Ellie and I drove to Saskatoon on Friday so she can have a week at ‘the spa’ with her master, my beloved C.C., and I can fly off to Vancouver and then Gabriola Island today so I can have a week at The Haven  with… Mark Nepo — author and guide of The Book of Awakening.

Ask me if I’m excited.

Okay, I’ll tell you anyway. Yes! I’m excited.

Firstly, I love being on Gabriola Island and being at The Haven is pretty darn close to what I imagine heaven on earth to be.

Secondly, the description of the course thrills my heart. It calls to my soul and awakens my imagination.

The workshop will explore our ongoing need to stay vital and in love with this life, no matter the hardships we encounter. It is an invitation to personalize the common and unrepeatable journey we all encounter in being human. Using ancient and contemporary stories, poetry, journaling, and dialogue, Mark will invite participants to befriend their own stories and listen for their own wisdom in this reflective and transformational gathering

I mean seriously, can you imagine anything finer than spending time on the west coast surrounded by the sea and salt air off Vancouver Island? I’ll be immersed in wind and sea air and seagulls cawing and waves lapping and words floating all around, bubbling up out of the ocean waves, cascading down from wet skies and sunny horizons? Can you imagine anything more inspiring than being surrounded by others willing to explore our ongoing need to stay vital and in love with this life?

And with Mark Nepo to boot!

Yup. I am excited.

So is Ellie. She’ll have an adventure — who knows what those two free spirits will get up to in the snow.

‘Cause that’s the other thing that excites me.

Leaving the snow to surround myself with the creaking of towering pines bending against coastal breezes filled with salty brine, the sweet melody of daffodils and crocus peeping their heads up out of the earth in anticipation of spring’s bounty, and the cracking open of the buds on the cherry trees pushing their way out through the hard shell of winter.

Ah yes, I’m off to the coast today for a week of sensual immersion in the beauty and wonder of life on the edge of the continent.

And… Bonus!  I’m meeting up with my eldest daughter tonight before I travel over to the Island and will spend a day with her at the end of the week before returning home to Calgary where C.C. and Ellie will meet me and I will hear all about their adventures together.

How perfect is that?

An adventures into words and thoughts and ideas and feelings bookended with Love?

Yup. I’m excited.

Just as I’ve been excited to spend this weekend in Saskatoon with C.C. I’ve loved the snow. The winter falling from the sky. The walks to the park in the cold frosty air. Ellie burying her nose in drifts and leaping through soft powdery snowbanks. The trees standing in silent snow-clad wonder, the sky heavy with cloud.

It has been beautiful — and relaxing. Running into my sister (she too lives in Calgary!) and her step-daughter at the market. A hockey game to watch ‘the twins’ (my sister’s step grandsons) play (one even scored a goal). Reading. Chatting. Cooking. Being together.

Yes. This is life! Isn’t it grand!

The Every Day A Poem is posted over at A Poetry Affair — Becoming One.

I had something else planned for this morning here in the blogosphere. It’s Sunday and normally Guest Blog day. And then…  I visited Misifusa’s blog, The Presents of Presence and was introduced to Joanne O’Riordan and my heart melted and my defences crumbled and my excuses evaporated.

Who am I to see the world as limited? Who am I to say, “I can’t do that”, or “Why me?” or any other platitudes I espouse to account for not living my dreams?

Who am I? I have all my limbs. I have independence, self-mobility. I can walk and run and leap and crawl. I can choose where I go, when I move, what I do.

Joanne O’Riordan was born with Total Amelia — no limbs. None. And her motto — at 16 years of age — No limbs. No limits.

Please do drop over to Misifusa’s place to find the links to learn more about  Joanne and her incredible belief in living with no limits.

And in the meantime, do watch this video of her story. I am in awe.

I am walking along the street towards my office. A car pulls in front of me, up the ramp to the parking lot to my right. The driver stops at the gadget where you wave your card and I walk behind where she is parked waiting for the gate to the parkade to open.

It’s her back-up lights I notice first. Why does she have her back-up lights on when she’s going into the parkade?

