The view from my window

Sun spills casting light shadows dappling the grass. Flowers blossom upon a vine creeping up the wall. Leaves hang silently suspended from the craggy limbs of an apple tree where fruit hides in delicate green buds above birds spinning on a feeder suspended just high enough off the ground to keep the squirrels at bay.

This is the view from my bedroom and on Saturday mornings, I move my laptop from the office to the desk in my bedroom overlooking the backyard garden.

Ok, so it's not really a garden as I am not known for my green thumb. But, it is green and rather lush because it's been a ridiculously wet summer thus far and along with my non-growing skills, I don't prune and pluck and primp the bushes and hedges in the yard. In fact, it is highly likely those yellow fronds just outside the window are weeds. I just happen to enjoy their ethereal beauty and think weeds get a raw deal with all the negative publicity about their pervasive nature and unwanted presence in our lives.

I like weeds. Seriously. Like dandelions. They're tenacious. Determined. Convinced of their right to be of this world and nothing we do can change their thinking, or their determination to grow up through cracks in the sidewalk and pesticides loaded with deadly chemicals and hoes designed to tear them out of the earth by their roots. Weeds have staying power. We can learn a lot from them.

My friend Nan, who inspired the name of my book, The Dandelion Spirit, wrote a poem many years ago for her sister which she said, after the debacle of the 'bad man' had passed and I was travelling along my healing journey, also reminded her of me.

You are a fierce and sentimental lady,

with a cool, electric class

Drop-forged steel in a silk stocking.

Tough as the times. Determined as dandelions.

I like that metaphor. Like the idea of determination and resilience being at the core of my being. That journey does not determine my worth today. How I've grown, blossomed, spread out and scattered seeds of hope and love and joy and laughter -- those are the measure of my worth today.

And I am blessed.

For in having survived and subsequently thrived the 'going through all my dreams and waking up to my worst nightmare' escapade -- I have become the co-creator of the depth and richness of my life today. I have become who I always wanted to be. Me. Myself and I. A radiant woman awakening brilliance in a compassionate and joyful world.

My world today, who I am today is far, far different than that woman who tentatively stepped upon the path of 'true love' those many years ago and believed one man had the keys to awakening the brilliance of her life. I have in this journey into myself embraced the wonder and the mystery of who I am when I am living up to my higher good, inviting the Divine into my life to set my spirit free.

I am alive.

And I am grateful. And thankful. And humbled. And inspired. And at peace. I am happy.

Oh, and did I mention? The window needs washing.

Nameste. Have a rainbow coloured day awash in the beauty of life.