Oh, Change if you can't be bound.

Hi Dear Friends + Perfect Strangers,

I wanted to share with you a monologue/quote that I'd heard tonight.  Okay, it's got a bit of sadness to it, but look at it for what it means.  Consider that maybe it's not grief for you, but fear, or self-esteem, or un-joy or whatever the texture is of the goop we get stuck in in life.  I think it's beautiful and true and cuts right to the quick of what defines moving forward.  I'm on this "moving forward" kick I think since I've now lived a solid amount of life and continue to refine how I live it.  For how I choose to clean up and prioritize my intentions.  For myself, for who I am becoming, and very importantly, for who I give myself to daily.  That and a quatrilion other reasons that I've known, never known and/or one day I'm sure I will know in very heart-achingly real and exacting ways.  This started off as an email to my closest, dearest friends.  Those who know me.  Aside from family, friends and faith, there are three things in life I fall back on: Quotes, Coffee and Running.  When I was in high school, I collected my favorite Reader's Digest quotes, and others I picked up randomly from conversations or literature.  I once filled an entire journal with quotes.  I started love letters with them.  I recited them to our soccer team before games.  While many people lift their noses at using "other people's words" to help define or articulate meaning, i think it's a beautiful way of recycling emotion or communication we cannot ourselves define at a given moment.  So yes, a quote for you tonight.  

"You're grieving not only for what you lost, but for the life you had envisioned.  You're grieving the future; for all of the plans and dreams you had in your head.  Now that's all gone.  There is this wonderful saying, "You have to give up the life you've planned to find the life that's waiting for you."  All our lives we grow by giving up things.  By loss, by moving on.  Big Things, little ones.  How we handle those losses really defines who we are.

All you need is a place where you can talk out loud; where you can hear what you really think.  What YOU think.  What you want to do and what you don't want to do.  And you'll know when it's time to move on.

If you don't acknowledge and feel it, it will never get out of your way.  Unacknowledged feelings are like a drunken cousin at a family reunion; they never shut up so you can hear anyone else and you have to be able to hear what's next in your life, what path you might want to travel down.  You have to be able to see what's there, what's right there, right in front of your eyes."

xo,

kay