I want...

WHEW!! Happy New Year!!

Muffin, Puppy, and I just spent the last several days disconnected from the world at the ocean and it was a lovely feeling. We spent several days reflecting on our past year and the year to come with no distractions or even any wifi (I DIDN'T EVEN TURN ON MY COMPUTER!!). It was super nice and helped us to recharge and come into this new year with all the excitement and voracity that we could generate. I spent a lot of time reading books about making myself more beautiful from the inside out by eating better, being kind, and understanding other people's needs. It was much needed and very enlightening.

During our off time, I came to recall that I was perusing Facebook the other week in a bit of a sleepy coma. We had spent the day with Molly, laughing, prancing, and eating festive foods. It was a day full of love and delight that was being wound down in my snuggly bed with the puppy nestled between my gorgeous husband and me. In my sleepy haze I found an article that made me a little weepy. It was an article that I immediately had to read to Muffin and share with everyone I could. It is a beautiful article that is encouraging, uplifting, and that stuck with me for weeks.

I prompted me to almost instantly begin a list of things that I want. It is a list filled with things that I want, things I've been craving and searching for for years. Things that I would like to see come beginning this year, this new year. Things that I will push for to make not only my own life better, but that of the people around me that I care so much about. This is a bit of a resolution list, but more of a list of things, tangible changes, that I would like to see in my life. Things that will make my life better and more magical than it already is.


I want for Molly to be comfortable and happy. To not feel alienated or like she has to fight to please or justify her parents. It isn't fair for her to feel embarrassed because she loves her father, mother, or step-parents and I want to cultivate it within her to have the strength to love whomever she wants without having to feel shameful. I want for her and Muffin to build a relationship so strong and beautiful that it cannot be chipped away by anybody. They deserve to have a safe and enriching relationship that will grow into something of trust and happiness as they both get older, and nobody is entitled to try and take that away. Not me, not her friends, and not her maternal family. Nobody.

I want for all the adults in her life to start acting like normal people who can act like the respectable adults she will look up to for guidance on how to act with their loved ones (or even enemies). I want for us to be able to communicate and talk and endeavor to make these two houses fluid and open so that Molly will grow up with more good memories than bad surrounding family. I wish that she grow up to be someone who respects people and knows the right and wrong way to treat people to avoid breaking hearts or disappointment. I don't want for her to grow up thinking she can just ignore issues or spread lies about them to make them disappear. I want for her to be accountable, realistic, and empathetic. All of this so that she could live an abundantly blessed life filled with love and happiness.

But I want her to see some disappointment. Not debilitating disappointment, but just knowing that people don't always need to win and that they can learn something about themselves, other people, and the world by losing. She is smart and that will get her so far in life, so long as she knows how to distinguish between broken and bent. Things can be fixed. Arguments can resolve. And we can move on without having to harbour guilt and shame. It is okay to cry, so long as we pick ourselves back up, forgive, and move on with life. Make decisions that are not going to hurt the people who love you, make decisions that will make you a better person.

I want to be kind. Kinder. Warm and loving even to those who do not offer me the same courtesy. Because those are the people who need it most. I want the people in my life to feel valued and appreciated. Loved. I want to validate feelings and concerns whilst still preserving valuation for my own feelings and needs. Those are just as important, and need to be contained, but not at the expense of other people. It is not my position to alienate or hurt other people, I am not God and cannot punish people. People will be hit by the karma that they are entitled, so I need to love and provide kindness in an effort to realign people who maybe just lost their path.

But I also want to be kinder to myself. My body hurts an indescribable amount pretty much constantly, and I want to find out why and make changes to stop that pain. I want to begin training to run no less than three 5k's in the next year. In that training, I want to begin eating healthier, smarter, and at home more. I want to put things in my body more for fuel rather than to stifle emotions or out of boredom. I want to begin creating a body that I can enjoy and feel proud to live in. I also want to cultivate a healthier mind. I want to focus less on negative shit and more on the abundance of beautiful things I have to smile about. I want to stop taking on the shame that others try to bestow upon me because of their own insecurities or issues and validate my own feelings and needs as often as I can.

I want to let go of the people in my life who seem to not care about having a place in it anymore. I try so hard to make people love me and please everyone. Much of the time, at the expense of my own sanity. I need to let it go, move on, and rebuild without those individuals in my life. Their exit from my life was not my fault and I did everything in my power to keep their position in my world, but their mysterious needs prevailed, and it is not my place to try to change that. Perhaps I will be fortunate enough to one day have them back in my life, and if not, I have so many other beautiful people in my world to keep my soul bright.

I want Muffin to feel secure, in every way possible. I want him to feel secure in his job, his marriage, and his self image. I want for him to see himself through my eyes. Eyes that love him more every single day because of the things I've seen him do, not just with me, but in his life. His history is rich and has made him the person he is today. A person who, like everyone, wants to fix things that they've done or could have done better. He has that ability but it is scary, and I want to be strong enough to help shine a light when he needs it and be his rock when he may only need someone to lean on.

I want to learn to be grateful of the many things we have. To be less petulant and actually appreciate my bounty of stuff. I have limitless love, countless things, and enough. I need to focus on the enough that I have and not need to get more, which has the tendency to lead to disappointment. Muffin and I are getting better, but we really do have a tendency to not budget well and over-spend, leaving us with too much junk and too little money. We always seem to make it through by the kindness of others and some sweet bargains, but I want to do more. I want to live consciously with delight in the things that I have. I literally have eight hundred books on my Kindle. Have I read them all? Nope. Not even an eighth of them. I want to read more voraciously, consume information, and spend more time in worlds crafted by other people's imaginations.

Finally, I want to craft more often. I want to journal, draw, paint, crochet, bake, and generally create. The tail-end of 2014 saw me make a lot of wonderful things, and I want this year to mark the re-ignition of my love affair with crafts. I plan to create things with Muffin, Molly, and anybody else who I can rope into it.

Hopefully, this will be a year of abundance, gorgeousness, and glee. I hope that my days are filled with more happies than sad, and that I can fix some things that are broken. It's as promising as I make it!