I love how every adversity, and treasure, have the capacity to teach me something new.

Yesterday I wrote about my experience of confronting conflict and coming to the realization — my best is good enough.

It’s true. It is. but, here’s the kicker. If I don’t look for the lessons learned, if I don’t explore what happened for opportunities for growth, my ‘best’ will stay stuck in that place and not inform me.

There are opportunities to grow in every situation — the thing is, those opportunities aren’t always apparent in situ. Sometimes, it takes a bit of reflection, a bit of self-examination to see where I can learn, and grow.

This morning I had one of those ‘realizations’. Those ‘ah ha’ moments that hit me on the inside of the head awakening me to possibility. The realization came through a comment a lovely woman made on yesterday’s blog. Joanne is one of those grounded, here I am and I’m okay just the way I am, kind of people I admire. Her blog, Joanne Rambling, is always filled with every day moments that sparkle in the light of love and joy and honesty and truth with dashes of humour sprinkled throughout. And yesterday, in replying to her, I realized, that my gratitude for my good dad far outweighs the fears I had as a child.

I’ve learned so much from my fears.

I’ve learned to not cower in the face of anger. I’ve learned to use my words wisely, to be conscious of how I respond in every situation, because I have the capacity to give-away my power, or to empower myself to be the peace I want to be in the world.  I’ve learned that anger is just another way of expressing deep emotion.  That anger held in eats away at peace of mind. That anger, when expressed appropriately, can be healthy.

And I’ve learned that anger isn’t what I fear. What I fear is what happens within me when I feel my own anger or confront someone else’s. And in learning that, I have learned to stand true to my feelings and emotions in all kinds of weather. To not allow the winds swirling around me to pull me from my centre. I can change direction, but never change my destination when my destination is always love.

This morning, I embraced the knowing that Sunday wasn’t about replaying what happened in my mind, and improving what I said and did so that I looked and felt less frightened or alone at the time. What Sunday is all about is the opportunity to grow and learn and to embrace my power and my capacity to create change in the world.

Our human tendency after moments of high stress is to go back and recreate the events in a way that we either look better, or, as often happens in the case of a ‘near miss’ accident, we play the ‘What if’ game.

What if I’d been standing right where I’d been 2 minutes ago exactly in that spot where the tree fell? What if I’d still been driving beside the truck when it blew its tire. What if…

And in our recreation, we don’t focus on the gift of life we received by not being in that place where the tree fell or the tire blew. Instead, we focus on the fear of what might have happened if…

My realization this morning was the gift of knowing that in every moment I have the capacity to see the teachings and embrace the learning. Good and bad.

For me, not going back in my head to re-write the script of what I did or didn’t say means I get to focus on my ‘behaviour’ as opposed to my being. There are things I can learn to do better in those situations, and that is all about my behaviour, not about who I am.

Sunday wasn’t about what I did. It’s about what I do now. It’s about embracing the experience to allow it to inform and teach me.

So often, my fear of looking imperfect leaves me stranded in an island of regret and self-doubt. In my heart, I know — I am perfectly human in all my human imperfections — but I’d sure like it if you saw me as perfect as I go about pretending I have no imperfections. 🙂

Striving to achieve perfection is simply a self-defeating game that doesn’t get me more of what I want in my life.

But, I’ll play it anyway sometimes because…. striving for perfection keeps me from accepting myself exactly the way I am and loving myself in all my human condition, beauty and the beast.

And that was my big realization this morning. (and I am smiling as I write this). I wanted everyone in that room to see me as perfect — and quite possibly, there were a whole bunch of people in that room who wanted to be seen as perfect too. Truth is, I was perfectly me and that is good enough. I am ok.

It’s not about me ‘being better’. It’s about creating the possibility for ‘more’. There is always room for growth. Always room to learn and evolve and embrace new information. To look deeper into ‘what happened’ to allow myself to expand into the possibility — I can create better.

I have a story I want to tell on myself — and that story is about a woman who faced her fears and learned to love herself in every light.