And then I notice she’s actually moving backwards down the ramp towards where I am walking. For a moment, I think I am mistaken (it’s a habit of mine to second guess what my eyes are telling me is true). I keep walking.

Fortunately, habit gives way to truth and I realize, she is backing into me.

I scream. Leap. Jump. Run. Scurry out of her way.

She slams on the brakes.

“You almost hit me!” I call back to her from where I stand at a safe distance, trying to catch my breath.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you,” she replies.

I didn’t see you.

How many times have those words reverberated through my mind? My being. My essence.

How many times have I felt, unseen, unknown, invisible.

Thank you Universe. I got your message.

To be seen. To be known. To be visible, I must trust in what my eyes see, my heart speaks, my belly knows.

To be seen, I must be present.

It was a good reminder. Just the night before my friends Kerry and Howard Parsons and I had been speaking about, “What does the future of ‘your work’ look like?”

Can you describe the future? Can you paint in the colours of where your dreams will lead you? Can you see, feel, taste, smell your success?

I can’t.

I’ve always been afraid to do it. Afraid, if I spoke my dreams, painted them in, splashed colour in all the corners of my mind, people will laugh at me, make fun of me, call me names.

I’ve been afraid that to speak my dreams is to make them untrue.

It is part of my adaptive journey.

When I was a little girl my father loved to plan trips. We’ll go here, and here, and then we’ll do this and that. It was fun, exciting, enticing to dream of all the things we’d do, places we’d go, adventures we’d experience.

Except, we often only got part-way, or nowhere at all. Something would happen. My father would get angry. My mother would cry. The sky would fall. The rivers overflow. The earth tip from its axis.

No one could predict what might happen, so I quit counting on any of it happening.

Dreaming big is for fools, that critter inside who wanted to keep me safe from feeling the pain of disappointment would whisper. And I adapted my thinking to include — not colouring in my dreams, not planning on ‘the future’ = being safe.

This morning, as I meditated and let myself sink into the quiet space within, I saw it. I saw the car rolling backwards. I saw me jumping out-of-the-way. And then, I saw me pounding my fists on its hoods. Screaming at the top of my lungs. “I AM HERE! LOOK AT ME. SEE ME. KNOW ME.”

Yup.

I am HERE!  Look at me. See me Know me.

I’m not yelling it at you. I’m calling it out to me. For me to hear and know. I am here. Present and accounted for. In this moment. Right here.

And in my meditative state, I turned towards the past, saw its long black vine-like fingers curling towards me, desperately trying to entwine its tendrils of memory around my ankles like a siren’s song entwining its enchanting voice around a sailor’s heart.

And I took out my magic golden scissors and cut the threads. And as I snipped away I softly repeated, “Thank you for the gifts. Thank you for the experiences, the teachings, the lessons. Thank you for carrying me here. I am here now. I am free. Thank you.”

And when I was done, I turned away and walked into the present free of memory’s lure.

A woman almost hit me yesterday and in her response I found myself free to step into the light of knowing — I am here. See me. Hear me. Feel me. Know me. I am here.

And I’m not going anywhere back there. I’m stepping lightly onto the path of my dreams. Colouring in the corners of my mind with all the tastes, smells, sights, feelings, insights and possibilities I can imagine. And then…. watch me. I am here!

Thank you Universe. I got your message.

Something very odd happened yesterday. I wrote a blog. Posted it. Had a couple of comments on it — and now it has completely disappeared. Vanished. Gone.

I can even see what the issue is — the date is gone from the page. I’ve tried to fix it. Gone in and inserted the date into the permalink — but to no avail. It doesn’t like the date.

What’s even funnier is… it’s not the blog I wanted to write originally. I wanted to write a blog about my youngest daughter whose birthday was yesterday.  But, I am under strict orders not to write about her on my blog (unless I ask her first). So, I didn’t.

But her sister did.

And in her blog Alexis mentions the arrival of aliens 25 years ago and their plot to gain intelligence about life on earth by leaving behind this being called, A Sister, when she the eldest and proud holder of the status ‘only child’ was a mere 18 months old.

