​Have you ever just looked at the nature around you?

Noticed how beautiful it is. Notice how everything's always changing, always growing, always evolving.

How there are cycles, seasons, even if you live in a hot place like Florida, there are cycles and seasons. How everything comes from the sun. How animals behave, the harmony that it all finds with each other.

There's this lake behind where I live and I go there quite often, usually for the very basic need to walk my dog. But I really enjoy being back there, looking at the water, observing nature around me and feeling like I'm at one with that energy of nature. That lake is my waterfront. When it gets low, when things dry up a bit, that's my beach.

I love that there are lots and lots of birds and fish and animals that have found home in that source of water right there. Lucky for us thus far, I have never seen any creatures of the gator variety back there. It's just been lots of ducks and sandhill cranes. Tadpoles are there, turning into frogs.

One day last week, I took my dog and my kids out for a walk by the lake. My doggie is very small. She's tiny but mighty.

She may not be the sharpest, but she has a very sharp nose. If there's anything pungent, anything offensive in its smell whatsoever, she's going to find it.

Found it, she did. She found this dead crow that was at the bottom of a tree. Of course, the tree that my children had started climbing.

She identified this poor thing that was there at the base of the tree, a dead crow. Of course, my reaction is, Okay, we're going to move along from here, not get near it, plenty of other trees. Let's keep going.

We moved along. We're just there, enjoying nature and the world around us, in our own little world of this lake.

All of a sudden we hear this "panic squawk". We're looking around, my kids are playing on the tree and I'm with my dog and my dog starts barking in response. This panic squawk, what is that? We all looked down the way at the other side of the lake and there's this big majestic grayish-looking bird standing there on its skinny legs.

A few feet tall, standing on the little beach of the lake. It's panic squawking.

We're looking and we're like, What's going on?

We see that the crows that are usually in the trees are flying from their perches in the trees, coming together as a flock to swoop down and within inches of this bird's head or body, swooping down very deliberately towards this bird.

So, our gut reaction, whenever we see anything like this majestic bird, with all these birds, in essence, attacking it, my children and I start yelling, Go away, go away from that bird. Leave the big bird alone.

Then it clicks. We were thinking about the tree that's just a few feet away with the dead crow at the bottom of it. We're watching all these crows come together as a flock and swooping down and dangerously close to this big bird, which is so much bigger than them. They're less than a foot each and they're coming together and creating it to feel this panic and to feel threatened.

Then the flip switches because we're like... Look at them. They're also tiny but mighty and they're coming together in numbers.

They're finding their power in their numbers. They're standing up for their flock in which this predator bird took out one of their own. Then we're like, Wow, this is nature.

This is nature at its finest, with these birds banding together as a flock and protecting themselves, standing up to a bully, really.

Then this majestic predator bird on the beach lifts off, takes flight and is still panic squawking. That's the only way I can describe it. Over the water as it's flying and from every direction, these crows are swooping at it from every tree. I didn't even know they were in these trees and they're just coming from every direction. It must have been 30, 40, 50 birds, crows, coming together to get this bully out of their lake.

It was amazing to see. Whereas we had started saying, Get away from that big bird, now we're saying, Go birds, band together, you got this, get rid of that predator.

It's funny how you can figure things out with a different perspective. Had we not seen that dead crow, poor thing, maybe we wouldn't have understood the motive behind that strength that they had to find in numbers to make their community safe again.

So hard when you have kids thinking about bullies. All you want is for them to have this better life than you had. You just want them to have this wonderful, peaceful, loving life, lots of friends, learn lots, be happy. Then they grow up and there's complications and you hear about all these terrible things happening in schools, especially bigger kids, bigger problems, so much bullying. Even when they're little.

Even as adults, even in the workplace, even socially, that's just kind of how we behave, right? There's bullying. I don't know why it's more prevalent now. But I know that what needs to change in order to combat against this is what we saw there in nature. We saw this flock of crows banding together to keep themselves safe and set a boundary.

