On Being Malia’s Mom

If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing she was ever so small
The dark brown almost black eyed little one with the soft, sun streaked, ringlet curls that cradled her face like bouncing springs
The easy smile that lit up her face anytime someone looked her way
The curious toddler with mocha skin and deliciously chunky arms and legs- giving observers the illusion of screw on hands and feet
Now stands before me a young woman.

I say this not in sorrow but in awe…
I take great pride in the person she is and the woman she is becoming
What a gift a daughter is!

This beautiful young woman who used to snuggle beside me and ask to hear her favorite book
The one who would wake up beside me in the morning and share her dreams
Now stands before me tall and beautiful- with a smile that is as much in her eyes as it is in the curl of her lips
As far back as I can remember she has been wise beyond her years.
Someone who chooses friends intentionally and is guided by realistic and considerate choices.
Someone who reads more than 30 books over a summer vacation and can read a 500 page book in 2 days with ease.
She is someone who is willing to brush my hair when I need comfort and laughs at my dark-side and sometimes bawdy humor.
Someone who roles her eyes when I’m being bouncy, playful and demonstrative.
She’ll hold her hand up as she walks out of the room saying, “Mom- you’re in the zone again.”

Every part of raising Malia has been humbling, we often switch roles and she’s the mature and wise one.
In fact… that happens more often than I like to admit.

But one thing I know for sure is- it’s been an absolute privilege to raise you and be your mom
And now that you are becoming a young woman before me- I just want acknowledge you and let you know that it’s an honor to participate in the choices you making about the life you want to create and the woman you want to become.
Happy Birthday Sweet Malia, Happy 17th Birthday!

in whom feelings are much stronger as reason.

I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me.

Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go.

Reality doesn’t impress me.

I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.

No more walls.”

Anais Nin quote

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
- Helen Keller Quote

‘There are only two ways to live your life.  One, is as though there are no miracles.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.‘ Albert Einstein

The only way around is through.
~ Robert Frost

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
~ Abraham Lincoln

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~Mark Twain

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
~ Pablo Picasso

“Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”
~ Mae West (1892-1980)

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.
~ Montaigne

“Some leaders are born women.”

“Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough–that we should try again.”
~ Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

“Love and the Self are One, and the discovery of either, leads to the realization of both.” ~ Leo Buscgalia

“I never loved another person the way I loved myself.”
~ Mae West (1892-1980)

“I’m a woman. Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman. That’s me.”
~ Maya Angelou

“Spend some time alone every day.”
~ The Dalai Lama

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”
~ Walt Whitman

“I found God in myself, and I loved her, I loved her fiercely.”

~Ntozake Shange

“The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one.”
~ Joan Baez

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
~ Anais Nin

“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
~ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
- Virginia Woolf

“It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower is to bloom.”
~Alice Walker

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
~ Carl Jung (1875-1961)

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”
~ Helen Keller

“Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.”
~Janis Joplin

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
~ Bill Cosby

“I do it for the joy it brings, cause I’m a joyful girl. ‘Cause the world owes us nothing, we owe each other the world.”
~ Ani Difranco

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”
~ Helen Keller

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
~ Walt Disney (1901-1966)

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.”
~ Carol Burnett

“A woman’s dreams are an index to her greatness.”

~Unkown

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”
~ Maya Angelou

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
~ Yoda

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ Mark Twain

“Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”
~ Sarah Bernhardt

It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.
~ Roger Babson

And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.- Anais Nin

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to ones courage.”
- Anais Nin

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”
~ Mark Twain

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.
~ Dorothea Brande

Success is a journey, not a destination.
~ Ben Sweetland

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
~Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“Each friend represents a world in us; a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only in meeting them that a new world is born.”
~Anais Nin

A friend is someone with whom you dare to be yourself.
~ Frank Crane

“If I treat you as you are I make you worse, but if I treat you as what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help
them to become what they are capable of being.
~Goethe

A woman cannot be comfortable without her own approval.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in
your life.
~Confucius

No one can take away my freedom to choose how I will react.
~Victor Frankl

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
~ Swedish proverb
Yesterday ended last night.
~Norman Vincent Peale

A friend is someone who sees through you and still enjoys the view.
~Wilma Askinas

Attitude is the way you mentally look at the world around you. It is how you view your environment and your future. It is the focus you develop toward life itself.

~Author Unknown

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.
~Kahlil Gibran

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

~Mahatma Gandhi

Reality is the mirror of your thoughts. Choose well what you put in front of the mirror.

~ Remez Sasson

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

~Pericles

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Morrie Schwartz, in “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!  ~Mark Twain

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.  ~Proverb
Spring has returned.  The Earth is like a child that knows poems.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  ~Nadine Stair

In springtime, love is carried on the breeze.  Watch out for flying passion or kisses whizzing by your head.  ~Terri Guillemets

The seasons are what a symphony ought to be:  four perfect movements in harmony with each other.  ~Arthur Rubenstein

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
~ Pablo Picasso

As we stand towards East, the element of Air. We turn to you as the direction where the sun rises each day, the place of a new start and new beginnings.  All of life that is born comes up in your direction.

And as we face your direction we honor the birth of babies, the birth of ideas, the birth of inspiration and the birth of ourselves.

Oh Spirit of the East~ The bringer of the element of Air.

May your influence provide illumination, perception, and transformation within our lives.  Helping us to embrace the why of the world.

Like the metaphor of a butterfly may our relationship to our bodies begin a new and hold clear vision of aliveness & inspiration. May we allow our bodies to breath deeply fully embracing the gift of life.

Humans seem to have a primordial connection to flowers: They’re a symbol of life and rebirth. It’s no surprise that cultures around the world cherish springtime blossoms, a sign that Earth is waking up from the slumber of winter and redecorating the planet with a colorful new beginning…

So here I am breathing and accepting of where I am and how far I’ve come. Today I was on Facebook and a friend of mine posted a story that seemed relevant and I thought you might enjoy it.

Here it is:

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it home so that he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. On the day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the moth for several hours as the moth struggled to force the body through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. It just seemed to be stuck. Then the man, in his kindness, decided to help the moth, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The moth then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the moth because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening was the way of forcing fluid from the body of the moth into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight would only come after the struggle. By depriving the moth of a struggle, he deprived the moth of health.

So maybe where I am today is perfect- and maybe just maybe my struggles ar is perfect and exactly where I need to be- in this moment.  If we were to go through our life without any obstacles, we would not be as strong as what we could have been. Food for thought…