For all of the peoples and the nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine, war, and suffering, be heard, but rather, may their moral conduct, merit, wealth, and prosperity increase and supreme good fortune and well being always arise for them.

Let humanity sing this mantra. Let it wake up to the truth of our connectedness.  Let LOVE touch hearts and minds and let us be kind to each other and to this earth that is our home.

In kindness and in Love.

2014 Year in Review

I have been spending a lot of time lately transcribing some year-in-review material and it's caused me to think about that: what this last year was all about. Reflecting isn't always easy when the year was a challenging one.

The year 2014 started off in the worst possible place for me. I was, for all intents and purposes homeless. I had closed down my life in Wisconsin to move to Florida and live with a friend. Our plan had been to spend our silver years enjoying each other's company and living out our days in the Florida sun, on the beach.

Suffice it to say it didn't work out as planned. The details aren't important. I've accepted that "shit happens" and it certainly happened at the start of the year. So I was reborn, yet again, as a "carpet bagger". It wasn't my physical condition that was dragging me down as much as it was my mental condition. I had slipped into a very dark place.

My daughter, bless her heart, took me under her wing. For being all of 105 pounds, she's fierce when it comes to defending and protecting those she loves. I so appreciate that about her. Even when she was little, a tiny child on a school bus, she stood up to a bully who was taunting her friend and paid the price by getting physically tossed around, and yet she came back just as fierce as ever in her friends defense.

She took me in and made sure I was taking care of myself, and yes, I was that far into the darkness of the hopelessness that I wasn't really paying attention to even some of the basics. She nurtured me, cajoled me, taunted me at times to get my "sorry ass" in gear and get back to living. 

My friends in Wisconsin rallied around as well. They are such great people who have hearts of gold. They ensured I had things to do, people to connect with, places to go. They took me in, like my daughter, and helped to bring light back into the darkness I had fallen into. 

In all honesty, it was nip and tuck for awhile, but slowly, slowly, the light started shining into the corners, the heaviness that weighed on my heart so terribly started to lift and even when it seemed that I was just going through the motions, it felt like I was moving away from the "suck zone" that the depression I was battling had me trapped in.

I was able to do some work for the company that I had retired from. I was able to get more work to do online with people that I enjoyed, and by Spring, early Summer I was doing much better. I am forever grateful to my "ladies" who made sure that we had regular lunches together and just chatted and laughed and shared.

I did break off all contact with my friend in Florida. I had to in order to move on. I have come to the place where I wish her well and hope life holds only good things for her. There is no fault in what happened, just events that spun in bad directions.

My dream of living back by the beach never completely faded. I grew up on the ocean and I wanted to spend my last years by the ocean and in warmer climates (Wisconsin winters are brutal). So I packed up my things, once again, and sight unseen rented a place in Florida on the east coast and headed back down to the Sunshine State. This time my daughter decided to come with me.

I have been in Florida, on the east coast now for three months. We are settled into a small apartment that is just perfect for the two of us. I continue to do my work online and to build my book of business, and Jess has a new boyfriend and is working to build a life for herself down here.

I love getting up in the morning and opening the patio doors to hear the sound of birds singing and to enjoy the warm air. I love to hear the children playing and people going about their lives as I enjoy the indoor/outdoor lifestyle that this region affords. 

I have found and explored every farmers market, and every health-food store. I am over-the-moon pleased that we have a Trader Joe's here. The beach and ocean are a short drive away and the sun shines a lot more than in Wisconsin this time of year. 

I love the spiritual opportunities here: the church I've connected to, the Buddhist monastery that I am a part of. I love the rich culture of the area. The delightful parts of the city that have eclectic coffee shops and tantalizing import bazaars. 

Life is slower here, but that feels right as well. There is an ease of life that doesn't have to be crammed into a few short months before it's driven indoors. There is something satisfying to be able to smell fresh mowed grass year round.

I miss my people in Wisconsin. They are a forever part of my heart-space and my extended family. I still stay in touch and call and correspond and connect whenever possible. I will go back and visit when the leaves are on the trees.

So as I look back on 2014 I am grateful for all of the good that so very much outweighed the not so good. I am grateful for the people who cared about me and for me, I am grateful for my dear daughter and my dear friends, and I am pleased to be in a substantially better place than I was at the start of the year.

The year 2015 is beginning with me in a good place physically and emotionally. I have a lot to work on this year and I am excited to do that work and move towards that future me that I am excited to connect with.

Sending you all hugs and best wishes for the coming year.

Love,
Betsy

Thought 13: Connecting in Meaningful Ways 30 Day Challenge

I wish for you that peace that is your true essential nature. To see the world through the eyes of promise and peace is to see a world that is evolving in goodness, in compassion, in kindness and in love. To start the day with promise is to move into the day with positive expectations - it's a great way to go out into the world and engage. To end the day in peace - in appreciation and gratitude and acknowledging all the blessings that exist today, is to end the day satisfied and complete. These simple acts of engagement can change your world and the world at large in profound ways.

Wishing you Love,
Betsy

Thought 10: Connecting in Meaningful Ways 30 Day Challenge

Kindness is a powerful way to change the world. That one kind word that lifted someone's spirits - changed their world. Change the world one kind act at a time.