My father was mercurial. A gentle soul who wrote poetry and read me stories and called me, “Little one” sitting in his lap, reading a book with him was where I felt safe when I was a child.

Unless it was those other times. Those times when the angry man my father could be would erupt and I would be catapulted from feeling safe to feeling exposed, unsafe, insecure, unsure of what the future held.

Because, while his nature was to be a gentle soul, my father was also an angry man. Within him ran an ocean of anger that could sweep across his being as quickly as a river flooding its banks when the damn breaks. One minute we’d be playing a game of scrabble, the next a battle of words would have erupted, its origins lost in the flood of angry words bursting through whatever ill-thought-out notion or comment had set him off.

In his unpredictability, I learned. To fear. Anger. Saying the wrong thing. Causing a disturbance. I learned to distrust. The present. Happiness. Contentment. I learned. To smile through pain. Pretend through fear. Stand still in every storm. I learned my lessons well.

It has taken me years to identify the impact of my learning. Years to dig out the roots of my distrust to find inner peace so that I could be present in the world around me with my heart full of Love and joy and peace.

And sometimes. I still get triggered. Into fear. Into retreat. Into silence or feeling helpless in the face of anger.

Yesterday afternoon I stood in front of a crowd of mostly angry, fearful people and I wanted to cry. I wanted to run. To hide. To pretend everything was all okay. I had been invited to attend the AGM for the community association where the Foundation I work for owns a building which houses formerly homeless individuals. The agenda said we’d discuss the community’s concerns in the final 15 minutes of the meeting.

I was unprepared for the change in the agenda when I arrived at the meeting in time for the discussion. I had been coaching at Choices all weekend. I told my team I had to attend this meeting and would be gone at most, an hour. I didn’t get back until the session was over. The, ‘at most an hour’ turned into 3. The discussion began with my being asked to give a presentation I wasn’t prepared to give. It didn’t matter. Within minutes of beginning one man jumped up to inform me that he’d heard enough and began to yell the truth as he knew it.

I am grateful for the moderator who did his best to keep the discussion respectful and calm. People really did do their best to contain their angry outbursts, but, in emotionally charged situations, people seek to be heard however they can. And sometimes, anger is the path of least resistance.

That’s the challenge of deep-seated learning. We all have it, and we all react in our own unique and adapted ways.

For me, the deep seated learning around anger that I still contain and that can still sometimes be triggered, interferes with my being present in those moments when being present is vital. It interrupts my sense of well-being, My knowing of my own competency. My confidence.

My deep-seated learning around anger leaves me feeling helpless.

Yesterday, in that moment, I felt helpless. I didn’t have their answers. I didn’t have their solutions. I had come to listen and learn and to seek common ground so that together we could find a way to create peace and harmony in their community. I had come not to be heard, but to understand and in the flood of their angry words flying at me, I found myself building a wall of self-defence. I found myself retreating behind silence.

Good fences build good neighbours.

A wall of self-defence builds resistance.

Building a wall wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t creating more of what I wanted in my life, and in that moment. I had to open up to what is possible when I let go of past learning to step into the moment fully conscious of the power I hold to be present and create change.

Yesterday, I stood in front of a crowd of angry people and breathed deeply into my knowing. I breathed deeply into my heart and invited each breath to open me up to expansion. And, in spite of the fact I wanted to cry, and almost did, I kept breathing. And listening. And acknowledging their pain and fear, their anger and desperation. I kept doing as I have been taught to do in coaching at Choices, to love the people when they walk in the room.

I stood in front of an angry crowd yesterday and was reminded of the fragility and grace of our human condition. I was reminded of our capacity to love and to harm one another. I was reminded of our greatness and our darkness. I was reminded, we are all connected. And when I can love the angry man and the screaming woman, I can love all of me.

I stood in front of an angry crowd yesterday and took down my wall. It wasn’t all graceful. It wasn’t all ease. But I did my best. And my best is good  enough.

The facts are sobering. Statistics Canada reports that 1 in 10 Canadians live with an addiction. A 2012 Salvation Army report, Canada Speaks 2012: Mental Health, Addictions and the Roots of Poverty, states that Canadians surveyed indicated 25% of Canadians live with an addiction. That’s 1 in 4 or 8 million people.

