Tag Archives: peace

02.06.21
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Not sure where this blog will go

Feel like I’m all over the place today. Started off with a Heart 2 Heart relationships class at 10. The instructor is a highly credentialed leader in the psychological as well as spirit driven genres. Seems as though the small group sessions will get us through the end of March working on our relationships…current, future and past. It occurred to me this morning that I may find some healthy, loving forgiveness and peace while releasing the difficult relationships in my life.

Very cold weather forecast for the area in the next few days. I wish someone would communicate this information with the geese. They didn’t leave the pond this year which I felt was an indicator that they knew it was going to be a warm winter here. The pond, which has not completely frozen over this year, was full of geese today…..FULL. The occasional dusting of snow doesn’t seem to bother them. Their gentleness gliding on the pond brings me so much peace!

Super Bowl tomorrow….just the two of us here which is probably healthier. It just doesn’t feel like I could possibly hold onto the kind and gentle image I like to maintain when I’m cursing and yelling. Nobody who really knows me had better be laughing at that!! Go Chiefs.

Namaste

02.05.21
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Pandemic make me lazy? Or did I just find contentment?

Doing my Morning Pages this morning…

What I scribbled out was “has the pandemic made me lazy or has it been a gift of contentment and getting to know who I am?” While I’ve had those days of total boredom … screaming in my head that I want to take a trip somewhere…Key West, Italy, Walmart… the gift I’ve received is being locked up in my house rather than my mind for nearly a year and having the opportunity to get to know what I want and what I think minus all of the key turns of the ignition of the car.

I near the anniversary of my retirement which is also the day He and I left work, loaded up 5 cats, 3 large dogs and our last bits of our life in Iowa, drove 4 hours to our new life in Missouri. The emotions were raw…the excitement, the fear, second guessing if we were doing the right thing, realizing its too late to turn back now, sister, we are doing this! I remember feeling such relief…anonymity awaits. I could wear sleep pants and forgo makeup to go shopping because I will not know anyone. No small talk will be required at the grocery store because I won’t know anyone.

So it would seem pandemic quarantining is exactly what I had been craving. I’ve had the opportunity to just be. To sit on the couch all afternoon and play Words with Friends, to read novels and self help books, to binge watch TV shows. I have groceries delivered, dishes may sit overnight in the sink, I may eat popcorn at 2 in the morning. Isn’t this what I craved since I became a responsible adult with a career!

Living in the moment….just being…

Namaste

01.18.21
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Code name: Pink Flamingo

In the back of my mind, I’ve always known that if I ever became first lady or CIA, my code name would be: Pink Flamingo!

I have flamingo chimes thanks to my friend, Sue. I also have 3 metal pink flamingos in flower beds in the yard right now, as well as totes of the plastic ones which does include Christmas pink flamingos. My next door neighbor also likes them and has a little square in her side yard (my side) where her pink flamingos live along with pink flower pots. One Christmas she started decorating the yard with them and so I bought Christmas flamingos and set them up so they looked like they were headed to her yard. She and I may be the only two on the street who felt giddy about it.

Years ago my late night dispatch partner and I did crafts when 911 lulled. I taught her to crochet and she taught me to embroider. I have embroidered dish towels put away which will last many generations. I pulled out my embroidery hoops etc the other day and then sat with them because I had no idea what I would embroider or on what. I laughed thinking about his face if I started embroidering his underwear #notgoingtohappen But instead…I found this beginning/children’s punch embroidery kit during a late night excursion on Amazon. It came today.

…..and so it is!

11.10.20
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It wasn’t wrong it just was

Yesterday I did this! I went for a walk around the pond and just kept following my feet down the path for about 1/2 a mile. It was warm when the sun would peek through, a fall breeze blowing fall leaves…I embraced the smells, the beauty, and wind blowing through my hair. The best part was I stopped several times…there was no destination, there was no goal. It just felt like a walk with my dad as I chatted with him and asked a lot of questions.

So many gifts he handed down to me. For a short time I found myself teary….why didn’t I get out of the house all summer and fall, why didn’t I ask my dad more questions, why didn’t I this and that!

Until I realized I just didn’t. The past is the past and I did exactly what felt right to me in the past. This is now and I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Each time I embrace the right now and let go of the shoulda, I find peace. This is also one of the shouldas that followed…why don’t I do “this” all the time? Because its just not what is right for me in that “all the time narrative” that I like to have preprinted for my life. Right now is right now.

