“Accept where you are, accept what you have, accept who you are ~
do what you can with all of that and let it be enough.”
Nikki Rowe

 I have been struggling all afternoon to write this blog post. What I have finally begun to accept is that every post is not going to be a chronicle of some deep, profound experience nor some teachings about compassion coming from the great masters. Sometimes it is just going to be moments in a day, and perhaps there is a deep, profound teaching in that — the little moments in our days are what do matter, they are what make up our lives. These are little, unrelated moments of the last 24 hours. They are all that I have to offer here today. Perhaps not much, but enough.

This weekend my son Aaron and his family were supposed to be here visiting. They had to cancel at the last minute because they all had the flu. We were so disappointed because this was the 2nd trip they’d had to cancel — the first one was to have been a few days after the hurricane and under the circumstances they couldn’t get here. Now, because of their work schedules, they won’t be able to come home before Christmas. This is not only a real disappointment because it would have been a lovely and much looked forward to visit but Aaron was going to bring his tools and help me here with some of the things that need repairing post hurricane. Now I will have to pay to have it done. It can’t be helped, it will get taken care of, but it would have been a huge, much appreciated help, the kind I seldom get since he, my only son, lives 7 hours away. There was a moment when my heart just fell, and then I said to myself, “It is what it is. Let go.” And I did. And then my dear friend Noni was able to come over and have dinner with me and we watched a movie and she spent the night and we had the morning to have coffee and visit and it was lovely. We take what we are given, we accept what is, like the Buddhist monks who go out with their begging bowls each day and accept whatever is put in them with gratitude. If we can approach each day with an openness, an acceptance of what is, doing the best we can with the difficult things that arise and feeling gratitude for the good things that come along we will find a greater peace.

After Noni left I took the dogs out again. This is requiring a kind of Zen approach, just being, with a kind of calm and patience I am having to slowly acquire. I moved in here in February 2010 and I have always had a fenced yard for my dogs. They loved running free in the yard to play, potty, and when it came to doing their big business they liked to go way out into the other side of the yard where they had the privacy to do their business without someone looming over them. Losing the fenced yard in the hurricane has been one of the hardest things because the dogs are confused, they have not wanted to go to the potty on the leash and getting them to do their big business has been nearly impossible. But I have learned something. If I relax, if I do not try to rush them, or even have those kind of “hurry up” thoughts in my mind, if I move slowly and take all the time it takes and maintain an air of peaceful calm they will, after awhile, and quite a bit of walking around, do their business. It has been, I think, more about me providing an atmosphere of quiet calm than them not knowing what to do. We are all learning, the two pugs and I. And each time we go out, every 3 hours or so, it has begun to be something that I don’t dread as I first did but a special time with them where I am taking care of these little beings in a gentle loving way.

This seemingly inconsequential thing has become important, meaningful times in our day. I feel more relaxed about everything once we are back in the house. I am relaxing and letting go of a lot of things now, post hurricane. There is no way to rush this process of recovery, it will take a long time to fix things, to get trees and hanging limbs taken down, to find our way to what life will be now. What I am learning walking the dogs is helping me with relaxing and becoming more patient about the endless tasks that need to be done to try to find our way to a new normal post hurricane. It is hard, but I am finding there is an element of “It’s only as hard as you make it,” that can teach me about patience in other areas of my life. I am learning, slowly.

I had a wonderful long talk with my dear friend Katya today, and then my eldest daughter Jenny FaceTimed me and I got to see and talk to she and my two little grandsons and son-in-law. These connections mean so much.

I got a difficult situation handled that I dreaded, the man who has been helping me with my yard has become more and more unreliable and didn’t show up again yesterday leaving me with a mess that has been needed to be cleaned up since before the hurricane. He is a sweet older man and it kind of broke my heart but I had to end that relationship today and find someone new and that sort of thing makes me very nervous but my dear friend Jeff helped me find someone, he will be here tomorrow, and we will begin to work toward trying to make sense of this yard now. Overgrown bushes, still messes here and there from the hurricane, the yard not cut for weeks, so much more. I find all this kind of thing overwhelming but a necessary part of maintaining a home. My husband used to take care of all these kinds of things and they feel beyond my ken. But I am inching along and learning how to manage and maintain things. I am doing what I need to do. I am proud of that.

I got out to the grocery store. I walked the dogs again. I fed them. I took care of my orchids. I came here and sat down again and decided all I could write here today was just this, these moments of my day. This is what I have, this is all I have, I am relaxing into feeling that this is okay, I am finding a gentleness in dealing with myself that has been hard to come by in the past. Everything is different now. I am different. I am coming to a kind acceptance for this life of mine. It is a relief.

Infinite Compassion: A 365 Day Journey~ 
Day 1 – Peeling The Layers Of The Heart…

“We must continue to open in the face of tremendous opposition.
No one is encouraging us to open and still we must
peel away the layers of the heart.”
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche