Wonder in the Everyday

Hello all. I'm going through menopause, I don't know if this has anything to do with my experiences lately but as I have started to experience brain fog I decided not to fight it but go with the flow. From what I have read, we experience brain fog as we are aging as women because our right brain (the intuitive, creative, non-linear side of our brain), is becoming activated. If we allow ourselves to experience this instead of fighting it (by becoming more attached to the rational side) we experience being in the present moment and what that has to teach us.

Take today for instance. I had to run some errands but took a moment to experience my surroundings, what I noticed is everywhere I seemed to go today on my bicycle there was this fluffy snowlike substance floating around that was detaching from cottonwood trees. I decided to ride down by the lake and it was everywhere. The experience was like riding my bicycle through a snowstorm, it was even piling up in the curbs on the street and being stirred up by passing cars. How lovely and magical.

Upon awakening, I had been experiencing a pain right around my heart area. I decided to see what was at the bottom of that pain and tried to allow myself to feel it while riding through this mysterious snowstorm. Memories of my father flooded through me like yesterday and it seemed time stood still as I felt the pain associated with my relationship with him. He never protected me from the violence of my mother when I was a young child, he was weak in the times he needed to be strong. I thought of a movie that always makes me cry about this, Million Dollar Baby, when Clint Eastwood's character told Hillary Swank's character what her name meant, "my daughter, my blood", just before he grants her wish of euthanasia. God just writing about it now makes me cry. How important those words are to children, that we are loved and held in regard by our parents.

Further along my path I saw some swans. I stopped my bicycle to stand and watch them realizing, it was a family; mother, father and 2 babies. I decided to get closer to them. I walked along the water and sat down by the water. Just then one of the babies jumped on its mother's back. The sight was so beautiful and profound to me, the mother enclosed her baby on her back safely within her dazzling white wings, while he had a little ride in the water. Right there I saw what I missed most, the play and fair regard I never experienced as a child with my parents. I wept. There watching the swan family I felt my heart healed a little, by the time I left the pain had subdued.