Listening for John D.

Sometimes those magic moments that we call epiphanies happen quickly, flashes of clarity that come out of the blue bringing us enlightenment, but this week I had one that took 30 years to come to fruition. You know how some people just stay with you, continually popping up in your mind, far more and long after you think would be reasonable? One of these people for me has been John D. and now I think I understand why.
John D. was a classmate of mine in high school. He was the biggest guy in school, a tall and strapping farm boy, and due to “alphabetical order” we were linked throughout our high school experience. In this tiny rural Nebraska school, Kelly F. followed John D. I sat behind John in most of our classes; I lined up next to him in PE, shared a locker with him and sat next to him on the stage at our graduation. But even with all of this close contact I have to admit that I didn’t know John very well. I was terribly shy and insecure back then and John was one of the popular kids, (yes, there are cliques even in tiny schools) and I guess I just didn’t feel worthy to open up to him. I have always liked to sit back and observe others around me and I observed John a lot. He completely fascinated me. There was just something different about him. He was just as wild as any of the other boys in the school but there was something more to him. There was a depth to his eyes that I have since come to understand as a mark of an old soul. He had a way of disarming a volatile situation by transforming his huge presence with unexpected silliness. What I get now, 30 years later, is that John wasn’t ego. He was authentic. He was who he was and he was just fine no matter what others thought of him.
John passed away in an accident only a few weeks after we graduated in 1980. I had moved to Phoenix and didn’t find out about it until after his funeral. The news rocked me to my core. I was unable to process all the feelings of shock and loss at the time, there was just too much to sort out and I didn’t have the knowledge or skills to put what I felt into words. So like everything else, it went on a shelf within me until I could figure it out.
A few days ago John once again popped into my head but this time I let him just sit with me trying to understand why he has stayed with me all of these years and then I got it. In the last few years I have been working to hear and trust my intuition. I have long known that sometimes “I just know things” but now I have come to realize that I am very intuitive and always have been. The thing is that my intuition has a soft voice, a whisper in the wind, and to hear it I have to really pay attention. In thinking back on my memories of John I suddenly realized that the whisper was there. My fascination was an attraction on the Soul level. John must have had some “gift” for me but I was unable to let him in to my life at the time. When John died, so did my chance of ever discovering what that gift could have been. That was what was at the root of my grief. Even though I wasn’t capable of understanding it at the time, my Soul knew. My Soul knew that I had forever lost my chance to discover what special gift John’s Soul wanted to bring to my life.
I pondered this realization for a few days. All the memories and emotions attached to them are as fresh as if they had just happened yesterday but with this new understanding I can see how all of the pieces fit together. What has become so clear for me is that John is really still with me, just on a different level. He still has a gift for me but now I will have to listen for the “whisper in the wind” to receive the message. The good news is that now I am ready and I am listening.
Blessings,
Kelly

Purging

Learning to Purge…….and loving it!

I never really considered myself a pack rat, I just had a lot of stuff. But being a good Virgo it was all well organized, boxed or filed and tucked away in its own little place. I knew exactly where everything was (or so I thought) and it all was quite neat and tidy. Seven years ago I couldn’t imagine getting rid of any of my stuff, after all I was quite proud of my system.

The first sign of things to come happened on October 26, 2003. That Sunday morning I woke to find a huge cloud of smoke blowing just southwest of our home. Within a few hours a wild fire ripped through our quiet suburban neighborhood. We were forced to evacuate, but we were lucky enough to have time to fill the cars with stuff. Many of my neighbors were not as lucky, 343 of them lost their homes that day and many of those had just enough time to get themselves to safety as their homes went up in flames. As we made our way to safety through the traffic jam of evacuees, I couldn’t help but think about what it would be like if I never saw our home or our stuff again. What came to me caught me completely by surprise. Instead of sadness for the loss of all of our things, what I felt was a strange sense of release, a sense of freedom. It was a very odd feeling, especially for me, especially for the moment. But the thought and the feeling passed quickly. When we were let back into our neighborhood, our home was still standing. We were among the lucky ones. Still, there was a lot to deal with in the weeks to follow and this strange moment of revelation would have to be tucked away until I would have time to reflect on it.

It took another life shake up four years later to bring me my next lesson. My twenty two year marriage ended and our big beautiful home with all the wonderful storage space would have to be sold. We had lived in this home for ten years and it took me two weeks to empty the house of all the stuff that we had accumulated. The first thing I did was rent a large dumpster and had it placed in the driveway. Then I started the sorting process. The categories were “moving it”, “donating it”, “selling it” or “dumping it”. I had no idea how much fun and how freeing it could be to throw things in that dumpster! Nor did I have a clue on how much crap we had saved just because we had the room to do so. The garage was the worst. For example, we found lawn irrigation piping that we had left over from when we put the yard in the first year we lived there. We had tucked the spare parts away for any repairs that would surely need to be made over the years. The problem was that by the time the repairs did indeed need to be made, we had forgotten that we had the spare parts and we went out and bought them again. So much for my highly organized Virgo system!

