So many trees. So many views.

I love how trees speak to us. They offer so much wisdom simply through their existence.

My imagination and I just sat there, wondering what this tree had seen.

What had she survived?

Who shares this space with her?

With the hollow and the mushrooms resting safely beneath her roots, I couldn’t help but wonder about subterranean parking garages!

And yet, the leaves far overhead feed her while also sheltering so much other life.

How amazing is that?

Look at how high she stands… and how far she reaches.

All her scars from previous wounds remain visible as proofs of living.

Maybe that moss covers her most wounded places.

I don’t know for sure.

I just know it is a garment this tree wears with such regal dignity.

Can we just stand and look at this amazing armor?

It’s not just bark. It’s a covering that seems almost defiant in the way it bends and pushes itself outwards.

I can almost hear its silent laughter as I stand there in silent wonder.

Does it hurt?

How did it get this way?

How long has she lived like this?

So many questions…

The tree never answered.

I think she was just enjoying the warmth of the sun up above and one lowly human who stopped to ask how she was.

As I continued my journey along the tree lined roads, I happened by this one tree who caused me to stop and whisper, “Ohhhhh…now aren’t you just being all that?”

Reminding me that sometimes life really does feel like we are being split in two.

And yet, when I looked closer, I realized that even a fork of a tree can become some plant mother’s cradle, which caused me to chuckle to myself at the absurdity of life.

In the midst of the worst…life still wins.

And then there was this one…He didn’t have to say a word. His presence alone was enough.

Every line and ridge declared, “I live, I live.”

And oh my eyes couldn’t help but look upward and upward to the tallest of spots.

I know in the kingdom of trees he is lowly and meek, but in his tiny kingdom, he stood and proclaimed: “This is my place. This is my space.”

As I made my way back to the car, I realized once again the trees had quietly done what they always have done.

They stand. They witness. They teach.

Just their existence reminds us that we, too, are planted, growing, and becoming part of something much larger than ourselves.

When we allow ourselves to wander, we give ourselves permission to wonder again

No vegetables were harmed in the making of this video. This is just Ollie enjoying his life and patiently trying to teach me to do the same.

Variety is good i.e.

carrots, asparagus, tomato, cucumbers, blueberries and especially scrambled eggs. He comes running no matter where he is when he hears the cracking of an egg!

Eat your vegetables.

Play with your food.

He exudes:

Patience

Trust

Laughter (ala Ollie’s snaggletooth grin)

Joy

Rest

Happy

He has no doubt that life is:

Good

Perfect

Peaceful

Complete

Simple

His

He knows what is needful:

Rest

Love

Food

Shelter

Play

Me

Every day he reminds me to just try and be like him.

He is my little black and white ambassador of all that is good and right in our little world and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Why am I posting this to my Substack page?

Reclamation

I realized something tonight that bowled me over. I have only been actively pursuing and learning just who I am creatively for a whopping four months. That isn’t to say I haven’t been aware that I love words and music and photography and all the things that are facets of me, but it struck me that I have been fractured and separated from those parts for a really long time.

Like maybe One Billion Eight Hundred and Ninety-Two seconds of them. Or maybe just since 2021, when my husband died, or maybe 2023, when it just got really dark, or maybe 2024, when I thought I had won the war, to find out in 2025 that it was all a scam. So here I sit in 2026, I have this little piece of the world here in New York and for the first time its going to be just me and I have been asking myself some simple and yet horrifying questions:

Who are you, Berta? What do you want? What makes you happy? What do you need to give? What do you need to get?

So again I ask, Who are you?

Which brings me to the glass and the reminder.

I love to see things before they become the thing, I love to stand in the land of metaphors and doorways. Seeing the options and the tensions, How two things can be completely different and yet be completely the same. Shifting my perspective is my default setting. Its also my default curse at times. I am so good at seeing possibility and shifting perspective in so many ways except when it comes to looking at myself.

Hence the image of my pineapples and avocado pit. I loved that I could pick them up and look and see just how they were doing. Was that a root? Would it live? I could see how things were doing, put it back in its glass, no harm, no foul.

The end result?

I didn’t expect any of them to take, so of course they all took. I now have three thriving pineapple plants, one avocado plant, sundry other plants, myself, and one dog in an 864 square foot house.

So tonight I sat in the realization that I have been figuratively picking myself up, wondering, why I am taking so long? Where are my roots? I have been picking myself up and checking way too many times to count.

And the reality is that I am ever so slowly rooting on so many levels.

Physically rooting myself when I moved to a totally different state to start my life all over again.

Spiritually rooting myself in learning what I believe and why I believe, and that those two things have very little to do with religion and an awful lot to do with faith—they are not the same.

Relationally rooting myself in being brave enough to try and meet new people and engage in this new place I find myself in.

Mentally and Emotionally rooting myself in the knowledge that I am alone and I am okay. The world still spins, the stars still shine. Amazing!

Financially rooting myself in trying to find ways to provide for myself in spite of what’s happened.

Creatively rooting myself in what I want to create and exploring all the different possibilities that gives. There is no one to tell me no. There is no one dragging me in different directions anymore. It’s just me. Whatever happens is entirely up to me.

That reminder over my computer? It’s the best fun reminder to be patient with myself. I am not late. I am exactly where I need to be. A visual reminder to give myself compassion. I am the pineapple tops and the avocado pit. I am slowly growing roots, and I need to quit picking myself up to look!

People who never read this will never know the context or the backstory.

Maybe you are reading this and realize that you, too, have forgotten growth takes time.

Maybe you didn’t think change would take so long. Give yourself time to grow your roots.

Be patient with yourself. Quit picking yourself up in judgment.

Put yourself back in your glass—your roots will come.

I found a new route walking today, and it goes a little ways along the Chemung River, and it’s beautiful.

My life has become where I don’t need a circle anymore. I don’t need an ending. I don’t need a beginning. I just need to move.

