Howdily-ho! Happy Brunch Sunday. Let's raise our mimosas or mugs and clink a cheers to a bit of connection between work, notices and ads in your inbox. Unabashedly written with a London accent in my head. Of course, reading with an accent is completely your (next best) decision.
It's a very sunny morning here in Central Florida. The reflection of sunlight off the white, metal balcony outside my bedroom window is angled into my right eye. I must make time to be out there today, even if only to enjoy it for my northern friends.
Ah...the north. Fall. COLORS.
My first twenty-three years I basked in the not-so-subtle seasons in The Great Lakes area of North America: Kenosha, North Chicago, and Ann Arbor. This minute, Kenosha is 60 degrees and raining, though it will have a late climb to 80 by dinner. How strange. But this brain of mine has deep roots in those seasons, and yearns every fall to have the temperature and changed leaves drop.
As much as you can count on the leaves changing up there, life morphs and passes away and is reborn.
And we have feelings about it.
I have in mind a dear friend who soars in her life, though one might not see it by watching. She is fierce. Her love is massive. Like me, she has experienced some of humanity's ugly underbelly. Despite times of pain and neglect, mirrored by love and peace, she makes so much room for others in her heart.
If we all could only.
My friend has lost many of her dear people. I want to hold her heart as it prepares to break one more time.
I've been busy holding my own heart these last few months. The beauty of friendship is that we get to take turns.
I have been prone to attempt sweeping change. That pendulum.
Okay, a little Divination class.
The pendulum has been used throughout history to find water or bombs, to diagnose illness and predict the sex of babies. You can find them today, crystals on an eight-inch wire, in wu-wu shops all over the world. It is believed that a Pendulum Dowsing can guide you through the most challenging, changing times of your life.
Okay.
Unlike a Ouija board, the pendulum only answers Yes or No questions. The crystal is supposed to react to small nerves in your fingers, pushed by your subconscious mind, when you hold it. Also like a Ouija, it is your hand moving, but your subconscious controls the muscle, which feels a little out of body because we're not following the neural path we normally operate with. This requires faith and belief, and obviously an open mind in order to work.
I guess we can have faith in anything. The mind is incredible.
When I became a wife, I packed up a lot of my own life into boxes to move about, state to state, country to country. When I became a mother, I packed away more. I kept it all in boxes in a closet, or an "overflow" room, or the garage in less humid climates.
Five years ago, I began unpacking me. All my journals, letters, photos. My paintings. Then we moved again and it all was painfully reboxed.
I believed it was necessary, in order to be a better mother, a better wife, to strive to be perfect every day.
I believed the need for perfection to earn my salvation. Or all my sins would resurface.
Today, if something brings me joy, I want to put it out:
Fat, retro Christmas lights hung in the window all year.
Wonky ceramic bowls that I made by hand.
Easels and brushes and paints.
Canvases everywhere.
Books unpacked, shelved and divided by genre. Oh, bliss.
Today's Deep Breath: Here's a practical juju nugget, a collective Next Best Decision.
These changes of life call into focus some great questions and wake us up.
Change sponsors a check-in with our hearts.
Are we happy where we are?
Are there things we want that we've been busy ignoring? Have we set limits that are not real but that we believe in, that make the world's possibilities smaller?
Are we content in our jobs? You might say, "Well, it's a job, and it pays the bills. I'm not blissed out, but it works for me, for my family." That sounds content.
I'm prompting--are things working?
A year ago, my partner and I were stuck in our own non-touching couch spots. Today, there seems to be much more possibility.
It's optional to wait for a sweeping pendulum change to ask these kinds of questions.
Asking them could keep you in this content job, by questioning your complaints about it.
Asking could keep you in a relationship before you slice it away.
Minimize the bleeding.
Ask in advance.
Until next time,
Tami Lowe
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