The boundary, this is our lake, this is our boundary. You can't just come here and pick one of us off. They had to stand up for themselves and band together for their power and numbers to get rid of this dangerous thing that was endangering their flock.

I think about my younger brother, who has since passed away. When we were in high school, he was a gentle giant. He was so nice. If you can just picture a six-foot-three person who maybe was intimidating looking by his size, but who liked to laugh and like to read and like to play cards with his small but very loyal, fiercely loyal, group of friends.

I can envision him as someone who was always light at heart and happy and inquisitive and really had so much thirst for knowledge. Anyway, that's a topic for a different day.

This kid in high school was bothering him. They were both in the school band and this kid was just incessantly bothering him, bullying him. Making fun of him. He just wanted to irk my brother.

One day it was too much. He didn't want to feel irked anymore. Maybe he had discussed it with his friends. Maybe that gave him the strength to stand up for himself. I don't know. But one day he just couldn't take this this kid irking him anymore.

He gave him a quick punch in the mouth and the kid never – ever – bothered him again. In fact, he was quite nice to him after that.
 
My brother set his boundary against this bully, and he never bothered him again.

There's this senior pastor at Life.Church named Craig Groeschel, and I always enjoy hearing him speak. I also enjoy his podcast series on leadership. He always says, “I don't know who needs to hear this…”.

So, I don't know who needs to hear this.

I need to hear this.

I think we all need to hear this.

You need to find your flock. You need to find those people that make your heart sing.

Doesn't have to be people who look like you, are similar to you by way of your interests or the way you think about things. It just has to be people that make your heart sing, make you feel good about yourself, make your energy resound and multiply. Somebody that has a deeper connection with you.

It doesn't even need to be a big flock. It can just be One.

I always tell my children this: It starts with One.

Find somebody that you have a connection with. Don't let anybody make you feel alienated.

As soon as you feel alienated, that is when the bullying is potentially going to happen, right? Find your power in numbers. Find somebody who loves you and will back you up. It could be a family member. It could be a friend. It doesn't matter. Be that person who helps somebody else if you feel that your friend has been in the same situation. Be that person who gives them strength and wind beneath their wings.

So find your flock. Whether you're in the workplace, whether you're in school, whether you're on social media, whatever.

Don't let bullies push you around. Set your boundaries. Find your flock. Make sure that that predator is pushed out of your lake and doesn't pick you off piece by piece like this one was trying to do to the flock of crows. Stand up for yourself. Stand up for your friends. You'll feel so much better at the end of the day.

And I don't know who needs to hear this, but…

You are awesome.

You rock!

Find your nature. Find your flock, find your people, find your harmony, and you'll find your flight. Just like that flock of crows.
​
Have a wonderful day. Bye.

Beautiful crows at a park in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photos by Jackie Morreale.

If you're interested in learning more about crows and their behavior, here's an interesting article on AnimalResearcher.com: ​Crows: Unlocking the Secrets of Their Complex Social Behavior - animalresearcher.com

​Excerpt from link:
"Crows are highly social birds that live in family groups, similar to humans. They form strong bonds, recognize each other's faces, and enjoy spending time together. They use different sounds to communicate, warn about danger, and find food. Their social structures are crucial for survival and success in various environments."

Yesterday I took my children to this fun play place where they have climbing walls and ropes and slides and all sorts of other ways to spend the day. We have a ton of fun and use up a lot of their overflowing energy, which helps them sleep really well at night. We're there at this play place and it's all renovated, and both kids are so excited. Everything's brand new. What they thought it was going to be was different.

They find this climbing section of the play place. The climbing section has five different climbing walls, as well as this set of stairs that are something like wooden pylons, obviously child-friendly version of wooden pylons, covered in some sort of a child-friendly material.

