True grit motherhood.

Dear Mom,

I love you.  I feel a deep wave of love come over me when I say that and it brings tears to my eyes.  I love you with every single cell of my body, mind and spirit. Even my ego has a stake in it.  It has been a meandering path for you but I look back at our lives and see every turn we took as a family was only meant to bring us closer to each other and closer to our pure inner essence of God.

I got really really lucky when the veil dropped upon my birth back then in November of 19xx.  I can talk about you and Dad and wax eloquent on all the richness and depth you both had as individuals, about the incredible experience of getting to know you both as your daughter, as the grandparents of my children, and as fellow human beings, but I’d rather tell you how grateful I am that it happened the way it did.  Little did we all know, we’ve been working on this incredible curriculum we called down to get us free and back home, back to the garden.

I’ve been sleep walking thru a lot of parts of my life, Mom.  I needed to live it this way, to go down those dark alleys that you feared, shake hands with my demons.  I needed to so I could be here now to understand that it was all ok, even though there was so much darkness.  You stood by me despite what I know were your own doubts that I would ever pull through the dark night of my soul. The failed marriages, the alcoholism and other addictions, giving up custody of my son, stumbling through years of parenting special needs children, half awake, barely conscious, calling down grace.   I hope you can come to some measure of peace in your soul and let go of anything that you think you might have done wrong or less than perfect which might have created more suffering for me.  It was all grace, it is all grace.

This is what you are:

a long walk in the woods on a day, any day, naturalist

whoever goes along, learns and grows

cloth napkins at dinner and all the food groups at every meal

up early to exercise and up late to do mending.  

alto in the church choir, bell ringer, just for fun

cross country skiing for hours at the first sticking snow  

head thrown back in full bodied laughter, every summer

on a porch or in a kitchen,

with your family my family, our family  

long car rides with word games and license plate spotting

museums where my brother and I would be waiting for hours for you to finish reading all the informative placards then making sure we didn’t miss anything on the car ride home

the one to talk about the “meaning” of the movie

the story in the song

coke classic stashed in the back of my refrigerator like it’s crack cocaine

piece of a pumpkin muffin hidden behind my toaster

care and concern and self sacrifice and light.  

the almost imperceivable wince at the tattoo

the tense mouth during the Simpsons shows you sat by and tolerated

the puritan work ethic that never let you rest.

Pied beauty.

Like daughter

Like mother

Now, all the lessons you taught me that I didn’t think stuck, all the many times I have been in the woods and remembered that I was supposed to be there for some reason but couldn’t quite remember why, all the places we went and things we saw and laughs we shared and books I read that you strongly encouraged…. you are all that too.

You and Dad were the most incredible bookends for a lost soul of a daughter who finally is waking up to knowing that everything I sought after was there the whole time, the groundwork laid with loving awareness, for minute upon minute, day upon day, year upon year.   I believe you would say that is how our heavenly father cares for us.  You are perfection in every moment and you have no clue.  You carved the keyhole and waited.  I found the keys and now we can be together here, and now with a glass of wine for you and seltzer for me, and laugh and love and know we are only just walking each other home, for the rest of our lives in these bodies, on this planet.

I love you Mom. Thanks for choosing me.  Happy Mother’s Day.
Jill

It’s been almost a week since I crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon and besides suffering a bit from muscle soreness and pmld syndrome (post marathon let down), I’m doing well.  I received more praise than necessary and was told I provided inspiration for many.  I’ve reflected on this idea of inspiration quite a bit since then.

It’s funny how everyone looks at a marathoner as a hero, as representing something maybe they’d like to do or know they could never do, and it seems as if the marathoner is almost elevated to a lower form of a deity.  This feels weird and uncomfortable for me.  When my boyfriend picked me up in Hopkinton after the race, I got in the car and said to him, “now it doesn’t have to be all about me anymore, I’m glad it’s over, it was a once in a lifetime experience and I feel lucky to have had this experience but I’m tired of all the attention” to which he replied something along the lines of, “let it be about you for just a little longer…you worked hard and you went out and did it so accept the praise and then move on”.  I took this to heart.

