The Apple Core of You

2010-06-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

2010-06-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

"The giving of love is an education in itself." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks to Louise L. Hay, I can tell myself, "I love you, Sheela," and not flinch. Too much. In the beginning, I looked into my own eyes staring back at me from the mirror, and I literally felt the self hate coming toward me. I had to sit down and consider just why I hated myself so?

But after telling myself "I love you, Sheela. I really do," those feelings have shifted, evaporated, and are not the ocean they once were, but instead a lake, a manageable lake, being drained.

Being able to give love to one's self is as good as it gets. If you aren't in love with yourself, you won't be able to love anyone else. Now that I can see myself as a loving person, other changes have begun. I am giving on several levels and letting go of the terror of fear and worry. Even as I just typed those words, I found myself starting to chew on a fingernail (or what is left of one).

It goes deep this notion of self hatred.

"It's all about love," my father told me the morning after he passed. So why should I separate myself from love and enter into the land of fear, so far from the light and depth of love?

It seems to be an Earthly problem. I read that we leave stress when we die. Time to die now. Time to live because I do love you, Sheela. I really do.

Giving me this, I know I will succeed and give back.

2010-06-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday during one of my Memoir workshops, a writer's husband walked in and we convinced him to stay and to participate. He oozed gentleness and good energy. And because there was a new writer in the group in addition to him, I asked everyone to introduce themselves. When it was the husband's turn, he told us of being the first born child to his parents who then divorced when he was three. He went to live with his mother, he said, who married a man who was poor. As a couple, his mother and this new man proceeded to have half a dozen children. I watched this lovely man's face turn somber as he looked at the table. He was not thin, nor overweight; he was just right with a round face, bald head, and enormous smile. But we could tell his story was a troubled one. "I was skin and bones," he said, "and always hungry."

But by 12, his father, he told us, had found him, and was able to convince him to return with him and to live with them as he had just remarried. And he did and grew healthier and found himself interested in school and subjects such as history, social studies, and more. But he said what he learned the most was that in those dark years he was blessed by girls, girls who noticed he didn't pull their hair to get their attention, and so they invited him home to eat dinners with them, and there he would walk into rooms with food from one end of the table to the other.

"I couldn't believe it," he told us, "food everywhere on those tables."

And when our workshop was over for the day, he walked with me out the door. "You know, I always feel like I owe women so much," he said. "I owe them to be kind, gentle, and to help because they helped me so much in my youth. I have been told," he said, smiling, "I am a feminist."

Yes, you are, kind sir.

Yes you are.

2010-05-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

My younger daughter who just graduated from college finds free time to be frustrating. She likes the structure of school and work and the weekends can make her a bit distraught. "Find routine in your off time," I advised, telling myself as well. She and I are very similar, so whatever I tell her, I'm shooting it right back to me.

So much time I have let drain away while watching TV or biting my nails or doing both for way too long of the day (and night). Franklin Roosevelt once said, “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” I told my older daughter recently that I knew I was being taught patience these past few years. There is a strong movement when patience and action connect. Erase fear from the equation and you have electricity.

Now I sit and wait patiently for my imagination to light up. I do not force it nor do I ignore it. I wait in a quiet room and when it is time, the words come. They need not be perfect, just visible. I then can see what lies in hiding, what has been waiting for me to wake up to and to act upon.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Franz Kafka: "You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

This summer my goal is to finish "The Year of the Brown Running Shoes." It will be through routine and listening in which I will accomplish this magnificent task.

2010-05-28T19:23:00.001-07:00

On my mirror in the living room, written in black eyeliner pencil are the words, "The only way to overcome fear is to walk right through it." I apologize. I don't remember who said it, but it is a strong concept.

This summer I will finish "The Year(s) of the Brown Shoes." I will show you how I've walked through fear.

Right through it.

2010-05-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

Spent Sunday touring Boston with my daughter and my sister. It was so nice. We went on a 45-minute cruise around the Harbor, walked through the North End, and finished up on Newberry Street, drinking Chai bubble tea and splitting two slices of cheesecake. We hailed a cab, insisted the cabbie turn off the radio until we realized he was listening to the Celtics who in the next six minutes won the National Championship!

