Cleaning my house today. They want it barren for the pictures so surfaces need to be cleared, and stuff put away that is always out. Bathroom countertops, dressers, night stands. Good thing they don’t take pictures inside of closets, lol. Had windows to wash, spots on the carpet to remove. Laundry to do. And that was just upstairs. Tomorrow I’ll do the downstairs, but I’ve been working on it a little at a time so it won’t be too hard.

I sat down on the couch to take a phone call, and after I hung up I fell sound asleep for about an hour, lol. My son came home from work shortly after, and we ordered a pizza for dinner. Way too tired to cook. I opened the pizza box when it was delivered, and thought, “Scott’s pizza” for a second. Only a second. It was his favorite pizza, we ordered it almost all the time when he was here. I haven’t ordered it in months. Probably a subconscious choice, not to remember.

Pizza triggers. Geezus. I suppose there are other ghosts buried deep in the recesses. Well, we deal with them as they come, I guess. Not much other choice. They are fewer and farther between.

I have the same thing with the text alert on my phone.  When I hear it, I automatically go to him, because for so long it always was.  That habit will probably break soon, I get a lot of texts that aren’t him lately.

Just, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just decide, ok, I don’t want to care about that person any more, so that instantly, you did not, and anything and everything associated with them instantly lost it’s meaning, it’s memory?

I guess I just want easy. It’s been hard for so long. My marriage ended incredibly hard. Scott…..the ending was way more painful, but relationship short. Praying for easy next time around. For once in my life, easy. I fall in love so easy. I fall out of it so hard. It’s hard for most of us to completely let go.  We can know it’s best for us, we can know it’s the direction we want to move in.  But nothing about it is easy when you really loved someone.

There are new starts, new beginnings ahead. It will all be good, I have a good feeling about this. Setting myself up for easy next time around. Maybe a next time will come, and I won’t have to fall out of love. Maybe it will last…..I dream about that. It could have been so good with either of those men, but it wasn’t my choice to let it go sour. I’d have loved either one of them for a lifetime, if they only could have been part of the equation.

Oh well. I still believe he’s out there somewhere, the man I can love and who can love me for the rest of his life. Today I moved a little closer to the dream. And tomorrow, closer still.

Love and light.

So where are we this morning, friends? It’s Friday morning, the last day of the work week. Have we resolved our problems of the week? Are we ready to sit back and relax this weekend, to celebrate? Or work, on our houses, on our homes? Or maybe, you work on weekends, and already had your weekend earlier this week? If so, I hope it was wonderful.

This morning, I am up. The gongs maybe, probably, a big part of that. To come to some resolution of those emotions that dog me, follow me, pop up unbeckoned, unwanted. To embrace them, and acknowledge their importance in my life, wishing them love and light, and moving on to the next thought, is a relief.

I hope I can continue doing this.

I was talking to Linda last night about my gong experience. She is such a loving soul, like me, more than me, she studies A Course in Miracles. She gets in a very deep way my need to love people, no matter what they have done to me. Knowing that anything but love is a projection of fear on their part. I told her about my struggle. She said, “Florida will be so good for you. The distance will help you with this. I know that you’re still a phone call away, but the distance will be good.”

I hope the others who were part of the trauma, the ugliness, the pain are doing well, I hope they have come to their own resolutions about it, their own way through that darkness. I wish them well. I have to be true and consistent to my belief that if I profess to believe in unconditional love, that I don’t get to pick and choose who I offer it to. Thus is the “unconditional” part of it. It extends to them also, always. I have to remember that those who would least appear to deserve it, need it the most. And anyway, we all deserve it.

I know I have spewed venom about some of it, here, and privately. That’s what I have let go of. I know that the ugliness directed at me, the unhappiness that was given to me, was only a projection of other’s fear. I send back love, and hope it eases their fear. I’ll put my flash-temper in check, and remember who I want to be, and let that person out. At least, that’s my intention. I hope I can do it. I’m sick of being angry and allowing others to make me that way.  Like Marianne Williamson says, pray for those that betray you. 

The weekend will be busy. Getting my house as clean as it’s ever been, for the pictures to be taken Monday. The listing will go live 24 hours later. My friends Peter and Linda gave me a statue of St. Joseph and a red cloth last night to wrap him in, to bury in my front yard. Everyone swears by this custom for a quick sale of their home. Peter and Linda had a house that they had tried to sell for about 4 years. It was a nice home, unusual, but very nice. They buried St. Joseph and sold it days later.

So I hope that the weekend is productive for me, and my son, who has some work to finish in his space.

The weather looks lovely, like close to 70°F on the weekend. I am feeling on the edge of wonderful things happening.

Love and light, everyone.

