Back After a Long, Hard Winter

Many of you have written me, asking about my family which is, miraculously, quite fine. Dad's had a complete recovery, Garland's heart is less the worse for wear, my young nephew does not have cancer, my owie wasn't a melanoma, my heart is now fine, my digestive system is healing and my cat didn't die.

Though, barely, on that cat front.

What I learned for certain in the last 12 months is how very powerful I truly am. Though my business needed to be ramped slightly down to give me the freedom to be where I needed to be, I kept it going and am on the home stretch run towards my Master's in business (with highest distinction, thus far).

It's not the things that can stop us. Kids, there were plenty of things out there that can fit that bill. It was who-I-said-I-was-going-to-be in the face of each and every thing that happened since March, '07 that means anything--that and whether I lived up to who I really am at each turn. I remember yet another doctor coming to tell me that Dad's case was hopeless and me saying "I'm taking my father out of here on his way to being whole, healthy and well and he'll be cared for by people who love or are predisposed to love him." One doctor just stared at me, telling me that I wasn't being realistic. I suggested he find another patient because he was the one who didn't get it. Later that week, that doctor kissed me on my cheek in the quiet of the ICU. Just a little human contact in that dim hallway that enriched my life. I think he could see his daughter in me, battling for her own father's life. There was so much love in that hospital those weeks there and even more in the rehab center where Dad lived for the next two months before I took him home to live on his own.

He's working out three times a week now, bragging that he's got a "two pack."

I amazed myself and when I think back on it I want to cry for the times I didn't know if I had it in me---particularly when busses weren't falling out of the sky. When I didn't think I knew enough to start my business all those years ago, or get into graduate school, or land that client...

We are--every one of us--more than we know or can suspect.

Enjoy this piece from Bobby McFerrin--essentially a love song to Mary. He and his music are just plain beautiful.