I did run many many miles on the back roads and the rail trails of Rutland, Holden, and Paxton over the past year, through all kinds of weather, some formidable and some delicious.  It wasn’t a bad winter so I got a break there, though I know I would have gone to the gym if necessary to get the job done.  So yes, I put the miles in and was able to pull it all together on race day and have a great race.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret about probably a good percentage of marathoners …it is that we LOVE the long runs and just about all the training that goes into preparation.  It is glorious.  There were very few times when I had to motivate myself to get out the door. This may not be true across the board, but I’m betting it is more true than not.  I loved the feeling of running away from my kids, my responsibilities in life, my worries and problems.  It is a pause, the run, a time to reflect, to go deeper into my consciousness and heal.  So it has become a win-win for me as it represents a sort of therapy, all this running, but it is the ones on the sidelines that are waiting and watching and hoping to see their runner in the race, that make the real sacrifices when they love a marathon runner.

It is my kids waiting for me to come home every morning on the weekends, worrying about me on the runs I did in inclement weather, it is my mother worrying and praying for me that I will use good judgement in deciding how much to run and she who knows the energy I’m using to train could possibly be used better elsewhere in the future, but she smiles and supports me as she knows and accepts that being a runner, for better or worse, is just part of who I am.  It is all the doctors who patiently treated my stress fracture and a friend who gave me free massages.  It is the many who donated to my cause in this past marathon effort, that of raising money for TSC.  It is the toll this has taken on my body at age 49.  There is a bit of a self destructive quality I have that also can be seen as willpower in light of evidence that running 15 miles a day might not be the best idea for much longer.

So yoohoo all you out there cheering, it is you that are the true heroes.  Each marathoner in the race represents a full army of support and we runners are just showing up to represent and honor those who love us with our heroic act of seeming self sacrifice, yet secretly knowing that it is really a joy to run.  I have truly had the chance to meet God on my runs, in the trees, and brooks, the fields and farms I run past, there is a still presence that envelopes and fills me and always keeps me coming back, like a good addict.

The paradox of it all is that running a marathon is an act of much willpower yet it is on the run, that there is a chance to really surrender to what is in this world and in ourselves and find true inner freedom.  Yet even we runners, have to come down and do the laundry, the dishes, walk through the conflict and drama of our lives and try to remember that we are one among many and we can choose to feel special and exceptional for being able to perform such a feat of willpower, or we can seize the opportunity to let our runs be a wake up call, and walk (or run) the line between willpower and true freedom of the soul.  It is a daily thing, a daily battle for me, but taking a step back and bowing to the heroes in all of you, is my lesson from this marathon thing, I did.

I had to think outside the box to connect the dots but holy mackerel, it took a fellow game player, with a bat, to show me how to hit it out of the park and help me see the metaphor, my own metaphor and all of ours in life. You see, it’s not about me anymore because I’ve set myself free.  It’s about all of us together and all of you who reached out their hands to give donations in multitudes of ways along the path of life to help me be in the position where I am right now….that of asking for help.  Help for my children.

I’m every mother out there and have been all of you good and bad, and all the places in between at one point or another in my life.  The good mother in me appeals to the good mother in you as running this race on the 50th anniversary of women running the Boston Marathon, is symbolic of all I want to do for my kids, all we women ever want to do for our kids, we lay down our lives for them but in doing so, we save ourselves, by running, what running gives back in internal freedom and joy.

I got distracted with “me”, and I thought it was all I’d ever see, but it’s about them, my kids, all of our kids, and the future and coming home.  Coming home to hope and faith that there is a better future for them with better treatments, more doctors and more public awareness of this disease of Tuberous Sclerosis Complex.

In some small way, I feel that this fundraiser has symbolized my attempt to give back to everyone in my life that has believed in me and seen the good in me and in all of us who want free from these chains of life, represented by dis-ease. Living life with a  disease, as dis-ease in all forms, physical disease, mental disease, soul sickness that we all at some level, at some point in our lives have run from.

Running for TSC, for me, is like finally waking up and realizing that I’m running home, homeward bound, as all of us are in life following our own curriculums and hoping for relief, salvation, in all sorts of forms.  As Ram Dass says, “We’re all just walking each other home”.  So tomorrow, the symbolism is not lost on me, especially as a mother.  Mother of 5, three with TSC.

