You are a unique and magnificent human being.  Of all the billions of people on the planet, there is not another You, and your very existence is vital to the functioning of our Universe, becuase you are one part of the whole Universe.  All that you see, and all that there is, could not exist without you!

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Note from the Universe (this one hit home with me today)

It sure is hard to get really angry at someone, Laura, when you can think of all the reasons you love them.

And you can -

The Universe

P.S.  Oh, go on, Laura.  You’re in their life because they love you.

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It is ironic that I get this note today.  I journaled last night focusing on the things that I loved about a certain someone so that I could get past the anger I was feeling toward them at that moment.  And amazingly enough, it worked.  “Thanks, but no thanks.” is what I have been dismissing my negative and angry thoughts with.  Replacing them with thoughts of love.  It takes some getting used to, and I will admit that I let things get to me sometimes still, but overall I am learning how to release the negative and let in only the positive.

And I am not going to let something as small as a semi-flat tire (mind you it was one of the brand spanking new tires I got this past weekend) absolutely dictate the mood for my day.  That’s all I have to say about that. lol

Look for the gifts in everything, especially when you are facing what appears to be a negative situation. Everything that we attract causes us to grow, which means that ultimately everything is for our own good.

Adjusting to a new path and a new direction will require new qualities and strengths, and these qualities are always exactly what we need to acquire in order to accomplish the great things ahead in our life.

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This passage actually hits home pretty hard with me. A month ago, I felt like my world was crumbling down around me and that I would never find the strength to get through the pain of the first real heartbreak I had ever experienced. I had been in love before, sure, but not the all-consuming, entire mind, body, heart and soul sort of love that I feel for her. I had found my soulmate, the person that I could connect with on EVERY level, that made me feel like running up to the top of the highest mountain that I could find and shouting to the world how lucky I was to have found that one person who I believed I would grow old with. I had finally found someone that made me believe in forever. And I fell in love with her very fast and very hard….and that love continued to grow throughout our entire relationship….it is still growing…just now it is in a very different way.

Unfortunately for us, neither one of us had stopped long enough to fix the things we needed to fix about ourselves before getting into a new relationship. And while our relationship, in my opinion, was absolutely wonderful (I have never been treated better by a partner than I was by her), not addressing the issues inside ourselves made us unable to fully give each other what we deserved.

So now here I find myself single….a place that I never thought I would be again. It hurts….it hurts so much that some days I find it very hard to get out of bed and face the world, our friends, her and even myself. But I have found this super strength deep inside me that I never knew I had. I thought I would die not having her as my partner, lover and best friend. I thought I would have to cut off all contact with her, because being around her or talking to her was very difficult and painful. But here I am, a little more than a month later, and I am still alive and still maintaining a wonderful friendship with her and actually enjoying it and looking forward to what the future brings.

It hasn’t been an easy road and I know the road ahead will throw things in my path that might be difficult to deal with. But the simple fact that I am using this time as an opportunity to open myself up to learn and grow as a person speaks volumes to me. And it makes waking up every morning, getting through each and every day, seeing and talking to her or our mutual friends, a little easier.

I am better than still alive, I am growing as a person and enjoying what the Universe has to offer. I am learning to love myself for who I am – a beautiful, smart, sexy, loving, funny, and caring woman. It has taken me almost 33 years to figure out that I am all of these things and more, and that I deserve so much happiness and love in my life. That I am perfect just the way I am.

I have always been very hard on myself….always thinking negative thoughts about who I am, what I can do and what I deserve in life. To be quite honest, I hated myself. I could never see what other people saw in me. I would constantly berate myself, blame myself for everything little thing that went wrong in any aspect of my life, and tell myself that I deserved to be miserable and unhappy because I wasn’t worth a shit anyway. I actually would tell myself worse things than this – I was not nice and loving to myself at all.

Ultimately, me not loving myself or being ENOUGH for myself, is what has made each and every relationship I have ever formed with someone suffer. I always looked to my partners, family members and friends to tell me how much I was loved, how wonderful I was, that I was enough……but the problem with that was I never fully believed them and therefore could never find true inner happiness, peace and love.

So rather than using this experience as an excuse to crawl further into my shell and block out everything and everyone in my world (which is what I have always done in the past), I decided to try something different. I decided to look at the positive side of this and see how this experience could help me grow.