They have these 10 pylons that are ascending like a staircase and maybe two or three feet away. A kid that's maybe around 10 would have the right leg span, or gait in order to get all the way to the top. Once you're at the top, you're in your harness and you just get to enjoy this lovely free fall feeling of enjoying going from about 20 feet up in the air back down to the ground, so that you can repeat the whole process over again and enjoy this ascending staircase and then the freefall at the end.

My 10-year-old daughter, who's so brave in so many different ways, is attempting to do this pylon staircase over and over and over again. Every single time, she gets blocked at that ninth pylon. It was just the last pylon she could do.

She's big enough to go from one to the other. She did nine previous steps, but there was something, some fear, something blocking her from getting to that final step, from breaking through to that final hurdle, from breaking through that glass ceiling, where she could enjoy that full free fall from the top. Must have gone on like this 20 times. She's one, two, three, four. Still going. Five, six, seven, eight. Then nine.

Then I see her on the fifth or sixth time, I see her putting a foot up, okay, testing the waters. Then a couple more times, and I see her trying to sit on it. Okay, she's sitting on it. Yay, we're at the tenth, but we're kind of half invested in it. Then I see her put her feet back on nine and take the free fall from there. It went on like this for a few hours. We had a lot of fun.

It wasn't the only activity that they did at this play place, but she kept returning to it. She was stuck on it. She wanted to get there so badly. It was just blocked, just a mental block, some sort of a fear of getting to that top rung and having nothing on the other side to and keep going.

Had there been 10 more pylons after that 10th one, I am positive that she could have kept going. She would have gone to that 19th one and had that same feeling when she was about to go to that last pylon, of having nothing around it and the idea of putting two feet on a very small surface.

There's about 10 minutes to go. I collect the kids and say, "Okay, 10 minutes, everybody. Let's get in whatever you want to get in."

I see something click in her brain. I've just given her a deadline, a timeline, and she's like thinking about the staircase and how she wants to get to the 10th pylon. She says to me as somebody who documents every moment of her beautiful life, she says to me, okay, mom, get your phone. I'm ready. Record me. I see her go over there and she gets in the harness. She's ready.

She's thinking about it, takes a deep breath. Does her ritual, whatever that is. She goes for the first one and steps up to the second one and the third one. Slowly, deliberately, she does her thing. She gets to the ninth one. She does what she's done before, puts one step up.

I said, "Is she going to make it?"
Then I'm yelling, "Go girl! You got this thing."

And... she... did it!

She got the second foot up there, all the way up to that last pylon! I see this look on her face that's pure joy and pure excitement at what she just did. I see that she's so surprised that she did it. She knew she could do it. She had done nine before, but she did the last one that had been this block for her. She got over her fear when she had a little timeline.

A little enthusiasm behind it, a little challenge behind it, and she got over her fear. She's hanging out up there. Of course I captured it. She's so surprised. This is pure elation on her face. I see her take this amazing free fall and just enjoy herself on her descent back down to the bottom. Once she had done this, she decided to keep going. So if she had done this 20 times before and only gotten up to nine, now...

She went 20 times again and gotten up to 10. Up until now, there's a line of very cute little kids who are inspired by her, wanting to do the same activity and waiting for her to be done.

Made me think about creative projects:

1. How many times is it that you'll have all this time in the world, and you have such a meandering process to get a project done?
2. Then when you know you have only 10% time left, you're going to get it done. You're going to get everything you need to get done.
3. Sometimes it's even 90 % of that project getting done in that last 10 % of time.

I don't know why this is. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's mental block, maybe it's surmounting that last hurdle just like she was doing to get to that final step to break through.

Once you've done a project well and you've completed it, you know that you can take that next step. I think about it in my own running journeys. I've hit a lot of plateaus. I started running when I was young. I was on the track and field team. Now as an old lady, I think about some of those early on experiences of running because endurance has so much to do with your clarity, your confidence, your mental strength. I think even more so than your body, you just have to be able to plunge through it. I think about my high school coach and how did he work with this bunch of teenage kids that had so many different things going on and hormones and different levels of energy, how did he formulate us into a team?

