Thanksgiving Wishes

I am reflecting and grateful for all the moments in my life that have brought me to this place now.

I am grateful for my friends who I can laugh with and who support me with their love and kindness. They remind me of my gifts and talents and see my inner light.

I am grateful for my brother whose wisdom about our crazy little family makes me feel like I am not alone in this world. I admire your strength and capacity for insight. I love you!

I am grateful for my sister-in-law. You are the most amazing social buffer without even trying. I love your humor and seeing how happy you and my brother are together. Your partnership gives me hope.

I am grateful for my parents. My Dad is a philosopher with perspective. He is kind and gentle. My Mom is brave and intelligent.

I am grateful to have my cousin Katherine back in my life. She is a friend-big sister-cousin who I admire and love to be around. Her inner light sparkles like light upon the water.

I am grateful for my ex. His loving foundation and partnership for many years allowed me to find myself once again. He will always occupy a special place in my heart. I love your ability to be self reflective and your honesty.

I am grateful for all of my teachers, clients, coaches, doctors, therapists, and practitioners who support my ongoing journey for health, stability, and warrior strength. Thank you for your expertise and caring.

I am grateful to pain, fear, doubt, anger, and uncertainty. Without allowing myself to feel and acknowledge these things I would not be human.

I am grateful to my best friend for all her humor, crazy laughter, and loving kindness. You loved me not matter what size I was or what condition my life was in. I know I can tell you anything and you will still be my friend.

I am grateful to all the members of the women's group I attended. Your stories were always inspiring. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to be part of your group and supporting my journey. You gave me courage and allowed me to grow & blossom in a safe place. I was privileged to be part of your lives.

I am grateful for my job and all the people I work with. I enjoy coming to work everyday knowing I am valued for my contributions and being part of a team.

I am grateful for having reconnected with old friends. Some from elementary school and some from college. It is so wonderful to have you share your memories of me and know that I impacted your life. I appreciate those memories as gifts.

I am grateful for the very small things and gestures from everyday people.

I am grateful for the little man at Dunkin Donuts who remembers me and makes my coffee exactly the way I like it.

I am grateful for the stranger on the bus who offers me a seat.

I am grateful for the random gentleman who holds the door open for me to walk through.

I am grateful to all my special animals (wild and domestic). I love your curiosity and your antics. I am grateful that you feel safe enough to visit me on a daily basis and share your beauty with me.

I am grateful for the wisdom and lesson from past events of my life who made me who I am.

I am grateful for the present. In this very moment in time and all its imperfection. Being given choices and opportunities to create my own path as hard as that is at times.

I am grateful for the future. Where ever I go, who ever I met, what ever I do - it will have special meaning and purpose.

I am grateful to my body. I have not always treated you well at times (yes, sometimes I even hated you). I think we have come along way together. I appreciate all you do without me thinking about it. I am grateful from the very top of my head to the tips of my toes for your strength, adaptability, movement, flexibility, and softness.

I am grateful for my mind. Spinner of crazy wildly confusing dreams, remarkable insights, and rapid fire intelligence. I am in awe of what comes out of you sometimes. I will say or write something and think "wow did I say or think that?" What a great feeling to surprise yourself. Thank you.

Heartache

What is heartache? Not just the cliche country music kind. That deep-down-to-your-toes blues music heartache. You know when you feel it. It feels like a tight knot in your chest.



Is it regret? Anger? Sadness?



For me it is a combination of all those things. Knowing one thing about myself (perhaps many things). I am a lion or other brave animal about the people I love. I feel the need to protect and defend those I love. If I am with someone they live in my heart. It is an unavoidable affliction.

The Journey of Moving On

Change can be scary to me. But I am proud of myself and have learned not to put wasted energy into the urge to dig my heels in and brace for the worst. I am learning to accept (and sometimes welcome) change as a part of life. I learn this lesson over and over. I get that feeling in my gut like am on a thrill ride but I ride it out. Part of my resistance is my perfectionism. I want to do everything right the first time. Impossible!


I have a new position at work (the job to pay my bills) and I am taking the time to appreciate what brought me to this place. The many friends I have made along the way so very different from me as well as the gracious amounts of support I have received. I look forward to learning new things and expanding my horizons and meeting even more friends in this new position.


I have a new relationship with a wonderful man who is kind and giving who really sees and values me (inside and out). As our relationship grows and develops I resist the urge to swallow my feelings for the sake of "keeping the peace" even when the conversation could be difficult or upsetting. I am inpatient but I am continually taught the value of patience since he moves differently (or perhaps very familiarly) through the world.


I am turning back as well as forging ahead while reconnecting with old friends and family. People from my past which I had lost touch with but have now re-emerged in my life. I am not the same person as I was many years ago. I am more settled and self-assured. I can appreciate and recognize where I am now, my gifts, my talents, and how I touch other people's lives. I feel a deeper and more satisfying connection in these new relationships with old friends.


Again, I reflect on my past long-term relationship and realize we were right for each other at another point in our lives but not anymore. I was reminded of this recently when he told me that he had married his current girlfriend. I felt strange and sad. I felt replaced. I questioned what was wrong with me. I was reminded by both my current partner and my ex that his current marriage was not related to me or what I lack. We were not replaceable in each other's lives. We fulfilled a special place and purpose. We meant something to each other. I was loved. We moved on.


All of these lessons are part of my journey of moving on. I am am thankful.