I am asking one more time for donations  Don’t see me, see my kids, the TSC community and outward to the special education community, the mental health community, the general overall community of human beings at large. All of us helping each other in our various methods of recovery, and waking up from the game of life to realize we’re all in this together, walking and/or running each other home.  #IAMTSC

To donate online, click on the link below:

https://www.crowdrise.com/jillsraisingmoneyfor/fundraiser/jillwoodworth
Thank you each and every one of you as “donations” come in all forms and there have been too many to name so God Bless you all!

So I walked into my local Big Y grocery store, recently and was confronted with the new addition of alcohol to the store.  Much to my chagrin, the alcohol was not just in one place, but was literally scattered, in stealth, and not so stealth displays ALL OVER THE STORE!! What’s an alcoholic in recovery to do?  My immediate reaction was to want to drop kick a 30 pack of Bud across the store and run screaming into the parking lot to the safety of my car.  From there, I planned to stay hunkered down, writing an anonymous letter to the editor of The Landmark about the state of affairs at the Big y and how this was messin’ with all of us ex alkies.  I did not do this.  What I did do, was talk to my other friends on similar paths of recovery and make jokes about it.  I posted on facebook and ranted.  Mostly, I thought about it and why it still bothers me to some degree and what it represents and I wrote this blog.

For those of you that don’t have addiction issues with substances, stop reading this and get down on your knees and thank your lucky stars or whomever you thank out there for this sort of nature/nurture scenario that did not set you on the fast train to hell that can be that which is the life of an alcoholic bottoming out.  After doing this, stand up and keep reading.

Booze in Big Y bothers me personally because it still triggers these “FUN” receptors in my head, that will probably always be there, and I’ve had to seek different, more reasonable ways to satisfy them as I am not willing at this time, a day at a time, to take the risk that the call of booze represents to me.  Thing is, I kind of have to honor and thank alcohol for all the fun because there was a lots of it.  Oh hell yes!  It kept me numb during a period of my life when I probably wouldn’t have made it otherwise.  But, it also did other things which I’ve discussed ad nauseum in other blogs so you can reference those if you don’t know what happened to me at my own hand and how I’m one of those touched by grace, that found my way back.

So I say to myself, “I see you alcohol and thank you for soothing me and holding my hand when I needed you but unfortunately for you and fortunately for me, I do not need to hold your hand any longer.  The feelings and emotions you were masking have been revealed and they are not so scary anymore now that I know from whence they came.  Now I am movin’ on and despite the boozy Big y, I am not listening to your call”….

Addiction to substances, is such a hot button issue right now, and the awareness of the importance of dealing with these issues in society has been raised so much so that we probably all know someone who struggles.  Those of us claiming that we are in recovery from addiction to substances are merely the ones willing to put our hands up in the air and say, “alcoholic”, much along the lines of saying “human being”.  Addiction is just amplified attachment to something, and it comes in all forms. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that most in our society are probably addicted to something, someone or some ideal to which we are a slave in serving….the slave in our head that tells us unless we get a “hit” of whatever it is we think we need, we are not enough.

Those who struggle with the idea that addiction to substances is purely a weakness, humor me, if you will.  We human beings are all in.recovery from the game of life.  Recovery from the life that we think we are supposed to have, the one that we see on TV, in movies, media in general.  We are bombarded constantly with messages of a life of physical and emotional perfection that in reality doesn’t’ exist, so we are constantly in a state of thinking we’re” less than” in some ways…it’s almost impossible in this day and age to tune all of this out and there is some really great stuff that goes with the new age of media too, so there’s that on top of everything else.

Alas, the solution for me isn’t avoiding Big Y, because that would be foolish.  I like Big Y for lots of reasons and I don’t have the time or energy, both valuable resources, to shlep to another grocery store all the time.  Plus, eventually, they’ll probably all have booze anyway.  It’s just an adjustment period right now, as I come to accept this new lesson in the classroom of life, and walk through the store, past all the new sorts of shiny bottles and packaging that are fascinating and present the query in my head of, “I wonder what that tastes like? …that wasn’t’ around when I was drinking”….that takes some negotiating to mute.

I also don’t want to go the other route and cling too much to a sense of self righteousness as a recovering alcoholic because I overcame this addiction, I am somehow better than the average Joe who never has had to overcome anything.  That is just arrogant and ridiculous as every single one of us has a story and every single one of us has some internal battle on some level to which we can say,  “I can relate….yo!…. you who…..human being, remember?”.

