admin, Author at Adulting: Second- Half

Another NHP

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

I think that the blog could use another light-hearted “no horse pucky” story, so here it is:

Earlier this week, I had my annual OB/GYN appointment. (this is the point where I lose most of my guy readers – I understand) When the nurse took my blood pressure, it turns out that it was slightly elevated. Now typically, I have really good blood pressure. Once, when I was giving blood, my blood pressure was so low that the nurse taking my blood quipped, “Are you dead?” Knowing this about myself, I implored my gynecologist’s nurse to take my blood pressure on my other arm. It still came up a tad high. Now, truthfully, the nurse wasn’t all that concerned, and neither was the doctor. I wish that I could say that this indifference was the same for me. I had just drunk a bucket’s worth of coffee right before the appointment, and I admittedly, was a little nervous about my appointment, in the first place (despite being 50 years old and having given birth to four children, they still have to beg to me “scooch down a little further, come on now, just a little further” to the edge of the table, every single time). Coffee intake and “white coat syndrome” are known to cause elevated blood pressure. I know this. I have experienced this before. But still . . . .

After the appointment, I headed to the grocery store. I had tried to put my “higher than usual blood pressure” out of my mind, but the truth is, I was sitting in the meat department, staring at my phone, and “telemedicine-ing” with Dr. Google. I once had an employer who was a neurotic, blood pressure fanatic. “I can’t let myself stroke out!” she would emphatically shriek on a weekly basis, putting her hands up to her neck and sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth (this is completely true – no horse pucky). Truth be told, standing in the grocery store, I was starting to freak out, that I was in fact, “stroking out”, with the visual of my previous boss growing exponentially in my mind. This is when I decided to calm down and to sing along with the grocery store music, and to focus my mind on the seven or eight items that I needed for dinner. I didn’t even grab a shopping cart. I just winded around the grocery store, juggling bread, and fish, and a bag of salad and few other items. Then, I passed the pharmacy department. This is when I got an “aha” moment or perhaps divine intervention, when I laid eyes on their glorious blood pressure monitoring machine.

There was a woman sitting by the machine, and there were two empty seats on the opposite side of the blood pressure monitoring machine. “Oh wow, are we still allowed to use this?” I asked the woman who was sitting by the machine and who must have been waiting for a prescription. I was concerned that Covid may have rendered the machine untouchable, but I didn’t see any yellow tape or Mr. Yuk stickers on the machine.

“I think that you can use it,” the lady by the machine said. (not that she really had any kind of authority on this, but I was happy to take her word for it.)

I was thrilled. I dumped my pile of groceries on the empty chairs on the opposite side of the machine, and I sat myself decidedly and comfortably, in the plastic throne of the blood pressure monitor. It is then that I decided to close my eyes, and I took five long, deep breaths to center myself. I put my arm in the cuff, and I put my mind in Nirvana. When I opened my eyes, I was delighted to see that my blood pressure was 117/73. It was such a gratifying, comforting relief to see those numbers on the screen. I turned to the woman waiting for her prescription and I smiled and I bragged. She nodded kindly (we both had masks on, but I am pretty sure that she was smiling and happy for me). Then I turned to the chairs, in order to grab my groceries, but alas, they were gone. The chairs were empty. No groceries. Nada.

“My groceries are gone! Where are my groceries?!” I asked the lady waiting by the machine.

“Oh yeah, a worker did come by and pick those up,” the lady said, non-chalantly.

“What?!” I looked at her astonished and perplexed. I could feel my blood pressure rising exponentially, at that very moment. But then, I decided it just wasn’t worth my health and my sanity to pursue any further conversation with this woman. I went around the store and I grabbed some more groceries. I did end up tweaking what I decided to purchase, though. I substituted a bag of chocolate chips for the fish. If I am going to stroke-out anytime soon, I want to make sure that I really enjoy every last bit of my life. My prescription for myself: More chocolate, less panic. (but wait, chocolate has caffeine in it, too, right?!)

