Paper doll cutouts and making sense of $1.04

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. Henry Van Dyke

When was the last time you played hard? Laughed heartily? Looked silly? Danced in the rain? Ran barefoot through mud puddles? When was the last time you gave yourself permission to take off the mantle of 'being adult' to leap for joy at the sheer exhilaration of being alive, of having a place that is uniquely yours on this great big ball of energy spinning through space. A space where you can be wild. Be free. Be yourself. A place filled with limitless possibilities, unwritten pages and stories yet to unfold. When was the last time you had fun?

Well, today's the day. It's as good a day as any to throw off your ennui and get into life in a fun and enjoyable way. Remember, the number 1 rule? Don't take yourself so seriously!

Okay, so maybe it's not the no. 1 rule, but it is a good rule none-the-less.

Think about the last time you got into a kerfuffle about what someone said or did. Maybe it was like the conversation I overheard while walking along the river path the other day at noon. Two women, obviously out for their noon hour constitutional, walked quickly along. One woman listened as the other described in great detail what had happened at the store the evening before.

"I know it was only $1.04," she said. "But really. That teller was a bitch. When I pointed out the discrepancy between what she'd charged me and what the sale price was all she could say was, 'it doesn't come up on my computer. You'll have to go to Customer Service.' I mean, really. Who's the customer? It was just a $1.04. What was it to her?"

I wondered if maybe it was her job. Or a fear of breaking the rules. Or doing it wrong. Or doing it right. I wondered if maybe she had been on her feet all day and had run out of energy to argue or fix it or just do anything other than ring it in.

The other woman murmured quietly, walked along beside her workmate and nodded her head. Was she really listening or just being polite?

As we walked, the river flowed silently beside us. The sun shone. Sprinkles of sunlight danced on the water, warmed the air. Golden leaves dappled the ground. The sky was blue. Clear. Endless.

The women kept walking in front of me. The one woman went on to describe looking over at Customer Service and seeing a line up of four people. She talked about her fear of making a scene with people standing behind her, waiting their turn. Her disgust with this teller, a perfect stranger, whom she felt compelled to label. In the end, she said, "I wasn't going to make a big fuss over $1.04."

I was walking behind them. Not meaning to eavesdrop but it was pretty hard given the level of her voice. I couldn't change their conversation. I could change what I was doing.

I stopped to admire the sunlight on the river.

Ahh, the seriousness of our encounters on the road of life. The $1.04 incidents that rob us of the joy that is our birthright. The $1.04 moments that steal our peace of mind. That keep us from seeing the beauty of the world around us.

No more $1.04 thievery for me.

I'm kicking up my heels. Dancing in the rain and running straight into the waters of life, laughing and leaping for joy.

I'm not going to take myself so seriously $1.04 becomes the focal point of my day. I'm going to invest my $1.04 in having fun. In doing something silly. In creating enjoyment. Sunlight. Laughter. Joy.

As a little girl I loved to make Paper Dolls and play with them. When Alexis and Liseanne were younger, Alexis spent hours creating paper dolls for her sister. She had entire families of dolls complete with extensive wardrobes and accessories. They'd play with them for hours. I'd stand and listen to their laughter. Their stories as the dolls lived out their lives on the floor in front of them were filled with drama, possiblities, life.

This morning, I cut out a string of paper dolls. I wrote phrases from my Vision Statement on my dolls and strung them around my desk. My dolls danced and sang and laughed and leaped for joy as I smiled at my mastery as a paper doll maker.

It was fun. Silly. And empowering.

I invite you to join in. Get five pieces of 8 x 11 inch paper. Tape the long edges together so you have a length of paper -- 40 inches long. Fold each section of 8 x 11 in half and then half again (lol -- explaining how to fold paper is hard!). Now draw a doll on the top page. Cut out the doll and you should have a string of 10 dolls holding hands. (I hope!)

Go wild. Write on them. Give yourself messages of joy and laughter. String your dolls around your neck. On your desk. Pin them up on the wall. Dress them up. Colour them in. Light up your world.

