Tag: photos

Roller Girl

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“Do not wear your skates down the stairs!”

This was a common directive lobbed at my back as I dashed down the steps from our third floor apartment each day to explore my world on wheels. As per my mother’s request, I would dutifully sit on the bottom step closest to the sidewalk at the entrance to my building and step into my skates. In those days we had the types of roller skates that strapped on over shoes. They were adjustable and tinny sounding and unstable and I refused to go anywhere without them.

There was a sidewalk in front of our apartment building that ended where a small sloping hill up began. This stretch of concrete is where the majority of my rolling would take place, avoiding chips and rocks and those pesky cracks that threatened to break my mother’s back were I to step on one. It was a limited track but freeing all the same.

It would be so much more fun with a change in terrain. You know, a hill.

Then one day, as if the roller gods had heard my pleas, tanned and muscled men were clearing a wide swath of grass to make room for a sidewalk expansion where our narrow trodden path up that hill at the end of the sidewalk once was. This was exciting indeed.

On the playground, across the street from this noisy and smelly work, my best friend Teri and I watched the progress from the swings. We speculated, as only seven year olds can, on what new and exciting promise this extension would provide. We imagined speeding down the hill and all the way to end of the sidewalk without lifting a wheeled foot. Maybe even floating. Or flying. Kids with bikes and trikes could race each other from the top.

We stopped to consider other scenarios as we took to the hot metal slide. Maybe all of us could be tied to a bike, you know to hold onto it like water skiing, that would start at the top of the hill…

Then one day the hill was complete. Sort of.

This newly flattened surface was made of tar and not concrete. It didn’t match the sidewalk. Not only was it pavement, but it was also bumpy and uneven. Yet, it still provided ample opportunity for experimentation with roller skates and bicycles and anything with wheels that previously struggled on the dirt and grass. It was the new shiny thing in the neighborhood and kids from all over showed up to test it out.

I started out carefully enough, side stepping up the grassy part of the hill in my skates a few feet before testing out the pavement. The first test yielding decent results: not smooth, but not awful either. The unevenness of the pavement slowed me down just enough to give me a false sense of confidence. I walked up higher in the grass and stepped onto the pavement and rolled down. Still okay. Bumpy and slow, but rolling. Then I got cocky and careless, marching to the very top of the hill in the grass and stepping onto the top of this glorious black hill like an Olympic skiier ready to compete for gold. Half way down this short hill my skate caught on something, I over corrected, arms windmilling, feet defying gravity, limbs flying in unnatural directions and despite the Herculean effort to save myself, I landed face down on the gravely pavement and skidded to a stop, shredding the tender flesh from my face and hands. The force was strong enough to produce the appropriate amount of blood to freak my mother out (sort of, she was pretty pro at wet towels and ice packs for my curiosity-gone-south by now) and leave me with a giant scab in the form of a question mark. On my face. Forehead, cheek, nose and chin. My hands were mostly just raw and tender.

Once my mother mopped up the blood, patted dry my raw and stinging face, and wiped away my tears, I pleaded to go back out. But my mother, ever the voice of reason, hung my skates up for a few days to protect me from myself.  

These skates were a natural appendage. This was not a horse I was afraid to ride again. It was not the fault of the skates, but clearly the new hill. However, in my juvenile lust for wind in my hair, I would master that little bit of pavement and seek even bigger adventures.

With age and experience, like at 8 years old, I began to make more discerning choices. I did not, for instance, skate down the slide. I walked up the ladder leading to the slide in skates, hovered on the little platform at the top, considered the consequences of flight, and possible death, by parental shaming – not necessarily bodily harm due to the velocity at which I would be traveling that short stretch – and sat on the slide instead with the wheels touching the slide in font of me, rather than tucked under me as I so desperately longed to do. It was a compromise. It felt like I was kind of rolling.

I did however swing with the skates on. Seems harmless, right? However, I really liked to hang upside down and wrap my legs around the chains of the swing holding me in place, while I let my arms and hair drag along the ground. On this particular day, a day like any other, with the exception of the skates on my feet, I miscalculated the force with which I had to hoist my wheeled feet up to throw myself upside down, and instead kept going on through. The weight of the skates created the perfect conditions for another face plant. In the gravel. Home I went for a quick patch job, then back out. Sans skates.

