perhaps you should...

this may turn into a deep post.  it may not.  it may seem like a joke to some.  to others it may awaken something that has been dormant.

since the passing of my mother I have been working on my routine.  is that the right word?  routine as in - what did I do "before" mom was sick?  what did my life look like before I opened my journal and the first to - do was "mom"?

I have been reading - alot.  not so much novels per say but good juicy books full of good things and not so good things and things to think about.  some of the ones I have been through or are sitting on my nightstand are:

this I know by susannah conway

return to love by marianne williamson

untie the strong woman by clarrisa pinkola estes

tibetan sound healing by tenzin wangyal rimpoche

my most recent read is the secret of the shadow by debbie ford.  so I am reading away yesterday while waiting for the hair colour to cover the grey and I was gob smacked.  I was in the middle of a salon reading and wanted to scream "what the fuck?"  that was the first thing that came to mind and then it was more along the lines of "holy shit" and "absolutely true".  It felt as if debbie ford had jumped off the page and was holding my hand and having a conversation with me.  not a welcome conversation, but nonetheless stuff I should hear.  I mean I've heard it.  we've all heard it.  do we listen?  do we ignore it and carry on?  yeah, that one!  that's me!  I live in my story.  we all have a story.  we all have something that continues to show up in our life and keeps us from getting to the other side of our dreams.  it may not even be a dream but a goal.

fine I'll speak for myself since it is "me" that I am trying to find.  I've felt lost lately and according to many justifiably so with what I have just gone through.  except that I keep telling myself that I can't live in this story for much longer.  I am running out of time.  life is short - as I have seen countless times this year.  the time is, for certain - NOW!

the words that struck me in debbie's book as words that I could hear out loud were the ones that talked about our stories and how so many times we reach out to try to "fix" something in our lives.  we buy self help books, see healers, go on a diet, start meditating and so on when really all of this is kind of a band aid that yes will help heal the sore, but new sores will pop up.  it is beneath the surface that we shall go.

there are stories in this book that were - ya, done that!  I didn't succeed and therefore YOU were right along - I really am good for nothing.  we are so hell bent on being right and not having it all that we give up living the life of our dreams.  some of us start to use our excuses as truths.  we start to believe that what we are saying is actually true and a fact when in reality it couldn't be further from the truth.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense.  it is all still so fresh in my own mind.  I keep rereading the chapter on "reclaiming your power".  one of my favourite lines:

"even if you've been living inside the story that life has done it to you, when you can say, "I'm doing it to me," you will have the power to stop it or do it differently.  the voice of power says, "I'm doing it, I created it.  I'm responsible for it.  I can change it."

if you have read this book or are interested in reading it I would love to hear your thoughts on it.  I haven't even finished it cause I keep going back and rereading parts of it that spoke to me.

"I can change it" has been replaying through my mind.  which essentially means that "I have the power".  I like that.  for so long I felt so powerless when it came to mom and her illness and decisions that needed to be made.  plans that needed to be rearranged, cancelled or needed to remain still.

yesterday my stylist and I talked about dreams and plans and such.  often we talk about "getting away".  like "getting away" makes it all better or something.

I shared this with my husband the other day - "yeah, so we go away.  we lay on the beach for a week, soak up the sun and kick back and then we come back to all this bullshit".

it was hard for me to say that out loud and even harder still for me to write it, but it is my truth right now.  I want what is right here in front of me to be my "get away feeling".  

and as amy and I talked about building forts and beds covered in mounds of pillows and mattresses on the floor I started thinking about how things could change around here.  I can "change" IT.