As I daily add words to the pages of my memoir, I decided to share glimpses into this “leap of faith” life we are presently engulfed in. Who is the WE? The “we” consists of me, my son, my daughter and our two “half pint” dogs (yes I grew up during “Little House on the Prairie” years).  Over the course of this last year I have found myself listening to the clock tick down the minutes before I turned fifty, it was a time of intense contemplation and reflection. I spent hours wondering the crevices of my memories, exploring the many books that haunted my book shelves, and reviewed the journals from years gone by, all the while searching for and reflecting upon the repeated themes and patterns of my life’s tapestry. On that quest I discovered that I was not living true to myself.  For thirty years I carried a dream in my heart, soul and mind – a dream that comes at me over and over again through the ink-stained pages of my journals, glares at me from the dusty bookshelf and zaps me personally every time I think about what is important.

The time has come, the time is NOW!! And ironically life has given us a push-off the cliff of complacency and mediocrity; we now float in the space of unknowns, embracing the pure potential of the human spirit.  What does that mean in black and white terms? It means we are “homeless” in the conventional sense, we are surviving on the simple wages of a farm hand income, and we have sold most of our belongings to simplify and downsize.  Daily we live in the pure spirit of gratitude that we have each other, incredible friends and family, our health, and the freedom to pursue our dreams with joy and love. I am personally blessed by two amazing young people who at sixteen and thirteen support, encourage, and sacrifice daily to continue forth on this path.

During the course of my life I have been the “black sheep” who never did drugs, but would never conform. I have been that nagging worry for my family and friends, the burr that sits under the saddles of those who want consistency and all the boxes checked off. In my head I hear the worried and frustrated thoughts of those close to me, “For heaven’s sake would you please just stay in one job and one relationship for a period of time!!” This is fueled by the reality that I have worked over forty different jobs give or take a few since I was 16 years old and I have been blessed to share in twenty plus or minus relationships over the course of that same time. While many see this as a negative, I experience a rich vastness that connects me to people from all walks of life. The extreme diversity of my life has allowed me to dig below the surface of checking off the boxes to “success” as we identify them in our society and to instead explore what truly drives the human being-ness in us all.

Thus the title of my blog – Purposeful Renegade! I live a purposeful life in that every day I wake to live presently in all the moments I am given. I interact with the intention to be compassionate, kind, truthful, and humble, for I stand above and below no one. I am vulnerably open and truthful, and I hold absolute faith that all is perfect as it is in this moment.

I am a renegade in that I do not “buy in” to our American definitions of “success”, “perfection”, “black and white”, “right and wrong”, I instead allow love to be my guide – I know cliché, and hokey…yet it is my guiding force in all my moments, including this page where I take a risk to expose and share.  We are all at choice in our every moment, to choose “love or fear” for they are the internal driving force of all that we do and say. I can remember when I read a book that shared this truth, I thought “Really, no way!!”  So, I put it to the test for the next few months.  It shocked me to discover that I could trace all of my thoughts, decisions, and actions back to the base feeling of FEAR or LOVE – the root driving force of our daily quest.

So, what will you find on the pages of this Blog? You will read snippets of our journey, you will peek through my eyes to see why I question and “rebel”, and you will explore the human potential through the open vulnerable heart/soul poured upon the page. I look forward to meeting you here.