Life is filled with magical molecules waiting to burst upon every moment.

They were dancing in the air all around me as I walked across the 10th Street bridge towards the north side of the river. Sunspots sparkled on the water that flowed benignly beneath its concrete arch. It is the same river that just under 2 months ago raged and overflowed its banks, flooding over its shoreline into the downtown core and beyond. Yesterday, the sun shone, a gentle breeze drifted in from the west, the sky was peacock blue and all evidence of the river’s fury had been swept away.

It was a beautiful afternoon and I was on my way to a meeting to talk about an event for Homeless Awareness Week with a woman from This is My City (TMC), the arts group that works with and within the homeless community in Calgary, building creative bridges that span the divide between both sides of the street.

ST is a visionary. I first met her at a TMC board meeting several years ago when I sat on the inaugural board for TMC. We had recently run into eachother at another meeting and I’d pitched my idea of using a song she’d written for last spring’s TMC Festival as the foundation of our Homeless Awareness events this year. Excited to be engaged in the initiative, we’d set up a meeting to talk about possibilities.

When I arrived at the coffee shop where we’d agreed to meet I found ST standing by a table chatting with three young men. “They’re helping me translate the words to a song I’m writing into Spanish,” ST told me as I walked up.  I smiled and listened as the three men, all of whom were musicians, shared thoughts on music and guitar playing and the joys of recording their songs (which is what they had taken a break from to come and grab a coffee). One man was from Barcelona, another from Brazil and the third from somewhere in the southern states. Suddenly, the man from Barcelona unsheathed his guitar and said, “I have a song to play for you!”

And that’s when the magic happened. There in the middle of a cafe on a sunny afternoon in Calgary, he began to play and sing his guitar, the rich tones of his voice sultry with the Spanish of his birth. ST began to hum, a beautiful melodic stream of sound that flowed beneath each note as natural as a bird singing in the sun. The man from Brazil sang the words to the chorus and I listened, my heart singing for joy.

It was magical.

Later, ST and I talked about what is possible if we dream big and forget to let our fears take rein and I was reminded that there is only one way to make our dreams come true. Believe and Do. Or, as Napoleon Hill once coined — Be. Do. Have. Be committed to Do what it takes to Have what you want.

Later, I was gifted with an invitation to meet up for a glass of wine with a young woman who worked with me as a summer student when I was at the shelter. She’d gone off to finish her undergrad degree, moving to Australia for a year and now to China for the past year where she teaches English. JM was responsible for Terry Pettigrew, a client at the shelter who was dying of cancer, receiving his Christmas Wish of a trip to Mardi Gras. Though Terry never had the strength to take the trip, the story of Jessica’s gift and Terry’s desire to make a difference before he died, garnered considerable media attention. Because of a story in the Calgary Herald, Terry’s family reconnected and I met two amazing people — Terry’s brother Larry and his wife, Bev with whom I still stay in touch today.

Talk about a string of magical moments suspended in time!

And then, to cap the day, I answered an invitation from DB, the meditation master of the group I often attend on Wednesday nights, to celebrate in an impromptu group meditation last night in honour of the Leo full moon that would reach its zenith at 7:46 pm. His invitation read, “Leo stands in a unique relationship to the sun at the heart of our solar system. The planetary and systemic alignment established at this Festival is a heart/soul alignment. This alignment is evocative of the cosmic principle of Love and Freedom.”

I couldn’t resist an invitation of a night of heart and soul alignment after so many magical moments strung like glistening pearls upon a day of wonder!

As I drifted into a restful and refreshing sleep I felt the magic of the day wrap itself around me in a welcoming blanket of heartfelt joy.

There is so much magic in this world and all I need to do to experience it is open my eyes and heart and arms wide and leap into the experience of living it up, moment by moment, on the others side of my comfort zone!  All I need to do to know the magic in every molecule is breathe and be present!

Life is good and I am joyful.

On Friday, Alexis, my eldest daughter, and I had coffee with a dear friend from the shelter where I used to work.

I first met MC when I started an art program at the shelter. Everyday I’d see him painting at his table in the Day Area on the 2nd floor. I’d ask him if he’d like to come up to the studio space on the 6th floor and he’d demur. “Not today. I’m not ready.”