It seemed to me that whenever I was super tired, whenever we hit any sort of a plateau was when he took out something like a tool to change it up, right? Like a suicide, which for anybody who doesn't run, it's not that morbid. It's just basically the hardest training tool that I ever had to do. Running, sprinting for your life halfway through a field and back, and then sprinting all the way across the field and back. They usually came in groups of 10.

By the time you're finished with the tenth one of going halfway through the field, all the way through and back as fast as you can, you're just ready to keel over and basically die, hence the name, suicides. But not that morbid. It builds you up and it gives you strength and it makes you better and faster. In high school I did hurdles and I did the high jump.

Man. Falling down on a hurdle or hitting your back and taking down the bar as you're descending in this free fall and you know you're going to hit the bar with your back on this high jump. I have so many fears from that and mental hurdles to getting to that 10th rung, getting to that 10th pylon.

In business, it's the same:
- How do we take it from 90% to 100% and beyond? How do we break through that glass ceiling?
- How do we see this bigger picture in which we can truly grow and do something that's unique and special in the marketplace?

For everybody, it's different. I do think that you need to have that light, that clarity, that confidence in your thoughts.

It's so important to believe in what you're doing because no matter whether you believe in it or you don't, you're right.

There's something about having that little timeline. Give yourself a timeline and see if that will give you the strength to know that you can do it.

You've already done this nine times. How do we get to the 10th?

Believe in it, do it. It's as simple as that.

Have a wonderful day!
​

I want to share my experience with an organization that's run by Alexander and Carolin Toskar, who are located in Munich, Germany. They have an organization called Toskar Healing and they provide Divine Straightening services and Spiritual Healing services and training for other practitioners around the world.

They also have offices in Cologne and London and are available to folks like me around the world via Zoom. Whether you have physical ailments or if you already know that you want mental clarity or whatever the case may be. The only story experience that I can share on it is my own. I'm going to date it back to about a year and a half ago.

I have a very good friend named Julija who had recommended this organization to me or a healing called Divine Straightening to me that she had taken her family to this healer in Queens, New York named Daina in pursuit of back straightening really, whether it was for different medical diagnoses or just for mental clarity, each one of her family members had such a profound response to this healing that they flew from Florida to New York to meet with this gifted person and undergo this healing treatment that she provided.

I have had chronic back issues for the past few years. I worked a very sedentary way of working, looking at two screens and sitting on a chair in the same place for many years, eight years.

I also wasn't in a good place in terms of my emotions, in terms of my own spirituality, casting my shadows on everyone around me.

Just generally unhappy and feeling stuck. That had manifested itself in having a very aching, chronic lower back pain that hurt no matter what I did, no matter how much I sat, walked, ran, iced it, put little metal spikes on it or put warm heat on it or cold on it or went to the chiropractor. Nothing was fixing this.

And at not even 40 years old, this really didn't seem like a lot in life that I wanted for the rest of my life. So my friend said, well, I had this wonderful spiritual healing from this person. She showed me a couple of simple hand movements, basically like a prayer position that you bring your palms together and you can do some stretches and you can undergo this divine straightening, perhaps your legs alignment are off and it needs to be loosened and straightened.

Me being the bookworm that I am, instead of buying a flight, bought a book and found out more about divine straightening and sought out the originators and found their website and watched a ton of videos and was really intrigued by their method.

With my back still hurting and flaring up and sciatica and all this stuff that my 90 something year old grandmother was also experiencing at the same time. I decided to take the leap of faith in February of 2023, right before my 40th birthday two months later, and book an appointment with Toskar Healing.

I had no idea that the person on the other side who would be meeting with me at that Zoom call would be the founder, Alexander Toskar, whose father had founded The Method in his own lifetime.

