Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.

At times, my nostalgia for our family life as it used to be--for our own imperfect, cherished, irretrievable past--is nearly overwhelming.

I know I can't make time slow down, can't hold our life as it is in a freeze frame or slow my children's inexorable journeys into adulthood and lives of their own. But I can celebrate those journeys by bearing witness to them, by paying attention, and, perhaps most of all, by carrying on with my own growth and becoming. Now it dawns on me that the only way I can figure out what I'm meant to be doing is to try to understand who I'm meant to be...I will not waste this life, not one hour, not one minute. I will not take for granted the blessing of our being here...I will give thanks.

In stillness, we find our peace. Knowing peace at home, we bring peace into the world.

We are the windows through which our children first see the world. Let us be conscious of the view.

Magic wasn't something I had to go in search of; it was here, within me, all the time. When hearts are open, when love is flowing, magic happens.

Now I see that the journey was never meant to lead to some new and improved version of me; that it has always been about coming home to who I already am.