One day I asked how he’d know when he was ready. He didn’t have an answer so I asked him, “What if you decide to make today the day you’re ready?” And he did.

Working in the art program I was always in awe of his amazing talent. Not just a gifted visual artist, MC is a carpenter, a writer, a poet and a musician.

MC also makes me think. He once wrote for a play he was performing in, “I am a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend. I am an artist, a carpenter, a writer, a musician. I laugh. I cry. I bleed. I feel. Which of these is diminished because I am homeless?”

On Friday, we sat and shared stories of the past many months since last we visited. He shared the music he was writing, his hopes and dreams of ‘moving on’.

For MC, homelessness hit over 20 years ago. The break-up of a marriage, the loss of connection with his only child, alcohol, all of these took their toll until he was no longer able to function in the world of theatre where he used to work. The shelter became his home. His ballast. His refuge.

But a shelter is not a home. It is designed to be a community space where those experiencing homelessness can find safe refuge. For a short time. Not forever.

Yet, there are those who will die in the shelter. There are those who will never ‘get out’. Not because they don’t want to. Working at a shelter I never met anyone who said, I want to die here, though I did meet many who were afraid to leave. Afraid that ‘out there’ would only lead them back. Afraid that ‘out there’ was too scary, unstable, unwelcoming and unkind.

For them, staying in the shelter became the safest and most familiar option. Their fear of leaving overwhelmed their capacity to dream, to see beyond the shelter doors the possibility of life beyond what they knew as the reality of their life today.

Shelters are filled with people whose lives are limited not by homelessness, but rather, by the belief they never will, or can’t, or don’t deserve to find their way back home.

Which is why it is so important that we must all hold the space, and the dream, of ending homelessness. It is not an easy task. In fact, there are those who would say it is impossible, to end homelessness. You can’t do it if you don’t first end all the things that contribute to someone becoming homeless, they say. Like addiction, abuse, violence, divorce, loss, poverty. If those things continue to plague our society how can you end homelessness?

Because even though those thing plague our society, not everyone impacted by them ends up homeless. In fact, of those who do suffer from addictions, abuse, violence, divorce, loss, poverty only a small percentage end up on the streets. So, why not take the ending up on the street option out of the mix? Why not remove one outcome that creates so much pain and suffering?

Yes, we need emergency shelter beds — as a temporary stop-over for those who suffer the loss of housing. But emergency shelter should never become permanent placement. it should never become our de facto solution for those who have no place to call home.

When someone enters homelessness they need supports to help them see and believe and know, there is a way out. Too long in an emergency situation creates lasting trauma and stress. Knowing there is  support, help, and a path out is vital to keeping the one thing alive everyone who becomes homeless needs — hope. Hope that they will not stay stuck forever in the nomads land of homelessness. Hope they won’t die in a shelter because, no matter which way you cut it, a shelter is not a home. It is a stepping stone on the way back to that place we all want to be, home.

At home, we can find the stability we need to rebuild our lives. At home, we can find the courage to do the things we need to do to take care of ourselves. At home, pride, peace, joy live with us because, at home, we find our selves.

Everyone wins when homelessness ends. Everyone.

My sisters and I love to cook. We come by our obsession passion honestly.

My father was an amazing Chef. As a teenager, he ran away from the boarding school where his father had sent him and hopped a train to Montreal. Once there, he worked in a bakery and then, when war broke out, he lied about his age and joined the RAF because Canada had not yet joined in the conflict and he was a British subject. He first became a gunner but lost too many friends and switched over to feeding the troops instead. When he married my mother in India in 1943, she couldn’t cook. Eventually moving to Canada, he taught her everything he knew. Together, they shared in his passion and love of entertaining making Sunday dinners in our house famous. People vied for invitations, always knowing there would be a gastronomic feast to devour along with the good company, and spirits, always present in my parents home.

Growing up, I didn’t cook much. Why cook when your parents always had the situation covered?

Even though I didn’t spend much time in the culinary arts, their love of cooking and entertaining was contagious. Once I was living on my own, spending time in the kitchen became a favourite past-time.

I loved to experiment. My theory was always, if you can read, you can cook. If you can imagine, you can create. And so, I’d take a recipe and experiment with ingredients adding dollops of this and measurements of that to see what novel thing I could create that had my signature on it. The joke has always been that if you like something Louise cooked, don’t expect it again as she seldom cooks the same thing twice.

