on the 1st day....

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
- Carl W. Buechner

on the 1st day of christmas, my true love gave to me.... the opportunity to listen and the gift of feeling heard.

i have been absolutely blessed by this blogging thing as far as i am concerned. it has become routine, and a way for me to learn (online and in a laboratory environment) how to communicate, to express ideas, to share parts of myself that i normally have kept bottled up inside. it is helping me to really look at who and how i am, and to try to learn how to accept that. it has offered me an outlet for some of my weirdness, and it has normalized that same weirdness in letting me see that i am hardly the "most" or "worst" anything.

i now communicate regularly with some very fascinating people in many parts of our little globe, and that has become my grist for the mill. it is my breakfast of champions.

let me take this day of my own personal gratitude and encourage you to visit the warriors on my blogroll. many of them have been nothing less than a gift from heaven to me. they inspire me with their blueprints of ideas, and they comfort me with their gentle offerings of support and criticism. they definitely make me smile from my heart. i have no doubt that most are angels (perhaps some light and perhaps some dark) sent in my direction to reassure me that i am on a right path.

today's sound choice is pat monahan singing "calling all angels"