The next day my daughter graduated summa cum laude. We ate at the bar of an Italian restaurant, stopped for gelato, and laughed until we choked for air when we realized the cab we had hailed was lacking in padding underneath my sister's portion of the backseat. Three to five inches lower than us, we were the three bears, my daughter the tallest, me in the middle, and her the baby! "My gelato is mush!" she screamed heaving with laughter. "Hoist it out the window!" I said, flinging my arm backwards to show her how, and we laughed all the way back to my daughter's home.

Today I rode out of Boston, reliving it all. Normally I go home blue for my girl. This time it was doubled. Sis is back home, as am I, and my daughter is having dinner with other graduates. I'm sitting here seeing that liquid Pistachio gelato sloshing in the paper cup held by my sister belting out belly laughs over the obvious proportional differences in our seating arrangements.

When we got out of the cab, my daughter stayed, saying she'd pay for the ride. Sis and I watched her slide down into the flat as a pancake portion, and my sister and I stood there blustering with chortles of joy - as one darling young woman entered the educated workforce - and two mamas staggered back toward childish mirth.

2010-05-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Overcoming Fear: Learning to Live and to Die
A Tribute to Nancy Lee Hastings, Sister, Daughter, Wife,
Mother, Grandmother, and Friend

No matter what we go through or don’t
the moment of sleep, connects to the divine.
You, Mother, have been always in the center,
the eye of the needle. the lap of love.
I watch the circular fan above us and know soon your motor will stop,
but your spirit, I see you, Mother, the one who wanted
to overcome fear,
has.
--Upon Watching You Sleep
Sheela Wolford
April 12, 2010
Born at home on October 26, 1929 in Hotchkiss, Colorado, Lil’ Nan emerged on her first day of Earth as a blue baby. Today, she would have been referred to as a “premie” but in 1929, the method used to keep her warm and safe involved the inside of an oven door to support the infant’s survival methods. Her parents, Violet and Darrell Powell asked the family physician to name their fourth baby. “Nancy is a good name,” he said, and Nancy it was. Two more children would follow much later, but for a long while it would be Lil’ Nan as the youngest child.
Nancy Lee also was born a few days before the Great Depression. Her life – a big part of it – was spent on a budget and when there wasn’t enough money, she and her birth family ate from God’s land whether it was from the Victory Vegetable Garden or the rabbits shot and skinned by her brother, Dean as they walked the region’s deserts.
Nancy grew up in Moab with her sister, Helen Dorothy, and brothers: Keith, Dean, Fred, and Jerry. It is no secret how much she loved Utah’s Canyonlands, where she hiked with her family and later with her own husband and four children.
As a teen, she studied and took her education to heart and at her high school graduation, served as Valedictorian. But no one explained to Lil’ Nan that someone of her ilk had the right to be exposed to the greatest of colleges and universities. Instead, she climbed aboard a Greyhound bus at the age of 17, headed for Salt Lake to attend Henager Business School where she hoped to become an administrative assistant. Destiny, though, is a funny creature, and had other plans for the Moab girl whose legs once were so skinny, she lifted weights and was featured in a muscle magazine. Yes, destiny muscled up to Nancy’s humble dreams and instead produced a handsome young Air Force man, eyeing her from the other side of a public pool in Salt Lake where she was sunbathing and swimming with her girlfriends. Three dates later, Nancy and Frederick Reed Hastings would marry on September 17, 1950 with wry Destiny smiling in the background like a Chesire cat.
And whatever would befall or bless Reed and Nancy, they would withstand together. Early in her marriage, she’d experience three miscarriages before becoming a mother to Steven Bradford, Sheela Doreen, James Darrell, and Sandra Lee.
Nancy once said she felt most content while breastfeeding her babies. If only life could have provided such peace to her as that. But, again, Destiny fished around for a few obstacles and produced head injuries for Reed, and a benign tumor under her skull for Nancy when at 51, Lil’ Nan became handicapped, legally blind, and paralyzed on her left side.
Do you think it stopped her? Think again.
Clocking in 800 miles of swimming for therapy, and endless walks around her block, Nancy worked her frozen muscles as diligently as she had lifted weights to improve the calves of her lean legs. She and Reed volunteered at rehab hospitals to encourage those trapped in their bodies to continue to work to break free and move again. She rose two hours early on Sunday mornings to dress, put on her panty hose, apply lipstick and force a dress over rigid arms and petulant shoulders who made it hard for her to prepare for church. But she did it because she wanted to worship.
