Life is Your Story

What I would give for one more moment... In the car with my parents and brothers listening to Genesis, Styx, Fleetwood Mac on a family vacation. My  father  at the wheel young and healthy, telling us jokes and my mother at ease by his side loving life, loving us and forever  moving  forward with her hand closed around mine. Friday night dinner with my grandparents, at the table looking around at all of our faces and listening to our stories, laughing, smiling  already  having learned  the  art of treasuring every moment as if it is your last.  The first time I fell in love without questioning that love, without feeling like I was falling but like I was floating, rising above everything to a place of wonderment and acceptance; a place that felt like no other.                       In the country walking, running with all of the dogs that have enriched my life, and shown m...

I couldn’t sleep. I found myself sitting on the side of the bed, negotiating with the hurricane that had blown through my life. I made my way to an all-night diner for people like me who find themselves wide awake while everyone else sleeps. All members of a club with no name and only one rule, "Don't judge me and I won't judge you." I was in need of a gentle hand stroking my back.  I needed to hold someone and be held. I needed to spend time with someone who knew nothing about me and who wouldn't ask the questions everyone asks. I needed someone to stay without leaving and leave without staying. I needed a bright shade of blue upon my weeping, blank canvas. Two stools down the counter, sipping coffee and reading  an old messed up copy of “Beautiful Losers” by Leonard Cohen, sat a man with a face chiseled and shaped by the greatest artists of all time. He was wearing a white t-shirt, faded Levi's and Converse shoes. His arms were graced in tattoo...

When I was a kid, my "happily ever after" (hereafter noted as "HEA") consisted of marrying my Ken doll (G.I. Joe was a close 2 nd ) and moving to Colorado where we would build a log home  without  a picket fence and have mountain children and a goat named Ed.     Then I went off to elementary school and when I was in that pivotal role of a 6 th  grader – not quite a child, not quite a teenager, I changed my mind and my HEA became  marrying a Veterinarian and having 5 dogs instead of 5 children and naming them Gus, Spade, Hank, Jack and Wilbur. High school came along and my HEA became me and my friends moving to California and living together in one of those houses by Venice Beach. We would run a taco stand on the boardwalk and play guitar and drink beer by a bonfire at night. Then I made my way to University and all my HEA became – "What am I going to do with my life and how am I ever going to be able to move out of my parent’s...

Strength keeps you standing even when the ground beneath you is crumbling. When something traumatic happens in your life, the blow can be so severe, that you find yourself knocking on a friend's door, asking if you can borrow some of their strength. And as you stand with your heart in your hand, and an aching pain in your gut, you are fully aware that you may not be able to return that strength, for some time. Strength allows you to focus on the middle rather than the beginning or the end. Strength is what gets you from here to there. There will always be a demand for strength. There will never be a demand for weakness.  Just keep in mind that weakness usually shows up first. It's up to you whether strength shows up next.

People fall apart when they lose a sense of who they are or come to the realization of who they are not. Some people never delve this deep and never really change. They glide through life on a straight line - wax on - wax off. People who lose themselves are also people who look for themselves everywhere and in everyone they meet. They look in all the right places and they lose themselves in all the wrong places. Some of them eventually do find themselves and that allows them to settle down and walk that straight line. While others flip and flop and fly and crash and repeat the process again and again to no avail. They are tired, worn souls and although both they and their loved ones wish they could follow a straight line; they don't know how -mostly because they can't see straight. What makes people fall apart? Well sometimes they feel alone without support, love or empathy and other times they aren’t alone rather they are surrounded by people who care for them deeply; ...