Mask

I am walking, and I find that I am smiling...for some reason. I think it is just being outside, in the sun, breathing in fresh air. It invigorates.

I think about the mask workshop I took in NYC, and how there was a woman in the class who was always smiling. "No one is that happy", I thought to myself.

I've been thinking about that workshop lately. It was 2012, and that was the first time I died.

My grandpa had just passed away, I couldn't get home fast enough. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

I picture myself in front of the class, both hidden and exposed by the wearing of this mask, trying my hardest to send out my heart. My energy, right from that spot smack in the center of my chest, out and over the sea, to a loved one who had just left, as the assignment required.

Stretching. Expansion.

I look up as I walk, I'm always looking up, to see what's above, what messages are in the sky. My constant, to remind me that life is still big.

I think about the time I stood on a Hawaiian beach, observing a father teaching his toddler how to surf, my writing of this observation, and the realization that there are so many ways in which to live life, and parent a child. This child of the waves teaching me a lesson in expansion in that instant.

It has never left me.

There is a new corner of the world, just every few miles.

Endless possibility at our feet.

I keep walking.

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March 26, 2020

“Guide me to, guide me from, guide me home”, I said to the stars. 

Like a cosmic prayer, it came to me one night. 

I’d made a habit of consulting the stars nightly before bed. 

Mid February, before the world fell apart, I wrote of “expansion, and being bound.” These words, this juxtaposition, now a prophecy. A foretelling.

My lessons are coming in hot. Lessons in distance and closeness, in tribe and solitude. 

I called them into being. The stars delivered.

The world shrunk and grew in an instant. So did my home, and my heart. 

I am filled to the brim with more than I can alchemize into words just yet. 

What a beginning to this new earth...the next chapter...

Not a soul with the answer. 

And that’s strangely comforting.

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Thirtysomething things I've learned in thirtysomething years

I did more than thirtysomething things...I could keep going. Maybe I'll just add to the list here and there, but here you go:

The unthinkable will happen.

It pays to say yes rather than no to adventures and opportunity.
 
You can’t help who you’re attracted to, and who you're not. Neither are to be forced.

Your perceived weaknesses are most likely your super powers.

You don’t know what kind of parent you’ll be until you are one.

You can’t possibly know how to parent your child until you meet, and get to know them.

Time will speed up the older you get.

You will look back on just about every phase with nostalgia, even the rough stuff.

You probably don’t know how good you have it.

People would never guess how bad you’ve had it.

We are all just souls, more alike than not, 
experiencing life in whatever body we happened to be born in.

It takes a long time to learn to love selflessly.

What you feel shame over is probably your greatest story to share and inspire others with.

Everyone is connected.

Everything is connected.

Birth and death are parts of the same whole.

Some things feel cosmic, biblical, and cannot be explained

The universe is full of love notes, and when you tune in, you’ll feel the world has been tailored just for you.

There are too many “coincidences” to not questions sometimes if you are, in fact, in “The Truman Show”.

Gratitude is everything.

Friends are important, chose them wisely.

Don’t give too much of yourself to those who don’t deserve it.

It is impossible and nonsensical to judge another, you simply cannot know what it’s like to experience life from their point of view.

You will have dreams that will come true.

Life will be full of curveballs, and the surprises will be some of the best things to happen.

You will survive that which you’re sure you can’t, should you chose to.

Your feelings will get hurt, and your heart will get broken, and there will never be an age where you’re immune.

You can’t love someone enough for the both of you.

Not everyone will want to do the hard work it takes to sustain a relationship, a friendship, or want to grow...those are not your people, if you’re a seeker.

You’ll experience yourself differently than the outside world perceives, and their perception has little to do with you.

Consult others for opinions at your own discretion, but in the end, only you steer your ship, and know where it needs to go.

If you feel stifled, or have a hard time expressing yourself, pay attention...go where breathing comes easy.

Human connection is vital.

We are all eachother’s teachers.

When it comes to religion, let people believe whatever they need to leave to get through life, but never let someone tell you their way is you are way too if it doesn’t ring true for you.

There is never just one possibility, or outcome, there are many.
At first that will overwhelm, but in the end, it is your freedom.

Soulmates can take many forms; lovers, friends, family, and animals.
 
Give yourself grace for doing whatever you knew how to do, until you learned to do better.

Each baby arrives earth-side absolutely perfect.
You’re supposed to be here, right at this moment, however you are.
 
You can’t imagine how quickly things turn.

Life is a series of goodbyes.

