Her name is Phoenix...

Lately I’ve found myself conflicted. For a while now, I have removed myself from nonsense and petty trivialities, but having spent some time with one or two folks, I found myself slightly sucked in by silly hooey again and I realized this morning that I have been conflicted.

The conflict comes in where I realize I’ve been sucked in by some (not all, thank goodness) of the drivel, and where I realized that I also, just live to ride… My life at the moment consists of moments where I am on my bike or where I long to be on my bike. I long to just ride, swing my leg over, start her and we just escape all the trivial foolishness and fly…

Getting on my bike is like a mini holiday of sorts. It is stress relief, it is escape, it is liberation in the truest sense of the word. When I ride, all I think about is riding, no petty rubbish, no politics, no chatter. It’s a kind of solitude I have never known in all my life. The noise of the world is drowned out and I am alone in myself. My full attention goes to my bike and riding to the best of my ability. Sometimes it’s slower, sometimes faster, but it’s always something amazing. It can be a quick, 10 minute ride to the garage to check tyre pressure, or it can be a longer ride to a jol, either way, I get off her with a feeling of bliss and enchantment. I get off and I feel untouchable, like nothing in the world can touch me, much less the petty nonsense of those who endeavor to exasperate a person. Riding releases all the worries that the world may throw at me and leaves a feeling of utter peace.

The magnificent machine my fiancé bought recently for me plays a huge part in that peace. She is a dream I never knew I had, a lurking wish that had no hope of realization. In my own mind, I never imagined I would ride such a beautiful beast, never mind her be my own that I would learn the characteristics of, or the moods or the quirks. Never did I ever, in my wildest dreams, imagine that I would one day be part of a team where the mechanical half is such a work of art. She is exquisite and I love her! I will be forever thankful for the gift that he has given me in her, for the dream he made come true.

So after writing this, I find my conflict has evaporated as quickly as the inconsequential worries that I found myself sucked into. No more, I live to ride, and all the silly stuff will slide… And the next time I swing my leg over and hear her heart start beating, I will smile, and know that there is a serenity that I can revel in when the world gets too loud. Her name is Phoenix and she is my serenity.

Some or other random stuff... as usual...

So I'm faced with a dilemma... I promised myself that I wouldn't be like my mother, who can just throw people away like she threw me away. I promised myself I would never give up on people...
And yet... I find, in this moment, that I have to... I have to give up on someone who does not feel that I am worth it. Someone who feels that their ego is more important than my friendship. It's so difficult for me to let go, to just accept that this person who I thought was my best friend, really wasn't... I am battling to come to terms with the fact that I have to break the promise I made to myself and let this person leave my life. She has made it very clear that my honesty was not appreciated, and that I should have just let her carry on as she was, making me (and my family) uncomfortable.
I'm slowly realising that sometimes we have to let people walk away, especially those who no longer add any value to our lives. It doesn't matter how much you felt/feel for them, you have ot let them go. And the safest bet for me right now, is to walk in the opposite direction....

Some wise words from a Kenny Roger's song... An ace that I can keep...
"You've gotta know when to hold 'em,
know when to fold 'em,
know when to walk away,
know when to run"

This is me walking... *waves goodbye*

Just playing around with Powerpoint...

The Elements in Me...

I wrote this for my Dust...

Being a Mom...

Being a Mom is about giving the world a wonderful person. Being a Mom is about loving beyond limits; it’s about giving of yourself completely and utterly, no compromise, conditions or complaints. Being a Mom is about loving a little person so much that you’d give up your last breath for them, it’s about holding a life in your hands, and hoping to God that you shape them right so that their lives after you are as easy as they can be. It’s about knowing that you have to let go of them one day and let them make their own way and their own mistakes. It’s about preparing for them to come back to you for advice and comfort. It’s loving them so much that all you want is for them to be happy, whether they make decisions you agree with or not.

Having children, your own biological children, adopted children, or your partner’s children, is hard. It’s accepting that they will not be with you forever, that they will go out into the world and get hurt, be messed around, be betrayed, be heartbroken. But it’s also about celebrating their successes, about sharing in their triumph’s and happiness. It’s about supporting their ideas and goals and doing your utmost to get them there, even if it means holding back and letting them run and fall and get back up and try again. It’s about steeling yourself and being there when all of this happens, and loving them even more because they have felt pain, felt glory, felt disappointment, felt love.

Being a Mom is doing your utmost not to build a box around your kids to protect them from the world. It’s being strong enough to let go, little bit by little bit, yet loving more and more as they grow and change and become their own people. It’s loving them more as they move slowly away from your life, into their own. It’s being proud of them for being independent, proud that they can be their own people and make their own choices.

Being a Mom isn’t about nappies and teeth and first steps. It’s not only about having experienced all these things, the first tooth, the first step, the first day of school, the first bicycle. It’s about accepting them as they are when you get them, and doing the best with what you have. Not everyone is made for nappies, and puke and sleepless nights. Not everyone is made for babies.

I’m a Mom, from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and back again. I didn’t give birth to them, I didn’t have too many sleepless nights with them, I didn’t get to see their first step or hear their first word, but I love them. I love them with all my heart and soul and would die inside if anything happened to them. I do not feel like less of a mother because they don’t share my blood or weren’t inside me for 9 months, I don’t feel like I could love my own biological baby more than them. I don’t feel a need to have a child of my own because they fulfil me, they complete me. Brandon and Angeliqa are mine, they love me, they respect me, they hold me on a pedestal, just like any child would their own mother. They have brought such joy and peace to my life and they are as much mine as I am theirs. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Perfectly...

There is no such thing as a perfect person, nor is there a perfect situation... We find our perfect person through imperfect situations. When all else is against us, that person is there and we realise they are perfect for us, that person alone makes our imperfect situation seem like it’s a quiet breeze flowing through our life, not even ruffling the leaves of our tree...

You are my perfect person... I have no doubts about you or about us. Our situation may not be perfect, but you make it perfect... And I love you...perfectly... XOX

Transition - Fear of Transformation (Author Unknown)

Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I’m hurling across space in between trapeze bars.

Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate, and I have the feeling that I’m in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while, as I’m merrily (or not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty, and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart-of-hearts I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well known bar to move to the next one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won’t have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of “the past is gone the future is not yet here.” It’s called transition. I have come to believe that is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched.

I have noticed, that in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a “no-thing” a no-place between places. Sure, the old trapeze-bar was real, and that new one coming towards me, I hope that’s real too. But the void in between? That’s just a scary, confusing, disorienting “nowhere” that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments of our lives.

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to “hang-out” in the transition between trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurling through the void, we just may learn how to fly.

If anyone knows who wrote this, please leave a comment as I would like to accredit this to the person.