Thought 9: Connecting in Meaningful Ways 30 Day Challenge

All those higher consciousness things that you do for other people like compassion, forgiveness, unconditional love, kindness...practice first with yourself to perfect it, and then with the world to engage it.

With Love,
Betsy

Thought 6: Connecting in Meaningful Ways 30 Day Challenge

What if we were to look at life mathematically? What if we made KINDNESS the common denominator? Here's how it would work - as we go about our day, as we do things, as we interact with others, as we look, see, touch, feel, hear - do it with the denominator of kindness. 

Here is an example: As I take my morning walk - I do it with kindness. I give the dog an extra pat as I'm putting on her harness. I walk mindful of the earth and I pick up a discarded candy wrapper that I see and tuck it in my pocket thinking that being kind to the environment is as important as being kind to each other. I smile at the people I pass and say, "Good morning!" truly wishing them a good morning and a truly happy day.

It is a life changer - both for yourself, and for those to whom you choose to be kind.

With Love,
Betsy 

Find Beauty in the World and Bring it Forward

Each of us have lives that are uniquely us.  Each day there are many many things that come into our lives, some in our control and some not in our control.  Find the beautiful, the uniquely wonderful, the divine, the simply impressive, the joyful, the rhythmically inviting, the goose bump inducing awesome, and share it...bring it forward...shine a light on it.

So today, here are some of those things, and it's only 10:25AM.  Think about what the end of my day will look like given that this has come to me in the beginning hours of my life, today.  I opened all of the blinds and let the morning sunlight come pouring, streaming, flooding into my room.  I heard the birds singing outside my window...lovely trills and urgent calls...life's voice needing to express itself, needing to be heard. I made a steaming pot of Cherry Chocolate coffee and topped it off with Mocha Peppermint creamer and took my coffee out onto the sunny porch along with my Nook and read some wonderful contemplative passages from Awareness by Anthony De Mello. In the forward to the book, J Francis Stroud says of De Mello, "That was what his work was all about, waking people up to the reality of their greatness."

A passage from the book for you, "Spirituality means waking up.  Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep...They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence." 

Finally, I shine the light on you, the reader of this post.  You are loveliness that has touched my life by reading this.  You are loveliness that will think on this and move from it to make it a part of your life's art.  I honor your connectedness in the co-creation of life.

Failure...IT SUCKS!

Failure...IT SUCKS, and it's inevitable.  It's a given.  It's going to happen to you...more than once...in a lifetime, a lot more than once.  I recently retired from a job that I had been at for 15 years.  The last year of that work was one of the most challenging.  There was A LOT of opportunity for failure, and I fell victim to it more than once in that last year.  So here's the nugget - we, collectively, don't handle other people's failures well.  Seth Godin writes in his Blog Cheering you on when you lose, "who is waiting at the finish line, and who will be cheering for you at the final banquet, even when you don't win?  Especially when you don't win.."  

So let's be clear about WHY you would want to be there cheering someone on when they lose.

• You, better than anybody, should understand that failure is a given.  If you have any doubts about that look to your own life for verification - you are not perfect.  Neither is anyone else.
• Failure is a given, so learning to handle it effectively with yourself and with others is important.  If you expect to get from point A to point B in a team setting, you better get a handle on how you deal with the failures of others.
• You do not have all the answers and you cannot accomplish all that you need to accomplish without the help or teamwork of others.
• Failure, for the person experiencing it, is not a place of comfort.  There is risk; there is loss; there is a myriad of emotions - frustration, anger, disappointment, sadness...

To move through failure, people need to work through what happened.  They need someone to LISTEN.  Failure is a kind of wound.  Failure creates vulnerability. If we are to grow and learn from our failures, we need the space and grace of those around us helping us to realize that the wound is localized, that it, alone, does not define us, and that, yes, we will get to the other side of this healing process and be able to come away with learnings.  When we are going through failures we need those around us to hold to the vision of our impending success being strengthened by this time of loss.

Things NOT to do when someone fails:

• Criticize - kick someone when they are down.
• Add our own emotions (anger disappointment, frustration, fear) to the cacophony of self inflicted emotions that the person who has failed is already going through.  There may need to be time to share, and THIS IS NOT THE TIME.
• Be callous to what those going through failure are experiencing..."Suck it up!...Grow a scab!...Get over it!..."

 Here's another nugget for you: how YOU feel about someone else's failure is NOT going to help them successfully process what happened.  THE BEST THING THAT YOU CAN DO FOR SOMEONE PROCESSING FAILURE IS LISTEN.  Give those processing their own failure the space and grace to work through what happened.  Use this time, as you listen, to come to better understand their point of view and how THEY see their failure and their path forward.  Often times you will find that your input is superfluous.  We, each of us, have an amazing capacity to heal ourselves given the space and grace to do that.

With Love

My Wish for the World on this Shortest Day of the Year

For all of the peoples and the nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine, war, and suffering, be heard, but rather, may their moral conduct, merit, wealth, and prosperity increase and supreme good fortune and well being always arise for them.

Let humanity sing this mantra. Let it wake up to the truth of our connectedness.  Let LOVE touch hearts and minds and let us be kind to each other and to this earth that is our home.

In kindness and in Love.