change.

It's utterly amazing what a simple change in scenery can do. Here I am with my cup of coffee sitting at my friend's breakfast nook alongside a window with beautiful white wooden slated blinds that are opened just enough to let the sun poor in and fill the room. I look out the window and I see landscaping and a beautiful pool. I look around her living room, filled with beautiful white furniture and dark brown accents and I feel peace. I look down at my dog who's enjoying the two foot bone he just got for his birthday (yes, today he turns TWO!) and I feel love. And I realize by simply being in a new place that's not just relaxing but it's new so it requires my mind to think more about where I'm going, where I can walk the dog, where to get groceries etc, that it's exactly what I needed. There are new distractions and new scenes to take in and a new home to enjoy and all that has done wonders in allowing my mind to stop running circles around the same exact things it was stuck doing back in LA. So while this is only a temporary getaway I'm full embracing the experience and letting it wash all over me. And I'm drinking in a feeling I'm very familiar with from my past but one I haven't felt in a while -- change. I'm trying it on ever so briefly and going to see when I hop back in the car to drive down to LA if I'm still thinking about what it felt like when I looked in the mirror.

I'm also working on re-embracing a mentality that I definitely believe in but sometimes lose sight of -- and that is that the universe will guide me toward what I need -- I don't have to hunt it down all the time. That sometimes you just need to be and allow the chips fall where they may and there within lies your answer. So I'm re-opening myself up to the idea of possibility - whatever that my be. And I'm allowing myself peace in letting some things go, no matter how painful and reluctant I am in doing so, I'm reminding myself that if those things were meant to be or ever mine to begin with, they will return.

So as I sit here on August 24th 2013 and think about how my mom would've been 69 today, and how it's still hard to believe she's not here to enjoy her birthday, I'm reminded that life doesn't always go as planned. The universe works in its own mysterious way. And sometimes you have to just lean into that and trust...