The Many Shades of Romance

I think every little girl has an idealized picture of what romance is and what love embodies in their minds. As we grow, and as we mature those ideals may flower and grow but the root ideals remain the same. The realism of each individual ideal matters not because to us it is real; very real.

It took me 5 years of marriage to realize that romance, in reality, is all around me. It's in my husband getting out of bed to check on me when I can't sleep because he notices I'm not there. It's in his little songs he sings to me in an offkey manner to elicit my "oh you" face. It's in him calling my psychiatrist to schedule an emergency appointment becuase I become to depressed to care to do it myself.

Sometimes we take for granted the little things that mean the most.

A Year of Healing

I have decided, due to my stress levels and mental health situation coupled with my daughter struggling through some things, to take a year off of school. I have dubbed the next year my "Year of Healing".

The last two weeks I have been focusing on making some changes in my routine, my attitude and my being in general. I have begun researching chakras which I have found to be truly enlightening. It was like unlocking a hidden secret. I feel the need to share my newfound joy in this with everyone.

A friend of mine turned me on to the idea of treasure mapping for the Aries new moon. The basic idea as I understand it is to decide where and who you want to be in a year. What you want to occur, what you want to gain, what you want to shed. You then construct a "map". You can collage it. You can make a book. You can pretty much do whatever you want as long as you release into the cosmos the hopes you have for your future. A lot of people use magazines and just cut out meaningful phrases, affirmations and pictures and construct a collage on posterboard. They tend to arrange them in occordance with baguas or chakras (which is how I got turned on to the whole chakra aspect). I chose to scrapbook mine in a chakra manner. Each page stands for 1 of the 7 chakra centers. I then, to the best of my ability based on my limited chakra knowledge, made affirmations about who and where I wanted to be in a years time focusing on making these present tense statements. For example: instead of saying "I will do blank" I would state "I do blank". I spent hours looking for pictures that inspired me, uplifted me, and fit in with these statements and printed them out on a color printer. And voila! The universe now knows my needs, hopes, and dreams thanks to a little creative elbow grease.

Now amazingly I am noticing drastic changes in my life. My treasure map mostly focused on internal change. My attitudes and things I felt would make me a more complete and healthy person and therefore influence my family to be more whole and healthy. One thing I have always struggled with is my ability to be an efficient housekeeper. Things always seem to slip away from me, overwhelm me and then get out of hand. Understandably then this is not good for my mood. These last couple weeks I have been able to efficiently keep up with my house and it leaves me so much more time and energy to attach to other, more enjoyable activities.

I have also started mediatating and doing chakra cleansing, connecting and balancing exercises through meditation. It has literally rocked my world. I feel an almost high feeling from the energy that I feel while doing it. At times during it I have felt so much joy I have been moved almost to tears. It really is an incredible experience. I have been sleeping better, I have more energy, my mood's better....need I go on?

Me and my husband have also gotten the exciting news that he has been accepted into a PhD program at a prominent school which while it means a move, is not taking us far and we will still be within reasonable distance to the city so that I can retain my psychiatrist and maybe even therapist to continue my path of healing.

I am whole heartedly excited about the changes to come and feel very positive about our future. It may take a lot of work to follow through with some of these changes but I believe it will be well worth it.

What the bumps in the road can teach us.

When you think enough has happened to you that is less than desirable, you're simply tempting fate. It's been a rough couple of months for me. I have been having a depressive episode and although given certain circumstances in my life it is probably quite normal, it has made me reflect upon my illness quite a bit. I have resumed seeing a psychiatrist and so far have been vigilant about attending sessions which can be a problem for me especially when I'm feeling very depressed. That seems to be the time when my anxiety really crops up and I suffer from agoraphobia on top of everything else.


There have been numerous problems with school since it's hard to keep up when you barely can manage getting out of bed some days. Most recently due to miscommunication and action before checking things out thouroughly my student loans were suddenly cut off and I didn't recieve any notice until the day rent was due, after the cheque for rent had been cashed which left me none too pleased.

The good thing about this latest episode is I have been honest with those around me about what I'm feeling. Normally I would keep it to myself and suffer alone thinking I wouldn't want to bother anyone. This time around I thought what an asset it may be to have people who know how I feel and stand behind me when I'm feeling like this. So far that's going well for me.

Above all I feel like my husband and me, despite some hiccups caused by my moodyness, have managed to become closer and more honest and able to talk to each other. So I guess there is always a silver lining after all...