This too shall pass - the good and the bad.
Nothing lasts.
Not one thing.

The year of everything

There are those years where eternity is crammed into just 365 days.

Life on fast forward. One giant event after another. A year where you land in a completely different space than when you started...figuratively and literally.

With a shiny new decade about to begin...

(the energy is palpable, isn't it? It's electric. It's sparking. I can see it, thundering behind a wooden door that can barely contain it. The brightness seeping out the cracks at the bottom, and all around. It's about to burst!)

...I am reflecting on how completely my end and beginning of 2019 were. Everything I learned can be summed up in three words:

I AM CAPABLE.

This spring, and just a few posts back, I published one titled burn. Where I talked about precipice, and how I had only felt on the verge like that just one other time. When suddenly I knew my life was about to take a redirect, and change, entire. I was right once again. A couple months later my dream day job came knocking, and the opportunity presented itself to become a homeowner for the first time. Needles to say, both transformed the current state of my world.

I get to enter this new decade with so much new:

As a working mom
As a mom with a preschooler
Without friendships I didn't expect
With friendships I didn't expect
In a brand new living space that feels like heaven
As a homeowner
Without the same car
Without my old furniture
Without fighting legally for my son
Without anxiety and PTSD...or at least with hardly any left...
With true in-my-bones and in-my-soul contentment
With a changed body, one that no longer experiences the beauty of breastfeeding, but now belongs to me, altered just for me
As an associate artist with one of my favorite theatre companies
Side passion projections about to be announced, and come to fruition
With giant dreams
With a limitless sky
With new optimism
Strengthened by knowledge
Senses buzzing once more

I have so much god damn gratitude. I couldn't wrap my head around what that meant for so long. Trauma left me longing for just the bare minimum. If I learned to want just the bare minimum, wasn't that...sad? Devastating? Didn't that shrink me, my dreams, all I once hoped for and strived towards?

No. It simply means appreciating the little moments along the way up, through the journey of my rising. The small parts build the foundation. Tiny miracles are always around, in the form of coincidence, of chance encounters, of omens. Looking back, even through the destruction there was beauty.

Only I steer this ship. I am finding I have loved every part of my life that led me here, and I will continue to. Was it always there? Whispering to me all along? The undercurrent of energy saying this was all meant to be...unfolding exactly as it should...?

I've never related more to the tale of The Phoenix as I have this year. This was the year I earned my wings. I proudly stepped into the ancestral line of warrior women that have paved the way before me, and will come after me. Confidently, and unapologetically.

This was my time to become...and I finally became.

For over two years, my senses dulled. I could only see black. Now, I'm rushing toward the light, for I've finally broken...into blossom...


"Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom."

A Blessing by James Wright 


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A new introduction.

Welcome! 

My name is Deena Marie Manzanares. Because I think it's far more interesting to know who people are, rather than what they do, let's start there. I am a highly sensitive person who often felt my heart was made of glass, my nervous system the outside, not meant for a world so harsh. Over the years, I learned to harness life's alchemy to redirect my perceived weakness into my superpower. I am the softest warrior you'll ever meet. 

I am a single mother to my son. I saw him in a vision years before he was even a possibility. Birth was the moment of my life. Housing the bones and soul of another is completely life-altering, and put all my priorities in just the right places. He is the greatest love I've ever known. 

I'm an actor, model, and tv host. Theatre, and storytelling are sacred to me. As an actor and as an audience member, I am able to dissipate into the whole. Relating to story reminds us we are not alone. 

I am a member of Actors Equity Association, and represented by Talent Management group. I am Brand Ambassador for local business Got Beauty. I am associate artist with the Sting and Honey theatre company. I am a tv host for ABC4. 

Over the years I created a large social media following after an extremely popular YouTube channel(s). 

I am a shapeshifting poet. My heart comes in many forms. My words, my poetry, my art, my exchanges with you. 

I'm in progress. I am a giant heartbeat. I am learning. I am sharing it with you here...

Burn

The other night I dreamt my childhood home burned to the ground. I stood on top of the rubble, with other members of my family. I looked to each of them for a place to live, to be taken in. There was no one for me to stay with. Although in reality this home was sold shortly after I'd moved to New York, in my dream all of my belongings had still been in the house, and now they were gone. Everything I'd owned had burned, but I wasn't phased. In fact, I felt a relief. I could start fresh. I needed, and was attached to, nothing. Yet there was a realization of how special the walls of that home had been. What they had held was scared, and now it was gone...as if it had never stood there in the first place.

