The Year that was.

Well hello everyone, I know it's been a while since I posted anything but it has been a busy year and I still can't believe it is already Christmas Eve!

The Brown's as most of you know have had a very busy year. In summary.

In February Beryl lost a husband, Bex and Ben lost a dad and Paul lost a step-dad ( I am not including Rob in this as he was not as close to Howard as Paulie was). Howard was such a lovely man and we were instantly welcomed into his heart and home when we arrived in the UK. My children lost their oupa and although we don't talk about it very much I know Kieran and Cheyenne will be missing Howard this Christmas, perhaps not as much as Beryl, Bex, Ben and Paul but he is and will be very missed.
This year Beryl, AKA Granny has moved in with us and we have finally managed to buy a property, we have moved out of the house in Moggs Mead which when you consider that Shiny is now 9 and we moved in just after she turned 3, represents a third of her life (so far), our flat affectionately known as "our tardis" is in Liphook and it has taken us all a fair amount of time to get used too.
Moving in was particularly emotional especially when almost the entire contents of Granny's house arrived in three wooden crates. I cried for her loss and was glad she had taken an extended holiday to visit friends in Botswana, so she didn't have to witness her entire life with Howard stuffed into the garage. My hat is off to her for coping so well, I doubt many would have the courage to be THAT STRONG.
This year my Mommy and Daddy arrived in Southampton on the Queen Mary 2 a sixteen day voyage that saw my Mommy get more and more poorly. With full intentions of staying until September Mommy put on a very brave face but eventually it was decided it was better for Dad to take her home and they left me in July a full 6 weeks earlier than they had planned. Mommy was hospitalised straight away and has gradually been feeling better and better. Jaime told me on Saturday that Mommy had been sitting outside in the shade enjoying the company of family and friends at Chantelle's 21st birthday party. Chatting to her on Monday morning she sounded very chipper and looking forward to having the family over for Christmas.
The rest of the year has been filled with work and school and not much of anything else. Kiki and Shiny continue to do well at school and Shiny is working hard towards passing her Modern Grade 1 Exam and her Ballet Grade 1 exam too! Rob and Kiki achieved their brown belts in Karate this year and have only three or four gradings left before getting to black belt. Something to work towards next year boys!
Looking forward to next year the Brown's are visiting Disney World in Florida in April (YEA!!!) and Paul and Sophie are tying the knot in July, so looking forward to seeing Ian and all of our South African friends who will be flying in for the occasion. (Douglas you better be bringing my mate because I need a Tequilla shooting partner).
I would not be a true South African if I did not mention the loss earlier this month of Madiba, a true hero in every sense of the word, a man who sacrificed much of his life for the benefit of ALL South Africans. May his memory be honoured by South Africa fulfilling HIS dream for society free of fear and corruption, where every man, woman and child regardless of colour is treated with respect and a right to live happily in peace.
May I take this opportunity to wish all family and friends a very merry, blessed and SAFE Christmas.
May 2014 fulfil all your dreams. To all those who have lost a loved one this year I wish you peace and strength during this time of the year, when those gone are missed so much more.
In love and light
Tracey

Welcome to 2013. EPIC!

Good Morning?

Yes it's question, or at least it should be. We have been given the opportunity to choose. So every day we should wake up smile and say Good morning. I know this, you know this and yet how often do I wake and think "oh no!"?

On a different note I saw this quote on Twitter Zen Essentials‏@ZenEssentials

"We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche. I got onto the bathroom scale yesterday, it has been a while and so I can tell you that this quote is absolutely true. So as much as I would like to make the resolution of losing weight, I know the real resolution should be to change my habits, when it comes to food, I have never (or very seldom ) shown any control.

 

So on the 3rd day of this marvellous new year I am resolving not to diet, but to break the habits that cause my weight to go up. But, perhaps more importantly, I am resolving to make each and every morning of 2013, not just a good morning but a Great Day!