Yesterday, my friend Jane called to check on what time they were expected to be at the house for dinner. Jane and her husband Al are my daughters, ‘other parents’. They have been in my life since before my daughters’ births, and have been there always to support, care, love, nurture and guide both girls (and me) through life’s ups and downs,  trials and triumphs. Along with their daughter and son, who are close to the same ages as my girls, they are family in the best way possible.

“Are you having a good day?” Jane asked when she called.

“I am having a perfect day!” I replied.

And I was.

Immersed in the creative space of my kitchen, my heart was full, my imagination on fire and my creative juices flowing as I prepared a meal for 14 that had to meet the dietary needs of everyone. Celiac. Vegetarian. Lactose intolerant. Meat eaters.

C.C. was in charge of the roast and getting things on the BBQ. I was in charge of the rest. A gluten free pasta salad with roasted tomatoes. Black Bean Rice Burgers, Guacamole, roasted beets, sautéed green beans, roasted potatoes, a chocolate mousse for those who couldn’t eat the cake. There was more — but you get the picture…

As my parents taught me, the perfect way to express your love is to gather people who are important to you around a dinner table and share what you’ve created.

And it was. A perfect kind of day capped off by a perfect evening spent sitting around the table on the lawn set beneath the canopy of the apple tree. The air was warm, the sky blue. Birds sang in harmony with our voices laughing, sharing, enjoying the thing that binds us all — Love.

And for my daughter….

Black Bean Rice Burgers

750 ml cooked or canned black beans, rinsed and drained (I cooked mine as I find the cans too soft and mushy)
250 ml cooked whole grain rice
1 med carrot, shredded
80 ml ground flaxseed
1 lge free-range egg
2 garlic cloves (I omitted as Alexis is sensitive to garlic)
10 ml Dijon mustard
5 ml ground cumin (I used fresh herbs from the garden)
pinch sea salt
1 ml black pepper
Grapeseed oil for grilling

Add black beans to food processor container and blend until broken down but now completely smooth (I had a big bowl handy as the beans plus other ingredients were greater than the size of my food processor bowl) You can also use a potato masher. Add rice, carrot, flaxseed, egg (garlic), mustard, cumin (herbs), salt, and pepper; pulse until well combined (I mixed it all together in big bowl and then ground it up in batches.) Form mixture into patties.
Preheat grill, or if doing on stove-top, heat oil. Cook 5 minutes per side.

Guacamole topping

1 lge avocado
Juice of 1 lime
handful of chopped cilantro
hot sauce, cayenne pepper, or Habanero pepper chopped fine
1 medium-sized tomato, seeded and chopped (or a salsa sauce works too)

In small bow, mash together avocado, lime juice, cilantro, hot-sauce or Habanero or cayenne pepper, tomato (or salsa) and a dash of salt.

Bon Appetit!

I have always been told I’m beautiful. Even as a child, strangers would stop and comment on my beauty. As a 50-something woman, I still get comments — though I must admit, I don’t turn heads when I walk into a room like I used to, especially if I’m with my daughters. Talk about feeling invisible!  🙂

But feeling invisible is not what this post is about. Beauty is. And the hiss of the critter’s voice flicking it’s tape of “You’re so vain!” through my mind as soon as I type the words, “I have always been told I’m beautiful.”

When I was in my teens we lived in Germany. My brother and I both went to the Canadian Armed Forces High School in the small town where we lived. Every morning we’d don our uniforms, wolf down a breakfast and race out the door. Except, the racing out wasn’t that fast for him. A handsome young man, my brother loved his reflection in the mirror. He stood in the mirror so long, we used to tease him about wearing it out.

And that was okay. My mother never chastised him for lingering in front of the glass. She never told him to ‘quit being so vain’ for admiring himself and she never said, “it’s not true,” when a stranger commented on his good looks.

She was different with me.

My eldest sister was a beauty queen. Tall. Slender. Beautiful. An oversized photograph of her with crown and sash graced my parents living room since she’d won Teen Queen status years before I reached my teens.

There was never any question that I would enter a beauty pageant. I was short, maybe even a bit pudgy, and constantly reminded that looking at myself in the mirror was vain.

