I live on $1338.00 per month, and I think I have an abundant life.  This is well below poverty level, yet,  if someone were to ask me what I need to make my life better,  I’d be hard-pressed to give an answer.

I worked and raised my two sons as a single parent, and made choices toward that which I aspired.  I always had it in my head that I wanted a paid-up homestead.  When I was 65, I achieved this goal. Owning a house was to me a most important thing.

My mother had purchased a little house which she used as a rental, and she figured I’d be her perfect tenant.  It was the late 60’s.  I was living hand-to-mouth, had a good job, no savings, and she figured I may as well pay her the rent as any stranger.  With some persuasion, I did move into that one-bedroom house.   She had profited over the purchase price of the home, and one day, she offered to give it to me, if I paid the taxes and closing costs for transferring the deed.  Down the street there was a bi-racial couple. I had always figured she thought her property was going to lose value, so why not give it to me, as against try to sell it.   She and I saw very little eye-to-eye, so I judged her very harshly on my assumptions of her agenda.  I lived in that house for a couple of years, and without breaking any outside walls,  made it into a two-bedroom, installed a dishwasher and put in an eating nook off the kitchen, added double front windows….all with the help of  “Mr. Peach”, my handyman (who moonlighted this work, after he had installed the dishwasher), along with my pure  gumption and grit that always kept me advancing.

When I sold ‘the little blue house’, it was the beginning of me moving forward, buying another one, and another one after that.  When I moved to Phoenix in 1990, it was that last house I sold to make that move, which I had lived in for 13 years.

I’ve shared this story to illustrate that everyone marches to their own drum…listens to their own music…sees the opportunities and is grateful for their successes, or complains for the lack thereof.  Everyone’s reality is different, and has been shaped by their own personal experience.  My  life wasn’t all rosy.  I made good and not-so-good choices…My father was bi-polar, an alcoholic, and had committed less than stellar acts against me which I recount in my last book, My Beginning Game, Without End (A Handbook to Self-Renewal).

My eldest son took his life in 2011.  The following are excerpts from My Beginning Game. “Chapter Three, Brutal Facts

“Thought for the Day and a Truth:  Every bad thing that happens can be looked at in a more favorable light.  You can be grateful under the worst of circumstances if you choose gratitude….Circumstances could have been much worse!  He could have permanently and irreparably disfigured his face and lived, AND/OR he could have sustained brain damage and lived out the rest of his natural life beyond the 46 years when it happened, as a vegetable! I am grateful for the outcome.

“It is so important that we become more serious about things that happen to us, or around us.  It is absolutely necessary that we ‘put it outside of ourselves’ and look at it the way it is, how it could be, how we can change it, how we can dismiss it, how we can decide whether it is Our Business, ‘Their Business’, or God’s Business (to paraphrase Byron Katie, The Work).

“We are not born victims of life.  I believe we are the perceivers of life. Big difference.  How many years I have lived under the assumption that I made my bed and had to sleep in it.  I figured out this was half true.  Yes, I may have made the bed, but I found out I could move it around every which way until I righted myself.  It is called learning the lesson and making some changes!

“…if you are scoffing reading this, if you are choosing not to see it as a truthful possibility, if you choose to sit in your close-mindedness and willingness to stay in the very place you’ve been to this very minute…STOP IT!  There are even more possibilities to a happiness-filled life than I know and have yet to discover!….It’s all in my hands and I refuse to stop.  My Joy and Happiness is at stake, and by the way, that goes for everyone around me too!”

Sometimes tunnel vision is a good thing.

(Caveat:  I have since thanked my Mother for giving me the ‘house start’…No matter what I thought, it was indeed a gift that never stopped giving as far as I was concerned.  I’m grateful I have broadened my views about so many important things.)

Direction, Persistence, Perseverance, Intuitive Wisdom, Heart Space,

Grit, Stamina, Desire, Attention and Intention…all dependent upon

the strength of choices and actions.        ~Gaya

Blessed Be to All,  To All Stay Safe and Well.