Tall Mountains and Starry Nights

When we are taking our evening walks, my husband often talks about how wonderful it would be, to gaze at all of the stars at night, if we didn’t have so much light pollution. Scientists have figured out that there are about as many stars in the sky, as we have grains of sand on all of the Earth’s beaches. That hardly seems possible. But when I saw this picture, the possibility became more real:

Photos of Silk Road on Twitter: "A starry night in Bamyan, Afghanistan, Silk Road. http://t.co/diSn3l6Ozt #silkroad http://t.co/42zppkwZpU"

This is what a typical starry night looks like in Afghanistan. When I stumbled upon this picture, I could hardly believe that it was real, and I was equally aghast at where it was taken. There are thousands of pictures on the internet of Afghanistan’s beautiful, starry nights.

Haiti Travel Guide - Beach Travel Destinations

This is a picture of a beautiful land that was the first land in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, sixty-five years before the United States did the same (which, when you think about it, is equivalent to practically a whole generation of freed people). This is a stunning picture of Haiti.

Where there are people and places on this Earth that are deeply hurting and full of fear, we can pray for these people and places, and we can give to honest charities that are helping the innocent people in these places, but we must also hold these innocent people and these places in high esteem, so that they remember how truly amazing and beautiful and strong and unique and needed, they are in this world. In order for anybody, or anything, to rise from the rubble, to overcome grief and pain and fear, they must have hope. Hope comes from an intrinsic belief in oneself, and our individual and our community abilities to rise from any challenge. Hope is a beacon of light that we must keep as bright as the starry nights of the darkest night in Afghanistan. Hope gives the overreaching views from the summit of the tallest mountain in Haiti, Pic la Selle (the third tallest mountain in all of the Caribbean islands), by showing the country in a whole different perspective – a God’s eye view, perhaps.

Hurt people hurt people. Many times hurting people have lost the innate knowledge which hope gives to the rest of us. Hope is knowing that we are so much more than what our little, naked eyes see, and what our computer-like, analyzing minds like to process in roundabout, insolvable puzzles. When we look and we gaze upon others, as if they have the power of the greatest Love inside of them (because they do, we all do), they are reminded of just how truly amazing and powerful they actually are, when they take off the shackles and the shrouds of their own warped perspectives of fears, and of isolation, and of helplessness. We must help the hurting peoples and lands of our world, with acts of kindness and charity and compassion, but we must also gaze upon them with a knowingness that helps them to remember of just how incredible they really are, and what amazing feats they are capable of, and that their intrinsic worth is their birthrights, from the moment that they took their first breaths as innocent newborn babies. We must remind them with our wise knowingness, that when the Love inside of them is made the only leader in all that they do, they are eternally invincible and full of hope. In the meantime, to hone our own skills, we can practice this wisdom on ourselves and on those right around us. Let’s let Love lead the way in all of our lives. Love has all of the answers. Usually it’s easier to remember this fact, when gazing at the stars, or looking all around at all of the magnificent views from the tops of sturdy mountains. That’s because when we gaze at the wonder of the stars and of the mountains, we are looking at them through the lens of our deepest Love. Let’s try using that lens on everyone and everything. Imagine the beauty to behold!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

A Few Dos and Don’ts

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

In light of working on my self-care, I have yet another routine annual health appointment this morning. (All is going well, and I think that my body appreciates the love and attention. Self care goes beyond just getting your vaccinations, friends.) Therefore, I am borrowing from other writers/creators this morning.

My husband and I were watching Vikings last night and we stopped the show and rewound the scene depicting this quote by the Viking, Ragnar Lothbrok, several times. With all of the turmoil and chaos happening around the world these days, this quote speaks the truth like no other:

“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best . Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up.”

