My Friend, My Partner, My Rock

Over the last couple of days I have had some interesting insights into my soul but none of these clarifications of self could of been so clear had I not been able to share them with my husband. The honest and open communication that we share is so refreshing and is without judgment. In the moments that I share my inner most feelings and thoughts with him I experience a freedom that I normally only feel when galloping a horse at full tilt.
It is the same power,connection, and trust.

Somehow everything becomes clearer when I share with him without reserve. All the words in my mind start to form cohesive sentences and memories shrouded in years of dust burst into the light and are seen for what they really are.

The best part of an experience like this is lying in his arms afterwards. Feeling our breathing synchronize and my emotional exhaustion subside. He is as comforting as slipping into the moon lit lake on a hot summers night and for this I am eternally grateful.

Thank you my love, for being my friend, my partner, my rock.
Love

Keep the faith

There are times in life that seem incredibly dark. Times where you feel that no matter what you do you simply can't make things better than they are. You dream of a life that would fulfill your soul and would leave you feeling proud at the end of each day but somehow no matter the prayers you whisper, the goals you set, the money you save, and the hours you put in your dreams are left as nothing more than whispers and wishes spoken to the moon.
I have always believed that the challenges we face in life are gifts wrapped in heartache. That when you peal back the difficult situation or challenge, you are left with the gift of greater wisdom, greater strength, and a chance to make a better situation for yourself. This belief will not change despite the challenges that I am now facing. Some how my dreams of being a mother, owning a business, living a country life style and leaving this world a better place than I found it will come to fruition. I know this because I have Faith and because I have my wonderful husband at my side and when I falter I know he will pick me up and carry my dreams forward until I have the strength to carry them on again my self. They say that love can overcome everything and now more than ever, I believe that this is true.

Keep your faith strong and meet each challenge with the most positivity you can muster. I will do the same and I have the feeling we will all see our dreams materialize some how.

Blessed be, Love and light,

Rainbow

Though my Mother never re-married after the divorce my Father did. He had two loves after my Mum. The first ended after many years and although my Dad was heart broken at the time it was also what allowed him to experience the true love of his life, Doug.
Doug and I met before he was my Dad's partner as he was friends with my Dad and my Mum through work. He was younger and full of a party animal spirit. He and I even went to a wedding together as he was friends with the bride and I was dating the Grooms son. Doug was wild and fun and searching for something. Blond hair, blue eyes and a big smile are how most saw Doug but behind the smile their was a slight shadow. You see it in many people if you look close enough. It is a part of themselves yet discovered and I could see that in Doug. I always wondered if he smiled when he was alone because to me that is the test of a truly happy person, if you smile when no one is watching.

Bringing together a conservative & proper business man with a party going aging wild child may not seem like a match made in heaven but here we are 17 years later and many of us look at their relationship and wish for a love as strong . I can also say with confidence that each of them now smiles when no one is watching.

My two Dads have the most amazing and positive effect on each other. Balancing out each others personality excesses and teaching one another to see the world through enlightened eyes.

In 1991 they stood before family, friends and curious on lookers and declared their love for one another in a Spiritual commitment ceremony. It was a wonderful summer day and laughter could be heard for miles around. A simple service conducted by Darrell, a family friend and United church minister, took place on the grass behind the swimming pool at our house and as they said "I do" we all knew we were witnessing something very special.
My Mum stood next to my Dad during the ceremony and acted as his best man. She never stopped loving my Dad as he really was the one and only love of her life but she beamed with joy that day and willingly handed over the keys to my Dads heart to Doug. He was the only person she would of trusted them to.
Doug was instantly a part of our family and it was hard to imagine that he hadn't always been so.
Being a step parent is never easy. Being a step parent to a precocious and head strong little redhead with a fiery temper is another story all together. But Doug handled it in his stride and always gave me enough rope to see the edge of the cliff without allowing me to actually hang myself.
As I have mentioned in other posts, I feel very blessed for my three parents. None of whom could of raised me alone but together they took the precocious, head strong, little redhead with a temper and grew a confident, loving, happy, larger redhead with a slightly more controlled temper.
Family doesn't come in a one size fits all box. It comes in multitude of shapes, sizes and colors. Mine just happens to be a rainbow.

Please take the time today to enjoy the many colors of your family.

Blessed Be, Love and Light.

A Family of Unconditional Love

By the grace of the Goddess I have been blessed with an exceptional family!
A family that is no where close to normal, who has had more than its fare share of drama, but who has, no matter what, loved each other unconditionally.

The term unconditional love has become a bit of a trendy catch phrase in the last few years but to actually live this philosophy is another story. My Mum and Dad taught me the truth of unconditional love from day one and still to this day my Dad reminds me of its tough reality.

To love a person in the moment is easy. As we are loving beings at our core but to love a person when they are at their darkest is another challenge all together.

Since my Dad was in his twenties he has been taking in those with no where to go and teaching them to heal themselves and to love no matter how broken their hearts and souls may be.
He has taken in street kids that no one else would take, he has taken in hitch hikers who didn't have a place to hitch to, he has shown kindness to his most ruthless business rivals and he has provided love to each and everyone of them.
Many of those that he has helped have turned on him in their difficult times only to be forgiven, made to analyze their own life lessons and then accepted back in to our family fold.

I think of my Mum as being a little tougher as she was (she passed back to Spirit 15 years ago) very protective of those she loved and had any one, out side her family fold, hurt someone within her family she would pounce like a tigress protecting her cub. But in truth she was just as forgiving and opened her heart and home to all who needed her.

To truly understand this family story of mine you would need to understand the family a little so I will try to explain our weird, wonderful, and blissfully dysfunctional clan:
My Mum and Dad married in their twenties after meeting through my maternal Grandfather who my Dad was working for. My Mother became pregnant and so they got married. Most would think of this as an unplanned pregnancy but after chatting with my Aunt (Mum's sister) I learned that it was far from unplanned (at least my Mums part!).
Within a short time the marriage dissolved due to irreconcilable differences or perhaps I should say similarities.....they both like to sleep with men :-)

Even though my parents marriage ended, the love never did. They stayed best friends from day one, talking on the phone, raising their daughter (me), and always sharing an incredible love. Nothing can represent this love more than my Dad and his partner allowing my Mum and I to live with them when my Mum fell on hard financial times. We all lived together on and off over the last few years of my Mums life and when it was time for my Mum to come home to die after a battle with cancer it was my Dad's house she went to. Everyday I would read to her and everyday my Dad would bath her and hold her hand. My two dads, my Mum and I made up a perfect family unit and I feel very blessed to this day for all three of my parents. A stunning and spectacular Mum as well as two amazing and unique Dads.

I am also blessed with five Brothers all of whom are much older and are the result of the love extended to those who needed it the most. My parents and then my Dad after the divorce ran a group home for kids who society had washed their hands of. They were the children of drug dealers, prostitutes and criminals and many had already racked up a reputation with the police by the tender age of 13 yrs. Five of these boys became part of our family and now have families and careers of their own. They learned to trust, to make a better life for themselves and most importantly LOVE.
Not all of the boys who came into the group homes have been as successful by societies standards as my brothers but they did experience love and learned to take care of each other and that is an amazing success.
The borders of our family extend out around far more than just our blood relatives. We have opened up our family to all who wanted to be a part of it and this diverse tapestry has enriched all of our lives, especially mine.

Unconditional Love - A messy, difficult, and sometimes trying philosophy to live by but it is delicious in its variety of flavors and I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Everyones family has a story and I would love to hear about some of yours so please feel free to share them with me as I have shared mine with you.

Blessed Be , Love and Light

The Foundation

Many years ago my Father, my Brother and I started talking about a business my Dad was trying to create. It was the taking of an old rundown chateau in France and creating a Spiritual Healing Center. My dad, John Maylam, continues with this dream. Doing all he can to bring together the required talents and funds to make his dream a reality now a decade later.

During the original conversations between the 3 of us we started talking about ethical business. How it seems that in many companies only the almighty dollar is important and the exploitation of the employees, environment, and even the owners of the company themselves were all fare game. We decided then to try and formulate a statement that we could do business by.

With a pen in my hand the words started flowing like a gift from the heavens and in moments it was finished.
With almost no revision we had a statement called The Foundation.
I would like to share this original statement here with you now:

“The Foundation” is a group of individuals and businesses that will all work from a solid foundation of truth. We hope to bring people together who believe in making a profitable living without sacrificing people’s individual growth, the environment, personal beliefs, equality, or the essence that is us all - love - both universal and personal which in reality are one.

The possibilities are endless. Imagine networking with a group of people and companies that you know do not sacrifice the greater good for personal gain. All of a sudden the balance that so many of us find only at the end of the day in our homes would encompass our entire lives. To understand this vision just close your eyes and imagine a world in balance, that vision is what a solid foundation can provide.

So here I am more than 10 years later and still believing that this is the only way to conduct yourself in business. I am happy to say that many more people are also bringing their businesses into balance and conducting themselves in a way that doesn't hurt others for their personal gain.
That being said, many companies, both large and small, do still sacrifice others and it has to stop!

We have a limited time on this earth and no matter your beliefs you simply can't deny that it is our responsibility while here, to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. This means not only choosing our employers carefully but choosing who we purchase our goods from with the same consideration.

My husband and I along with another business partner are planning our first company and it goes without saying that we will be living and working with this philosophy in mind.

I believe you can be successful, that you can have abundance and that you can sleep with a clear conscience.

I wish all of you the best and pray to the Goddess that I connect with to guide you to a balance in your work and personal life.

Blessed be. Love and light

Enough

Next door to our house is a retirement home and in the time I've lived here I have met a few of the old people living there.
I see them walk by to the coffee shop down the road, A few of them trick or treated at our house last Hallows Eve and since we have been landscaping the front garden many have stopped to chat. I don't know any of there names but I know them by the smiles they give, the advice on cedar trees, or the image of a 80+ year old woman in a pumpkin suit that shall forever be ingrained in my mind.

The person who intrigues me most though is the grey haired lady who sits at the bus stop just to the right of my house. The first time I saw her was the day a large big dog chased our puppy Sage right out of the dog park one block from our house. Sage ran for home and nothing I screamed in my frantic voice could stop him.
I ran as fast as I could from the other end of the park where we were standing when the black dog started to chase him. I didn't stop until I was able to bury my hands in Sages soft puppy fur.

Sages journey took him out of the park, across the road and to the bus stop where he forgot the scary black dog in exchange for a pat from the old lady sitting on the bench. I stammered an apology to the lady as I took hold of Sage and then quickly retreated to the safety of our front room and vowed to never let my dog off leash again.

Since that day I have seen the same lady at the bus stop each and every day. She never gets on a bus and although I have seen her speaking to the odd person I don't think it is ever more than a casual exchange. I became quite interested in her daily or sometimes twice daily trip to the bus stop and I will admit that I now watch to see if she is there.
I walk past with the dogs if I have seen she is siting there and although I never speak to her I always smile and breath in the smell of a cigarette which is curious because I hate the smell of smoke normally and I have never actually seen her smoke but the smell is always there with her and some how it brings me comfort.

I have no family here except for my husband and so I have often fantasized about adopting some lovely elderly person to become a surrogate grandmother to the child I hope to have one day. So it should come of no surprise that the thought of chatting to the old lady at the bus stop has crossed my mind but somehow I can't help but think it would ruin the perfect give~&~ take we currently have.

I watch for her and give her a smile.
She nods and allows me to smell her phantom cigarette.
Somehow it is enough for us both...

Blessed be!

The Much-To-Do About Boobs

This ones for the girls....