It is a tape that runs through my mind still today. I heard it yesterday when a visibly homeless man who was walking in the opposite direction as I walked towards my car, stopped dead in his tracks in front of me and said, “Holy F**k. You’re beautiful.”

I laughed and smiled and said “Thank you” and we continued on our separate ways.

But the tape fired anyway.

What’s the question behind the question of the tape, Louise? My mind of reason and love asked. There’s something deeper here than a vanity tape at work.

And it was true. There was. Something deeper.

I love it when my mind whacks me on the side of the head and says, “C’mon girl. Dig deeper!”

I dug. And what I realized is, it’s not the surface response of ‘don’t be vain’, it’s actually all about trust. Or lack of it actually.

When someone pays me a compliment, I don’t trust that they’re telling the truth.

Not a particularly healthy way to go through each day — in fact, it’s downright self-defeating. Not only am I accusing them of being a liar, I’m undermining my own self-worth!

Think about it. A stranger stops me on the street to say I’m beautiful and really, my first response is to want to tell him he’s wrong — hello?  This is a stranger, and in this case, a man with absolutely nothing else to give but a compliment. Why not be gracious and accept it with a smile?

I know there’s still stuff around beauty that makes me uncomfortable. I look at my daughters and am in awe of their beauty and how comfortable they are in their own skin. I’ve never been comfortable in mine. I’m working on it, but it is, as my blog friend Leigh commented yesterday, a work in progress.

But rather than work on my issues around vanity and beauty if I focus on building trust, being trusting and trustworthy, it won’t matter what the critter hisses — I’ll simple smile and say, Thank you for caring enough to share, and continue on my way.

As Don Miquel Riuz writes in the Four Agreements “Don’t Take Anything Personally” — it’s not about me anyway. Whether someone thinks I’m beautiful or ugly, what they think is not about me. And it’s none of my business what they think of me anyway!

I’m all about me.

And trusting people, creating a world where we can trust each other, where I move through my day extending and receiving trust is something I want more of in my life. To have it, I must give it, be it.

And it begins right here, right now.

I began this post with a statement that makes me uncomfortable, I have always been told I’m beautiful. 

The discomfort of typing that, the challenge of putting it out there in the open stretches me. The voice that states, you can’t type that, it’s vain, rushes in, and in its onslaught I breathe into the truth — no matter what I look like, the truth about me is found in what I want to create more of in my life. It resides in the acts of kindness I share. the laughter, the joy, the love I create.

No matter how I look, turning away from the mirror of judgement and self-deprecation to see myself through the lens of compassion, love and kindness creates more of what I want in the world — peace, joy, harmony and Love.

It was a lovefest evening. My eldest daughter arrived home last night for a weekend visit. We drove back from the airport, picked up her sister on our way home and then sat on the deck as the sky turned from peacock-blue to indigo. One by one stars peeked out from behind night’s blanket as we chatted and laughed and shared and caught up on the happenings in each other’s lives.

It was bliss.

This morning, I have an early meeting and a busy day ahead.

And then this evening, I get to do it all again with ‘my girls’ when C.C.’s daughter joins us for dinner at our favourite restaurant, a place where we have spent many an hour talking about everything from heart throbs and heartaches, leaping hurdles and tripping up, dreams and bad ideas and what will happen if…

The joke in our family has long been that if Alexis, my eldest daughter, and I sit in a restaurant together, she’ll inevitably start crying. It’s not that I say something to make her cry! It’s just that Alexis (as she demonstrates in her blog every day) is so in touch with her emotional self, so connected to her feelings, and so willing to be vulnerable and open about where she’s at and what’s really going on within her, our conversations quickly dive into the heart of our human connection. And the water-works follow.

I admire her capacity to express her true self. I admire her ability to be who she is, without trying to cover it up with a brave face, or false bravado.

I am not as open. A lifetime of trying to pretend everything’s A-ok, even when the sky is falling, holds me back. It’s not that I don’t want to be as vulnerable and open. It’s often just, I don’t actually know what I’m feeling. Having disguised my feelings behind my smile for so long, it takes me awhile sometimes to actually figure out — what am I feeling in this moment? Is it anger? Sadness? Am I ok with what just happened? What is it about what just happened that is distressing me? What do I do next?