But let’s back it up a bit. Let’s go back to when Reed retired from the Air Force in 1965, after taking his Nancy to Germany and a tour of Europe and later with their four children to the forests of Alaska, lakes of Michigan, and cattle yards of Nebraska only to retire in El Paso, Texas because he loved the sunshine and his mother was recently widowed and living there, too. On December of ’65, in her new home on 9804 Album Avenue, Nancy took a towel and flung it upon her concrete patio and sunbathed, leaving the snowdrifts and winter boots of Michigan behind.
Now let’s see what you might not know about Nancy besides that she was a medical secretary for nearly 15 years at William Beaumont Army Medical Center and before that, a top drawer stay at home mom for 13 years.
Whether she was scrubbing the floors, typing in her wizard way in her Beaumont office, sunbathing by Lake Huron, sewing for her daughters, her home, and herself, or making lamps from diamond wood, Nancy Lee put her all into each project whether at home, office or church.
Ahhh, church. Nancy and her religion.
It was back in Alaska in the late 50s when she and Reed fell in love with salvation. Every baby born to them could be seen a few days old in church whether on a Sunday morning, afternoon or Wednesday evening at Bible Study. Most of you have probably been lucky enough to have heard her recite chapters of the Bible from memory. But no matter how much she knew about the Bible, no matter how much she professed to have faith, to want it, near the end of her life, Nancy worried about being good enough to cross over. How many of us feel that way, too?
Now she knows she is, was, and always will be secure in love: pure, boundless and free. She struggled with this, day and night a prisoner in her hospital bed, but just as we know, she realized everyone is welcome in her father’s house.
For while Nancy Lee Powell Hastings was having children, attending church, being a wife, secretary, seamstress, and honor student at UTEP, she was living and doing her fair share of worrying and stressing, but nonetheless living. And at the end of her life, she knew the truth. Maybe she’d had one too many fretful days or an angry moment and 30 years of being disabled, yet to know Nancy was to know her determination, routine, hope, forgiveness, and search for salvation.
In that order.
Before my mother passed, she and I spoke and I asked her to come to me in a dream and to tell me what her experience was like in crossing over and what it is like where she is now?
“I sure will,” she said, “if I can.” I also asked her to drop coins in front of us, her children and grandchildren: Robert Darrell, Leila Sandra, Sarah Nancy, Sienna Marie, Kenneth David, Jared Douglas, and Victoria Quinn.
“Where will I get them?” she asked.
“You’ll know,” I said.
“I sure will,” she said.
So to all of you, I suggest you start watching for those coins. I asked for pennies. “Quarters,” said my mother, and recently before passing instructed my sister to go to the Credit Union and get her lots of coins.
Take nothing lightly after Nancy leaves the building. Because her nearly 81 years of existence from a blue baby to eating blueberries to keep herself healthy, Lil’ Nan, is a presence we shall never forget and I – as I know you do, too – look forward with excitement to the day we see her again. I shall do as I did one night while serving as her hospice caregiver. I shall kiss her on the lips and if we kiss one – two- three times – I will tell her what I did that night, “Mom, I think we just made out.” And we will laugh again as we did then, until our bellies hurt.
I love you, Mom. We all love you.
Your passing is temporary. I will see you in my dreams. And expect a funny line or two from you, as well, just as you said that day at Sierra Medical when you looked at your cramped hospital room and said, “Well it’s not the Taj Majal, but it’s okay.”
Better than okay now, eh, Mom? I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Look. There’s a quarter.
Te amo, Lil’ Nan. You are our love. – Love, Sheela

2010-03-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

Must get ready for another day at the hospital with Mom. I'm anxious to see if her nutrition via veins is working. If so, next is the tube into the small intestine, and if the food absorbs Mom has a chance to begin physical and speech rehabilitation so that she can return to her home at the assisted living center and NOT a nursing home. Send power to her, please.

I know we are all on our own paths, unique and pertinent to our contracts way before we were born from our mothers. I know this and it is all that keeps me sane when I think of my mother's options since her most recent stroke. She has been disabled for 30 years. When my sister remarked about the three decades, I was shocked. Had never thought of it that way. Seventeen years of helping her dress, cooking for her, driving for her, and then 13 years worrying over her when I moved to New York and her 2,000 miles away, back home in Texas with my sister and brother, home health, and yet never seeming like we could get her squared away and safe.

Now she has to start all over again in learning to walk and to swallow food. She is 80 and her path exhausts me, but it is her path, and if she wants to continue walking it, I must find strength to reach my own peaceful place on which my path understands that.