And this is my favorite chapter from the excellent book by Matt Haig, called The Comfort Book:

And I will end today’s post with an amazing truth spoken by an incredibly inspiring woman. Despite getting “the golden buzzer” on America’s Got Talent for singing a beautiful song that she wrote herself, she recently had to drop out of the competition because her body is being ravaged by cancer. Here is a link to her performance of “It’s Okay” by Jane Marczewski, also known as Nightbirde:

“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” – Nightbirde

Peaceful Monday

“The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another. The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed.” – The Law of Thermodynamics

When you get really quiet and still, such as when you are involved in meditation or in a listening prayer state, or at a point where you choose to completely surrender to what is happening right in the moment to the degree that you lose all sense of time, you are connected to the part of you that will never, ever disappear. When you are in that detached, peaceful state of awareness, you come to understand what is eternal. This awareness doesn’t have thoughts, although it has all-knowingness. This awareness energy just notices thoughts, like it notices bodily sensations, without naming or judging anything. It just lovingly notices all that is going on right in the very moment. This deep, eternal part of you, is peace and love beyond understanding. It cannot be touched by fear, or by worry, or by desperation. It is untouchable, indestructible and everlasting. This awareness energy is always available to you. Today you can choose to stay with the realest, deepest, most undisturbed energy that lies within you, or you can stay mired in all of the scary news of the day. Use your feelings as a navigation system. What feels better – obsessively scrolling through the negative news feeds and trying to make intellectual sense of it all, or staying connected to the very, now moment, in which you are breathing, and in which you are completely okay? What state is your body in, when you are mired in fear and anger and distress? Is it tight muscles with cold extremities? What state is your body in when you are calm and connected to your inner peace? Is it warm and soft? We don’t want to believe that peace is a choice, but it is. As I have written recently, peace is a practice. But it is a worthwhile act. Peace is a practice of noticing what is always there, and always available to us, deep below the surface.

When you realize that you have this untouchable awareness inside of you, you come to realize that every other living thing has this same exact awareness inside of them, too. You come to realize that this awareness is what binds you to every other being for eternity. You come to realize that it is this very continual awareness that creates, and yet also experiences Creation. You come to realize that this peaceful, knowing awareness is what makes all of us One. So that if you think that you are hurting or attacking another, you may bruise their bodies, or their egos, but you can never destroy their Awareness, and nor can they destroy yours. And even more so, how silly it is to try to destroy that which is a very part of you, and that what is eternally indestructible.

I know that this is deep for my blog on a Monday. It is fun to start the week off on a joke, like I typically do on Monday-Fundays. But it is strength to start the week out on the right foot, by making peace a practice. When peace is your practice, you can laugh and you can cry, but at your core, you remain in tranquil bliss forevermore.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Hello, loves. I am happy that you are here with me. Welcome to Soul Sunday. On Sundays, I wax poetic. I write a poem or I share a poem by another poet. I think that poems open you up to your own soul better than any other kind of writing. Poems often bypass the analytical mind and head straight to the heart. Here’s your assignment: Write a poem today. Just start writing. You may be amazed with what talents you possess! You will feel better and clever and mysterious and interesting. You will feel more connected to your deepest self, and that is a wonderful way to start a week.

The Course

The Teacher arrived and opened his familiar, worn lesson book,

I winced, but The Teacher smiled and asked me to take another look.

I thought that I already mastered the lesson (many times before).

But The Teacher reminded me that there is always something more.

The Lesson is always the simple, solid same, but the learner is ever shifting.

The learner comes with new, fresh eyes to grasp what The Lesson is now gifting.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Finishing Touch

So far you've survived 100% of your worst days. You're doing great. | Happy quotes, Encouragement quotes, Life quotes

This latest surge of coronavirus in our country has brought back some gloom and doom into our everyday conversations. But we will make it through it. This too shall pass. The interesting thing is that when you reflect back on your worst days, you realize how greatly outnumbered the worst days are, by your good days (or at the very least, by your normal, average days).

If someone asked my kids, “What does your mother always tell you?”, I hope that “I love you,” would be the first thing to pop into their minds, to give as their answer. I tell my children that I love them, all of the time. I think that’s so important for them to hear regularly. “I love you.” I also believe that my kids would say, “My mother always tells us to ‘Finish Strong.’ ” When raising children there are so many beginnings and yet also, so many endings involved. At the end of any school year, at the end of any games or competitions which they were involved in, at the final days of their summer jobs, I would always repeat the mantra, “Finish Strong.”