In the summer I would skate in shorts and a tank top – mostly Danskin sets. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, Google it. These were required of every young kid in the late 60’s and early 70’s. At the height of the Polyester awakening, we the children, endured plastic clothing sets because they were virtually indestructible and wrinkle-free.) It was an invitation to shred the bare skin off my bones repeatedly, especially my knees and occasionally an elbow, and of course, sometimes my face. But I was undeterred. Those eight wheels were freedom, like flying. And if the scrape didn’t take my breath away and make me feel like I was going to cry, I waited to share it with my mother, should she decide I had had enough.

The skates were my parents answer to a bicycle. We were on the third floor and schlepping a bike down all those steps sounded like a chore to them and an impossible task for me, so I traveled on 8 wheels instead of two. The bike would have to wait until we lived less densely and closer to the earth.

How fun would it be to ride a bike in skates?!

 

Gay Uncles

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I took a break from organizing and donating crafting supplies to begin the task of categorizing photos. The entire surface of the bed in the guest room is covered in boxes and baskets of photos. This room, the guest room, is my most favorite. It is decorated exactly the way I want it – simple white linens, an antique cherry night stand on one side of the bed and a filing cabinet hidden under a round top and layers of white linens on the other. The headboard is painted white-ish and gold – perfectly distressed – there is a cream colored bookcase, a dark oak hutch, white linen curtains and a dark wood chair. The art on the walls consists of bird prints and tiny pieces of original art I purchased on trips abroad. It is simple and clean (most of the time) and it’s where I go to breathe. The one room that is almost always neat and clean. I miss that feeling, so I’m digging in to unearth my little island of calm.

The photos are a mix of recent, with vibrant colors and uniform sizes and old yellowed, black and white with creases and cardboard backing. I love them all. The fresh memories and the bits of history I’m left to make up in the older ones. It’s those stories waiting to be told that I get lost in.

In these various piles there are two secrets closely held: one in a brown vinyl travel bag, the other in a tan photo album. They belong to my uncles. The twin great-uncles that I loved so dearly.

There is nothing scandalous hidden here. No pornographic images, no confessions or blackmail. The memories and photos are powerful in their simplicity. Each had many photos of the two of them together, they were very close, just standing side by side smiling for the camera. They were gay, both of them, though the opera singer would never claim his preferences. His brother, discreet, but out, would share his twin’s secrets with my mother and I after his death.

They weren’t really secrets.

The photos they left behind hold images of men seated in living rooms and kitchens, laughing, smiling, enjoying themselves. There are couples, it seems, only if the time is taken to go through them all. The same two men are standing or seated side by side with their arms around each other like “pals” on more than one occasion, in different clothes and maybe a change in hair style or length. These were relationships.

Tucked in with these photos are newspaper clippings of accomplishments of each other and their friends, their family.

What is so striking about these photos is nothing. Yet they were held in bottom drawers of dressers under winter clothes. I imagine them filling a roll of film half with these photos and the other half with shots of them with family and women so as not to arouse suspicion at the one-hour photo processing center in their home towns. Or even driving the unprocessed film far enough away. They would carefully cull out the photos and place the special ones in albums to be viewed often and probably alone or just with the subjects contained within. The other photos would be found loose in a kitchen drawer or in the envelope they came in, resting on the coffee table. Or maybe discarded.

So much of their lives were manipulated and restrained for the comfort of others. These secrets and maybe lies would ultimately undo them.

The opera singer, became well known in the opera community of New York City. He was married three times to different women, powerful artists in their own rights. I always suspected he was gay. He was just this side of flamboyant – dramatic perhaps, that was his job after all – and he never had children. Never wanted them. He was happy to be an uncle and he was an awesome one.

But his secrecy made him sick.

Ultimately the “not gay” opera singing uncle would succumb to AIDS toward the end of the eighties. He wasted away. He had denied his actual existence in favor of the persona he thought everyone wanted. And it killed him.

The other uncle lived much more quietly, pursuing the arts differently. He would work in Europe for Fortuny, then in Boston. Later he would open a lighting store, then a florist shop. He would drink and make the unfortunate decisions that come along with alcoholism. It was not easy living inauthentically. Liquor helped.

