Honesty

Paradise:  is a religious term for a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless.  


Funny, I always thought it was somewhere, come to find out it really is a state of mind.  


When I was a little girl I wanted to grow up to be a boy. Yep, you heard that right. No I didn't want a sex change. I watched a lot of movies and in those movies the boys and men where the fearless cowboys, the adventures, the wild bunch. Girls were sissies. I did not want to be a sissy. As I got older I learned I could be a girl and be a member of the "wild bunch". I was daredevil, yes I stuck my tongue to frozen poles. I swam naked in beaver ponds, I fell off horses and got right back on.

As I got older I learned that I could be a girl/women who had appeal as an outlaw (I prefer the term, call it what you want.) I worked hard to become who I was, we all do. Then I hit that dreadful age of uncertainty. I went to collage got lost, got found, got lost, and found again. This time I was found by my mother who insisted I go into business for myself as a horse trainer. (personally I thought she was nuts, but I played along (really I did)).

I worked really hard at it. For two years I worked at making a name for myself, I had a lot of people doubt me. Slowly I gained followers and believers as that happened I found myself believing and seeing it.

Ten years ago I was at my peak. I was making money, paying my bills, training horses. I sold my first high dollar horse all by myself. I had met the man I was gonna marry. He owned land (that's what it was the land), he always thought it was the red truck. He owned an arena, horses, was breeding and raising and needed a good trainer. Paradise.

Life happens while we are making other plans, my mama always used to tell me. Boy, she is so smart.

I don't know where it happened. Where I lost myself again, but I did. Looking back I think I can see it, really a lot has happened. It always does, but I know that I started to doubt myself a little more each day until one day I believed I wasn't really that person. You think I've got this, or that doesn't change me. But it does. I decided I didn't care anymore, I decided that's not me. I wanted to be this...this person I never was. But I insisted, I started looking for anything to make me happy again. We fought Don and I, looking back I see he was trying to pull me back. He has always seen it, but he didn't know how to fix it. I bet he even blames himself. Its not his fault, that's a fact.

I wanted so badly for a change, thinking a change would make it better. I had a dream of living by the ocean.....I love the ocean. I think I thought that it was what burned deep inside me. When the opportunity struck I leaped at it, perhaps faster than I should. I had already decided I didn't care, I could give it all up, remember it wasn't really me anyways.

Paradise....state or mind, state of being. I found it, funny that I had to travel 3500 miles in the wrong direction to have to turn and look back and see what it is that makes me...me. The ocean does have a healing power, it is a mirror looking through it you see yourself and what you have become.

Healing I am. Not gonna be easy, not gonna be swift. Wish that it was, but never an easy fix. But...

I hear the wind across the plain 

A sound so strong - that calls my name 

It's wild like the river - it's warm like the sun 

Ya it's here - this is where I belong

Under the starry skies - where eagles have flown 

This place is paradise - it's the place I call home 

The moon on the mountains 

The whisper through the trees 

The waves on the water 

Let nothing come between this and me

Cuz everything I want - is everything that's here 

And when when we're all together - there's nothing to fear 

And wherever I wander - the one thing I've learned 

It's to here - I will always....always return