I just got in from the gong bath / meditation. I hadn’t been in 2 months, a record for me I think. I missed them. I will miss them so much when I move. Linda my friend/gong player said I’ll find them there. I don’t know, it’s not that easy. While I know of 3 groups here that have them, I know friends all over the country in highly populated areas that can’t find them. I told Linda if I can’t, maybe I’ll have to start them.

I guess it’s just more of the stuff here I love that I will be leaving. But I’ll figure it out, I always do.

The gongs tonight sent me so deep. I thought I would just continue with healing, the letting go of all of the trauma and sadness and ugliness of the last year. I began the meditation with the Ho’oponopono (I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you). I began a gratitude list, thankful for all the incredible blessings I have had bestowed on me. So many more right now, with finding my house in Florida, and my sis and her hubby doing so much of the leg work for me. Just so blessed.

But I knew I have stuff yet to let go of.

I think the connections I have to people, especially some people, are like the roots of a plant. They are wrapped around each other and everything inside of me. My heart, my lungs, my liver, my kidneys, my ovaries….everything. I cannot possibly remove them all, and let go of everything. Those connections are now part of who I am. I came to the conclusion out there in the ethers, that I only have to accept that those connections are part of me. They are at times uncomfortable, at times comforting, but whatever they are at the moment, doesn’t matter, because they have become part of who I am. I cannot look back at my life and ignore parts of it, or say parts of it didn’t matter. It all mattered, it all taught me, and now I have to accept that all of those experiences are part of what makes me a unique person. Acceptance. Just, let it be.

Suddenly I got the Cheryl Strayed quotation that I posted the other day in a much more profound way. What if I wanted all of that? What if the same thing that broke me so hard, also made me beautiful? What if I ignored all the warning signs, and chose to feel the pain instead? Because…the cause of the pain, the intense pain, was also at times a thing that caused me intense joy. What if my soul needed that experience? The ying and the yang. The light and the dark. One cannot exist without the other. I needed to know this, to feel this, in a way that made it part of me.

My God, our lives, in all their painful misery and excruciating joy, are so sacred.

I don’t think that I’m going to try any longer to let it go. It hasn’t been working anyway. And why should it? How can I let go of who I am, who all those experiences helped to create. I like myself well enough, and if I rid myself of all those connections, if I pull them out by the roots….I’ll damage a lot of other things, trying to get rid of things that are completely entwined in my being now.

I’m going to accept them all. I’m going to just let it be. If I miss someone, then I’ll miss them. Wish them love and light, and say the Ho’oponopono for them a few times, and sit with the sadness until it’s gone.

When it was over, when the gongs and the crystal bowls, and the drums were silent, I was a million miles away. I heard, finally, someone talking and I opened my eyes. Everyone was sitting up, discussing their experience. Later, Linda told me she had called my name, but she didn’t think I’d heard her. I hadn’t.

I stayed and visited with she and Peter, her husband. He is mentoring a men’s weekend put on by The Mankind Project, which he’s been involved in for a dozen years. It’s such a worthwhile project. He is such a cool guy. We often all talk about our hippie days, and music and drugs, but now….he holds gong baths and sweat lodges and teaches men how to reconnect with themselves.

I will surely miss those two. But they have promised to come see me in Florida.

I’m reposting the Cheryl Strayed quote, because it was so instrumental in my meditation tonight, and I think I really got somewhere, I think I really helped my healing in a big way. Time will tell, but instead of letting it all go, I am going to try embracing what’s left. And embracing myself while I do it.

Love and Light, all….

Words have escaped me this morning.  Imagine that?  I am oddly content, but at the same time, slightly sad that I am seeing things the way they are, not the way I wanted them to be. At the same time, I am glad about that, because it doesn’t hurt me, it validates what I know I have to do, the choices I have made, instinctively.

My intuition is strong today, for the last few weeks, I have known things I couldn’t know, but did.   I’m learning to trust that voice that whispers in my ear, the one that tells me that things are not always what they seem.  And then, points me to the truth, so I can go on.  Forward.  Onward.

I sometimes think I know the reasons, and sometimes I think, there isn’t one.  But somewhere inside I know it all had to happen, that there was something I needed to experience, and learn, and I hope I have.  I think I have.  I think the reasons, whatever they are, are probably not comprehensible at the human level.  I think I somehow have to quiet my insatiable need to know.  S used to say there will be an answer, the Beatles were right.  I wanted always to know what it was.  (I guess in the case of him, that was a good instinct…)

But the larger question, the larger answer, we spend a lifetime trying to find.  I wonder if when we transition from this life, if there’s a blinding moment when it all makes sense, when we finally know the answers.  But I expect not.  I expect that is what the evolution of our souls is about.  A quest, to find answers, to understand, to have some greater comprehension of our place in the world.  Our journey here in this lifetime is only one small part of an eternal, infinite evolution.