Lately, I have been repeating, “Finish Strong” to myself, quite a lot. My youngest child just started her senior year in high school. This is my final year of full-time mothering, which has been my main task and duty, for the last 25 years of my life. There are going to be a lot of easy, fun, celebratory days, in this coming year, but there will also be some “worst days” sprinkled in. That’s just the way of life. And I believe that we will survive, and even thrive through all of it. I believe that everyone I know has the capacity to “Finish Strong.” And I must model my own words to my children, if these words are to have any meaning and wisdom and worth. “I love you. Finish Strong.” Say these words of confidence and conviction often, to your loved ones, and most importantly, to yourself.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Spooky Friday

Friday the 13th quotes for work Friday the 13th funny quotes quotes mystiekevrouwen | Dogtrainingobedienceschool.com

Hi friends and readers! Welcome to the best day of the week! On Fridays, I keep it surfacey. I typically list three favorite books, products, websites, songs, etc. and I strongly encourage you to share your favorites in my Comments section. If you are curious about more favorites of mine, please look at my previous Friday posts. Without further ado, here are today’s favorites:

Safflower Seeds – If you are like me, and you really enjoy having all sorts of birds in your yard, but you could live without the squirrels visiting, (they torture my poor Collie, Josie), then fill your bird feeders with safflower seeds. According to the experts, birds loves these seeds, but squirrels can’t stand them. I have two “squirrel proof” feeders in my backyard, but that doesn’t stop the squirrels from doing all sorts of Olympics-level acrobatics on the feeders, trying to “break the code.” This really sets off Barky, I mean Josie. I am hoping that these safflower seeds will finally send the squirrels packing.

Adam on Twitter (@adamgreattweet) – This guy is a resident physician in Georgia, but he is also one of the best “curators” of funny on the internet. I love most of his own funny tweets, but he also has a knack for finding other really funny tweets from so many different sources. (I don’t know where he finds the time to practice medicine.) Warning some of the tweets are a tad raunchy, but many of them are just plain funny, especially the ones that comment on parenting. Here is a sampling from a few of his recent tweets/retweets:

do i struggle with gaining weight? no, i do that pretty easily thank you. (Dadman Walking)

Growing up in the 80’s made me believe I’d need to “stop drop and roll” a lot more (Midge)

And here’s one of Adam’s originals:

them: i’m tired

me: hi tired, i’m

them: of your jokes

me: oh

“Peace is a practice.” – I read this recently and it has become my new favorite mantra. A wise person once said to me that you don’t go into a gym, look at the really buff people and ask yourself, “Why are these really buff people here at the gym?” The buff people are at the gym because the gym is where they got buff, and the working out at the gym is how they maintain the buff. Our peaceful minds work the same way. You have to find the ways that help you to gain and to maintain your inner peace and clarity, and you have to implement these practices on a daily basis. Unfortunately, just like good bodily health is not a “one and done”, neither is good mental/emotional health. “Peace is a practice.“

Have a great weekend, my dear friends and readers!! See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Selfish

“When they say, “Be yourself,” which self do they mean? Certainly not the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and think of nobody’s needs except your own.

So when they say, “Be yourself,” which self are they referring to? Here’s what I think: It’s the self that says “Thank you!” to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. It’s the creator who’s working to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. It’s the lover who longs to express your love of life everywhere you go.” – Rob Brezsny

I love that quote by Rob Brezsny. I guess that when we say “Be yourself”, to ourselves and to others, what we are really meaning is, “Be your Highest Self.” (and I am not referring to any substance use here 😉 ) When Rob talks about someone who “think(s) of nobody’s needs except your own,” it’s so easy to curl up our lips in disgust and think, “selfish, selfish, selfish”, because we are thinking about this in the context of sharing food, and resources, and medicine, and volunteer time, etc. But there are other tricky times when we think that we are being loving and altruistic, when really, what we are more focused on, is our own needs and comforts, and we put that heavy burden on to others. I am talking about emotional selfishness.

