Tag Archives: peace

Shopping and Sunsets

Posted on by learning to live like water

My sis and I spent the day shopping today. Neither one of us particularly likes to shop, but we both needed many of the same things, so off we went, hoping it would be more fun together. And it was!!

We first went for shoes. I have been wearing flip-flops for over 6 months. Except for the last month maybe, when I’ve switched off to shoes with arch support when I’m going to be on my feet for a long time. And my feet are telling me to quit the flip-flops. I LOVE flip-flops. They are like my trademark. But I bought a pair of athletic sandals to wear when I want to go for a walk. I also bought a nice pair of comfy open toed shoes too, in a kind of silver weave. My sis bought 3 pairs of shoes, lol.

Then I found jeans that fit me actually! I’m very excited about that. I’ve had to wear a belt for so long with my jeans because they tend to slide off of me. I keep tightening up the belt, now I’m on the 5th hole. So I now have 2 pair that aren’t made for teen-agers, but for adults. They are skinny jeans, but come up to my waist, so no more belt!! And they fit my legs tightly as skinny jeans do. Yay! So excited about that. I also bought some undergarments at Victoria’s Secret. I had them refit me because I wasn’t sure what size I needed any longer. It’s TMI to discuss but let’s just say I’ve lost enough weight to drop a couple sizes! And they were buy one, get one half price. We ended the day at Bath & Body Works because everything was on sale there, lol.

When we got home we went to the beach to watch the sunset. It was just amazing. The rest of this will be a pictorial essay on the setting of the sun over the Gulf of Mexico. I will let it speak for itself .

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Hope you enjoyed the sunset.  Love and light everyone.

A Grateful Start to the Day

Posted on by learning to live like water

I had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in days, slept 8 hours and that’s a real feat for me. I suppose the 3 glasses of wine I had while sitting outside with my sister and one of her friends in the evening really helped me to relax. It’s so awesome, to be celebrating TG here. I know, that’s very redundant. I’ve been talking about it for weeks, I think. But each day, I am grateful again as the feeling washes over me.

I made it to the town dock for sunrise this morning. It did not disappoint. Oddly, no one else was there. Perhaps because it’s a holiday, everyone is busy with cooking and planning and getting things ready. It’s slightly warmer here than where I live. And I only life about 30 miles north as the crow flies. But the temps this morning were in the low 60’s instead of high 50’s and it’s supposed to get to the low 80’s. These are some pictures.

I was kind of grateful that no one else was there this morning. It allowed me to do a bit of meditation. To kind of slide into the spirit of the day, the spirit of gratitude. I read these words by Anne Lamott a few days ago on her FB page, and I so loved them. This is a copy and paste of the short post. I think it’s fitting for today. My heart is full of gratitude that my life has turned out the way it has, so far.

” We pray to be mindful of the needs of others. We savor these moments out of time, when we are conscious of love’s presence, of Someone’s great abiding generosity to our dear and motley family, these holy moments of gratitude. And that is grace.”

I hope everyone has a wonderful day, with family and friends. Love and light to all.

Daybreak Ruminations

Posted on by learning to live like water

I arrived at the fishing pier with the first rays of daylight. The sky splotched with gray rain clouds and patches of grayish blue. On the horizon over St. Pete Beach across the bay, the sky is pink. There’s a nor’easterly breeze, strong enough. It’s still balmy, which surprises me. In my old home a nor’easterly wind foretold cold weather.

The tide is very low.  Probably due to the new moon. Tides are always more pronounced when the sun and the moon share the same sky.  The derelict sailboat which broke loose in the recent hurricane sits high and dry on the shore this morning, amid mud flat now exposed. Now I know why I saw someone out clamming one morning, with a rake and hip-waders.

I can see rain falling from some of the clouds offshore. Since the breeze is blowing that way, hopefully they won’t rain on me.

A little slice of day glow pink appears above the horizon where the sun will come up in 15 minutes or so. I have not adjusted to how late the sun rises here, nor how the days are almost exactly 12 hours, and how the difference between the length of a summer day vs. a winter day is about an hour or two. No months where it’s dark at 4:30 in the afternoon, and no 15 hour nights.

