Dear %$firstname$%,
Grab a box of tissue! This is powerful and personal.
Women are amazing. I mean really amazing. Our greatest gift of bottomless giving is our greatest contribution as well as our greatest challenge. Somewhere in between and essential is the need to love ourselves as much as we love others, so this journey becomes our evolutionary stretch and we somehow keep stepping forward to explore the edge of our comfort zone. That is where deep joy lives.
I dare to share another personal core, beautiful, happy, bittersweet moment of reflection on my grand-nephew Connor’s continuing journey with cancer that oozes with profound love… no… LOVE. This is one of those ‘ALL CAPS raw, real moments for me that I suspect will open your heart a little wider, too. It is healing and hopeful to access the ‘real’ that often gets stuffed way down in our busy-ness that helps us appreciate how powerful we really are even when we feel fragile.
To know my niece, Alicia, and her remarkable oldest son, Connor and this entire family is to know grit, determination, tenderness, risk, feminine power, willingness, sensitivity, grace, flow, focus, intellect, intuition, tenacity, transformation, caring, gentleness, leadership, unity, and deep relentless commitment even when you are too tired to move and none of it makes sense.
I am blessed to be an up close witness as Connor and Alicia (little brother Carson and proud dad, Steve) expand and deepen the meaning of family, maneuver each unknown and savor each precious moment against all the odds thrown their way. Whether they want to or not, feel like it or don’t, they live each day, each moment, as present as possible with forgiveness and love as the underlying propulsion that gets them one step further, and then another.
Although we still stretch to learn self-love, hands down, there is nothing like a mother’s love. Nothing!
I respect Alicia beyond words and I am so proud to be one of the women of this family. I witness this same power in my own daughters as they do what is asked of them each day as best they know how in order to embrace their journey with their own special needs kids. They doubt themselves constantly and yet stretch to see joy even when it is hiding and happiness when it is difficult to find.
I also witness and honor the supporting role of the siblings, Carson, Cohen and Brynn, who stand strong in the shadows with their own unique and precious gifts. As odd as it all is, it is all perfect because each one in their own way continues to become stronger as a result, a force to be reckoned with, unstoppable yet adaptable. Because of them teaching us as well as us teaching them, we all become stronger and better humans.
Perhaps there is not only a personal purpose being fulfilled through moments like these that we would rather avoid if we could, but a family theme as well. These Hull women make their Grandma Tutu, my mom, proud… making me proud to now be a ‘Tutu’ (Bobo) to all my ‘grands.’ They activate in me and make me aware of how blessed I am even when the road of being human gets messy, and for this consciousness expanding opportunity I am grateful.
Click the link below to watch Connor as he was sworn in as Mukilteo Junior Police Chief, preceded by Alicia’s powerful unrehearsed introduction story: http://youtu.be/snJDoppWNT8
Joyfully,
Rhonda
If you feel this newsletter would make the road of life a bit easier for another, please pass along. Invite all your family and friends to sign up for my newsletter by visiting http://www.centerofhappiness.com. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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