Meeting Alexander face to face a year and a half ago for the Divine Straightening was a surprise. I think I showed up an hour late my time. I was very flustered and caught up in my own routine of work and life and family and activities and very flustered and showed up to our session not in a great place. He made it work no matter what and put me in a place of comfort and reflection and safety, and taught me some real simple ways to, basically, self heal.

Again, I'm thinking this is a lower back problem. Started with focusing on a spiritual cleansing. A very simple activity like putting your hands over your eyes with your eyes closed and just repeating a mantra: light, clarity, confidence in my thoughts.

Being in the present and thinking about what those three things mean:
- Light
- Clarity
- Confidence... in my thoughts.
While he basically sent his energy over the distance and time difference and whatever other obstacles in the way.

Then we moved down to the body. Hands over navel as a simple exercise and repeating a simple mantra:
- Power
- Health
- Vitality... in my body.

Then meet the two in the middle at your heart center, hands over your heart, repeating:
- Love
- Peace
- Harmony... in my heart.

It was a way of thinking about the body as a Trinity, really:
- body
- mind
- spirit
Altogether, in a way that I hadn't before.

My reaction to it was... intense, I would say. I felt immediately lighter. I was able to see a light in my mind. At that point, I was seeing some shadows somehow through the light, which it was very early in the morning and nobody else in my house was awake. There was no reason for that to be around me. It was in my own head casting my own shadows out.
 
What was most interesting, I'm still a little bit in disbelief, however, when I got off this call, I wrote a list of things that I wanna do. And after the list making, I went for a 10 mile run. It was like everything was lighter than a feather. Nothing hurt. This was after having done a marathon a month earlier and everything was hurting and still healing. It was like floating. I had no idea I was going out from my house to run two miles to the park, to run five miles in the park, to do a fun run through a trail, to do another two miles home and just enjoy being outside and in nature at this trail that had been almost biblical for me in terms of my connection with nature and other people and divine source.

So here I am, I'm filled with energy, I'm running, I'm making lists, I'm charting a path to a better life and I go to eat, I don't know, something unhealthy. We were constantly rushing and eating fast food. I go to eat something unhealthy and it tasted like poison in my mouth.
It just tasted wrong.

The same thing with alcohol. The next day after the healing, I went out with friends. And that was the last time I drank alcohol. Thought I could still do it socially, but my body was telling me no. I had a sip of red wine, and it just tasted like poison. That's the only way I can describe it. It just tasted wrong.

It's a year and a half later and I've still kept it. I'm trying to keep my body pure. I haven't drank alcohol since then.

I'm still working on the food. It's not always when I'm able to make a gourmet meal at home, but I have definitely been called to eat more food that comes from the ground, more fruit, more vegetable, more food that comes from sunlight.

Let's keep going. From there, everything kind of opens up and I realized that I'm just living a life that is like a shell. Living for a paycheck, not living for a purpose and just intensifies. The more and more I did this meditation and trying to clear my thoughts and see the light and build my confidence, expand my love.

It was only a few months later that I knew that what I was doing day by day was bringing me down and making me feel stuck. My back was relieved. I started running every day without issue. Started praying every day, being more active in church, reading the Bible, wanting that connection to God in new ways, wanting to be present and to help other people, wanting to create things.

In the summer of last year, my grandmother gifted me some paints that my grandfather, who had just recently died, had left behind. Some oil paints and some plates that he had done. And I just felt called to create art. It had been a while.

I'm doing things all the time that are creative but never for me and never just for the sake of art, for the sake of expression of my own. I felt that that was my responsibility to carry on his legacy and make something beautiful with his tools.

It kept going like that, that there were all these different things that kind of were aligning and coming together and opportunities from all different angles. At some point I knew that what I was doing day by day in my day job was not right. It was something like August 2024 and I attempted to quit my job I had this calling not only to connect with God, not only to run, not only to eat and drink healthy, but to help people. That manifested in wanting to heal people, to help them get better. I thought it was in the medical sense. My initial pull was to go to medical school and become a doctor and help people in that way physically.