It’s a big thought, but it’s not as big as the ocean, because I’ve lived by the ocean. And that’s huge. It’s vast. It’s insurmountable. It’s impossible to conquer the ocean or to traverse the ocean in any safe way and or form.

The pond is beautiful, because I’ve lived by a pond, but you can only go so far, and you end up back where you were. You just keep repeating the same safe things over and over again. There is no real growth or change because the pond is created to be contained. A pond has everything it needs within its bounds to take care of itself and to keep you safe.

But a river? A river is cool. A river has depth. A river just goes where it’s always been meant to go. It chooses its path. It tumbles, it falls. It does whatever it wants. It knows where it’s been. It doesn’t quite know where it’s going.

And I think that’s what I want to write about and how that’s where I am at this stage of my life.

For a long time there was a need to understand, to complete the circle, to find the ending. A river asks for something different. It asks only for movement.

I think it’s easier to drown in a pond of fear than a river of fear.

The pond of fear traps us in place. The fear reflects itself back to itself. We can stare into the same fear for years and years and never leave its shore.

Just like an ocean of fear will drown you faster than a blink.

The waves blind.

The undertow can grab.

There is no end in sight.

The ocean of fear overwhelms. It is too vast to comprehend and too large to navigate. It reminds us how small we are and how big our problems are.

In the river, you don’t even have to do the moving. She will carry you with her wherever she’s heading.

The river carries. Not always gently. Not always comfortably. But it moves in a direction whether we are paddling or not. Sometimes courage is not steering. Sometimes courage is entering the water.

The pond asked me to stay.

The ocean reminds me how small I am.

The river asks only that I trust it enough to enter its waters.

For once, I do not need to know where I am going.

The river already does.

Perhaps that’s why its speaking so clearly to me today. It was never really describing water. It was describing my new way of living.

Sometimes courage is not steering. Sometimes courage is entering the water.

These words are what’s left of me and what I learned.

I hope they help someone, I know they helped me.

Where were you when the bottom fell out?

Where were you when the world stopped spinning?

Do you know what it is to lose everything and not know who you are?

Were you there when they promised to never lie?

Were you there when they promised to always take care of you and they didn’t?

Do you know what it is to have every promise broken and to wonder why you even exist?

Do you know what it is to know evil exists because that is no doubt the hardest truth a person can learn when they see what remains after everything burns.

Do you know what it feels like to be all alone with no one to guide you?

Do you know how it feels to live with regret that is so suffocating it would be easier to die?

Do you know what it is to wonder if you can ever believe and trust in yourself or anyone else?

The betrayal of self, the betrayal of life. The betrayal of love when everything was taken.

Everything became tarnished.

Up was down and down was up.

In was out and out was in.

Backwards became forwards and forwards became backwards.

There was no rhyme, there was no reason.

Nothing made sense.

It was chaos and loss and you adrift in all of that space of nothingness.

You have no idea where you are or who you are or where you’ve gone and it’s in those moments that you wonder what you come back for.

What reason could you possibly have to come back to yourself after you’ve lost everything you thought you would stand for.

What do you know of the weight? What do you know of the well?

What do you know of sitting inside of yourself while the world keeps on spinning and yet your world keeps on dying.

Were you there in the mornings, were you there in the nights when there was no star to guide and there was no reason to fight?

I feel like I am Job circling the truth and circling the LIE in the whirlwind that had somehow become my life.

I wonder sometimes, will I ever find out the truth of it all, but I’m beginning to realize as time slowly drifts by, the need for the answer to the question of why, has ever so slowly ebbed like the tide.

I can only hope that like the tide that pulls back out to the sea that it will take all of the hurt and the pain and leave me with just me and that somehow it will all turn out right.

And for some that will make absolutely no sense, and for others it will be just an excuse, and for a few it will be a reason to mock and a reason to laugh. For the rest it will be a reason to wag their fingers and shake their tongues and say ah-ha would you look at that.

What I know is I still don’t have answers and it’s been such a very long fight. I’m tired, I’m scared and some days I just want to give up the fight because I don’t know if I can survive and sometimes I don’t know if I even want to try because it just doesn’t seem fair.

I wonder what happens next and as I say those words I am reminded that just like Job I’m seeing it in my own eyes and not from the eyes of the Divine.

I’m looking too far ahead or staying too far behind. I don’t know how and I don’t know when but I do know that you have shown me over and over again that in spite of what’s happened and because of what’s happened you always somehow make everything turn right.

I just have to learn to wait and to trust in the midst of the dark.

I am reminded that in the midst of the light on my rare and good days to store up the memory of them because sure as I stand here I’m going to need them on those really dark days.

I’m not sure if this will ever be read, by you or anyone else, but I struggle with the pain and the knowledge that someone could someday be faced with what I’ve had to face. That is such a horrible thing and a horrible thought.

So if you are reading this, and if you feel like me, I would tell you to hold on. Hold on with whatever is left of the you, sitting lost, down in the depths of your heart.

I won’t sugar coat or give you false cheer. It doesn’t get better for a really long time, but with faith all things can be gone through. And that isn’t fair and it sure as hell isn’t right, but that won’t change the fact or the place you are at. So remember this one small thing while you try and decide what you can do next.

There are 86,400 seconds in 24 hours. Did you know that?

I remember feeling absolutely terrified at the impossibility of surviving 86,400 seconds, I couldn’t imagine surviving the next hour, never mind 24 of them. Those days they call, “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

In my case, and maybe in yours, it wasn’t a night, it was nights, lots of them. And it wasn’t always dark, it was broad daylight. Everyone else’s worlds were bright and happily spinning as they always had and always would. My world, like yours, had tilted off its axis, not enough to roll away, but enough that things were precarious and wobbly, like a rim not quite bent but not quite straight. The only thing I knew for sure was it was in my soul and it was deep and it was dark in there.