Moving out of that home was a daunting task. I was completely over whelmed by the amount of stuff that we had packed into this place. For the first time in my adult life I was doing some serious down-sizing of my stuff. I filled up the dumpster, sold several truck loads and donated even more. When it was finished I felt like I was lighter, freer and ready to take on my new life. But the truth was that I still had a lot of stuff. The biggest issue was the holiday boxes. I had large tubs of decorations for each holiday. There was one each for Easter and Thanksgiving, three for Halloween and about fourteen for Christmas. Letting go of the holiday decorations was absolutely unthinkable. Even at the cost of renting a storage unit for all of it, and let me tell you, storage space here in San Diego isn’t cheap! Eventually I ended up purchasing industrial shelving units which my son helped me erect in one half of the garage of my small townhome. We then moved the stuff from the storage unit to its new home and I was quite happy again to have my stuff near me and well organized, at least for awhile.

I’m not sure when it started. It was slow at first, just the occasional thought as I would pass through the garage. But those thoughts came more and more frequently as time passed. As I would pull into the garage to park my truck I would look at the well organized mountain of stuff and think, “Do I really need all of this?” By last Christmas I was ready to pare down the Christmas decorations to at least half. What I lacked was the time to go through all of the boxes and decide what I would keep and what would have to go. Also, where would it go? There were memories attached to all of this stuff, I needed to find it all a good home. So, Christmas passed and all the boxes stayed neatly on their shelves and the thoughts of freeing myself from it all kept coming. When my partner, Lori moved in I found myself embarrassed about the mountain of stuff that I had saved and I found myself making excuses for all of it. She had some things that we also needed to store. We were able to get it all in but now it wasn’t quite so organized. In fact, it seemed that it was requiring constant attention to keep it all from over taking the whole garage. It was draining more and more of my energy and I needed to take care of it.

The day after Thanksgiving I rolled up my sleeves and headed to the garage. I went through every tub of decorations and saved only those pieces that were very special to us. I had arranged for my friend Amy to come the next day and take the rest away. Amy has three young children and three sisters who also have young children. They were very happy to take over my treasure trove of holiday booty. In the end I eliminated at least 70% of all of the decorations. But the best part was that I knew it was all going to homes where they will create their holiday magic for another generation of children. It feels wonderful to have it all gone. I had no idea how much stuff can weigh you down. I have learned a powerful lesson about just how draining stuff can be. Oh, I still have a lot of stuff, but now I have the willingness to keep going through it all and keep freeing myself of what I no longer need, and now I have a much clearer definition of exactly what “need” means.

Blessings, Kelly

“I've been getting rid of some clutter — anything that doesn't serve a positive purpose in my life — and making room for things that feel happy to me. Because I get to make my life whatever I want it to be. I get to make the room feel however I want it to feel. I get to make the closet as full or as spacious as I want it. And, if I have more clutter to get rid of after Christmas, I'm not going to wait a year, or two or three to do it.” - Jan Denise

A Funny Thing Happened To Me The Other Day...

It was a beautiful fall Sunday here in San Diego and I was out doing my weekly shopping. I pulled into a parking spot at the grocery store when the realization hit me. I’m sure that you have experienced it, the instant of dread when you realize you’ve lost your wallet. I knew exactly where I had left it, I had made note of its location while I was wheeling my cart to my car at the previous store. It was sitting right in the front of the basket and I had actually thought to myself, “Make sure that you don’t forget the wallet in the cart”, then I proceeded to unload the groceries and push the cart to the return rack, leaving my wallet sitting right there. Now I was a good 10 minutes away and my mind started to whirlwind. Could it still be there? Will the carts already of been picked up? Will I get it back? Will I have to go through the hassle of canceling all of my cards? “Crap, this is a bad time for this!”(as if there is a good time for it!) My mind was racing faster than my truck was as I sped back to the store, but then I stopped myself and said “Expect the best.” It’s taken me some years to realize that when I expect the best I very often get it. Now in this moment of panic, I slipped right back into my default mode of “anticipate the worst, hope for the best.” Now I had to challenge my old mode of thinking, why should I anticipate the worse? I have always been the kind of person who sought to return lost items to their rightful owners, many times going well out of my way. Why shouldn’t I expect for the Universe to help my wallet and its contents to find their way safely home to me? And so I did. I took a deep breath, slowed the truck down to the speed limit and just expected the best.

As I pulled into the parking lot I saw that the carts had not yet been picked up. Filled with hope, I pulled in front of the cart rack and jumped out of the truck and began my search for my wallet in the long line of carts. My heart sank as I realized that the wallet was no longer there. But then I heard someone yelling behind me and as I turned I saw a petite brunette woman running towards me holding my wallet over her head with one hand and pointing to it with the other. I ran to meet her and she quickly explained that she had peeked at my license and recognized me from the picture. I thanked her, gave her a big hug and asked if I could give her a little something for her trouble. She just smiled, waving her hand declining my offer. “No no, just pay it forward.” I had a huge smile. Pay it forward is one of my favorite concepts and I was very happy with her request. I assured her that I would indeed pay it forward and I returned to my truck to continue on with my day.

As I drove off I couldn’t help but reflect on other similar instances that I have experience in my life and how different the outcomes had been. I have been actively working on myself for over twenty years. Learning and growing through trial and error. This episode drove home one of my greatest lessons; the power of positive thinking, and looking back it was so clear to see just how far I have come. I like the new me much better.

Blessings,
Kelly

“It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”
~William Somerset Maugham