As George Bernard Shaw once said, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

Get playing! Get into the game of life and Have Fun!

The question is: What about you? Isn't it time you let loose? Kicked up your heels and did something silly? Isn't it your time?

My highest expression

More men fail through lack of purpose than through lack of talent. Billy Sunday

I am taking my professional coaches certification. It's an online certification program -- and I am loving online learning!

One of the exercises is to create a Vision Statement for your client. As we are all trainees on the call, each trainee takes a turn being 'the client', while another interviews them and then writes a Vision Statement for them. And then we switch -- but work with a different trainee as the coach/client.

The Vision Statement is a powerful statement of what you've revealed during the interview as your dreams and hopes and goals in all areas of your life; spiritual, relationships, emotional, financial, career, physical. Of what you've described as your ideal life and the goals you want to achieve over the next year. It is written as if you are already living it, already experiencing your dream life come true.

Last night, the coach trainee I'd worked with the night before read my Vision Statement to me. She invited me to relax, to sink down into that place within me where I feel safe, secure, open.

I sank. She read. I awoke to my life as 'a brand new and spacious place filled with surprise and hidden bursts of light coming from unexpected places."

I felt incredibly blessed. Honoured. Respected. Heard.

We had spent an hour and a half the night before, the coach trainee interviewing me. Me digging deep to provide her insight into my dreams.

She nailed it.

Heard me and fed me back, and thus my subconscious, the words and ideas, thoughts and images, goals and dreams I had shared the night before.

Listening to her voice read my Vision Statement to me, I felt like I was immersed in a river of love and beauty. Buoyed up by the warm gentle waters carrying me along, I drifted into that place where I am free to live my greatest expression of me.

And the fun didn't stop there!

I then got to read to the trainee I'd worked with the Vision Statement I'd created for him. What an amazingly rewarding experience!

For half an hour, I got to repeat back to him his powerful words of the change he wants to be in the world. Of his drive to live his life creating value everywhere he goes.

As I read, I imagined my words were a beautiful spring rain shower pouring down upon him. They entered his mind, sank into his heart and settled upon the soils of his verdant subconscious creating a lush and sustaining garden of beauty and love. I imagined him being his Vision Statement. Saw him taking the steps he'd described to reach his goals, to soar into his highest expression of himself.

The objective of the Vision Statement exercise is to embed what a person's Vision Statement in their subconscious as their personal truth. In his book, Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, MD., wrote,

"Change occurs not by intellect, and not by intelligence; change is brought about by experience. Remember, experiencing is the same to the subconscious mind as imagining. The subconscious mind does not know the difference between real and unreal. It accepts what you feed it."

Last night, I sank with grace and ease into the truth within me. I opened my heart and mind to the wonder of being alive, of living this one wild and precious life in love with all I am, all I can be when I let go of the shores of my comfort zone and swim out into the limitless possibilities of life beyond the realm of my wildest dreams. Of life lived large. Lived completely in love with all I am, all I can be when I align myself with my purpose and focus on creating a ripple effect of love with every stroke I take in the sea of possibility that is my life filled with beauty and wonder.

The question is: What's your purpose? Are you willing to open yourself up to the wonder of your dreams by embracing your vision of living your highest expression as your truth?

The Poet Boy

I wrote this piece a few years ago in memory of my father. I share it again today in honour of those who have lost their lives in the name of freedom.

When the poet boy was sixteen, he lied about his age and ran off to war. It was a war he was too young to understand. Or know why he was fighting. When the guns were silenced and the victors and the vanquished carried off their dead and wounded, the poet boy was gone. In his stead, there stood a man. An angry man. A wounded man. The man who would become my father.