Sobering.

Disturbing.

And, when put in context of homelessness, startling. The visibly homeless population in our city make up 4% of those suffering from an addiction. In a city of 1.2 million, they would normally be lost in the numbers, but, because they are more marginalized, and more ‘visible’ which also could mean, look different, we perceive the impact of their addiction to be greater than the impact of others.

Yes, an addict who is homeless is a frequent user of social and emergency services, particularly if they are living on the streets. When you’re living the life of homelessness, survival is a day-to-day event. And sometimes, survival isn’t pretty.

Homelessness sucks. Homelessness saps you of energy. It tears away the fabric of your life, exposing your underbelly to the grit and grime of an existence no one would wish upon even their worst enemy.

Homelessness kills.

Spirit. Health. Will.

End it?

Yes please. Pass me the needle. Give me the hit that will end the futility of all of this.

Olympic athlete, Dan O’Brien said, “The only way to overcome is to hang in.”

For people experiencing homelessness, hanging in, hanging out, hanging on, is often all they can do.

Direction is a place called oblivion. Purpose an upside down world of despair. They don’t know what they’re going to do to fix the mess their lives are in, but wait, ‘Hey buddy, Gotta fix?’ And someone answers. Someone always does when you’re livin’ on the dark side of the street.

“You gotta find a new direction. Get a job.” society tells them. Frightened, they run away. Can’t they see? This is the only direction they’ve ever known. Their lives have led them to this. How can they find a ‘new’ direction when they don’t know how to change the direction they’ve always gone. Down. Down to the street. To street level. To outside looking in. To never havin’, always takin’. It. Us. Them. They don’t know if there’s a place they can go where despair will let them off the hook of desperation. They don’t know.

And so they hang in, hang out, hang on.

We tell them, you don’t belong here, and then we call them drains on society, as if we could wash ourselves clean of the stink and filth of homelessness in one simple statement.

It doesn’t work that way. Homelessness is an outcome. It is an indicator of what isn’t working. In someone’s life. In our community. In our cities and society. Homelessness isn’t the problem. We are.

We talk about ending homelessness but we don’t talk about ending the financial drive that underlies the tearing down of existing low-income housing stock, or the gentrification of our inner cities that is pushing the very people we say we want to help out to the edges of our communities.

Outside looking in.

It is the plight of those who lack the economic, political and physical will to fight for themselves. Whose resources have been drained and whose energy has been expended fighting for that next fix, that next trick, that next inch of ground where they can make a stand if only for a moment, to catch their breath, sell a trick, buy a toke. Maybe, once upon a time, they made a choice that brought them down to street level. Too long looking at the dirt, the choice to get back up is too far gone on the road to desperation. Up is too far away. Up is an unknown direction. Up is that place you’re just too tired to reach for.

And there they lie, until one day, someone reaches out a hand, it may be the one hundredth or the one thousandth hand, but it is that hand they reach for. It is that hand that has found them where they are just too tired to resist reaching back. And in that one hand, they find the strength to get up. It’s not easy. But they do it. And even when they fall, they know, that hand, which is part of many hands connected, will be there to catch them. Again and again. Because to end the homelessness that has sucked their life away, they need to feel part of those hands connected.

Homelessness sucks. but then, so does poverty. So does disease. So does abuse and divorce and mental illness and intolerance and judgement and a host of other social ills that drain our communities of the spirit to work together to be the change we want to see in the world.

We can end homelessness. But first, like an addict choosing to put down that drink, push away that needle, we must believe we can.

I walked the streets yesterday. Oh, not like in the past where I posed as a prostitute to experience going eyeball to eyeball with a john. This street walking didn’t put me feeling at risk on the seedier side of life — even though I had two undercover police officers watching over me. This street walking wasn’t for research. It wasn’t to get deeper into what happens to a young girl’s psyche when selling her body for sex. This street walking was to get close to neighbours, to gain understanding of their concerns about a ‘Housing First’ apartment building in their neighbourhood which is part of our City’s 10 year plan to end homelessness.

