pies at soul food farm. photo by bart nagel.

something amazing has been happening inside and around me over the past year. i'm not necessarily to the point where i can articulate it very well, but it's something like this: once i shed the idea that who i am is who i will always be, i started to become the person i've always wanted to and believed i could be. i had to let go of the preconceived notions of who samin is in order to be able to begin to become the person i've always wanted to be. does this make sense?

we all make mistakes, and i've made more than my fair share, mostly involving my being really hard on the people around me. but as one with type-a, ocd tendencies, i've always been harder than myself than anyone else, and that's never led to anything very good.

i've had to learn to forgive myself for my mistakes; incredibly (and unexpectedly), that's allowed me to be so much kinder to the people around me. in turn, the kindness and generosity has been returned to me ten-fold, and continues to breed abundance in the most unexpected ways. each day, new magic unfolds in my life (as melissa put it earlier tonight, "so, what amazing thing happened today? did julia child get up out of her grave to come over for dinner?"), and i've found that the best thing to do is just to roll with it, and to exude gratitude at every turn.

of course, each day i still struggle with the practice of not beating myself up for every little thing; i have to work really, really hard to see the greater successes instead of the details of failure. nitpicking has always been a favorite pastime, and i struggle at controlling it. jealousy, too. and of course, there's insecurity--well, there's always plenty of that. i don't doubt that facing these issues will be a lifetime practice for me, but even taking the first few steps down this path has been groundbreaking for me.