aimee Mullins is inspiring! If the embedded video doesn’t work please  click HERE  for the video.

I did it!  A whole week of not posting here. I did it. And in the process, I’ve written 16,000 words of Lessons in Love!

A fear I had moving into not writing here every morning was that I would fritter away the time, I wouldn’t use it as intended.

Not so!  I can trust myself to make good choices, even when I’m not having to turn up publicly and talk about my choices!

I like that.

What I find more difficult is not reading and commenting on the blogs of all of those with whom I share this space. I miss your words — and still, I know that holding the space for me to write every morning is important. It brings value to my efforts to write this book.

So thank you.

Thank you for your beautiful words. Thank you for your encouragement, support, love. Thank you for understanding, for sharing your own story of what you dream of doing and how you’re going to do it, thank you for knowing, my not commenting on your blogs is not about you, it’s all about me honouring this space I’ve created to write the stories I know I must tell.

I’ve learned something really important this past week. It’s not that I didn’t know it, but this past week has cast a light upon it and given me cause to reflect on what it means to ‘trust myself’.

In choosing the path of limiting my online presence, I have discovered that cutting out something I love to do, while not necessarily easy, opens the door to ‘more’. It creates space for miracles to happen in other ways, that I had not unimagined.

Writing for two hours every morning has reignited my excitement, my energy, my desire to write. And in that writing, I ‘see’ all there is waiting for me to share, to know, to become. I ‘see’ truths never before seen, write words never before written, and uncover ideas never before known.

It’s all rather exciting and in the process, reminds me, as my friend Mark is prone to do, to ‘not take myself so seriously’.

I was taking myself far too seriously. I was falling into the trap of believing there was only one way to do things for me, and that was my way. ha! That just ain’t true. There are hundreds of ways for me to choose to do things — and I was only choosing one way.

In that learning, I open up the possibility of doing this differently again. I open up the possibility of writing here on Sunday’s. Of making this a weekly, rather than a daily blog.

Something else that not writing here daily has re-awakened me to is my love of journalling at night. I had become very inconsistent in doing so and now, I’m once again finding myself on the page at night, pen in hand, the halo of my bedside lamp casting a warm glow over the page of my journal as I let the day flow out. My sleep has become clearer, my dreams more vivid and my memory of them more reliable.

Wonderful gifts!

It’s one of the things I’ve been reminded of this past week — everything holds gifts. Everything holds truth. It’s up to me to discover what holds true for me. What gifts will I treasure? What truths will I unfold?

I treasure the gift of your presence. I treasure the truths we share and discover together. I treasure you.

Namaste.

(See you next Sunday!)

Oh, and… in keeping with one of my favourite activities, to share something I’ve seen or heard that’s moved me, I watched,  a video on film-maker Ken Burns and was moved by his words — in pondering his statement that when Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘all men are created equal’, he owned, and never saw fit to free, 100 human beings, I was struck by how our beliefs don’t always align with our truth, and how even when we hold one thing true, there is always room for truth to grow. In fact, we need truth to grow within us to align our beliefs with our actions and our truth. To change one thing depends on how willing we are to be open to the possibility.

And…. one thing I have done this week is to continue to write every day a poem.

Blessings and Love on a week of beauty, wonder and love.

I have come to a decision. A realization actually and, in its awakening, I have made a decision.

On March 10, 2007, I began writing on my brand, spanking new blog, Recover Your Joy. For the next 5 years I would write almost every day in that space, creating over 1600 posts. My intent when I started Recover Your Joy was to ignite my practice of writing every day. I wasn’t into readership so much as instilling within me the habit of daily writing.

And then, I met all these amazing people — like Maureen at Writing Without Paper, and Joyce at Imagine Joy Art, Diane at Contemplative Photography and Glynn at Faith. Fiction. Friends. There are so many wonderful people I’ve ‘met’ through blogging and as time went on, the daily contact with them began to create a beautiful weave and warp to the tapestry of my life. Blogging no longer became about the habit of writing daily. It became an act of friendship, a means of staying in touch, of keeping myself connected to some pretty incredible people.

And, it became an excuse.

I realized just how much of an excuse it had become when someone asked me the other day, “How’s the book coming?”

Truth is, it’s not.

Oh, of course, I’ve got my excuses. I’m a busy gal you know! What with saving the world and feeding starving children in Africa, and finding a cure for anything that ails humanity, oh and of course, writing a blog every day, I’m a tad distracted.

The book? Well, it’s languishing.

“Oh that’s too bad,” the one who asked me the question said after I told them it was coming, ‘slowly’. “I was looking forward to reading it,” they replied.

Yeah, well. At this pace, that may be never.

And that’s when it struck me. I spend two hours every morning online writing and reading posts. I get up at 5 so I can keep up with my blogging circle. I love it. It is wonderful — but… it’s become my reason for not doing something I want to do. Finish the first draft of Lessons in Love: Everything I know about being human I learned at a homeless shelter.

