It feels like it should just be any other night. It isn’t though. Tomorrow the woman takes on a new mountain, or will it end up being a mole hill? She doesn’t know, there are so many unknowns. She comes and goes in life like a ride on the shores. What will become of her in this next chapter of the journey. She is taking a leap of faith, not because she’s running away from something or seeking something. She is taking on this journey to experience herself in a new way. She sits on the porch, staring up at the sky, knowing she’ll see these same stars, only thousands of miles from home. It’s scary, she misses her home already. She misses her people and the life she has stepped back from. She chose this journey because she needed to pause. The woman is afraid that once she’s paused for so long she’ll forget how to get moving again. She yearns to hold calm inside herself and never let go, that is why she’s going to walk and walk and walk. Some fear for her safety, while she fears for her sanity. So she’ll go to be with the earth and nature and herself. She’ll face trials and tribulations. She is likely to face an abyss, a breakdown, a spiritual awakening. She’ll find redemption, forgiveness, and salvation. She’ll return to her known world with new wisdom from around the world. She’s scared, sad, joyous, and excited all at once. She already feels exhausted. Her armor is self-care, connection, and love. She’s resilient and a fighter. She’s a warrior walking into a garden to meditate. The woman will be better than okay. She will thrive through adversity and adventure.
My Camino Pack
The Journey Continues
Birth to Death to Birth
Sixteen years ago I was 16. I recall thinking about how I would die young. I hoped for a long grand future, but I felt a certainty that I wouldn’t make it. Yet here I sit, 32 years old, looking back on my life. At 16, I was right, I wouldn’t survive to old age. My mistake was thinking I would face my physical death before 30. Instead, I died emotionally. Instead, I died mentally. The person I was at 16 has died and been reborn multiple times. I have stood on the edge of life, crippled with exhaustion, and been dragged away from certain death by loving people and my own determined desire for hope.
Today, however, I watched “Water Lilies” by Monet for a while at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. I say watched because as you breathe amd look the picture changes, different colors come to life. Earlier, I had watched the changing trees which blossomed with life. A bed of daffodils sat outside the museum, ringing out spring. I slowed down, my voice became calmer than usual. I spoke with the sweetness of love and kindness on my tongue. I truly felt love for all of creation.
There are things I’m developing and growing in my life. I’m expanding my limits and risking my all on how to love others better. This is 2019, this is 32 years of life and death and rebirth.
I have wandered far and wide. There is much left for me to see. It is yet a new birth with tomorrow to be lived. I accept it may also be a death of who I once was. However, the past lives should not be forgotten or we risk not learning from them. Then, we might risk to necessitate having to learn it again.
I am 32 years old and I live and love with unlimited potential and possibility.
The next chapter is starting, and so I will share it here, in hope the next person might wander even further.
My Flawed Existence
To be human is to be flawed and to succeed by simply the act of continuing to try again. I am great at counting my flaws and I struggle some days to keep trying. I find though that I have had to stop trying to be perfect. The idea of perfection still creeps into my thoughts and I have to do the hard work to not allow it to take control. For the most part, I am glad to say, I am not trying to be perfect. I am most simply these days just trying to be, to exist with the world around me. Through all of this I am just trying to understand my own nature further, and the nature of other humans around me.
I feel that humanity hides itself under the cover of owning things, gaining power/perfection, and trying to hide our flaws. I find deep gratitude when others I interact with are also working on seeing who they are underneath the covers that mask our true selves. In our modern era, full of information and toys, we struggle harder to simply enjoy our lives. I have read various research which discusses how there are too many choices available to us, and this overwhelms our capacity to be happy.
With a world so full of so many things we often makes things more difficult than they need to be. I know that I do. I am constantly speaking with my therapist about getting in the way of my own healing. I set barriers in my life that restrict me from fully embracing the world around me. These are flaws that I have to come to terms with. They are fall-backs that when I am hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or all of the above I will likely revert to.
I have some beautiful friends that I often get to speak with by phone or enjoy over a coffee. I have a flaw of not always remembering to be grateful for them. I have the flaw of being afraid of their judgement or dislike of who I am. I worry that trying to be a simple writer/artist/barista/aspiring bohemian woman seems silly to them. I also worry that in doing so I will fail myself. The truth though is in the words I said at the start of this, and have said many times to individuals I have supported through healing. If you are trying you are succeeding. It seems too simple to be true. It seems like not a big deal and gets pushed to the side by the habits we have learned through our society.