Later in life he would give it up. He met and fell in love with someone a decade younger who was sober but infected. They never had sex, he told me, but they were affectionate and madly in love. There are photos that make this obvious. Sweet, gentle images of the two of them engaged in conversation, smiling, listening.

But AIDS would take him too. They both knew it would eventually come and were as prepared as anyone can be for such profound, gradual loss.

There would be no other lovers. Instead he turned his life over to AA. For over 30 years my sweet uncle would take in people in the “the program” who needed a soft place to land for a while. He had inherited his father’s house and there were two bedrooms and a Florida room surrounded on two sides with jalousie windows and a back door. He moved into the Florida room to allow the residents of the other rooms some privacy. That’s just how he was.

The house was a very small typical Florida home built sometime in the 40s and 50s. Just one small bathroom, a large kitchen with a window over the sink with a wide sill that my great grandmother would place peanut butter crackers on for the local squirrel population, feeding some of them by hand and a living room big enough to fit an upright piano. His parents had lived in it over 30 years. He moved in with his father to help take care of him in his later years, to be sure he took his meds and didn’t drive after too many cocktails. His dad “knew” but it wasn’t discussed. His mother had passed ten years prior and she would not allow it to be spoken about. She knew too, they were her babies, the youngest of six by about 12 years. But still, you just didn’t talk about such things.

He would, much later after his beloved dog died, check himself into an assisted care facility from which he would not emerge alive. He was beginning to forget things and didn’t want to be a burden. He knew what was coming, he had seen it in every one of his older siblings, except his twin who would escape that fate by dying too young.  Less than a year after he moved out of his tiny Florida home he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I’m pretty sure he planned it that way.

Their lives were rich, they mattered. They loved wholly and completely. They each left a legacy of art, beauty, laughter and love.

They were great, great-uncles and sifting through their photographic pasts fills my heart with compassion and sadness in equal measure for the lives they lived and the ones they hid.

 

There’s a Monster in My Closet

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There are days that I feel like the purging will never end. I worry that I will get the house “set” and decide I need to rearrange or pick up a new hobby that brings more stuff in. I wonder what would happen if I just decided to pitch all the CDs. I toy with the idea of emptying one room completely and mindfully putting each thing back in after a ridiculous amount of consideration.

Then I realize I’m just in the middle of this process, not even quite in the middle of the year I’ve allotted myself. All of these things will resolve themselves in time.

Today I dove back into my room. The once sparse and organized closet with a handful of projects is threatening to buckle shelves and blow the doors open with the addition of the crafting supplies of mom’s I somehow I had to have. More project ideas presented themselves to me and now I am left with the task of sorting and storing. Do I purchase organizational boxes, as I have all but vilified, or do I make it work some other way, or do I let most of the stuff go?

In addition to all the closet stuff there are piles of papers on the desk that need filing or shredding; books that need to be reshelved or maybe even released; CDs to be burned; and matted photos that will likely be given away.

I am ready to let go of the photography for photography’s sake which has led me to this little thought spiral crises. If I can so cavalierly toss away photos that I once loved and was happy with, what’s next?

This was my inheritance.

My mother loved to craft and create and she had enough supplies to make something for everyone on the planet. She would create one thing she loved then decide to make 200 more of them and then be disappointed when they didn’t sell. I don’t want to go down that road. Any more.

I don’t want to do those artsy craftsy things I love for money. I will absolutely still accept financial compensation for things I make, but it cannot be why I make things. It was those things she made first that were magical. Each subsequent item was not as special. Maybe it was smaller, with less or more embellishment or somehow skimped on. Maybe it was just that there was now way more than one that it lost its magic. Whatever the case, I think I get it now. When I would make a piece of jewelry for myself it was always the first thing that sold. If I tried to make something for someone else in mind it fell short.

But back to the stuff of this room.

On the floor scattered in no particular pattern are half filled boxes and well-meaning piles that point to some sort of attempt to organize.

There are also three bookcases that will need to be culled with a strict hand. And my own files that need to be thinned of last year’s papers.

But one thing at a time. One ball of yarn in a bag to go to a friend. A book set aside for another friend. A small pile of photos started for gifting.

