Walk for Hunger

Dear Friend,

On Sunday, May 4, I will be participating in Project Bread's 40th Walk for Hunger. This year's event is an especially important one, and I hope that you will support me! This year, there is a lot to celebrate. For 40 years, caring people from every background, united in the spirit of helping others, have come together to take part in this wonderful tradition to help feed hungry families in their communities. And there is a lot we still need to do.

Project Bread's 2007 Status Report on Hunger showed us that hunger is on the rise in Massachusetts, and there is a greater gap between the rich and poor here than almost anywhere else in the country. The need has never been greater. I'm walking because I know that there are hungry people in Massachusetts, and that I can help them through The Walk for Hunger.

The money that I raise by walking as much as I can of the 20-mile route will directly help hungry people. Funds raised through the Walk support more than 400 emergency food programs in 126 communities in Massachusetts. Visit my personal Walk Webpage to learn more. From there, you can donate to me, or sign up to Walk with me! Thank you for considering sponsoring me, and for your support of hungry people. Use the link below to visit my personal Walk Webpage and help me reach my goal.

Thank you!

Click here to visit my personal page.
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
www.projectbread.org/site/TR.../General

Click here to view the team page for Pequot Striders
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
www.projectbread.org/site/TR.../General

Everything is connected.

So my life thus far has been very conventional, even I admit, boring. I allowed myself to believe the "reality" imposed on me by society. I followed the rules. I guess I still follow them, but I'm working on changing, one step at a time.

After high school I went to college, started working, met a boy, fell in love, had my heart broken, met another boy, fell in love (again), got married and started earnestly planning for "the future." This included plans for a home, plans to start a baby fund, etc. I thought that if I worked hard and sacrificed at this point in my life, I'd be happier later on. Two Sundays ago, after 2 years of marriage, my husband and I were talking about the future and I mentioned "someday when we have kids."

[This would be a good time to insert that my husband was previously married with two daughters in Argentina (17 & 13) before we got married I had countless conversations with him regarding a 2nd family and he assured me both in private, and during premarital counseling that he did... apparently like all things change, he changed his mind. Now I am not ready for kids. In my mind you need to have a house, stability financially, and have some travel under your belt etc.]

I am probably 2 years off from being ready to start a family, but I had always known that it was in the cards for me "someday" to have him say that he has made the decision on whether or not it will happen for "us," a decision he made on his own - he knew where I stood, he didn't need to consult me apparently. When was he planning on telling me? My mere mention of it forced him to tell me. I may have waisted more valuable time in a voided relationship. I can't see how we can share a life together if we don't hold the same dream. For me there is little point to being tied down and married if the promise of a family isn't in the cards. I have been oddly unemotional about this.

I am a cancer, as is my work friend, our morning ritual is that she reads us our horoscope over coffee. For almost two weeks our horoscope kept mentioning that it was time for a change, a change of life, a change of career, etc. Last week I jokingly professed with all of this "change" surrounding me I was ready to quit my job, follow renaissance fairs and make jewelry or something, cause I couldn't think of any job that I wanted to do and at least I'd live a memorable life.

Later that day my HS friend and I mourned the fact that we had lost contact of one of our friends who moved to CA at the same time that I moved to RI, and though we had tried countless times to locate her on MySpace we had had no luck. My friend suddenly remembered her old phone number from HS and I called it, chatted with her mom and then called my long lost friend and left her a message.

That night she returned my phone call and it was so good to hear her voice. We chatted a bit, she told me about tribe.net, her new love of Tribal Belly Dancing, how she traveled the world, how she was starting up her own business in jewelry making and was signing up for different fairs and some Faerie Fairs, etc. This caught my attention cause one of my best friends for the last 8 years or so and I have always talked about getting to these Fairs and she's a "wannabe pagan" that occasionally will give me a spell to try or consult the books that she has. We talk about dabbling in belly dancing and crafts that we always buy the supplies for, but never take the time to get together and actually make them.

I didn't tell my friend that I had jokingly said that I had wanted to get into the business she was starting and quiet honestly as far as jewelry making my skills stop at making wine glass charms and Christmas ornaments or beaded snowflakes and really other than a pair of earrings I made in 2nd grade I don't have a clue... I think I'd rather dabble with textiles personally as I have more experience with them. I honestly think though that this statement popped into my head as I made a connection on some plane with my former friend. It wasn't until I saw her tribe.net photo that I realized what a transformation she had made. I had always imagined that she was working as a real estate agent or something, with silicone here and there and spending all her free moments at the gym & on the beach worshiping the sun. Little did I know what parts of those thoughts I had right, and the majority were wrong!

Then this Sunday, my friend in RI called me, I excitedly asked her if she had read my email and gone to the link of the tribe.net page I had sent her and she told me she hadn't yet, she had been in Maine for a funeral, but that she was calling to see if I would vacation with her this summer to California and Oregon to go to this Faierie Worlds Fair! She is a newly divorced working mom with two young kids and she wanted to see if I wouldn't mind being a nanny-figure in exchange for her absorbing some of the travel costs. Of course! The universe is pointing me in this new direction it feels like! This was all the proof that I needed that its time to make a major change. I am not happy w/ my 9-5 job, I don't feel like I am living my life currently, but surviving it. There has to be more out there and the world is letting me know in a big way that its time to change.


I have spent my time since these two conversations trying to get down to the core of me. I am re-reading "The Four Agreements" and other inspirational/spiritual texts and I am putting together an Amazon order for more books to read. I need to be enlightened, inspired, I am still young enough to go out there and start my path or a wonderful life that I can be proud to say I truly lived.

I really think it may be time to cash out the retirement plan and live off of it for a few months and find my bliss. Who am I? Who do I want to be? How am I going to live my life? I don't know if I can figure this out in my current situation. I'm hoping to realign my compass and see where the world takes me. I need to follow a new path and find my destiny.

Living your Life.

It has recently come to my awareness that there are those that live in the past - they are always looking back, unable to recover from a tragic event or loss. They see their past with nostalgia and rose colored glasses. Then there are those that live for the future - squirreling away money, working miserable jobs, telling them that a few years of sacrifice and they will have everything they want. Then there is a small group that lives for the day, in the day. They are always aware of who they are, even if they have no idea of where they are going. They trust the universe to guide them in the proper direction.

I have spent my entire life either pining for the future or regretting certain events of my past. I can't control or change any of these events. I can only live in this moment. No one knows how much time we will spend on this earth. I can't afford to not try to live in this day, in this present time every day.

I am making an effort to shed my emotional and physical baggage. To find myself and stay true to myself. Sometimes you actually have to purge before you can binge on life.