We have to clear out all the many choices and the multitude of things that get in the way. We have to return to the simple self, who are we when everything no longer exists in our life? The biblical figure Job is a good example. The book of Job is about God proving to Satan that when Job has nothing left he still has God. I have in my life been asked in various different settings who I am when I take away the volunteering, the working for others, the trauma story, the activities I do, and the things I call myself. Through one program, You School, I was asked a number of questions that helped me dive into who I am.
Through that exercise I found a key Greek term that I have known for years, Agape (ἀγάπη, agapē). This word is found in the original Greek portions of the Bible and is one of several Greek words which translated to the word “Love” in the English language. This specific Greek word denotes the love which God gives to humanity without expectation of return. It is a benevolent love, one full of good will. When I look at my life and the world around me I find that I often focus on the trauma and the pain. It some days appears that there is not good in the world. I had the Greek Agape tattooed on my forearm as a reminder of why I exist in the world. If I have no other reason to be here, at least I can love unconditionally others.
Part of me hopes what I give to others will be returned to me by others, but ultimately it is a term that I must apply to my relationship with myself. The thing about developing myself and being aware of the world around me is that I cannot care for others if I am not first caring for myself adequately. One of the flaws I hear of a lot from different individuals is that serving others is what gives us meaning in life. I know many people who don’t face their own flaws in the mirror because they are too busy helping with their neighbors crisis or flaw. It goes back to balance, which is a common theme on my journey. Helping others can give me perspective but at the end of the day, am I helping myself?
How can we truly be human, accept ourselves, and in turn accept others, if we are so busy ignoring our own humanity? If we are so busy building walls to protect ourselves from the unknown, the dangerous, the risky, the scary? If we build the walls to keep out those things which we have learned to dislike the most we are also building walls to the joy, the happiness, the love, the true connection and relationship we could have with other people.
So here I am being all smart, right? In fact, I am saying this as much for me as anyone else. I struggle to move past the knowledge bombs I like to drop on myself, to the place where I am actually experiencing life. For so long I have watched the world around me, I have been a spectator full of criticism and judgement as I have gone along. I have failed to accept my own flaws and really embrace them. Though it may not seem like it sometimes, I am trying.
This is why I am a wanderer though, because I do not know what this looks like in the end. I wish I did, I wish I knew the outcome for myself, what I can achieve, what I will look back on at the end of my life. Often it feels like life is just happening to me, so I wander along, trying to just experience it. When I have tried to plan it often fails or doesn’t turn out how I desire. The thing about it all is that I have to find unconditional love for myself. I have to dig in roots here, I have to accept my flaws and my story.
The thing is, I keep digging, sometimes I hit rocks, sometimes its’ an easy passage, and sometimes the roots stick. That’s the funny thing about wandering, the roots start to grow in different places, but they don’t hold you back, they support you to grow more, gain more nourishment, and discover what can bloom on your tree of life. There are knotty parts on the tree, some broken roots, some storm damage, and many flaws. All of this together makes you stronger. So yes, I have a flawed existence, and that is okay, I’ll keep trying. And in trying, I will be succeeding.
Gift in the Wound
Life is full of ups and downs. The struggles are always real from the individuals perspective. We cannot dare to think we can compare or fully understand what another person goes through. Neither the elation of joy and happiness or the sorrow of sadness and fear. I have felt many emotions both those from my shadow and my light. 
Life is a duality, two things exist at once at all times. Though it is night here it is also day somewhere. Though, right now, my body is in crippling pain and my soul is crying huge tears of sorrow, I know that I will find joy and relief again. I know that these two things coexist inside me.
It has taken years of wandering, searching, listening, learning, and trying to even begin to understand how two opposites co-exist at once. In my original holistic PTSD program, Save a Warrior Cohort 018, they suggested that in my wounds I might find a gift. In my mind I have many images when I think of what this might look like. I’ve a romantic, fantastical imagination. So, when I suggest that we might all find gifts in our wounds I picture a Phoenix rising from the smoldering coals of its’ own death. The ashes remain, yet something new blooms and can live again. It didn’t erase the previous existence but built on top of it.
I have in my wandering been blessed with mentoring 10 different groups of women through another holistic PTSD program, Warriors’ Ascent. 
I have encouraged them to find the gift in their wound even as my own gift reveals itself in my work with them. It isn’t enough to just pass the gift though. I have to live it myself. I have to give the gift in my wounds to myself. I mention these groups of women though because they too are doing the work, they too are on this journey. I’m not the lone wanderer, others are traveling too.