As much as I want to complete it all today, tidy up my room and sit down to watch a movie, I know the sweetness and the lessons are in the time.

Oh, I’m still going to watch that movie, the stuff will keep.

 

Inheritance

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Tomorrow it will be a month since my mother passed away. It was unexpected. Nearly a decade ago she had surgery to replace a heart valve. After that she had lots of energy and spunk but she would be on medicine for the rest of her life. It is that medication that is likely responsible for her death. “A catastrophic bleed.” A stroke, she simply laid down in bed one night really tired and never regained consciousness – it’s how she wanted to go, but probably not when.

I share this with you not to elicit sympathy or use her life as a cautionary tale, but by way of explanation for my absence from the interweb. And to share a little story about a lot of stuff.

In the weeks since she died I have been handling her “estate” and its contents. She had no money, was on social security and Medicaid, but her modest two-bedroom apartment told a different story.

My mother was not a hoarder, but she did have an affinity for all things crafty and written. She had three enormous bookshelves packed with books – floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall, sometimes two rows deep. She had one bedroom, the larger one, dedicated to crafts. She sewed, knitted, made jewelry, painted, drew, fantasized, dreamed and created all sorts of things in this space. She had 5 bookcases in this room filled with fabric, beads, yarn, paper and more books. Two desks for working. And when those filled up she opened a table.

Her closet and dresser were packed with clothes, good quality, known brands, yet she often complained that she needed new clothes. She had items stored in her kitchen that she never used. At least a dozen cups full of notepads and pens, crochet hooks and feathers, dotted the landscape of her home. She had multiples of personal care items like deodorant and soap – different brands, not like she bought them in bulk – just in case, I suppose.

Dealing with her home and its contents provided a welcome distraction from grief for a while, but in the larger picture it was full of life lessons on prosperity, abundance and stuff. It felt like a cruel joke at first: this is my year of letting go of stuff, of purging my home and now I have added a whole (almost) two bedroom apartment to the mix. It wasn’t about me of course, only it was.

It was a lesson for me. So many lessons, some still being revealed.

I brought a lot of her things home, but I was also able to off-load a ton of the fabric and craft supplies to a crafters guild she belonged to, I left some furniture behind for her neighbor and donated some clothes and kitchen items to the local charity thrift shop. But I still filled 6 car loads, an SUV and one of those super tall vans.

It overwhelms me, but it was very clear to me that I wanted to take my time with what I culled. And I’m glad that I am. There’s not much of monetary value, but a lot of memories and clues to the woman that was my mother.

I was completely prepared after this “year-long purging project” to chuck all my personal things and never look back. That could still happen, but as I paw through the personal effects of a life that spanned 75 years, and a handful of states from coast to coast, I’m starting to recognize value in things.

Not all things. I am not changing my tune completely.

But finding the book my mother read to me as a child stirred the sweetest of memories. All the bad artwork my brother and I created as children was saved, as were a tiny outfit or two, a blanket, locks of hair.

I uncovered a poem my grandmother wrote and some of her artwork. Tucked in a folder I found an autobiography my mother had written for admittance to ministerial school that revealed a few things I did not know. And a mountain of cards and letters from my mother’s friends showed her to be much loved.

While it’s true the memories do not live in these things, they do serve as a touchstone that creates a picture of the person who elected to hold onto them. These things convey what was important to her, what mattered. It’s a comfort.

I have already released many items. I just needed to touch them, to take my time with them, learn something from them, investigate. But now, they have served their purpose. I am slower in giving up photos and items she made and maybe I’ll always hold onto them. I have set aside a few items I know she particularly loved. But I have also been able to gift specific books and items to my friends who are a perfect match.

I have let go of the self-judgment that would have forced me to toss them before I was ready. My mission for my own home. Instead I am learning the value of a few items to bring comfort.

My mission for my home, even with her stuff in it, is still the same. I am going to go through everything and release that which does not serve me or bring me happiness. This was never about living in an empty home, but about lightening up, I just have more stuff to go through now.

It’s a process, a journey, and like all journey’s it’s made much sweeter by taking time and moving mindfully.

 

 

 

 

Mattering

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I’ve been absent for about 10 days. I have a really good reason: someone close to me passed away. It was unexpected and sad, but ultimately beautiful and freeing. For her.

