reflections

one hopeful year

~ onehopefulyear ~ Leave a comment

While brushing my teeth this morning, I took – what I believe to be – my first deep inhale since Thanksgiving. I guess it’s only when stepping off the merry-go-round do I notice just how constantly I’ve been spinning.

It’s almost time to begin my next hopeful year and looking back just now, I see this will be my tenth year writing (and hoping) here on this blog. Ten years is a long time to commit to anything, really, and while my attention here is often sporadic, I do feel at home here and I’m always hopeful I’ll make it back more often. Maybe this year’s the year.

Because I do have high hopes for this next year and all the wide-open months to come in it. Despite – everything – I am looking forward. I’m ever more self-aware of what I need, want, and hope for. Sitting here on the back end of December I’m dreaming dreams, setting intentions, and making space for all those needs, wants, and hopes.

Maybe there is no greater hope than that found on January 1st, but I’m looking for hope each and every day of this next year. Day after day. One day at a time.

Today’s hope might be all I really need.

saturday hope

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

This morning, I rescued my room from a week of comings and goings, fragmented attention, and a too-tired reckoning of I’ll do it tomorrow. All my best intentions and plans and ordinary habits set aside out of necessity – there simply wasn’t enough of me to go around.

It was a week of life-long held mantras: one day at a time, this to shall pass, first things first, and do the next right thing. Phrases borrowed so many years ago, I no longer know who spoke them or wrote them – I know only of their wisdom, their shelter in the sometimes-storm of everyday living.

How lucky am I to have a husband who knows something about buoyancy and friends who bestow patience like chocolates on a pillow when I most need to rest. This week, I’ve learned how hope arrives in an unassuming cardboard box delivered on the front porch and addressed to me – a reminder sometimes dreams do indeed come true.

So this morning I’m delighted by the sunshine through the bedroom curtains and the pile of pillows on the bench. I move this here, that there, and tuck all the stray bits and pieces of a life well-lived into the laundry hamper. Soon my shoes will line up straight back in the closet, and I’ll thank them for helping me stand upright and steady.

There’s hope still in the anticipation of who’s visiting this afternoon, what I’ll be creating next week, and where I’ll be traveling soon.

One day, one hope at a time.

pause

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been watching hummingbirds.

So busy. So active. A blur. A burst. A vibration. A purr.

Effervescent.

I hear them before I see them, as their hum precedes their presence.

And it is only in their pause I am able to admire their glory.

Sip. Pause. Sip.

Sustenance.

I consider my pace of living.

Only lacking the iridescent patch of green at my throat (and the pause,) I am a hummingbird.

Always more to do, do , do.

Where’s the pause? Where’s the sustenance?

The pause for beauty. A pause for peace. Contemplation. Gratitude. Hope.

It is in the pause the hummingbird sustains itself, sips on enjoyment. Breathes.

A pause in the effervescence to notice the iridescence.

A pause to Be.

Still.

Nourish

and sustain.

who am i

~ onehopefulyear ~ 3 Comments

Who am I today?

Which woman will I be today?

Maybe I’m the woman who faithfully drinks her water, walks the recommended steps, and picks up her book instead of her phone.

Maybe I’m the woman who naps. Or the woman who cries unexpectedly. The woman who loves to bake, aspires to paint watercolors, and reads poetry.

I know I’m the woman who loves deeply, bruises easily, and fears being faulted – for anything – anything at all.

It’s quite likely I’ll be the woman who never quite reaches her goals, who always just misses the mark, who never quite meets the impossibly high expectations she holds for herself.

She often shows up.

But I’ll try not to be the woman who complains. Who criticizes. Who’s impatient.

Instead, I’d like to be the woman who’s grateful. Humble. Hopeful.

And kind.

For sure and certain, today at least, I’m the woman who writes.

catching my breath

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

look for me

gathering my thoughts

somewhere on a shore,

under a tree,

resting quietly

after climbing the mountain of this year

you’ll find me out in the garden

watering hope

or plucking it fresh-grown

after nearly a year of dormancy

I’ll not so much measure time, as I’ll breathe it

Inhaling and exhaling my way through summer

catching my breath

holding myself still and

celebrating the feeling of full lungs

I’ll hope for sunshine

and revel in the nourishment of rain

one hopeful day

after another

focus

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

I discovered a pint of strawberries in my teacher book bag last week – an entire day after grocery shopping. I have no memory of placing them there, nor did I notice them missing from their usual spot in the fridge.

I guess I just wasn’t thinking.

Or I was thinking — just not about the groceries, or specifically, the strawberries.

I’m sure the strawberries are symptomatic of a lack of attention. Day by day I notice my fragmented focus — living as I do in an increasingly fragmented world.

