Happy Friday everyone. It's time for the Joy Diet……as I was saying last week,…. I do not think doing "nothing" means being empty. Our journey started with our daily bit of nothingness. I chose to do "nothing" differently this week by doing a walking meditation which lasted much longer than the needed 15 minutes a day. After a nice place was carved out to do a bit of introspection, we had some poignant questions to answer, to help us go deeper into ourselves and our truth. 

What am I feeling?

Here on my little blog, I intentionally make it a happy world. It is my intention to share the daily beauty I find in the world and my life in it.  I would be lying,however, if I didn't confess to having moments of great joy and recently moments of sadness. The sadness comes from living ,which sometimes means saying goodbye to those we love. Two years ago today I said goodbye to my sister who died of cancer and in July I said goodbye to my father who also lost his very brave battle with cancer.

So when the next question was posed,"Where do you hurt?" It is from a place of loss and honor that I answer this.

While on Gotland, in my lovely city of Visby, I've come to complete a journey. I am here to write the names of my father and sister in the family book. With this their lives are complete and their memories serve as our blessings. It is a time to be patient with myself in missing them and to accept the sad moments that arrive.

So in thinking of their passing and the joy diet journey of doing nothing everyday; it had me thinking about this quote from Khalil Gibran. It is a "nothing" of a different sort, a freeing moment.

"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance." Khalil Gibran

What are the painful stories I am telling? Are they true?

After two wonderful people who so much influenced my life are gone, it is so easy to say "I'm alone." While that story is true in one sense, I'm deciding to move forward as I grieve, to a different story of my choosing,an other perspective.

Can I think of another story which might work better?

A story I think might work better is one of continuing to live by the philosophy that both of them cherished, and that was service. Though they are both gone, I have a life time of memories and examples to step forward from. In doing so I keep them close.

Today I light these candles in their memories. To signify their great contributions to my life. Now we will let them dance. 

~May our memories be our blessings~