I, on the other hand, have been gifted the bulk of her possessions. And it’s a lot. She had a two bedroom apartment stuffed with books, creative project pieces and parts, clothes and the normal belongs of a life richly lived.

The Universe can be douchily ironic. Just as I am in the process of purging and letting go I am presented with a whole house of stuff to manage.

I am not being intentionally insensitive, it is just that I am on the business end of handling this parting. Grief comes in waves mixed with laughter and sweet memories. For now, though, the sorting of that life is the task at hand.

It’s always a process.

In sorting through the markers of her life I am both compelled to keep special tokens and simultaneously light a match and walk away.

There will be no fires.

At first glance the items surrounding me point to a life of abundance. But on closer inspection I find evidence of something more akin to lack and fear. Where one stick of deodorant would suffice I find 4. All the same. Five tall bookcases line the walls of the craft studio. They are packed with scraps of fabric, beads, books on creative endeavors, sewing materials, patterns, paper, glue. There are two computers, a sewing machine and a closet stuffed with mystery. A million tiny notes are scattered about. Half as many projects begun then abandoned.

Elsewhere in the home 3 large bookcases are full of books, sometimes two rows deep, a few photos and other mementos dot the shelves. Stacks of books rest next to the spots most frequented, magazines teeter on tables, the freezer is stuffed with food, the refrigerator the same. The walls are covered in artwork and photos with still more framed pieces leaning against walls waiting for a vacancy. And appliances requested sit in boxes unused.

It is a very accurate representation of its occupant: homey, messy in that creative way and lived in. It’s welcoming and feels safe.

But it’s a lesson. In stuff, in love, in fear, in recognizing what is necessary. In recognizing what is true.

I will continue to sort through belongings, donating many to the faceless masses, gifting some to friends of the deceased and keeping a touchstone or two.

There are boxes full of love – letters, cards, photos of trips and good times – that were perhaps felt and then forgotten. Mementos of troubleless times. (I will study these.) But they were not powerful enough to convince the beholder of her worth. Perhaps for a moment, but long term this sense of ‘not-good-enoughness’ would take a seat beside her.

Receiving things, temporarily created peace. Until they didn’t and more things would be desired, procured. She wasn’t a hoarder, but may have been heading in that direction.

The biggest gift I am getting from this experience will not take up any space in my home. It is the recognition of my own self-worth, my place in the universe. That I matter.

She mattered too, so much more than she could accept and believe. She heard the words over and over again from so many people how she had made a life-changing difference to them, how she had given them peace when they thought none existed, how she awakened in them a creative spirit they didn’t know they had. But she didn’t receive those words, she didn’t integrate them. She wore them for a short time, shared them with those close to her as external evidence of her worth, then shed them like dead skin.

In sorting and purging her things I am infected with a sense of melancholy. In purging my own things and letting go I am left bare, all raw nerves and sensitive teeth. It’s necessary. At times I am elated and giddy. It’s a cleansing with far deeper implications than a tidy home. It’s a liberation. And it’s a process.

 

 

Evidence of a Life Lived

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As far as I can tell I have about a million photos, just in my room. And 20 times more on my laptop and two external hard drives. Oh, and on my phone. And on about 3 SD cards. I guess you could say I’m a visual person.

What occurs to me as I sort through the physical photos is how much I enjoy touching them and deciding if I want to keep them or not. Putting them in piles, tossing some into the trash, then maybe retrieving one or two from there. I go from a stack so tall it threatens to topple to one no thicker than a Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman novel.

And I am filled with satisfaction.

I do not get this same high from sorting through my virtual pile of photos. I never feel like I’m complete, or that I’m doing it right. Didn’t I just put this one in the trash? Or did I move it to another folder? Maybe it’s on my desktop. It’s maddening. And yet I feel like it should be the same.

But underneath all of that the underlying cause of the distress is the fear that I will delete the wrong photos.

I am attached. I loathe to admit it.

This process, the counting and cataloging and eventual purging is revealing all my neurotic tendencies. Why are photos so precious? What if they all just disappeared? What am I truly holding onto?

Memories? Evidence of a life lived? Proof of something?