 

I have a colleague at work, she has the most amazingly dry sense of humour which is based almost totally on sarcasm, I love it, a few don't get it but the best part of any day is seeing her and saying "how are you?" She ALWAYS and I ALWAYS comes out with something that makes me laugh, "Cosmic!" " Epic!" Listening to how she feels each day inevitably makes my day either Cosmic or Epic and there have been others but I am also going to stop answering "fine" when someone asks how I am. From today I am "Cosmic" "Epic" "Fantastic" "Awesome" and perhaps I will look up a few others in the dictionary, just to keep it "fresh".

 

In love and light, enjoy an absolutely Awesomely Epic day!!

 

Think it and change it!

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." ~Buddha.

I saw this quote and you know it's the 3rd time in as many days that I have seen something similar, said something similar and shared something similar. I'm guessing the Universe is trying to tell me something.
A couple of nights ago I re-read the first part of The Master Key System by Charles Haanel, this part basically tell you that your external world is a reflection of your inner world. Since my vision board is being used to focus our thoughts, my home environment is pretty good. A good start. In the mornings I work in a warehouse and usually suffer from some sort of verbal diarrhoea, anyway the chap I work with listens and I share what I am learning. So it was mentioned again today and then this evening I see the above quote.

After re-finding The Secret, I have spent a lot of time checking the facts, the Emerald Tablet, says "as above so below, as within so without." or something like that, and I am not in the mood to dig through my notes, but anyway this is how I remember it.

So today I ask that you consider your external world and see what is not right, what is not as you would want it to be and then do yourself a favour and change your thinking. Change the perspective from which you are viewing the discord. If it is something you can change, then do it in the most positive manner you can, if you can't change it then change your thinking about it, see it from another point of view, smother it in love and gratitude and move away from it. Rather move toward something else. Get mentally active to generate the external change you want.

In love and light
Tracey

Faith in yourself. YES YES YES

It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself. -Muhammed Ali.

I saw tghis quote and thought about how amazing it must be to have such faith in yourself. even when everyone else is saying NO, the little voice in your head is say YES YES YES!!

People who have the YES YES YES voice go on to be legends, just like the man I quoted tonight, he believed in himself, he worked hard and he made a difference. As a champion he also embraced faith in his God. Allah, to muslims, God, to me and hundreds of other names to thousands of others.
It does not matter to whom we pray, it is having the confidence to say I believe in myself. For if we are created in the image of our creator then we must be blessed with all the power of creation.
Think it and you create it and in essence this is what someone with a YES YES YES voice does. They think about the best possible outcome all the time. They focis on what they want and it is created, they work, they notice the signs, they sieze opportunities and the universe really does conspire to bring about what is thought about.

Short but sweet tonight.
In love and light
Tracey

Working The Secret

I have re-found the Secret and within a week I have seen how The Secret works. I made a vision board that is more a reminder of what The Secret can bring. “Money comes easily and frequently”, “I love going on fantastic holidays”, “everything I touch turns to gold” these are a few of the things on my vision board and I have surrounded each phrase with a photo of my children, husband and I all smiling and all happy, the key to these photos is that every one of them makes me feel happy because they represent a moment in time when I was happy and being able to recall that feeling of happiness daily, changes your mind set, so immediately I am having a great day.

I have been very negative lately, feeling very sorry for myself and being ungrateful and miserable. On Monday I collected Shiny early from school and did not feel like doing housework or laundry. So I sat on the computer, playing scrabble etc. So waiting for someone to make their move, I go into Youtube and I am randomly searching and I see The Secret full movie, now I’d never watched the movie, I read the book and listened to the CD, watching it re-awakened the spark. Hence the vision board. I asked Rob and the kids to read the vision board everyday. I think then everyday we are starting the day on the same page. On Wednesday I bought the local paper and looking through the property section the kids and I found a house that we feel is our dream home. So I cut it out and put it on the vision board.

My Shiny was a little sceptical until Friday morning when Rob logs into our South African bank accounts and I have received over R20,000 from a pension claim I put in almost 2 years ago and had completely forgotten about! Unexpected income!! “Money comes easily and frequently”.  Shiny was sitting on the bed and I shouted “Look, Cooks it really works! Money comes easily and frequently!”.