Daily, as I wander through the various employment, volunteering, creating, and exploring I continue to unwrap the gift in my wounding. There are days like today where the wounding is deep and crippling. My physical injuries take my peace and open the door to my mental wounding. It reminds me of how I’m different, how I must treat myself more gently, and how I have to ask others for help. I struggle to see the gift in this wound. I start to shut down both physically and mentally. I wonder how I’ll make it through the night and the next day and day after that. Less pain feels like a distant memory, let alone no pain which was eons ago. The tears stream down my face, unabashedly. I let them leave trails on my face and I feel my skin tighten as the trails dry. I focus on a sensation that is not my pain and I try to breathe.
One of the things I’ve found in receiving my gift in my wounds is that I cannot stop the feeling. I cannot numb that which is unpleasing to me. If I sent this shadow self then I will inevitably deny my light self. It is the same when I let this shadow-self run rampant it will overrun my light. Finding the gift in the wound is the first step to finding balance after and through wounding.
I want to deny that this physical pain has a gift. I rail against it, full if venom and curse words. I am tempted to sink deeper into it, to give everything I’ve accomplished and strived for up, to live in darkness. This seems ridiculous to those whose darkness and wounding doesn’t have such a hold on them. I however have lived inside my darkness for a long time now, for a long time I couldn’t see the light at all. I find an odd comfort in my pain. It is the feeling I know the best some days. If I’m going to be honest though, being able to write is my gift in the wound. It is the gift I give myself to put all of this pain and suffering into something more than just my body. It is a gift I hope I can give to others who struggle like I do. I don’t know what other gift these wounds might give me, but I will keep wandering. I will keep searching for the value, the purpose, for the next chapter of my life. In the meantime I’ll put into play all the many things I must do to care for myself. I have to force myself, but I will keep trying, because if I’m trying, I’m succeeding.
So if you too find yourself wounded and struggling I hope you can find a gift in it to give yourself. However begrudgingly you may also feel towards it. I know it exists because I have found gifts in other wounds. If not for the gifts I’ve found I would be dead. Take the journey, allow yourself to wander and search out the gifts in your wounds.
To Begin Again
I am afraid of the fear that I have in life. I have knowledge that protects me and acts as a shield against the power of my emotions. I wonder what my purpose in this world is. I look back on my 31 years of life and see all of the travels that I have taken. I see all of the plans I have made and not accomplished. I see the potential that I held and where that potential was not experienced fully. I see the aimlessness with which I searched for something in my life. This something is undefined, unknown to me, and feels extremely important to define. As I traveled, aimless in my search, ill-defined in my value and my meaning, I accomplished a great many different things. I often wonder how. I wonder how my journey looks to others, how it compares to their journey. I have met many like me along the way. I have met beautiful people that have helped me on my travels and given direction, insight, and wisdom. I have stood at the brink of annihilation brought about by my own hands and experiences. I found stories and people and strength that brought me back to firm ground. I looked for a word to define all of this searching and unknowing. I wanted something to name myself that allowed me to experience this journey. I found it in the depths of my tragedy and wounding, I am a wanderer.
In my life I learned in many different places that I needed to have a direction, a plan, a purpose, a mission to follow. When I talk to my inner most self, my soul-self, I find myself wanting to stand on the top of a hill on a windy day and be blown about as if I was a tree. Somewhere between what I have learned from the world and what my soul-self, my inner wild woman desires I wander. I do not know where I am going, or what my purpose is. I do not have a goal in mind, at least not one that I feel the world accepts. I have felt shame over my lack of being aligned with the world around me. I have felt not enough, less than, lacking in what allows others to engage fully in life. I have tried to fake it till I make it. In the end I come back to this wandering. I wish there was a guidebook, a path to follow in being a wanderer. That’s irony though, to have a plan to be a wanderer. Tolkien says “Not all who wander are lost.” I am a wanderer, but though I do not know the answers or have a map, I am not lost.
Though there is no singular way to lay out a plan for those of us who find our true spirits to be that of a wanderer, we will still find guidance in the stories of others. We pick and choose what applies to us and we also find that things will often surprise us in how they affect our lives. It is through the stories we hear from others and inside ourselves that determine what is next. A guide is not set in stone, it is a suggestion, it is shared wisdom. It is the reminder that though we wander, we are not wandering alone.
