Thank you, Dear Reader, for being here. I’ve gone AWOL again. But I’m back with renewed determination and fortitude. When I go offline here it means I’ve gone offline in my life. I’m in survival mode. It never ceases to surprise me, because, well, I’m far too self aware for that to happen again…right?! (Insert laughing emoji face here.)

We all have a default. It’s the trigger that catches you by surprise every damn time. It’s a sneaky demon. It’s a jealous, vengeful little tick. It doesn’t want your life. Oh wait – yes it does. It just wants what you have. You know what that is, right? Right?!

It’s wants FREEDOM. It wants all the freedom, as if it were a limited resource. It wants a life of it’s own. Let’s not give it ours, whaddayasay?

I have a favorite scene in a favorite old movie, Witches of Eastwick. Brilliant movie, way before it’s time. The women have discovered that they can fly. The dog is barking at them. And Daryl Van Horne kneels next to the dog to calm him, and whispers, “Look what they can do. These are human beings.” And he isn’t – but he sure is in awe of them.

Are you in awe? Are you in awe of you, of your life? Are we? Are we thriving? Thriving requires we free ourselves from survival mode. Apparently I’m accruing more clueage about how to do that, and I humbly come here to share my floundering. Just FYI, I will continue to seek freedom until my dying breath. Some days I’m kicking and screaming (which looks like ranting and raving.) More often than not I’m under the covers, breathing shallowly, wondering how I came to be so small again.

Now about that “clueage” – which we will explore here this week: I have a niggling feeling deep inside that it’s the same issue for us all. I’m certainly not special or unique in this intrinsically human pursuit. There is a common denominator in all our woes. You won’t like it. It’s ugly and you might not believe we are still dealing with this all these years of therapy later. It’s codependence.

Cringe. Yep. You think you healed it or outgrew it, and it finds a way to sneak back in through your pores and infiltrate your bloodstream. You felt safe, and you let down a boundary.

So that’s about the gist of this – boundaries are never going to be negotiable. You are going to have to spend the rest of your spectacular human life patrolling the fence line of your own being. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PUT YOURSELF FIRST.

That’s all there is to it…