I've often documented my dreams, and the visions that have come to me in the in-between here. Some I understand the meaning of right away, and seem almost more real than reality.

This one makes sense. I've been in a state of emotional purging recently. A lot of gunk has built up inside me over the last few years. Trapped in me, I've been living with the sickness of it. PTSD, and anxiety. Physical manifestations that breathe down my neck daily, and dull my sparkle. Only recently has it started to pour out, mostly in the form of tears. This is unusual for me, to have bouts of crying. Sometimes full-on sobs. I have been in fight-or-flight for so long. I've had to hold off on letting it out due to the battles I've had to fight, raising my son, and simply not having the time. But lately it's leaking out, ready or not.

This isn't a bad thing. The webs are untangling inside from around my brain, and heart. The water from my tears is cleansing. "Make space. Clear the way." It whispers..

I have had a sense that a new page is just about to turn. The next chapter is so close. New players will enter, a new stage is set, and life begins, anew. I see white light where I once saw no color at all. I feel warmth right around the corner, coming to me from the opposite direction.

I have only felt on the verge like this one other time. I searched through my old posts until I found it, and wouldn't you know it, the date was February 2013 (here). Exactly one month before absolutely everything about my life changed in a million ways I never could have seen coming.

Is there a shedding of the skin every six or so years? I laugh to myself, remembering that every seven or so we literally become new people, as every cell in our body replaces itself with a new one.

Of course. 

I hope I'm right about this precipice. I have no reason to doubt. Everything I once had burned to the ground. I need nothing other than walls to house a sacred space, where that ends up is TBD.

But I stand calmly on the rubble.
A clean slate.
I don't feel loss.
I am not empty.
There is a hint of spring in the breeze.

I wait...

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Well-Read Women

It's almost Mother's Day, and I'm especially excited since it's the first one I'll be celebrating! Until then, I'm going to be posting some of my favorite gift ideas from Got Beauty! 

First up, Well-Read Women

Portraits of Fiction's Most Beloved Heroines 

by Samantha Hahn

Beautiful quotes and illustrations from the famous ladies of Romeo & Juliet, The Great Gatsby, The Wizard of Oz, Madame Bovary, Lolita, The Scarlett Letter, A Doll's House, and so many more. $19.95

Four reminders.

I can't tell you how often I repeat these to myself. 

Saying yes.

I came across the above picture a couple of years ago now.  A friend of mine, Paul Duane, posted this along with many others on his blog after his first experience at Burning Man. That post of his affected me deeply. I still thinking about it and re visit it. While at Burning Man Paul asked, "Imagine that I handed you a microphone; when you speak into it, the whole world can understand and hear you at the same time. You can make 3 statements. What would you say?" 

So many of the words and phrases that these people shared inspired me. I still get chills when I scroll through. I find that different ones speak to me, depending on what I've learned, and what I'm going through. However, the one above remains my favorite.

1.) The more people you meet, the more you learn about yourself. 
2.) Before you have an opinion about something, you must experience that thing.
3.) If you say no, your reason for saying no must be better than the reason for saying yes.

I use these on a regular basis. The other day I found that I needed to reminded myself of #3. It's true that if it scares you, you should probably do it. Most of the time when I (and I'm going to bet you) say no, it's because of fear. When you check in and honestly find that the answer is "because I'm scared", you know it's time to be brave and say yes.

The fact that this strangers words have been with me and helped me for nearly two years now is pretty cool, isn't it? We impact other people more than we think. We all guide each other. Share your words, experiences, and stories. You never know who you're helping.

I thought I'd pass this on. Keep passing on.

Thank you, stranger. Thank you, Paul.


What 3 statements would you make?


Thanks for reading,

Deena Marie

xo

yoU Magazine

Have you heard about yoU Magazine?
The new creation from powerhouse Nineveh Dinha?
Talk about girl power, talk about inspiration, talk about empowerment! Women supporting women. Yes. More of that, please.

I got to contribute to the latest issue.  And I went there.
Take a look here! Are you pregnant yet? Page 13.

Full article:

Six months ago, I married the love of my life.  The morning after we got engaged and made the rounds telling family and friends our news, I was bombarded with questions.  Who would my bridesmaids be? What colors would I pick? What kind of dress did I want? Did we set a date? Meanwhile, I was just trying to process the fact I was now a fiancé.  I wanted to soak in the night, and the fact that I had just been proposed to by the man I love.  I wasn't anywhere near deciding what kind of cake I'd have! Fast forward through the process of making those decisions and pulling off the wedding of my dreams, settling in over the last half of a year, to the new question that I'm often asked.  The big one.  The, "so when are you going to have a baby?" I'm not sure what my reaction is supposed to be to this, or how most women respond, but it makes me cringe.  It's the quickest way to make me instantly uncomfortable.  I start sweating.  You see, I just don't think this is a casual question.  It's loaded.  It's the most sensitive of topics.  