Like my night on the street years ago, however, this street walking moved me to tears.

When working at the homeless shelter, I was often surprised by how many people came in with their workplace to volunteer, who when given a tour of the facility would say, “But aren’t you enabling people?”

My response was always the same. “Yes we are. We’re enabling them to stay alive.”

Housing people experiencing homelessness saves lives.

It doesn’t really matter what we think about the condition of their lives, they have the same right as you and me to be alive. And staying alive keeps hope alive that one day they will be able to make different choices.

In the almost six years that I worked at the shelter, I never once met someone who said, “I love being an addict.” or, “I dreamt my whole life about being homeless. I’m so grateful for finally achieving my goal.”

Being homeless, or being an addict is not a dream come true. It’s a nightmare.

Challenge is, it’s a nightmare that scares most of us and when we see it on our streets, we want to hide from its impact, avoid eye contact with its reality. We want it to go away. To disappear. To leave us alone.

It is our human nature. To avoid confronting things that make us uncomfortable.

I didn’t want to walk the streets yesterday. I didn’t want to knock on doors and introduce myself and explain why I was there.

I was afraid of how people would respond. Afraid of what they would say.

In the end, I didn’t need to fear. People are human beings. And, in highly charged emotional spaces, we humans tend to respond in highly charged, emotional ways.

It is in these spaces that deep listening is essential. It is in these spaces that listening with the intent to learn, to understand, to connect really makes a difference.

I walked the streets yesterday and knocked on doors and heard people’s fears, anger, confusion. I listened with an open mind and heart. I accepted the truth of their perceptions and stayed out of defensive rebuttals designed to prove them wrong. They are not wrong to feel the way they do. Based on their experience, on their observations of changes they see in their neighbourhood, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to see what’s going on.

There is only their truth in what they perceive and always, there is truth in everything.

In their words, in their fear and concerns, there is truth. There also may be misconceptions, wrong impressions, misinformation, but allowing room for their truth to be heard is the first step to understanding what has happened, where things went sideways, where misinformation got spread, where wrong impressions got exposed.

I went street walking yesterday and, as happened years ago when I spent a night going eyeball to eyeball with johns, I came away moved by our human condition. I came away with a deeper empathy for the fragility of our human need to seek comfort, community, a sense of belonging. I came away with a deep appreciation of our human need to connect.

We are not wrong to fear what we don’t understand.  It is our human condition.

And in our human condition there is only the truth of what we know, what we have experienced, what we have shared. In our human condition, no matter the past, however, there is always room to grow because in being human, there is no us and them. There is only us. We are all connected. All one humanity experiencing this thing called life. and in this experience, there is truth in everything and the truth will always shine light on darkness.

I found truth walking the streets yesterday and in its light, I was moved to tears.

They’ve made it to Amsterdam. That I know for sure. Sometime during the night a message arrived on  my phone telling me my daughter and her girlfriend were waiting for their flight to Istanbul and then, Izmir where their friend who they met when they were at University in the Netherlands is picking them up. She’s safe. Excited. Happy.

And I am nervous.

This is my baby-girl, off on a world adventure into an area that is experiencing unrest. She is far from home. In a country that speaks a different language, uses a different alphabet and practices a different religion.

And then I read this quote by Craig Groeschel:  What you fear most reveals what you value most and where you trust God least.

Oh oh. I know I value my daughter’s life most — it’s the ‘where I trust God least’ that rattles my thinking.

‘Cause really? Is it that I don’t trust God to turn up in other cultures that I fear what might happen if she is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people with the wrong idea of what is right and what is wrong? Is it that I can’t control what happens in her life any more?

The fact that she is off adventuring in the world, living her life for all she’s worth gives me great joy. She is willing to go meet the world on her terms. She is willing to travel half way around the world to experience — different cultures, languages, people, places, foods, sights and sounds. My daughter is brave and confident. She is everything I have ever dreamed she would be.