86,400 seconds was too immense.

And that was when like a single drop of rain falling on a dried up leaf I felt the power of my indrawn breath. It may not seem like much, but oh my dear friend, if you can trust me with just one thing, trust me with this one thought:

The Gift of One Breath

Take a breath, remind yourself there are only 900 seconds in fifteen minutes. And if that still feels like too much, then there are only 450 seconds in 7 minutes. Whatever it takes—One minute or one breath.

Take the grief, the pain, the betrayal, and the loss, one breath at a time, one second at a time. Put your hand to your chest, take that deep breath in and just pause and just rest. That pause at the top of the breath? That is the place where you stay for as long as you can. It won’t change the facts, but I promise it will help your heart and it will help your mind, then let your grief and your anger and pain exhale with your breath. And yes, you can and you will absolutely do that over and over again.

The crazy part that binds it all together is to remember:

Don’t look too far ahead and don’t look too far behind.

Keep your mind in the Today.

If you can do that, then every day you’ll get just enough of what you need to get through that day.

Never too much, never too little, but always just enough.

Just enough faith, just enough hope, just enough breath or just enough light. You may wonder at the start of the day if you can do it, and then at the end of the day, you will take a deep breath, and you will be amazed because you can say, I did it, and that’s how the days will go, and that’s how the days will end. And then at some point you will realize, wow today really was better.

I don’t know if it will take a month, a year, or a lifetime, but I do know that yes it eventually does get better, so hold on to whatever anchors of faith you have, hold on to your breath and most importantly, the anchor of love.

Learn to love yourself and most especially learn to love the pain of letting go.

I will leave you with this simple thought:

Letting go gives room for the past to leave our lives and

for the future to enter our lives which in the end is no small thing.

Anyone else want to travel down the road called memory lane? My biggest regret? I didn’t think anything ever got truly lost and deleted on the internet. It does folks! If you have an old website or something that holds special memories to you, go and grab what you want of it now. There is no guarantee it will be there in the future.
This is my visuals of my very first attempts at trying to create a place for my photographs with words and music back in 2004. The background on this page was created from a bookmark that I still have that I must have scanned and duplicated somehow because you can still see the faint lines between each narrow section. Midi sound files, guestbooks and visitor counts. ICQ and Angelfire, AOL and all things Geocity. The early days of mainstream home computers.

Tonight I was struggling with what to write and what to post here on Substack. I have four drafts in my google docs. All of them dark, all of them angsty. Five short videos ready to post to Youtube, and about 20 pictures of various sizes that still need their mats cut for them along with sundry other creative things that have grabbed my heart and mind and have left me pulled in way too many different directions!

The Good Bad Friday Day book and The No Small Thing book are still sitting in the recesses of my mind taunting me with the fact that I am not one word closer to writing than I was a month ago. I’ve got white boards and paper notes, ideas in the phone, written on the laptop. Where is the thread? Where do I start?

Note to self and anyone reading this, if you put yourself in a creative desert for five years, expect to be overwhelmed with all sorts of things when you open yourself back up again!

What does all that have to do with this random picture of my old angelfire homepage? Its Proof. I needed proof tonight that just maybe somehow, someway I will manage to collect all the threads that I have and create something from them. I think that is the hardest and best problem to have when you are a creative and visual thinker. Everything has potential, everything has possibility. Each of them appeal to me in different ways, I don’t want to give up on any of them, but I also know I may not be able to do justice to any of them if I don’t figure out how to create a routine that honors the most important of them.

So here I go, I have created a post, it’s not my best not by an extremely long shot, but it is proof that I sat, planned, and corralled the squirrel ideas in my mind long enough to think it out. It may have lasted for just an hour, but I will take it where I find it. I think I forgot that writing doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be real and it has to be mine. I think the best thing of all is that it wasn’t my angst note, or the grief note, and it wasn’t the betrayal note that surprised me with how much the betrayal still stings! How much it still hurts and that I am still dealing with the fallout from the GBFD and Gift That Keeps on Taking.

This note may not have been in blushing pink or golden sunrise hues, but it wasn’t grey and it wasn’t dark, it was somewhere in the middle of them all, a place where truth exists. A place where for a very short time, hope got to take a turn at driving this crazy machine I get to call my life.

I wanted to remember how magical the moment was. I wanted to remember how blessed I am to have a dog that embodies Happy. He walks Happy. He smiles Happy. He is just Happy. Four years ago the universe knew how dark the days were and gave me back overflowing happiness, laughter and joy with him.

I loved the music I chose to go with the video. That changed it to an almost vintage video moment of times past. Totally unplanned for, but it reflected the mood and the feelings of the walk perfectly . Seeing our footprints while walking backwards and how it looked like I was actually walking forwards was spur of the moment but so whimsical too!

It was like the snow, Ollie and the universe all conspired to make sure I knew that no matter which way I went, it was still the right way. The universe was reminding me about being intentional. The universe was saying, I don’t need hours, joy can be found in the shortest, smallest and simplest of times. I just need to remember to pay attention!

What a magical moment, what a magical day. I share it here with the hope that I give you my 46 little seconds of joy!

I have been recently rather overwhelmed with an amazing realization. Have you ever been struck so hard with a truth that you just plunked down and cried?

That’s been me these past few weeks. I have been given such an amazing little gift of seeing things in a rather unique and quirky way. I have alternated between wonder and weeping at the universes way of giving me such a gift. Its just been me and my little cell phone camera, catching a glimmer here, a reminder there.

You see, its been a rather horrible wonderful couple of years. And to know that in spite of how horrible its been, its because of this time that I have discovered this amazing gift. It makes all the pain and hurt worth it. And to have it, I would suffer everything all over again.

For me? I don’t just see the picture, I see the words behind the picture, I always have, I just never knew it wasn’t something everyone could do. I see the picture, I see what it wants to say, if that makes any kind of sense. I speak for her, I speak for them.