I usually make a joke and quickly change the subject.  I know that when someone asks this it's coming from a place of excitement, and it seems to be what society has taught us is the natural question to ask a newly married couple.  Just like when you announce your engagement, the next questions are all about the wedding day itself.  

The reason why I get so sensitive, is because it I don’t think people realize it’s asking a slew of personal questions all at once.  Are you and your husband financially secure yet? Are you off birth control? How's your sex life? Are you actively trying? If not now, when will you be? Are you two emotionally and mentally on the same page? Are you tracking your ovulation cycle? When will you be at a place in your career when you can plan for a baby? Is your body ready? Are you prepared for the changes to your body? Have you two experienced enough to know how you’re going to raise, teach and explain the world to a brand new human being? It's also assuming you both want to become parents.  

Maybe it’s the day and age we live in.  Maybe it’s too much media and information overload, but I have witnessed a variety of stories from couples over the years.  I have learned that it’s not always smooth sailing for two people get married and automatically have a baby.  Some get married with no intention to have children.  Some can't seem to be on the same page at the same time.  One might even want one, and the other might not.  

I also know women who have suffered multiple miscarriages.  Women who have chosen to end pregnancies.  Women who have wanted nothing more than to become a mom, only to realize that due to health issues either for them or their partner, there was going to be a struggle ahead.  I've seen women go through rounds of in vitro.  Sometimes it's been a success, and sometimes it hasn't.  I've seen adoptions.  What I’m saying is, I've seen it all.  I've seen far too much for it to be an easily answered questions. 

It’s made me beyond superstitious.  Personally, I was always confused about motherhood.  My mom told me she knew her whole life she wanted to be a mom.  I've always been great with babies and kids, but I didn’t know that motherhood was something I desired.  That is, until recently.  Until I’d had a career for more than a decade, and met the love of my life.  Suddenly I’ve found myself in a place where work seems secondary.  And now that I've found my partner, it makes all the sense in the world.  Actually, and I'm reluctant to tell you this because of how long it took me to discover it, it’s what I want most.  

I’m not sure women can ever change being asked this question, but maybe we can change the way we think about it? Maybe we can approach it with a deeper sensitivity? Or maybe, we don’t ask at all.  But let a new mother to be let us in on the news.  So how do I answer the question, “When are you going to have a baby?” Well, it's a giant unknown.  And it's deeply personal.  I've already let you in on more than I should.  Yes, we want it.  As for the when? Maybe the first try, maybe the fiftieth.  That's between myself, my husband, and our future baby.  Whenever and however it happens.  And it’s only for us. 

Instagram: Deena_Marie
Twitter: @DeenaMarie
FB: Facebook.com/TheDeenaShow

Thanks for reading!


DM

These bones.

I came across this beautiful quote a few weeks back, and it's stuck with me.  It struck me as something I would have declared was exactly my life if I'd found it three years ago.  It no longer is, but still it stayed.  I've been mulling it over and finally realized, somewhat of the opposite is now true for me.

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I've lived.

I touched on this a few posts ago.  How can I be this young and have already been so many people? Had so many lives?

How do we hold our bones together as each year layers on?


~ Deena Marie

You.

Last night I was watching you as you talked,
and I could see around you a tapestry of everything that has made you, you.
I sensed the home you grew up in, saw your parents, your childhood.
I loved them deeply for without them you would not be you.
I started thinking about all the people that will get to know you
over the course of your life,
and those who won't.
Then I got sad.
Thinking of all the people who will miss out on knowing you.
Friendships you'll never make.
Yet I got picked.  I am rich.  I am chosen.
I am in awe I get to know you, love you, be married to you.

My wish for you.