I remember the day well. It was cold. Really, really cold and there was a nurse’s strike going on. Sometime during the morning of the 30th, while putting the final touches on the sponge-painting I was doing of what would become Alexis’ bedroom until L (the code name for the not to be written about younger sister) was old enough to share it, I felt a gush of water escape my body. I didn’t mention it to my then husband. I wanted to get the painting done, and I didn’t really want to deliver a baby during the nurse’s strike. Being 8 and a half months into my second pregnancy I thought maybe my bladder had just loosened up a bit…

A few hours after said water incident, I thought I’d best mention it and Grant, my then husband, suggested I phone my doctor. Now, I should explain, I had no idea what ‘labour’ felt like. Having somewhere in the mix been given a diagnosis of ‘an incompetent cervix’, (seriously, that’s what my doctor called it) I never went into labour with Alexis, and wasn’t feeling any pangs of her sister wanting to push her way into the world. So, I can be excused for not really thinking this might be ‘the big event’.

My doctor however, had no such qualms.

“I’ll let the hospital know you’re on your way,” he said.

“Um. Well… Can’t I wait until after the nurse’s strike,” I asked hopefully. I mean, my first daughter was 19 days late. He’d booked a C-section for me after nothing, and I mean nothing, could make labour begin. I was two weeks before my due date. Maybe it really was just my bladder leaking…

His response was immediate and rather curt I thought. “No.” and he hung up.

Which is why, a mere three hours later, I awoke from anesthetic and groggily reached out to hold the infant Grant extended to me. She was tiny and perfect. An exact replica of a human baby.

But, according to her sister, I was duped. She’s actually an alien.

Go figure. Nobody told me.

All these 25 years I’ve thought this amazing, incredible, gifted young woman was a natural born human.

Just goes to prove the power of a mother’s love. Doesn’t matter where the child heralded from, a mother loves it anyway. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

And so it is.

Now, as to the missing blog. I think I’m going to fool the aliens who stole it and repost it as a brand new blog — and I’ll just change the date in the permalink to yesterday. Ha! Take that you extraterrestials you. Thought you could trick me did ya! Ha!

But… just in case — has that ever happened to anyone else? Posted a blog and it appeared only to disappear later on? It’s not in my list of posts. It’s not at the top of my page when I load in my blog. It’s not anywhere… except it is — because I can access it through the link on my FB page.

Very curious. Very other-worldly eerie.

But then, it was a curious day yesterday. The celebration of the birth 25 years ago of an alien form who has transformed my thinking around love and compassion and being real in this world. The celebration of the coming into this world of my out of this world delightfully amazing youngest daughter.

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And today’s Every Day A Poem is posted:  Waiting for the Light

Yesterday, while visiting over at my friend Fi’s place, Inspiration to Dream, I discovered a site I’d never heard of before. Notes from the Universe. I clicked. Was intrigued. signed up and this morning got my first message. I Love It!

Now, you might wonder why I’d never heard of Notes or its founder Mike Dooley. I mean, seriously. Have I been hiding under a turnip leaf? Mike Dooley is featured in The Secret. He’s spoken on every continent except Antarctica. He’s written gazillion books (okay maybe not that many) but he’s sure written a lot. And, he’s an accountant!  I mean, I’m a card carrying member of the Writer’s Guild and he’s an accountant and he’s living my dream. What’s with that?

Oh right. He trusts in the Universe. He keeps doing his ‘what’ and trusts the Universe to take care of the how.

In fact, that’s how his Notes from the Universe and all the rest of his work was created. He kept doing ‘the what’ and trusted ‘the how’ to appear in the Universe’s time. And it did.

I discovered this gap in my trust last year when I took a 40 day online retreat with Abbey of the Arts. Every day of the retreat, I meditated on the proscribed text, created a mandala, shared my observations and in the process, wrote the entire 21 day course material for Right Your Heart Out, wrote a poem a day for my beloved, wrote an annual report for a client and the list goes on. I kept doing my what and the universe kept appearing — I don’t know how.

