Tag Archives: faith

happiness

Quiet moments 

We spent the evening stabilizing our family. It’s not perfect, but we balance each other well. It brings us back into harmony with our true selves. 

I feel so insecure with all I’ve learned from Ayurveda. But when things like this happen and I realize all our coping skills come from what I’ve learned I am reminded of how it has saved my life. The meditation, grounding foods, self care – all of it comes from my studies. It was a huge gift that was sent to me at exactly the right time. I am so grateful for that. 

The evening was spent with young people in and out of the house. Laughter, popcorn, snow, spaghetti and meatballs,tv, and love. All so simple. That’s what I’ve really discovered over the last couple of years – the more simple we make our lives the richer they are. We are less stressed, we live in the moment more, we enjoy nature. Thoreau was right. Simplify, simplify, simplify. 

My happiness moment was feeling the peace and the love in our home. We have worked hard to create a safe environment here and it truly is where we come to heal. 

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Grounded in love

We are in crisis, there is no other way to put it. Full out, white knuckle, crisis. We have been in crisis for years where our security and safety was an issue, then the upset of my dad dying, the divorce and all the ache that has brought, and then we circled right back to the safety and security issue, to the crisis and the well being of a child. 

You need to feel safe in order to be able to heal. Because the issue of safety is treated like a game, healing continues to be almost impossible. We have made lots of steps ahead, but things like what happened to my boy last weekend come along and it’s enough to flatten him. Whether the threat is real or not, his fear is. This is the aftermath of living with a narcissist who rages and destroys safety. Crisis. And I can’t just wave a wand and fix it. 

This is a happiness blog, and this blog has pulled me through some real shit and it will continue to. Happiness isn’t always laughter and Disney animals. Sometimes it is remembering to look for the rainbow in the storm. 

We are at the gym, the girl and I were on the treadmills and the boy is playing basketball with friends. It’s happiness. It’s happiness because we are home, we are rooted, we have a community, we have support. We are grounded in faith, we are grounded in love. That gives hope, and happiness can come from hope. 

So those of you who read this, please pray  or send healing light for my little family. We need some extra support right now. Thank you ❤

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Family Day 2017

My understanding of what a family is has certainly changed over the years. I so badly wanted what I considered a traditional family – mom, dad, kids, dog, cat, horses, happiness. That didn’t work out so well for me. We are our own little family, and a pretty happy and functional one at that, but it wasn’t how I had imagined life would turn out.

Being a single – or solo – parent is hard work. There has been so much emotional turmoil that we all have gone through and the recovery and healing from that is substantial. At least one time a day something comes up that triggers some kind of pain in my children (or in myself), and sometimes it takes all the strength I have to deal with it. And I have to deal with it always as the only adult in the household – which means no one to bounce ideas off of, to discuss strategies with, to lean on.

I have discovered the three of us have incredible strength.

I feel like we celebrate the fact that we are a family all the time, but today is Family Day and it makes me appreciate what we have even more. Even with the hard times (or maybe because of the hard times) we are so incredibly close. I have a relationship with my children that is better than anything I could have ever imagined.

That is what real happiness is.

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Sharing meditation

Both the boy and I have had some pretty intense bouts with anxiety. I decided a few years ago that I was willing to do anything I needed to in order to stop the constant panic attacks I was having (ironically that has lead to my living a completely different and happier life now than the one I was trapped in back then, funny how that works). I have had to learn many different coping skills, as has my boy.

One of the greatest things we both do is meditate. I hate it – I love it. Sometimes it is so very difficult to force myself to sit quietly with myself, with my Source for 20 minutes and just be. But after I do it I always feel so much better. And the more consistently I do it, the more it pays off in my every day life.

The boy texted me today that he was having some anxiety triggers come up. Before I could suggest anything he told me he was heading off to meditate. When he was done he not only told me how much better, calmer, more grounded he felt – but he sent me the link of the meditation he did on YouTube and told me that I needed to do it as well. I can’t believe that my 15 year old boy sends me meditation links. I love that. All of the work we have done to learn how to make ourselves feel secure and grounded is paying off. He knows how to identify the feelings of anxiety and is learning how to calm them.

I have been feeling a little anxious the last few days as well, and I have been doing much the same thing  – meditating, calming, grounding, laughing with friends.  It is a world away from the helpless feelings of panic and fear that I felt years ago. I still get fearful, I still want to panic, but I have this deep sense that I am doing exactly the right thing, I am doing what I need to do, following my dharma.

That is happiness.

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Tears in the wind 

For the first time in ages I took my Dotted Dog out for a walk along the ridge. It was still pretty windy, and a little muddy and icy, but it was certainly nice to get outside and spend some healing time in nature. It’s been a few months since I have done this particular walk and I forgot that as soon as I got to the spot where we had scattered some of Dad’s ashes I would have to stop and cry. It was blowing so hard that the wind took away my tears almost as soon as they were out of my eyes. I wonder how much longer it will be before those tears come without warning. Dad would have loved the walk along the ridge tonight.

I go on all the time about how happy I am that we are home and how much I love it here – but seriously… look at this place. I am grateful every moment of every day that God brought us back where we belong. We are home, we are safe, we are loved.