And still I worry.

But then, I am a mother. Even if there weren’t demonstrations happening around the country, I’d probably be worrying about her travelling so far from home if only because, she’s my daughter, and it’s a mother’s right, and rite, to worry!

Is this what I want more of in my life? Worry? Unrest? Distrust?

I’m giving it up. Not the being a mother part. Just the ‘it’s my right to worry and dang it, I’m gonna worry myself sick’ part.

All the worry in the world won’t change where she is in the world. It might change my appreciation of her adventures though. And, without worry, maybe I can simply step into being joyful for her courage and willingness to experience the world. Maybe without worry, I can simply trust in my daughter’s ability to take care of herself . Maybe without worry, she won’t be worrying about my worry and will simply be revelling in the experience of where she is at this moment in time and space experiencing all that she can of life far from home.

Maybe without worry, I can Let go and let God.

Because no matter the language, creed, or place, no matter the pew in which we pray, or the direction in which we bow, or the offerings we place upon an altar, when we are open and loving, kind and caring, trusting and trustworthy, God manifests magnificently in our hearts and in our world. When we let go of fear, judgement and condemnation of one another, God shines brightly in the spaces between us and within us.

I don’t call myself a Christian. I don’t follow any one faith or creed. I see myself as a spiritual being on the journey of her lifetime. I see God in every breath and beleive we are designed to take God’s breath away. And in my journey, trusting in the Universe, knowing the many names of God and trusting in God by any name means — letting go of fear and worry. When I trust in God’s capacity to be with me, knowing God’s desire for me and you and all of us is to shine, to radiate love and joy and peace brings me great love and joy and peace.

My daughter is on her way to Istanbuhl. She is on the adventure of her choosing. She is in God’s embrace and I am happy knowing she is safe.

In my heart I know… God is Love and in Love, there is nothing to fear.

I breathe.

Breathing, peace enters my heart and expands my being into knowing, when I trust in Love, there is nothing to fear. No matter what happens, in Love is all I need to meet what life presents.

I am blessed with so many gifts and today, I shall cherish and revel in the gift of knowing, my daughter is safe in God’s embrace, experiencing life on her terms.

I got me some serious self-doubts going on.

Breathe. I admitted it. I am wracked with self-doubt and nothing you can say is gonna change it.

See, I just don’t want to believe I can be all that I dream of being. That the universe holds for me  anything other than the daily grind of living the 9 to 5. I just don’t want to give up on mistrusting the universe because…. well, it’s a mighty big universe and if I give up on my disbelief what will I believe in? What will hold me up and keep me plodding along if I’m wrong?

But then, what if the universe really is an ever-expanding field of opportunity and possibility? What if there are no limits?

Last night, my friend Ian Munro of Leading Essentially, and I, sat and chatted and plotted about The Essential Journey course outline we are creating based on Kerry Parson’s teachings of what it means to live from our essential essence. In Kerry’s Essential Journey we have ‘The Adapted Self’ and the Essential Self at play. Most times, we don’t even realize that our adapted self has kicked in, has always been in control, has always held the reins on our dreams, because we’ve so adapted our thinking to believing the limitations of the ego that we can’t believe there is something else possible.

Believe me, it’s true.

There’s something else possible.

It’s just our limited thinking can’t imagine what we don’t know. It can’t believe there’s something beyond the limits of our comfort zone — or at least that if there is something beyond what we know, it’s not going to hurt us.

We fear the unknown. We fear what we cannot see, what we’ve never before perceived and never before experienced. Which means, we fear the pain we cannot imagine but assume is there, over the pain we already know of living within the limits of our adapted selves. Because, if we’ve got pain and fear today, there must be pain and fear tomorrow. Right?

Wrong.

Just because it is this way today, was this way yesterday, does not mean it must be the same tomorrow. We can break free. Right now. We can reclaim our essential because our essential essence has never left us.

We were born that way. Essentially alive. Perfectly human. Divine. Great. Magnificent.

And then we forgot.