And through it all I discovered — I don’t trust the Universe.

I mean, I get that it’s big and it’s got my back — but do I? Do I really trust it is for me, with me, that it is in the best interests of the Universe that I succeed, that I shine my light as bright as my light can be? That each of us shine brilliantly so that the path out of the darkness can be illuminated in the light of our hearts beating in time to the abundant awesomeness that is life on planet earth. Do I get the Universe is me, and you and that we are each responsible for our journey into and through the light?

Last night on my call-in for the Living An Enlightened Life course I’m taking, one of the participants said, “Tomorrow is a thousand years away and yesterday is a thousand years ago.”

Now is all I have.

Right now is all there is for me to turn up, pay attention, speak my truth and stay unattached to the outcome.

Right now is all  have to live with integrity, be responsible, do my duty for the unfolding of the evolutionary impulse within me driving me to create more of what works in my life so that I can and do shine.

Right now is all there is. I’ve got all the time in the world for right now to unfold. And when I don’t trust the Universe to be present, I am only living one part of my right now. In my distrust I am withholding the best parts of me from the Universe because… I fear… what might happen, or not, if I truly let it rip and live my dreams. I worry… the Universe might not turn up — at least not for me.  Excuse me? I’m that important it will single me out for special treatment!  🙂

I dream of writing full time. I dream of speaking about life and living and shining bright and inspiring others to shine.

Dreaming doesn’t make my dreams come true. Action does. Speaking up does. Doing my what does.

I don’t know how the Universe works. I do know how I work. I do know the work I need to do to make it possible for the how to appear in this world of wonder, this world of infinity possibility.

So thank you Universe. I got your message. I’m listening and breathing into this moment right now — and along the way I’m laughing out loud at how stuck I can get in believing it’s all up to me! Aren’t I the funny one! 

My Note from the Universe today.

Do you know the main difference, Louise, between messing with the cursed hows and turning them over to me? 

Besides smoother, more radiant skin. 

No, besides more free time. 

No, besides more interest income. 

Right! More laughter! 

Tallyho,
    The Universe

“When you strip away everything else – love remains.” ~ Diana Schwenk ~

And the completion of Freedom Isn’t Free (a line from a song the Up With People troupe I sang with in my teens) is…

“You gotta pay a price / you gotta sacrifice / for your liberty.”

Freedom rose into my awareness this morning while visiting over at Liz’s place — Just be. Love All. Live Life. — where she’s celebrating One Word Wednesday with the word FREEDOM.

In my teens, I thought freedom meant singing songs with an American singing troupe while living in Germany (that particular one celebrated the American Revolution and the invasion of what was to become  Canada, the land of  my birth — go figure) and talking it up amongst my peers about ‘what I’m gonna be when I grow up’.

And then, the grown up years were upon me and I had no clue about what I was going to do let alone be because I was too busy figuring out who I was.

Google dictionary defines freedom as:

free·dom

So, here’s the challenge, when haunted by the past, when held in the grips of adaptive thinking predicated upon the lessons learned about how to be in the world at a time when how to be was all about fitting in and surviving childhood through adolescence, acting, speaking and thinking without hindrance or restraint is impossible.

We gotta’ let go of the past to be free in the present.

But, when we don’t see the connections, when we are unaware of the link between our limited thinking blocking our view of what is possible like a line of trees blocking the not so distant horizon, how do we let go of something we don’t recognize as holding us back?

This has been my life journey. To let go of looking back to free myself to see the limitless possibilities leading out to a far and distant horizon of infinite wonder.

On her post today, Liz shares a Jim Morrison quote I love — “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.”

Inside me a revolution has been waging. Inside me the masks have been falling. Inside me I’ve been committing  acts of treason against my adaptive self that would hold me down to keep me from rising up and being free.

It is no longer good enough for me to just do.

The world needs my best. It needs me to be acting out from my higher self, not my lesser beliefs in the limitations of my possibilities.

