Beauty

Just to go back to thr first post...my original intention was to create a 'blank book' where I and others could create their own divine text by describing what they find beautiful in their lives.

A couple of my posts have remarked on beauty I find in the fall, accompanied by a piercing feeling of loss and memory.

What do you find truly beautiful? And what feeling(s)does it evoke in you?

What do you know about beauty? You know everything about what is lovely and divine to you.

Personal Bill of Rights

Feel free to copy, paste and print this. What do you KNOW is your right?

Personal Bill of Rights for Adult Children

1. I have a right to all those good times that I have longed for all these years and didn’t get.
2. I have a right to joy in this life, right here, right now — not just a momentary rush of euphoria but something more substantive.
3. I have a right to relax and have fun in a nonalcoholic and nondestructive way.
4. I have a right to actively pursue people, places, and situations that will help me in achieving a good life.
5. I have the right to say no whenever I feel something is not safe or I am not ready.
6. I have a right to not participate in either the active or passive “crazy-making” behavior of parents, of siblings, and of others.
7. I have a right to take calculated risks and to experiment with new strategies.
8. I have a right to change my tune, my strategy, and my funny equations.
9. I have a right to “mess up”; to make mistakes, to “blow it”, to disappoint myself, and to fall short of the mark.
10. I have a right to leave the company of people who deliberately or inadvertently put me down, lay a guilt trip on me, manipulate or humiliate me, including my alcoholic relative, my nonalcoholic relatives, or any other member of my family.
11. I have a right to put an end to conversations with people who make me feel put down and humiliated.
12. I have a right to all my feelings.
13. I have a right to trust my feelings, my judgment, my hunches, my intuition.
14. I have a right to develop myself as a whole person emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically, and psychologically.
15. I have a right to express all my feelings in a nondestructive way and at a safe time and place.
16. I have a right to as much time as I need to experiment with this new information and these new ideas and to initiate changes in my life.
17. I have a right to sort out the bill of goods my parents sold me — to take the acceptable and dump the unacceptable.
18. I have a right to a mentally healthy, sane way of existence, though it will deviate in part, or all, from my parents' prescribed philosophy of life.
19. I have a right to carve out my place in this world.
20. I have a right to follow any of the above rights, to live my life the way I want to, and not wait until my alcoholic relative gets well, gets happy, seeks help, or admits there is a problem.

September 1st

Have had some sniffles for a few days, and getting an actual cough...will have to cancel a job tomorrow morning, and hope I don't have the H1N1 (swine flu).

I am so grateful for all the people who support me...I can feel quite calm and confident even though my former? sweetie is, to all appearances, gone.

I can love the person, hate the behaviour, and refuse to have the behaviour in my life. We're not talking loud TV volume here - we're talking gambling and disappearing for some 5 days now.

What do you know about relationships? About keeping a balance between your health and that of others?