Recollection & Renewal

On the eve of 2015, I find my thoughts wandering back into the year behind us, reflecting on all
of the teachers and challenges that found me and that I found this year. Looking back is always bittersweet. Each year there are always unexpected treasures and delights that you could never have dreamed of for yourself and then there are the heartaches that you could not have fathomed would ever darken your doorstep. In both instances, we surface the other side with a greater capacity for love and endurance.

Although, I will always choose love and light and to focus on the gifts and the blessings. This year
did offer so much beauty to focus on, but it did not come without challenging my commitment to remain positive in the face of fear and change.

While 2014 hosted a multitude of absolutely amazing opportunities and adventures, it also presented
several life altering situations. On the side of beauty, we had three new babies in our family both
immediate and extended, with a couple more on the way. We were privileged enough to visit some of our family’s favourite places and were lucky enough to be there with our dear friends and loved ones.
We enjoyed the luxuries of many epic concert experiences, traveling in our motor home,
hosting visiting family and friends, birthday celebrations, accomplished goals, creating new bonds with great friends, experiencing and witnessing the successes in our home and of our beloveds and having opportunities to further nourish life long friendships.

We have had our share of true joy this year but as I mentioned, the joy was even more wonderful when it enveloped us because we were also visited by several challenges that had us counting our blessings and praying for more to come. I have to think that we are coming to an age where health issues are more prevalent amongst our parents and their friends, but also in our own circle of friends.

The year was quite smooth until the summer arrived and one of my dearest friends moved out of province. It is always difficult when a loved one moves away, but it is especially difficult to face when it is someone who is in your day to day life. All of a sudden you wake up one morning and your
living your life without seeing or hearing from that person in the same way that once provided you
a constant sounding board, comrade and partner in coffee and crime. It was a huge adjustment which
took a larger toll than I had anticipated.

My heart was healing when word arrived that a dear friend had suddenly passed away. There
was no warning. It was a freak accident. They were here one day and gone the next. It was shocking, horrifying and totally blindsiding. It was another loss that took a large toll and left a huge hole in our community of friends.  There are no words I can call on to convey how gutted we all were.

This summer was lovely and then again, all hell broke loose. This past fall, in as many weeks, I found out that three of my very dear, beloved girl friends are fighting cancer. Just when you think that you can handle the fear that follows the journey of cancer treatment with one of your nearest and dearest, you find out that wait, you have two friends fighting the fight, but then you wake up one morning to that phone call you just want to believe is a dream or nightmare… but you realize that the reality is that you have three of your own fighting for their lives. Except for the grace of deep rooted strength and not having a choice, you muster up the courage and put on your game face and you go into battle leading the charge. That old saying ‘never let them see you sweat’ should be revamped to say ‘never let them see you sweat, cry, worry or your fear’.

When it comes to life, nothing is as important as good health. Of course there is never a good time to
get this kind of news, but on the heals of these revelations, I was kicked hard when I was down, and was literally disowned by someone I had considered more than a best friend. My family was her family and vice versa, until one day she decided she was ‘done’. You can imagine the emotional challenge; however, there is something very amazing about divine timing. When you are dealing with life and death in such a major way, and then forced to deal with someone’s fickle and flakey dismissal of your love and friendship, it is all put into perspective in a major way, really fast. That said, loss is loss any loss requires and deserves an appropriate amount of grieving. It is what it is and it was what it was… just not what I thought it was. My bad.

With friends coming and going, fighting for their lives, dying, divorcing, moving away, moving closer, losing loved ones, aging parents, launching businesses, buying and selling vehicles and vacation investments with the added blessings and stresses of everyday struggles that are all apart of daily life, to say the least it was an interesting year by any standards, which had me constantly battling the urge to leave the present moment rather than relishing the comfort that one can find when living in the moment.

As individuals we know ourselves. We know what we are capable of handling. By autumn I knew I was about at my limit when even more news of poor health arrived to us, surrounding other loved ones. I knew that I had to stay in the light and focus on the facts and not the what ifs. That is precisely where I have forced myself to remain until treatment strategies and surgeries are behind us. We are still presently in that holding pattern. It makes one feel weak and
useless while literally several of you close loved ones are battling for their life and quality of life, and you are stranded on the sidelines, unable to do anything of consequence.

