365 Days of Laugh, Learn, Love… LIVE! ~ IT’S MA BIRRRFDAY!

 

I know I’m dating myself with that line but hey, I don’t care.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sooo, I’ve just completed one trip around the sun and stand at the start of another. I give thanks!

So many thoughts and emotions today, all of them positive, but varied. I look at my number of completed years on a piece of paper and think “I don’t feel old enough to be this age”.

Full of gratitude for the year just ended, with its highs and lows and myriad points in between. Looking back at it I appreciate that that year was meant to be about growth, change, healing and refocusing. These lessons persist into this new-year but at varied stages of progress. I have much to be thankful for… and I thank my honoured ancestors and the divine ones of my spiritual escort for all they have helped me accomplish, learn, and work on.

I’ve learnt how to let go of the fear of not being in control. Had no idea this fear even existed in me or that I was holding so tightly to the idea of always being in control. This past year has forced me to confront that and search out where it came from. The truth is that the experiences in my past where I completely lost control and was mistreated and taken advantage of lead me to believe that I always have to be in control in order to be safe. This past year brought me a state of almost complete lack of control…over everything! From where I lived to my movements on any given day, no matter how diligently I tried to exercise control, no matter my efforts, every experience came with the lesson – you’re not in control anymore booboo; let go of the need to control the process! It (whatever “it” was) would happen when and how it would happen, but would happen without your control-freak tentacles touching it.

This past year, too, I was confronted with a plethora of feelings, emotions, that I’d unconsciously given home to within my body that, over years, have caused imbalance and destruction within my body temple – envy, anger, jealousy, resentment, shame, fear, guilt, worry, sense of unworthiness, weak esteem of self… so many nasty, gunky feelings and thoughts and emotions. Thankfully, this year gave the awareness, space and time to begin the work of healing and releasing. It’s been a hard, tough journey so far but I haven’t been alone. With the support of the Divine Ones, I’ve been doing the basic and necessary work of healing. And I’ve made much progress – beautiful, hard progress – and I continue to push through and work harder and progress more because, you see, there’s no way I can fully live the life I’m destined to live until I do the foundational work of cleansing and healing all of me first.

So, while it didn’t seem like it while it was unfolding throughout the year, this completed year was one of healing, of breaking down and dismantling and destroying and repairing and replacing and cleaning out…. And this work continues. Give thanks for healing!

And now, standing on the freshness of this new-year, how do I feel? What do I see? Hmmm, I feel peace! I feel overjoyed at the possibilities this life’s path has in store for me. I feel ready and eager to continue the work of healing my body, spirit and mind, of evolving into my higher self. I feel ready to love more openly and honestly that I ever have… to embrace my divine destiny, to help others on their paths by sharing the few lessons I’ve learned on mine; to open my heart and womb to the ultimate love, to create and birth people and ideas and projects that thrive and my most impossible desires and a life of abundance and prosperity doing JUST what I was born to do. I feel open!

When I close my eyes, I see me on top of a high place with nothing hindering my view; the vastness of the ocean is before me, blue and calm and constant and massive and me; the sky above shines happy and bright, there is sun, there are white clouds, there is bluest-blue sky; there is breeze, blowing and flowing wherever it wants; and I’m standing there on this land of low cut, healthy looking grass, wearing long white flowing clothes and my arms are open wide as if to give everything I see and feel a big, gigantic hug, and my face smiles as I feel the bliss of the experience; so much so that my real face, now, smiles as I take in, consciously, the reality of that vision, hold it and turn it around. THIS is how I feel at the beginning of this new year. I feel OPEN!

 

 

 

 

 

 

© September 21, 2016

The Smell of Orange…

The smell of orange reminds me of summer in Antigua. But not just any kind of Antigua summer… the summer of my childhood. The smell of orange reminds me of 8 year old summer. All heat and no rain; days so bright you had to squint like a chiney-man just to see down the road; begging granny everyday to go to the beach even though you knew she’d always say “lawd jesus if you don’t move dis chile from in front me face!” (or some other variation of “no”). Roaming the neighbourhood with all the other children, making up games featuring the abandoned house down the road with the cassie trees overgrowing it to the point of near total reclamation. That was our castle or fortress or dungeon or lookout spot, depending on the world our play wanted us to be in. Playing with my older brother and our alter egos, Touncan and Tell, in the backyard that seemed so much larger then.

