“Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens, keep learning and growing. Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.”

What do you love to do? I would love to hear more.

To go with the beautiful quote in the start of your post, I feel that power in the clod of earth within me. And yet I know I am prone to also be that farmer who stands in the middle of his field, in tears because of those crops layed over unwatered, the ones strangled in knee high weeds, the bare ground never planted, and yes… the crops too that grow beautifully and will soon be ready to harvest.

Matt Zavadils last blog post..Secret Male Ritual

Thanks! You’re awesome!

I am glad I found you … I was a little sad that I could not recall a Diane I know…I know you now! It sounds like you have been through a lot, but it also sounds like you are getting back on track. It is awesome.

Jean, thank you for sharing your life in your short yet powerful posts and making way for such wonderful conversation.

I love your comment, Jean about not missing a moment with your mom.

And Maya, is shadows when we enter self-doubt sometimes?
Or uncertainty about what the future might hold in our lives.
I read your work the other day and it was so honest and it beautifully articulated how hard it is to hold onto the right stuff. And cling to the ones that can support you not add to the uncertainty.

Good luck in finding a way to support yourself doing what you love. That’s so important.

Maya,
Thanks for the encouragement, but in fact I have sunshine as well as shadows in my life right now. In What I Learned From Losing Loved Ones, over at Transforming Stress, I talked about when my best friend, my uncle and my mother died within 7 weeks of one another and I helped nurse my mother as she died. That period wasn’t all shadow by any means. I wasn’t trying to go through it to get back to joy, I felt privileged to be there. In fact some of my memories of deep joy come from that time.

Thank you so much for continuing the conversation!

I did not talk about the shadows, but nobody escapes shadows… It is an integral part of having the sunshine in our lives, isn’t it?

I am so sorry about your husband’s brother. But I totally understand. In my life, acknowledging the shadows is very very important….to me it is about respecting whatever life puts us through. And when under a shadow there is not much sunshine ….

But I try to remember that the shadows are temporary. As we move into the future the shadows of the past will and have to shrink …and the sun will shine. In retrospect shadows always show us the little things that get lost in the glare of the harsh sun ….

Hang in there …the shadows will pass and reveal a new you once they pass.

Thank you for leading me down this journey ….

What do I care about? Deep connection, getting to the heart of something. Sometimes this is figuring out a problem or investigating a topic. The most satisfying is deeply connecting with another.

The growing edge for me at the moment is making money doing what I love. I hope blogging is a way to do this. At the moment I don’t know that it is possible but I’m going to find out.