Mostly, I’ll just grin a bit as I remember who I thought I had to be when I was drinking and cruise on down the aisle of Big Y and of life, with a sly smile, and the knowledge that it’s just life after all and I’m just damn glad I’m still here to be a part of it.

Prompted by an old college friend’s blog on coming back to her southern roots after many years of struggling with the contradiction of southern gentility and charm, in her mostly northern, well educated, intellectual and successful life, I started reflecting on my own roots, or lack thereof, and just what are “roots” and how can I springboard the very idea into a more in depth discussion on one of my favorite rants, that of fundamentalism, aka attachment or zealous self-righteousness in proselytizing one’s own opinions and not remaining open minded.

I guess it all started with my kids and being begrudgingly bullied into the Christmas spirit.  My youngest, at age 11, insists on listening to Christmas music in the car.  My 14-year-old son is in militant denial that despite the overwhelming peer pressure and factual proof of Santa’s nonexistence, he insists on peppering his conversation with questions on Santa’s milk and cookie routine and what time Santa actually arrives on Christmas eve.  I patiently and almost routinely, answer the questions and listen to the music while somehow finding myself reflecting on my own childhood Christmas beliefs and am catapulted back into the morass of my own journey from my roots to where I am today.

Truth be known, I often feel as if I have no roots, as in any one place I grew up or where my family still lives today.  I was born in one place, Rochester, NY, and moved about every three to four years right up through high school.  So when people ask me where I’m from, I almost stammer a bit and have a hard time coming up with a concise answer.    I didn’t know how greatly this lack of being “from” a place had affected me until I got into therapy.  Hah.  No, just kidding, I actually became more and more traumatized with each move though I was able to split off and fantasize each time about the new place, new start, new friends, better life circumstances, etc.

My father was not in the military, nor was he transferred for a job.  He was in the advertising/marketing field and I have been told that it is not that uncommon to change jobs a lot in that field.  However, part of it was my father’s personality and his general stubborn idealism and beliefs of living by the golden rule in a business world that places values on the something as silly as money.  Fortunately, my dad generally got decent jobs and we maintained a lifestyle of middle class throughout my childhood.  It was not easy, for any of us, but I have come around to the opinion (after years of therapy), we all do the best we can at any given point in our lives and thus my father was doing just that.  Plus, there are a whole lot of good things about moving a lot as well.  I have friends from most of the different places we lived, that I didn’t even realize I still had until I went on Facebook and looked them up.  This has been a boon.  As well, no one can pin down where I’m from based on any sort of accent or colloquialisms.  I’m stealth.

Seriously though, I’ve gained a vast wealth of knowledge from all my life experiences and come to terms with mostly all of them, better and not so positive.  At this time of year, when it seems people generally reflect and take stock of their past year, their lives, and practice their holiday traditions, I want to shirk the whole thing.  It initially exhausts me, as I’m always worried about the cost.  Not just financially, but as in what am I doing or not doing to give my children the memories they need to form the groundwork for their own beliefs and traditions.  Here’s one thing they have, living in the same friggin’ place, from at least the age of 5 (my oldest) onward.  It is a whole different game and I can see the value of having the same friends and going to the same schools.

So my roots are fragmented and scattered around the Northeast and Midwest.  I walk through life with an ability to maintain a sense of self without a good deal of attachment to people places or things.  I know how to move on and look to the future and integrate the feelings of loss triggered when people move and leave my life for one reason or another and honor those feelings.  Life is hard and Christmas is a time when we can remember our friends and family, whether with us or not and celebrate the roots that gave birth to our own process of change and growth.  Especially today where there seems to be such an undercurrent of anger, hatred and fear fueled by politicians and the news media.  How to explain this to our children that fear and hatred are not hats to wear, when police are suddenly walking the halls of their schools?

When they return home with questions and fears of their own, I must dig deep far back into my own childhood and roots and pull out the times when I felt fear and hatred just as they do and what I was taught and experienced in my family, that is a message of love.  A love that cannot be pigeonholed or owned by one religious tradition or method of recovery or any other path.  Love is above and beyond all, not ours to keep but ours to share.  I am grateful that I can give this to my kids and trust me, it ain’t always a perfect message, in a perfect package in a perfectly decorated home with perfectly wrapped presents under a perfectly adorned tree.  Did I say perfect too much?  Nah…that’s not how I roll.  I learned that walking in and out of town after town and school after school, house after house.  Perfection and control are illusions and what is under the tree that matters are the symbols of love given to each other in poorly wrapped, odd shaped presents, humorous mishaps at Christmas dinner or whatever you do or don’t do during the holiday season, grab it.  Hold it. Treasure it and share it.  Please. And show the family that love can still win.

