Archives for posts with tag: winter holiday season

You Say It’s Your Birthday…

December 27, 2014 //
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Someone dear to me has a birthday today. (Happy Birthday!) More than one friend, love, associate, colleague, or family member have birthdays during the winter holiday season, sometime between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Statistically, it would be stranger if none of them did. I rather like celebrating these birthdays; each person a unique individual, with a different need/desire to celebrate – and different aesthetics and traditions for celebrating. How delightful my entire holiday season were filled with these individual days…the calendar could roll from one to the next day over day… Jen’s Day, Jo’s Day, John’s Day, Sean’s Day, Tyler’s Day, Michael’s Day, Lisa’s Day, Stephanie’s Day, Rhi’s Day…mixed in with the ‘bigger’ holidays and given full measure of celebration and meaning! Each of the people dear to me are worth celebrating, at least I find them so, myself. I hope they find joy in celebrating their experience of self, it seems important.

When I celebrate my own birthday, I like it to be ‘about me’ in a rather literal way. I like to spend the day with friends and loves, doing what I like to do utterly unapologetically, sharing those experiences with people who matter to me – who are willing to share the moment because I have value for them, and the relationship is worth taking that time to participate in some activity that might not be their first choice, any other day of the year. We celebrate me, that one day each year. I tend to celebrate everyone’s birthday that way, if I know it is their birthday, just by deferring to their preferences when the opportunity to do so arises. Seems an easy enough way to say ‘I value you’ by saying ‘let’s do it your way’.

I know people who don’t actually celebrate their birthday. I don’t know that it is truly significant or has any meaning beyond what it is. The more I enjoy me, the more I want to really celebrate my birthday…and to do so beyond gifts, parties, or elaborate plans; I want to celebrate simply by being me, quite comfortably so, and really delighting in what I have to offer myself. Seems a little funny to take a special day to do that, though; I am sure I could do it every day, in every mindful moment, quite as easily.

Like a butterfly; a birthday celebrates the growth of an entire year.

Metamorphosis; a birthday celebrates the growth of an entire year.

Verbs and choices… Perspective. Words matter. Happy Birthday. I hope you celebrate you. 🙂

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Categories Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

Winter is Coming

November 12, 2014 //
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It’s a pretty pointless observation, really, isn’t it? Mid-November, and the days rapidly bringing the winter holiday season closer, yes of course ‘winter is coming’. I mention it because we often have such mild weather in this region that it’s somewhat less obvious. This morning, I woke to the beeping of my alarm, and the cracking, groaning straining sounds of the cedar outside my window being bullied by strong winds. The icy winter blast hit us sometime yesterday, I think. Trees that had been clothed in festive autumn colors are likely utterly naked this morning with the ceaseless way the wind has been blowing. I was so cold getting home that my feet were still icy when I went to bed some time later. It was a poor night to be out-of-doors without resources, and I made a point to mindfully cherish the comforts of my experience; there are so many people far less fortunate.

I slept well last night. I slept deeply. I dreamt grand dreams that dissipated like morning mist in the heat of a summer sunrise when I woke, and although the details are lost to my memory now, I still feel nourished and restored by having dreamed them. My coffee is hot, tasty, and I didn’t spill this one in my lap. 🙂

Time for warmer socks, winter coats, scarves and hats, and fuzzy mittens, and it’s time to be more precise about time and timing; it gets much harder to linger outside, or wait patiently for a train to come… whenever, now that colder weather has come. Winter brings her own beauty when she arrives, so much of it most beautiful from indoors, perhaps in front of a warm fire, embracing a hot cocoa. Time to begin considering the holidays to come…nearly all of which are either about gifts or food, or both.

I hear the espresso machine in the background, louder than the blustery winds outside my window. I think of home, of hearth, of love…today is a good day to savor the best bits, and leave behind what doesn’t satisfy. Today is a good day to change the world.

For now, it is still autumn.

For now, it is still autumn.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words