By the time of my arrival, the final note in a quartet of baby-boomer children, the poet boy was deeply buried beneath the burden of an unforgettable war and the dark moods that permeated my father's being with the density of storm clouds blocking the sun. Occasionally, on a holiday or a walk in the woods, the sun would burst through and signs of the poet boy would seep out from beneath the burden of the past. Sometimes, like letters scrambled in a bowl of alphabet soup that momentarily made sense of a word drifting across the surface, images of the poet boy appeared in a note or a letter my father wrote me. For that one brief moment a light would be cast on what was lost and then suddenly, with the deftness of a croupier sweeping away the dice, the words would disappear as the angry man came sweeping back with the ferocity of winter rushing in from the north.

I spent my lifetime looking for the words that would make the poet boy appear, but time ran out when my father’s heart gave up its fierce beat to the silence of eternity. It was a massive coronary. My mother said he was angry when the pain hit him. Angry, but unafraid. She wasn’t allowed to call an ambulance. She wasn’t allowed to call a neighbor. He drove himself to the hospital and she sat helplessly beside him. As he crossed the threshold of the emergency room, he collapsed, never to awaken again. In his death, he was lost forever, leaving behind my anger for which I had no words.

One Remembrance Day, ten years after his death, I went in search of my father at the foot of the memorial to an unnamed soldier that stands in the middle of a city park. A trumpet played “Taps”. I stood at the edge of the crowd and fingered the felt of the bright red poppy I held between my thumb and fingers. It was a blustery day. A weak November sunshine peaked out from behind sullen grey clouds. Bundled up against the cold, the crowd, young and old, silently approached the monument and placed their poppies on a ledge beneath the soldier’s feet.
I stood and watched and held back.

I wanted to understand the war. I wanted to find the father who might have been had the poet boy not run off to fight “the good war” as a commentator had called it earlier that morning on the radio. Where is the good in war, I wondered? I thought of soldiers falling, mother’s crying and anger never dying. I thought of the past, never resting, always remembered and I thought of my father, never forgotten. The poet boy who went to war and came home an angry man. In his anger, life became the battlefield upon which he fought to retain some sense of balance amidst the memories of a world gone mad.

Perhaps it was as George Orwell wrote in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-four:

“The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist... War is Peace.”

For my father, anger became the peacetime of his world until his heart ran out of time, and he lost all hope of finding the poetry within him.

There is still time for me.

On that cold November morning, I approach the monument. I stand at the bottom step and look at the bright red poppies lining the gun metal grey of the concrete base of the statue. Slowly, I take the first step up and then the second. I hesitate then reach forward and place my poppy amidst the blood red row lined up along the ledge.

I wait. I don’t want to leave. I want a sign. I want to know my father sees me.

I turn and watch a white-haired grandfather approach, his gloved right hand encasing the mitten covered hand of his granddaughter. Her bright curly locks tumble from around the edges of her white furry cap. Her pink overcoat is adorned with little white bunnies leaping along the bottom edge. She skips beside him, her smile wide, blue eyes bright.

They approach the monument, climb the few steps and stop beside me. The grandfather lets go of his granddaughter’s hand and steps forward to place his poppy on the ledge. He stands for a moment, head bowed. The little girl turns to me, the poppy clasped between her pink mittens outstretched in front of her.

“Can you lift me up?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I reply.

I pick her up, facing her towards the statue.

Carefully she places the poppy in the empty spot beside her grandfather’s.

I place her gently back on the ground.

She flashes me a toothy grin and skips away to join her grandfather where he waits at the foot of the monument. She grabs his hand.

“Do you think your daddy will know which one is mine?” she asks.

The grandfather laughs as he leads her back into the gathered throng.

“I’m sure he will,” he replies.

I watch the little girl skip away with her grandfather. The wind gently stirs the poppies lining the ledge. I feel them ripple through my memories of a poet boy who once stood his ground and fell beneath the weight of war.

My father is gone from this world. The dreams he had, the promises of his youth were forever lost on the bloody tide of war that swept the poet boy away. In his passing, he left behind a love of words born upon the essays and letters he wrote me throughout the years. Words of encouragement. Of admonishment. Words that inspired me. Humored me. Guided me. Touched me. Words that will never fade away.

