I feel loved.  Actually more than just loved. I am overcome with feelings of love, happiness, and peace.  Feeling loved and being loved are the greatest gifts one can ever hope to receive in this world. It is that love that feels your soul and allows you to be able to love on others, thus bringing happiness and joy into someone else’s life. Love is what makes a good life possible. This week I turned thirty-eight and while I can hardly believe my new number, I am feeling so grateful to be in THIS place in my life.  Last year was an extremely emotional one for me as I was dealing with some serious growing pains. I learned a lot of hard lessons and in the process learned some very important things about myself.  If I am being honest, I was a little anxious for my birthday this year. While I have always LOVED celebrating birthdays, including my own, I have felt pressure to make my day perfect. All that unnecessary pressure about what the day ...

What is in a number? Rather what is in an age?  I am now thirty-seven and I know I will spend the year saying things like “I am thirty-seven and will do whatever I damn well feel like”.  But what the hell does that mean? I think it is supposed to mean that I am a grown ass woman who can do whatever she likes whenever she likes. As Julia Roberts famously said in “Pretty Woman”: “I say who, I say when”. This a line I quote on a frequent basis.  As I get use to saying my new age out loud and finding new freedoms I can associate with it, I have this unmistakable sense that this is the age I have been waiting to be. By that I mean that I have always thought thirty-seven is the age I would be when the life I had transformed into the life I have imagined. When what I was working and hoping for, actually became the life I lived on a daily basis.  Without going into specifics I am being to see the necessary steps I have to (and will) take to get th...

I am fine.   Actually fine, content, in my current state. It is not a lie I am telling myself or a thought that I am repeating so that it will become true.  It is the actual truth.  For the first time since I can remember I have taken all the pressure I put on myself for my birthday (and on myself daily for that matter) to be perfect. I have been down this road before, when as any December baby knows, no one can come out because of holiday plans, low funds, or there is a blizzard. We wait all year for our birthdays and when you make such efforts throughout the year for all of your loved ones special days you would like to see the love returned. Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way.  Instead of being disappointed about plans that did or didn’t pan out, friends who you didn’t hear from, or wishes that didn’t come true, I have decided to let it all go. There is no such thing as a perfect day when you are expecting it to be so. I have de...

Well I am finally at that ripe old age of thirty-five. I can no longer say I am in my early thirties. I am only five years away from forty, a number that doesn’t really scare me as much as wows me. I can’t believe I could ever be that old simply because that’s a “grown-ups” age. But since our only choice is either to be this age or not exist I shall explore what this new year of life brings to me. Since I am writing this blog a month, almost to the day, after my birthday I have had some time to adjust to my new age. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted to write for the prior few months. My brain doesn’t work like that. Thoughts and feelings pop into my head no matter what I am doing in the moment. I hardly ever jot them down instead I try to understand them clearly  and keep them dormant until I type them down. This analytical way of thinking can be exhausting but it’s how I process life.  I am what I am. The first birthday post I ever wr...

I have an amazing life. Sure there are days where I cry into my Brussels sprouts but I just blow my nose and forge ahead. Meanwhile my sprouts are always tasty and no that is not why. This year as I reflected inward to work on myself I learned many things. Sometimes they were little things but usually they were large amounts of small things that ended up making all the difference. For instance during the weeks I am stuck on the couch in migraine induced hell I forget what I have been successful in and instead focus on what I am missing out on that day. One of the major problems of a chronic illness is that it becomes invisible to those who do not see you at your worst. I am talking about the kind of days where getting up to pee or brush your teeth feel like climbing to the top of Mount Everest without oxygen. Worse yet are the days you know you need to shower because you are bothering yourself but still aren’t steady enough...