These days feel so wonderful and I love wintertime. My aunt and I were talking about her word for the year which is “renewal”. After losing her sister and mom in a relatively short time, she feels a lightness in her heart that she hasn’t felt in quite a while. She is newly retired and focusing some time on her health. I was telling her about my new job and just how grateful I am for it. Something about it has seemingly checked every box.

I still have to really get started but I’m enjoying it for now. The wonderful thing about these license hours is that I can count all my reading. Two new books came in the main. The first is called Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. With it I ordered the companion workbook which gives outlines for individual exercises as well as for leading group sessions. I’m excited to use and apply material that I’ve been learning for so long.

My Gottman and online somatic courses will also count. The somatic thing is one of those dreams I am going to pursue, no matter how cumbersome or potentially weird it sounds or feels. The face-to-face hours will come as they are meant to, though the idea of needing over three times as many hours as I did for my total internship hours makes it seem a far off hope. I can’t worry about all that and must stick with one day at a time.

I do ask God to direct my mind because it does seem to be always veering. I could be a recluse for most of my days and not a soul would seem to mind. As long as I am appearing for meals and providing joy with my meager but made with love cheeseburger Bisquick pot pies, they are content. I lie in bed half asleep and still feel haunted by the passing of time. The voices tell me I need to be out there. I know I do.

When the kids were little it was my anger and lack of patience that made me feel like a failure at night. The guilt stole joy and erased many wonderful hours. These days its succumbing to the aloneness and immersion into my own internal and outer worlds. I still have work to do. I still have souls to invest in and bodies to be close to and think about and care for, somehow still clinging to the need to be a mom as they are grown.