Tonight's post is about gratitude. I feel grateful for you. I feel grateful for all of my readers. I feel grateful for the positive feedback I receive in person or by email or facebook message. What are you grateful for? What are the good things in your life? Don't just read my gratitude posts, this post is a call to action too. Before you go to bed/start your day, take the time to list some of the wonderful things that are happening in your life. If you're feeling down or ill, go simple. A comfy bed? A warm home? Fresh food? A warm cup of tea? Pain relief? What ever is making your day a little easier. xx If your kids are in bed asleep, why not sneak in and watch them for a few moments? This always helps warm my heart if I'm feeling a bit tired and cranky. Then go to bed if you're tired and cranky! Take care of yourself; getting enough sleep is essential, especially if you're taking care of others. If you're feeling good already, get specific and get detailed and feel how good life really is. Most nights when we sit together to eat tea as a family we like to share what we are grateful for or what our favourite part of the day was. Looking for the good in life brings us together as a family and helps us remember how lucky we are. Sometimes we learn a little more about each other too. I am grateful for the recent rain. The animals enjoyed the rain too. I love finding these scenes in the yard. Living by the beach is such a blessing. I am truly grateful for her beauty and wonder. Til next time xx
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I have had a rough few days.
A challenging conversation I experienced a few weeks ago was still hanging around in my space. It was quite painful and confusing to face at the time, although I tried to take it as a bit of a learning opportunity and move on. It turned out I hadn't really moved on at all. I still felt quite a bit of anger and confusion at the person but I didn't really want to say anything to them. The person hadn't really done anything wrong. They had expressed an opinion different to mine and I had felt icky inside and like I wanted to speak up...but I didn't. I went to bed last night stressing about it and I had a nightmare, seemingly unrelated, and I woke up with a burst blood vessel in my eye. Again, seemingly unrelated. I'm pretty sure these days that nothing is really that unrelated It was time to face this doozy...pushing it down wasn't helping me at all. I decided I would write a letter to the person but I wouldn't send it. I would use the letter to get all of my feelings out and hopefully find some clarity. No, I'm not going to post the letter on my blog :-p About half way through I was furious. I had so much anger and hurt. I needed to do more than write. I needed to do something physical. It was ninja time. I karate chopped and ninja kicked and punched the air until I started crying. I could feel that stuck emotions releasing. I knew if I kept at it I would come out the other side. In a couple more minutes, I did. I felt better. I took deep breathes. And I wrote a little more. I needed to ground myself so I rugged my daughter up and we headed to the beach, in dire need of fresh sea air and renewing energy. It was a lovely antidote. We walked on the jetty. We cuddled and kissed. We laughed. I took some photos while she practiced her stair climbing. I watched and listened to the waves and it was like they washed away the last fragments of my anger and confusion. And then I was exhausted. I hoped on the drive home that my daughter would nod off. I knew I didn't have the energy to battle a defiant two year old if she didn't want a nap. A minute away from our home, she was asleep. I carried her into bed and I napped for an hour as well. I woke up feeling loads better. I feel like I've kinda moved on from anger and confusion to a kind of sadness which still feels like progress. Self care is so important. Don't push stuff down. Make time to express your emotions. Feel them. Let them out. Take time out for you, however you can get it. Sometimes it takes a bit of creativity, I know! Here's a pic of me and my little girl. I have a tear stained face and my bashed up eye and she is shining bright like the beautiful star she is. We all shined that bright once too. Don't put your light out for anyone. xxx Please welcome the super inspiring Christine Long from Scattering Stars Art for today's guest post. Christine offers a rich plethora of tools, resources, insights and inspiration to help you create your dream life. Today she shares with us the importance of our connection to Higher Power within the context of a significant relationship. Enjoy! 'Me’ out of ‘We’: the importance of meditation within a relationship. When I fell in love with my fiance after being single for over 12 years, it was a predictably blissful time ~ life-affirming, invigorating, soothing, happy and serene. It took no effort at all to feel happy, serene, secure, centered! We spent all our free time together, I was always with him. I wanted to be with him every waking moment! That kind of put a dent in my meditation practice. I’d been meditating daily for all of the years I’d been single. But now, here was this other wonderful thing filling my time, and I loved it! I started meditating during my lunch breaks, and held on, waiting for time to smooth things out. Then, I lost my job. On the heels of this, he was injured on the job, and taken off work until surgery could be scheduled through the complicated red tape of workers’ comp (it took months). Suddenly, we had plenty of time to be together. Bill was not into daily meditation~ and the challenge for me to find time for solitary meditation increased dramatically! At first, I was at a loss how to fit in the time alone, to meditate, when we were always together, enjoying so much being together? We were so compatible, and it was so FUN to be with him! It seemed more important, sweeter, more enjoyable to just be with him as much as possible and I let my long-held meditation practice slide. The upshot? Less serenity, a sudden increase in sleepless nights, more negative feelings popping up that I couldn’t control well. I would be fussy and critical for no reason, a sure sign that I was getting out of touch with the connection between DivineLove and me! Sleepless nights, when I’d always slept so well, and a head full of ugly, petty, critical thoughts? Ok, now I really had a big incentive to find time for meditation! I could see very clearly how important it REALLY was (is) to take that time alone with DivineLove. With that new clarity and defined priority, I was suddenly able to find time for meditation! It was pretty much like magic, really from then on, I could find time to meditate for at least 20 minutes, every day. There’s rarely been a problem keeping this date between my Maker and me. Make up your mind and you make it happen. The thing is, the more something is a priority to you, the easier it is to find a place for it in your life. This is how it is with everything, even the things we look at and think, “that can never happen for me!” Yes, it can. If you make something a priority, and Believe in its importance, it will eventually find its place in the flow of your days. Maybe not right away (if you have a newborn baby on your hands, you just hold on until things let up, some). Maybe you’ll have to work towards a solution. But it can happen. Strengthen your belief that, “I DO deserve this time of solitude for myself, and DivineLove wants this time alone with me, too! Therefore, the way will be found!” It will happen for you, and everyone around you will benefit from it, not just you. You can check out Christine's fabulous shop and blog here, Scattering Stars Art. |
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