Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Calm & Resilience

Category Archives: acceptance


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Delightful

I am happy to support you along the way.

I am always willing to remind you of your talents and your strengths.

I will continue to share in your surprise in discovering your gifts,

In realizing your power, and spreading your wings.

I will hold the door open as long as you need

And leave the window unlocked just in case.

I will scoop you up when you trip over the illusion of failure.

I will not let go until you feel your own steadiness.

I will lend words and gestures to guide you into your own being,

but I have never told you anything that you don’t already know.

I have never seen any part of you that you should withhold from your own sight.

I long for the moment when you free yourself from the tentacles of self-doubt.

And I delight in the prospect of you delighting in the greatness of you.


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In This Vase

I tried to grow straight and tall like them. I worked just as hard as they did to grow.

But, it seems I am unfolding differently. I wonder if you see me as suffering, wilting or weak. Do you think I am lacking in nourishment or attention? Perhaps I strike you as non-compliant or maybe even deformed.

Why can’t it just be that because of me their poise and beauty are more prominent while my stature is no less dear?

Could there be room enough in this vase for all of us to be equally valued and admired?


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Beyond the Fog

I am the turbulent sea. I am the dense fog. I am the shining sun behind the haze.

I am all three. So what you choose to see, feel, and believe of me is what you choose me to be.

I am quite content to be all three.


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Be-leaf in yourself

My new year wish for you…

Not that you make time for me or to do other things.

Not that you resolve to be any different than you are right now.

Not that you set out to accomplish anything more than you already have.

Not that you accumulate more than what is already there .

My new year’s wish for you is that you be safe where you are,

that you be fed on the soul level,

that you feel love,

and you fully and completely believe in the power of you to be a bright beacon for yourself and others

and in that light you thrive.


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Tiny Seed

It is here in the cool darkness that I harness the energy to grow, that I am held, and bravely take on the task of seeing myself as something I’ve never been before.

It takes great courage to stay within these confines and not feel restricted or inferior. The darkness gives me time to be a tiny seed – tight and small, contained in my protective shell —nurtured by all that is around me.

This time in the dark is essential for growing on the inside to support expansion on the outside.

Isn’t it fortunate that we all at some point or another have the opportunity to go inside and revisit our magnificence as a tiny seed…time and time again.


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Awakening

Why is it when something good happens, I assume I am dreaming? Good fortune couldn’t possibly come to me just because it is a way of living.

Our dreams allow us to live out endless possibilities, to experience great joys and work through sufferings. Yet it is more often the sufferings that we bring with us into the waking world. It is the sufferings we expect to find in the daylight hours.

As we settle into the darkest time of the year, let us awaken in this darkness to the fact that we are intended to live in joy and peace, and to thrive in the living more than in our dreams.

It is the suffering that is the illusion, not the success. It is the discomfort that we can relinquish to the dream state.

In the darkness, I awaken to know that this being is intended to be miraculous, exuberant, joyful and abundantly filled with ease.

It is time to give ourselves permission to celebrate our successes and well-being, fully awake and aware in our right to thrive.


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Befriending

It is easy on some days to feel like my body had betrayed me or is out to get me. There is weakness, soreness, or illness. I could see this body as unattractive or failing. I could label it as the enemy. Instead of interpreting the condition of my body as messages intended to inform and perhaps even inspire me, my mind perceives threats, expresses disappointment.

When I experience my body as misaligned with me is precisely when I need to remember that my body is less like a vulture and more like a little baby bird simply needing to be nourished and loved.


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Contain It or Let It Roll?

These days are like scooping mercury. Chasing after it can be so exhausting as it beads and evades more with each attempt to contain it.

Feeling the need to clean it up, but might just have to sit here for a bit and just watch as it glides and rolls around making beautiful patterns and shapes.

Remarkable how something so potentially harmful can have such valuable purpose and be so beautiful.


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Settled in the Ocean of My Unsettledness

The ocean rolls in and out, finding a rhythm in the irregular beat of its waves on the shore, a consistency in the inconsistency.

It asks that I bend more, stay more still, listen more closely, find my entry, consider a way to dive in while still feeling my feet.

Restless…rejecting…beautiful…inciting…matching breath to motion.

Sometimes steady and full, sometimes roaring in…sometimes barely there.

Here together, a push and pull of synchrony.

Even in the struggle you connect me with my breath.

You awaken my senses.

You remind me what it means to exist and give me permission to settle into my unsettledness.


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Brushes with Bromeliads

Every day, I tenderly pluck and sort the unwanted guests between the treasured plants in the garden of this life of mine. I carefully reach between the stalks and flowers I choose to keep and arrange them all just so.

And, even with the most careful attention, I never leave my garden without scrapes, brush marks and bruises.

Yes, some of the most treasured plants in my garden have thorns. I move with particular sensitivity around them lest they snag my flesh. And somehow even as they cut me, I am still able to see their beauty and feel their special worth. They reach out and brush against me as if they just want to touch, to say “isn’t this all so grand that we are here?!”

It is at that moment when I am wounded but still capable of loving – even those plants with thorns – that I recognize that this coexistence is the essence of thriving.