I came back and jotted this haiku that had formed somewhere in my soul!

Guided by the light

I’m back on the road again

Embracing the light

Namaste

01.11.20
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The Leaf

Hanging at eye level out my kitchen window is this shriveled leaf still attached to its branch. It has survived several windy autumn days, thunderstorms, gentle rain, sleet and a significant snow storm and still remains today while, again, snow flakes fall all around.

Occasionally it will flutter with a breeze but continues to hang secure to its branch refusing to give up…its not time for it to release and softly drift to the ground to join the other leaves. It is a quiet reminder for me about the simplicity of life in nature…

namaste

05.15.19
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These Dreams

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life

First two lines of the chorus of These Dreams sung by Heart (just in case you aren’t familiar). I felt aggressive, angry and hateful when I woke this morning and it didn’t take me long to realize who the characters were in my dreams and what rolls they were playing. I realized I was continuing the fear based thinking as I took my first sips of coffee. As is usually the case in writing my feelings out and replacing those fear based thoughts with love and gratitude, it all starts to make sense and disappear.. or heal?? Each time I work through monkey brain thinking, I realize the mental flapping quiets!

The last two mornings, I have decided to take advantage of the solitude and sit by the pond on the walking trail. The sun on my back, shifting the rocks under my sit-down for comfort, the variety of bird songs all around me, the occasional plop of a fish, and the ever smooth glide of a goose through the water leaving a silent wake on the still, pond of glass. These are the moments when a peaceful meditation just happens as you just slide your eyelids closed.

The perfume from the blooming honeysuckle eventually gets me on my feet following the scent…..one of those ingredients of spring I savor!

Until next time…

08.30.17
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I will try

I woke up peacefully this morning.  I slept with the drapes over the open deck door wide open last night and the view overwhelmed me with contentment……I allowed myself the luxury of laying in bed drifting in and out of light dozing and soaking in the love and friendship of the girls weekend in Des Moines.


As fall weather starts the slow creep with cool overnight temperatures, I hope to wake each morning feeling love and peace and remove myself from the pain that seeps in during the day from the news of what is happening in our country.  because I can’t physically do anything about the ugliness all around me, I will endeavor to combine my peacefulness and love collectively with other loving souls and send it quietly out into the universe.  This will be a challenge to close myself off to the negative I allow to be fed to me.  But, I will try.

Until next time…..

08.24.15
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That’s one way to get rid of me…

But actually it was a fail!  While this kind of dream may seem quite negative….I woke up feeling stronger than I have in a few months….

Memories of the dream are sketchier as the morning awake progresses but hang with me here a bit…

I had a huge argument – yelling argument – with Sheriff V.  In real life he was an asshole I worked for…I was so surprised in the dream that the next day he offered me and 3 co workers a weekend away in a hotel.  I was skeptical.  We checked into the hotel…I was with Lynnette; and, Craig and Marsha roomed together.  I was immediately back at work and walked around the corner and He  (the real husband-correctional officer) whispered that I was being set up.  In order to find out what was going on, I participated in some flirting with the sheriff and then came upon a box containing a brown paper sack and list of the 4 of us employees and what hotel rooms we were in.  I stuck my hand in the sack and it was full of cocaine.  I showed him my hand covered with the cocaine and told him I knew what his plan was and I then called the local newspaper.

….and that is all I remember….I woke up feeing strong, empowered and in control of my life again.

I have had several “therapy” conversations with Jenny as to why I just can’t seem to get back to feeling at peace – I had kidney cancer, I had surgery, the cancer was contained in the kidney and when the kidney was removed…so was the cancer…but I couldn’t seem to get my peace of life back again.

It takes awhile when we encounter struggle in our lives…it takes time to work through it.  Once we think we have dealt with our own particular life struggle, we expect to get a high role on the dice and jump back into it.  It takes time…sometimes we just have to wallow in our struggle until we get more strength to continue the climb.

….and for those of you reading this who know the characters in the dream…and perhaps will disagree with my description of this Sheriff V.  Disagree…that’s your opinion…and by putting it out there in MY blog in black and white – I’ve had the courage to put it out there the way I lived it and stepped up one more rung on my ladder.

Until next time….