Life just continues on in its laid-back way here. Going to watch a local band tonight with friends. We can volunteer to help set up the place and then get in free. I think it will be a good way to meet people anyway.

There were just a bunch of fish jumping, as if being chased. When they stopped, I could see a small dorsal fin sticking out of the water. Maybe it was a small shark, herding smaller fish.

The sun is almost up. It’s been a pleasant, solitary sunrise this morning, though I was greeted with a “good morning” by s few of the fishermen on the pier.

Edited:  it was not a shark, but a dolphin. As I got up to leave it began swimming around the end of the pier. This is as good a picture as I could get.

The day begins, peacefully. Full of gratitude and love to be able to watch the morning unfold.

Love and light…

Letting Go of You, A Little Bit at a Time (A poem)

Posted on by learning to live like water

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Sunrise from the town dock, Longboat Key, Florida

I let it go
On the summer wind,
With the sun in my eyes,
I let it go.

I remembered what we did here.
I remembered how it felt then.
I smiled, and I cried, just a little.
I will always miss what was
and I will always miss what wasn’t.

But letting go is something I’m getting good at.
Knowing that letting go
Opens the space
For something new and wonderful
To come in.

Entering the autumn of my life,
I cling to summer.
So, I go where it is warm,
Where I’ll not be reminded
Of the summer dreams that
turned into nightmares.
Where new dreams will be born.

I wish you love and light,
I wish all good things for you.
Even though we don’t talk,
We talk, on levels we don’t understand.
I still feel you, all the time.
I hope you are happier than what I feel.

Let us both feel good about what was,
Just between us, when there was no one else.
Peace to you. Peace to me.
Love always and all ways.

Peace and Some Blessings

Posted on by learning to live like water

Thank you all for the thought and wishes. They are so much appreciated.

I am oddly at peace today. I am so happy she went peacefully in her sleep. And after my visit to the psychic, in which my father said he was there with her every day, I know she and he are together, that she is whole again, and at peace. She had a long and good life, which she made for herself, and the help of the universe.

She’s being cremated in Florida, and then at some point we will all meet in Virginia where her remains will be buried next to my father. So, there is no rush to get down there, it is simple and easy, just the way she would have liked it.

I am exhausted today. My phone was ringing like crazy this morning, and I had a lot of work to do in the house too. I slept only a few hours last night, but tonight I think I’ll sleep easily. I feel her love wrapped around me like a blanket.

Been thinking so much about what’s important in life, and what isn’t. And really…not much is except the love of your family and friends, and their health and welfare. I hope I go peacefully in my sleep.

I was very glad I’d been to the gong meditation last night. I think it helped me to be in a place to accept. I have done so much of my major healing there, from many things. I am making a conscious effort to stop blogging the painful breakup with S. I really feel it’s over and done, and right now feel there’s nothing more to say about it. Of course…..I have been known to have a random thought that needs working out, lol.

One of the blessings of this blog, aside from being a venue to work out my own thoughts and issues, is the number of friends I have made, from all over the world, and a few close by me, who have experienced the same thing. Unlikely friends, we are united by a common experience. It just goes to show that we are all, really, part of the one great thing.

I had to draw my own conclusions from the information I could glean from such “reliable sources” such as Facebook, my own blogs, trying to sync dates and events. I know that not all the conclusions are correct, or the way it was. When I have found out that I was not accurate, I have tried to own it and make it right.   I do think that the broad strokes of the picture I got and wrote was fairly accurate.  You guys are so great, you have kept me on the straight and narrow when my own judgment was severely clouded, and supported me at times when I felt completely alone.  I am so grateful.

The Biggest Fool

Posted on by learning to live like water

Christmas lights twinkle, and I sit here alone again, watching The Voice, my solitude broken by my son’s intermittent energy erupting into the family room.   I am ok alone, I always have been.

When I was married, I loved being alone.  At least for the last 10 years.  To have peace in the house, not to be dealing with the alcoholic temper, not to be worrying at least for a little while, what was going to set him off on one of his crazy tangents.