Is that what all stuff is? Is that why we hold onto things from our past? I think maybe that’s one reason. I also think guilt holds objects in place longer than they need to be. And lack, fear of never having enough. Our stuff tells our story, too. It communicates to others who we are by the selection of items we choose to live with. It’s more than just your style.

But I digress, back to the endless stacks of photos.

It hits me as I paw through one box in particular. Most of the photos are from past work events from a company and job that defined me for a while and definitely shaped my business acumen and practices. I loved working for  this company and the people I worked with. We traveled to Hawaii and San Diego and San Antonio. We had fun trainings in Atlanta and parties locally. Yet I can only name maybe half the people in the photos. The photos don’t tell the story as richly as my memories. I can let them go.

I’ve also noticed that I am quick to toss photos of things that I’m sure I felt were amazing and new to me at the time, but I have since seen or experienced whatever it is over and over again. A tiny alligator in a pond at the Kennedy Space Center 15 years ago looks trivial and silly next to the up close and personal friends I’ve made at the Orlando Wetlands. I am comparing my past to my present. Healthy? Normal?

This shows me that the photo was a novelty, not a memory. I also can’t bear to keep photos of animals in the zoo or Sea World. My sensibilities and education about such places won’t allow me to enjoy them.

I am questioning my own photo motives.

Mostly I think I just really like documenting things. I don’t know why. I’m not sure it’s just for me. I like to share.

I will continue to thin the photo herd for eventual scanning. Photo books are in my future, but will I be able to let go of the actual photos once they’re scanned? I guess we’ll see.

I’m just grateful I have not committed to counting everything I have digitally. Although that may be a worthy endeavor.

Makes me sleepy just thinking about it. Let’s deal with the tangible stuff first.

Personal History

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I am lost in a sea of personal history. Memories and emotions gently rock my present, nudging my attention this way and that.

My room: the repository of my past. Photos from as far back as 1800 and something. My great-grandparents parents photos and maybe their parents too. Some I know, some are magical ghosts of my DNA.

My room: the sanctuary of my creative aspirations. Over 20 boxes of hundreds of beads – many semi-precious stones that I could just caress for hours. I am partial to rubies, they feel mysterious and rich. Aquamarine gives me space, I can’t help but take a deep breath in when working with them. And sapphires are the keepers of  secrets. In boxes in my closet are unpainted canvases, paper cut for projects forgotten and photos I’ve taken and left to die in the back of a drawer.

My room:  the organizational nerve center. Four file drawers hold the remnants of an abandoned organizational system, files numbered and lettered but empty. Files full of bills paid, places to visit, the history of my pets and cherished documents that allow me to wander the earth.

My room: holder of tiny sacred spaces. An altar that continues to grow even though there appears to be no more room, sits atop a large bookcase. As I was counting it I thought I’d find new homes for some of the excess Buddhas and rocks, but there appears to be no such thing as excess Buddhas.

This was to be the last room on my list but something compelled me to “knock it out.” It’s been a week. More than. I’m almost done counting. That was supposed to be the easy part. But to count photos you must touch them and I don’t know about you, but I must also look at them. And as I do I am mentally eliminating some and finding purposes for others. I am sorting and organizing memories as if I can come back to them when I’m ready.

There are just a few boxes of photos left to count and then all the jewelry supplies. I have set a goal to complete the counting by the end of this week – Sunday. In the meantime I am surrounded by a mine field of unfinished projects. And it’s creating heaviness, filling spaces that I need free and open. Cards that need to be cut, photos to be sorted and culled, letters to be read and overall purging. This is just round one.

As I sort through the stuff that has built me I wonder what I am really hoping to gain by this process. My goal from the outset been space and time. I want to be able to walk into my home and not feel compelled to straighten up, but I sense something much deeper at work.

Urgency. I carry with me, deep in my gut, this sense of needing to get things done. Organizing, categorizing, sorting then storing. Get it done, check it off. But when it’s done will I be sad? Will I look for the next thing to accomplish no matter how trivial? Maybe that need will abate once things are ordered. Maybe not. This is the work of the process. This is why to abandon it or hold fast to rules would dilute the outcome.

It’s cranky and itchy, the process, but in a most informative way. It’s doing its work on me and I like, don’t like it. I think that means it’s working.