So this is the rebirth of the Wanderers Guide Book. It started as me telling my story. I had the audacity to think that by experiencing my life and telling my story I could make a big impact on the world. What I have learned in the 3 years since I started this blog is that it is not my own story that is important. It is the stories of everyone I interact with, and what they define their journey as. So I hope that through this Guide Book I can share the beauty, the insight, and experience of individuals’ journeys. The journey’s that bring love and growth. The journey’s that shine humanity at its’ brightest and its’ darkest. So that I may continue my wandering and that others also remain courageous in their own journey.
Welcome to the Wanderers Guide Book.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
Last year a friend of mine suicided. Honestly, we were not that close but we shared this passion and this purpose that draws me close to so many people. I attended his funeral and grieved with my friends for the red-bearded giant who loved pumpkin spice lattes in the morning and Jamison to cap the day off. More than his favorite drinks he loved serving others and having a purpose. I didn’t know him well, but loved him nonetheless.
In the last 18 months I have in some way been connected to more individuals than I can count on my hands, who have taken that last resort, that last ditch option that it’s hard to back out of except on accident. When James’ suicide took my community by storm there was an outcry on social media from so many people who were struggling with thoughts and behaviors of suicide. I moved from post to post offering my support as a trained ASIST caregiver, my friendship, and most importantly my love. Some rejected my statements or thought me foolish, one girl challenged how I could love her without knowing her. Nonetheless , I love each of them. I want to tell you why I can love each of you, without ever having met you.
This is a hard time of year for me, because it is the anniversary of how in the darkest of days in my life I was able to love someone that I didn’t even know and in the end will never truly know. I lost my baby in my first trimester. It’s statistically probable and so relatively insignificant that it occurred, in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t a cookie cutter planned pregnancy, but none the less I found myself with child. Something I wanted my whole life. I had no idea who this life was inside me. What a good man he could be. What glass ceilings she might shatter. I didn’t need to know a thing about my baby, who I called Sharkbait, after Nemo. Just like Nemo, my baby would start out with disadvantages, but I believed he was strong, that she could conquer all. I believed that just by being I could love Sharkbait so much that it would never end.
I remember my devastation, after two weeks of hearing a heartbeat while suffering complications, to birth my almost 10 week old fetus in the dark of my room and realized I’d never hear the sound of his heart again. Sharkbait was gone and I loved him no less and maybe even so much more for the wasted potential.
When someone suicides, or simply doesn’t try in life to succeed, I find that I love them nonetheless and also so much more. Knowing this, having experienced what I have, I try each day to love every person I encounter more and more. I’m not always perfect, but I damn sure try, and no one is less off for my love.
I recall very vaguely the few days following my miscarriage where my mum flew me to where she was in Vegas at a conference, so I could be near her. It was a blaze of booze, cigarettes, and a roulette table. It was late nights sitting on a pillow in the bathroom so she wouldn’t be awoken by my sobs.
I thought I would die. I wished for it. It was a shit year full of mental health crisis from my undiagnosed PTSD (at the time) that I couldn’t acknowledge because of stigma. The same stigma that makes people not talk about suicide or miscarriage. The things that make us appear so vulnerable in its’ honesty, so we bottle them up like they don’t exist… until they boil over in the dark of night… at bar closing when we’ve had too much to drink… in whispered circles with intimate friends… in the awkward pause when someone says that I don’t know the pain of childbirth without remembering they know my hidden shame.
When I lost him I told myself the sympathetic response that we’re now taught not to say… “At least you can have more kids one day”… “ At least you’re free now from being tied down”… and the list goes on. No one told me those things, they were mine to say. Mostly other people would stutter, at a loss for words, often they still do. The empathic response I’ve been told are the ones that helped me pick up the pieces and change my own mindset. “I understand.” “Me too.” “I love you.” “I’m here for you.” The most valued response was the love I was given.
Through my own ongoing struggles with suicide post-Iraq, my miscarriage almost broke the camels back. The next year around this time I became even worse than before with my thoughts and behaviors of suicide. In the interim I’d connected to an organization that provided me the opportunity to live and serve others, I did so as a promise to the lost potential from my miscarriage. I felt I had to take on and be the potential, make my life something of value.
It wasn’t enough. The one year anniversary came and I was a mess. There were people who didn’t know my full story, and still won’t unless they read this blog. It didn’t stop those people from loving me regardless of their knowledge of me. They saved me, helped me carry what felt like an impossible burden. I still could not speak of it. Nonetheless, I was loved beyond measure.