I started focusing on me. The first step was falling in love with myself…..starting to believe that I was enough….and once that began, the rest started to fall into place. I started believing that I was beautiful…and because I started believing that on the inside, my outside started reflecting it. Now random people talk to me at the store because I walk around confident with a smile on my face or cute butch girls hit on me while sitting at a stoplight (her pickup line was asking if she could have the rainbow lei hanging from my rearview mirror – OMG!). I feel like I have this new power….I sometimes notice heads turn now when I walk by. I feel sexy, attractive and radiant…..and I KNOW that I am these things. It is exhilarating to feel these things!

Now I am in a place where I feel loved, happy and at peace. For the first time in my life, I am happy to be alive. Grateful that I am given the chance to wake up each morning and see the sun, smell the flowers, hug my son, love my family and friends. I have it good….and now I KNOW that.

I don’t know where all of this is going to take me in life. And for once, I am not worried about it. I know that I will receive everything I need and want in time. It is not my job to figure out how, it is just my job to receive it and be grateful.

So here and now my new life begins…..a life of love and joy, gratitude and thanks, peace and harmony, happiness and fun. I can’t wait to see what happens. And I will never give up hope that one day, I may find myself experiencing that all-consuming, entire mind, body, heart and soul sort of love again. And although I can’t deny that deep down inside I hope that I find this love again with her, I will be ok with whatever happens and just be thankful that I will always have her and the love we shared/continue to share in my life, and that makes me the luckiest woman in the world.

Fill your heart with love and you will always feel happiness!

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Laura,

Isn’t it nice to know that you haven’t yet laughed all that you’ll laugh? That you haven’t yet met some of your very best friends? And that you haven’t yet dreamed all that you’ll manifest?

Well, it is for me, because I also know that if you don’t see these things yet, you will.

Could it get any better?

P.S. To me, Laura, it’s like life is one big, long Friday.

Right outside my window – floating around like it had no place in particular to go – was a small plastic grocery bag.

The wind just picked it up and carried a foot this way and a couple of feet that way.  It jumped up and down, getting as high as 4 feet and then dropping down to barely touch the ground before the breeze picked it up again.  It did this for a few minutes and then the breeze took it away to flit and float somewhere else.

In our busy lives, it is the small things that we miss.  The small things that can make you feel so wonderful and grateful to be alive.

That plastic bag flying around outside my window reminded me of all the wonderous and interesting things this Universe has to offer us.  All you have to do is really open your eyes and you will witness some of the most breathtaking things that usually go unnoticed.

I know, I know – you are thinking well geez it is just a plastic bag….heck that scene in American Beauty was stupid.  Most people wouldn’t think a plastic bag flying around in the breeze is a beautiful thing.  But it is really a matter of appreciating the simple things that we as humans have no control over.  And at that moment, watching that plastic bag that somebody discarded floating around on the breeze, I saw beauty and felt peace.  And that is a great thing to see and a wonderful thing to feel.  I felt gratitude for having the eyes to see all the beautiful things that I encounter on a daily basis.  And all these feelings are GOOD…..which is exactly how I want to feel.

Take a moment today to just stop and look and REALLY see what is going on around you.  I promise you will be amazed…and you will feel true gratitude for being alive to experience all that the Universe has to offer.

I started reading the book “The Secret” last week.  I watched the DVD and finished the book a couple of nights ago.

I have been trying to apply the principles of positive thinking and love for myself on a DAILY basis.

My life has been transformed.

Gone are the days where every thought in my head was negative.  It was always about what was wrong with my life and not what was good in it.  I was always very hard on myself and focused all of my energy on the the things that I thought were wrong with me or that I didn’t like or want, and I was miserable.  Absolutely miserable.

Over the course of one evening, I began to change the way I think.  I started to truly believe that I was good enough and perfect in every way.  I began to really LOVE myself – and believe it.  And in less than 12 hours, my life changed.

I started to feel good about myself and the things that I have.  I started to believe that all the good things that I want in life are going to happen.  I realized that I am the only person that can control what my life looks like and how I live it.

Because I am walking around with a smile on my face and feeling GOOD about myself, I have noticed that the way people treat me is different.  I get smiles back, I get “How are you’s?” from strangers on the street, people open doors for me, the little things like sitting in traffic or waiting in line are now pleasant rather than dreadful.  I am forming better relationships at home and at work.  I might even be getting that promotion I want sooner than I think!

I am just amazed at how SIMPLE it is to change your life.  It makes me wonder why I didn’t know all of this before.  I have always been able to look at people I know and see only the GOOD in them – inside and out.  But I was never able to do that for myself.