There’s simply not enough of my attention to go around.

In 1971 American spiritual guide, Ram Dass, published a book entitled Be Here Now. I’ve not read the book, but I’ve read some of his teachings and heard the title phrase used by others. And if that phrase were a piece of clothing I could wear, I’m sure it would fit me just fine. Today. Now.

It’s a practice, I think. The practice of living each and every moment on its own and for its own merit. Being and breathing and living exactly where I am … and who I am. Hopeful or not. Here now is exactly when and where and who I want to be.

I’d like to gather the fragments of my mind and my tattered attention and focus my way to whole again.

I’d like to remember what I was going to say before my own thoughts so rudely interrupted me. I’d like to reclaim linear thinking and conversation, so I pursue a topic from beginning to end.

I’d like to put the strawberries away — where they belong.

just lately

~ onehopefulyear ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been at odds with myself just lately. Many of my conversations, internal.

Maybe it’s a January mood. Maybe it’s a loss of hope. Maybe it’s cumulative and cultural.

Could be . . . everything – everything – feels just too hard.

It’s private. It’s personal. And, I’ll bet, not uncommon.

Or, perhaps, not unexpected given the state of the world.

There’s sorrow. Grief. And disbelief. Fear. Anger. And helplessness.

I suspect I’ve internalized a lot. Set aside a fair amount for processing someday other than today.

So what do I need for and from myself this day?

What does this day – and the people in it – need from me? Where is my time best directed? What is my emotional temperature? My social tolerance?

Do I need music? Silence? Fresh air? Solitude or company? Should I make something? Bake something? Sit, stand, walk . . . kneel?

I would like to be master of this day’s destiny – everything from how I will spend my time to how I’d like to feel. Perhaps today is not so much what I need, as it is about what I do not need.

Truth is, some things CAN (and maybe should) be put off until tomorrow.

Tomorrow. When the sun comes up … and maybe some hope also rises.

data

~ onehopefulyear ~ 5 Comments

I discovered this morning my watch now measures the amount of time I spend in daylight.

In addition to this new feature, I’m able to access up-to-the-minute functions of my health: my blood oxygen level, how steady I am while walking, the rate at which I climb stairs and how many flights I’ve climbed, the duration and quality of my sleep, my respiratory rate, and my heart rate under a variety of conditions. Among other useful health data checkpoints.

But what I ask myself most often is … how do you feel?

I’ve been keeping my own sort of data. Little colored hearts on a calendar. Each color a measure of how I feel upon waking. Do I feel calm? Anxious? Rested? Happy?

I am (and feel) more than the sum of my data. And if I’m honestly able to answer how I feel, I’m more likely to ask and answer the next question … Why do you feel this way? And the next … What will you do about it?

These are important questions for me to ask and answer.

I know the health data my watch provides is helpful, and even necessary as I monitor a heart condition. And for the record, I’ll try to spend more time outside in daylight today than I did yesterday.

But my watch provides no measure for hope.

That’s one data point I’d like to keep track of on my own.

becoming

~ onehopefulyear ~ 7 Comments

I thought I knew myself well. Really. I’ve lived with myself all my life, for goodness sake. By now, I should know how I feel about most things, how I’ll react to others, and why.

And maybe I do, mostly. Until I don’t – occasionally.

As it turns out, aging is one more evolution of me.

I’m becoming. Again.

And I think – this time – I’m observing myself more carefully. This process of becoming is fascinating and exciting and (at times) a little anxiety producing. I’m not sure what me I’m moving toward and with no real goal in mind, not sure where I’ll end up.

I am my own experiment. An emotional experiment. A social experiment. A physical experiment.

When forming a hypothesis about myself and this me I’m becoming, I often wonder about the women who came before me. Who they were at my age. How they felt. Their emotional struggles. Longings. Loss. Dreams. Fears. Hope.

Maybe it’s only as simple as only now owning most of my time. So as to listen to my thoughts. So as to understand exactly how I feel. Learn who I am underneath all the roles I’ve played thus far: daughter, granddaughter, student, wife, mother, teacher, friend.

Become me.

All over again.

today’s forecast

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

Foggy early.

(I didn’t sleep well last night.)

Giving way to a mind-clearing, mid-morning breeze.

(Write. Photograph. Plan. Dream. )

Full-sun by midday.

(Get outside.) (Get stuff done.) (Find fun.) (Play.)

Colder air moves in late afternoon.

(Wrap up the day. Catch up the day.)

(You go first. No, you.)

((How was your day?))

Star-sprinkled clarity early evening, followed by moonshine late.

(Tuck in, count blessings and stars, hope.)

Fair skies predicted come morning.