My higher good is to be my all. To live my most. To love my best.

Freedom isn’t free. It’s true. And neither is the past. It comes burdened with all kinds of adaptations that once upon a time protected me from, or helped me make sense of, a world that was too big, too scary, too much of everything scary my child’s mind couldn’t grasp it all. I had to adapt to understand the world around me.

Free today to see myself in the light of this moment, I have a choice.

To let the past control how I am in the world today, or, to be myself as I am without the past controlling me today.

I choose to be myself.

I choose to step fearlessly into the freedom of jettisoning adaptive behaviours that don’t serve me well. Behaviours that would have me hold a mask in front to protect me from unseen ghosts and boogie men (and women) who once upon a time taught me to believe that hiding out was safer than being seen, that fear was greater than love.

It just ain’t so.

The courage to be seen trumps hiding out, every day. Love is greater than fear, always.

Once upon a time, I  trapped my spirit in a glass jar believing it would keep me safe from all the pain in the world.

Today, the glass is broken.

There is no pain in the world greater than living trapped within fear of the past.

There is no joy greater than being myself when I drop the masks and let go of fearing all that I am in freedom.

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I’m using an image a day (mostly taken from my iPhone) to create my Everyday Poems over at A Poetry Affair. The photo today is the genesis of today’s poem, Into the Distance.

There was a night, a year and a half ago, when I let my eldest daughter walk out the door not knowing when, or if she’d walk back through it again.

I knew I had to let her go. She was 25 and for a big part of those 25 years I’d been fighting for her life.

And I couldn’t do it for her any more.

She had to fight for herself. She had to find herself and her will to live, to see the beauty all around, to love herself like no other.

I knew I had to trust the universe. To accept whatever happened next as what happened next. I knew I had to trust she would find the courage to take the actions, take the steps that would lead her back from the precipice.

Before I let her go I’d asked if she had any plans to make her threats of ‘ending it all’ concrete.

She said No. She was going to go and check herself into Emergency at the hospital a few blocks down the street.

I had to trust her. I had to believe her. I had to let her do it herself. To make the choices that said, “I can do this. Choose life. Choose to let go of the darkness. Choose to see I am loved, wanted, needed in this world.”

I had run out of options. I had run out of things to say or do. Ways to be. I had run out of words.

My daughter, Alexis, shares  the story  (here and here) of the night she called the Distress Centre and the woman on the end of the line didn’t hang up on her nor tell her she was crazy. She listened. Said a few things. Gave her some suggestions and Alexis heard her.

And everything shifted.

And has continued to shift, day by day, as Alexis has grappled with healing from an eating disorder that had almost cost her life, and a belief system that said within her, “I have no worth.”

I never wanted that belief to be hers. Never wanted her to hold onto darkness.

I wanted only light for her. Just as I wanted only light for her sister.

I remember the first time she threatened to take her own life. She was mad at her father and me for some transgression. She stood at the top of the stairs, outside the door to her bedroom, her tiny fists balled up against her hips, legs spread apart. “I am so sorry I chose you as my parents,” she said. “I’m going back to heaven.”

I tried not to smile as I asked. “How do you plan on getting there honey?”

“I’m going to go in the kitchen, get a knife and stab myself. Then you’ll be sorry.”

She was five-years-old.

I didn’t want to smile after that. I wanted to race up the stairs and grab her and hold her and shake her and soothe her and tell her I loved her and that she could never, ever say something like that again. Calmly, I asked her to take a time out. To come down the stairs and sit beside me. We needed to talk.

I wouldn’t realize for many years just how deeply the thought of ‘going back to heaven’ was embedded in her psyche. At first, I thought it was just her vivid imagination — I had always thanked her for choosing us as her parents — in her wild imaginings, I just thought she had taken that choice to mean she could choose differently when she was mad or disappointed. “You’re needed in this world,” I’d tell her and then I’d remind her of all the reasons why I loved her, of all the reasons why her presence was so vital to this world. And she would cry and tell me I was wrong. And I would talk her out of the thoughts that seemed to cloud her vision of her beauty and wonder. I thought in my spending the hours I did showing her the path out of the darkness I could make it all right.

