Welcome October! Next to Christmas, it’s my favorite and craziest month of the year. I’m thinking about so many things these days. I’m thinking about service and information that can benefit all you writers, artists, and every day people out there. I’m taking stock of my last several months that were some of my most challenging and how work and grace allowed me to move through to move onward. I’m thinking about turning 49 in two days and what that means, if anything, to me right now, and I’m thinking about the work.

I’d asked for input regarding questions or topics you might like me to talk about. I think I’ll choose this thought today:  How love pulls you through?

Well, this could be the subject for an entire book and something I’ve turned to over and over again, indeed to ‘pull me through’. Growing up without the guidance, love, and support of my mother, but instead raised by the enormous love of my father and my father’s life partner Chip Garnett pulled me through my entire life. It remains my strongest example of the best and most powerful love and my strongest reserve that I continue to call on. Love of dancing helped to pull me through my adolescence. It helped to nurture, in physical terms, loving my body and myself. The love I grew to have for reading and writing became an intellectual, a creative, and a kind of self-help love for things I didn’t understand. It broadened my love for other worlds, love of different kinds of people with different sets of challenges and circumstances. Reading, especially other people’s life stories, developed my love where empathy is important, while writing helped me to unlock my inner most feelings and fall in love with all of the complexities of my life. Falling in love over again and believing in love has continually kept my outlook healthy and positive. I mention this because sometimes a lost love, broken love, or ended love can make us bitter and cynical about our future with it. But it is too big, too important, and too vital a thing to turn away from, give up on, and desert. We must continue to believe in it. It is the only thing. When my father was dying of AIDS the only thing I could offer him was my love in return for all that he’d done for me. It was the only gift, the best gift, the most natural and right gift to give him. The gift of love costs us nothing but believing and trusting. And although those are often not easy places to surrender, nothing on this earth can replace the dividend one receives. I have not mastered always being my most loving self because I do have “trust” and “belief” issues but I do know that in my darkest place I must always turn to love, must always draw from that most basic positive force, and sometimes suck it to the marrow because I KNOW it will always help to pull me through.

Monica, I hope this was helpful in responding to your very good question and I welcome more! In the months ahead, I will be working hard to address and offer up information that I hope will be of help in some way. Please leave a reply, “like”, “share, “follow” me and enjoy the beauty and the bounty that this October no doubt has in store for each of you.

XX

AW