The last sunset…or is it?

This blog post was written 10 days ago on my last night in Hawaii…it has taken me this time to feel ready to share what turned out to be a very personal reflection Enjoy!

Tonight is my last night in Hawaii. I feel I want to summarise my thoughts and feelings in my journal to share with you and what better place to do it than on the beach watching the sunset. However Mother Nature and Human Nature have conspired against me. The sunset obscured by cloud and the beach obscured by crowds!  Waikiki is an interesting beach experience and certainly no place for solitude! My retreat, the pool bar at my hotel – open air, in the warm breeze watching the madness on the street below.

Curiously I feel a little bubble of Joy and not seeing the sunset, as if the universe has taken the opportunity to remind me of the many sunsets that stretch ahead of me in my life…why finalise that experience tonight.

My thoughts turn to home and what I take forward with me. I know that I am returning a little changed, not in my essential self but in how I am prepared to show up on my return. I feel I can no longer put off what it is I want to create and in the same way, that I can no longer hide the truth of who I am.

I am aware of what I am afraid of and the things conveniently put on hold in my life when I stepped on the plane just over a week ago. There has been a lot of talk about burning desires on this holiday and I have repeatedly asked myself the question of what burns within me. This has also been a solo expedition and although I have made some wonderful new friends it has become clear to me that although I am an expert at my own company I really prefer to share my experiences. (no doubt an essential desire of any blogger!)

Before I left home I started seeing someone. A big step for me and the timing of this break if I am honest, served me. I was cautious and afraid. I am the kind of person who has embraced love in the past, diving in boots and all. This level of commitment has come at a cost, I have lost pieces of myself and my beloved husband.

My experience of losing Ande has made me afraid to risk love again. When you love someone who is terminally ill it is easy to lose yourself completely to their cause. Ande’s care and survival became my purpose. I doubt there is any other way to manage it but the all-consuming nature of it and the depth of the loss afterwards is not something I wish to repeat.

I can see now why Hawaii called me….I came here to really feel those parts of me. The parts that go missing in giving myself to another. The truth is that I am changed now. I know myself, I am clear on what is mine and what is not. I know I am enough exactly as I am. I no longer need to shape-shift myself to other people’s needs. Being utterly myself is where it is at!  Most importantly I can admit to myself that I am ready to step forward into something new. I am prepared to take a risk, to risk my heart.

I don’t know what the future holds but I do know that I am in! I am ready to live deep and live full, no matter how scary or vulnerable it feels.

Sometimes its good to put your life on pause….

At the Dawn of a New Day…….

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours” Henry David Thoreau

Maui, Hawaii.

This morning I had the great privilege to witness the dawn of the new day from the summit of Haleakala. Getting there involved a 150am wake up call and a 230am departure from my hotel in the company of a small group of like-minded women whose friendship, laughter and generosity of spirit has warmed my heart these last few days.

It was no accident that this trip to Haleakala (10023ft) came at the end of our 3 day writers workshop in Maui. It has been an intense and inspiring 3 days and we were all invested in marking the end of our “writing from the  soul” experience in a way that acknowledged it’s significance for each of us.

Haleakala is considered a place of spiritual significance, an earth chakra, and energy vortex. Local legend tells that it was from this same summit that Maui lassoed the sun with his sisters hair to slow its journey across that sky each day so that his Mother could dry her tapa cloth. To this day the summit of Haleakala experiences 15 minutes more sunlight that its surrounding coastline.

This mornings sunrise also felt significant to me and my companions. As the sun cracked the sky flooding the summit with light I felt my commitment to take what I have learnt over the last 3 days and to put it into action.  To write and to write to be read. The invitation to us all to prepare a book outline to be submitted to Hay house by December 14 this year.

There is something very special about witnessing the first moments of a new day. Yesterday falls into the past and we have a choice about what we will bring forward into today and what we will leave behind.  The light brings a promise of all that is possible and an invitation to create anew. Breathing in those first moments of sunlight this morning filled me up with hope and joy and excitement as I step confidently into my new day.

Tomorrow there will be a new sunrise and a new choice of what to leave behind and what to bring forward and to birth in the new day.

What will you choose to confidently step in to?

So…..About that Bucket List….

Do you even have one?

In the movie that gave a name to the list of dreams we keep for the things we most want to do, the characters were two old and ill men in the last days of their lives. They began ticking off experiences on the bucket list. Things they wanted to do before they died. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that in doing these things they had always desired they were able to receive more life. It filled them up, it was energizing, reviving, healing, it fed them heart and soul.

So…why put off what you desire most? Why do we wait until we are older, diagnosed with something horrible, are thinner or fitter, or until we meet someone, or have more money or more time? We constantly delay the joy we seek in discovering or experiencing something new. Are we afraid to give ourselves what we really want? What would it be like if we did?

Life is a funny old thing when you think about it….it’s easy to feel too tired to really consider this. Fatigue is an epidemic! It takes so much energy to do what needs to be done every it’s hard to find anything left for dreams and plans. But I what I have discovered is that, like the movie, it’s our dreams and plans that revive us from the weariness we feel. Even more so if we take action and live some of our dreams, tick something off the bucket list.

This week I am doing exactly that. I am in Hawaii, a place I knew I would love. It’s a heart swelling moment to find yourself in the field of your own dreams. And there is more to come this week, I am excited and delighted at the prospect. Savoring the experience is what it is all about, embracing it, plunging in, going deep. Not just for the pleasure of letting yourself have it either, although this is a gift I am open to receive! When I am back at home and feeling tired of my routine my memories of this week will sustain me. Experiences are better than things ( they have even done studies on this) your things you cannot take with you but your experiences travel forever in your heart.

So….what is on your bucket list? When will you begin….