My ex is in a bed of his own making.  Renting the tiny cottage next door to the house we lived in for 30 years, he lived there for almost 40.  But it was not too big a change in his address, just one number.  One number in his phone number.  And he can still look out in the morning and see the lake.  I don’t think I could do that, though, see my old house every day that I lost in foreclosure.  I’d want to get away.  But he never did what one might expect.  I’ve known him for 46 years.  I’ve seen the changes that took over him little by little, and turned him into someone I just didn’t love anymore.  I’m not surprised, but saddened at his state.

It still is hard for me to to reconcile the S of the last 8 months with who I thought he was.  I mean, yeah, it’s in my face, and no I don’t want him in any way.  Just seems so incongruous.  I guess there was always a hint of it,  but when he did the prison whore, he couldn’t wait to get it off his chest.  He came to my house and stood up and talked about it, which I know was hard for him, until I understood enough of where he was to believe it was an anomaly and let him back into my life.

But this….he just lied and deceived two women who adored him for so long, for so many months.  Daily, hourly with me, lies.  He knew, he absolutely knew, that we didn’t want any part of a triangle.  I guess I shouldn’t speak for Betty, but from all Scott told me, she didn’t.  He knew for sure that I didn’t.  He once talked about swinging when he was younger… I just looked at him, like how?  How did you do that?

He used to say he wasn’t jealous, and if I had sex with someone else he wouldn’t be jealous.  Only if I loved someone else.  But when I was with A for the short time after the prison whore, and I was coming home from Florida and A was picking me up at the airport, S asked me not to let him sleep with me.  And A fully expected to, he was picking me up at midnight.  I hadn’t seen Scott in about a month, maybe longer, but I’d thought only about him when I was in Florida. We made plans to get together the day after I came back.  I said, we won’t have sex if he does.  S said, “sleeping with someone is pretty intimate.”  So, he pretended he wasn’t jealous to himself, but it was just a shell.  He didn’t want anyone else to be with his woman, whoever it might be.  At least, that’s the guy he showed me.

I don’t remember a break in our texting all summer on Saturday nights when he was with B. Not until I knew about her.  Then I would hear from him Saturday morning til early afternoon and then Sunday when he was alone.  But all summer…I don’t remember thinking where is he, why won’t he answer me, on Saturday night.  He must have taken his phone in the bathroom, or waited til Betty was out of the room.  We’d be texting and sexting as normal….

Damn, he was good.  Gutsy.  But in the end, I’m free of him.  I had nothing but a heart and soul full of love for him to get out of my system. I mean, no long term plans.  Just more desire than I’ve ever had for anyone.   Oh he talked about visiting me in Florida, how much he’d like that, but that was bs, just idle talk to draw me in, if he was with her.  He couldn’t have taken a week off, lol.  I was so angry he wouldn’t go with me in June, after he’d been looking at airfares and making plans.  He would say are you still mad about that?  “Yes”, I’d say for weeks after.  “It was stupid.  We could have had so much fun.  My sister lives in friggin’ paradise (2 blocks from the gulf, with a fenced in yard with lagoon pool) and it would have cost air fare.  We’d have had it alone.  Skinny dipping in the pool, walking the beach at night, we could have found a secluded spot to….”  And he’d go silent, because he couldn’t tell me the real reason, he thought I’d buy his bullshit story.  I never did.  But I sure didn’t think he was with her….

She and I will be ok.  B is attractive, she will find a man who can be faithful to her. I know right now she thinks she’ll never love again, but she will.   I think I can too.  I don’t think all that many men in their 60’s are interested in seeing how many women they can have.  Most of us are sick to death of games by this age.

Oh well.  Don’t know why I’m going here tonight.  Just still trying to see the man as he was, trying to put the pieces together still. I don’t know why.   It’s simple.  He is good at what he does, he fooled me, and he fooled her.  I think, in hindsight, he was probably the biggest fool of all though.

Peace out.  Love and light to all.

 

Believing

Posted on by learning to live like water

In gratitude this morning.  I awoke early as usual, about 5:15.  I felt peace, for a lovely change.  No angst over the past, no worry about the future.