 

Now why the smell of orange takes me there, I honestly couldn’t tell you. Its not like my childhood summers were full of oranges (if anything oranges were scarce like good gold and mangoes were plentiful). Look, summertime in Antigua equals mangoes! Mango fu bang dawg! Logic would suggest that the smell of mangoes take me back there, that way; but it doesn’t at all. Only the smell of orange does that. Only the smell of that summer-less fruit can invade my memory and flood my consciousness with 3D images of that 8 year old summer of no more school, hot days and endless fun, roaming.

 

 

Writing prompt: in ten minutes finish this sentence: The smell of orange reminds me of…

The Most Beautiful Smile I Ever Saw

 

The most beautiful smile I ever saw was attached to the face of my mother. She was cleaning the house on a Saturday morning, as she always did, and ZDK radio was playing calypso, as it always did on Saturday mornings. I was busy multitasking (or attempting to) between watching bootleg Disney channel cartoons on ABS TV and completing my assigned chore – polishing the mahogany entertainment center. At that age multitasking basically meant watching TV until mommy or granny shouted at you to do your chores. Mommy was a much better multitasker. Mommy was a much better everything actually. She would do laundry, clean the bathroom, vacuum the drawing-room carpet, sweep and mop the hallway, dining-room and kitchen floors all at the same time!… or so it seemed to me.

 

Well on this particular Saturday, a warm, typically sunny one, mommy was cleaning in an old T-shirt with faded letters on the front and the sleeves cut off, jeans cut to be almost-batty-riders, and her hair covered in a scarf converted to a head-tie. She probably wouldn’t have considered herself beautiful (she never does) but she was to me, even in her ordinary clothes. I had just looked up from the TV (she’d responded to something the DJ said on the radio and that got my attention). Seems it got the DJ’s attention too because his next remark was the perfect comeback to what mommy had said to him. So perfectly timed the comeback and so uncanny and unexpected that mommy stopped in her tracks, looked at the radio for a split second, then released the most complete belly laugh – all her teeth exposed, her eyes squinted, her cheeks raised up as if they wanted to kiss her eyelids, and the melody of her cackle was the sweetest benna. That laugh, that smile in full bloom, was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

 

 

Writing prompt: In 10 minutes, write something, anything based on the quote:

“The Most Beautiful Smile I Ever Saw…”

 

 

365 Days of Laugh, Learn, Love… LIVE! ~ What’s the point?

 

What’s the point behind all this energy we expend in living, sharing space on this planet we call home? Is it merely the arrive – get schooling – get job – get debt – get retired – depart playlist rotation that the dominant culture of the so-called most developed countries of the world has provided, not as an option bus as the only way to be? As the superior way to be? Is that the point behind the miraculous burst of energy that is birth? All that effort, all that time, all that risk, simply to fit into the get schooling – get job – get debt – get retired – get outta here cycle?! Surely THAT isn’t all there is! THAT can’t be the point of it all!

All the soul coming and going; all the path crossing and uncrossing, over all the years and decades we roam on Mother Earth, isn’t by accident; no big bang theory here! Intentional these relationships we create and breathe life into, within families of blood and families of heart. Whether their lives number days, months, or a lifetime, sacred and divinely meant to be they are… and only ever serve one primary function: to help us evolve into our higher, highest self. At the end of the day, THIS is the “because” of life; the why we choose to come and stay and call, welcome, fight against, run away from, embrace, receive, accept, reject the experiences that come to us while here – it all, ultimately, is for the main purpose of allowing us to grow, morph, evolve into the gooder, better, best version of ourselves we can be in this lifetime. That’s DIVINE!… and THAT’S the point!