We forgot about expansiveness as we breathed into fear. We forgot about living large as we learned to play small. And, we forgot about our brilliance as we toned down our light to not shine out beyond the edges of our belief, fitting in is all that matters.

We got busy adapting to life’s ups and downs. We got engrossed in adapting our thinking, and thus our being, into fitting into the boxes the world presents us. Seeing a box that seems to fit, that doesn’t stretch us too much beyond what we can imagine, we step in and get comfortable. And in our comfortable place, we move forward with living. Except, in living from within a box full of comfort, we forget that out there, beyond the box, life is happening at the speed of evolutionary light shining brightly.

I got me some self-doubts.

And I got me some possibilities.

Which will I breathe into today?

To doubt oneself is perfectly human. It’s just not essential to living this one wild and passionate life in the rapture of now.

To lean into limitless possibility, I must surrender my disbelief of what is possible and fall into the universe’s limitless capacity to turn up and be brilliant. I must give into my soul’s yearning to shine.

Care to shine along? Together we could light a path into tomorrow that will blow the foundations of our adapted selves struggling to stay alive today… Let’s shine!

It’s funny to leave the sun and ocean breezes of Vancouver to return to rainy Calgary. Funny — not in the ‘haw haw’ way but rather in the — but it doesn’t rain for days on end in Calgary. That’s Vancouver weather!

And it is, really green in a city that is generally more golden hues and dusty.

On Saturday night in Vancouver, I joined a girlfriend at her favourite neighbourhood restaurant for a late night glass of wine and a visit. At one point, she was talking with some friends at the bar and I chatted with a man seated beside me. Amid was born in Tunisia but moved to France as a child when Tunisia declared its independence from French rule. He works for a large engineering firm and has been living in Vancouver for the past 6 months. “I love Canada,” he said. “It’s so calm and welcoming.”

We chatted about life and at one point, after I’d mentioned being in Vancouver to visit with my daughter and her boyfriend, he said, “You sound like you have a great relationship with your daughters.”

“I have the relationship I’ve always dreamt of,” I told him. “I feel very blessed.”

“It’s one thing to know you’re blessed,” he said. “It’s even more important to feel it.”

I’ve thought about what he said a few times over the weekend as I’ve wandered the streets and Granville Island Market and Gastown and Yaletown with Alexis or sat over dinner with everyone together.

I know I’m blessed and I feel the grace of my many blessings every moment. My heart swells with gratitude.

When I returned last night my youngest daughter picked me up at the airport and we shared a late night bite at a new Calgary eaterie. “We might have to make this our new place,” she said as we dug into a cheese fondue and talked about highlights of our weekends. We have a standing date every two weeks. Dinner and a glass of wine and an evening of sharing what’s happening in our lives.

I am truly blessed.

I have two amazing daughters who enjoy taking time out of their busy lives to sit and chat and share. It is the relationship I always dreamt of having with my mother but, because of the dynamics of our lives, was never able to create. As I once told Alexis many years ago who, after crawling into bed with me late one night after returning from a date with her boyfriend where they’d had a fight (it was actually early one morning), apologized for waking me up. “Don’t apologize,” I told her at 3 am when she had cried herself out and was going off to her own bed. “I’ve always yearned for this kind of relationship with my mother and now, I don’t have to yearn for it any more. I’ve got it with you.”

The rain is falling this morning. The world outside my window is green and soggy, but in my heart, it doesn’t matter what the weather does outside, inside my heart expands in the knowing of my many blessings and feeling the joy of that comes with basking in the Love that rains down upon me with every breath I take.

I am blessed and grateful for the grace of my many blessings.

I am sitting in the big bay window at the water’s edge in the Sylvia Hotel. C.C. sleeps in our room above while I, ever the morning lark, have arisen early for a walk along the beach and now a latte in the hotel restaurant.

We have come to Vancouver this weekend to celebrate — JM, Alexis’ partner, was called, and admitted, to the BC Bar on Friday and Alexis just got her dream job at Lululemon. It seemed as good a reason as any to come to this special place at the edge of the continent, especially when it was pouring cats and dogs in Calgary when we left and here, the weather has been picture perfect for most of the trip.

