I don’t know how I forgot, and I don’t know why it always happens in summer, but summer, for me, for what reasons I cannot imagine, has always been a crucible time. From very young on I have been extremely heat sensitive, and when summer comes, especially here on the coast of North Carolina, with it’s brutal, sub-tropical summers with 100 degree heat waves coupled with 100% humidity a lot of the summer, I always wonder if I will survive it. Though people die here every summer in the worst of the heat I know that literally I will survive, but something in me is put to the test, and each year I seem to face it again. This year my house burned down in February and it has been an unbelievably long journey to get to this point when finally I know that within a month, by the end of August or early September, I will move back into the house that is mine but has been rebuilt from the ground up. It is my house and not my house and I am afraid of it.

Too, because I lost my office and studio just when I was starting my business, the business that I needed to survive financially, the fire happened, and there were months when I couldn’t work at all. I have to work at home for reasons which I’ve written a lot about in the last entries, and in this tiny rental with no office or studio, just a laptop, it has been unbelievably hard to do anything at all. By the time I move back in the house will be nicely rebuilt by the insurance company but money to rebuild my home inside and my life in general and start over is very minimal, and my own funds have all but completely run out. It has led me into a kind of despair that I wasn’t sure I could survive this time but at the bottom of it all I looked up into the faces of my 4 wee rescue pugs and knew I would make it, no matter what, for them. But then, something started to rise in me, a kind of courage and bravado I had forgotten that I had. Oh yes, these are scary times, but I don’t have time to be afraid and I won’t let myself dwell there. And the quote came back to me, this quote, my number one favorite quote of all time since my 20’s when I first read Camus. The Stranger. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer…” And by God it’s in there somewhere. Today I decided to claim it and Kick Ass!

I have so much to do my bi polar brain can get all screwed up in knots and trip the light not so fantastically and I have to keep reigning myself in or I have to stop everything and take a nap under a pile of pugs. I have mental health challenges that rather than being stumbling blocks I like to see as incredible gifts that have helped me hone my life down to the essence so that I can do powerful work from the little space in which I feel safe enough to live. Agoraphobic, I am not comfortable, even terrified, much of the time, to leave my house, but inside these four walls I can, say it with me, Kick Ass!  And that’s exactly what I intend to do, and I intend to help others who are brave enough to jump on the I WILL SURVIVE AND THRIVE NO MATTER WHAT! bandwagon. We will kick ass together, we will survive all kinds of things. We will do it with eBooks and podcasts, bumper stickers and wild determination, and I will show them that it’s okay to stumble and say, “I’m sorry but my house burned down I’ll be a week late,” or something if the house is, one way or another, falling in on you. One thing that I have learned living with bi polar disorder is that sometimes my bi polar bits and parts will get disorderly and I have to pull back and balance and take care of myself — I am vigilant about self-care — but ask anyone who has worked with me and they will tell you that if I have to be a little slow here and there because my bits and parts got out of whack or my house burned down you will surely get what you came for and more. The kind of things people say about me in comments and reviews is that I “over deliver” and “give way more than expected.”

I bring this up because the reason so many people have trouble surviving and thriving is because they are afraid to say, “I’m so sorry but I have to be a couple of days, or a week, behind.” Now if you have a track record of only and always being behind that’s another story, but most people work hard and do their best to do their best but stuff happens. Brains go funny, houses burn down, people die, we get sick, our dog dies, and a whole host of other things. I am not a fan of pretending that life didn’t happen to you, and you know what the main reason is that you shouldn’t pretend it didn’t? Because you will then make everyone around you — including and especially the children you are raising to be strong and brave in the world — feel that they can’t be human. I think if we embraced this, say, gave a day off with pay if someone’s dog died, or really hard events that happen in life that are soul crushing — we would have more vital work places than anyone could possibly imagine, and further, I bet you that there would be far less drug abuse, alcoholism, fewer people barely hanging on by a thread and living on meds just to get by (I am not talking about people who have to take them because of a real mental health diagnosis, I mean the people who are driven to the brink by too much stress, too much despair, too much too much in the modern world), and I believe there would be fewer suicides. We have had a suicide in our family and if you’ve ever considered it, don’t. I realize some people feel they have no other option and there will always be people who will get to that point, but having watched the family so broken and in pain, the shockwaves that are sent through the whole community, the heartache that will never end, trust me, there are ways to survive that you never thought of. Trust me, I know.

I have woken up in the middle of the night so terrified by the nightmares, horrific nightmares, that have haunted my dreams since childhood, that I was afraid to get up and go to the bathroom. I have been up all night because I was afraid to go to sleep. I have rocked in bed holding myself and sobbing in the morning because I didn’t think that I could face another day. I have been so afraid to enter the outside world that I couldn’t get my mail for days or get the trash barrels out or back in. I have been so afraid to go out that I have run out of food and ordered too much carryout to be delivered for awhile. Lord, I pray for miracles like maybe they will one day have carryout other than Chinese food and pizza which are okay once in awhile but not for a steady diet. And there is so much more. But I’m still here, and I’m going to BE here, and, say it with me (Especially the “I’m” part because maybe you need to kick your inner ass kicker into high gear too!), I’M GONNA KICK ASS!!!

Right now I have one month and 3 days before the projected moving out of the rental date to go back home. I have to do so much work it kind of boggles the mind, both with The Spontaneous Art & Life Project & Women’s Circle, which I adore, create a bi-weekly eBook and daily podcast for + am very present with the women in the Circle, I have to create this new Surviving & Thriving project with monthly eBooks and daily podcasts (Please click the arrow at the bottom of this page to go to the last entry and the one before it to read the details and sign up if you are interested, it starts the first Monday in August but you can start any time, it will soon have it’s own page.), I daily have to work with the people who are rebuilding the house to do a laundry list of things for them, like by Monday I have to give them all the colors for the entire house, oy, and tell them which counters I want, and get answers from them I am waiting for so that I can make 127 other decisions I need to make RIGHT AWAY!, not to mention I am training for a part time job online so I have some money coming in and I have to watch dozens of webinars and so on for my training and I need to do it NOW so I can get some money coming in!

Some days I’m grateful when my manic side kicks in. Just for awhile. Or maybe a little longer.

So this is the summer I swear to God and all that I hold holy I will be invincible, or at least my bi polary version of invincible which, at times, gives me super powers mere mortals don’t have. (You just don’t want to be in my way when I’m driving like that, metaphorically speaking.) And I am going to get done what needs to be done and if one day I can’t I’ll take the day off and hide under a pile of pugs — oh, you think I’m kidding, take a look at this. This is me in my Giant Recliner (They call it The Beast, go ahead, you can look it up online!), under above-mentioned pile o’ pugs…

AND I AM GONNA — SAY IT WITH ME — KICK ASS!

Now I don’t have time to dawdle or stick around and chat, I’ve got work to do, but if you want to spend the year with me learning how to Survive and Thrive hop aboard, it will be a great ride and in the end you’ll be a kickin’ ass all over the damned place. Won’t that feel nice?

Best & Love & Hi Ho Silver, away I go!