So I took the MCAT. I'm a designer. I've never taken science since high school. I just felt compelled and I felt that my own role was holding me back and I needed to do more. I'm very fortunate. My day-to-day job, when I tried to leave, offered me so much more reasons to stay.
More responsibility, more money, and working with people that I love. I took it. All that flow that I had gained and working towards a goal and trying to start a new chapter was put on hold.

I had a friend who had a similar thing happen to her where she had this position that I thought that everybody in the world would want and she had it. She decided to leave it behind. I asked her, why would you do that? Her response for me when I was in this situation for myself is she said, Make sure that you're setting yourself up right and that this is something that you want because if it's just for the money, it won't keep you happy long. It's usually a few months.

It was nine months, by the way. Nine months for me.

But before then, I kept on my path, knowing that I was growing and knowing that I was now in this executive role and very grateful for the things that were happening around me. Although my natural talents are not in the area of medical science, as I found out from my eight hour MCAT test score, which I'm very happy that I did, I sort of realized that as an executive in business, I still want to pursue higher education.

I want to pursue something that will naturally flow in my career and still help people and allow me to write and research and be part of the conversation on thought leadership. I came up with applying for a PhD program in business for executives, which is a wonderful program, one of the top programs. I'm so fortunate that it's just a short drive away from my house, and that it exists, and that they took me! Yay. Maybe had I not accepted that job, maybe I wouldn't have had the guts to seek this out and to apply for this program with confidence and to know that I could do it. I was accepted into this role and so grateful that this new chapter in my life, that I wanted to do, that I wanted to seek education, was opening. When it came to February 2025, when it was a year after my initial Divine Straightening with Alexander Toskar, I felt the need to schedule another appointment with him. I just wanted to see his face and say, thank you for making this positive change in my life and tell him my story.

Lo and behold, I booked the appointment and he showed up again. He was there and I just couldn't keep my emotions within. I was so grateful for this Divine Straightening, for the spiritual healing and every change that it had made in my life.

He said some amazing things. He said, your experience is sort of enhanced, is different. All I did was plant a mustard seed. Love humble people, amazing. He said that maybe I should pursue a training for spiritual healing for other people, which was amazing because that's what I wanted to do in the first place. I just didn't understand the call.
I wanted to help heal other people.

After a very tearful session and another cleansing and healing of spirit, body and mind with Alexander, all of the feelings and the callings and the purification process that I had been undergoing just amplified. I started taking a philosophy class. The philosophy class reiterated all of these things that we were doing with these spiritual cleansing meditations with so many resources over the course of time from ancient Greece to China to Egypt to India. Many ancient philosophers in different places at different times saying the exact same thing.

It just clicked that we have these three bodies, right? We have our body, our physical body, we have our emotional body, and then we have a spiritual body in which we can connect to God at any time that we want. It's not something that's far, sitting on a cloud away from us. It's something that we have to understand within.

To find that higher consciousness, to find the Holy Spirit, to find the Holy Trinity, it's prayer, it's meditation. If you want to bear fruit, as I've heard in church, look at the vine, look at within and draw to Him within.

And it worked. I am very proud to say that after my nine months, yes, I did quit my job. That was sad, sad to go, but very happy to open a new chapter. The week afterwards, I took a healing training with Alexander and his wife, Carolin Toskar via Zoom. I met four other amazing people, healing practitioners from the UK with their own talents. I just felt with each day and with their challenge of being able to heal another person. First, my husband, was my first victim, then my best friend. And their responses to it, being so different and unique and powerful, I knew I was doing the right thing. I knew that I was following a call and a higher purpose, finally in my life, 41 years old. It took me a while, but maybe, everyone's on their own journey. I just want to keep receiving the calls and following them and seeing where it goes.