I love this city. I love the mountains crowding up against the shore, the tall buildings shiny with glass, the greenness of the trees hugging the shoreline and the flowers cascading everywhere. I love that everything is within walking distance, and if it’s not, there’s always the Aquabus to ferry you to the other side of the water, or a bus or a Skytrain or a cab to take you where you want to go. And then, there are the people. This is an outdoor city, a walk the streets and sit at sidewalk cafes and along the Seawall and ride your bike along the path kind of city. An it’s green. Very, very green right up to the place where the green grass and maple trees meet the water’s blue lapping at the shore.

We’ve done a lot of celebrating this weekend. Thursday night dinner with JM and Alexis at the Cactus Club at English Bay. An evening spent overlooking the water, the sun setting to the west, the seagulls squawking on the beach as joggers and walkers and tourists passed by. A bottle of bubbly to toast these two young people whose lives are opening up to all that is possible when they fearlessly breathe into their dreams and allow.

Allow miracles to happen.
Allow greatness to to be the expression of life.
Allow the other side of itheir comfort zones.

For JM, Friday’s celebration was a culmination of years of study and hard work. Two undergrad degrees, a few mis-directed steps until realization awoke that to be the man he wants to be, he must claim his right to be the greatness of his human being.

For Alexis, it’s been a journey of tempting fate upon the stage only to discover her dreams do not live in the acting out other people’s stories but in creating her own, in being her own magnificent self.

It has been fun to spend the time in the presence of Alexis, JM and their friends. From the luncheon sponsored by JMs law firm on Friday to the evening on the upper deck of the Keg in Yaletown, youth and vitality, dreams and possibilities surrounded us. There is something so very reassuring when surrounded by ‘the next generation’ to hear their stories of what they can and are, what they will and must do to create a world of difference.

And create it they will. Making it happen – they are.

As the waiter who served us on Thursday night commented when we were celebrating Alexis and JMs successes, “The power couple”.

They are powerful these young people. Powerful in their capacity to see into themselves, and to see the role they play in being the change they want to see in the world.

I’m sitting at the edge of the continent, looking out at the future, and it excites me. The ocean of life spreads out before me and I see all that is possible when I let go of holding onto land and set myself free to swim in the wonder and awe of the world around me.

Namaste.

I fell in love this morning. I fell into that deep, infinity pool of knowing we are all One. We are all connected. We are all magnificent. That place where I feel inspired by my fellow human beings. Where I feel uplifted by we the people.

My headfirst dive into the pool happened because of two brothers, Connor and Cayden Long. I’d never heard of them before. Never read any of their story until this morning when I wandered over to Cassandra’s blog, My Life Is My Message, and dove into all the wonder she shares of inspiring people around the world. As one reader said, I got infected!

I like this disease. I like how it infuses my body with hope. How it fills my heart with joy. I like that in the stories Cassandra shares I too feel empowered and inspired to get into action. She even shares easy steps all of us can take to be the change we want to see in the world on her ADVICE page. She shows us how easy it is to make a difference!

Cassandra’s no small slouch when it comes to being inspiring. She’s volunteered all over the world to help educate and support children in developing nations. She volunteered in Haiti after the earthquake. And, she is constantly volunteering here online, sharing the wonder she finds.

In the ABOUT ME section of her blog, Cassandra writes,

This blog is for anyone who, like me, is addicted to inspiration – for those who remember that to live is a verb; who endeavour to give more of themselves and get more from their lives – to live with passion, to take action, to love completely, and seek peace  (both inner and outer); for those who aspire and inspire and seek to be inspired.

In Cassandra’s words, Connor Long is living the verb of life in action. And Love.

Connor Long is 9 years old. His brother Cayden is 7. Cayden has Cerebral Palsy. He can’t walk or talk. He can’t run, bike or swim — on his own. But with his brother he can do all those things, and he does. Connor and Cayden compete in Kids Triathalons. Connor pulls his brother in a trailer and when he swims, he pulls a rubber raft behind him in which his brother lies, smiling and pumping his fist in the air. They may not win medals but they sure do capture every heart. They are a team. They are brothers. They are love.

