What if the question is not why I am so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

Within each of us there is the heart of a lion, the courage to simply be who & what we are regardless of others opinions or our own fears. Sometimes this courage has been buried beneath years of shaming that may have been so implicit or insidious that we breathed it in, unaware of how it separated us from knowing our own beauty of being. May we each know our own beauty & right to be today. May we drop down into the heart of the lion within & say to shame, when it rears it's head, "Not today!"

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know whether you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. .I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, . and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout . . . "Yes." .I want to know if you can get up . weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done. .I want to know what sustains you . when all else falls away.