I think that most of us would say that our biggest treasures in life are our families and our friends. We can’t bear the idea of losing those whom we love. We want nothing more than their happiness and their peace of mind. Most of us, by middle age, have suffered losses of people whom we love dearly, and we become extremely fearful of having to go through that depressing, painful experience again. So sadly, sometimes we project those fears of loss on to the people whom we love the most, in the guise of needing them to be happy and content and healthy, all of the time, for our own comfort and relief and security. Now these people love us deeply, too, so they want us to be happy and comfortable and fearless, so they feel the need to protect us from our own fears. And so these people pretend that they are always happy and content and fearless, so that we won’t worry about them. You can see what a vicious, ugly cycle this becomes. And when we aren’t being real and authentic with each other, the relationship becomes distant and false. We become isolated from each other, in the very relationships that mean the most to us. In a sense, we lose the real relationship, even with people who are still alive and with us. Our fears become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Worry does not equal love. Putting on a false front does not equal intimacy. It’s okay, not to be okay, all of the time. Unconditional love recognizes that fact. Unconditional love can hold space for anything – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Do you think that our Creator worries about us? Do you think that our Creator needs any of us to be anything different than what we are, right in this moment? I don’t. I believe that we are loved by our Creator in whatever mood we are in. I believe that we are loved by our Creator no matter what we have done, how we have felt, and what we will do and feel, forevermore. Our Creator doesn’t worry about us. Our Creator doesn’t need us to be anything other that what we are right in this moment. Soak that in. Our Creator holds space for us, always. Our Creator is within us. Our Creator is our Highest Self. We have the capability within us, to hold space, and to unconditionally love ourselves and all others. And when we are in that state of pure and unconditional love, we are fearless. Love is fearless. We are loved. We are Love.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Last First

Today, I took our annual “first day of school” picture by the front door. We have been doing this for 20 years now (My eldest son, the eldest of four children, is 25). It is my daughter and our youngest child’s first day of her senior year of high school. This will be the last “first day of school” picture that I will ever take of our children. I’m feeling a little sniffly. I am trying not to sob. This is going to be an emotional year.

I’m the eldest “child” in my family. I was even the eldest grandchild on both sides, by five years. Frankly, I didn’t always love the pressure of the spotlight. I didn’t love always having to be the lead dog, and having to figure things out for myself (often the hard way). But, I did feel special and important and mature. I guess in some ways, I even felt a tad entitled. In my mind, for the burden of being the eldest, I “deserved” the biggest bedroom or to stay out later. I think that I always felt that I should have a “bigger say” in my little sister’s life, than she should have in mine. I now realize that’s silly. We deserve(d) equal respect.

I feel for my daughter. I am trying not to dump all of my emotional baggage into her backpack as she heads off to her last year of her childhood. She doesn’t need to be weighed down. I realize now that the youngest children in families, have to share all of their own milestones, with the entire family. The eldest children mark the beginning of it all, and the youngest children are the “official closing ceremony” of the raising of any particular family. That’s a heavy burden for the beloved babies of any family. Too much attention can be a big burden, especially when it is laden with emotion and melancholy and an endless reel of memories. This year, I’ll do my best to keep in my own lane, as I process this “ending/new beginning” stage of my own life, and this new stage of our family life. Hopefully, my baby will not notice (or at least pretend not to notice) when I hug her to me, harder than ever before.

27 Funny Tweets About Being A Youngest Child | HuffPost Life

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Weightless

Yesterday, I spent a little bit too much time ruminating in my fear and my worries and my disappointments. It didn’t help that I had woken up in the morning to a terrible dream in which I had been told by a doctor that I had throat cancer. I spazzed out on that one. Interestingly, about half of the hundreds of dream interpretation websites which I looked at, said that this was actually an excellent dream that foretold fortune and happiness and lovely surprises. Nice. Let me tell you, Dreams, “There are much kinder ways to tell me that good things lie ahead.”

Also, yesterday morning, my son texted a picture from his first medical school class. It was occurring on Zoom, in his teensy little apartment bedroom, for eight hours straight. Sigh. Thanks again, Coronavirus. So awful to see you again!