  It’s been a summer of love and loss.  As I brace  myself for the final week before school starts, I cannot help but reflect.  Last Sunday, my beloved boyfriend left to live in VT for a new job.  One of my very best friends is moving to Florida in September, for the next phase of his life.  Two of my children are starting in new schools this year, I am going back to school (first time in 25 years), for an addiction counselor training program, and my oldest daughter will soon be headed towards some big changes in her life as we attempt to facilitate her higher education combined with support systems needed to stabilize her mental health.  All these things are good and blessed, but all these things bring with them their own set of emotional baggage which seems to be unpacking all over me right about now.  I also was not able to run.  Running has been my treasured coping mechanism for years.  It was a hardcore bummer when it was discovered after multiple doctor visits, that I have a tibial stress fracture.  I think subconsciously or semi consciously, I perpetrated this injury to see if I could deal with the loss of my old standby obsession.  I pushed and pushed and ran and ran and eventually, hurt and could barely walk.  I handled it, not always like a rock star, but  I stopped running.  I also had hernia surgery.  It knocked me down, the hernia surgery recovery did, my mindset being one of obscene denial of my age.

I started to read more to fill the void left by long runs meandering through the meadows and gallows in my head.  Somehow, I find myself becoming a fervent learner.  I have passionately immersed myself in following the addiction crisis in this country and the evolution of common understanding that we need better ways to handle what seems to be a screaming  of the masses.  What they’re screaming is that something in life, in our lives, in our country, is simply not working.  I’d be a fool if I failed to see the connection between my own life and that of this outcry of the underbelly of society, the voice of we addicts, recovered, in recovery, active or passed on.  I am learning.  I realize I am one of the lucky ones, to be alive, first of all, as well as to have recovery, that is working. I have and had family and friends that cared enough about me to intervene and get me help, before it was too late.  I am on my knees in prayers of gratitude for this yet there are so many who have the family and friends to help and still end up in the morgue. It again bangs home to me that we are no different, we are all connected.  

I must see the addict as my fellow human, my fellow sufferer, someone I have been and may be again, I can accept the complete nonsense of behavior, the path  of destruction that follows us and at least consider kindness. I know that  in my life, at least in my head, I have been have been  both the victim and the perpetrator, the abused and the abuser, the criminal and the innocent. I have done many of the same things, as those on the margins of society, in prison or still on the streets, caught in the cycle of addiction  The difference being, my path was just directed differently, one small move and I would be one the other side of bars because Lord knows, I just got lucky.  Or is it luck?  It’s what I’m trying so very hard to understand.  It is my belief we are put here on earth to learn, we all have a different curriculum and so in everything now, I ask myself, what am I supposed to learn? I don’t expect because I ask the universe or God for favors, that I’ll get them, more that I’ll just be able to accept.  Anything else is a bonus.

It’s taken me my life up until the last few years to start to understand even a minute amount about love and loss and and of course if I had learned them earlier, I’m sure I’d have a much more lucrative position (a.k.a. fancy-ass job) in life, but it wasn’t in the stars this time around, and that is ok.  I see so many who are less than content with far more than I have and many who have less and are more content.  I’m getting it …plodding along, heavy footed and lumbering, toward a much greater sense of peace and freedom.  

And love totally, hands down, wins. Connects us all and I know this I can try to remember that the triumph of an unsedated MRI for a boy with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, is as much of an accomplishment as any that are earned by other typical 14 year old boys, it’s just his syllabus looks different, as does mine.  

Yet…. i’ve stood there too, on the brink, the cliff, close to my jumping off point, at least in my head, many times.  I didn’t quite go there. But what if I did? And for those that do, and leave so many behind, in pain, wondering if life holds any meaning when 16 year olds and 50 year olds, overdose on heroin or crash their cars into trees or hang themselves in their closets? Did their lives matter less? Are they completely a failure based on how their lives ended? I think not.  A friend recently described to me the gift of remembering certain lovely things about her brother who she lost to addiction, and the way he had touched so many, despite his life’s burdens.  He was on a different journey than mine.  