I love my children and my family and friends. But I never realized until I started looking at all the pictures that I’ve taken that my one and first great love has always been this planet we call home.

I am so blessed to have captured so many rare and amazing little things. Some that bring me laughter and some, like this one, that brings me to my knees.

So I give you my visual in picture form of our ancestors walking towards the way of peace. I give you our hope for the future. I give you the answer we must all strive for. It is the way of peace.

The Peace Walkers

Our ancestors are gathering

We must follow the way

The ancestors call

They are walking with us

They are reminding us

We must first come together

To heal from without

We must first heal from within

That is the way of peace

That is the way of love

Our ancestors call

I hope you enjoyed my peace walkers story, I truly am grateful, I truly am blessed.

There is something so wonderful about taking pictures like this. They speak to the child in me. They are a witness to the wondering little girl who saw the “other-worldly” as very real possibilities.

I understand finally that every time I see and capture something beautiful that its from that place of childlike wonder that I have been given these inspirations.

Why am I just learning this now? I see her so clearly every time I stop and wait in expectation. I see her inside myself, smiling up at me. Its like she understands and takes my hand in anticipation. Somehow she already knows what it is that we are going to discover. She already knows the words I want to say.

How do we even begin to thank that inner spark inside each of us for the ability to create? Whether its in words, pictures, art, music or speech, each persons gifts are unique and designed for the person they became. They are perfectly suited for what the world so desperately needs. Each persons gifts displayed and given as tiny offerings to the world around them. We are truly blessed to be able to create in so many wonderful ways.

There is so much to be angry about in the world around us. There is so much to be scared or hurt about. It is a constant wearing down of every little bit of hope we keep inside of us.

I do not mean to minimize or make less of the danger of the world we live in, but I want to very gently remind all of us, that the only way to overcome darkness is with light, with love.

No matter how bad things may be, we will not win if we allow their darkness to spread inside our skins. I have no proof to give you that we will win this war of hatred. Their war seems to be spreading faster than the speed of light. What I can offer is the hope and peace that comes from deep within each and every one of us.

When we choose as best we can, to give love and light to everyone around us, we create the possibility that we just might win.

~Today I speak a new story over me~

I never knew a Xxxx-he was only ever Xxxx

I never knew a Xxxx-he hid himself from me

I never lost money-I gave it all away

I never got stuck- I only stayed

I never lost- I always learned

I never needed love-I only needed me

I never left-I just returned

I let you go-

I grieve the loss of the star that shone so bright.

You are me-I am you

I give you back the parts of you that you gave to me-

I forgot they were never mine to keep. They were only mine to hold until I was ready to give them back again

In the letting go of you,

I call back the parts of me as though they never left:

I call back my joy in simple things

I call back my words

I call back my greens

I call back my love

I call back my way of seeing things

I call back my laughter

I call back my peace

I call back my love of God

I call back the divine of me

I call back my hope of us

I call back Maktub-and make it mine

I call back my strength

I call back my hope

I call back my future

I call back the me-

All the pieces.

All the parts.

I call them all back to me

You made them whole, you made them healed while you held them in your heart.

I am complete

I am enough

I do not know for sure if I am ready, but by these words I say it is enough to start.

Today I will grieve the letting go.

I give myself permission to grieve a little every day, but I will always end the grieving with the reminder to be grateful that you helped me heal my broken mind and broken heart.

I remind myself that if I had known the journeys end, I would never have been brave enough to take that first and simple step.

I would not be who I am, because I would still be who I was, afraid and small, not knowing how unique I really was.

So I thank you Xxxx, and thank you Xxxx.

But most of all?

Thank you Father, who has the love and grace to trust those of us who dared to live this journey we call faith, this journey we call fate, this journey we call love, this journey we call life.

We are people of great caring

We are people of great hearts

And by great, I do not mean in a good or bad sort of way, I mean in a creative way. In the awareness way we have of seeing the world and the possibility each soul has to make a change.

We feel deeply, we see deeply. This doesn’t make us different than others, it just means we are always going to be more willing to share and be vulnerable. We are willing to see what others are too afraid of.

On this first day of 2026, I wanted to give each of you and myself this video gift of remembering we do make a difference.

I want each of you to believe that each word, each post, is a post of faith and belief in our little circles no matter how big or how small that circle may be!

Take care and be blessed!

Berta V

I didn’t realize how much the past year had affected me until I started writing my intentions. I chose to start writing the intentions on the first of December.

On the right side of each page I write the intentions and mindsets that I want and need to bring with me into 2026.

On the left side I write the mindsets and the default settings that I need to stay in 2025.

Every night I read them all and then write the 2025 intentions. Every morning I read them all and write the 2026 intentions. Its been a huge commitment, but after putting so many other people before me for most of my life, I finally realized I needed to give myself the best, so I committed to giving myself the gift of intentional belief.

2025 is almost over. Tomorrow morning I will write my last intentions. Tomorrow night, New Years Eve, I will read them all. I will choose the most important ones. On New Years Day those important ones will be written again and will become my blueprint for 2026. They are my expectations. My boundaries. They are my proofs and checks. They will also be my written conscience.

Taking a few minutes every morning to read them and check in with myself will be the only way to make sure I have changed my old default settings. Those few minutes will also give me the wonderful gift of seeing the someone new and yet the someone I have always been, but was never brave enough to be.

I just got through making a YouTube video about the weird and quirky realities of where I am in the birth order of my rather strange and totally dysfunctional family.

I had such a fun time creating the simple video, recalling and talking about weird little facts was so easy to see and create using my voice. Writing those same ideas takes so much more effort and I am still trying to figure out why.

What I have learned so far is that I need motion to turn on the creative parts of my mind. When I am moving, I see words and ideas and possibilities so clearly in my head. I just don’t know where they go when the movement stops!

