When I went through my Facebook stream this morning, I found this powerful and poignant post from my friend Donna Santoro Judge who has been living with cancer for the past 8+ years. She was given six months to live at one point but she is thriving and continues to move through the storms that cancer brings with grace, humor, integrity and a fierce Spirit.
As I look out our window all I see is snow. From the inside it's beautiful, magical, and mystical. On the outside there is a different view. The flakes fall one by one portraying their own story. How did this one shape and why are they all different. Each snowflake is created with it's own personality. They float down gracefully as if each one is an angel from heaven trying to touch our souls.
I know the snow looks angry and I know so many are sick of it, but take it in, each flake, each shape, each personality, and each angel. Maybe Mother Nature is not mad at us, Maybe, just maybe she sent so many angels to us, because let's face it a lot of us need angels.
I think maybe it's a lesson for so many. Everyone sees all this snow as overwhelming. We all wonder where will we put it? So many say how much they hate it. Well the clutter of snow everywhere you look is the same image in the mind of anyone who is living with a life threatening illness. It's so easy to look at the copious amounts of snow and so difficult to see each flake for what it is, just as for us, it's so easy to face your own mortality every day and it's so hard to get back to that moment you are alive and well.
She put the snow and storms of the past several weeks into perspective for me.
We are conditioned now to react to the weather and to the weather forecasts. We narrow our view to see how it is inconveniencing and impacting us and our world. We are in this cycle of fear and uncertainty. I found myself getting caught up in it. It's easy to do especially when I had a lifetime of being conditioned to experience fear and to want control over what I had no control over living in a chaotic violent household.
But we are not destined to be conditioned to fear.
When we live in the moment, all fear melts away. When we tell ourselves all will be well and all is well, all fear melts away. When we reframe our perspective as Donna did away from anger and to love and feeling the love and support of the Universe no matter the conditions, all fear melts away. The warmth and love in our hearts may not be able to melt the snow; we'll have to wait for Mother Nature's help to do that but caring for ourselves and one another in the midst of the storm can and does melt away the fear to reveal the gift of the present moment!
Presence from "A Celebration of Life"
Presents
gifts of awakening and awareness
come in the oddest of boxes
illness
old age
death
presence always presenting
opportunities
for transformation
the physical body
an illusion really
yet necessary
if we are to experience the fullness of life
the journey is the destination
being present
receiving all the gifts that presence presents.
Journey well!
"Journey Well" and all of my inspirational books are available on Amazon.
"Journey Well" is a book about resilience, strength, courage and how we are able to journey well no matter what conditions life hands to us. I profile the people who are Boston Stronger and share how 4/15/13 was a wake up call to me to return to my healing path from contracting paralytic polio at age 5 and 9 years of domestic violence as a child and adolescent.
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