I stand at the base of the monument and look up at the soldier mounted on its pedestal. Perhaps he was once a poet boy hurrying off to war to become a man. Perhaps he too came back from war an angry man fearful of letting the memories die lest the gift of his life be forgotten.

I turn away and leave my poppy lying at his feet. I don’t know if my father will know which is mine. I don’t know if poppies grow where he has gone. But standing at the feet of the Unknown Soldier, the wind whispering through the poppies circling him in a blood red river, I feel the roots of the poet boy stir within me. He planted the seed that became my life.

Long ago my father went off to war and became a man. His poetry was silenced but still the poppies blow, row on row. They mark the place where poet boys went off to war and never came home again.

The war is over. In loving memory of my father and those who fought beside him, I let go of anger. It is time for me to make peace.

Living large in a world of wonder

The major block to compassion is the judgment in our minds. Judgment is the mind's primary tool of separation. Diane Berke

I have been called headstrong, stubborn, willful and arrogant. I have been called, kind, caring, loving and considerate. I like the second set of attributes. The first set annoy me -- but then, my ego doesn't like it when someone sees it at play.

When I have been considered headstrong, or stubborn or arrogant, it is because I am coming from an ego-driven place that holds me separate from (think above) others. My ego wants to believe it has the answers. My ego wants to control how the world turns around me so that I can feel safe, secure and comfortable spinning my human being into doing what she knows best -- playing with my ego.

Several years ago I had a disagreement with someone I love. It wasn't too long after Conrad was arrested so I was really proud of myself for standing my ground. For not backing down in the face of someone else's insistence they knew what was best for me and had the right to usurp their authority.

At the time, I surprised myself, and the person I was dealing with -- someone I love -- by choosing to walk away, in love, and not hold onto the argument, to their actions (which just to be clear, my ego considered to be wrong, wrong, wrong). At the time, I chose to let go of right and wrong, to surrender and fall into love -- that place where there is no right or wrong, no time or space, no place other than where I am in the moment.

It was a new experience for me. Different. Far beyond the edges of my comfort zone. Out in that place called, living large. Living true to all I'm meant to be.

And I was scared.

A short time afterwards, the friend called to talk about what had happened. She was crying. Upset. Scared. In trying to make me see 'the wrong' in my actions, she began to tell me all the things I shouldn't have done. All the ways I was wrong to say/do/feel what I had. At first I resisted her attempts to tell me who I was. I stood my loving ground, but then, I found myself falling under the lure of the elixir of her tirade about what was wrong with me. I began to listen hungrily for the next item on her list, my head abuzz with thoughts of "Caught. She's found me out. She's so right." I remember sitting numbly, listening to the phone, listening to her voice as the victim's voice within me rose up to shout with her, "Damn right sistah! I'm selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful and stubborn. I don't give a damn about anyone but me."

It was... a painful moment. A painful realization to discover within me the voice that wanted so desperately to collude with someone else's negative thoughts about me.

Now, I know and love the individual in question. I know she was only operating from her fear, her place of sorrow and angst and concern. I know her words were not about me and had everything to do with where she was at in our discord and how desperately she wanted to make things right. Her words were a reflection of the enormous inner turmoil our disagreement had placed her under. Her words were her angst giving voice to the pain within her.

Doesn't make what she said right. It does make her human condition understandable and forgivable.

The challenge for me was recognizing how my psyche was so adept at flipping from, "I am ok" into "I am such a mess" in a few quick, uneven breaths.

My victim's voice wanted confirmation that I was not responsible for me. I was not to blame for the messes I had created. I was not accountable for everything I had done. It wanted to abdicate self-responsibility and give into the notion -- I'm just not good enough -- so that I wouldn't have to say, "Enough. I give enough. I do enough. I am enough." My victim's voice did not want to turn up for me in all my beauty, warts and all, and so it gave into the whim of letting someone else define me.

My victim's voice is a powerhouse of self-condemnation. It does not want to stand tall. It does not want to 'grow up'. It wants to hold onto the notion that I am not responsible for my life. I am not capable of being a mature, caring and self-loving adult. My victim's voice does not want to claim its right to be perfectly human in all my human imperfections. Beauty and the beast, warts and all. My victim's voice wants to keep me playing small in this great big world of wonder. It's no wonder it stomps its feet so harshly when it is scared -- my victim's voice doesn't like feeling out of control, out on the edge of reason, leaping into the unknown waters of life beyond the realm of my comfort zone.

My victim's voice doesn't like knowing, compassion begins within me. It's frightened of the truth -- no one can rescue me from my human condition. No one can do it for me but me.

Scary thought that. That I am the one who has to turn up for me and live my life, live my heart's desire and soul's expression infused with the Divine blessing of being perfectly human. It doesn't like knowing it is waiting for no one but me to surrender and fall in love with all that I am, and all I can be. It doesn't like knowing it has the power to liberate me from the past. It doesn't want to be committed to love, honour and protect me, myself and I. It doesn't want to admit it loves me.

Too bad ego.

I love you. And there's nothing you can do to change that!

The question is: Can you love yourself, in all your ego driven, angst-riddled confusion, enough to stand up and be your own agent of change, living large in a world of wonder?

Let it Shine

The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry. Vissaeus

In a world of wonder, there is war. In a world of beauty, there is pain. In a world of laughter, there are tears. Perhaps it is as the sages suggest, the one cannot exist without the other. We cannot experience laughter without having known pain. We cannot know joy without having met sorrow.

Buddha said, "Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." How do I give myself to the world when my heart is carrying pain?

Life is the made up of dark and light. Our journey is to find our light within and 'let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.'

I wasn't shining very much over the weekend. Mired in thoughts of scarcity and lack, I trampled through my psyche, playing my self-defeating game of confusion. Angst ridden, I searched for the path into the light and kept finding myself in dead end alleys.

It started with a throw-away comment from C.C. on my tendency to ask questions. "You're constantly asking me how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking," he said.

Ouch.

I wanted to stop right there and scream back. "No I don't!" I didn't. (Scream back that is. I must deserve a gold star for my restraint.) Regardless of my outer restraint, however, my inner landscape kicked into high gear, running as fast as it could from a comment that triggered deeply seated grains of truth buried within me.

Harummph, my willful ego whispered. I don't 'constantly' ask. I ask because I'm interested, concerned, looking for information, seeking insight...

The litany of rationalizations, excuses, making sense of nonsense talk flew around like sharks zeroing in on their prey. I was abuzz with justification. My discord hid behind my smile as my psyche lazered him with pointed ripostes replete with razor-like wit, scathing rebuttals and shining insight into his faults and my 'rightness'.

Looking for order in my disorderly thinking, I headed to the back yard for air. I scooped up dog poop, raked leaves, stuffed them into bags and pummelled them down to make room for me to step into the garbage can and jump up and down in a furious dance to drain every breath of air from the stack of the leaves in the bag. If I'd had a vat of grapes, I'd have made a potent wine! But I didn't need the wine. I was heady on my indignation. After three giant bags of leaves, I headed into the kitchen to make parsnip soup. I cleaned the bathroom and threw in a load of laundry. And through it all, the monkey chatter in my mind kept stirring up a great big vat of angst.

I do not.

He doesn't understand.

He's just.....

He won't...

He doesn't...

He can't...

See the problem? My ego-driven thinking was all about what he was or wasn't doing, and wasn't giving any room for his comment to exist without my taking umbrage to their content. In my angst, I was withholding love and carrying pain as I focused on refuting his comments -- I wasn't interested in his truth -- I was interested in making myself shine in a better light.

Breathe.

Give his words room for air.

What am I avoiding? What is true for me here?

There is a cord of angst tied to the past in his observation about my tendency to ask -- and honest, I don't do it constantly! :) The key for me is to unhook from hearing what he said as 'my truth', or 'his truth about me', and accept it as an observation. A piece of information on how he feels about being questionned about his feelings.