It’s a lot to try and write the words that are dancing in my head. Sometimes they’re slow dancing, sometimes samba, sometimes they’re line dancing, and on occasion it feels like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is going off inside my head. The words, like musical notes, are not always easy for me to hear and even harder to arrange.

I have also come to realize that overcoming my hard things is essential. Whether on paper or on the computer, learning to write and express my ideas in written form has to be conquered. For me there are emotional scars attached to writing that need to be healed.

This next sentence will only make sense to a select few, and of those select few, only a further few over the age of 55 will understand!

I AM left handed. THERE I SAID IT!

Being left handed in a right handed world, was and still is, in many ways, frowned upon. The stigma attached to the wrong hand runs deep. If you were born before 1965 you may have gotten your knuckles cracked to break you of the dreaded left.

If you were blessed or cursed with being allowed to use your left hand to write, you remember cursive penmanship in school. If you went to schools like I attended, you remember the man coming in once a month or once a quarter or however often it was, to grade, and to teach the dreaded penmanship. I remember the gold stars and blue seals with ribbons for the best in cursive. Those badges of achievements were given on an individual and on a class level basis. If you were one of the left handed people, it was made known you were the reason the blue seal eluded the class. Year after year that followed you.

Then there was the awkward elbow bumping, the hand smudging, the paper smudging. Never mind being graded less because your words looked like a scratch instead of a scrawl. I finally refused to conform. I taught myself to write my words sideways. It made letter spacing inconsistent, but it was so much better than the hooked over fisting way to write! Such small things from back then, but to be different? Oh what a curse.

I am so grateful for the age I live in now. I wish computers had been around for the younger me, but at least they arrived for the older me. To be able to type and not be judged for my penmanship is such a healing gift.

I LOVE WORDS. I have always loved words. Reading them, seeing them, creating them, hearing them. I love words in all their forms. They are magical and wonderful to me. Seeing the wonder of snow in words, or a baby’s cry, far away lands and whimsical elves with fairy dreams still have the power to allow me to live in worlds I may never actually see!

Words are power leashed and then released. They are the unseen breath of winter. We breathe out the possibility of so many things with our words. They are us. If we could take the essence of who we were, the words we create would become our Mini Me’s.

Isn’t it amazing how the ideas and words in our minds become something totally different once we release them from our grip? I had a totally different plan for what I wanted to write when I started this piece, and yet I have wandered down this totally different path. A path that led me back in time to who I was, to help me heal who I am. I love the power of our chaotic messy mess of all our thoughts and words.

What a perfect segue back to the original intention of telling my birth order story!!!

I didn’t land in a “normal family”

Alcohol abuse, generational traumas, the dynamics of the huge age difference between my parents (Mom was 17, Dad was 33 when they got married) Factor in the dysfunction of them being first and second generation “Americans” along with the whole, ” too big a family” and “not enough nurture” and it’s amazing we all lived to tell about ourselves.

Hmmm….actually, I am the only one that seems to have this weird penchant for telling stories. I seem to be the only one who has this deep desire for creating purpose from the strangest and most ordinary of things.

So how did I get this way? Why all this talk and preamble?

Maybe I am still looking for justifications of why I am so damn weird. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn’t.

I was born in the spring of 1961

I am one of seven children

I am the middle child of those seven children

I am the middle girl

I am the middle leftie

Girl (R/H) Boy (R/H) Boy (L/H) ME Girl (L/H) Boy (L/H) Boy(R/H) Girl (R/H)

For several years, I was the youngest child

I was also the middle child after my younger siblings came along

I became the unofficial eldest child after my older siblings left home

There are so many unspoken default settings implanted in us due to birth order that we aren’t even aware of until it’s much too late to accept or reject them.

The oldest child being so responsible and feeling like they need to be perfect.

The forgotten middle child that at times acts out just to be seen?

Or the unwelcome youngest who is over loved out of exhaustion or guilt? Maybe even sadness that you might have been your parents last?

In the midst of all that birth order confusion, it’s no wonder I loved the world of words so much. How sad it was to have been born in a time where writing for a left handed person was anything but fun. I wonder how much of this struggle to express my written words was formed on the trauma of my handedness and how much was out of the weirdness of my birth order?

So my Shutterfly community, from your outside perspective looking in, what’s your take on my strange left handed and birth order facts? Am I just wishing upon a hopeful star, or is there some validity to my weird and quirky thoughts?

The tableau shown in this picture is a reflection of the different touchstones that have helped me in my 2025 journey. Each stone or leaf or feather helped me to see growth. They helped me to see things from a different perspective, and most importantly they helped me learn to be intentional.

I am not normally a ritual type of person, but somehow I know this year end holds power.

From the first moment I read of the 13 intentions, I knew that this was exactly how my year would be ending. I saw it all. I saw it like a mini montage in my mind.

I saw each night, my 12 slips of hand written 2026 intentions and how they would burn with sage and bay. I saw in my mind how it felt as if I was holding tiny pieces of my future self. I saw me walking to the pond with the burned slips of my intentions, pouring the ashes out for the air to take. All of this played in my mind, like a visual script.

I am shedding my 2025. My 2026 has been dreamt, it has been grown, it has been created by my intentional thinking. There is nothing more powerful than acting on our intentions.

Intentions are birthed in our hearts. They are the secret dreams we hope to be or do. They are the leaves we kick as we walk down the street in the fall. They are the snowflakes in winter that accumulate until the spring thaw melts them away. Intentions are the hopes we can only whisper to ourselves because we learned long ago to hide who we are.

I have spent this year learning what words mean to me and what I want to do with them. I have dragged my uncertain and afraid little inner self into this person I am becoming. I finally realized and accepted that whatever I want to become, rests squarely where it should be, where it has always been, inside of me.

Intention

Perspective

Shedding

Growth

I can’t blame you, my neighbor, my dog, or the people that betrayed me. Sitting in the ruins of my dreams I got a very clear perspective of my life. Change doesn’t happen in an excuse filled life.

