Breathing Underwater

For Christmas this year, among other lovely things, my daughter gave me a journal. On the inside cover was this inscription: Her heart and brain do not weigh her down, but are set aflame; they singe her skin, they make her radiant. She is your mother.  She is you, years from now. Let your definition of beauty begin with her. They are lines from a poem called Mother Courage . She wrote it for me, for my 50th birthday, and performed it as a spoken word piece in front of an auditorium full of people to spectacular applause. It was stunning. It took my breath away and it made me cry. Proud and touched, I posted it on my Facebook page, where it was shared over and over and viewed nearly 2,000 times.  It remains the best gift I have ever been given. But if I'm honest, I'm not living up to her words. My heart and brain have been weighing me down. I am not radiant. I do not feel beautiful. I feel tired and worn, dull and heavy - in every way. Yesterday, w

A while back, I did a blog post about how, because I've been through so much in the past couple of decades, very little really scares me anymore. And a little while after that, I did one specifically about how the thought of death doesn't really frighten me. Yeah.  I lied.   Now, I didn't lie intentionally, mind you. I still believe there is little I'm truly afraid of. And, in general, the thought of dying doesn't worry me so much... but I have found out that the idea of dying right now? Scares the bejeebies out of me, people. I spent Wednesday afternoon and evening in the emergency room. I was sent there by my doctor's office because my blood pressure had been ranging between 178/98 and 210/110. For those of you not in the know, those are not good numbers. The nurse at my doctor's office used the words, "stroke range" and asked if I wanted them to call the rescue squad to come get me.  Gulp. Now, I've never had hi

The definition of the word ' live ' is: "to be alive." The definition of the word ' deliberately ' is: "consciously and intentionally; on purpose." So, when you put them together, ' to live deliberately ' means "to be alive, consciously and intentionally; on purpose."  That? Does not describe the way I'm living. It doesn't. In fact, I haven't been living deliberately for a long time. I mean, I experience little pockets of living with intention , but by and large, my life over the long last while has been happening to me, not because of me. I expect most of us could say that at times. We get so caught up in the 'must dos,' in the putting out of fires, in the crisis management, in the daily drudgery, that we forget what it means to really live consciously.  Please say that's not just me. It's you, too, right? Sometimes? Ever? Regardless, I've decided it's time to make a ch