Happy Solstice

I started my day with intention. I had scheduled some long overdue yoga to celebrate this longest day of the year, #solstice. But I also have some cobwebs in my mind that never seem to get cleaned out. Today I am to let go of the thoughts and feelings that don't serve me, and in doing so attempt to brush out the cobwebs.

Picture from summer of 2022. I have been practicing yoga since 2012. I continually find it both healing and challenging.

I in fact did the yoga and challenged my body and mind. In this challenge I can only now show #gratitude. Today I show gratitude to my body and my mind. I have put them through they have been through so much. Despite my body and my mind going through all of the trials and tribulations of grief, depression, illness, and neglect, they carry me today and allow me to look to the sky. I can look towards the sun's nest today and my lungs #breathe the air. I take a full deep breath today for every person who has not had the privilege of strong lungs and diaphragm.

The air powers and energizes my heart and brain. It makes my hands strong so that I can do the work that I so love in massage. It makes my fingers nimble to chop vegetables for my soup and write my words onto paper. All of it working seamlessly without instruction.

So I am privileged and truly #grateful, however I am not always in a position to remind myself each day of this. For this neglect, I show not remorse but #kindness. Kindness toward my #human-ness. I do not always show gratitude for what I have. I do not always see it and appreciate it. Yet I still owe my self #love and kindness, as I would to to a friend. I faulter, I fail, and eventually I fall. Because we are all human and deserve the dignity and grace to be able to do these things which are so in out nature. I fall and I get back up. I will, at the very least, owe it to my body and my mind to always get back up.

So today, on the longest day of the year, I will #rise up and thank the sun. Thank the air. I will thank my body and my mind, my vessel, for continuing on even when I fail. For continuing to do for me what sometimes fails for others and take one more step toward compassion for those others in not taking for granted what I have in my body and mind.

/Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Today is National Indigenous Peoples Day.

I would like to acknowledge as a settler of this land that I am on Treaty 6 territory, the traditional meeting grounds, gathering place, and travelling route of the Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Saulteaux, Nakota Sioux, and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 4.

I invite you to share with me what you are grateful for today, what you struggle with today, or share with me your human-ness.

Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it. - Kevyn Aucoin