With all of the goodness of 2014 and the challenges that arrived on the heels of so many blessings, it made it very easy to give deep gratitude for our health, the health of our children and the life that has given us so much to enjoy. Where this past year was so lovely and joyful, it was also extremely emotional and has left us in a state of limbo in many ways. While we hang on for many happy endings, we wait with bated breath as the uncertainty that crept up upon us in 2014 is grandfathered into 2015, despite the lack of invitation.

My hope and focus for 2015 is for good health, not just for myself and my immediate family, but for all of my loved ones and for all of yours. In light of this year and the lessons it brought, I am recommitted more than ever to bring health to the forefront of my life and that of my family’s. It pains me to admit it, but I have not made overall health in every aspect of our lives, the priority that it needs and deserves to be. I try hard and often succeed in being a positive role model for the children in my life, but I know I can do better.

With all of the above information laid out there, it goes without saying that my goal for 2015 is to bring my health to where it needs to be. With all of the details above comes a responsibility to know better and to do better. Life is such a gift but in no way is it a given. There is a fine line between living and being alive, but once you cross that line into living fully, the rewards are ample and they provide a greater experience in an already miraculous world.

My wish for you is to always remain focussed on the light that causes any shadow that finds you. Remember that there are gifts in every challenge despite the anchor of pain that might keep you from immediately realizing it. The gifts are always worth the trials that you sometimes have to endure.

Wishing you love & light in 2015,

t.

The Myth of Love, Friendship & Forever.

With February soon to be here, it is easy to get caught up in the ‘idea’ of love.
Love comes at us from many angles. We love our intimate partners, we love
our sisters, our brothers, we love our children, we love our friends, our pets,
our parents etc… Love. Love. Love.

To know me is to know that I love, love. I can find it in anything and I find it
in everything. I will always choose to see the good in every situation, given
enough time to process the moment. Happiness is a choice and I find joy in
love and light. I love fully or I don’t love. I don’t know half way, it is simply not
apart of my DNA. Negative, skeptical and insecure people usually find this
really annoying. Too bad for them, I say. Must bite to be so miserable, I figure.

Love truly is beautiful and necessary to have in our lives provided that
there are healthy boundaries in place. The moment a line of respect is crossed
you quickly realize that there is fine line between love and hate.

Regardless of the relationship, boundaries broken can create the perfect platform
to host a painful lesson which can and often lead to the discovery that the the way
we think of love is not necessarily a true representation of the reality of how love
actually works.

True love. Those words bring me back to a moment I witnessed this past Christmas.
It was Christmas afternoon and I had been thinking of a loved one who had passed
on, so, I decided to visit the cemetery. I entered into the gates and continued on driving
slowly to the far north end of the yard. I noticed families gathered around headstones.
I saw dozens of newly left poinsettias to honour loved ones gone. It wasn’t long before
I felt the blanket of heaviness that was hovering over the entire place.

Despite the heaviness, I was honoured to be there and to visit my loved one. Did I shed
a few tears? Did I convey how much I wished that they were still here? Of course. I brushed
off the headstone, wished them a Merry Christmas and I slowly walked back to my car saying
a prayer of thanks that I was able to represent a few of us and leave a little love there on what
was a beautiful winter’s day. I was there because I love this person.

As I drove out of the yard, slowly, on the narrow lane, I noticed a woman. She sat in a camping chair
with a child not much older 2 years old on her lap. The child was napping and she was staring off
into the distance in a stare 5 miles long. There was a picnic blanket, toys, snacks, a thermos and
several other items that conveyed to me that they had spent the morning there and that they had no
plans of leaving anytime soon. I was humbled, horrified and heart wrenchingly aware that while I
had been at home with my family, cherishing the our moments together, this woman had been there
‘spending time’ with her late husband. She was there because she is in love.