Through multiple programs, therapies, medications, struggles with binge drinking, and not always making good decisions I have been loved regardless of how well others know me. You don’t even know what you don’t know about another person. So you have to go on faith that you love things about them you couldn’t even imagine.
We all have secret pains. We all suffer shame and guilt. We all let society and it’s stigma hold us back from the edge of living our true lives and being our true selves.
If you’ve suffered a miscarriage, have a mental health diagnosis, struggle with suicide or addiction, or even feel as if your life is happy and easy, whatever you are, whatever you do… I love you, I really do, even though I likely don’t even know you. You can take faith knowing that you are loved. You are not alone. I look for you in the street, so we can share a smile and be connected a little more. even if only for a second… because nonetheless I will always love you, the same way as after 4 years I still love my Sharkbait that never got to live, but somehow helped me find a life worth living.
Original Post on Medium.
2am and Sober
Sometimes I like it here, in the deep of the night. The 2am without alcohol. The alone-ness of my apartment. Everything around me is silent, except the fan on my ceiling and the low hum of the refrigerator. If I sit quiet enough it becomes like I don’t exist. Slowly without thought drinking cold water from a glass. I can feel my muscles tense and move in my shoulders as I lift the glass to my lips. The silence is almost deafening.
The small sounds are present like white noise in a mothers womb. It is as if I am encapsulated in a bubble that is safe, serene, and without emotion. My mind clears itself to match the silence outside my body. It begins to drift, not to anything in particular, just to drift. My mind samples this thought and that, but has no attachment to any of them. I consider going to bed, but I can’t, because in this moment I just am. I won’t go to sleep yet, because I want to hold on to this peace for as long as I can.
It is in this moment of peace that I plan for tomorrow. I plan to be tired in the morning, but recall this moment where I just was. I will recall how I felt a part of everything and nothing all at once. I will recall how this moment is different than the 2am’s where I drank till I couldn’t remember what time it was. How this moment is different than other 2am’s sober. This is a different moment, where I am not haunted by the dark. Where I cannot be scared by visions of my past, present, or future. It is a place where I can know that the dark is not always to be feared and full of enemies.
I think of the quote that I keep saying over and over, “Be so full that even if they take and take and take you can still be overflowing.” (Alison Malee)
It comes to me in this moment of silence, at the end of the night, when I should have been in bed hours ago. It makes me think of how just at this 2am moment I am in a place that I can refill my cup. I don’t want to be anything but a giver, and so I must continuously learn to find new ways to stay overflowing. In the moments where my vehicle won’t move in traffic and I see the shadow of the clouds shift on the trees around me. In the moments where I take a break to walk or just stand and stretch during a conversation. It is the 2am moments where I feel that I am a part of the whole big world, but nothing in it at all.
I have seen many 2am’s where it’s all hazy and exhausting and often forgotten or needed to be pieced back together. I don’t know who really enjoys that kind of 2am. I could be found crouching somewhere crying or would have disappeared all together. My feet always hurt and often my face was tight from the make-up and the cigarettes. I would drive home hoping to not get pulled over or hit anyone and it was a miracle when it never happened. I hardly felt safe, never serene, and always filled with too many emotions. It is amazing I survived those roller coaster nights. It is amazing that I was too drunk to suicide, though often the thought crossed my mind. I would pass out before I could do anything else. It is amazing I am giving that up, no matter how hard it is to not drown my sorrows.
A character in a television show was asked why he did drugs and drank. His response “I suppose it was because I did not like myself very much.” That stuck with me. I like myself very much now and I work very hard to love myself as well. There are a million reasons to run from having to like and love myself, but they are merely excuses. So when I sit here at 2am and am Sober, I know that I am breaking down my own barriers to being overflowing in my life. With this serenity and fullness comes happiness, joy, and prosperity in my life. The person that I did not like very much is not really here anymore. I don’t want to forget it, I won’t let myself, and so I write to record the person who I am becoming.
The person you are at 1:59am is not the person you are at 2am. I hope that in the change of a moment you grow and do not whither. That you find hope and not fear. That you find peace and not conflict. So stop at any moment, and pause, look around you, take a deep breathe, listen to what you can and cannot hear. Search in the moment of silence for the sensation of how you are a part of everything and at the same time nothing in this world. Just be.
Original Post on Medium.
Take Heart, So Dear and Brave
Dear, brave, heart, the world is not what you expect of it.