Change happens with intentional.

Change happens with shifts in perspective.

All of it happens in shedding.

All of it happens in growth.

It wasn’t easy. Actually it has been downright scary, and I am still messing up. But whats important for me and for you is that we keep trying. We keep trying to figure out what fits us and what doesn’t fit us.

If it felt uncomfortable, but right to do, I did it.

If I felt gratitude for things that I noticed,

I found a way to thank the person.

Did I feel stupid for thanking total strangers? Absolutely!

If it felt scary but right, I told that little voice inside of me to shut up and pay attention. I was going to do the thing.

If it felt too big a task for me, I said to myself,

“And? Your point is? Its too big? So what else is new? You’re only five feet tall, everything is too big for you!”

If I felt it would be embarrassing I said to myself,

“And? Like you’re the first person to do something embarrassing?

I reminded myself over and over that choosing to not do whatever the thing was, meant guaranteed failure. So I tried. A lot.

Did I fail? Hell yeah!

Did I embarrass myself? Sometimes!

Did I lose a lot? Absolutely!

Would I do the things again? Always and Full Stop Yes!

The important thing is that I tried. I claimed my little intentions and said to them,

“You will not go unnoticed this year”

Before this year, I knew the power of faith, I knew the power of intention. But it was this year that I really learned how to trust them completely. Maybe that is why this year end feels so powerful for me. My soul and who I am becoming sense in the chaos of the cosmos that surrounds all of us that change is coming, growth has happened and it all started with the simple beliefs of my intentions.

💙Thank you Outtamydamnmind for reminding me of my snowglobe storms and memories💙

A friend of mine has this Cape Cod snowglobe and I was thrilled when I saw it on her shelf. For those of you from far away, Cape Cod is on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Its the land that sticks out like an arm from Massachusetts into the Atlantic Ocean.

Cape Cod is known for lots of sand and dunes, too much seafood and for sure too much traffic.

Cape Cod was home and world for most of my life. I returned last year and the journey has made me feel like I too am in that globe, shaken, waiting, learning and becoming something?

Snowglobes can represent so many things. We see the mind and the life within and without. It captures a moment in time forever. Snowglobe memories can never change. Maybe its the beauty of a first snow held captive over and over again, or when shaken too hard, it stirs the uncertainty of life in the storms and the unknowns.

With a snowglobe, you can see yourself, you can be seen, or you can look at the world around you from within the globe. What a rather convoluted and weird way of thinking and seeing life, of seeing ourselves and the world around us.

I confess I miss the snowglobe of my memories. The ones that had the white stuff inside that really looked like snow was drifting down. I am not sure how I feel about this shimmer and glitter type of snow. It reminds me too much of our world today. The hype, the smoke and mirrors of what we want the world to see and not the world we really are.

The snowglobe world is beautiful and perfect, the snow falls just right, the scene is always calm and perfectly perfect. Except when you shake it, then we see what the real world looks like.

I grew up in snow. I lived in the days of snowstorms, sledding and snowball fights. I grew up in the days of spending hours and hours in the snow and having to walk home for what felt like hours numb and unable to feel any of my extremities!

I believe in snow and ice and I even believe in the craziness of thundersnow!

Just ask Jim Cantore what he thought of it! If you’ve never heard of or don’t believe in thundersnow, feel free to watch him here!

To have thunder and lightning in the midst of blinding snow? Trust me, thundersnow is a very real and freaky thing!

Anyways…back to my snowglobes of memories.

I am well beyond the age of anything seeming magical, but I tell you, the first snow of every winter is ALWAYS magical. It is as pure and sacred as the moment of a baby’s first cry.

The wish of every child who’s lived here in the north, is for a snow covered roof for every dancing hoof. The wish of every adult is to always see themselves and the world around them with a kind of awe and wondering mind.

Snow is magical in its ability to cover so much so quietly.

Its been years and years and yet the memory of walking down a deserted street at night still lives inside of me. I see the diffused streetlight, florescent oranges, muted, but somehow they’ve been transformed, becoming tiny orange flakes of the snow they ride upon.

I stood still with sudden awareness that even silence has a sound when its muffled by the snow.

The eeriness of hearing a foghorn blowing from far away, understanding in that hushed and quiet moment, that I heard it only because it traveled miles on the snow that blew from sea to shore landing softly all around me.

It was the first time I understood that even something as weightless as a snowflake has its own reverent sound.

Snow can rage its fury with the wind? Or the wind can rage its fury with the snow? As they wail around and with each other for days and nights, the snow is blown high upon the walls and trees or is forced to blow back up and fall upon itself.

Walking and looking at the sculptured landscape after a snowstorm leaves you wondering if you are living in a white washed heaven or if you have survived a living hell. Weird shaped tunnels, towering sheered off cliffs, all brilliant white, so bright and shimmering in places it hurts to look at it with our human eyes.

That is the landscape left behind to remind us of the power of furious wind and raging snow.

I was going to publish this on Saturday, but now I think I have to wait. There is a possibility of snow tonight! I am now the child with that winding inner tension.

Will it snow, will it rain? Will it be enough to make a snowman, or will it only blow away?

I have the hope of that child knowing there could be no better ending to this little story than to end it with the perfect picture of a snow covered yard at night.

Last night I had the ending to this story all planned out. I saw it tying back to the globe and how life is so much like that, but I couldn’t make it fit. I spent the night wondering why that was. The answer came this morning, as it always does, when I stilled my mind and asked myself what it needed me to see:

I can say this is the first snow of 2025, or it’s just as possible this is the last snow of 2025. I can say this is the start of winter 2025, but it is also the start of winter 2026. Winter reminds us to stop, to rest and to be intentional with packing up our 2025 and getting ready for our 2026.

For those of us here in the north, winter is the only season that bridges old and new. Winter is the only season whose sole purpose is to rest, to plan, to think.

