So, here's the thing...

I don't make New Year's resolutions. What for? They're never kept. We mean well though, we want to start again, we stare down at the three hundred and sixty five days spread out before us, and we're either optimistic about the new year, or we're scared. I was scared. Always. The unknown caused my heart to skip a beat, it made me want to pull the covers over my head on New Year's day and fervently pray that I would be spared the trials and tribulations that seemed to find me. There was a large X cut into my front lawn, had to be. Trouble was beating a path to my doorway.....or so it seemed. I set myself up perfectly, you see. The very thing I ran from, found me . Every time. "Surrender Dorothy"! I had the nagging thought that I just needed to give up the fight. And I can truly say that over this last year I finally surrendered, and what a relief! What an absolute relief. The best diet in the world is to rid yourself of baggage, all the old ...

Let the following words express my love for you all.....and may this day bring you a measure of quiet joy and humble expectation. "I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, that while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instance. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy! Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty . . . that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it, that is all! . . . And so I greet you, with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away". "Letter to a Friend" by Fra Giovanni, 1513 Until next time....blessings upon your heart Cindy

How has this holiday season been for you so far? Blue? Anxious? Tumultuous? Been there. Now, take a breath and quiet your heart, if only for a moment. All shall be well. I have used that quote from Julian of Norwich for many years. I can't count how many times I've uttered those words in the dark of night, and especially when I didn't believe it. I've held onto those words as if my very life depended on it. Whatever your circumstances are right now, I wish you solace and a refuge from your personal storm. Let me say this to you.... it will pass . Things change, things get better, people can have a change of heart, even the most ugly among us can turn around. I can't begin to know the personal stories out there happening right this minute. Tales of woe, heartbreaking sadness and despair. But I have a good idea, we can all imagine, we all have hearts, and we're the same at the core. I know you hurt. If you are not religious and this very Christian ...

I intend to have a great life, how about you? If truth be known, I am having a great life....but it was hard won. It took bravery and resolve to not let the events of the last fourteen years sour me to the point of no return. I also intend to have abundance and "enough" to accommodate my lifestyle....an admittedly simple lifestyle...the way I like it, but I intend to live it to the max. I intend to live with creativity, spontaneity, joy, fabulousness, beauty and grace, which I happen to believe are a given for every human being alive at this moment. They are highly achievable and your Divine birthright, in my humble opinion. We have no time for regret, angst, post-traumatic stress or bitterness. This work of letting go, while so worth it, isn't always pretty though, it can be downright exhausting and circular....we let go of this, we acquire that, we let go again, we let God in, then we doubt and recoil and hoard all our negativity around us like a blanket.... beca...

I love the word contentment, it signifies a deep peace, an easy grace, a comfortable state of being. Happiness is fickle. Contentment lasts through the long haul. Happiness is fleeting. Contentment is stable. And I imagine the one thing you want right now is stability, it's what I needed when the shit hit the fan and the rug was yanked out from under me. My wounded self wouldn't believe I could ever be happy again. Happy . What a word! People pay a lot for happiness. We seek it.....no, we doggedly pursue it, and when we grasp it for a fleeting moment in our hot little hand, we squeeze the very life out of it. Then it flees, bolting on its merry way, laughing back at us as we stand there in its wake....broken, desperate, sad....all because we wanted to be "happy". Happy was a dwarf in a Disney cartoon, and that's where it belongs in my book. "I'm so happy"! Yeah, but I'll bet you anything it's was some external thing that happe...

Where does love go when a marriage ends? It disintegrates little-by-little I would venture, especially if it was a long slow death....like mine, like many, until it takes it's last breath and utters one last whimper, or one big SLAM of the door. I can still hear the reverberation from that day, all I have to do is close my eyes...but it's fading now. Something as real and as permanent as Love (with a capital L) doesn't really go away....I am content to think it just changes form. The investment in a marriage that goes south can leave you feeling like you wasted years of your life just to end up out of love, out of luck, broken, angry, and hating the ever lovin' ground your ex walks on. I struggled with this for many months, the unending questions, the guilty feeling that I had somehow squandered my life away......the anger at my child's father. Let the anger go....please, and I'll tell you why: If there are children involved, you need to love the father of...

I've gotten dubious looks when I've said I had a "good divorce"....and yes, ultimately, it has been good on so many levels. My friend the other day who I'd not spoken to for a while gingerly asked me how I was doing. My response kind of shocked her. "What do you mean you had a good divorce? Side note: and she won't mind my saying this, her divorce was from hell. Three years and $30,000.00 down the tube just for her to come out with a permanent crease between her eyes and a broken spirit. As we talked I told her all the bad parts over that last nine months that I had experienced, but the point was not to dwell, it was to say that without the bad you cannot know the good. Without the dark you cannot know light. Trite, I know, but it's the simple truth. I chose to make my divorce good, and since the alternative was hell on earth, I just didn't have that kind of stamina or endurance...nor the will, to come out looking older and angerier...

What are you worth today? Do you value the magnificent person that bears your name and a striking resemblance to someone you used to recogonize in the mirror? You are more then you know....we all are. Now I don't often quote the Bible, but there's that verse about "Seeing through a glass, darkly".......that's at least until we come to know ourselves as the Beloved knows us. What happens along the way that makes us forget about our greatness? As a child did your parents enforce in you the fact that you were magical? Did you believe in things you couldn't see? Imaginary friends? fairies? Was your imagination allowed to run free? Many of us didn't have this kind of conscientious parenting because our parents were not raised that way, and bless them, they did the best they could with who they were and what they knew at the time. For many of us growing up was about making do, not expecting too much, keeping our place , and not allowing us the right t...