Birthday Thoughts

Today is my (Ty's) BIRTHDAY! So, last night my friend Amy asked what I'm grateful for from the past year and what I'd like to invite in for this next year. I was a bit of a deer in the headlights when she asked, so I spent this morning thinking about it. 

Truly, I'm grateful to still be here - that I haven't given up. I'm grateful to be married to someone who knows what love actually is, and who loves me so well and so actively every single day. I'm grateful for the new closeness I have with many friends who for years I was out of touch with because I was so wrapped up in my career (sorry, guys!). I'm grateful to care more than ever about how I can also be a good friend who shows up. I'm grateful for my big, loving family, for my weird, large, rental house, for the generosity of strangers and the unexpected raining of good fortune. And I'm grateful to have become a student of the world, rather than someone who professes to know something, anything - to be expanding outward rather than collapsing inward, at least most of the time. 

In the next year, I'm inviting doors that have been stuck to open easily, old wounds to heal, and a reconnection with some intimate inner fire of purpose. I'm inviting myself, as always, out on the ledge with an open heart, inviting myself to let go of anger and regret and replace it with light and forgiveness, to see what else is possible in this brief life. I'm inviting in gentleness and kindness and especially humor. And goats - I'm inviting in lots of baby goats. In sweaters and/or pajamas. 

Every year brings a little more acceptance, a little more peace with change. I'm still putting on my workout clothes and setting my timers and putting pen to paper each day, trying to make ultimate sense out of it all, but truthfully, isn't this just what it is? When are all life's questions ever answered? When are you ever your ideal weight, with your ideal job, partner, home, money and accolades, assured forever that you're making a positive, unique contribution to the world? When do the people who hurt you come back and apologize, when do all the no's turn into yeses? When do you get to be besties with Oprah and have a movie made about your life? (Answer: Only if you're Elizabeth Gilbert and you wrote Eat, Pray, Love.) There is only now, in all its messy, imperfect perfection, so maybe those of us with Virgo in our charts can stop trying so damn hard all the time, yes?

Life appears to to be a process of continually humbling yourself and realizing that your own perfect comfort and success were never the point. The cool part is, we get to be part of something so much bigger - a community, a world. I love that! Today, I'm grateful for all of you. Dearly, dearly grateful. <3

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