The Highest Compliment

I am so grateful and humble to receive what I think of as the highest compliment I have received in a long time. I know people in my life appreciate my insight, my humor, my intelligence and my instincts with people. I am adept at human negotiations. I navigate relationships and people with thoughtful vision and honesty. I try to maintain, connect and understand the people I care most about. I am a supportive partner, friend, and ally. I can observe, listen and respond in careful loving ways with strangers and friends. I am gifted in this area and I value my skills.

I ended a long term relationship with one of the best men I have ever known (honest, true to his word, hard working, thoughtful). It was difficult to say the least and there were times I thought I was making a horrible mistake and ruining my life. As we worked through the process of "breaking up" we talked a lot about our feelings. We processed a lot of our relationship history and our mutual failings and successes (there had to be many of those since we were together 16 years).

Saying goodbye and coping with the loss of this person and the ending of our relationship was very difficult. There were/are many times I miss him. I miss his company. Sharing every day occurrences with him. But, I don't miss the relationship. Which to me is telling and informs and confirms for me that I made the right decision.

We both have new relationships now with good people. People who are likely more similar to ourselves then to our previous partners. We both carry through to our new relationships what we learned being with each other. Roger taught me how to be brave, to speak my mind, to not be afraid of conflict, and to show people that I am a leader. I am sure that my new partner Adam appreciates having this newer, braver, wiser Felicia (that is why I picked him). Roger told me today how his new "lady friend" was thanking him for being compassionate with her. She asked him simply, "why are you the way you are?" He reflected and said, "it was something that Felicia taught me."

The gift I was given by him today was hearing him tell me that I taught him to be kinder to people. He thought I made him a better person and more compassionate. It fills me with such love and joy to hear this. It makes my heart swell. I am proud and humbled to know that I affected him this way.

Neither one of us created things in each other that weren't already there. We just encouraged them to come up to the surface and manifest in a real way. Now our current partners get the benefit of our previously forged relationship wisdom. As it should be. We do better when we learn and grow and apply our experience to present circumstances. We give more when we don't fear. We receive more when we don't expect. Not that we shouldn't have clear goals and standards in mind. But we are allowing all of our good stuff to come through without complicated filters or defensive postures. We are moving forward with ourselves for ourselves in a new life not forgetting or ignoring the past but embracing it.

Fly away...be free

I am thinking about butterflies and transformation. I am in the beginnings of a new phase of my life. It is exciting and scary and sometimes I wonder if I deserve all this attention and happiness. Then I find the answer. It comes loud and strong from within like my own heartbeat. I hear and feel the words.

Now in my life, I feel re-awakened after my long-fat-sleep. I am in love with the "newness" of things. There is excitement and chemistry and comfort and pleasure.

I think about how the people in my life have changed. What I need and want in my relationships is always evolving. I think that now I can appreciate who i am and where i am going I hope that the I have drawn and welcomed people in my life who can the see the light that shines through as the essence of me.

I wonder why now, what purpose, what lesson is here for me...I am happy to discover these in the days to come...

To A Monarch Butterfly (Homero Aridjis)

You who go through the day
like a winged tiger
burning as you fly
tell me what supernatural life
is painted on your wings
so that after this life
I may see you in my night

Believing

Trust, faith, blindness, tunnel vision, love, acceptance, gut checks....


Believing in someone else is trusting your instincts. Trusting what you know to be true. Being on the same page. Feeling your feelings and doing the dance. Connecting the dots between your mind and your heart. Allowing things to happen rather than trying to make them happen. Being open to all possibilities and making decision based on information and not fear. Listening with all your senses and knowing that your mind can lie to you sometimes. Finding answers in your dreams. Seeing yourself in other people.

Being nothing more than a soft leaf floating along the river. There is no right or wrong.

Open Doors, Closed Doors

When one door opens another one closes. I am reminded of this as I reflect on my history, my present and my future these days.

I have gone through tremendous physical and emotional changes over the past 6 years. Every experience I have had in my life (good and bad) has made me who I am today. I am grateful for all of those lessons and people who have helped me and cared for me along the way.

With all my heart, I am grateful and proud to have been in a loving and caring relationship (although not perfect but none is) for the past 16 years with one of the most decent men I have ever met. We came together under different circumstances (he was my roommate), we stayed together under difficult circumstances (my severe weight gain and his 9 years of struggling through college) and tried to forge our own path. We are very different people but I think I learned a lot about myself from him and when I needed it I used his strength and rational insight to cope with difficult situations around me. I think he learned from me perhaps how to be kinder to people and not be so hard on himself. Even though our paths are no longer pointing in the same direction I will always love and appreciate the time we spent together.

He helped me along my journey to get where I am today. Sometimes it was not the support I expected or wanted but I understand now how hard he tried. We both made mistakes and sometimes our communication styles worked against us. Even in the dissolution of our relationship I can still appreciate his support and love and admire his strength. I see his efforts to love me when I felt unlovable as pure. I can understand why we stayed together as long as we did because we needed to. We both derived comfort and found a home in the stability of our union or at least the need to keep that connection. At times we were both unhappy but tried to connect to the foundation of what kept us together. Our humor, common interests, ability to admire and sometimes even appreciate our differences, and our genuine care and concern for each other.

In our separation I can see him struggle now through his pain, anger, and hurt to try to be supportive of me and my new path. It is difficult as I struggle to balance my sense of freedom and find my own happiness. I realize how much I value and love all the positive contributions (even if I didn't see them or appreciate them at the time because they didn't look or feel like I needed them to) he gave to me and the relationship. We may never be a couple again but I feel so very lucky to have shared my life with him for so many years. I struggle now to envision a new life that he may or may not be a part of. Our relationship and connection brought me to this place and I am a different, changed, and humbled person because of it. For this I will always be grateful.