In my reaction to his comment, I was connecting to something deeply buried in my psyche. A thread of feeling less than, not good enough, not perfect, not wanted, not needed. It is a voice that resonates from childhood when I was a curious child looking for answers in a world I didn't understand. It underlies my core tape. The lie I tell myself when I am feeling afraid: I am helpless.

The truth about me is: I am a fearless woman touching hearts and opening minds to set spirits free.

Speaking truth is always a frightening thing for me -- especially when the truth is about my feelings, my needs, my wants and desires. Especially when the truth counter commands the lie, "I am helpless."

I did a lot of work this weekend. Inner and outer. I dredged and pulled and raked and scooped and trampled through to come to a place where I am clearer on what is mine to fess up to.

I am afraid of speaking my truth. It is a truth that lays heavy on my heart -- not the words I need to say, or even the feelings that inspire the words -- the act of speaking my truth is a dark secret I hold close to my heart, shielding it from the light. To be real, to be authentic, to be my most magnificent self, I must break through my fear and shine my light on what lays heavy on my heart. I must speak up.

Ouch.

What if he gets angry? What if they get upset? What if he/she doesn't like me? What if...

The what if's for me are endless when I give into my fears.

The possibilities are infinite when I step through them.

I stepped through my fears and spoke up. "I am feeling..." and I told him how I felt. It was a long conversation. Sometimes awkward. Sometimes jangly. Sometimes scary. But we kept talking. And in the opening up of truth, more truth arose. More openings appeared. More honesty was revealed.

It was a deep realization for me. I am not acting with integrity when I hide my truth behind my fear of speaking up.

This morning, the cloud has lifted for me. I am feeling balanced again. Hopeful. Open. Trusting and, in love. In love with this little light of mine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

The question is: Will you shine your light on the darkness within to bring it out into the light of day? Will you let yourself shine?

A good question: What is worth protecting?

For several years I worried a lot about protecting an image, but today I have understood that the image cannot be preconceived. Shakira

Over at Maureen's 'All Art Friday' blog today at, Writing Without Paper, she poses a question that artist M.K. Guth will ask at a collaborative art event she is creating, "Ties of Protection and Safekeeping". "What is worth protecting?"

A good question.

At the Free Online Dictionary, 'protect' is defined as 'to defend from trouble, harm, attack, etc.' It can also have economic implications -- to impose protective tariffs, to protect against default of payment.

What is worth protecting?

After I had moved back to live with my daughters in this city at the foot of the Rockies, we felt pretty safe. Conrad was in jail (again) and I did not think about his presence on the streets around me -- or in my head! When he was released from prison the year after I moved back, I was worried he would try to find me and impose his power over me. Alexis and Liseanne shared my fear -- and I didn't want to have them live in fear. I wanted all of us to live with peace of mind, joy and love.

To nullify our fear, I met with Brian Willis of Winning Mind Training to get some guidance on how to create a safety perimeter -- around our home, and ourselves. The best way to protect yourself, said Brian, is to educate yourself.

My life was worth protecting. My daughters lives were worth protecting. And more importantly, by taking positive measures to protect what was most important to us, we created peace of mind. We educated ourselves so we could let go of fear and walk easily in the world.

I had never thought much about 'protection' before Conrad's parole. Hadn't thought much about my right to protect myself. Or even the need. I hadn't give much thought to the value of taking concrete steps to create safety in my environment. But, after being jumped by Conrad one night while visiting my girlfriend, and his subsequent return to prison and parole, I needed to take action, and responsibility, for my own safety. "The police cannot be with you twenty-four seven," Brian said. "The courts nor the police can protect you, unless you're in protective custody. Take responsibility."

Taking responsibility was an eye opener.

One of the first things Brian recommended was putting my 'fear' into perspective. Is Conrad a violent man or is he a coward? Now, my fearful mind wanted to scream out -- he's violent! Really, really violent.