I guess the words are coming back to me.  I feel like I’m making a major shift in my life, that my focus will change, is changing.  Sharing what light I’ve found, and seeking more, and being in a position to focus my energy on that quest.  Through friendship, creativity, living in a place full of light and warmth, that will support that quest.

Yes, onward.  I am forever grateful to Elizabeth Gilbert for that word.  Onward.  Let us all become more fully the expression of best selves.

Love and light.

My thoughts are all over the place tonight. The new guy didn’t call, so I’ll scratch him off the list. Not gonna deal with someone who can’t do what they say they will. I’m an Aries, I don’t sit well with just sitting. It was hard for me to learn to sit with my emotions, which I’ve gotten more practice than I ever wanted in the last year. I’m still willing to be vulnerable and put myself out there, but I’m not willing to sit there hanging from a limb, while someone watches for their own amusement.

I managed to consider what to have for dinner tonight, when I left this morning, so my son and I actually had a nice dinner. Take a chicken breast, pound it flat. Spread chive or garlic or whatever your favorite flavor of cream cheese is, in a thin layer. If you want, add some basil leaves, and slice up cherry or grape tomatoes and lay them out on the cream cheese. Roll it up, secure it with toothpicks if need be. Then wrap the roll in a slice or two of bacon. Bake it for 30 minutes or so, maybe 40 if they’re big. One of my son’s favorite dinners. It’s unusual for me to cook much during the week. I try to have left overs and easy stuff for during the week, because I get home so late.

I have my gong meditation tomorrow. It’s been two months for me, I missed them both last month. Boy did I miss them. Looking very forward to spending some time with myself, deep.

I’m excited to get the house on the market. Excited to get this move underway. So much I need to leave behind me. So much I have to look forward to ahead. The line gets clearer every day. Every minute. At work today, at about 4 pm, I just had the hardest time, I just wanted out of there. No reason, the day was fairly easy and uneventful. I am just so done, mentally, with the daily grind.

And I’m done, really, with trying to understand what happened to my life over the last year. How I could expend so much energy and love, care and concern on someone who surely didn’t deserve it, didn’t want it, just took it because it was there. Gave back nothing, absolutely nothing, but lies and deceit and heartbreak. Just tired of the conversations that run through my head, real or imagined. Every day I am stronger. Now, I am able to see at least WHO he is, with clarity. At least, I can make a distinction between the soul, the man I loved so well, and the man he actually is, now, in this lifetime. I gotta feel for him, still. I can’t imagine living the kind of life that so f’d up an Aquarian man, a 7, into someone so self-centered, so self-abusive, so sure that he is not worthy, so sure that he’s inadequate, so sure that the good things that are in all of us don’t apply to him. But I can’t fix it, not gonna try anymore. I tried to convince him otherwise, in the short time I had with him. He slid back to his comfort zone to people who will agree with him and serve him false pity on day old bread, (“Oh Sweetie, don’t worry about it. You can’t help it that you lie and deceive. You’ve had such a hard life.”) Unless he wants to climb out of it, on his own, unless he seeks and listens to someone who is willing to hold his hand through the fire, and find some joy before he leaves this earth, there he will stay. I can’t know what his soul’s journey is. I can’t believe that it is to be so unhappy though. I can’t believe anyone’s soul’s journey is to lie and deceive and see what they can get away with, despite the pain an misery it inflicts. On others, and on himself.

I’ve just had it, trying to wade through that dysfunctional mess. My nature is to find the answers, to understand on a personal and metaphysical level, what happened, why. But some things you just have to let go of, some things it’s just too hard to get an answer. It’s just too non-sensical. Suffice to say, it is over for reasons that may never be understood on a human level. I wish him well, but I am pretty sure he won’t be.

Not to mention, it will be nice to not have to drive by the lake on which I lived for 30 years, and see my old house in the distance, and know my ex is living in the teeny cottage next door, with absolutely no comprehension of what happened to him. I tried with him, but he’s so far gone. He won’t listen to me, just because it’s me saying it. No matter what I have to say. No matter how dire his situation.

Anyway, I’ll be glad, really glad, to be somewhere new, where the experiences, and the memories will all be new, where I won’t have to sweep the cobwebs out of my memory every day.

I am glad my son too, will be somewhere where he can create good memories. Where the ugliness of the past can be left behind. He’s a 3 like me. Trying to share, and spread the light. Always.

Guess that’s it for tonight. I’m falling asleep on the couch again. Love and light.