My wish for you:
I wish for you to have love.
To keep searching if you haven't found it yet,
and to never settle.
To experience a love that comes easy, 
and not force a fit because you wish it would be so,
or you've told yourself you're running out of time.
I wish for you to follow your truth to love,
because that's where it leads you. 
Every time.
I wish for you to release a love,
if it isn't the right love.
It is a hard and ultimately selfless act
to cut the strings
and free them to seek their love.
I wish for you to love someone more
than you love yourself, or a career.
I wish for you to be relieved, home, made whole, by love.
To be freed and enhanced.
I wish for you to wholeheartedly believe that you deserve love,
that you are perfect and worthy
of love just as you are,
That love is not selfish and does not
have to be conditional.
It should fill you, not deplete you. 
And if it is, and if it does, then it is not IT. 
Keep seeking.
Miracles happen every day. 

Thank goodness for poets.

I've posted this before.  It's been in my head again the last few days.

This is why I love to read, why I love poetry, and words.  Bits and pieces stick with me and pop up when I need them, reminding me I'm never alone, never the first (nor the last) person to feel a certain way.  I can't think of anything more comforting.

Thank goodness for poets.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke  

I've also recently been reminded,

"Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't" - Bill Nye

And maybe more importantly, I've been reminded that every person we ever encounter has something to teach us.  Every one of them.

Thanks for reading.


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Jacque Fresco

"I make more mistakes than anybody I know, 'cause I try more things.  There's nothing wrong with building something and finding out that it doesn't work.  This is where you get your experience.  There's nothing wrong with criticism...

...all of us stand on the shoulders of one another.  And we shape the future."

Jacque Fresco
creator of The Venus Project

I discovered him today and have been watching clips of his talks and interviews on YouTube.  I strongly suggest you do the same.

Listen with an open mind to his thoughts on government, money, religion, god, science, democracy, socialism, communism, depression, language, why a utopian society is impossible, invention, groups of people around the world, land, our history, and our future.

I know this post is a little general, but there really is just too much I'd like to say.  Much more than I can write.  It's just so comforting to find what aligns with your soul, isn't it? While watching I've teared up, clapped, and cheered.

Here's a good place to start: US Has Never Been a Democracy 

Wanting the impossible.

I've been thinking about "the impossibilities of judging another" for nearly 24 hours now.  It started with a comment I made on a Facebook post that got my thoughts swirling and my words forming, and now here I am.  With something much bigger than I originally intended to post.

Over the course of life you learn to never say never.  I can't stress how important this mantra has become to me.  And crucial.  Over time, you will find yourself in situations you never in a million years thought you'd be in, or could have ever planned for.  Planning, in fact, is a large part of the problem.  Planning is a trick and often has the reverse effect of what the intentions behind it are.  If you make a plan from which you tell yourself you cannot waver, any unexpected event or roadblock will only cause you grief.

Plans can of course be good.  It means you have an idea of what you want and what you're interested in.  That is, if it's your plan and not someone else's plan for you.  It means you're tuning in.  You're following your instincts and following your heart.

But the most important things of all when planning, are flexibility and adaptability.  That's the secret.  All the things you tell yourself when you're a teenager and in your early twenties (when you are one hundred and fifty percent sure of who you are, what you stand for, and all you'll ever want to be) only belong to a version of you.

You know the time you wait for (that you know one day will magically come) when you're finally a grown up, and you'll know how to be an adult? And what to do, and how to do it just like you see your parents do? It never comes.

It's all one big experiment up until our physical body expires.  An experiment for you, your parents, for anyone you've ever known or will know.

We're all making it up as we go along and doing our best for what is right for the version we are at any given moment in time.

As you grow and gather along the way all the unexpected, transformative, huge, and traumatic experiences that add to the sum of who you are, you realize just how impossible (and not only impossible but completely nonsensical) it is to ever judge another.

See, we never know what we're capable of until we're forced with the thing we swore we'd never have to do, or the situation we knew could never happen to us.

There's that word again.  Never.  Never say never.

If, or more importantly when, these lessons arise, be gentle with yourself.  Forgive.  It will wound you but it doesn't have to ruin you.  It feels for awhile like a betrayal to who we thought we were or who we wanted to be, finding ourselves in that spot that happen to other people but never to us.

Acceptance is crucial.  Accept simply that "we don't know what it is we don't know."  And that the same is true for any human, at any moment.  There is only sympathy.  There is only compassion.  The more you surprise yourself, survive, and age, the clearer this becomes.  That to judge another is impossible.  Everything you know to be true right now, can one day change by events in life that you'd never see coming.

You would want sympathy and understanding, and you certainly wouldn't want to be judged when it's you.  Why wouldn't everyone else want and deserve it, too?

Lately, when I see judgements passed it makes me sad.  A dull, deep, sadness.  I'm not sure why now, or why so sad.

