Friday Five

Hello my lovelies! I hope Friday has been treating you well!

Things that have been going on:

1. I am glad that the work day is over- it appears my lovely fiance gave me an upper respiratory infection, and I'll definitely be glad to get into bed at the end of the day. I am all kinds of achy and full of sniffles.

2. I'm mulling over the following Al Anon slogan:  "What other people think of me is none of my business." This is a radical shift. It says to me that I then have to focus on what I think of me, and what I think of others...which makes me think of shifting the meaning of the word "self-centered" away from the concept of selfishness, moving toward being centered in self.

3. I think I'm going to go to the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History this weekend for some food for my soul.

4. This made me laugh today. A Softer World, you had me at hello. The mouseover on this one is great, too, and it makes me hug my little ball of fur just that much tighter.

5. Here's your horoscope from Free Will Astrology. For the Lovely Leos out there, Rob writes:
I'd love for you to be able to always give the best gifts you have to give without worrying about whether they will be received in the spirit with which you offer them. But that's just not realistic. I would also be ecstatic if you never had to tone down your big, beautiful self out of fear that others would be jealous or intimidated. And yet that's not a rational possibility, either. Having said that, though, I do want to note that now and then both of those pleasurable scenarios can prevail for extended lengths of time. And I believe you're now in one of those grace periods.

Personal Responsibility: Making it Sacred

Some rights reserved by Tracy Holland

“The  wounding becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories and to become the vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time. When we fail to do this, we repeat the same old story over and over again.” ~ Jean Houston

I was all set to sit down and write a post about personal responsibility tonight...but I've just gotten home from witnessing a friend's reading of her memoir at Duquesne University, and I want to write about that experience. Maybe I'll really end up writing about personal responsibility after all...I guess we'll see by the end of the post, right?

To Light the Fire, To Tend the Well

Semele by John Duncan (1921)

Imbolc is one of my favorite holidays. I have always been drawn to Brighid, and she was the first Goddess I pledged myself to in service. This holiday also marks the anniversary of my Reclaiming Initiation (January 30th marked two years), the anniversary of my decision to show myself that I mean business.

"Meaning business" has meant so many things over the past two years. It has shown up in decisions to unravel old patterns and leave old associations behind. It has show up in my courting joy and my desire to define my life outside of victimhood. It has show up in my writing and my loving and my return to slow, calm breathing when the going gets tough.

The past year has been especially challenging. I've been weaving the pleasant with the unpleasant and learning to live within both. I'm finding that, in accepting all of life (even the shittier, scarier parts) I'm actually living. In giving up trying to be better than, above it, perfect, I'm finding out who I really am, and that person is simultaneously surprising and generally a good egg. In letting the reins go I've found that the horse is better behaved than I could have ever dreamed and knows her way home.

So this year, I'm pledging to Brighid that I will be real, even when that is messy...that I will be myself, even when it's humbling. This year, the focus in "I mean business" has shifted from the "business" to the "I". Real people light the fires, real people tend the wells.