Reality was, after talking about what my intuition and my experience with him knew -- he wasn't violent. He could be dangerous. But he was, first and foremost a coward. The real monster of Conrad had grown up in my mind. He had taken on a greater than life aura in my head that caused me to view him through the filter of my fear and sadness and sorrow and shame of all that had gone wrong. In cleaning the filter of my thinking, I put the real man into perspective. He did what he did because he was terrified of living without lies and deceit. He was terrified of his human condition. He did what he did in my life because he could. It's what he does. And because I didn't stop him from 'doing what he does' in my life, he terrorized me and those I love. He was a coward. I had been a victim.

I wanted to be a victor.

In the course of creating the safety perimeter around my home, or, Target Hardening, as Brian called it, he worked with Alexis and Liseanne and me on personal safety training. "It is your right, your duty, your responsibility to protect yourself," he told us. "Whatever it takes."

The whatever it takes was the scary part. "You can't let your thoughts of, oh that's not a nice thing to do, interfere with your responsibility to take care of yourself," Brian said. This was after demonstrating to us how to use our voice and limbs as tools to deter an attacker. "Tactics for personal protection must be easy to use, and effective outside the training room," he said. "Avoiding confrontation is always the first step. Don't trick yourself into believing that in a confrontation you can 'talk' him into being nice. He wouldn't be stalking you if being nice was part of his agenda."

Think like your enemy. Take action, he advised.

In his book, Fear Less, Gavin deBecker writes, "Others can choose to make you a target. Only you can choose to be a victim."

Victim's abdicate responsibility for their well-being to the courts and police and other people, writes Brian in Creating a Safety Perimeter an article he wrote for my book, The Dandelion Spirit.

"A Victim has an external locus of control and feels they are powerless to stop whatever is going to happen to them. As a result they give up their power and control to others. Their lives are filled with worry, anxiety and fear. A Victor accepts personal responsibility and takes action to make themselves and their loved ones, 'Hard Targets'. They have an internal locus of control and understand that they have the power and they are in control. The 'Victor' mentality not only makes you safer, it allows you to live a life filled with awareness, confidence, fulfillment and empowerment."

What is worth protecting?

Life.

Target hardening my home, my workspace, my environment were simply measures to provide me the assurance that I had done, whatever it takes, to protect myself and my daughters. I couldn't control what Conrad, or anyone else, with evil intent would do. That wasn't my agenda.

My purpose was to make it hard for anyone to do something that took away my peace of mind, that robbed me of my right to move with ease through my day without fearing what lurked in the shadows around me. My purpose was to Live without fear.

Looking over my shoulder was part of my fear. Making my life a 'hard target', gave me the peace of mind to keep my sights on the road ahead of me. Knowing I had taken responsibility, done what was required to make it hard for him to break through my safety perimeter gave me the space to live my life with joy, without looking over my shoulder in fear.

Today, I don't fear what others will do in my life. Whatever they attempt, I know that I am safe when I take responsibility for creating the life of my dreams -- and that includes shining light on the shadows around me.

In protecting the sanctity of my environment, in creating a safety perimeter around me, in consciously choosing to be aware, to listen to my intuition, to not let fear drive me away from being courageous, I step confidently into my day knowing, I am 100% responsible for my life. I don't have to live with fear. I have to take action to live fearlessly.

The question is: Are you fearlessly living your life by lighting up the shadows you fear?

She is a miracle.

If nothing every changed, there would be no butterflies. Unknown

It is a miracle she is alive. I wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant. Before her conception, I'd had two ectopic pregnancies. Half a tube was left. She found the point of entry and the miracle of Alexis was conceived.

That was almost 24 years ago. Yesterday, I stood at the airport with C.C. and my sister, J.T. waving good-bye to Alexis as she passed through security and walked towards the gate where the jet awaited that would whisk her away. She is moving. Permanently. Forever. (or so she says.) "I'm not coming back to Calgary to live," she said. "I hate winter."

She's gone to the coast. Gone to pursue a dream she's nurtured since she was a child. A dream that has pushed her, pulled her, torn her apart and driven her upwards and forwards and backwards and around and back to centre stage again and again. It is a dream she cannot let go of because it will not let go of her.

