Room For Change: Your Footing Back Home

Like the prodigal son, grief sends us to unknown places. We may splurge on time alone or be insistent to be with others continuously.  We may splurge on items we never owned before or be insistent on keeping every item from the past.  We may splurge on thoughts of the past and be insistent on keeping things the way they were to hold onto the footing and balance we again insist , was perfect.

I am returning home.  After almost 7 years of widowhood, moving 3 times and challenging myself to meet new opportunities and others, I have moved again to Atlanta.  No, Atlanta is not a place I ever laid my head, but it is one that resonates for me at this point in time.  In this move, I am not anxious to find all the stores and facilities right away.  I am not anxious to be in traffic finding my way around the new town and fresh opportunities. 
This time, I am listening to the birds in the morning, watching the sunset at night and slipping into bed early.  I have returned “home” to a sweet rhythm and received love unconditionally again.   It is that I have accepted myself as I am: a single, maturing woman with flaws and gifts.  

Death, loss and change of environment can send us spinning. Like the child game” Pin the Tail on the Donkey”, there are guides to call us back home during grief. Though your eyes may be covered your footing back home is on the horizon. Accepting what is today can broaden your path to your “new” redesigned home with its door wide open.

Giving thanks for what was and now giving thanks for what is, is a solid footing for growth through grief. I think will sprinkle some recycled glass along my new sidewalk and light a candle for you on your journey.

Blessings.  Susan

Room For Change:Accepting Your Loss, Accepting Your ABUNDANCE

I am coming up on the anniversary of my two daughters leaving home and onto their own careers and the death of my husband. I turned fifty that year as well.  Welcome to an upturned world.

Today, through no single act, but the compilation of encouraging moments and defeats and the victories and struggles, I felt release.   Release in that I no longer needed to carry those past roles around with me, release that I am not what I thought I was and release knowing today I am who I am today.

Accepting my loss now also means accepting my changing body and my deepening facial furrows.  I would love to say it is from all the smiling in my past loss, but mostly from frowning and resisting the place I was in, or perceived to be.

Today it hit me, as I was lingering in the shower, that accepting my abundance was the key to my accepting my perceived losses.  It really hit me.  For years I tried to give so much away because I felt unworthy of the abundance I had.  I  described myself as above average in height, intelligence and looks.  Blessed with a fantastic family and friends I hid my abundance with others.  I down played the beauty of it all.

It's like that light under the bushel.  There is release in me experiencing this feeling right now, in the present, in this instant, maybe not forever,  but in this instant.

 

I promise to get dressed before I leap outside and shout, thank you to the universe for all that you present ed to me in my changes and through grief( the terry cloth towel with the pulled threads is not abundant enough to cover my derriere as I sprint outside) but shorts might do!

Sending you abundance in thought and love in your loss.

Susan

Room For Change: BOLD. EXPERIENCE.

Having just returned from a Hay House conference at sea, called " I can do it!",  I took one of the scattered ideas afloat this past week and put it into practice today.   I simply moved.  I put my yoga pants on, with a jacket and gloves loaned by another, with colors of disharmony and took my first run-walk of this year.

Any motion is good motion and so I completed my one new practice.

 Keep Moving

Experiencing grief, whether the loss of dreams, loss of physical abilities, loss of health or loss of a relationship places creates a void , an empty space in your puzzle of life.  What now?  Where can I find that piece that will fit in exactly to make it whole again?


It is almost like the square puzzle with the numbers which you shift around , bombarding one next to another, shoving one up , another sideways, another into the corner.  With patience, order or balance is received and perceived.

Finishing my run-walk I cooled down on a side street.  There was debris from a remodeling being done in the neighborhood.  Cracked and dusty sheet rock wedged along an old toilet and sink.  On top, resting in perfect balance at the pinnacle of rubble was a bathtub box, with the words... BOLD. EXPERIENCE.

Hmmmmm.   I looked around for more clues to this morning message.  Next on the same side of the street was a red fire hydrant, followed by a reflecting stake, driveway, then mailbox, then reflecting stake.
( there is no quiz of order to follow,,, just breathe... grin)

Okay, my visual mind recouped the pattern, the journey, the order of all things even in the experience of loss.

The message received was in the rubble of experience, in the remodeling of your life, be bold, experience it all, there are others to help you put out fires and guide posts along the way reflecting the goodness and light back to you and you must simply open that box to receive.   Just like that mailbox, sometimes we have something to send out, but in loss and grief you may not be able to send very much.  Be open to receiving from others and be bold in this experience.  There are invisible guides along the way.

May your light, even if a spark, be reflected in grand ways today.  Be bold and receive.  Sending you love,

Susan