Ani Dylan PsyD, Life Coach

I asked a friend who has crossed 70 & is heading towards 80 what sort of changes he is feeling in himself? He sent me the following: 1 After loving my parents, ...my siblings, my spouse, my children and my friends, I have now started loving myself. 2 I have realized that I am not Atlas. The world does not rest on my shoulders. 3 I have stopped bargaining with vegetable & fruit vendors. A few pennies more is not going to break me, but it might help the poor fellow save for his daughter’s school fees. 4 I leave my waitress a big tip. The extra money might bring a smile to her face. She is toiling much harder for a living than I am. 5 I stopped telling the elderly that they've already narrated that story many times. The story makes them walk down memory lane & relive their past. 6 I have learned not to correct people even when I know they are wrong. The onus of making everyone perfect is not on me. Peace is more precious than perfection. 7 I give compliments freely & generously. Compliments are a mood enhancer not only for the recipient, but also for me. And a small tip for the recipient of a compliment, never, NEVER turn it down, just say "Thank You. 8 I have learned not to bother about a crease or a spot on my shirt. Personality speaks louder than appearances. 9 I walk away from people who don't value me. They might not know my worth, but I do. 10 I remain cool when someone plays dirty to outrun me in the rat race. I am not a rat & neither am I in any race. 11 I am learning not to be embarrassed by my emotions. It’s my emotions that make me human. 12 I have learned that it's better to drop the ego than to break a relationship. My ego will keep me aloof, whereas with relationships, I will never be alone. 13 I have learned to live each day as if it's the last. After all, it might be the last. 14 I am doing what makes me happy. I am responsible for my happiness, and I owe it to myself. Happiness is a choice. You can be happy at any time, just choose to be! I decided to share this for all my friends. Why do we have to wait to be 60 or 70 or 80, why can't we practice this at any stage and age?

FAREWELL LETTER (For All the Mothers Who Have Passed Away) She wrote me a letter... after her death and I remember a kind of happy light falling on the envelope as I sat by the rose tree on her old bench at the back door, so surprised by its arrival wondering what she would say, looking up before I could open it and laughing to myself in silent expectation. Dear son, it is time for me to leave you. I am afraid that the words you are used to hearing are no longer mine to give, they are gone and mingled back in the world where it is no longer in my power to be their first original author not their last loving bearer. You can hear motherly words of affection now only from your own mouth and only when you speak them to those who stand motherless before you. As for me I must forsake adulthood and be bound gladly to a new childhood. You must understand this apprenticeship demands of me an elemental innocence from everything I ever held in my hands. I know your generous soul is well able to let me go you will in the end be happy to know my God was true and I find myself after loving you all so long, in the wide, infinite mercy of being mothered myself. P.S. All your intuitions were true. FAREWELL LETTER in River Flow New & Selected Poems Many Rivers Press David Whyte https://davidwhyte.com//prod/river-flow-new-selected-poems A mother remains a mother even after they have passed away, and in many ways the conversation between mother and son, mother and daughter, if we allow it, can deepen and intensify after their going. My mother had lost her own mother at just thirteen years old, and I had the strongest intuition after she had gone that she was returning to the childhood that had ended too soon in the Ireland of her youth. To acknowledge a mother, but also to let her go into her own personhood, independent of that the fact that she brought us into this world, may be one of the more difficult steps in the maturity of that almost indissoluble bond. DW Dublin Bay Roses Photo David Whyte May 19th 2020

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Between Lament and Gratitude It’s easy at this time of year to feel a heaviness in one’s heart .. it could be the dying away of things during the month of Novem...ber with her meagre rays of sunlight and long black nights, or the news that details so many tragedies in our struggling world, or that grandchildren live too far away to be held in our arms .. whatever it is there are countless reasons to feel sad, fatigued and overwhelmed .. and even as moments of enormous generosity and beauty pierce through the mayhem of our days, I can’t say I have much faith that we will take the necessary steps to course correct so that future generations will recognize our actions as having been taken in service to their lives and the life of the planet instead of the default focus on our immediate satisfaction. And yet there are plenty of reasons to press on no matter how deeply mired we might be in the belly of the machine .. I wonder what we might each speak out loud if today were our last day to live .. I wonder about the 7.8 billion people on our planet and how each, including myself, is so sure about the accuracy of the lens though which they view life and how it might be if we were all a little less sure. I wonder what it might be like if we were less committed to our comforts and opinions and more committed to the lands and waters which we depend upon to live. I wonder about the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he wrote, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." I wonder about how much sorrow each human being carries inside him or herself that will never see the light of day because of how much it asks of others and of the world to bear witness to it .. and how it still leaks into world anyway. I find myself unable to turn away from injustices and equally perplexed at continuing to perpetrate them every single day by virtue of belonging to a culture that cannot stop its sanctioned addiction to destruction. My life is dependent upon my complicity and I can be tormented by knowing it or brokenhearted by knowing it. More and more I choose the latter. I simply want to lie down with my heart pressed against the earth, ask her to hold me yet again as she has done so often since the time immemorial, and weep for how hard it is for each and every one of us. And I wonder if it's too much to ask her since perhaps she too needs to be held. How could she not. I think of Leonard Cohen's words: "What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?" May we be merciful. In spite of all this and more, may we be grateful. If you have something to care for in this life that depends on you to keep it alive, you are blessed. If you have someone to love and someone who loves you, you are blessed. Bless what has blessed you. There are so many reasons to keep going .. so many reasons to say Amen Keep going friends .. Poetess (Rachelle Lamb) Artwork by Deborah Koff-Chapin

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The... birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated. ~Terry Tempest Williams Painting: Raymond Hagerman. See more

"You can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending." - C.S. Lewis"You can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending." - C.S. Lewis

When you follow the crowd, you can lose yourself. When you follow your soul, and think critically, you sometimes lose the crowd and even "friends" may not understand and criticize you. To thine own self be true.