Today I met with an agency to discuss children who could participate with Celebrate Every Child. I had to give a little talk about myself and how it was that the idea, the dream, for this project came to be. It was pretty emotional as I had to put myself back where we were a year ago when we were in such a scary and uncertain place. I had just filed for divorce, our finances had been completely cut off, I was in the process of discovering so many painful things about the life I had been living. I had to go back even before that to the life we lived where there was so much pain and fear, so much hurt and sadness. And then I got to talk about how my tribe stepped in and helped me and my kids when we were at our bottom, when we had nothing. I got to talk about how the kids and I were now at the point where we wanted to pass on some of the blessings we had received.

They loved my idea of giving birthday parties to children who because of family circumstances would not get one, they agreed that every child deserves to be celebrated. I am one huge step closer to seeing this dream become a reality. This is such huge happiness I am at a loss for words to explain how grateful I feel. I think this is something that can make a big difference to children who really need some happiness in their lives.

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The race marked out for you

The sermon at church today was about the race marked out for you. Meaning we are all here to run our own individual race, we can’t run someone else’s race, can’t run ours the way someone else does, can’t compare our results to that of the other runners. Our journey is ours alone to walk with God and we have to listen to how He wants us to walk it. 

This was big for me as I have spent years trying to live my life to make others happy – even when I knew that it was causing my own soul pain and taking me away from my spiritual path. These past few months I have really felt things like up in a way that they never have before and I’m feeling like I’m walking the right path. Honestly, a lot of it has to do with my decision to not give a f*ck about all the things that used to bug me. They were all distractions from my journey and took so much time and energy away from what I need to be doing. 

I’m finding I make myself go to church lately even when I don’t feel like it because his sermons always seem to hit exactly what I am struggling with at that moment. I consider our decision to start attending regularly last fall one of my greatest blessings. It has opened doors and put me back on my path. 

Happiness 

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Laughs and love 

I and an early morning email that pushed me much further towards seeing Celebrate Every Child come to life. It’s funny, I decided I wanted to see this impossible dream come to life, and by completely disregarding the how and just moving ahead on faith it seems to all be falling into place. That is love in motion, that is happiness. 

I had lunch with an old friend who has been dealing with very similar issues in the last year. We get each other because we’ve known each other forever, but also now because we have seemed to found ourselves on paths that not a lot of other people seem to be on. And the fact that we are both horse crazy allows us to talk horse without anyone rolling eyeballs. That is laughter happiness. It’s also love happiness. We talked about how important our tribe is and how we would never be able to hold it all together without the support of our people. 

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Filling up your soul 

Yesterday’s sermon was all about how to get your soul  refilled when you have completely drained it. It was very timely as I went into church feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. Honestly if we hadn’t needed food I wouldn’t have even gone to town or church. But we did and so there we were. 

Always the right thing at the right time. A reminder that sometimes I need to get completely emptied so that I can surrender and allow the miracles to happen. 

Since then I have had people step up and quietly fill my soul, all without me saying or doing anything. It’s pretty awesome. 

We had a ton of snow today and while it made for some crazy driving, the girls had a blast playing outside in it tonight. That was happiness. 

Seeing the beautiful winter wonderland we live in, that’s also happiness. Knowing my soul is being cared for… extreme happiness. 

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In our own way

We have been really struggling in our healing process the last couple of weeks in our little family. I’m not sure why it is now that these issues are here, but they most certainly are. 

The kids have had several memories pop up bringing with them lots of questions and it’s meant a serious dose of anxiety for all three of us. 

Interestingly, not long after they started coming to me with questions and memories I found an old journal. It was one I wrote during the time we had the fight that ended our family (as it is now called). Sometimes I feel like maybe I’ve over exaggerated some of the things that went on in ourbhome, like time has made them more extreme than they were. Well, let me tell you… that is not the case at all. It was incredibly painful to transport myself back in time and relive the hurt, fear, terror, confusion, and many other things that were swirling around at that time. And to know that it went on for years… that this is the childhood they look back on… breaks my heart. 

Sometimes (like all the time) I feel like we should be over it all ready. We are home, we are safe, we should be fine. And yet we are not. One little thing happens and someone is triggered and we have to hold on for our lives to keep our balance. 

And then I remember that this is our healing journey. No one else is living it besides us, no one else gets to determine the path it takes. I’m learning every day to have faith that we are exactly where we are supposed to be. It’s tiring and tearful and I want to just be done with it, but we need to honor the process and give thanks that we are in the healing part of it. 

Happiness tonight was watching the boy play his basketball game. Every time he’s out there I see his confidence grow. He is such an amazing young man and has incredible strength. It brings me such joy to see him finding himself, knowing that he is in a faith filled spiritual journey of his own. 

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Girl talks 

I had a very pleasant unexpected afternoon out with my girl today. We had some errands to run in the city and while we were there discovered we were hangry and near Mercatos. We decided to have a little pre-birthday dinner (or for her a post-birthday dinner). 

I realized while we were sitting and chatting that we don’t do this kind of thing often enough. We get one on one time after school but it’s often rushed and filled with errands. 

To sit just the two of us at a table and enjoy a meal that I neither had to prepare nor clean up from has not happened in a long time. 

Without meaning to, our conversation got deep. She’s got a lot going on in that preteen soul and it was an honour to get to see a little of that. She’s a pretty amazing little human and has really learned a lot about people and relationships. I continue to be impressed by her. 

It was a delightful meal, there is a certain kind of happiness that you get when you break bread with someone you love. Deeper happiness was our conversation. I treasure that and I’m grateful that she trusts me enough to let me in. 

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