I am using writing a blog every morning for my reason for not working on my book when seriously… I don’t have to ‘find more time’ to write. I’ve already got the time to write.

It’s not time that’s the issue. It’s what I’m filling my time with that’s the issue.

It’s time to redirect. Refocus. Revamp my writing time.

Which is what the decision is all about. Instead of writing here, I’m going to be writing over there, at my desk, pulling together the pieces of this book that wants to be breathed, and written, into life.

It’s my choice — and that’s what’s so important — writing here has also been my choice. I get to choose differently today.

After 6 years of writing a daily blog, I kinda get that I have a writing discipline. In the writing world, content is king — and I’m queen of my domain.

So… here it is.

I’m taking a hiatus. I’m not going to be writing here daily — I may drop in once a week to say hello, but I kind of think I need to do this cold turkey — I need six months of head down, fingers to the keyboard, to work on my book and I’m gifting myself permission to do just that.

I’m walking my talk. Putting my attention on what I want more of in my life and doing it!

It also means, I won’t be reading and checking other bloggers as much. I need to keep my focus on what I say I want to do — write this book — and not distract myself with reasons why I don’t have time to do the work.

My blogging friend Lisa Rosenberg really drove the point home for me with her blog the other day, Back: A Book revised, a Reading Coming Up — she’d been away for awhile and turned up full of news about the second draft of her book she’d finished and a reading she was doing, and I realized — I need to learn from Lisa’s experience how to put up my “Writer at work. Please do not disturb” sign.

And then I realized — it’s pretty easy.

Just put it up and get to it.

So… I apologize in advance if I’m not commenting on your blogs and keeping up with all your amazing goings-on. I love connecting with each and every one of you, and right now, I need to take a little holiday to create space in my world to live the life of my dreams.

See you soon!

PS — I will be continuing to post my daily poem at A Poetry Affair, as well a photo of what I’ve given away (now that I’m back from being away I’ll be picking that up again).

It is one of the first things I notice in this magical place by the sea. Inland, caught up in the busy-ness of the city, I have forgotten to breathe. Forgotten to simply be present to my breath moving in and out of my body.

I feel the tightness in my chest. Feel the constrictions against my heart.

I don’t remember when, or how, or why or where I forgot to breathe. I just feel it. The knowledge appears and I feel its truth.

I have forgotten to breathe.

And I begin again.

Always begin again.

It is, as Mark Nepo tells the 40 people gathered in a circle beneath the giant peaked dome of the Festival Hall at The Haven — we move in and out of being present, of being awake.

I take a breath and move into wakefulness.

Perhaps it is this place by the sea. This place where land falls into water and the water rushes up to meet the sky. Where sea otters play along the shore and seagulls caw and swoop down and in and out. Perhaps it is the lush green forest of Arbutus and Pine. Or the lumbering hulk of the ferry passing by every hour, its wake moving out behind it, rippling into shore long after it has sailed from view.

Perhaps it is that in this place, city worries fade into the cacophony of background noises that no longer fill the space between being awake and sleeping. In this place all becomes become part of being awakened to no longer sleeping.

Whatever the reason, in this space I am awakened once again to the ebb and flow of life constantly calling me to be aware, to step with eyes wide open and arms reaching out. Reaching out to hold on and to let go, to let be what is without fearing it will always be, or never be, again and again.

And I begin, again.
Always begin again.

Begin to tell the story, Mark invites us.

Begin to tell the story.

We must begin.

for the story is never completely written, never completely finished even when we are gone. For this story of our life is connected to the universal story of life.

We come into this world to celebrate this most precious gift of being human.

we come into this world to know the sacredness of our life, of each life and in that sacred nature of our being human, we come to know I am is all I need to be.

In a one on one exercise with another woman yesterday, she shared something she’s learned on her journey, “There is nothing I can do here that will destroy the divine nature of my being.”

And I felt my heart break open. I felt the breath rush from my body and then back in like waves crashing endlessly against the shore washing away memory of what came before the wave breaking against the shore.

“There is nothing I can do here that will destroy the divine nature of my being.”

There is nothing I can do that will destroy the divine nature of life.

And there is much that we can and do, to destroy life.

It is time to begin again. To stop destroying life and to start celebrating it.

Collectively, there is much we can do to celebrate, to cherish, to nurture life. There is much we can do to create space for life to dance beneath the sun and moon and stars.

There is much we can do.

And always, when we find ourselves holding our breath, we must begin again to breathe life into every moment.

Namaste.

I flew from Saskatoon to Calgary to Vancouver. Spent an hour in the airport at Calgary and laughed because I was home and on my way all at the same time.

This morning, my girlfriend who is taking the course with me, and I are off to Gabriola Island.

And that’s all she wrote!

The day awaits. The unexpected lays in waiting and I am open to its arrival.

Must run.

More when I return. I’ve got a dream to unfold, a book to finish and plans in the making.

Blessings on the rest of your week.

Namaste.