So I must must must, remember now, it is in the moments when we smile at those with whom we come in contact, offer a kind word or open a door or even send a text with intentions of love, we have the opportunity to touch another life and in turn, enrich our own.  We are all so worthy of this life we have, right here, right now and the more I allow myself to remain in touch with the ways I am broken…the more love gets in through the cracks.

So here’s the thing, lately, I’ve been thinking a lot of all the different roles I have had over the course of my life, because when you get to be my age, “you’ve seen some shit” (JD).  All these roles that I’ve identified with over the course of my life have somehow have become less and less important as time passes. Some are permanent roles and some crop up from time to time and I don their cloaks, so to speak, to play the role.   Among  these roles are two time divorcee, mother without custody of one, mother of 4 more, 3 with TSC, TSC mentor and advocate, mother of special needs kids, mother of a cheerleader, wife, exwife, recovered anorexic/bulimic, recovering alcoholic/addict, clinically depressed woman, long distance runner, real estate secretary, writer, blogger more recently, biohacker, reader, seeker, pacifist, buddhist, hippie, ex fundamental Christian, girlfriend, and whoa.  There are probably tons more that I’m forgetting.  I take a little piece of each of them and have incorporated them into who I am today.  The tricky thing is not falling in too deep with any of them to the point where I really think that that’s who I am.  I like to quote Ram Dass who said that when we are born, we enter “somebody training”.

All this to say that it certainly is not easy, especially when parenting.  I go out running most days which is how I worship, amongst the trees, my feet kissing the roads and dirt trails.  I often shed a tear, as I feel a strong connection with all that is, and especially the trees. God, a higher power and that connection reminds me of who I am.  But back to parenting.  I get done with the run and enter “the house”.  Most days, my calm serenity falls away within seconds of walking through the door, especially upon seeing 85 dishes all over the surfaces in the kitchen, snack fragments everywhere and my 14 year old son sitting facing the snack cabinet, ready to inhale the last few pretzel sticks I was saving for myself.  Done.  I’m mom again.  Mom of this teenager, this struggling, hormonal, learning disabled kid, and I’ve lost my footing.

The meaning of life is coming into form through the fog as time passes.  Maybe all this chasing the “American Dream” and accomplishment, constant driving ambition, achievement at all costs, wealth, success and all the external trappings of a life well lived are really not all that they seem.  I tend to believe it’s one’s inner life.  Our job here on this planet, as humans incarnate, for this brief blip of time, is to learn who we really are, beyond all the roles we play, way out there beyond all that seems so imminently important.  All those things we strive after day after slaving day, are maybe not the point.  What really matters?  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s learning to love each other, and I don’t mean just the loveable ones.  I mean the ones that we love to hate, the sticky ones that irritate the crap out of us and the man on the street who is begging for change, maybe just to buy that bottle of hooch, yeah, we gotta love him too.  The only way I can personally do this is to put down all my armor, maybe for a moment, imagine that whoever it is that I hate or want to hate, cries too.  I mean really cries.  The power of evoking an image of my worst enemy crying, always opens a window in my heart, a way in, a gleam of light.  Some days it’s all I can do to open my grinch heart enough to  let in a glimmer of the light of love.

You know, most of the time, I may remember that I’m not the roles I play and to quote one of my favorite lyrics of all time, by The Indigo Girls, “the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine”, is more of a lofty ideal, than my minute to minute reality, but at least now, I know what it means and how to continue on the path or getting there.  I imagine myself getting dressed in the morning and picking out my costume.  Shall I be the rad neo buddhist, aging hipster fem fatale in heels?  Or maybe the exhausted soccer mom in the SUV with the dunks latte, in sweats and no make up, taking my kids to school? I can’t go back to being the drunken, drugged up barfly or the girl hanging her head over the toilet every night puking up the feelings she couldn’t express….

I’m grateful for every bit of pain and angst I’ve felt at the hands of who I thought I was at the time and who taught me truly, over the course of many many ragged, careworn years, just who I might be becoming.  I’ll continue going to church in the trees where I worship what is new every day and of which I am a part of changing and growing and evolving.  Please everyone, lets just all try to tweek ourselves a little bit and move toward more gratitude for this life, our greatest teacher, and smile at a stranger, or even an old enemy as you pass by.  Let light and love in through the window of our smiles and often, that is enough.