It was, and is, one of the hardest things I ever learned as a mother.

Sometimes, we can’t make it all right. Sometimes, we don’t have the words, or actions, or even the power to make it all right for our children.

I am grateful today that at 26, Alexis has found the words and actions and power to make it all right for herself.  I am grateful she is choosing to see the light, and to step away from the cloyingly sweet tendrils of the darkness calling her to give into the seductive deceit of its promise of release.

Alexis and I have agreed to write about these events because we both believe that in our willingness to be open, vulnerable and truthful we might help someone else struggling as we did — She with her fascination of the darkness and me with my desire to help her into the light. We want to reach anyone who is blinded to their beauty and worth in the darkness of depression see, there is a way through. There is hope.

My daughter is amazing and I am blessed to have her and her sister in my life. I am so glad both my daughters chose me as their mother.

I met today’s guest blogger, Bev Boyden-Van Staden through her amazing daughter, Tamara. Tamara was 11 when she first walked into my office with an idea for a pay-it-forward project she was doing in her Grade 5 class. She wanted to sell the jewelery she made at the art-show we were mounting for the artists of the Wildrose Art Studio at the shelter. Over the next five years, Tamara and her friends would raise over $9,100 for homeless charities.

And always, Bev was there, standing beside, behind, with her daughter. Supporting her, guiding her, showing her the path to living on purpose.

Recently, Bev sent me a FB message sharing her thoughts on de-cluttering. When I asked if I could share her words here, she quickly replied, of course. And that’s who Bev is — willing to step in and be of service, to share however she can, whatever she has to light up the world.

Bev and Tamara continue to give to community. In 2008, they set-up Heartprints: Kids for a Cause Foundation, and have expanded their products to include hand-knit scarves and dishcloths, beaded lanyards and other beautiful items.

Thank you Bev for all you do to create a world of difference. You are the change you want to see in the world.

What would you carry?

by Bev Boyden-Van Staden

Your postings of purging, decluttering and giving away one thing per day prompted memories of my 1983 travels (on a “shoe string” throughout SE Asia and the fact that I had to carry everything with me on this 3+ months adventure through Indonesia (Bali, Java and Summatra), Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore and back to Thailand before heading back to Canada.

Items of extreme value (passport, travel cheques and main supply of $$) were secured on a “purse” made from an extra large pocket from jeans secured to a long shoelace that hung around my neck and was tucked under whatever I was wearing and which I even slept with. Everything else was in a durable oblong daypack … compact enough to put on my lap during transit. If memory serves correctly, that pack weighed between 7 to 10 lbs.

Your recent postings had me thinking “what would we keep IF we had to carry with us everywhere what we wanted?” Sure, at major cities throughout my travels, I had the option to mail back home keepsakes, but mostly I had to make a daily choice about whether an item was really necessary to be packing around in the sweltering heat every day. I was a lot tougher about getting rid of unnecessary stuff at that point in my life than I am when I permanently settled (home).

We’ve been in our current home since 2000. Being a creative individual, everything has potential. I usually find that I have a tough time throwing things out … except when I get in one of those rare moods.

Over the years we have had a craft area and have collected (and stored for “just in case”) many things from a perfectly shaped flat rock found on a walk to cardboard and styro-foam.

For example, when my daughter, Tamara, was younger and into Barbies, she really wanted Barbie furniture (unit price $75 and up if purchased then at Toys R Us!, which wasn’t in my budget!). So I started making Barbie furniture out of styro-foam, old leather (or fake leather) purses, fringe material and a glue gun. Voila, Tamara and her friends had a grand time turning the “Barbie Room” into a girls’ dream place to play with all this funky furniture.

Fast forward many years later and we tackled the task of purging, throwing out or giving away so much stuff in order to turn areas into a teenagers’ hang out. Still it was with fondness that Tamara said ‘goodbye’ to her favourite Barbie couch I had made from styro-foam, black leather, and black fringe (including arm rests). All the stuff that another young child would enjoy we boxed up and donated to The Children’s Cottage … to the delight of the staff there!

