Fall Is Here

September is here and with it my mind is going over this cycle we call the seasons. Once again we have come through, the rebirth of spring and it's, 'Hey, I'm here, notice me!' blooming days, through the hot, 'give me everything you've got' days of summer, to the slowing down, 'I'm showing my age' days of fall.

With the coming of fall this year, more than in years past, I find myself searching for changes in me. Maybe it's because on the surface I don't notice a lot of changes in myself. Oh yes, there are the 'big' changes; children growing up and leaving home, my weight and my wrinkles, my parents 3 brothers and one of my sons leaving this mortal existence, a new house, a new job etc.
But the 'little' changes, (that really are, 'BIG' changes) aren't as easy to spot as the growing colors that will splash across our beautiful Wasatch Mountains in the coming days!

With the 'I'm slowing down and showing my age' days of fall, I find myself trying to slow down and look inside, to see if I can find any of those 'little' 'BIG' changes in myself. I am finding that slowing down to relflect on the me, that is right now in this 'fall' stage of life, has been a refreshing breath of spring so to say.

I was sexually molested as a child, like so many others. What difines me now is that I listen to deeper communication than just words. I will forever be an advocate of children's freedom from exploitation of any kind. I, like many many others, was once in an abusive relationship. What now defines me is that I am strong. I can now make choices out of facts, not fear. I had a child die in infancy, as many others have. What now difines me is that I have empathy. I can listen and share, with a knowlege that my pain isn't the same as yours, but I can have complete and total empathy and grief for you and your pain. I, like so many others have experienced cancer. What defines me now is that I have learned to listen to my body and rejoice not only in the medicines of our times, but I rejoice in being alive and healthy and learning each day, ways to become healthier. I have a progressive disease, one of the many that people in every walk of life are diagnosed with daily. What now difines me is that I have a chance to make this world a better place as long as I can, and I seize each moment to live life.

As we travel along this road of life we all experience pitfalls and backslides. Somehow in our 'dailyness', we can easily difine ourselves by those, and other negative experiences because they are usually more graphic, emotional and noticeable than other experiences in our lives. But when I looked beyond those experiences, I found the 'BIG' changes in my heart. At this season of fall and change and slowing down I realized that....... I like the me that I am becoming.