The Woman Within

We all have those mornings where we wake up, after a long stretch of horrible sleep nights, to a day of clarity and calmness, feeling refreshed and anew.  Those moments, as we all know, do not last very long and become consumed by the minutiae and general stresses of reality and life.  When they do happen however, they can be an opportunity to see what has been plainly hidden in sight all along, yet unseen.  Today was just one of a handful of those days. I've been very stressed lately.  I haven't been fully forthcoming of the level of that stress to anyone and, instead, have been denying it's existence to myself.  Apparently, the adage I oft quip and only half believe, "IGNORE THE PROBLEM, IT WILL GO AWAY" was my downfall that would catch up from behind my back and consume me. It was this past Saturday Evening that J and I were out to a local T-Bones Steak House.  The restaurant was packed to the gills and the wait for a table was told to us to be a ha...

I was up early this past Sunday morning.  I haven't been sleeping all that well through most nights, my mind racing with so many thoughts, emotions and fears.  The sun was shining brightly on this early September Morning, and with the passage during the night of a strong cold front, fall was now unofficially here.  I ambled over to the kitchen and soon found myself standing over the sink as I washed and scoured the dishes, pots and pans that lay there from the night's dinner before. As I stood in silence, with the only other sound being that of the water running from the faucet, a vision of my mom in that moment arose.  There were many times that, as a child, I would awaken early on a weekend to find her in the kitchen doing the same thing as I was doing now.  I would ask her, "Why are you up so early doing dishes?". Her response to me was always the same.  "This is my time to myself." I understood, in the moment I was in now, just what she meant when...