Dona Nobis Pacem

My dear friend and kindred spirit Mimi has invested so much of her heart and soul in this day, in these globes she has been collecting. And I love her dearly. I must be worthy of my Queen and such a noble cause.

I thought long and hard about today. I thought: "I should post something profound and inspired and wordy". Thoughts that are torture to someone like me, the non-writer. Thoughts that cause anxiety. What if... I mean... There's the distinct possibility that I'll fall short of such a monumental task. We ARE talking about bringing peace to the world, people. THE WORLD! PEACE! MOI! With a POST! *whimper* Some words I write and send out into cyberspace are meant to reach others, set off a chain reaction and inspire PEACE. -This is the point at which I start to hyperventilate and desperately look for something to keep me busy that will give me an excuse to step away from the blinking cursor (curse... how appropriate...) and my total and utter brain freeze (I have brain freeze, writers have writers' block, I have brain freeze and I didn't even get to eat some ice cream - how unfair!).

How? How do I pull this off? Me!

Think Anndi...

OK

What it all comes down to is...

Love.

Her love for her Papa and his love for her, that's how this started. A love she then shared with us all, so very eloquently and generously.

Such small gestures can make a difference... and no one is too small to impact the world. Even a few words sent out into cyberspace. Setting off a chain of events. One small marble touching another after it is cast... Like in a child's game.

"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room."
- Anita Koddick

So... I thought I'd bring you someone else's words. These are WAY better than anything I could have come up with.

Mother Theresa said it best...

"What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family."

That's exactly it.

Home... Love... Family...

Peace!



Thank you, Mims... for everything.

Love you my friend!

what I want...

Home...

New beginnings...

This blog came about because of changes that needed to be made in my life. I stopped posting here for a bit, going back to the familiarity of the old blog I used to call home.

June is before us, and a year ago last June I made the best decision of my life. I came to a realization about what the path forward was to be. So, I'm back here, the new home blog, the transition towards where I ultimately want to be. I will bring with me some of the silliness, the irreverance, the good parts that the old blog held.

The truth is, in order to be happy, I have to make some monumental changes in my life.

My Honey is in Alabama. My home is in his heart and he is in mine. I want to go home. We've lived the long distance relationship for a long time now. I was afraid for a while we would never make it work and I denied my heart's true desire.

So... I have to make a very drastic change. In order to go home, I have to move thousands of miles. People do it every day, right? Should be easy, right?

But I need my daughter and I can't make a move without her. For seven years, it's been the two of us with people acting as satellites, but no one ever truly made an effort to be a part of our family, until my Honey. And although her father left us and moved into the city, leaving me to be the primary caregiver, how do I move her so far away from him? Chicklet asks me when my Honey and I will get married. She knew even before meeting him last year. She is aware of the implications.

I'm an only child... with one living parent... how do I move and not feel like I'm a bad daughter abandonning an elderly parent? Not being physically close.

I'm not really asking you to tell me what I should do. I have to trust my heart and find my way. I do want to thank Turnbaby (it's her birthday) who was the first friend to follow me here for always encouraging me to grab on to love and let my heart lead.

"Paradise is always where love dwells."
~ by Jean Paul F. Richter ~

who said you can never go home again

For a long time after Mom passed, it was excruciating to come back to her house. I don't really know how to explain it but I felt like I was trespassing. Even though it was the house I grew up in and Dad's home. In my eyes and heart, it was my mother's house... it was her home. Who was I to go through her things? To discard things she held dear?

I don't think everyone feels like this when they lose a parent, maybe they do, I don't know. And I don't ask anyone to understand it. I'm just telling you how it felt.

Finally, in the fall of last year, it started to feel like home again.

I spent a lot of time last summer seeing to Dad, making sure he had good meals, that things got done around the house.

I think that was when I started to ease back into it all. I came out of the grief induced fog.

Some days I felt like a lion tamer who goes into a cage of Bengal tigers for the first time... Now the only wild creatures in the house are the dogs.

The apple trees that blossomed every spring of my childhood have long been cut down, and somehow the backyard looks smaller to me now.

My perspective has changed.

I expect it's all a part of renewal, of new beginnings, of healing.

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
-- John Lubbock

what does it feel like

... to have new blogging digs?

It feels like home.

Shelter.

It feels like I have my own private island. Fortunately, there's decent ferry service and a not too scary bridge for folks who want to visit.

It feels like it's mine, all mine. Selfish huh? But you know what? It doesn't matter what anyone thinks, except me. This is the "love me or leave me" side of my personality - "qui m'aime me suive" as we say in French. This is the part of me that knows I can't be happy if I live my life based on what other people think of me.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't care. I do. But, (there always seems to be a but) I love myself enough to accept my faults and to assert who I am... to be true to myself. Only then can I grow. I'm not resistant to change, on the contrary... but it has to be for me. Not to please others. If someone doesn't like something, they are welcome to tell me. I then have to decide whether or not I see it as an opportunity to grow.

Too often, constraints are applied to people by invoking the "friendship" card. Not maliciously, mind you. Think about what you're doing when you ask someone to change who they are... are you doing it for them? Or so you can feel better?

A dear friend and I were having a chat late last night (wee hours actually...) about blogs, about how touchy people get about them. What I told her was this, my blog, is an outlet... but it isn't me. Yes it's a part of me. And it's a place where I'll try to bear my soul. A place where I'll be stark naked and raw. But it's one way I have chosen to pull from inside what I need to see out there. So I can grow. And those who come here will get to know me as I learn about myself.

Even if the blog was me... I'm wise enough to know I can't be liked by every single being in the universe.

It's funny, the conversation started after she sought me out to bounce something off of. She was having a hard time with something and I just told her how I viewed the situation from the outside, based on my own experiences. And as it turns out, being there for her actually was of great benefit to me. It allowed me to focus on something other than the hurt I've been drowning in.

Thank you my friend.

"It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word."

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky