Lose Someone so you can Win Your Life back

Today is VETERANS DAY in the United States.  11-11-11, as it happens to be.  I have known many veterans over the course of my life and currently know a few enlisted servicemen and women. My readers know, that my brother was KIA in 2004.  So on a day like today, I have some feelings and thoughts...perhaps not the same as the majority of my friends and neighbors.  But out there in my community, there are like-minded individuals who feel that honoring Veterans today is important.

Some years I march in parades, while other years I hear a speech and visit the Cemetary.  On Memorial Day this past year, I took my family away to New Hampshire for the weekend.  No matter how I use this time, I am mindful..and not just ON THAT DAY...but always...I am mindful that I am here, alive and living.  As I live, I offer gratitude on a daily basis for the opportunity to do so.  It is easy to forget or take for granted the lives of fallen ServicePeople like my brother.  But because it is personal to me, I have  that perspective burned into my consciousness where it stays always.

 This photo above is Sgt. Todd Parisi removing the yellow ribbon from the tree at Dad and Jane's House during the funeral procession.  This picture is very dear to me.

This picture here...THIS is tomorrow's Veteran.  He is the son or daughter of any person in any community anywhere around our country.  He or she is or was an average kid who wanted to go to college or make a life for himself.  The military is an important life choice.

The date on this picture would indicate to me that it was taken exactly one month before John died.

So what does my Blog title mean?  Lose someone...so you can win your life back.  We are all engaged in warfare.  Our war is on the spiritual vs physical level.  Although my John used weapons and fought a physical enemy, his enemy was never a person or the Taliban or AlQueda.  His purpose in life was to fight a Spiritual battle.  I wonder what tools he used for that.

Losing John had a profound effect on everyone here in our circle.  It made such a devastating crater that those at ground zero were just taken out.  My Mom and my Dad will never be the same. My sisters and I are affected in varying ways.  But for me, Losing someone meant winning Life back.  John would never ever have wanted any of us to suffer and be miserable without him.  John loved to live and play and travel and meet new people and he was an all-around great guy.

Losing John started me on a path of discovery.  After a year or two of depression, related to losing him, I tried getting back out into "The Workplace".  I took a job at AAA.  I found myself always emotional and never achieving the level I wanted to be at. I had moments whem I was truly strong and I was impressive, but I could not perform that way consistently, and so the depression came back when I was pregnant with my son and working there.  People were way more understanding then I could have expected.  I had great times there.  But eventually, I had to ask myself, how long can you carry-on with this facade of happiness?  I didn't want to just keep getting by, I wanted to really WIN MY LIFE BACK.

I left that job in 2009, but I did not experience my first real breakthrough until 2010.  I often credit reading The Secret on my birthday (August 20) with my initiation into discovering The Right Way to live, but actually the changes began a slight bit earlier in May 2010.  I was stricken with the desire for change around that time.  I had an inner prompting to exercise, lose weight and improve myself.  It was because of this that I would be in Danielle's car the day she got wrongly fired from Sears, and I would sit on a copy of The Secret in her passenger-side seat.  Because of her detour through Cranston to retrieve a phone charger, I was able to read the first few chapters of this book, which started my thinking.  I had never heard such ideas as what I was reading and now...today...I completely take for granted that EVERYONE knows this!  I wonder if they do?

When I began that transformation, it was slow...it was a process and did not happen instantly.  although time, according to Einstein, exists everywhere all at once rather than in a line, we are all constantly being exposed to new things and receiving new messages.  I guess it is possible they are old messages, just newly received.  Anyway, no one really cares what you know unless they know that you care right?  At first when I would talk about my new beliefs, people seemed uncomfortable or perhaps they were judgemental of me for not just reading a book and then saying "hey that was a good book" and putting it away.  I could not do that.  I re-read it many times and I went on to receive and read The Power.  But the theme of my life choices had become "transformation".

So, Losing someone caused me to WIN LIFE...back.  I can remember a time in my life when I was connected with these beliefs.  It was time of innocence for me.  I can still remember it though.  I used to convene with nature and escape to the woods where I would ponder the nature of all things and talk to  my God, and sing and pray and cry and run.  I would literally frolic in the woods.  That is the level of joy that we are expected to feel if we truly believe in Certainty.  If we want to Win back our lives...the lives we were meant to have.  This is how we were created to Live.  We are no accident of evolution...no by-product.  We (people) are the Divinity of the World.

My Brother John's Last Accomplishment in life...earning his Purple Heart.

~namaste~