January 9, 2008 @ 9:39am

I'm so proud of myself and I feel really spectacular this fine cold Michigan morning. Snow is in the forecast for today and or tonight but I'm ready. I'm ready because I'm finally ready to live a good life, ready to live my life, ready to be in the moment and experience this sense of being. I woke up early, as it stands I'm a volunteer screener for the Ann Arbor Film Festival (www.aafilmfest.org and there has been some intersting stuff as well as a host of really awful stuff and a doo amount of stuff that's almost there it just needs a little more work. I'm inspired and I can see the struggle of other filmmakers. As I stuggle, I know that I'm not alone.
Today's affirmation from www.scienceofmind.com: Today, I release my story. I move to a new way of living and being. I experience the joy of living in Spirit. The releasing of story is one of the biggest challenges for me and I cling to it like a badge of honor, like a much needed extra bone or like it's something I can't live without. I've spent a good amount of time over the last several years, letting go of my story, the story full of complaints and incidents that somehow define who I was or am. I realize releasing is not that the story goes away but simply an honoring them as something that was and doesn't have to be. I look at pictures of myself when I was younger, this has been so healing because I considered my life from birth to just a few days ago ( I exaggerate but only a little) the worst existence on the planet earth. I've often clung to the idea that my mother didn't want me and maybe she didn't but when I look back on my baby pictures and there are lots, that's teh benefit of being the first born, I see a woman who was loving and giving and nurturing and proud. It's hard to think that you're not wanted in the face of those photos, it's hard to hang on to a story that I've been telling myself for over 40 years. It's hard to give up the story but such a blessing to see the light of love in my mother's eyes, a light of love aimed toward me. I feel disconnected from her now and I blame her when in fact, it's me, it's the story I tell myself, it's the need to find fault, it's the desire for more love from her as I push her away. I've got a lot of nerve to talk about people when I'm guilty of the very same things, guilty of worse sometimes. But time and silent meditation helps to clear the disillusional clouds and bring forth clarity in a sky blue as the ocean. I think of burying my old story, finding a resting place for the old hurt and pain, covering it up with dirt and letting it return to universal matter, letting it reincarnate into something good. To honor it with just enough reverance to understand that it's an old story and not the story I create in my current day to day life. My old story kept me alive or so I thought, it did keep me from killing myself because as long as I had someone to blame, I didn't have to take ownership for my own shortcomings and why die when it's not your fault, why give those who I gave my power to, anymore power, why let them win.
It's a new day and I have a new story. I have self actualization and I am co-creating my reality. I told myself yesterday after making several major decisions, decisions that as I thought, would make people upset with me but I wasn't about making decisions to make others happy, I'm now in the business of making decisions that make me happy. And I said to myself, there is no one to blame for what happens now and just then I understood, there has never been anyone to blame, there is no need for blame because life is what it is. I will continue to have challenges but this time when a challenge comes instead of spending time on who to blame, I will spend my time awaiting for spiritual support to get through. To blame is to accept what is going on as your story, there will be no more stories, there will only be moments of living. I was watching one of the film festival entries and a man said the older I get the less I know. I want to be like him, I don't want to know anymore I just want to be and be confident that what is meant to be will be. I want each moment to be a surprise, I want each moment to wake me up just a little bit more and I want each moment to move me closer to what I'm here on earth to do which is LOVE. Realizing the love my mother has/had for me in those pictures was awe inspiring, it was a moment of clarity and it brought me closer to her. In all those days of thinking that she didn't love me, she was struggling with her own inadequacies, she was dealing with men who chose not only to love her (that was tragic enough) but men who failed to love the children they fathered with her. As a mother, I am heart broken when my kids contend with fatherlessness, I am devastated and want to protect them from the neglect and abandonment but I can't. I want to kick myself for making poor decisions about men but then I stop and listen to spirit. In those quiet moments spirit tells me to love them, be the best I can be and know that what is missing, isn't worth missing at all.
My son came home last night, aggravated with me. Technology has a way of making teenagers made at parents. His phone was about to die, he needed a ride but I wasn't sure where he was, so I drove around to all the places I thought he'd be and I found him at a bus stop but he wouldn't get in the car. I started to yell and then stopped myself. I pleaded in as close to a loving voice as I could, for him to get in the car and he refused. With traffic piling up behind me and horns starting to blare, I drove off and went home. On the way home, I prayed for his protection and safe return home. On the way home, I thought about how to respond and the quiet still voice of spirit said LOVE him just love him as if the incident never happened. When he came, he went in his room immediately and slammed the door. I took a moment before I approached him, just after he came out to use the restroom, I asked if he was hungry, he grunted. I fixed him some food and put it in his room, I didn't try to talk or anything just food delivery. This morning I texted him I loved him and asked if he wanted to go to the movies and his response was 'sure."
Sure is a four letter word but it was just enough for me to know that I was still alright with my son and that later on today after work, I will love him, spend time with him and we will heal from yesterday's mishap. We could embrace the story of yesterday or create a new moment today. I'm proud, humbled and honored to be creating a new story today with my son and for him to know that my love is continual.
I am perfect, I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME.