discovering myself

NOTE: pay special attention to the hyper-links.

I've been trying to think of the best way to describe my indescribable weekend.

For someone who manipulates words every day for a living and spends a lot of her free time blogging and writing, I was stumped as to what to say.

You all want to know, right?

You can't see me but I'm smiling. And not just right now but like, almost every minute. Or at least when I think of this past weekend and the incredible miracles I witnessed in other people and and in myself.

And when I'm not smiling, this former porcupine-soul is allowing myself the freedom to cry. Yup. So that's what I did on my commute to work this morning. Listened to very dear songs and cried.

Now I just sound crazy, huh?

I guess you could say this is my new kind of crazy.

For the first time in a very long time, I'm happy. Genuinely, down into the core of my soul, happy. It's not life is suddenly easy or that it's not challenging. Trust me, it is. But my perspective is different, my reaction is different, my response is different.

And when I fall down, I get back up again.

Yesterday I wrote a column and I took most of it from this blog post. You guys might remember this post too, which now looking back, makes me incredibly sad for the person who wrote it.

So yesterday I was in the main office and I was smiling (of course) and allowing my joy to ooze out a little. It was time for our 10 a.m. editorial meeting and as I was walking into the conference room, I met the opinion editor at the door. I had submitted my column to him the night before.

As we were seating ourselves around the table, he kept looking at me and finally said, "You're smiling. You must've found your water tank."

If it's possible to smile bigger than what I was, I did. My heart soared even higher and I knew those words were the ones I would use to describe my weekend.

Guys, I found my water tank. And I jumped in with both feet. I didn't even plug my nose.