In the winter of 2007 I got a book from the library and a dvd the same week from Neflix called ‘The Secret’ and I realized this morning, the last month I guess, that it really is no secret at all…the mind is an incredibly powerful tool and our thoughts do become our life…we do create our universe with the thoughts we think.  Anybody who knows me well, or reads what I write, gets the vibe that over several months this last year I was in something of a rut, or slump, or funk.  Any descriptive word will do that expresses the simplicity that I felt blue, not ‘myself’ and that really I was in a sucky place…BUT nothing was different, at all from months before the slump…I was still crazy in love with the most beautiful boy I’d ever laid eyes on, I still lived in my dream house built from scratch, I still lived next door to my gloriously perfect grandchildren, still had a job that I really found fulfilling and never to be boring…the fact of the matter is the ONLY thing that HAD changed was what I thought about.

By late August I felt tired.  Tired of being blue, tired of being sucky, tired of thinking things that left me feeling  confused, tired of feeling ‘off.”  I learned a LONG time ago that the only way to get to Neverland is to think happy thoughts and last month I made a mindful change to change my mind.

Situations do not change overnight, people do not change overnight, what we think we want from life can’t change overnight, BUT what we think about, and how we think about those situations, people, and wants CAN change in a split second if we wish them to.  I did not need some ethereal music and a psychic on a dvd to tell me this secret.  I did not have to push myself to read through the drivel in a best selling book to understand this secret.  I just had to figure it out on my own, through the help of loving friends and people in my life who are good people and happy people and content people and secure people, who already understood that the thoughts they create become the life they make…purposefully feeling positive, feeling gratitude, feeling fulfilled, even when THEIR lives are perhaps not moving constantly in the direction they hoped or chose, they know the secret…keep thinking happy thoughts.  I learned from Peter Pan as a very little girl, that you can’t fly if you don’t think happy thoughts, and worse, the longer you keep yourself from the happy thoughts, the more impossible it seems to get ‘back.’  J. M. Barrie wrote, “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”   It seems Peter knew ‘the secret’ all along.

If you have never read the book Eat Pray Love, you should.  If you have never seen the film Eat Pray Love, don’t.  When I first read the book in 2006 I was ready for a change, but I did not know what kind of change.  I knew I was unsettled, in too many ways, and a friend told me about this story, that I would enjoy reading about how another woman felt unsettled and what she chose to do about it.  The first chapter, where the author is so despondent that she can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can’t BE, where she sobs onto her bathroom floor, where she suddenly KNOWS she no longer wants to be married, no longer wants to live in her house, is sure she does not want to be a mother…the “scene” she retells is gut-wrenching.  I do not and did not have any scene such as this.  I also have neither the means nor the ability to travel around the world to “find” what I need to be settled.  To be clear, two years later I decided to build this house and move, and things did change and I did find a new way to be settled, nested, rooted.  Reading the book did not change my life, but reading the book helped me achieve a new perspective about what it means for a woman to change her life, and that is a beautiful thing.

I had an hour-long chat with my mother yesterday after we attended grandparent’s day for my daughter’s girls at their elementary school.  I walked my Mom to her car and we chatted about much of nothing and then chatted about much of something, and then she went and did it, as she is prone to do, said the “wrong” thing…Mothers, no matter how much we love them, or in some cases for many woman, loathe them, often say the one thing that gets your goat.  As I am a mother, and as I do this myself, I am well aware that it is neither a deliberate effort to irritate your daughter nor is it a purposeful action to make the enjoyable afternoon chatting end…it is simply a fact of life that for most mother/daughter combinations there is one thing, one subject, one issue, one tone, one little spark that irks the daughter or the mother and starts the fire of ire.

“We are worried about you” was what did it for me yesterday…my Mom’s points were valid, and as a mother, I know and understand EXACTLY what she was talking about, and she made her points and was clear and expressed herself in a way that told me she really only has my well being and happiness in mind, as a good mother should, and I calmed her nerves with a brief conversation, succinctly made my points without being overly agitated,  but the whole time I was trying to speak without being angry, or mad, or irritable over it all, I was thinking about the author of this book I love…THERE was a daughter to be worried about!!!  THERE was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown!!!

I realized last night that I have only to look into the eyes of my granddaughters, spend even a few minutes with those charming delightful humans, and I am rebalanced, and there is nothing to be worried over me about at all…I have love, deep unconditional love in my life, which is something many women never ever get…they eat here, they say prayers here & they love here, they chew, kneel, and kiss, they are the best thing that ever happened to me…sure, I’d love very much to go to Italy, India, and Indonesia to try to find myself, to have new experiences which guide me towards the kind of emotional grounding I do so often crave, but I can’t, so all I’ve got to do is open my door to these little girls, and there is plenty of eating, praying, and loving, to solve any worry in my world…

IF.  I read a poem in college titled “If” and while it is really something of a guide to living, written from a father to his son, and sort of a to-do list to grow into a good man, it really can be a guide to living for all of us girls and women too, and I thought about the poem last night on a long drive, and how often I use the word “if” and all of the implications the word holds…

If I had more money I would do -blank.-  If I had more friends I would do -blank.-  If I had more free time I would do -blank.-  If I was not afraid of getting caught I would do -blank.-  If it was not illegal I would do -blank.-  If I didn’t have to go to work regularly I would do -blank.-  If I was more brave I would do -blank.-  If I were less timid I would do -blank.-  If I were more creative I would do -blank.-  If I were stronger I would do -blank.-

…my list in my head went on and on and on and on…41 miles each way, on the way to; very stressful, heading west, sun in my eyes, lots of traffic, slow pokes and speed demons…on the way back; black dark night with a waxing moon, peaceful and a road heading east all to myself…I listened to music on my trip, of course, there is always music, and then I would turn it off and just enjoy the silence before my mind started to wander, let the quiet consume me, and I would think about “if” and when I pulled into my driveway I had the most amazing thought; If I had not been where I have been these last 45 plus years, If I had not had the joys and the sorrows, the good times and the bad, If I had not lived through the lessons, and there have been SO many lessons, If I had not made the mistakes, If I had not achieved the goals, If I had not cried over the wishes unfulfilled, I would not be pulling into this driveway, walking into this house, being HERE, NOW…