Judging yourself or others is so small.  So incredibly small.  It comes from a small mind, a small world view, a small life, and keeps it small.  I do realize that judgement comes from a place of simply not knowing.  There should be compassion for that concept alone, and I'm trying.  But it hurts.  I'm not even talking about or being spurred on from any recent personal experience.  Just from observation.

Maybe it's because more than ever I am aware and understand that every fiber in me craves the opposite.  I choose big.  I want the biggest mind I'm capable of.  The biggest life with every possible experience.  The answers and opportunities to explore from getting the knowledge I'm seeking.  It's on full force within me.  The volume is up.

I've also been slowly but surely trying to wrap my head around and notice that our thoughts have everything to do with our happiness.  Our reality and how we perceive and experience the world.  Judging is negative.  Even if you don't realize it, the negative energy adds up.  Not only do others sense the negativity and instinctually avoid you, but it drains you.  And you aren't as happy.

The question I  keep coming back to when thinking about this is, "how can you judge what you don't know?" You don't know the decisions someone has had to make that they never wanted to, or planned on.  How can you tell anyone outside of yourself what is right? Or wrong?

It's like the Carl Sagan quote, "If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."  For someone to explain "why" they are the way they are to someone judging them for it, they would have to start with the moment of birth, and then every experience they've ever had, and the impact of every person they've ever encountered so you could understand what has shaped them into who they are up until that point.  But actually, then you'd need to go further back.  You'd have to explore the lives of the parents that birthed them.  Then their parents, and their lives, and their parents, their lives, and so on.

But here's the other thing.  No explanation is necessary.  To anyone outside of yourself.

You are enough.  You do what you can, with what you have, where you are, today.

If more people understood that, there would be more sympathy and less judgement.  Sure we all believe what we believe is right.  We may even think we need to spread messages to sway other people in to our beliefs or lifestyles.  But I'd like to suggest another way.  I think there's simply the way of sharing what we know.  I've said it a million times, we are each others teachers.  It's crucial.  What if instead of  preaching what we know is right or true, we just gave? What if we just share who we are, who we've been, and who we're becoming, and let others interpret and take from it what they will? And what if this sharing of the self came from a only a place of love? Of compassion? Of expecting nothing in return? Of a judgement free place.

What I realize is I am seeking the people who are big.  In mind, in heart, and in life.  The teachers.  The lifters.  The inspirations.  I want to surround myself with those who have the most knowledge.  The biggest minds.  The most open of hearts.

Those who will help me in spreading compassion.

There is only compassion.
There is only love.

Compassion and love bring unity.

We are all one.



Thanks for reading


My life in pictures: http://instagram.com/deena_marie/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDeenaShow
Video: http://www.youtube.com/beanerlarue

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Welcome to a new year, a fresh start, a clean slate.
I feel like I've just hatched from an egg!
Things feel better already, don't they?

"Begin today. Declare out loud to the universe that you are willing to let go of struggle and eager to learn through joy." 

I'm finally using the Instagram I started (one year ago today) regularly.
I've posted several pics from last nights New Years Eve celebration.  That was the first NYE in years I've spent with my family rather than friends.  Tradition is important, but so is NEW.  So we combined the two.  We made reservations at our favorite New Years restaurant, the same one we've been to for years, only this time with the family.  Then came back to our house.  It was perfect.

The state I was in coming out of / entering a new year last year was toxic.  This year is completely opposite.  I've realized now that if your rebirth is in chaos and negativity you set yourself right up for a downward spiral.

Today I was born in lightness.  In air.  In happiness.


I wrote one last blurb of the year on my facebook yesterday:

An ending & a beginning: If you know me or follow my blog, then you know that 2012 was the worst year of my life. I am so glad that in a matter of hours 2012 will no longer exist, and that I made it through! There really is no way out, but through. I came out transformed. It was my 365 day crash course in life's hardest lessons. It was the year of loss and impossible goodbyes, but also the year of the soul. I found lessons in everything and grew more in a short time than I would have thought possible. It was the start of a major transformation and rebirth. I leap into the new year a new person. Nice to meet you, universe. 2013 is my time to dig deeper into the unexplored parts of myself that I've left waiting. It's time to fuel my spiritual scientist. It's the year to create, in all ways. To express in new mediums. To share my words further, and to learn all I can. To follow the lead each time my heart pulls me toward something. To remember I am responsible for my own happiness and happiness is something I can chose each new day. I am so grateful to embark with my family connected to each other. 

Goodbye. Hello. Forward...forward now. ♥