I know I’m not alone. In a conversation the other day with a very dear friend who is highly evolved and emotionally aware, she shared  how it had taken her weeks to finally figure out that what was going on in a work situation was not okay.

I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling the way i was feeling, she shared. Especially because at first, I couldn’t name what it was I was feeling.

I understand.

In the heat of a situation, I often revert to my adapted learning that would have me stay silent in the face of fear, anger, sadness, embarrassment, confusion, shame and a host of other emotions that I am more apt to run away from than face.

In my silence, I tolerate the unacceptable. I minimize my feelings, my needs, my desire to be seen, heard and real. In my silence, I lose myself to my fears and forget to turn up authentically. I regress back to that place within me where I make other people’s bad behaviour ok, or, as happened recently, I let other people’s bad behaviour be my excuse for not turning up.

Silence is violence when it is not filled with Love.

And in my silent acquiescence of the unacceptable, I am committing a crime against myself. I am lessening my joy, minimize myself and dimming my light. In my silence I become my own abuser.

I am 100% accountable for everything I accept in my life. When I accept the intolerable as permissible, when I conspire against my own well-being, I am not treating myself the way I want to be treated.

We teach people how to treat us.

When I let my silence hold me back from being present, I am teaching myself it’s okay to be invisible, to be unseen, to be disrespected, abused… whatever it is that is happening around me, when I let the not ok be ok, I am telling myself, I don’t matter.

We all matter. And that includes our feelings.

There is no right or wrong to our feelings. They just are. And when we let our feelings flow free, they don’t pollute our well-being. They don’t dam up our expression of our gifts, talents, light. They don’t stop up our magnificence.

We are born to shine. Let’s do it!

I am supposed to be deep in my morning meditation when I realize… I am reconstructing yesterday’s interview on CBC and saying all the things I wanted to say and didn’t!

Breathe. Repeat my mantra. Begin again.

I continue only to find myself a few minutes later dreaming of squirrel retribution. The dastardly devils ate my daisies yesterday and dug up one of my potted plants, again. Immersed in pleasant thoughts of how I rid my life of their pesky presence, I forget about my meditation until I realize, once again, I’ve veered from my course.

Breathe. Repeat my mantra. Begin again.

Sigh. It is always this way when I return to my practice. My mind is easily swayed, easily pulled from silence into active engagement with my thinking.

And I… Breathe. Repeat my mantra. Begin again.

It’s not just in meditation that this happens. It appear in my life too. My thinking gets in the way of my being and becoming and living my truth. instead of eating right, my thinking says, “Oh go for it. One (fill in the blank with any calorie, sugar-infused, fat laden item of your choice) won’t hurt.”

I look at my running shoes sitting in the corner calling me to give them a workout and my thinking says, “You’re too tired. Start tomorrow.”

Avoidance strengthens fear. It also keeps me tied to the couch, surfing channels I don’t want to watch, eating bonbons i don’t need to consume and playing spider solitaire.

Breathe. Repeat my mantra. Begin again.

It is the way. To find myself out-of-the-way of where I am going, only to return again to the path.

Buddha said, The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.

it’s also not in my head. The way is in my heart.

I don’t have to look up, down, out or all around me, all I have to do to find myself, to see my light, to discern my path is to look within. And there it is. Always.

Alberta Einstein wrote, God always takes the simplest way.

And that’s the problem with my thinking. It is seldom satisfied with simple.

My thinking likes to complicate, second guess, undermine, minimize or over-inflate, and trip me up with its constant judgements and criticisms. My heart knows the way.

And the way is not through doubt and fear. The way is always through Love.

I lost myself in meditation this morning. In losing myself I found myself once again right back where I belong. I found myself again in that place where I know peace, joy, contentment and Love are always present. I found myself in my heart.

My new flower bed

It was an idyllic day. Sublimely so.

A decision to create a flower bed in the backyard. Hours of hard labour, a satisfying result and an afternoon to kick-back and relax under an umbrella, reading a spy novel, sipping lemonade, listening to bird-song and squirrel chatter.

Ellie the Wonder Pooch

I don’t often read novels. In fact, when I decided to sit back and R&R I pulled out one of my many ‘here’s how to change your life and mindset to get what you want in life’ kind of books and settled in on a comfy lawn chair to read. The heat, the words, the message blurred and I fell asleep in the shade of the lilac bush that sits at the edge of the deck. When I awoke, I looked at the list of other things I had to do, and decided, they weren’t getting done. I was going to indulge myself in sheer escapism literature and an afternoon of unscheduled time. Fortunately for me, C.C. loves spy novels and thrillers so there was an ample supply of them to choose from for my afternoon of indulgence.