My mother and I have never gotten along even though as my younger daughter told me a few nights ago, "Mom, you always tried!"

Thank goodness for daughters.

And mothers.

Two days ago, flat on her back, she told me, "You have become so dynamic."

I looked at her. I knew to hold on to that moment and to relish it.

"Thank you, Mom," I said.

Yesterday morning I entered her hospital room and discovered the "Pic" line had been placed into her central vein already, not later in the day as I was told. "I wasn't afraid," she said to me, as I sat in a chair beside her. "I did what you said, Sheela. I told fear to go and sit in the corner."

Fifty-four years of squabbling flew into the sky. I stared at my mother. "And did it listen?" I asked, my voice, cracking.

"It did," she said. "I am not afraid."

Whatever happens to my mother, whether she regains her strength and can orally eat and return to her home, or if she decides to fly on to the Great Wide Open, or if she is forced into a nursing home, I know she is not afraid, not fearful, no longer thinking she has done something wrong and punishment awaiting her.

"I love you, Nancy," I've gotten her to say once a day since the week I've been home.
"I guess I never really liked myself," she said days ago, hungry, weak, and asking God to take her.

I love you, Nancy.

2010-01-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

2009, bye-bye, but not without my thanks. For even though it has been a wild ride, it has also been a year of enormous growth and I am a better woman for it. At the close of this year, I understand - at my core - I am a writer, but more specifically, a poet. I realized a person who claims to be a writer, yet frozen in block, must thaw somehow, and poetry does it for me. I've let it go for a long time. It comes easily to me so imagine if I really give it attention!

Happy New Year!

Books read this year by me that helped so much:

"A Course in Miracles"
Mary Oliver's "A Poetry Handbook"
Carlos Castaneda's "Tales of Power"
Steven Covey's "Daily Reflections of Highly Effective People"
Deepak Chopra's "Seven Spiritual Laws of Success"
Wayne Dyer's "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life"
Louise Hay's "You Can Heal Your Life"
and much more!

Another thing I realized this past year was my love for my daughters. Maybe because I finally fell in love with my true self, but I understand and have this passion to convey this to both of them. I have been a good mom, but it is always a chance to be even more effective. Even though they are grown, it is never to late to be of assistance and help, and I am going to be both to my chicks.

Lastly, as I evolve into my true spirit, I know this year is a productive and profitable one, on many levels. I will see my works sent out to the world and I will no longer hold on to them whether only embryos in my imagination or on sloppily written notebook paper. I have a routine, work I gather energy from, and ideas fertile in the ground.

This year I become the farmer I've only claimed to be in the past.

Much love and go to it! This is your life and it is a beautiful one!

2009-08-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

If you had ever told me I'd be dissecting my own business plan, figuring out my target market, or trying to write workshops for professional career women ages 25 - 45 with a hefty salary, I'd tell you you've been sniffing the paint too long.

But here I am, sitting on my couch on an end of summer Sunday afternoon in late August and feeling, maybe, maybe I'm close to being at a lift off point with "Workshops by Wolford" and hoping, hoping, hoping I've got enough business, marketing, and workshop information to convince the good and kind loan officer to give me my business loan so I can officially launch this business!

I am nails-bitten-to-the-core excited about offering a series of workshops that deal with turning the daily grind into an adventure and applying the spiritual principles found all over the place in the bookstores, Internet, radio, and TV into our lives no matter the situation!

Something just fell in the bedroom as I was typing this and unless it was due to something Russell, the cat did, I think that was my sign that all is well. All is happening.

Or toppling.

But I am pressing on. "How can I help?" urges me on. I know this is my avenue to help and it will provide me the breathing space to write my stories, too, it all fits.

It's married together.

And now I go back to working on it, the patience to do a good job, and to believe always whispering in my ear along with my dad's words 10 years ago the morning after his death...

"It's all about love, Sheela."

It is.

2009-06-08T04:27:00.000-07:00

Who Understands Me But Me

They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine,
they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere,
they take each last tear I have, I live without tears,
they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart,
they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future,
they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends,
they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell,
they give me pain, so I live with pain,
they give me hate, so I live with my hate,
they have changed me, and I am not the same man,
they give me no shower, so I live with my smell,
they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers,
who understands me when I say this is beautiful?
who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms?