21 Day Challenge – Day 21 – Enchantment

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Wish web IMG_2159The 21 Day Challenge I laid at my feet three weeks ago has been met. I have been able to check each item off my list without a lot of trouble.

I have learned that when there is an intention to align with instead of a goal to be met, the force behind it creates openings for just the right circumstances to manifest keep me on my path.

Goals are often set out of exasperation, especially personal goals. They are bringing to light a shortcoming and putting it on a pedestal for all to see, so when we fail to meet that goal again the village can have a good laugh at our expense or just shake their heads collectively with, ‘here we go again.’

When goals are used as stepping stones to achieve something great they often work for a while, especially if that something great is aligned with our soul’s purpose. If we are failing to meet the same goal over and over again, it is not aligned, therefore it is a distraction from the real work of the spirit. It’s time to let it go and look beyond that particular goal.

I have goals. I have a pretty big one right now that I’m working on. It feels completely congruent with my intention; they support each other.

As I move forward from these 21 days I plan to continue the habits I have set.

1. Yoga Daily. This was more difficult than I thought, especially if I planned to do it at home. If you recall I had mentioned it is much easier for me to meet the expectations of others than to rise to my own tasks. Going to class helped a lot. It was actually easier to get myself out of my house, drive to the studio and take a class than wander to my back porch unroll my mat and do sun salutations. I’ll continue to work on a home practice, but for now I know what will work.

2. Yoga Nidra twice a day. This proved to be excessive. Once a day fit perfectly. I established doing yoga nidra at the mid-afternoon dip, to be the most beneficial and I’ll continue with that.

3. Gym twice a week. This is one that surprised me. I had no trouble going twice a week – one week I went only once, but took a very long walk outside. I am planning on attempting 5 days a week with this one. I feel energized and bright when I leave the gym.

4. Write 2 hours a day every day – even Saturday and Sunday. Overall this goal was easily met. Many days I wrote much more than 2 hours. There were times when I bored myself with my own voice and struggled with subject matter, but working through the process helped and I was able to check that task off feeling accomplished.

5. Fresh photos daily. Harder than I expected as much as I love to take pictures. It became a necessity. I would find myself locked into my computer or overcome with my sense of busyness and remember I hadn’t taken pictures. Just walking away from whatever task I was engaged in and going outside with my camera created a beautiful sense of presence. This I will continue.

6. No alcohol. Surprisingly easy. There were only two social occasions in which I would have normally partaken but didn’t. Bowling and a swanky little party. Both times I had water and no one scoffed or even noticed. And I didn’t miss it. I will drink wine again, but it will be much more deliberate – a single glass at a special dinner or party. It just isn’t worth the sluggish, cobwebby feeling in the morning.

So overall I’d call my little experiment a success. But the biggest gift in all of this was the Facebook Group that grew from that very first blog. A tremendous group of women who didn’t necessarily know one  another – I was the common denominator – came together in total unconditional support of each other. In three weeks that group has grown to include friends and relatives of my friends who I do not know and the power of the group has only expanded.

What started out as a seemingly selfish task has turned into a movement of upliftment and love. It is about no one and everyone at the same time. Women are able to share their darkest feelings and proudest accomplishments without fear of judgment. It all happened organically.

The only word I can come up with to describe this group is Enchanted.

My challenge was to change habit patterns that I felt were holding me back from the true expression of my soul’s purpose so that I could live a more enchanted life. What was created was a whole community of Enchantment.

I don’t know how it happened. I don’t care. The Universe has a way of rising up to meet us when we’re ready and many of us were ready. I didn’t do this. You didn’t do this. This could have only happened because we were all aligned on some level and knew we were to work together.

I learned that living an enchanted life had nothing to do with being the perfect size, in the perfect house or relationship or at the perfect job. It has to do with giving to others, being grateful, taking time to notice a bee on a flower. It has to do with presence. Showing up authentic and present for my own life.

It’s the last day of the challenge, but the beginning of a lifetime and lifestyle of enchantment as I, along with those in the group and elsewhere, continue to remind each other of our own magic and bigness.

The blogs will not end, it seems to be in my nature. I will continue to look for the magic in everything every day and share it. I encourage you to do the same.

[Photo: A little wish caught in a web.]