Winter has these past several years been difficult for me, as it is for many who crave the light that is so often hidden behind grey clouds month after month.  My plan was to rewire my brain's way of thinking and I decided I would just keep reminding my Self that, "It will be Spring before we know it!"  And guess what?  It's really working!  I'm breathing my way through the winter months, staying focused on the gift of time to work on inside office Things and getting much accomplished.

That being said is not to say that there aren't still times when I feel "whelmed".  I heard this term from a friend and loved it....it's not over-taking me, I'm just the "whelmed" part!

Life is what you make it and I'm learning that more and more each day.  Focusing on negativity in your life only serves to bring you down and our brains get locked into that negativity pattern so very very easily.  Although on the outside looking in my life may seem to be all roses and butterflies and unicorns but in reality, I’m human like everyone else and I deal with unpleasant things I’d rather not deal with and have days when I feel sad about experiences I’ve had and miss the people and way of life before things took a turn for the unpleasant.

There are times when I get focused on those things. The negative things. The hurtful actions of others and my hurt feelings. I stew over them and let them fester and feel sorry for my Self and my situation. It never feels good. Ever. Just yesterday, for example. I had made arrangements for my mom to come over and visit, take a look at the plants and make sure she still had the house key so she could take care of the plants for me while I’m in Egypt. I checked with her in the morning to make sure that she was still planning to come over and she had replied, “Probably later :)”

So I kept busy with working on the taxes and going through the credit card statements to allot all the charges to the proper account. This sounds benign enough but this is tough because this is where I see charges related to the reason for the separation and money spent on dinners and entertainment and trips with the girlfriend and it stings. It begins to make me want to crawl into a hole, not speak to anyone, not go out, not have fun…that awful ”whoa is me!!!” kind of feeling. It sucks big time, especially when I am still friends with my husband-ex-husband and we talk every day and …. he’s still a very important person to me. Going through the credit card statements, however, makes me feel like a nobody and like I’m just being stupid and completely delusional about the whole thing and just who I am.

All afternoon I kept my head down and my fingers flying on the adding machine to get it done and finally finished close to 5:00. I decided that I would go on to do something else…maybe watch a movie or read a book because at this point in the day my mom probably wasn’t actually coming over. I went into the bedroom to get a book to read and saw my mom with my stepdad and my husband-ex-husband and they were unloading a washing machine and taking it to the back of the house! (My washing machine went out about 4 weeks ago and I was just going to wait until April or May to get one b/c I didn’t want to spend the extra money right now)

The day’s activities already had me in an emotional state but then THIS. This act of kindness. Unexpected. Un-asked for. Wow. I kept thinking that everything else still sucked but I was really lucky to have people in my life who cared about me and wanted to take care of me. I was pretty speechless. I felt blessed. “Whelmed”….in a good way.

There’s probably more I could say here but I’m just going to leave you with this. Not everything is as bad as it seems and there is always that proverbial silver lining somewhere.

Sometimes you see it quietly.

Sometimes, it delivers a washing machine.

Sending you so much love!