Jen's Web (Part 2)

I said I would expand on Jen’s Web…so here I am stretching and expanding. This weekend…I took a road trip to State College, PA. I went to Penn State University for my undergraduate degree many years ago. Some college friends, associated with my sorority, were planning a get together. I went back and forth and back and forth on whether or not I should go to this event. The expectations were for us all to meet up Friday evening, at a local hang out, as everyone gets into town. The next day would be filled with tailgating before and after the Penn State Football game followed by more socializing wherever we all would end up. Lastly, Sunday would be a day of reminiscing our sorority life at a brunch and reception with the local active chapter. For me, I was unsure if this was at all what I wanted to do. But I decided to come anyway. I am glad I did. Catching up with old friends on Friday evening was simply fun. It was nice to see old friends and catch up on years past. Most of these women have careers and families and are juggling the lives of managing their numerous roles. They are happy to get away for some moments of freedom from their busy schedules and to once again relive our college moments and memories. I too felt a sense of relief when I finally caught up with my sorority sisters and found out that we all share many of the same struggles and delights in our separate corners of the world. We have reconnected happily reminisced as well as shared our new lives. We have all grown into incredible women.

I am thankful, for deciding to come. I am especially thankful for the freedom from mother hood responsibilities. (My husband is watching all three kids this weekend!) I have the ability to go and do whatever I like at anytime during the day and the ability to ‘NOT’ have to answer to anyone. Few…I forgot what this kind of freedom was. It is good to be reminded of what this feels like. It is so simply easy to forget. This independence has reminded me of the ‘I can do anything’ & ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude I freely expressed many years ago. I am still that same person I once was, just a little more mature, a lot more vibrant, and way more knowledgeable about life and living. Yes, I still know that ‘nothing is impossible’ but it is a different form of energy then what it once was. Then it was an energy that was sometimes misguided. It often became frustrated and easily distracted or unbalanced. Now it has grown into a constant balance of comforted energy that knows ‘nothing is impossible’. Then, I was challenged to stretch and grow into believing that anything can be done. Now, I have firm roots supporting all my beliefs that sometimes sway and shift with the winds but overall stay firmly where they are. Then, I had significant people come in and out of my life that helped me to become the woman I am today. Now, that I am the woman I have always dreamed of becoming, I still grow, learn, and change but the simplicities in life are what give me the most pleasure instead of the dramas and the challenges that always brought me to my climactic views. Now, I stand firmly in my shoes of a woman. My roar is of a Lioness who loves and protects her family and lives life to the fullest in sync with the natural flow of life. Going back to experience ‘who I once was’ helps me to see all the riches and incredible unfolding of my life that has brought me to where I am today. And those wonderful sorority sisters, that I am so proud of, helped me immensely along the way. We reconnect now and still help each other to go forward in life. They are all women of my web, the web of Jen, which keeps unfolding and transforming in marvelous miraculous ways.

This is you; we all hold this deep within our hearts. The magic is in going in to recognize you have all this and more inside of you and all we have to do is trust and allow the joy to arrive. It’s there waiting for you. So knock on the door. The doors will open and your past is waiting for you to come back and experience who you once were so that you know the incredibleness that you are today. No matter if you have a tragic past or not. Each experience is carefully orchestrated to grow you into light. So go ahead, embrace your light, and love your life, no matter where you are. Allow these opportunities to come into your life. Embrace them, as you would an old friend. You will find that when you allow yourself to go back and revisit who you once were there are always diamonds in the rough waiting to show you how sparkly you are. Especially, when you physically revisit places of the past. There is an even more empowering energy there waiting your presence to help you climb to higher ground. It is not enough to look at pictures or to talk about old times. When you actually put yourself in the places of what you once were you own who you are today. So, go ahead and take a chance, go and do and be who you were from the past and see how healing and revealing it can be. I know I have more to come. This retreat to my college days is just the beginning. I will be continuing to go back to places that I have often wanted to forget about because the pains were too great to bear. I now also know that this is just the way I perceived these situations at the time. Now, when I go back I go back perceiving life through the eyes of joy and with the knowing that I thankfully experienced all that I have experienced in order to get me where I am today. For this I am thankful. Thank you.