A wee bit of BS

I went to home of friends for dinner tonight. These are dear friends. I have known them for a long time. I was in their wedding. I consider them family. We can be honest, we can share our struggles, we can celebrate our many blessings. There is comfort. There is safety. There is freedom. There is grace. There is understanding. There is love. Tonight we were talking about how we grew up. We all grew up in very different homes. We had very different experiences. My one friend was saying how she is doing better financially than her mum. She grew up with little. Yet there was a lot of love in their home. Her husband grew up in a very different situation and what their family had, they worked hard for and saved smartly for. I grew up with little and eventually my dad's business did well. There were other struggles after that but we still knew what it was like to not have to worry about finances as much. None of us are motivated by money. Nor are we concerned with having lots of ...

Last year a friend gave me a small journal. It has a lovely embroidered cover. I love journals. I love stationery. I love writing. I have a lot of journals so I thought this one should have a special purpose. This one would be my 'joy journal' and I would write in it at the end of each day about something in my day that brought me joy. That was last year. It is still completely blank. Last year it was hard for me to find much joy daily. I am sure it was there, I was just too tired to look for it. However, my life at this moment is so much better in so many ways. It is easy to find joy each day. My hope is to get into the habit of finding joy daily that when life is hard again (because really, life is hard at times for all of us) seeking out the joy in the day will help me through it. When we find joy, it can lift us up in difficult times, it can inspire us to move forward, it can give hope. It can also be contagious. When we recognize joy we then cultivate it. When we culti...

I have been hearing this word a lot lately. I am not sure why now more than before. Or maybe I am noticing it more because frankly, the term irritates me. I have heard a lot of people gush about finding their 'soul mate' or waiting for their 'soul mate'. Personally, I do not believe in the notion of a soul mate. I am not anti-relationship. Nor am I anti-marriage. I am also not cynical. I have blogged about that before. This post is more about managing expectations. It is also about perspective. I have a lot of married friends. I do not think I have heard any of them refer to their spouse as their soul mate. Certainly not the ones with children. Why? My guess is they understand the reality that relationships take a LOT of work. Living with someone day in and day out is not all wedded bliss. Adding children to the mix creates new layers of complexity. Communication is so important yet so difficult at the same time. They also understand relationships are impacted by ...

I have noticed a few of my friends post on Facebook today that they have chosen a word for themselves this year. The word will be their focus, their guide. As the year progresses, this word will be their plumb line, their lighthouse when things get rough. It will also help them celebrate when they succeed. It started me thinking about words. They carry tremendous power so it is important to choose them wisely. It is crucial that we think about the words we use towards others and maybe more importantly towards ourselves. What messages do we allow ourselves to believe? If we make a mistake, do we believe that makes us a failure? If we have a bad hair day does that make us ugly? As children we are told to choose our words wisely, instead of fighting we were told to use our words to explain why we were frustrated or hurt. Words. They are powerful. Honesty is vital to me. Many years ago I decided I would work at never saying something about someone I would not say to them. If I could ...

I know I said I do not make resolutions because of the new year. So today, when I committed to writing 500 words daily for the next 31 days it was more because of the timing in my life and less because of the timing of the calendar. I had committed to writing a novel in a month last summer. Yet my hard drive crashed at the start of the month and it took over a week to get it replaced so I gave up. Today when I decided to sign up for this commitment (as opposed to challenge) I did so knowing the only way I would get writing more is with some inspiration like this. I cannot explain why, but I feel like my life at the moment is better than it has been in a long time. After a year of great difficulties, the year ended with tremendous freedom from a lot of toxic things that were weighing on me tremendously. At 41 years of age I am feeling, maybe for the first time in my life, a tremendous freedom to do things I have previously only wanted to do or thought of doing. Last night I stayed...