There have been so many changes in my life.  Good ones overall, that’s for sure.  But I find myself paralyzed in the mornings these days by anxiety.

Some days are better than others.  It all makes sense with all the stuff going on, all the changes, the bankruptcy, the move, the losses, the gains, the new life.  But, I am hard on myself.  Very hard.

Let yourself fuck up now and then, my therapist told me years ago.

So why do I let myself feel like a fuck up as opposed to being easy on myself, free in the knowledge that I can ALWAYS hold my head high?

It’s the little girl in me wide awake, traumatized by bullies, feeling small.  Voiceless.

EXCEPT IN MY ART.

Self work. Self work.  Self work.

I pull out my tools:

I mind map out my to do’s.

I micro-step my day, simplify.

Even avoid certain things on my to-do that trigger me.

I  journal– pour out whatever comes off the pen onto paper.

I reach out to friends.  I read.  I blog.  I build my network.

I create create create.

But the one thing that eases anxiety- always, no matter how tired I am- is to get out into nature.

To take it all in.  Works every time.

Dear Mother Earth!  I think I have always especially belonged to you.  I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down on to you in my sorrows.  I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you.  – Emily Carr

You must be very rich, said a grade 8 student to me the other day when I told her about all my projects.  My heart sank for a second as I thought of the $19 in my bank account, but I responded with, Yes, I am.  

For I am rich with the gifts I was born with, the talent I have developed, rich in the relationships I have built through art, rich with family. Rich for waking to a new day and being able to walk, to listen to the baby herons, to watch the swans, to walk in the woods with my nephew and my dog.

To know, each day is full of new possibilities.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. – Abraham Lincoln