Birthday Thoughts

Bringing back the title of this blog to the simplicity of my name seemed right today in honor of my 52nd birthday. Changing the template and background to something bright and light is also symbolic of how I feel, that the year ahead will be one of great goodness and mercy, a place with a smoother path and clearer skies. If you have been reading along with me the last couple years, you know that there have been some dark places I've had to visit and revisit, suffering seemed (at times!) to be my best friend, and everything in my life felt like it was falling apart. Life's journey is so unpredictable- and, of course, being a middle aged menopausal woman certainly added to my internal need to find and create change that would simply make me happy.

So I have made some changes, started college, and opened myself up to all the possibilities....

And as I shared with my husband Terry a few days ago, I am choosing to enter this next year of my life being honest with myself, with him, and with the world. No more hiding. And it feels pretty darn good.

A couple weeks ago I caught one part of the movie "V for Vendetta." As Natalie Portman's character reads the story of a fellow prisoner while she herself is in prison, one powerfully beautiful quote from that story left a deep impact on my heart:

"Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free."

And not ironically, once at that place of honestly, a place I couldn't even see before, I found hope. I came home.

My first semester of college is over and I am proud to report I did very well! Starting in June I will be doing weekly blog posts to introduce you to some of the amazing writers I met during this semester. One of the papers I did for my writing class was titled "Women Writers Resisting Oppression." The women I featured in this paper blew me away, literally! Sharing my own story has been good and necessary, but I want to use my gift of writing to also share the stories of others in the future.

A poem I wrote while sitting outside on a beautiful spring day at Temple University, 4/9/13:

Migration

Is flight up
or down?
A means to
get from
here to there,
or somewhere
else?
Maybe it doesn't
require any
movement, flapping
of the wings
but is found
in stillness.
Breathe. Exhale. Inhale.
Jump in, descend
gain courage
reach the bottom
push off and
fly back to
the surface
Wet, Clean, Ready
to migrate again.