Yellow Leaves. Season of change.

Good day my friends! What a lovely day it is! Fall is just around the corner. Just a little over a month away. Last week I saw the first yellow leaves. The fire season has been an outrageous one this year, and the cooler temps and occasional rain showers bring moments of relief from the smoke. Summer is slowing down. I am watching the parents of school aged children prepare for back to school, and only one more set of guests before the season starts to really wind down for me.

I have been so busy going with the flow, and quietly watching the unfoldings around me. What a bittersweet thought stream as I get some down time to process all I have seen and done in the last couple months.

This summer has been a strange cycle of welcomes and good byes. A continuous cycle of visitors coming, and locals going. One of my besties moved away this summer. Over the course of the last two years, all of my besties have moved away. I made three new friends this winter. One moved away today, the other two were going to move last month but changed their minds at the last minute. I look around at the growth explosion that is about to happen in our tiny community, and I am ready to move away too. I am just waiting. Waiting on direction. Waiting for the answers to become clear.

I had a vision, a dream for our future. I guess I still do, but it has morphed so much in the last year that I need to spend some real quality time sitting back and considering the next step. While the goal remains the same, the details are ever changing. I have a deep sense that I am missing a simple but critical detail. The detail that opens my eyes and shows me what I am looking for.

She took the horses this morning. Maybe that is why I feel lost. We were getting so close. I was appreciating our newfound friendship, but she was giving me more than friendship. She was expanding my knowledge of horses. The reason this whole farm adventure began. I do not know how to imagine a future without horses in my life. I keep telling myself, that it will be ok. That maybe the pasture opening up will provide us with new opportunity, but truth be told, I will gaze at that barn wistfully every day until there are horses in there again.

The moment that Pistol and I bonded. That beautiful stubborn Arlene. And sweet Phoney Baloney. They will always have precious memories in my heart. Possibly the thing I will miss most though, is their dear person. We thought alike. We embraced our eccentricities in a similar fashion. We shared a mutual, understood, love of the equine. Nothing else mattered. No Judgement. No expectations. Just an understanding that being around these delightfully gentle beasts is really what its all about. What matters. Horse people know. The rest will probably not understand. I guess its an equine thing.

My mind is on land, and cabins. It flows constantly with thoughts of the barn at sunrise, and the ruckus of farm animals waking up in the morning. A big garden, an orchard, and a new set of hives. Visions of preserves, stacked high and deep in the pantry, mesh with ideas about extensive opportunity. Yet, I find myself sitting here, sorting thoughts, wondering what it is that I need to really focus on today.

I feel compelled to write, despite a lack of organization about my thoughts. Despite a lack of anything profound to say.

I guess I just need to marinate.

Politics have got me feeling like I am watching from Mars. Has everyone lost their ever loving minds? What the hell is going on? If someone had used a time machine to show me today’s headlines, twenty years ago, I would have denied the plausibility of it, and yet here we stand.

Environment? Where would I begin? I have developed a passion for fighting a toxic environment. I am not talking about this grand planet. Not the way you might be thinking when you read the word environment. I am talking about our immediate environments. The places we reside. The places we visit. The people and things that we surround ourselves with. The food we consume. The air we breathe. The relationships we make. The stimuli that affect us every day. The fact that mental and physical unhealth has become the norm. That has become my personal mission. I intend to undo as much of the toxicity in this environment as I am physically able to. I intend to help others learn how to remove the toxicity from their lives. I intend to help as many people as I possibly can, to see that these issues are not government issues, they are personal accountability issues, and that we are far more capable of solving them, without the governments help, than with their meddling hands in the cookie jar.

I want to help the masses to understand that their anxiety and depression are not life sentences. I want to help people learn the skills that allow them to make healthy, non toxic choices, for their environment.

I never saw myself as the voice of reason before, but today, I want to help people see that they are missing the meaning of life. I want to teach them how to stop worrying, judging, running, and suffering. I want to teach them about acceptance and the choices we make. I want to show people their worth. Not only because it aches to see people hurting, but because if we could all see our worth, then we would know that we can do something about this crap show we are watching.

I see our worth. I see your worth. I see my worth. If only you knew your own strength, mountains would be moving. Life is hard. I think that is the point of it, actually. Life is hard for everyone. Every. Single. Person. People are working with the tools they have, and while most are quick to offer well meaning advice, few are prepared to loan out their tools. You can’t fix broken without the right tools. And somewhere along the line, every single one of us gets chips, and wear and tear, simply from a lifetime of use. Broken is the norm. But we can have a healthy kind of broken. A kind of broken that strengthens us. Heals us. Grows us into beautiful. A kind of broken that, when all the pieces come together, forms a glorious mosaic. A true work of art. I want to teach people that art. I ache, and long, to help people see the beauty in that masterpiece.

Just when I think I know where I need to meet people, along comes some weird political backslide, and I realize that this project of fixing the world, that I apparently have decided to take on, is getting bigger than my shoulders can distribute the weight of.

How do I spread the message that it comes back to environment? The environment that we create for ourselves. The food we put in our bodies, the inter personal relations that we may or may not have developed, in this tech driven society. Relationship is getting lost. We desperately need to turn to our environments. We desperately need to shake a neighbors hand, remember where food is supposed to come from. We need to change our focus. The solutions that we have in the box with us aren’t working, and its time we reach outside the box and find some alternatives. Its time we lend a hand to a neighbor. Its time we stop talking and start doing. Its time for us to become present in our lives folks. Its time to take a good, hard look at ourselves and decide if we are perpetuating hate, darkness, division and negativity, or are we seeking solution, accepting the situation and problem solving. Each and every single one of us needs to step back three steps, decide if we are putting more ugly in the world, or if we are part of the solution.

We need to self evaluate. We need to take our own thoughts apart just like we dissect the media and the politicians. We need to dig all those ugly skeletons out of our own closets, and decide if we are going to purge or perpetuate them. I see so many, quick to judge those in charge, demanding to get what they want, regardless of what side, calling the other side lunatics, and pointing out every human error, mistake, or misjudgement.

I would love to see what you have in your closet. Would you be willing to put it under public scrutiny, for the world to condemn? I certainly wouldn’t. I live an honest life, and I have reached a point in my life where I am rarely ashamed of my behavior, but I still have skeletons, and I will continue to make mistakes, because I am imperfect. Perfection would be a horrible goal to strive for. With no chance of attaining that goal, it would be a set up for failure.

We have to stop screaming at everyone else to fix this. We have to do it. We have to start right now. We don’t have a minute to spare. What can you do to remove some toxicity from your environment, today? (Hint* It helps to remember that the opposite of toxicity is wholesome).

Do one thing today. Just one thing. To start the very daunting task of removing the toxicity from your immediate environment. Maybe tomorrow you will feel compelled to do two. At any rate, if we each remove one toxic factor from our life today, the world becomes a much cleaner place overnight. There is a snowball effect. It is contagious. Hold a door, shake a hand. Smile and wave. Share a brownie with your neighbor. Run an errand for the elderly couple down the road. Start being the change you wish to see, rather than hollering at others to be responsible for those changes, and you will be shocked the difference you can make. Your words, your actions. They can be a source of loving light in this world, or they can be a source of divisive hatred. What do you choose?