I'm on a journey. I'm creating. I posted a podcast, and didn't script it. I just recorded myself talking about my own journey and my lists and kind of what I've learned over the past couple of years without specifically calling out the Divine Straightening, but that is a crucial element.

I have this journey that's kind of plotted out ahead of me to gain wisdom from whoever I want in my life. I'm charting my own path and trying to learn from everybody around me. And I just want to help people.

Create and help people because honestly when I'm drawing, when I'm writing, I am in flow. It's a beautiful thing to know what it is. Although it started with a mustard seed, that seed has burgeoned and grown. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to connect with this program, to connect with myself in a way that I didn't know that I could and to connect with God.

I'm just grateful.

If we think about the word abundance, it's not what we think in terms of material goods, stuff that we have, money in the account. I feel so abundant with love, with friends. I feel so abundant with talents. Thank you God for giving me this ability to draw, to write, to sing, to be present, to make connections.

The best things in life are free. It's true.

I hope that I can continue on this path as long as I can and maybe inspire a few others along the way.

Thank you.

Learn more about Toskar Healing at: Spiritual healing - treatments and healer training - ToskarHealing
​

Carolin and Alexander Toskar with Jackie Morreale at a virtual training.

Select concepts taught by Toskar Healing:

Flight to Colorado, taken March 17, 2024 by Jackie Morreale.

​
It's kind of simple to achieve happiness in your life, at least according to my own very recent experience.

Follow your calling!

(I'm going to leave a couple of seconds of silence for us to think about that.)

Follow your calling. Do you know what it is?

I guess if you don't know what it is, the first step to happiness is to figure it out. What are you meant to do in this life? What do you feel compelled, by God, by your inner most thoughts and dreams, to do?

Because when you do it, it feels like flying.

I'm writing and drawing and learning new things, and now literally dreaming about flying among the clouds. My head is clear. Finally! I've turned down the noise and I'm in creation mode. It finally clicked: All the noise, all the distractions, all the stuff that I allowed to keep me down, the stuff that I allowed to cloud the way I thought about myself or my abilities or my talents, all go away when you're focused on the present, and what you're supposed to do, and your purpose.

For those of us who were like me about a year ago, who don't know or understand their purpose, had a lot of things that they wanted to do, and just couldn't cut through the noise of what all you should be doing with your life. It's frustrating to be so multifaceted in your functioning on trite things. But simple to fix.

Figure out what your thing is. Do it.

It's different for everyone. For me, I find clarity in a "Trinity" of pushing my body to the limits with endurance exercise to calm my emotions and connect with God. For others, it could be through meditation. It could be through a good song. It could be through finding flow in something that I'm really concentrating and working on, or have been trained to do and just do. It could be with prayer. It could be with going to your sacred place or seeing your sacred person.

I don't know the answer for everyone. But I think it's about building consistency. For me, I keep a journal and try to identify patterns. I started to see little dots connecting from all different parts of my life. Completely different parts of my life connect, sometimes even in the same day. Love when totally different circles overlap.

I wondered why. Is it just a coincidence? Is it just something that's weird? If you chart it in a journal over time, you can see that you're on a path that's meant to take you somewhere.

At least that's what I'm finding. I've just barely entered the tunnel, no where near seeing the light at the end.

Simply starting the journey has resulted in so many moments of clarity. Things I didn't actively think of pop into my head. Let's call it, a calling, to do a certain thing. To call a person. To create something. To change what I'm eating or doing or drinking or not or being present.

It all boils down to finding your purpose and doing it. Action towards my own callings are like wind gusts beneath my wings; like a weight has been lifted off my heart.

It's like the clouds have left my mind and gone up where they belong. It's the most incredible feeling of flying.

To take it back to some natural philosophy, I now understand a little bit more about what our ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato, we're talking about in terms of building a Republic in which everyone in the civilization would have their own role, their own responsibility, based on what they were called to do. Based on their life's purpose.