Whether this time is your summer, spring or fall, the biggest reminder for all of us on this planet we call home, is quite simply this, you are your snowglobe, you are your life.

At times it will be beautiful, at other times it will shake you to your core, but like the scenes within the globe, the most important reminder is that the storms will pass, the snow will settle, it just requires trust, it just requires standing still.

~Allow the snow to settle deep around you, trust that peace will come, if only for a little while~

Something strange and weirdly wonderful has been growing and morphing deep inside of me. One of my children thinks its a really cool thing, the other is on the verge of existential crisis thinking they may be looking at their own future mental state with who I am becoming!

So here I stand in the midst of who I was and who I am. More attuned, more intentional. Trusting that all things give meaning to my life.

I ask myself,

“How can I be a person who’s lived most of their life and not understand their inner self?”

“At this late stage, can a person use what they are finally understanding, or am I the ship that pulled into the harbor way too late?”

I’ve walked by this little 12 x 12 area so many times in my daily life, and yet yesterday I was struck with how I keep the things that are full of touchstone meanings close where I can always see them.

To many of you? This looks like junk or clutter. To others it may look like the proverbial junk draw naked and exposed. But to me? Its a visual and tactile memory of my journey these past weeks.

The ping pong balls with silly faces? My reminder “props” to a connection video that I made

The mini mic and gadget things? My reminder that I can do “the everything”

The coffee beans waiting to be roasted? My reminder of my future things

The pictures leaning on the wall? My reminder of so many hopes and miracles

The stacked books? My reminder that learning is hard, but learning is essential

The hidden seeds and pods tucked on the side? My reminder of little joys I found walking through my life

The light bulb? The one thing on this tableau that is absolutely random, but even that gives me the reminder that every idea I have is just a word or an action away from becoming real

So I ask you,

Whats your shelf? Whats your vista? Whats your things?

Do you enjoy having reminders of what’s touched your inner soul? Your heart?

Do you have your favorite playlists? Is it a book of treasured poems? Do you walk to a certain spot? Do you sit beside the sea or is your thing being burrowed deeply on a window seat?

What brings you joy in the midst of your tumultuous life?

Remember to keep your touchstones within reach. Those memories are your anchors. They’re your place of inner peace.

Nothing is more sacred than knowing and returning here as often as its needed

Find your hearts space

Find your touchstone

It will always guide you home

I invite you to join me on a journey.

A journey of self.

A little me to me gift if you will.

In the midst of this lost, broken and torn apart year of 2025, taking a few minutes each day to speak power and bold truths of who we are becoming, seems to be a very precious gift.

So here is what I am doing, if anyone feels the pull, please feel free to join me in whatever way works for you.

I started this on December 1st by asking myself these two things every day.

What are the “good and new things” I have learned about myself this year?

What are the “I wont do things” that I have learned about myself this year?

Every night on the left side, I write my statements of:

I will not…

I cannot…

I am not…

Every morning on the right side, I write my statements of

I am grateful

I am blessed

I follow that up with my power and truths that I choose for myself

I Am…

I will…

I can…

What I have found is that every time I write, different and new truths emerge.

Each morning I read each page aloud. Yes I know, by the time I get to day 31, I will be reading quite a bit every day. But truly, what better way to spend our time than in reflection of who we are becoming? What better gift can we give ourselves than the gift of autonomy and love?

I will read and write in this on the final day of December 2025.

When I wake on January 1st 2026, I have decided to choose the statements that speak to me the most. I will write those on the next two pages. Those will be the framework for what I intend to create for 2026.

My new growth, new boundaries, new dreams. Whatever I have called and whatever is calling to me for 2026 will be birthed in these last days of 2025.

I don’t know about you, but 2025 has been a year of hard changes. Its been a year spent in something like this chrysalis.

From the inside its been dark and so full of hard and uncomfortable feelings. So much of me has had to fall away. So much of who I was, is gone. The person I was, died one early April day. And yet, bit by bit, day by day, the changes happened. I think once we choose to start to change, its truly just a matter of how long we hold on to the things. Its only a matter of time until we are ready to come forth from our hiding place.

Whats more amazing to me, is that from the outside? This me? This place of change? It’s beautiful. People who knew me before, don’t recognize the me I am today. The people who have just recently met me, see who I am now. Someone who is strong and funny, intentional. A person who sees the world from a place of wonder. A place of grace. The woman I was, is finally learning to like what she is becoming.

So I ask you, what better gift can you give yourself? What better way to start 2026 than with spending time learning what you want and who you are. Spend these last few days deciding what to keep, what to give and what really needs to actually be thrown away!

I don’t know about you, but this is my me to me gift. Yes, its selfish and just for me, but guess what? I’m finally beginning to understand the most precious gift I can give myself is the gift of me!

I am getting ready to move once again. After 16 months of waiting and banging into invisible glass walls, I am almost at the end of my time here. Its bittersweet and almost paralyzing. I have to get ready for this move on all levels.

Physically

Mentally

Emotionally

Financially

I’ll be starting all over again. I know I will be rebuilding, and learning to trust. All while trying to be strong and brave and hopeful. And like a hidden underground river I am constantly reminding myself to not get bitter or angry for too long.

My self talk is whispering, keep the cup at half full even if its only by one drop. In between I’m trying to remember to breathe in ways that helps me overcome the emotional cacophony that’s inside my mind. And all of this is happening in multi dimensional cinematic views on an almost constant loop inside my head.

Can anyone else relate to me?

Its been a tumultuous year. I’m not even sure how I’ve managed to still be here. Too stubborn to give up? Too resilient? I have to ask the question, what do you do when everything you planned and dreamed crashes and burns and you’re left sitting there thinking, now what?

The answer?

Breathe, breathe, breathe, but don’t breathe too much! Hyperventilating because of the emotional stress can end you up in the hospital. C02 muscle cramps so bad you cant unbend your arms and legs! It happened to me once, I will not let it happen again!