As I continued driving past, I knew in that moment that I had just witnessed ‘true love’. I have always
believed since the day I met my husband that I know what ‘true love’ is; however, in that moment I
realized that I had been sweating the small stuff a little too often. I try to keep my eye on the prize but
there are moments when I get caught up in trivial things that actually do not matter. I realized that
I am able to better honour the gift of true love that I have, by staying more present. I know that woman sitting there with babe in arms would give anything to forget the small stuff and to be with her beloved for even one minute longer in this life time. Witnessing this scene made me instantly recommit to being fully aware of how and with whom I spend my time with.

Over the past few years, I have spent a great deal of time and care ‘purging’ my friendship circle. Maintaining only the relationships which nourished me and made me a better me. I had decided last year to not allow anyone to treat me with any less respect than I feel I deserve. I made a commitment to myself that I would let people know when their words were cutting or perhaps feeling less than kind or considerate. What I didn’t count on is that by demanding respect and calling people on their words that did not reflect the standard of friendship that I believe any healthy relationship should have, that I would be on the receiving end of a purge, that I, in fact, would be purged.

Of course when this recently happened, I was dumbfounded, side swiped, gutted and deeply hurt on a cellular level when one of my best friends decided that it was time to cut ties with me. At first, I was simply heartbroken. I was sad as I had lost a family member, a sister as far as I was concerned; however, after using my inner circle as a solid sounding board who knew both sides well, I presented the facts as I know them to be true. After a great deal of discussion I  came to realize that perhaps I did not have what it takes to nourish this friend’s spirit. I love this person to this day as much as I ever have. I love her enough to realize that she deserves what makes her happy and if my friendship is not enough for her, than that is just the way it is. I also realized that sometimes, some people do not realize when they are subconsciously saying hurtful things that can only and could only ever be perceived as hurtful. That old saying ‘We know not what we say’, comes into play sometimes.

Sometimes the love you have for a friendship has a shelf life, I have learned. You can love as long as you like, but it doesn’t mean the person you are gifting that love to is always going to want to receive it. We are gifted teachers and challenges on a daily basis. Sometimes a person can qualify for both titles. I have learned a great deal about human nature, authenticity, illusions & love. In some instances, with the huge the help of birthday cards/books, written words and otherwise,
I had convinced myself that I have meant more to certain people than I actually ever did.

I have willingly and happily spent love & energy in a direction that was primarily one way, believing that down the road at some point, some year, that the tides would change and the flow would one day find balance. Well, not everything that we believe will come to fruition actually does. The relationship, one which I can honestly say, I gave my authentic self to in a routinely selfless way, was in my opinion a forever relationship. We spoke of raising our kids together. We discussed what it was going to be like when our families retired together. We annually spent holidays together. We share a lovely group of friends from both sides with whom have been very supportive in a private, ‘please don’t let on that I’ve called you, please don’t repeat this’ kind of way. We will likely find ourselves at parties, vacation spots, etc… together and ultimately we will continue to be in each others
force fields whether we want to be or not. Her friends continue to contact me and my friends remain hers, our husbands are good friends.  Our social circles are simply designed in a way that will see that happen into the future. So… it is what it is and life goes on. We are adults. We have social graces.
It will be fine.

Life goes on. Life unfolds and if witnessing that woman by her husband’s grave on Christmas Day
taught me anything, it taught me that life is too short. Life is too short to hang on to ‘what ifs’ & ‘how comes’.  Onwards and upwards, lessons under the belt and scars to prove we were there and we lived to tell about it. If seeing that woman by her husband’s grave gave me one sacred take away it is the reminder that forever does not exist. We can romanticize the notion of something, let it be love, life or friendship being forever but the truth is that tomorrow is a new day and with it comes new light which will shift the shadows that were there the day before and cast new ones where you never dreamed there would ever be one.

At the end of the day the only love you can count on is the love you give. For reasons that will make sense and sometimes won’t, love can be given, taken and redirected without notice. Forever is an illusion that comforts us in a world where the only thing that stays the same is change.

While the world and Hallmark prepares to insight mass anxiety over the need to be loved, find love, give love, I will quietly remember that love is truly about accepting yourself and those around you for who they are, where they are and why they are. Enjoy what you have, while you have it.
True love is unconditional and lame imitations need not apply. The myth about love, friendship and forever is only cruel if you forget who you are and why we are here... to love and be loved.

love & light,

t.