The great mask debate is in full force (and obviously on national display) here again in Florida, and my daughter starts her senior year of high school tomorrow. The ugly vibes are swirling on the news, and in social media, and in the neighborhood and like everyone else, I am so, so, so tired of it all. I had tricked myself, earlier this summer, that with the vaccinations, Covid was practically a thing of the past, and instead it has come back with an ugly vengeance. Some of my closest friends, despite being vaccinated, are in quarantine, healing from Covid infections. Luckily they have seemingly mild cases, so far.

So those three paragraphs above, show you where my mindset (and heartsick) was yesterday, and even into last night, as I crawled into bed. I don’t like that mindset. I don’t like negativity. It doesn’t feel good. As I was waiting to go to sleep, and I was thinking that I really didn’t care to have anymore scary dreams, I went to my phone and I looked up “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world.”

Over a decade ago, when my family and I were the poster kids for the Great Recession, and we were watching our savings go down the drain like rushing water, this Bible verse helped me to get through those tough times (Matthew 6: 28-30):

²⁸And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

This verse made a lot of sense to me and it became my daily mantra. And thankfully, we made it through the Great Recession just fine. Last night, though, I wanted a new, fresh mantra. My current worries and stresses are more about the health of my family, and of my friends, and of our world, and maybe even my own mental health. My worries are more about the overall health and well-being of everyone I love, including our Mother Earth. So, when I searched up “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world” last night, the search wasn’t as satisfactory as I wanted it to be. It turns out that there are about 18 million comforting thoughts to pick from.

My love language is the written word. I love to read. I love to write. I love comforting thoughts. My search had me strumming through hundreds and hundreds of uplifting verses and quotes, many that I had already seen, and had already read before, many, many times. So many of these quotes talked about the fruitlessness of worrying. Duh. But that’s not particularly comforting when you are stuck in the worry cycle, which has taken up a life of its own, in your head. It’s hard to find the “off button” for the Worry Cycle, at that point. So reading about how taxing worrying and anxiety is, to your body and to your spirit, is honestly, at times, just more upsetting and worrying, than anything close to being reassuring and comforting.

I was frustrated that there was not one simple consensus as to what is the “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world”. So, I figured that I might as well take a few screenshots of quotes that at least, resonated with me. This quote was very similar to my favorite Bible verse:

“Don’t try to force anything. Let life be a deep Let-Go. God opens millions of flowers every day without forcing their buds.” – Osho

This one has always made sense to me:

“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” – Pema Chodron

And as I was beating myself up angrily for being such a Wanda Worrier/Debbie Downer/Negative Nancy, this one really struck home:

“I just give myself permission to suck. I find this hugely liberating.” – John Green

But then, some kind of Divine Intervention happened. Without searching for it, I somehow ended up reading a scientific article that talked about comforting music. My guardian angel must have been saying to me, “Girl, you don’t need any more words. You need to get out of that silly little pissy-missy mind of yours, if you want to have a good night’s sleep, and a hope for a more positive tomorrow.” The article that I miraculously landed on, said that this ONE song, created by professional sound therapists, has proven to reduce anxiety by 65%, and shows a 35% reduction in any one person’s typical physiological resting rate. This song is wordless. I played the song as I was trying to fall asleep. And I slept so soundly. My husband didn’t know that we were both being “treated” by this song last night, because he was already asleep when I played it, but this morning, the first thing that he remarked to me was how well he had slept last night. The lesson I gleaned from this experience was that we shouldn’t get so stuck in trying to control the ways in which we are going to be comforted, or fixed, or reassured, or loved to sleep. When we do the “deep Let-Go”, the Universe gives us exactly what we need. I slept incredibly well last night. I don’t recall any negative dreams. I feel comforted. I feel reassured this morning. It turns out that last night, for me, Marconi Union’s “Weightless” was “the most comforting, reassuring thought in the world,” and it is not even a thought. It doesn’t even have words. Last night’s comfort came from pure sound. Be open to every amazing resource available to us, friends. Keep the faith. We are loved. We are protected. All is well.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.