I shouldn’t have been surprised that after all of that inner chaos, I walked by this beautiful Weeping Japanese Maple and the word that went across my minds eye was:

S H E D D I N G

I don’t know why I see words in my mind this way, but I do, and I’m grateful for the inside view. I am grateful for the divine that taps me on the shoulder as if to say, pay attention Roberta, pay attention!

So when I saw the word I started to think and ask:

What am I shedding?

What do I need to shed?

What do I need to let go of?

Literally, mentally, emotionally?

What am I holding on to?

What am I refusing to let go of?

The tree reminded me that I cannot grow while clenching with both hands. I cannot move on while I am living in the past. It hurts to let go, but it hurts more to hold on. Its time, its time to let go, its time to move on. Its time to shed the “didn’t works” and even some of the “did works”.

I have to trust that I am ready, and that like the new leaf in the spring, I am getting ready to grow, shedding the old leaves to make way for the new. Not too soon, not too late, at just the right time and hopefully the right place, I will finally find myself blooming again. I just hope its not too late.

Letting go and trusting God is essential and that is exactly what the universe has been trying to get me to do for weeks now. Truth be told, its probably been trying to reach me for months. The divine has been letting me know over and over, its not time. Its been trying to get me to believe, even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense, that everything is going to be okay.

For some of us, its almost impossible to stop the planning and the sorting of all the possibilities. Its hard for us to let go of the need to know before we need to know. For some of us, the biggest leap of faith is just the letting go.

I liken the past few months to being in a wide open space, I think about an option, I work out my decision, it feels like a good one, so I walk towards it, and BAM, I slam into this invisible glass wall, and I’m smacked right back to where I was. Over and over this has been happening. No matter what direction I turn, no matter how well thought out my decisions have been, I keep getting sent back to the same waiting space.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me when I got all these reminders of spinning and letting go. Are you as surprised and humbled as I am that the creator of this beautiful planet we call home is so interested in us? We shouldn’t be surprised, because He is. Over and over the divine speaks to us. Sometimes quietly, sometimes with the most amazing sense of humor and wonder!

My first stop was the spinning sailboats, three stationary ones in the outer circle and three spinning madly round and round in the inner circle. I am reminded that wind is cleansing. It blows away the chaff, it removes the dead and dying. If we allow it to, the wind blows things to go in the direction they’re supposed to. Just like the sailboats on the open water, we are meant to sail in the direction set out for us.

My next stop on the journey was to see the three pinwheels spinning gaily on their sticks. They looked like pointed wings and flying arms. Shiny and whizzing with the joy that movement brings. Whether we are held in someones hands or mounted to a post, whats important is that we shine with our inner light and enjoy the spin no matter where were at.

The next stop as I rounded to the top of the hill, was this amazing view in the distance of the three spinning turbine blades. From this distance they look so small, but they’re reminding me that the the closer we get to our goals the bigger we actually get.

Apparently the Divine wanted to make sure I understood the truth that standing still is sometimes still moving even if it doesn’t feel that way to me. Sometimes movement goes in circles, sometimes it goes up or down, but no matter what we think, we are always in movement to our next destination even if we have no clue the where or the when.

And if you’ve made it this far in reading my wonderful tale of threes, then this last picture says it all. I pass by this house whenever I walk the pond. It was my final reminder to listen and believe. It reminded me that I believe in three, I see in threes and more often than not, I write in threes. Its time for me to let go and let the wind of fate decide my path.

Like the leaves that dance in the wind or the balloons that float on their ribbons, the dance is the journey, the ribbons are the path.

Like the sailboats and the turbines, the power is there for me to harness as its needed for the tasks ahead.

And like the pinwheel that is held in a child’s wondering hand, I am being asked to have faith in the divine, to trust that He knows the way, and more importantly, that He knows the perfect time.

The divine reminds that sometimes letting go is our most beautiful dance of all

Every time I walk this pond she shares herself with me. Not in the pond itself, but in the life she supports. The birds, the squirrels, the bushes and trees. So much life I can see with my eyes. So much life I can only see with my ears. So much life I can only see with my mind. Hidden life. Hidden seeds buried under leaves, buried under logs. Life hidden in the nest buried deep within a bush reveals itself only after the leaves have fallen and life has left the nest.

The hidden message and directions left behind are here. Look at this and tell me what you see. Don’t tell me with your eyes, but tell me with your heart. Stop, pause and think back to that time where anything was possible then look again with me. Take my hand, lets close our eyes and take a step together. Do we go straight along the pines and take a right at the tree that holds the yellow leaves? Or do we look for only pine trees that live beside the big leaved trees? But first things first, close your eyes, let go of life and remember the wonder of belief.

Oh to live within this forest beneath the trees. The hidden valleys, the deep ravines. To see the tiny rivers sliding around the sacred cairns. The way that only shows itself to hearts and minds that see beyond the trees, the life of sprites, the life of fairies. The life of time that lives within itself. Its the hidden hope that giggles to our souls and asks, “what if” and then whispers for us to just let go and to believe.

The artists brush so bold and true. It paints each edge the perfect hue and yet leaves no edge untouched. The artist paints with frosted brush, and frosted glance. The whisper of a breath that passes by and yet remains unseen by human eye. One realizes no human hand could paint like this. I wonder at the artist who works with such quickness. I wonder who has mastered this delicate craft with such skill and ease. I am left to ask myself if there is anything more sacred than a person who knows their craft and shares just for the joy they know their paintings bring.

This is whimsy personified. This is humor in full flight. The proof of the impossible. The proof of the divine is in the simplest of things. There is so much beauty in the simple and the divine. We understand in part what can only be seen deep within our hearts.

Herein lies the truth,

“Yes Roberta, turkeys really do fly. Don’t they make the perfect weather vane?”