"Oh, I remember it well"....

This new journey has led me back to wonderful moments in my life, the bad ones just dust on the soles of my shoes. As I sit alone in the hotel in Pittsburgh recovering watching old movies I think about all of the things in life I love the best. Over these past few months I am reminded of the so many beautiful things in this world, things I have loved since I was a child. I have decided that I spent most of the first half of my life (before Pittsburgh) thinking of how things didn't work, or hurt me or could have been better. I have analyzed them, written about them, reacted to them, suffered over them but now...

I will leave them where they are, dust on the soles of my shoes. I am not in denial, no, they just do not serve me anymore. They may have helped me become who I am, helped only because I accepted them. There will be more troubles, pains, trials and they too will be stepping stones but not carried in my pocket, no not my pocket anymore.

In this new beginning I choose to only remember the taste of sweetness. I am watching Gigi joyfully singing along to "Oh, I remember it well". Yes, I do remember it well. What a beautiful life I have had so far. Soft clouds on a clear blue sky. I used to try to gallop my horse Betty along with their shadows as they passed over the fields in the summer. Racing across the green grass feeling like I could keep up with the wind. Spending lazy, hot afternoons with my black horse Shadow along the irrigation ditches where I used to graze her dreaming of this time in my life now. What I hoped I would be doing, wondering who I would become....What do you call that place in your heart that sees the world, sees the self, the voice that develops somewhere around fourteen, the one that names your dreams? Yes, I have changed, grown, grown up but that core, that center, it has the same familiar voice. The same passion, the same magic and wonder about the world...Dreamy, determined and free. I feel centered now, almost full circle. Oh yes I remember it well.

Here is a self-portrait of the sunshine in my life....