Whoa! I hadn't realized how long it had been since I last posted. Chalk it up to my daughter coming to visit and working on details for a new online writing class.

My daughter's visit was wonderful. She glowed as she dressed up to go out with the girls in a way she never had when she would go out to try to meet guys. She was happy in a way I can't remember seeing her in years. She spent a lot of time with friends as well as with me and I'm glad because the more reasons she has to visit here the better. I'm filled with pride when I look at her and think of the wonderful, compassionate, intelligent person she has become and the work she is doing that may help change medicine.

I have also been feeling a sense of change in myself. Odd dreams of needing to escape people who I thought were already out of my life. Apparently I'm still giving them emotional--if not physical--space in my life and need to look at how to let go more completely. I need to find a way to both bless and release them and move forward in new directions. And I want to reclaim, I think, more of my genuine self--not the person I think I'm supposed to be but rather who I really am.

As part of that, rather than doing long term coaching of fellow writers, I'm discovering that I seem to have a talent for helping writers find--in one session--the process and/or qualities to the material that will work best for them.

I find myself thinking, too, how often people lay down dictums and say that to follow those dictums makes one superior and I'm realizing how often it's a way of staving off fear. The more people who do whatever it is, the easier it is to believe that it will convey some kind of protection and/or act as proof of the person's value or rightness. I'm choosing to let go of some of the dictums I grew up with or heard from others over the years.

So...it's been a time of reflection and I realize one of my patterns is that in times of reflection I draw inward. Not because anything is wrong but because it gives me a chance to process and make choices without being influenced by others. Too much of my life, you see, I trusted everyone's opinions more than my own and I don't want that to be the case any more.

Hope that all of you have been having productive and/or happy weeks since I last posted and had a chance to visit blogs.

Sending blessings and safe and gentle (((((((hugs))))))),
April_optimist