Decluttering is an ongoing process. Now and then I tackle a drawer, a closet or shelves. I’m not drawn to other people’s garage sales anymore (haven’t been in awhile now!). What triggered my decluttering over 2012 is the passing of my dad in January 2012 (he was 84). He lived in BC, on his own (his partner pre-deceased him by less than a year). Soon it was discovered that his house and shed were in horrific state with so much junk collected over so many years. Some precious keepsakes like photos and such were found among his belongings, but most of the stuff was just that “stuff”. My oldest sister, as executor, vowed never to leave such a mess for her children to clean up after she is gone. That influenced me to rethink the state of my closets, drawers, cupboards and storage space areas.

Still I am amused when I think of my traveling days throughout SE Asia and wonder how much “stuff” I would keep around this house, if I had to carry it all with me everywhere I went. One extreme to the other, I know; but I am inspired to find a balance.

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Today’s poem is posted at A Poetry Affair: Time Flows

I cried this morning. I knew I needed to. I knew the tears were waiting. My daughter and I had spoken of them as we drove home from an event we hadn’t want to be at, but knew there was no where else we wanted to be yesterday.

She too felt the tears crowding at the back of her eyes. She too felt the need to release them.

It had been an emotional day.

My day began early. A not unusual occurrence for me. A 7am coffee conclave to discuss an upcoming presentation. An 8:30 am breakfast meeting to map out a media strategy for a client. It was work done all in the course of doing what needs to be done to live on purpose.

And then, a two-hour drive to a small prairie town a couple of hours north of the city. A beautiful blue sky soaring above us. Dry road reaching out to the horizon in front of us, leading us towards that place we never expected to go.

It was when we reached the end of that long straight road that normal met up with surreal. At the end of the road we gathered with over a 1,000 people to celebrate the life of a young man whose end of life had arrived far too soon, far too tragically.

Brett Marshal Wiese’s life ended in the early morning hours of January 12, 2013. He was 20 years old.

A young 19-year-old man and 17-year-old girl are in custody. Their lives have taken a far different course, I’m sure, than the dreams their birth once ignited in the hearts of their parents and families those few short years ago when they were born.

And lives are shattered. Hearts are broken. Family tables reset.

And where once a vibrant, funny, courageous and kind young man walked amongst us, only memories are left behind to warm the hearts of those who knew and loved him and had such hopes for his future.

And I have no words. Only tears.

My heart breaks for Jody and Brenda and their daughter, Brett’s sister, Morgan. It breaks for Kip and all the family who must now learn to adjust to their world without their loving son and brother and family member in their midst.

I cried this morning. Not a normal way to start my day, yet, I know, in my tears I find the breath, and courage I need, to hold the space we all must hold for this beautiful family as they move through their grief in the days to come. It is that loving space we must hold open so they can find the normal of life without Brett walking and laughing and snowboarding and driving fast and jumping off cliffs and teasing his sister and playing tricks on friends and curling his 6’4″ body into his mother’s lap and being his outrageous,’ here I am, I’m so glad to meet you’ self amongst them.

I never knew him, but in watching the videos, hearing the stories, talking to family, I met a young man of great character. A man who was a hero in the eyes of everyone who came to bid him farewell.

Go in peace Brett. May the hearts of those who love you so find peace in knowing that for those of us who never had the privilege of knowing you, the story we witnessed unfolding yesterday was the story of your hero’s journey. You lived life with passion, courage and kindness. You welcomed in strangers. You held your family and friends close. In every breath, every word spoken, every photo shared yesterday, your life story embraced each us with Love and held us close.

May Love be your cradle forever more.

Namaste.

Moment after I hit “Publish” in WordPress, I visited the lovely Sandra Heska King’s blog where she shared this beautiful video as part of her Still Saturday. Thank you Sandra — this is exactly what I needed to find stillness, softness, peace and… hope.