A couple of weeks ago Rob and I had a huge fight over a table I wanted for the kids to do their homework on. Yesterday I collected an almost brand new table exactly as I’d imagined that one I wanted. Free!

In one week I have received a table and unexpected income of around £1200 (depending on the exchange rate). If I were sceptical before, it is gone, after one week I am a believer, our home environment is better and everyone is excited that we are going to have a great Christmas because there is unexpected money, Father Christmas will be delivering amazing presents this year and hay if Father Christmas is the provider of my children’s dreams, and they are more able to believe in their dreams coming true then that’s all I want for them.

In love and light

Tracey

Are Facebook "Happy Birthdays" Genuine?

Hello

I was chatting to a friend today about birthdays seeing as we were wrapping "lucky dip gifts" for the kids coming to our daughters' joint 8th party.

I mentioned that this year that I got so many messages on Facebook and most of the people who posted on my page I haven't seen in years. I hardly respond to their posts, they don't respond to mine and if I am honest (and if they are honest) probably ignore all the little titbits of information that don't make sense to anyone else but themselves.

So the thought occurred to me, are facebook birthday wishes sincere or are people just posting something on your page because a little block in the right hand corner reminds them that it's your birthday?

I am not saying it's a bad thing, I am merely questioning the sincerity of it. Am I being too sensitive here? I saw a quote recently (I probably shared it) that said something about people being in our lives for a specific time and then for whatever reason they are out of our lives. Is is necessary to refriend everyone of your high school classmates? Some of them I don't even remember, and I seriously doubt that anything I did keeps me vividly in their memories.

Don't get me wrong, there are a couple of people from high school with whom I am still friends and there are many of my "adult life friends" I haven't lost touch with, but we communicate in other ways, telephone, texts (SMS's for those in Africa) and those conversations are so much more meaningful.

You will notice here that I have not included family in my rant, and that's where social networking sites are totally awesome, in that I can see exactly what my family are up to and being so far away from them, it keeps them all closer in both my thoughts and my heart.

Anyway, I was pleased to see so many birthday wishes which just proves that whether they were sent sincerely or not, my ego got a great stroking and generally made for good day all round.

In love and light (and sincerity)
Tracey

Looking back.

If I am honest, I will admit to not having done much writing on my book. Initially I was very excited and got stuck in. Now, however it's fizzled down to nothing.
With Rob away it seems that there is just so much time, especially after the kids have gone to bed. So for the first time (in a while) I picked up a book and a pen and I started writing.
The writing begins as fiction and then moves swiftly into my memories. Due to a trauma as a child, most of my childhood memories are gone. A psychological safety net if you will. The "amnesia" keeps the subject (i.e Me) from developing serious psycological breakdown.
The problem is however that once the subject starts to remember the trauma, the cause is discovered, technically these are known as repressed memories, no other memories resurface.
So what I remember of my childhood has been the memories of others and photos provide a setting and backdrop to what sort of happened. This is great, yes, BUT the memories are the perceptions of someone else.
Trying to remember, what my life in high school was like was much easier.
I just want everyone to know that being invisible in high school is really easy.
It's sad really because I tried to stay that way. There was a time when I did not wish to be invisible and I did not feel invisible because I believed there was a group I fitted into, alas no, a very candid discussion with those involved reassured me that I did not belong.
I wish I could say that my first broken heart was the result of a careless, selfish teenage boy, but no that honour belongs to a couple of girls.
Thinking back it wasjust another painful event I buried deep inside, another event that has shaped who I am today.
I guess I am just writing for the sake of it now but I also feel I must share that only time after that, that I had a broken heart was when we lost Jonathan.
I know this has been about my pain, (hopefully without pity - that's not why I share it) but was it the pain or was it overcoming the pain that makes me who I am today?

In love and light (and deep contemplation)
Tracey