As fall approaches and the weather changes it starts to feel natural to access the year and what you have experienced, accomplished and to start to measure yourself against your hopes, wishes and dreams you may have set out to experience. This is the time we usually start to get down upon ourselves for not doing or accomplishing enough or we double down and try to squeeze something out just to mark it off a list. We may start to feel the heaviness of a pressure or a sadness of what has yet to come into our lives. I am grateful to these feelings and have learned to embrace and allow myself to feel them without judging myself. I now know these feelings are a wakeup call that something is ready to fade away and something that ignites me is waiting to be discovered. Yet in the past when I tried to avoid these feelings or questioned if something was wrong with me I failed to see I was prolonging something I was ready to end and something that was waiting to be born within me was not given space to emerge. I discovered this by chance on day of feeling sorry for myself, low energy, pain, and unmotivated. I took a bath and let myself just be. As I went within my mind and body took me on an awareness journey of what I no longer felt passionate about or you could say what I had experienced all that I needed to experience. Now all that was left was for me to go through that experience and find what I learned. What I liked, what I did not, what I would do the same, what I would change and do differently. To feel and find my gratitude for all I was able to participate in, the expansion and sometimes the contraction. These all are great lessons to be reviewed. I found the gratitude for people who were part of the journey. And yes even the ones who at the time irritated me or frustrated me. For I have learned that each of them have something for me to learn about myself. I learned that we all are more alike than different in how we feel, what life requires of us and all trying to find connection, acceptance and love. I have learned to look at how I cope with all these things and to look at how others cope as well. To see underneath it all we are all hear having a human experience in a body we all have no idea exactly how it functions completely and sometimes run a muck and fall back to times we were very young and protecting ourselves. So I look at anger and yelling as a coping strategy. I look at avoidance as a coping strategy. We all have coping strategies and we all at times fall into them when pushed past our comfort zone. I now try to look to others to help me see and evaluate where I may need a reminder of my own coping strategies that do not bring connection, acceptance or a loving approach. For everyone who I get to interact with everyday thank you for being my mirror.