Hello March!!!! 🌷

Hello March!!!! 💚

It's a month of new beginnings & springing forward. 🌸

It's also Women's History Month!!! Where my girls at?? 🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋‍♀️

Other calendar dates. 🗓️

March 8 - International Women's Day 💁🏽‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️

March 9 - National Napping Day 😴

March 12 - Popcorn Lover's Day 🍿#pattyspopcorn

March 17 - St. Patrick's Day ☘️ 

March 18 - Global Recycling Day ♻️ 

March 20 - 1st Day of Spring 🌷

8 Months - Grief & New Beginnings

    It was a night like tonight when we loss our father, grandfather and my mother's husband of over 50 years. For me it's been 8 months of trying to balance many aspects of my life, including grief, and honoring my father. Somedays it's hard to get up and be productive. Somedays, I lay in the bed most of the day and scroll, sleep or let my mind wander.

    Sometimes, I think I'm getting better one minute and the next minute, I'm curled up in a ball. The hardest part was that it was totally unexpected and we didn't get to say goodbye in the way that we thought we would. It's been rough thinking about how he passed. My dad fought prostate cancer for 20 years and yet that wasn't his cause of death.  As we read the coroner's report, it felt like the wind was taken out of us. He went to doctor faithfully and followed instructions thoroughly. In that moment it felt unfair or was it just us being selfish? Maybe a mixture of both.

    Today makes the 8th month since he's been gone. 8 means new beginnings. I guess I'm finding that new beginning can be hard and depressing, yet also an opportunity to implement what my father taught us and to carry on legacy.

Eight Months Later

It’s been eight months,

and we’ve learned how to carry the silence.

Not because it got easier—

but because we’ve grown around the ache.

There are days we laugh now.

There are days we move freely.

But there are also days, like today,

where we feel it all again—

as if no time has passed at all.

Eight months ago, the world lost you.

But we never did.

You are still ours

Still loved.

Still remembered.

Still here—in every breath we take through the pain.

Fresh Rain New Beginnings

Early this morning as I walked to my car, the rain was gently falling before sunrise and as I inhaled, I smelled the scents of the newness of Spring. I smelled the idea of new flowers being planted and the reemerging of my lavender and hastas plants from the previous year. I smelled the idea of fresh cut lawns and the dusting off of porch furniture. I smelled newness as the rain fell on me. 

The only thing, though, it's February. It's wintertime and yet I smelled Spring. I smelled my favorite season. If I can be transparent, my feelings have been hurt several times here lately but I sense new opportunities and open doors are upon the horizon. I'm learning to take pauses and to assess the roles that I've played in these heartaches. Only to essentially understand that in many instances, I've broken my own heart by staying in places and relationships past the time I was supposed to. When I should have made clean breaks, I've stayed because of comfort and because of loyalty. That comes from an honest place and God has a way of bringing those things to light where you have absolutely no choice but to see it, experience it.

Today the rain reminded me that new beginnings are coming my way. That unbelievable doors will open for me. I've been fed for years now it's time to flourish in the new beginnings that emerge from  fresh rain. Spring is upon us. God makes all things new.