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Hi .

Should you be relatively new and wondering, you are receiving this mailing because at some point you subscribed from one of my sites to the Picture to Ponder or Treasure Your Life Now Ezine. Thank you and Welcome.

To all you whom I so appreciate, your life has likely been full these past two months as has mine.  What new things have you discovered? I'd love to hear in a reply email, on the blog or on Facebook, where I'll mention this post.  I'll also detail a bit about my happenings at the end of this ezine. In the meantime I want to get right to... 

Today's Photos - 
Sunflowers, a few of the over 300 photos I took during the 21 days following the purchase of bouquet of five. I invite you to allow the sunflower images to speak to you before reading what I wrote.  Are they holding, or withholding, any secrets, as one person who saw the photos suggested?

 

 

One of my activities during these past two months has been working on the completion of my Writing for Self-Discovery: Creating Breakthroughs Kindle book. A friend and mentor who previewed portions of a Preview wrote:

"When you do your free-flow writing, it's like poetry. It's beautiful writing, clear, elegant, unencumbered." Her comments moved me to do some timed, free-flow writing to the Sunflowers for this issue instead of explaining. Thus:

Sunflower waiting to burst through
Comfortably protected in elastic netting
What’s possible when released?

Petals open out curly…
some straight, others varied... 
lighting demands taking photos from different directions.




5 flowers lasted 21 days. 
Reluctant to show the ending…
the beauty seems to have disappeared
and yet they wanted to be taken.
Images, photos.

Can you find the beauty? From underneath and above.
What are the flowers wanting us to know?
That no matter what age, no matter what angle
they still exist to be seen, to be honored?

So be it. I’ll go back and include some of the photos here.




 

The third photo was taken seven days into the series. The last two were 20 days after I brought them home and unwrapped them.

The Quandry - Mine, when putting together this issue -
I wanted to share beauty and I was not finding it in the "end-of-life" photos of the sunflowers. Since they did come up, though, in the free-flow writing, plus the fact that a couple of friends encouraged me to "share all", I went with adding the last two photos.

One "secret" was that I'm almost always promoting finding the beauty in everything we see and I wasn't here.

I think part of the reluctance for me here also, another "secret," was being in a state of denial. In addition to my not wanting you to know I was missing seeing beauty, or that writing is often a burden, I was likely thrown back to the days of being in denial about the likelihood of my beloved Sam's no longer being with me.

For those not with this community in the Picture to Ponder days, Sam had Parkinson's Disease. Though Parkinson's itself is not fatal, other complications generally surface, oftentimes from swallowing issues. Sam unexpectedly died almost 8 years ago. (If you want more information you're welcome to reply to this mailing and ask.)

The fact that denial did come up for me led me to think of my friend, Dr. Ina Gilmore's ebook package, From Burden to Blessing: 31 Days to Start Transforming Caregiving and Life.

Dr. Ina "lived it... Both as a professional and a family caregiver." Her years of experience led her to the 10 Simple Steps that Can Transform Your Caregiving. To discover what they are, simply click or tap on the image on the left or on Transform Caregiving. It’s A HEART PLAN™,  the step by step guide to transforming caregiving.

 (Synchronistically and unplanned in relation to this post, the Sunflower image on the cover is one of mine from several years ago.)

Self-Reflecting Queries - 
What do/did you see as you viewed the flower photos above?

Were any secrets revealed to you, either in flower stories or your own? It was my friend Julie Jordan Scott, who has a major contributing role in the book, who said the images looked to her as if they were "sharing secrets".

I invite you to check in with yourself: 

Are you currently feeling constrained, as the first flower shown here was, in one or more areas of your life?

If so, do you know what it is you are protecting? What might be possible for you were you to allow the enclosures to be removed?

What openings and possibilities might there be for you? for the people with whom you are close?

and if you want more to ponder:

My friend Marifran Korb suggested other queries:

What photo reminds you of you as you are now?
How do you feel about the stage of life that you are in?
What can you celebrate about each stage of life of the sunflower? 
What can you celebrate about your present stage of life?
Is there any grief you need to release?

And, if all of this have become overwhelm, take a deep breath and simply let the sunflowers cast their light and beauty onto you.

Per my promise at the beginning of this ezine for those interested...
Activities During My Last Two Months - 

Life has been full, exploring many directions. I traveled to Colorado, invited as a guest by a client/friend to her beautiful home and surroundings.

Beautiful and spacious mountain views from their home... Hummingbirds at a feeder on a deck resulted in my doing over 40 videos. I'll share a couple in the next issue, later this upcoming week.

Early in my time there,  I was enrolled by my friend's husband to be a passenger on his Harley motorcycle (a scary first for me) for a ride up and down the mountains... approximately a 40 mile round trip to and from our destination. 

Beautiful flowers were everywhere, some in gardens, some in containers in front of shops and more...  Loads of photos, I mentally planned to share.  

When I came home, five sunflowers in bunches greeted me in a local produce market. I purchased one set to continue experiencing natural beauty and at the same time to calm me down from the sensory overload of travel and all that I had seen and done.

Needless say I took hundreds of photos of them during the next 21 days. The first photo above is of one of them in protective stretch, netting holding it together.

Three weeks later I went to Philadelphia for my brother's 70th Birthday celebration.  Again I experienced contribution in the love and generosity of many family members. There was more to that also on the home front. This led me to consider "contribution" as a topic for future issues of PTP/TYLN.

In the meantime I invite you to consider,
"Are YOU an opening for contribution? What does it, or would it take, for that to be so? What more is, or could be possible when you receive as well as give?