Healing Through Love

The reality is some days in our life just don’t flow. Some days are like a LA traffic jam. Today is my LA traffic jam and surprisingly I’m doing pretty well with it. I haven’t lost my cool and I’m focusing on the basics, things that can’t be screwed up. I paid a few bills, tried to make some calls but that wasn’t working out either so I nixed those for today and am sticking to simple things, doing the laundry, taking care of necessities and lying low until I sense the traffic jam is gone. It wouldn’t have always been this way for me. The old me would have been angry and tried to plow on through the obviously not working tasks and would have become even more frustrated. I’ve learned and one of those gifts of learning was to let things go and not react when things start going wrong. I now work with the things that I can and I let the rest work it’s self out on another day when the traffic is moving without delays.

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A Hawaiian mural I discovered at a Big Island Resort shopping area.

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Old Kona Airport Beach, Big Island of Hawaii

The last few days I have been drawn to adding beautiful photos that I find healing. I hope that these photos bring you pleasure as well. This beach is gorgeous, quiet and quite unique. It used to be next to the runways of the old Kona Airport. To reach the beach you actually drive down what used to be runways for the airplanes, kind of cool and bizzare all at the same time. Definetely worth a visit or two!

Madison WI Botanical Gardens

I recently had a chance to visit Madison WI and their Botanical garden. It was such a gorgeous and peaceful place. I took this photo of a water lily while I was there. I find myself so calm and centered when I spend time in gardens and nature. I hope you will enjoy this picture as much as I do. What is even more amazing is that I took this photo with my PHONE! Incredible!

August 23rd….Today it has been four years since my father died. At times I miss him as deeply as I missed him the first day he was gone. Then a calm comes and I know he is with me, watching over me, guiding me and that he’s proud of the progress I’m making in my life. It is never easy to move through grief… I wish it were and I wish I could tell those reading this that there’s a magical answer to the pain, there isn’t. But time is a great healer and I think of my dad these days with so much love and gratitude and so much less sadness. That is the miracle of time and love, they help to heal you.

I took this shot on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Another beautiful shot from the islands of Hawaii. I called these islands home for three amazing years and I still treasure them today. Aloha!

A surfer on the island of Maui.
Everyone seems to be searching for views of Hawaii lately so today I am simply adding some beauty to the blog by adding a photo I took a couple years ago while I was revisiting the Hawaiian Islands I love. Aloha!

This website is one that my friend Mary shared with me. It rates skin care products and their safety as far as their chemical content and ingredients. I think this site is amazing and I recommend you check it out. http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/

The Traveler’s Gift

Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success
By: Andy Andrews

The Traveler’s Gift is an amazing book. It is one that should be shared with friends and loved ones alike! It is an inspiring novel about a man called David Ponder who finds himself in a desperate situation and a cross roads in his life. He reaches a point of extreme fear and struggle in his life and a split second decision places him in a situation of grave danger. He is given in that moment divine assistance to show him and teach him what he can do with his life through seven principles. His lessons and his inspiring work resonate with me and leave me feeling like the world is a better place with this book! It is a book that touches my heart and motivates me to create good in my own life. A must read!

By: Elizabeth Gilbert

What a great book. It is a heart warming journey through the transitions of Elizabeth Gilbert’s life and her year of healing while traveling to three countries she felt drawn to. It’s absolutely worth a read! I particularly loved two particular quotes from the book. These touched my heart.

We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace.

So that’s the final lesson, isn’t it? When you set out in the world to help yourself, you inevitably end up helping….Tutti (In Italian Everybody)

 

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The Guam girls fourteen years later… still treasuring our friendships.

Our Guam Reunion Group

This has been a weekend of laughter, great fiesta food and sharing friendships. It has been great to catch up and share our lives and also a wonderful way to reconnect with women friends and their spouses who live very different lives. It has been fun and interesting to talk and share our tips, our ideas and the strategies that work for us in our every day life and relationships.

It is also eye opening and humorous to spend four days together sharing our lives, our memories, stories and just hanging out together. Some of us are single (myself and another friend Shelly, others are married and others still are married with children (most of the group). So though our lives have changed dramatically in the fourteen years since we met we remain connected and joyful in our friendships. This long weekend was an amazing time of enjoying Guam fiesta food…chicken keliguan, pancit, red rice, finndene and ribs, cucumber diago, and chammoro potato salad. All the wonderful food was courtesy of Richard Taitano and his wife Sheila, our hosts for the weekend. Richard brings all his love of his culture to these weekend reunions and allows all of us a treasured weekend of sharing memories of Guam and our love of the island we once called home.

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Our group while living on Guam.

This weekend is our annual Guam reunion. This get together started with our desire to continue reconnecting and maintaining our friendships. We are a group who worked together on the island of Guam in the early nineties. We are meeting for a weekend of catching up and sharing memories. We are meeting in Minneapolis at one of our friends home. It makes for a fun weekend of laughter, memories and catching up with each other’s lives after a year apart. It’s a wonderful way to share our lives and have a great break from every day life.