She's an actor. An artist. A singer. A dancer. A writer. A gift from God. The stage is the playground upon which she found her voice. And now, she's off into the wild blue yonder to make her mark, to stake her ground, to give voice to making her dream come true.

It was a bittersweet moment.

Before we'd left the house in the morning, she was sitting on the couch in the living room, reading the newspaper. I sat down beside her, put my arms around her and gave her a hug. "It's finally hitting me," I said. "I won't be able to just walk up at any time and give you a hug."

Tiny tears pricked at my eyelids. I held them back. This wasn't a time for tears. It was a time for celebration. The butterfly's wings have spread wide. She's taking flight.

It isn't that she was living at home in the past couple of years. She'd moved back home when she made the decision earlier this fall to leave the city and pursue her dream.

Having her home has been a gift of time. Okay, so sure, there were the frustrations of her 'stuff' scattered everywhere. "If you wouldn't nag me mum, I'd clean it up myself."

What? Me? Nag? It wasn't nagging. It was constructive criticism designed to create awareness of the value of respecting other people's space. Uh uh. Really. I wasn't nagging.

I went into the kitchen this morning and didn't find her keys on the counter. Her purse is gone from the floor by the front door and suddenly the empty space looms larger. There's no book on the couch. No sweater on the chair. No reminder of the wonder and the woes of a twenty-something who fills whatever space she's in because... well, just because. It is her way. She is still filling out the pages of her book of life, expanding into all she will ever be as she paints the world in the amazingly vibrant hues of her laughter, her joy, her love.

So, it was appropriate this morning that I hadn't opened yesterday's Daily Om until today. It was titled, "Making Connections While Apart". The article suggests we send loving thoughts to those we love who are far away throughout the day. It also suggests picking a set time, every day, once a week, once a month, to pause and think lovingly of the ones we love who are far away. In time and with practice, the article states, we may learn to recognize the feeling that comes when a loved one sends energy our way, and the feeling of soul-to-soul communication. I'm sending you vibrations of love Alexis. May they fill your heart with joy, lift your spirits and warm your soul.

Last week, Alexis wrote on her blog,

"The times I’ve wished I could have fallen in love with computer programming are countless. But every time I have made an attempt to follow a more even path, something calls me back. And I can’t help but think that maybe what is so frightening about a life of creativity is that it is not unlike falling in love.

Like love, it is a risk. It is called “falling” for a reason after all. It is falling without knowing where we will land, or how hard. It takes a leap of faith. Sacrifice. Commitment. It takes tearing down all the walls we have built up to protect our hearts and letting someone else inside. One must be fearless in their vulnerability, courageous enough to open themselves up, to share their voice, their feelings, their heart and soul. And when we risk all this, allow others to witness our humanity, we also open ourselves up to the sting of rejection, to pain, to heartbreak. Just like we cannot make someone love us back, there is no guarantee that the world will love our art.

And just as lovers, in spite of knowing all the risks, fall anyways, I have to trust the wind to pull me from the safety of the branch, and let me fall."

I cannot stop her falling. I cannot give her flight. She has spent her lifetime creating her wings, preparing for flight. And though she is a part of my being, my soul, my heart, she has learned the lesson we all must learn to find ourselves in the world, how to fly.

I can't tie her wings down. I have spent her lifetime making space for her to find them, being there as she tested them, as she built up strength to spread them wide and soar free.

I am joyful that she has, grateful she is courageous enough to leap -- and to trust in the universe to be there to support her. She knows I will always be here to help her up if she falls. To give her space to catch her breath should she run out of wind.

She has flown away, but she will never fly free of my heart. She lives within me forever in my heart. I will miss her. And I will not have to pick up after her again! At least, until she comes home at Christmas. And this time, I promise, I won't nag. I'll see every bit of clutter as a gift from a young woman who fills my being with joy. She is a miracle. And I am blessed to be a part of the miracle that is Alexis. She is a blessing to the world.