“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
~ Vincent van Gogh ~
With patience and time, the act of creating creates who I am. The gift is in the process…not just the outcome.
I can orchestrate each moment for my Highest Good, using the gifts of patience, tenacity, and inventiveness to get the job done. The outcome may not be as I planned, but no matter what happens as the result of my efforts, I can both let go…and start all over again. I am not fragile. I am resilient. And no matter how hard I work to create a specific result, I know that the element of surprise can undo it all. Starting over is an integral part of starting…
“All successful people have the uncanny ability to focus on what is possible in a situation, what positive results come from it. No matter how much negative feedback they get from their environment, they think in terms of possibilities. They think that everything happens for a reason, and it serves them. They believe that every adversity contains the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.”
~ Anthony Robbins, Unlimited Power ~
In my recent book, “It Takes A Lot Of Sh*t To Make a Garden Grow,” I feature some amazing individuals who have faced and many are still facing some pretty hefty life-challenges. But it’s not just their challenges that I find so compelling. It’s how they each have risen above them to find more positive pathways and perspectives in which to grow their lives. They are beyond inspiring. I hope you take the time to “meet” them.
My blogs give me a chance to continue writing about others who are helping me learn to be a better “excrementalist,” as I’ve been called! I’d like you to meet three incredible people. Each symbolizes my firm belief that no matter what we’re dwelt with in this lifetime we all have the power to shovel out of crappy situations and ultimately create extraordinary new lives. One is a chef who lost his sense of taste. The other is a brain scientist who was nearly decimated by a stroke. And the third is a surgeon who was struck by a disease that crippled his fingers. Their stories are featured in a riveting article in the www.dailygood.org: Lessons from Those Who Lost…and Found, by Pavithra Mehta. Click here to read the entire article.
I’m always in awe of the power of the human spirit and what we’re truly capable of accomplishing, especially when we’re tested time and time again with mountainous “manuretia” that oftentimes seems insurmountable. Chronic pain. Disease. Accidents. Tremendous losses—physical, mental, spiritual. Homelessness. Cruelty. Divorce. Heartache. Blindness. The list is endless.
But every day I read about one more person or animal who not only survives but thrives against all odds. Their stories help me rebound again from whatever pit I’ve spiraled into and under. I truly believe this is Earth School and we’ve individually raised our hands to take on this crazy curriculum of learning—each with our own unique life agenda.
The key ingredient to success is sheer balance between the garbage and the garden. Both are reflections of choices that we ourselves make. Sure you probably didn’t plan for all that “you-know-what” when it hits the fan big time. But how you deal with it is how you inevitably grow beyond it. It’s up to you. All the mulch and compost and germinating seeds and endless acres of verdant possibilities are who you are. How rich and abundant your garden is depends on what you add to it and how much you put into it; how much you’re willing to shovel and grow a new life.
Whether you look at life as fertile ground for infinite possibilities, or as Pavithra Mehta sees it, a way to find what was seemingly lost—it is a twist of fate and perspective that can make or break us. The key, or the shovel is in our very own hands…
Why not give Mom some sh*t she’s gonna really love?!
Isn’t it time to give Mom something she can really relate to after all the challenges she’s faced (or the crap you’ve put her through!) Here is a book with the voices of many who are shoveling their way out of amazing mountains of life’s “manuretia” and not only surviving, but thriving. Just like Mom is doing!
Now available on Amazon.com.
Or
Take advantage of a special Mother’s Day offer to purchase all three of my books for $30 on www.wordsfromcara.com
To your favorite Mom from Mother Nature!
All of Nature has a voice, a lesson, something unique to teach us. Here is a book that will offer Mom a sense of peace and harmony within herself as she watches and listens to the gentle wisdom of Mother Nature. How to embrace and let go, to be patient and accepting, to go with the flow, to accept the inevitability of change, on and on…
Now available on Amazon.com.
Or
Take advantage of a special Mother’s Day offer to purchase all three of my books for $30 on www.wordsfromcara.com
It always amazes me. This circle of life thing. How little puffs of life’s circumstances, bits of passages, happen concurrently; some even colliding into each other, or paralleling along the paths. One happy thing happens while another spirals down into an abyss…
Dylan’s “Grains of Sand” struck me as just the words I needed to color in the feelings of it all. How time and each moment of time is “…like a sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.” Precious, elusive increments gone practically before they arrive. Ephemeral little sparks of energy not to be missed. All to be savored; each to be appreciated and then released.
Each swift time passage as unique as the numbered hair: The joy of friends celebrating a brand new grandchild and in the same week their deep sorrow in burying an elderly loved one. Another longtime friend of mine struck down by a truck while she was simply crossing the street. A delightful woman of joy and beauty and rainbows of color, she is now thankfully and amazingly alive but bedridden and broken from head-to-toe and fighting to find her laughter again. And then the unthinkable courage of a mother relating her precious eight-year-old son’s battle to stay alive through the horror of the cancerous demon suffocating him. She begged us on Facebook—friends and total strangers—to pray for a miracle to save Gage (“Fighting for Gage”) and then when he begged her to let him go to Heaven, she asked us to pray that he be released of his struggle. Blessedly, that just happened. And now, another mother is reaching out to us for her little girl, “A Tale of Bella” and the prayers continue. Other stories of animals rescued and abandoned and performing heroic efforts prove to us all that they are not merely our equals, but in so many ways our superiors. Our angels. As are the animal-rescuers who fight to keep them alive.
My sister had to put her beloved old dog down in that dreaded ritual of release, and hours before she heard some encouraging words about her career that gave her hope along with her sorrow. Pete and I were stuck in a terrible traffic jam the other day as we headed for a beautiful gathering with friends to celebrate a Bris, the ancient Jewish ritual of honoring the little boy’s eighth day of life. And while we sat in that morass of unmoving cars we saw the blinking of police cars up ahead and streets being cordoned off. When we finally arrived at the home of our friends we found out that the traffic was both for the visiting Dalai Lama speaking nearby and also a traffic fatality of a cyclist. The Dalai Lama, a dying man, and an infant whose spirits lifted into that circle of mortality, like an inhale and exhale…
Life and death. Death and life. All played within moments from each other. All happening simultaneously and in layers. A few days before, Pete and I were able to enjoy a brief Sunday afternoon escape together along the soothing sands and foaming waves of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, while shore birds soared above us and families gathered in play temporarily free of all cares. Later, I bought myself gratitude flowers in honor of my son, Jesse’s birthday. And this weekend if I’m so blessed I’ll continue my flower ritual for my other son, Ethan’s birthday. And I just say “thank you” over and over again for this gift of time to savor every wondrous grain of life. As fleeting as minuscule bits of sand sifting through an hourglass…
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