Marley the Great Cat

yesterday, I chose to ‘do different’. I chose to not live to my schedule, to not fill my time with doing, doing, doing and simply let myself be.

At peace. At one. At ease with myself, my world and where I am in it.

Like the butterfly who spent countless minutes simply sipping at the nectar of a flower, I let myself sip gratefully at the unstructured time before me.

It was delicious! Delectable. Juicy.

Later, when a girlfriend came for dinner, we sat on the deck and laughed and shared and chatted about life. She is one of the most amazing people I know. Where once alcohol blurred her vision of who she was and what she deserved in life, Sobriety now graces her every action. She sees, hears, feels clearly what it means to be human.

I get so tired of people asking me, what am I going to do next,” she said as we cleared the dinner dishes and brought them inside from where we’d been eating on the deck. “I’ve decided. I’m not a human doing. I’m a human being.”

I spent a quiet afternoon being at peace with where I was at. Reading. Relaxing. Not really thinking about what needed to get done. Not thinking about what I was thinking about, and what I was going to do next or why or how I was going to get it all done. I simply sat back and didn’t think.

I dug into my human being and let myself be.

It was delicious.

Now, where did I put that list. It’s Monday. I’ve got a lot to do and not enough time to do it all in.

Ahhh. How quickly I forget.

I am a human being. Doing is optional. What I do is my choice. How I do it is who I am.

And sometimes, to do my best, I need to give myself a break. Kick back and savour each moment as it passes by simply watching the birds and bees and butterflies busily doing their thing!

My ego is a mirror of the world around me
My heart is the mirror of my soul.

Those words floated into the silence of my mind this morning as I meditated.

I have drifted from my practice of opening my day with meditation. Left my path of centering myself in oneness to keep me grounded throughout the day.

I have begun again.

Day 5 of the Meditation Challenge created by Oprah and Deepak Chopra.

I missed yesterday. Got up late. Rushed through writing my blog. Rushed into my day. Forgot all about beginning in silence and stillness.

I begin again today.

Such a simple concept, to begin again, yet, sometimes, it seems so far away, so distant, so difficult. My critter mind wants to make up reasons why I need to go back to the beginning and begin all over. It likes to recite the litany of why not’s. —  I don’t have time to do it all, and what’s the point of doing any of it if I can’t do it all? It’s too hard. Too easy. Too stupid. Too whatever.

There are a thousand reasons why my mind would like me to believe I can’t.

My heart knows none of them are true. All of them are excuses.

My heart is the mirror of my soul.

It speaks of what is at the pure essence of my being. Light. Love. Joy. Truth.

It hears what is essential in my being here, on this planet, in this moment, right now. Connection. Community. Contribution.

It knows what is important to creating a life of wonder and awe,   Integrity. Honesty. Authenticity.

It wants for me to be who I am even when my ego would have me believe I am not. Essential. Evolved. Emergent.

It knows all. Sees all. Is all that I am when I live from my soul’s calling me to be the divine expression of Love’s amazing grace.

It is always who I am — even in those moments when I step away from embracing the truth of who I am because, it never ceases to exist — I am a radiant woman. I am a miracle of life, of love, of beauty. I am, as this morning’s mantra invokes, “Om Bhavam Namah” — I am absolute existence. I am a field of all possibilities.

I love that thought. It calls to me on this rain-soaked Friday morning. I am a field of all possibilities.

Within me exists the field of all possibilities. To access the field, all I have to do is breathe deeply into my essential being, and let the truth shine.

It’s all each of us has to do. Breathe in and embrace the truth of who we are. Breathe in and let Love awaken us to the beauty and awe and wonder of our absolute existence. Our field of all possibilities.

My heart is at ease this morning. My heart feels full of grace.

And my soul is dancing.

It was challenging getting into my office yesterday. Yellow police taped sectioned off the side of the street leading to the doors of the building. A policeman stood guard. Legs spread wide, hands on his belt, his voice commanding as he turned away anyone who tried to duck beneath the tape to get to the doors.