I am finally doing it for myself now.  I am the only one that can make me happy.  I am the only one that can love me exactly the way I know I want to be loved.  Once I figured this out, it is making it easier for those around me to love me too.

I found the following “Optimists Creed” that I have put up on my wall by my desk at work and am going to put on the bathroom mirror so that I see it at regular intervals during the day.

The Optimists Creed – Christian D. Larson

I promise myself………..

To be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person I meet.

To make all my friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make my optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature that I meet.

To give so much time to improving myself that I have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of myself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to the best that is in me.

Tonight at our weekly gathering we are having a memorial remembrance and celebration of Kasey’s life.  It should be a good thing for all of us to be together and give us another chance to heal some more.

He took his first pill (3 attempts and it was finally down his throat!) and says he is very excited to have some medication that will make it easier for him to make good choices throughout the day.  We are pretty much leaving it up to him on whether or not he wants to take the meds – we will encourage him to take it every morning before school – but on the weekends it is up to him!

I am keeping my fingers crossed on this one.  I really hate the idea of medicating him, but his behavior in the classroom just isn’t getting any better no matter what we try.  And it really bothers him that he is seen (by his teacher and schoolmates) as the “troublemaker”.  He tries so hard to be good, but sometimes he just can’t help the fidgiting and bouncing around from one thing to another.

Let’s hope this works!  My kid deserves to be happy – that is the ONLY reason I agreed to the medication.

You were an amazing woman and I will always carry the good, happy and silly times we had in my heart!

You will be missed but never forgotten.

Rest in Peace Kasey.

I was sick with the flu/really bad chest cold for a couple of weeks.   It was pretty bad and had me down for awhile – I even had to miss a couple of days of work and visit the doctor for a breathing treatment!  He sent me home with an inhaler and codeine laced cough syrup.  I slept well after that!   I am finally getting back to normal now……BUT spring has hit Sacramento and I have been sneezing up a storm!

Had a great visit with my parents last weekend.  They flew into San Francisco on Friday and we met them at the hotel on Fisherman’s Wharf.  We had a WONDERFUL weekend.  I will be posting pictures soon – I have to get Michelle’s camera from her to download those and hopefully after the basketball tourney, Mom and Dad will send the ones they took!

Just a taste – here are some fun pictures we took at the California Academy of Sciences – they had little stations with cameras and touch-screen computers to e-mail the pictures to yourself.

It was fun to goof around.    Royce really enjoyed the camera – we were also able to make a video, however I haven’t been able to figure out how to save that to my computer yet.  As soon as I do, I will post it for all to see!

I have been pretty sad this past week.  On Friday as we were getting ready to walk out the door to travel to SF to meet my parents, we got the call that a friend of ours, who recently found out she has cancer, was not doing well in the hospital (she has been in there for about a month to have lesions removed from her spine and hip and to start chemo/radiation).  She was given until the end of the weekend to live.  She had liver failure and when they went in to see what was causing it, they discovered that the cancer had attacked ALL of her organs.  She has numerous tumors in her stomach and cannot eat food because it cannot pass.   She has been hanging on and seems to be on her last breaths these past couple of days.  Her family will not let any of us (her friends) see her in the hospital – it is understandable and we think that they don’t want any of us to see how badly she has deteriorated.  Wednesday they took her off her oxygen and have been medicating her for pain.  We have been told that she is sleeping peacefully and pain-free and her breathing is shallow.  Last night we received word that her motor skills are almost completely gone.  We know she doesn’t have much time left on this earth.

I have been having a very rough time with this.  Kasey (our friend) is a very vivacious, bubbly, happy and silly woman.  She is only 31 years old.  31.  Thinking of her in that hospital bed just wasting away is killing me.  She only found out a little over two months ago that she even had cancer – a fluke really – she went to the ER with kidney stones and when they took x-rays they were surprised that she was still walking and feeling as well as she was.  The exact name for the type of her cancer is very long and I can’t remember it – however it is a very aggressive form and by the time they diagnosed her, she was already stage 3 and metastasized. In the past two months, the cancer has spread rapidly and it caught us all by surprise.  We were all convinced that she was tough enough to kick this cancer’s butt right out the door.

Overall, this has made me realize just how important it is to live each day like it is your last.  To never take things for granted, because you never know when it might be your time to go. To tell those you love that you love them as often as possible.

Writing about this experience has been therapeutic for me.  Sorry to write about such a downer subject.

I suppose that I should get to work – they are paying me to do something around here!

Love to you all!

Laura

http://cbs13.com/local/budget.plan.senate.2.938504.html