I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand,
I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble,
I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty,
I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears,
I am stubborn and childish,
in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred,
I practice being myself,
and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me,
they were goaded out from under rocks in my heart
when the walls were built higher,
when the water was turned off and the windows painted black.
I followed these signs
like an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myself
followed the blood-spotted path,
deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself,
who taught me water is not everything,
and gave me new eyes to see through walls,
and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths,
and I was laughing at me with them,
we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal,
who understands me when I say this is beautiful?

Jimmy Santiago Baca

2009-04-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

It has taken me five decades to realize MY PURPOSE is to encourage others. Sure I'm great at customer service, public relations, and other career positions, but what I really like to do is to hear of someone's dream or wish and then instantly it comes to me, ideas of what they could do to get closer to that dream. So, here is a test for me, a creative test to see how much the Universe will respond to me putting myself in the position of doing what I love and organically seeing where it will go. I'm also a writer and I am writing workshops, working at a bread and butter job that is harsh, so I am also making courageous moves myself right now in this extremely creative time of shift and change.

Pay $1 for each Reason Why You Should Go for Your Dream. You tell me how many reasons you want for each $1 paid ($10 = 10 reasons) and I will comply. If you are afraid I'm pulling your leg, $1 won't hurt, but I am honestly reaching out and doing this in the hopes it will be excruciatingly fun.

So if you need a nice dose of encouragement and courage (which is what encouragement is after all), please email me at hastingswolford@yahoo.com and tell me what you need encouragement on, pay the $1 per reason to my Paypal account, and I will email you back happily with that many (and probably more) spontaneous reasons why you should give it a try. If you love to do something, you truly should be doing it. I do believe with all my heart that we come to this Earth with a purpose. What's yours? It's also supposed to be what you love.

I'm ready to offer encouragement. I'm already having a blast.

2009-01-20T10:18:00.000-08:00

Helicopter skyward
allows a return to breath
beyond hope
a beginning contingent
on path.

2009-01-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

The wind is whipping outside, going wherever it wants. The door to my rooftop is slamming. I tied it down so much last time the bolt nearly came off the door (yes, our door needs great attention), so I've just let it fly this time but will buy more rope and put another call into the landlord. Soon the wind will ease down and the door will stop banging.

Going with the flow, I'm going to go with it. Action, too, that is part of it, by swimming downstream where my riches and talents are down there, and that's where I'm headed. That's where I am.

Now as soon as I say this you know my stomach clenches and every bit of my mind rebels. There is the key. How to quiet the mind. But rather than roping it like the wind, I let it calm down, as everything does, must. And if I fall deeply into my creativity and ideas, do the dishes in between, dust, clean the bathroom, and keep jotting the ideas down, the paralysis of fear lessens in my head, and the wind stops, eventually.

This time I'm staying with the core of me. I have abandoned me plenty out of fear and desperation. Here I am again.Watch me ride the wind.

Back in the seventh grade, I got caught jotting down Bob's lyrics while a new and eager teacher chatted on about her trip to Greece and I listened and drifted into my daydreaming, which I know now is my method into creativity. She walked over and picked up my paper, read it to herself, smiled, and set it back down. Words change emotions. Write on.

2009-01-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

You know I've been guilty of watching reality shows for as long as they've been churning out, but this recent one about beautiful people (true beauty, the premise is, is within), well, what kind of beauty do the producers have when they trick contestants? I don't care how vain these kids are (I'm getting older, that's right, they're kids to me), humiliating anyone is not very pretty either, inside, outside, all around the town.

God, give us some written shows again! Please!

I auditioned for an editor/writer position with E. Jean's advice site. I met a hoarde of fantastic writers, vying for the same position. That was in late October, some are still there, but I bailed out in early December. I left when I found out that position would be announced on her new advice show being taped, I guess now, or who knows?

I felt the slight sting of manipulation. Sure, these reality show folks must sign release after release, I'm sure, and sure they're reaching for stardom on a shaky platform, but the bottom line is they are people just like the rest of us. They have feelings, too, and after watching just one episode on this reality show on beauty I realized that it's not something I shall watch anymore.

That's because I'm a beautiful person. Or at least trying to be.

2008-12-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

My daughter, Sarah, says I'm freaking out on YouTube and I am! Love it, love being able to find and provide music to you with a simple search. So Happy New Year to you, wherever you are in your journey. Find and refine your voice. 2009 just smells so ready to take us where we need to be: oh yeh...right here.

Thank you for touching my life...and if I've helped you, you're welcome and let's do more.

Peace and love.

2008-12-28T11:09:00.001-08:00

Dedicated to Mary Cait and anyone who desires to live out their craft day in, day out.

2008-12-24T18:12:00.001-08:00

Icy puddles of snow
plastic snowmen
white wired reindeer
"Jesus is the Reason for the Season"
strung from one limb to another.
A neighborhood walk on Christmas Eve
leaves room for thought.
Stretch to find the highest,
wet feet do not matter.

December 24, 2008

2008-12-19T20:45:00.000-08:00

When I was an adjunct lecturer in NYC, I met lots of young people like this sweetheart. It is my claim to fame. My moment of glory to have crossed paths with such sugar bears.

Welcome to my New York.

2008-12-18T04:47:00.000-08:00

Why I love Yoko Ono...

2008-12-16T10:33:00.000-08:00

2008-12-15T06:14:00.000-08:00

Today, I vow to continue my dream, goal, present moment life. I KNOW I created this and I KNOW I create tomorrow. So, I put down for you here and now, my statement of release, excitement, peace, and the ending of creating negativity, poverty, and doom. I embrace my wealth, resources, richness of spirit and vision, now.

Now.

2008-09-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

While working on my customer service workshop last night I came across a note I had made after listening to a PBS special with Dr. Wayne Dyer and he was talking about playing the match game. What's that? It's not with Gene Rayburn. It's checking yourself to see if you are matched up to the Source. In harmony. I tried it and instantly solved the dilemma I'd been experiencing for days, weeks, let's face it, years. I'd been doing affirmations recently, and visualization, even putting more into action toward my dream, but still a knotted dread in my gut when I spoke my wishes. Well, the match game works. Instantly I was in alignment.

What is it to be in harmony with the Source (other names can be Universe, God, etc.)? It is to know that you are safe and that everything is working out. It's like going to the chiropracter to have your back adjusted.

Thank yous started coming out of my mouth. Gratitude. Another important component that came out naturally and organically as did the reassurance, the awareness that all is well.

I slept and had magnificent dreams which I know now all relate to the healing and health of my body and Self.

Thank you.

2008-08-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

Blogger The Town Hall said...

When you know you can fly you don't have to. When you know you can run you can sit down. When you know you can love - well you just have to!

2008-07-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

This sweet little blog has been sitting patiently for two years with me ne'er touching it once, but now I'm giving it a new face and purpose. I do hope you will feel free to leave a trail of your message relating how you found your true Self; how you ripped off the social mask and became the real You. I'd love to hear it and on this blog I will put in as much as I can find relating to this topic of self-actualization.

I started my quest about five years ago. Something was nagging at me in my public relations jobs and somehow, someway I started following those feelings like bread crumbs leading me out of an area where I was clearly lost. All I knew was that in my mid-40s I still had to actualize my purpose as a writer, something I hadn't really put my full attention on (my fault, no one else's) since my 20s and not much even then. But whatever it was, it was burning inside me and so I started asking friends, family, and what I now know is the Universe for help, direction. My story is far from over but for the last year, I've started to find it.

I left teaching last summer for a funded sabbatical. My mother was sick of hearing me whine about being tired and paid my way to finish my first novel. It's still in its fourth draft and quite undone and not understood by me and she pretty much lost faith in me and told me 'no more!' I asked my boss at the school where I taught too many classes if I could return only to teach online and found myself suddenly unemployed. This was October 2007 and the party had begun. I've had many a night of wishing I could go back and take less classes and write that way, but somehow something always pulls through, and you know what? This is the way I am supposed to hunker down and write.

I want to get to a better place because I still have one daughter in college and another making her way in the fashion industry and I'd like to be able to help them both and not be such a burden, so I am 'damning the torpedos' onward! I am seeing it from the end.

Nice to meet you and feel free to leave a message about your Self actualization journey. I hope this blog will inspire and refresh any of you if you are in a place where you feel like you've missed your mark and maybe it's too late. It's not! Don't listen to the media, your parents, your friends, ignore anyone who tells you you can't do what you feel is your purpose!

My journey - albeit made with several enormous mistakes - is my journey and now I'm on it. I literally threw myself over the cliff and you know what?

I can fly.

And so can you.

Here we go. Feel free to tell your story. I will read it and display them here and we all will benefit.

Much love and remember, "The whole point of desire is to allow the Self to rejoice in Itself." (Sanskrit wisdom)