Welcome
This is my journey. I want to share this incredible roller coaster ride of hopes, dreams, signs, emotional crashes, and excitement.
this is the space where i work out what is going on in my head. i hope that you can see yourself in my posts and that you will gain something from following my story.
“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss
i have been worried about writing an update on my state of mind. worried that i would jinx it. worried that i would be speaking too soon and everything would come crashing down around me if i dared to write about how i am doing these days.
the truth is ... i feel ... happy.
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
i have worked hard to work through issues, to face my darkness, to be vulnerable, and to come out of my cocoon into happiness.
maybe it's the sunshine. or the love and support i am receiving. maybe it's the warm weather or the long walks. maybe it's the changes i am making in my life and in my mind; in the way that i think. whatever it is, i feel true happiness for the first time in a long time.
“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.” ― Stephen Chbosky
do you ever laugh so hard that it hurts? do you ever get the giggles and laugh until you cry? laughing with friends is better than any medicine. when i was a kid, i would get the giggles and couldn't stop laughing. i had to leave class on several occasions because i just couldn't get myself together to stop laughing. those are the best kind of laughs.
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer
i think that allowing myself to feel the sadness. to feel my grief, and my hurt, and my pain. to feel the dark emotions that i avoided for so long. i think that feeling those emotions - letting them in - has allowed me to let in the good feelings. and these good feelings are filling me up with happiness. don't misunderstand, i still feel the bad feelings. i still have stress and anxiety and worries and fears and grief and sadness and all the pain of the world. but those feelings don't weigh me down. i feel uplifted. i feel like i can fly.
“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” ― Chuck Palahniuk,
i allowed myself to look inside. to face my own darkness. to be vulnerable. to put myself out there. i allowed myself to share my stories. and this has left me feeling happiness.
“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” ― Ayn Rand
i am learning that i am worth something. i am worthy, and deserving. these are new words for me. and these are words that scare me. but also make me feel happy.
“All happiness depends on courage and work.” ― Honoré de Balzac
it has taken a great deal of work to get to this place. i have had to be brave and face my darkness and face my fears. i have had to take risks. and all of this has brought me happiness.
so there it is, readers, i feel happy. something i never thought would happen. when you are numb to the bad feelings of the world, you are numb to the good feelings too.
be kind to yourself,
xoxo
“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”
― J.M. Barrie
...
a bubble of happiness. i used to know how to create those ...
once i ate an entire box of strawberry shortcake cereal in one sitting and the sugar and red dye entering my bloodstream and creating a hypoglycemic nightmare in which i literally was bouncing off the walls (and the floor, and the bed, and anyone who got in my way). i was sent to my room to let the sugar and dye work it's way through my system while my cousin L begged me to eat the protein i was being bribed with in an attempt to bring me down from my over-the-top-ridiculous sugar high. but i didn't want to come down from the bouncing goodness.
another time, the bubble was created by lying on the raft in the moonlight, holding hands with O, after a weekend fraught with drama. and we left all the drama causing people alone with their drama and found time to be with each other, in the moonlight, sharing our compassion for each other.
bubbles of happiness don't happen on their own. they aren't random. they need to be sought out, created, and maintained. they might be spontaneous and unplanned ... but they still need crafting and care.
i wanted to share one of my bubbles of happiness from my childhood ...
when i was 7 years old, my cousin B and i used to have weekly sleep-overs, mostly at my house. we would make up ridiculous games, like building a snow village for little plastic bunnies that our grandmother gave us for Easter. or naming the yellow foam rabbit from my magic kit "honey bunny." those sleep-overs are one of the highlights of my childhood. B was older and wiser and beautiful and smart. and fun. purely joyfully fun. i bet that when she reads this (and i will be sending it to you B, because i WANT you to read this) she will be taken aback by some of the words i used like "beautiful" - our childhoods were not built around people telling us that we were beautiful, or smart ...
as the years went by, the 4 year age difference between us became too much of a gap and we spent a period of time being cousins, but not friends. at 13, i was only 9 and that was too big of a gap.
when B went to university, and i was in high school, i went to visit her. and it was so kind of her to take me in for a week and show me her life. over the years, we have traveled in and out of each other's circles, losing touch and finding each other again. always connected by our friendship and by our family ties.
but this post isn't about B or how important she is to me. this post is about being little, loud, obnoxious girls on the danforth. invincible, noisy, and not caring what anyone else thought about us.
i have no idea where we were going. it could have been ballet class, or the library, or just the store. but for some reason, we were being taken somewhere and we had to walk for awhile along the busy danforth. and B and i decided that it would be a GREAT idea to sing. loudly. a song we made up. at the top of our lungs.
i remember walking along the street feeling pure and unbridled JOY with B.
picture this, the busy danforth on a sunny day. people out walking, shopping, running errands, or just enjoying the day. and then 2 little girls skipping, arm in arm, scream-singing at the top of their lungs:
1, you're a nun!
2, a piece of poo!
3, a drop of pee!
4, shut the door!
5, stick your head in a beehive!
6, pick up sticks!
7, go to heaven
8, shut the gate!
9, drink some wine!
10, START AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and then we would repeat our made up song. and then after that, we would repeat it again.
i don't know why that was so much fun. i don't know why scream-singing about pee, and poo, and beehives, was hilarious and joyful and exciting and made us so damn happy. but we were giggling and singing and skipping and yelling. i wish that i could recreate that feeling, bottle it, and give it away. because everyone needs to feel the elation of scream-singing on a busy street in the sunshine while skipping arm-in-arm with a cousin-friend, not giving a shit about what anyone else thinks because the joy of scream-singing a made up song puts you in a bubble of happiness that is even better than a blue duvet cocoon.
i wonder if B would be willing to skip arm-in-arm scream-singing with me now? i think that perhaps i need to find a new way to create the bubble of happiness. maybe i can teach her children our song and find joy by enabling the joy of watching them scream-sing and embarrass their parents ...
any other ideas?
xoxo
...