Expectations, are not what you believe of them. They are things which are made up. Expectations are living creatures that creep up on you from the shadows and lay out a specific path for you to follow. These creatures crawl around on many legs, with many forms, and many virtues. They strive to control the person you desire to be. Expectations as they live and breathe are movable things, they are fluid, and they can be rejected. Their master is those who create them, and their slave is those who follow them. For the person who understands what in their life they can control, they will be both master and slave. They will create the creature that lays their path.
Sometimes, people yell at you, when you do not deserve to be yelled at. These are the moments when others force their expectations upon you, and they feel you fail to deliver on their creations. They desire to be the master and the expectation their muse. As master and muse they crave a slave and creation. They desire a puppet that cowers to tone and volume of their yell. All the while, they do not realize what it is they are a slave to themselves. For not a single master is not also a slave to expectations. So stay brave, dear heart. For if you know what you control, then they cannot enslave you.
Sometimes, you take a step too far past the line of respect. No matter how brave a heart may be or how much they try a heart may fail with the best of intentions. Life is a progress, not a perfection. However, there are hearts that are not as brave and loving as you are, dear one. There are hearts full of shadows, scratching claws, and gnashing teeth. They wear masks and try to fool us. They do not have the best of intentions. They walk the line of respect looking for a foothold, for a thinning of the line, where they might cross. We must be wary and watchful for hearts such as these that shed not love and instead seek to lessen us. For a heart so brave and true, you know what you can control.
Sometimes, you cannot go back on your actions. This is a thing you can control dear one. However, you can choose new ones. You can choose to change how your body moves and if it hurts or heals yourself and others. Hindsight is often known to be the clearest form of sight, but it is not a vision which can be undone. You must find strength to make new choices on your actions. Promote a world where you can be who you are, and where others expectations are not your master. So no, you cannot change the past, but you can improve the future. By choosing the way in which you reach out and touch the world you can become even braver dear heart, this you can control.
Sometimes, an attitude gets in the way. Attitudes are controllable when we are paying attention to ourselves, dear one. Emotions and thoughts can spin us around like a top on a table which falls off the edge and clatters to the floor. They affect our actions. They affect our attitudes. We feel so spun up and out of control and wrapped in our own yo-yo yarn that we forget the way in which we can control our lives. Believe in something that you struggle to see, dear heart, your own ability. Allow that to untangle you. You choose how to show what is going on inside of you. You can determine what others see in you. Shine with vulnerability, honesty, and compassion. Let your attitude be not one of division, but one of humanity and equality. Let it be an attitude of love for yourself and others. Dear heart, this will be hard, but you are brave.
Sometimes, they love you when you do not deserve to be loved. What an odd thought, dear one. That you would think yourself unworthy of being loved by another, perchance for no other reason than because it is good and right to do so. Love is a sparrow that flies across the sky to the destination which it most desires. It is difficult for us to control the flight of a wild sparrow in search of its’ chosen destination. Being loved is not up to us, if we are loved, then we deserve to be loved. It is not a gift which once given can be given back. Though, there are times that you take love back. We control our own sparrows so full of love and the destination in which we desire them to land. Do not shy away from the multitude of sparrows in your heart waiting to soar to the farthest reaches or the coldest shores. For loving is about giving unto others, for no other reason than you desire to. Dear, brave, heart, I hope you soar.
Always, you should set your own expectation to move forward. You should look for what you truly control in your life, and that which you cannot. You should follow your dreams, dear heart. You should take to the sky and continue going until your life becomes one in which you know you are safe and loved. A bird in a storm does not give up, but takes shelter for the moment. Emotions come and go, so do people. Both can be equally overpowering. Dear heart, you know what you can control. The strength in your being with each beat of your muscles continues without thought. This is why you move forward, why you keep learning, and why you can make choices in your life.
The world can be cruel and will most definitely throw wrenches into the gears of your life. Sometimes, you may wonder how to end these wrenches in life that tear you up and sometimes stop your functions. You can’t my dear, brave, heart, you just cannot. It is as much a fact as gravity on earth. There are things in life which you can control, and this is just not one of those things. These other things which you can control will be the difference between a life where you are whole and overflowing or a life where you are less than you might desire because the wrenches took control. A life of greatness awaits you, my dear, brave, heart.
In all the things that you control, just remember the basic rules. Always, if it hurts you or another, stop, turn back, reject that direction. Otherwise be you, and expect others to be them, my dear, brave, heart. Go now, walk on, take flight, and soar. Take Heart, so dear and brave.