I have a ring with a large larimar stone.  This is the stone of the Caribbean, it’s only found there.  It’s metaphysical properties are tranquility of sea and air to the heart and mind.  It is supposed to soothe and uplift hurt, fear, depression, pain of life and changes, with love.  I bought the ring in St. Thomas when I took my son on a cruise when he graduated from high school.

 

 

The day I was decorating my house for Christmas, at about 5 PM I looked at my ring and the stone had fallen out somewhere.  I had no idea when or where.  I had been digging in boxes of ornaments, and decorations, doing laundry, cleaning, run an errand to the drugstore.  I dug through the boxes I’d been in but to no avail.  While I was sad it was gone, I had a feeling that it would just turn up somewhere.  I don’t know why, I wasn’t frantic, I just thought it would.

Two days later I was at work, and my son called me, that he’d found my stone in the washing machine!  It fell out while I loaded the sheets into the washer.  Now I just have to reset it into the setting and I’ll have my ring back.

This is how I am feeling about my life right now.  It isn’t perfect, but what I want I know is going to come.  And I can let go of the angst, at least for today.  The angst, and all the other negative emotions that the last 6 months have brought me, I just let go.  I almost brought the drama back into my life this weekend, but it wasn’t supposed to happen and didn’t.  I am so grateful for that I can’t even express it.  I am so grateful to have a wonderful life to just settle into, and know that if I just believe, the things I want will manifest.  It has always been so, and will always be.

I remember during my divorce, thinking every day, that what I wanted had already happened, it just had not manifested yet.  I feel this now….the things I want, in the vast expanse of the universe in which there is no space and time, have already happened.  They are waiting for the perfect time to manifest.  I know they are coming.

Breathe in love.  Breathe out all that no longer serves you.

And believe….just believe.

 

 

For Paris, For Us All

Posted on by learning to live like water

The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering)

I keep trying to write something for Paris, but it is too overwhelming for me to have a coherent thought.  I know all our hearts are with the the citizens of Paris, of France, and of humanity, as President Obama said.  We are all connected, nothing affects anyone that doesn’t affect everyone.

Anyone who reads my blogs knows that I am a believer in the power of love.  But here….there was such huge evil intent.  Its inexplicable,

I pray for peace.  I pray for healing. I pray for light to be borne of this darkness.

Making Heartspace

Posted on by learning to live like water

Got my new computer, and partly set up.   So glad to be back on line, but I’m not used to this keyboard yet, lol.

I never heard from S.  I guess he’s not talking to me.  I sent him a last message asking if he’s really never going to talk to me again.  I said, I loved you so much, please don’t do this.

But apparently he’s going to.

I had stop at the store and get cream for coffee in the morning, and I’ve been a little sad all afternoon, once I realized I was checking my email incessantly for a message that wasn’t going to come.  But when I left the store, I had a little heart to heart with myself, and realized that I don’t want to get back with him, I don’t want to have sex with him, I just wanted him to be in my life on some level, maybe because I’m used to having him there.  I will always love him, always miss him, but he’s got to travel his path, whatever it is.  I would have liked to see him once more, just to maybe smooth over some of the really hard parts, and let him go on a positive, or more positive note.  But if it can’t be, it can’t be. He did a lot of damage to me, but I am strong, I’ll be fine.  My door will remain open.  I wish him nothing but love.

I got home, and began to set up my computer, turned on the tv and saw the horrible news from Paris.  So sad, so senseless.  The misery that humans are capable of wreaking on each other is just mind boggling.  Fear and hate.  Just so sad.  My heart goes out to Paris tonight.

I left my phone in another room while I was working on the computer.  When I went to get it, I saw that the man I had kind of expected to talk to last night, had called tonight.  He left a voice mail, and said he’d connect with me over the weekend.  I called him back, and left a short voice mail, so he’d know when I’d be around this weekend.  I liked the energy of his voice at any rate.  It seems that he called within minutes of me coming to terms with the fact that S wasn’t going to respond to my messages, and he’s blocked my phone. I’ve known that holding onto S and A would keep my heart closed to a new man who might be perfect.  I don’t know if this man is it, of course, but i do think that I freed up the energy and the space for the possibility.

Love and light.