Hello lovely people and welcome to the long days of summertime! It is full on, with berries, BBQs, river time, hiking and bike rides to boot! I hope you are finding the time to celebrate the days in your own special way.

This time of year comes full cycle, as I celebrate my birthday at the end of June. Taking some time to reflect on the year that passed and the one to come.

A few days before my birthday celebration I had the treat of meeting with one of my most favorite patients. I enjoy our sessions because we seem to communicate like old friends. She loves to share stories and is willing to peel back some layers, with nothing to prove.

SIDE NOTE: In past visits, she has shared with me a connection that she has with the afterlife, with a sense of knowing how someone will leave this world upon meeting them. It has been a blessing and curse in her life and career, causing her to both draw in and retract from interactions. Needless to say, this likely brings in some hints of magic to our sessions which seemed extra potent around the cycling of my birthday.

Recently, my patient has felt a new lease on life, heading into retirement and starting to make plans for solo travel. From previous sessions, I also knew that my patient has a long held meditation practice that she holds dear. She told me that recently she had been feeling a lot of anger during her meditation. She shocked me with what came next.

At 62, she was angry that her life did not turn out how she wanted it to.

Her whole demeanor changed and I felt a tension fly into the room that was shaky and dark.  I would have never guessed this sentiment was tucked into her daily life.

Our time together left a residue that has woven into my thoughts on moving forward into the next year, on knowing what is and is not our job, on how we get in our own way, on how we churn stress into our life. Instead of the knee jerk, story book reaction to this where I figure out how to flush or change my life from anything I might regret…

I AM TAKING A NEW APPROACH.  I am making a resolution to realize that having the ideal life or even the life I dream of… is not my job. (And as my gift to you, feel free to try this sentiment on and feel some release!)

We are all guilty of this patient’s mindset or experience to a degree. I have dressed it up in every fancy outfit, I have called it goal oriented, daydreamer, free spirit.

The truth is – our mind is a professional at preference. It loves opinions and problem solving and being anywhere but right where you are.  My rubric for my next trip around the sun is to ask myself honestly – how much of my mental bandwidth is used on preference? Where can I clear some space to simply experience, right where I am?

One of my favorite quotes is by Rumi :
“Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Similarly, it is not our task to achieve a perfect life or one that would get our stamp of approval, worthy of the time spent. Instead, the hope is to become better at removing the barriers, the places where we block ourselves from experiencing, right where we are, which is pretty magic in itself.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the recipes and the summertime coupon below and be well!

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