Functioning in that way, following your purpose, is the only way for both the individual and the civilization as a whole to become most successful and happy. In doing so, it would bring betterment to themselves and the entire community around them. It would make for an ideal civilization.

It took me a really long time to get here. It took years of thinking. Reading. Listening. It took some bravery. It took being willing to give something up to get something more.

I don't think I understood that one until I started ebbing away at little things, giving up little things I couldn't do anymore. They just held me back. They're different for everyone, but for me: drinking alcohol, doom scrolling on social media, browsing phone and television apps... all needed to be replaced with better things, like hydration, reading, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, which is such a privilege to pursue.

Take control over the channels that are streaming noise and energy into your head. There's a sort of power that you gain by being able to control what you put in and what you expel out. My own result: I just feel like I'm flying through the clouds. 

I hope all of my family, my friends, my colleagues can figure out what it is that makes them tick. Pursue their own destiny. Find these kind of connections. Figure out how to live in such a way that your heart is light. And you'll just float and everything you do. A smart person on a bench told me, heaven will be open to you, you just have to ask.

Thank you for reading. Have a safe flight!
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Day One of actively living in abundance, and counting blessings, in my own way.

It began with my first ever beach sunrise, serendipitously. It also ended at the beach, over a spontaneous gathering with friends at sunset. A chance to go see a friend on the sand and share stories. Laugh. Go in the waves just because.

Abundance is realizing the important things in life, the beauty, the friends, the many dots that connect as part of a greater plan. Not taking anything for granted.

Today, my daughter went on a trip to Disney World with her singing group and made two new close friends. She had an adventure and performed for the biggest audience she ever has - yet - on a world-famous stage. Also today, my son played his hardest in a soccer game, heard other people cheer his name, and made amazing saves. Become better at something and more tightly knit with his team. They've both come so far and learned so much.

We can all have abundance in our lives. Simply gather friends like flowers.

We can all fulfill our purpose if we first seek it. If we need answers to our questions, they're there - just open your eyes to them. If we ask God for something, He's right there in our heart.

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Let's back up to how I got to see my first sunrise over water. I'm not a morning person. I don't live close to the beach by Florida standards. My morning simply stared early, taking my daughter to the bus for her chorus trip. I was about to head home and go back to sleep. At the traffic light, instead, I had an immediate urge to the car around and go East. It was still dark out. I followed it, and drove over the bridge and to the beach.

I followed my heart to the sunrise over the water and in return, it sang.

My adventures usually include sneakers and sweat. After my fill of the sunrise, I ran six miles around Palm Beach island. Discovered a new trail by the intercoastal. Placed my hands on an 186-year old Kapok tree. Asked God to help heal some pain I was feeling in my hip and knee. Felt comforted.

I (finally!) understood why people journey to beach for sunrise, in seeing and appreciating the beauty of it for myself. Connecting with nature in that way is unreal.

Then to see my kids succeeding, my husband with his friends, my friend thriving and happy, and friends of hers which have become part of our circle all together. It's a beautiful thing. I'm appreciative to be able to make these connections, and connect the dots. Thank you, God, for putting these beautiful people and things in my path.

Our legacy of faith and friendship continues on through our kids. In a few short weeks, our kids will all to church camp together... and not only willingly, but excited to do so. They feel God's presence in each other, too.

The funniest thing that happened today was on our way home. My son asked from the back seat, "Dad, why do you always say thank God?"

True, we probably say "Thank God" often for an eight-year-old to notice. And we probably shouldn't take God's name in vain as often as we do with all the "OMGs".

But, why do we say, "Thank God”?

We thank God for everything in our lives. Thank God for keeping us safe. Thank God for keeping us healthy. Thank God for all of the abundance he's already given us. Thank God for our children and their talents. Thank God for giving them a good head on their shoulders, and an even better heart. Thank God for this family that regenerates the love we have every day together. Thank you, God.