A man had been stabbed one street over and made it as far as the door next to my office entrance before collapsing.

The police were busy investigating.

And here’s the thing. He was stabbed at 3am.

My critter is screaming, “Told you so! Told you so!”

My voice of reason is calm in reply. “They’re not related incidences. There’s no correlation from one to the other.”

The ‘other’ refers to my blog yesterday. About choosing to not walk around the block at 3am.

A does not equal B.  Just because the stabbing took place in the middle of the dark hours, does not mean walking around the block at 3am will result in my being assaulted.

But the critter mind doesn’t care about the logic. It wants to remind me of other despicable things that happened in the dark. It wants me to remember fear. Because in the critter’s world, fear equals safety. And its job is to keep me safe.

Problem is. Fear does not induce a state of feeling free. It only creates more of what is — fear.

I know this through experience. In fact, I can see the critter at work in making relationships between what happened in the past, to how I need to stay safe in today.

Remember the time, that man, the one who tried to kill you, the one who lied and manipulated and cheated and schemed, the one who almost cost you your life. Yeah. That one. Remember… he used the dark to scare you. All the time. He called in the dark of night to tell you about the evil men who were threatening to kidnap your daughters and drug them and put them in the sex trade. He called in the middle of the night to tell you about the bullets he’d received. One for you and each of the girls. Remember?

How could I forget. Well actually, I’d like to forget but the critter mind is good at its job. it likes it when I remember my fear.

And don’t forget about the time he jumped you in the dark. Remember? You were walking back to your girlfriend’s house after Alexis 18th birthday party. It was dark. You’d dropped the girls off at the bar where they were continuing the party and driven back to Nan’s where you were staying. Remember? You parked in the visitor lot on the other side of the townhome complex. Took that shortcut through the buildings. Left the path to cut across the grass between two units. It was dark. There were a stand of fir trees and bushes on your right. You saw a shadow move up from where it had been lying in wait on the ground. He was wearing a hoodie. Dark. He jumped up and called your name. You screamed and ran.

Remember?

Yeah.

Good. ‘Cause that’s why you don’t want to walk around the block in the dark. He could still be out there.

Dang. That’s when it hit me.

Walking in the dark isn’t about overcoming my fear of the dark. It’s all about challenging my fear of his being out there. Somewhere. It’s all about keeping my guard up.

Problem with keeping my guard up forever is, I get really, really tired. Weary. Bone weary.

It has been ten years since his arrest. Ten years.

In that time I have not intentionally seen or spoken to him. Not even once.

And still, he stalks my memory. he stirs up the muddy waters of the past, keeping me from knowing true peace.

That’s way too much power to give away. Way too much mindspace to hand over.

It’s time.

Time to stake my claim on the past, present and future. It’s time to not give into my critter’s need to find safety in fear. It’s time to give into my soul’s calling me to be free. To be released from fear.

Yesterday, a man was stabbed at 3am. He survived.

In his survival I am given the gift of remembering to look beyond the obvious. To see into and through the evidence to the root of what was really going on. In the case of the man who was stabbed, the evidence is pretty over-whelming that his assault was related to what he was doing on the street at 3am and while the circumstances of what he was doing may have led to his being stabbed, there is no excuse for violence. No one deserves to be assaulted at any time of the day or night.

I have a fear of walking around the block at 3am. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as I am conscious of the underlying current of my fear. As long as I acknowledge that my fear isn’t about what’s on the street. It’s all about who my mind is telling me ‘might be’ on the street.

It isn’t my fear of walking around the block at 3am that is causing my angst. it isn’t even the remembering of those dark days and nights of that relationship that almost killed me that is stirring up my unease. What’s really the problem is my fear of ‘what might be’ masquerading as my fear of the dark.

There’s no proof he is anywhere even close to where I am. No proof at all. And still my critter’s mind would have me play safe, just in case.

No sense wasting a great life on what might be. there’s no place for playing small in the light, nor the dark.

It’s time to let go of my fear of who might be out there, and face myself in the mirror of my soul and acknowledge, “I am here!”

Whoever might be out there isn’t my problem. I am my problem, my challenge, my gift. It’s up to me to step beyond my fear of what, or who, might be out there.

Hey world!  I’m free!  Watch me shine.