What a week. There has been a lot of growth, or at least a lot of uncovery. It has been a painful week. It has been an emotional week. But it has also been a hopeful week. It's funny to me how sometimes the most painful of moments can leave us with the hope that it will get better from here. At least there is now a name to the suffering.

I had a dream, an awful dream on Thursday night. I had a dream that Grandma Joan was still living but she was in the nursing home and I had to go see her before she died. I left for Michigan because for some reason that's where she was, but for the life I of me I couldn't find her! The sun was out and I found my other grandma but I couldn't relax. I felt awful because I knew I was running out of time and if I couldn't find her I would never get to see her again. I woke up feeling sad and panicked. She was gone and I couldn't find her.

I was then walking to class and the song "He Lives in You" from the Lion King came on my iPod. Maybe it's a dumb thing to have trigger this reaction, but I found a lot of comfort from it. It was something that I found in Drums Downtown last night too- organized chaos. We are all connected. We may not move parallel to each other, we may be finding different patterns in our own lives, but my grandma will always live on in me because of the things we shared and because we loved each other. There are some things that I wish didn't happen to me that will always be a part of me too, things that I'd rather not talk about but that are causing me a lot of pain. But they are a part of me whether I run from them or face them. So I face them, I incorporate them into who I am because they always will be.

I think when I was younger I had this false notion that I would remain unscathed by life, that I would live purely and according to what I wanted. But life isn't like that- there are forced at work bigger than us. And really, to love another person in any capacity is to leave yourself vulnerable to their influence. But I think that's what life is about- we have to open ourselves up to the people around us. We impact them, they impact us. In this way our life isn't about money or our degree, it is about how we grow and learn. It is about how we learn the path to love and find our way back to it no matter what happens to us. Love is always a choice, but it is at the root of who we are. We are love, and our fear is the only thing that keeps us from that love. Now, sometimes you have shit to work through to get back to the love. I'm there right now- SO MUCH SHIT TO WORK THROUGH- but I know that if I face my fear, my fear of "I can't handle it", that I will find my way back to love. Because that's my destiny. That's all of our destinies.

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.”
― Marianne Williamson