When I get what I asked for, and create what I want.  When I do something mean or stupid and someone forgives me and continues to love me and accept me.  That my friends and I can get together after over 10 years of friendship, from all over the US, and it still feels like we last talked yesterday.  When a party goes really well AND the clean-up is a breeze :D.  Seahorses, whales, and canopy tours.  My own ability to overcome myself sometimes.

That "should's" are needless.  That joy and play and rest are ok.  More than ok, actually, they just are!  That losing sight of the moment for tomorrow or yesterday is not as fun, or as necessary, as I thought.  That intuition really is precious, and that it's wonderful when you listen to it.   That you need to both ask AND receive. :)

Lol, this started when my friend and I were both like "we could use a Red Tent to go to once a month or so to eat chocolate and talk and cry and laugh."  I would create a Red Tent-like retreat center--geared specifically toward self-care in women.  There'd be lush, soothing, comfortable rooms, well-lit and dark, spaces to sit and read books, receive and learn energy healing, support groups for a variety of women's life phases (from grief, to menopause, to puberty, to marriage), sex-ed classes and experts, gynocologists, therapists, gp's, rape/sexual assault counseling specialists, and nurses on-call...oh, it'd be grand.  IFestivals promoting wellness, self-love, and empowerment would be given each month, discussion groups on goddesses and archetypes would be held, and any women's group could use spaces and rooms for their own actvities and ideas.  This would be well-funded from a few generous benfactors, so naturally we wouldn't need to fundraise for the center or its programs, but we would host and work to fundraise and advocate for women's causes around the world--(lol, see the dream of a nonprofit worker here?)

The whole point would be to recreate the sense of community and bonding that joined women in ye olden times around their bodies, while educating and expanding women's notions of self-care, healing, and support for one another.   Wouldn't it be wonderful?? 

Yes, pretty much always.  Though I think being hit with this spiritual 2x4 to the head enough times has taught me to open my mind up a little bit more and consider what I'm fighting against (change? growth? newness?).  It's never easy giving up friends and lovers, but those changes, the ones where someone leaves or you need to leave, or it just needs to be clean break, as opposed to growth into a new friendship or love, always just plain piss me off and bring out way too much stubbornness in me.  Mostly with myself, frustration I didn't see it coming, or that I don't know where to go from that place. 

I think it's my dad piling up a bunch of stuffed animals around me, taking them from my bedroom to my parents' bedroom, and telling me stories about princesses while piling the stuffed animals on top of me to "hide me."  Then my mom comes in and I act really quiet, and she's laughing, and we're all laughing.  :)