Have you sat down recently and thought about boobs? Yours or someone Else's?
I find myself this morning wondering how breasts became such a hot topic and how one body part can be related to so many emotions, thoughts, experiences and controversy.

In what seemed like an overnight transformation I went from a flat chested 11 year old girl to a 36C curvaceous 12 going on 20 year old. All of a sudden my mother was having to try and hide me from the leering gazes of 35 year old men. This overnight change in my body didn't just mean that clothes fit differently but it meant EVERYTHING was different.
I became a sexual being in the eyes of other people because my body had changed, and let me tell that at 12 I was no where near ready for it.

The tops that on my friends looked cute and innocent looked sleazy on me. My friends mothers weren't sure I was the kind of girl they wanted hanging out with their daughters and they certainly didn't approve of how their older sons and their husbands were all of a sudden offering to babysit.

Having breasts changed my life the moment they arrived and they continue to play an important role in my life. They let me attract certain lovers but deter others, they prevented me carrying on with certain sports, they have both advanced and hindered career moves at certain times, they have formed a part of my personality and I have both relished and rejected them at different times of my life. Breasts are controversial and those are just my own.

The power of the breast is overwhelming.
It is what nurtures our young, lures our lovers, forms our fashion sense and fosters billion dollar industries from creams, bras, surgeries, magazines, film, and countless others businesses.

No one goes unaffected by boobs.

So why do I bring all of this up? I suppose it is to ask you to be sensitive and to give this over worked body part a bit of a break.
Their is a reason that breast cancer is rampant in our nation and it is more than just the physical nature of our world. It is also the emotional pressure that our commercial driven North American lives force on to this unsuspecting fragile collection of tissue.
As women we criticise our breasts for being too small, to big, too low, too pointy, too, too, too and I think we just need to give them a rest.
Stop judging yours and everyone Else's.
Stop allowing society to tell you something is wrong with them.
Stop forcing them into padded wire contraptions that force them into unnatural shapes.
Let them breath for Goddesses sake!!!!

1 in 27 women will die of breast cancer. This is staggering!!!!!
I say embrace your tits. Their size, shape, and stage in maturity.
Love them for what they are and take great care of your mounds.
Don't forget to check them to ensure good health and perhaps let them see the sun first hand.
www.bcsc.ca

Blessed be, Love and Light

A Complex Answer to a Simple Question

This morning I was asked a simple question.
"Do you ever loose yourself in a character of a book your are reading? Really loose yourself where you start thinking like they do?"
" Oh yes" I replied. I spoke then of a few favorite characters from the books that I love but the question has lingered with me well past the original conversation.

I think I loose myself in characters all the time. In books, in movies, in songs and even in friendships. But more often I find my self in my interactions with these characters. We have a choice in how we learn our life lessons and although I spent my younger years learning some difficult lessons through traumatic events such as death of friends and family, date rape, leaving school, leaving relationships, and so on... I have discovered in my slightly older and wiser years that I can learn valuable life lessons through listening to the stories of others and allowing myself to become a character in a story for just a moment and then relate it back to my own life. I no longer need to experience first hand a difficult path to gain the wisdom from it.
I feel very grateful that I can open my heart, mind and soul to another persons experience and gain insight from it.
It makes me wonder if that isn't the Spirits goal. To live on earth learning a handful of lessons that we can take back and share with the greater conscience at our time of passing.
How wonderful it would be to live on earth as we do in the Spirit realm sharing our insights and feelings without having to experience the drama first hand.
It takes an incredible amount of empathy to transport yourself into a character that is far removed for your notion of who you are and very little to relate to a figure you admire or respect yet I have grown more allowing myself to bathe in a character I feel disdain for, as it those who are different that can be our greatest teachers.
As I said, a complex answer to a simple question but one worth continuing to think about.
I hope you each enjoy your next book or movie. Try allowing yourself the joy of loosing and finding a part of yourself in an others character. Just remember to tie on a safety rope before diving in so our mental institutions don't become overloaded! :-)
Blessed be. Love and Light,