I cried when I watched their video. I cried and was grateful for the box of tissue beside my desk. And, I was grateful that in this world there are boys like Connor and Cayden, and people like their parents.

Be prepared to be moved this morning. Be prepared to feel your heart break open, to feel inspiration flood your being. Be prepared to be reminded, once again, that nothing is impossible. All it takes is Love.

The other night, my youngest daughter asked me while we were sharing a dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, “Do you miss the daily interaction with the clients at the shelter where you used to work?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I do.”

And then, yesterday, the universe delivered the message I needed to hear to see that it’s just my thinking that’s in the way of believing I am missing something that I’ve never lost. There are people everywhere to chat with, interact with and connect with. It’s my thinking that’s kept me from seeing it.

The message came in the form of two individuals, both former clients of the homeless shelter where I used to work. Both have been housed for some time now, one a year, the other just over two. One is a man in his mid 60s. The other an aboriginal man in his 30s. In both cases, had you asked me or any of the staff at the shelter a couple of years ago, “Will they ever be housed?” we probably would have answered that their addictions had too strong a hold and they were too far gone to be able to sustain housing. In fact, in the case of the aboriginal man, no one would have given him two years to live given his life style.

And we would have been wrong — in both cases.

Yesterday, both men taught me a lesson in humility and possibility. Both men opened my eyes to the narrow corridors of my thinking.

The older man had lived at the shelter 8 years, he told me when we encountered eachother walking down the street. One morning he woke up and realized he hated the way he was living. Hated what he was doing to his life and figured it was time to change course. “You know, the whole time I was there I worked and on weekends, I’d take my money and go stay at a hotel just to get away. I kept telling myself there was nothing I could do to change it and then, I woke up one day and realized I’d had enough.”

Sharing his mealtime with hundreds of people. Sleeping on a mat every night. “There was no privacy. No hope of anything different. “I had to make different choices. If I could afford to spend money on a hotel, maybe I could afford to get my own place.”

And so he did. He connected with an agency that works with long-term chronically homeless individuals and supports them in finding housing and transitioning out of homelessness. He’s been living independently for over a year now and in his words, “No way would I go back. It ain’t gonna happen.”

The aboriginal man was sitting on a bench that sits at the edge of the sidewalk near my office. As I walked towards my car at the end of the day he saw me walking towards him, lifted a hand in greeting, smiled a toothy grin and said, “Hey! I haven’t seen you in a long, long time. Where have you been?”

I stopped and smiled back and we chatted about changes, moving on, and, as he described it, ‘growing up’.

“I have trouble believing some days that this is my life now,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d live to see the day that I got out of that place.” And he paused and I could feel the quiet descend upon him as he looked into my eyes and said, “I’m happy now. I got my own place. Kept it for two years. Life’s good.”

He’s fallen once. “I don’t live downtown. I can’t,” he told me. “I get anywhere near that place [the shelter] and there are just too many temptations. Too many opportunities to fall back. The time I did, I was lucky. Nobody knew my address so my workers could help me get back on the straight and narrow and away from everything.” And he laughed. “Guess I’m like the alcoholic going into a bar. I can’t go back to where I was falling down all the time. It’s too easy to stay there.”

When I worked at the shelter it was hard to imagine some lives surviving the trauma of homelessness, addictions, abuse, self-harm. It was hard to imagine a man who spent 20 of 24 hours under the influence of alcohol or drugs finding his way home.

And yet, it’s possible. It happens. It is happening, every day in our city as people work together to find new and exciting ways to provide hope, possibility and life beyond homelessness to those who have lost their way and find themselves stuck in believing, being homeless is all there is to be.

It isn’t.

There’s more and unless we’re willing to explore the possibility of more, we’ll never see that it’s our thinking that keeps us from seeing the potential for change and growth in every life, no matter their circumstances.

I met two men on the street this week who reminded me that nothing’s impossible, it just hasn’t happened yet.