From the Sanctuary:
The wind is blowing heavily on this eighty-degree Labor Day—the Universe is working overtime as I like to observe, shifting the world to our liking. It is playfully knocking over the plants on my deck, empty soda bottles in my kitchen and banging my screen door. I go outside to soak in the accompanying sunshine and as I’m sitting there with my notebook, a gust lifts my patio table umbrella two inches up from its base. I’m marveling at this feat when suddenly, not only does the umbrella pole lift again, but rises up through the hole in the table, clear across the yard, taking the umbrella with it. I yell and giggle and chase it, grabbing it before it can hop the fence and land in the creek.
Once it is tamed, I sit back down to enjoy the wind through my hair and write. In the Sanctuary today, the late summer shows its natural shift. The bees are pollinating the yellow flowers in my butterfly garden and the jewelweed cluster that popped up in the midst of my fading lilies. The goldenrod is up now bordering the field and grasshoppers are perched on the fence posts clinging in the wind. I inspect the remnants of my garden from the summer. A few petunias are still blooming from the hanging plants, and parsley, thyme and basil are thriving for my recipes from May’s farmer’s market and the peppers are there. Ahhh yes, the peppers…six plants (three in pots, three in the garden) that are still six inches high. I acquired them too from the May farmer’s market and, they have remained green and healthy. However, they have not grown a centimeter or produced a single pepper since I transplanted them all those months ago. Mother Nature’s reminder that she is still in charge.
As the wind shifts, I think of the reflecting shift in my life. There is change happening in the form of a vast uncertainty and I’m facing that with a courage and vulnerability I have not known that I possessed until now. I’ve said this enough through my decades in my roles as a Mom and as a coach to thousands of college students, “You have the ability and potential to choose any path in your life. Do it according to your own values, virtues and unique definition of happiness. Find your truth and live it.” In the case of my children, I wanted them to find this based on their own standards, not mine or the world’s. In conversations with my students, it was the same, except I would remind them not to limit their future pursuits based solely on their academics, consider their desires.
As time winds down on my structured career, it is time to follow my own heart and words; to expand my comfort zone beyond home and University into a world that so needs love, hope, kindness and joy right now. Having just finished my memoir (my greatest gift as a writer) I have discovered that I have an overabundance of all of those from others, plenty to give away and still keep. As a result, I realize just how much there is to share. Reconciliation of the Heart will be my owner’s manual and Capture Life Writing, my nonprofit organization, my vehicle.
Moving forward with both is exciting. Trust. Believe. Allow. Receive. Shifting with the wind, I’m taking off to and reaching the stars understanding that the Universe will meet me half way. Time to put the umbrella away on this Labor Day and focus on what really matters; helping others.
Wishing you courage, joy and love in your own endeavors.
