You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
Maya Angelou
It is still. My girls slumber downstairs and my canine girl snores softly at the end of my bed. I welcome the day with a mug of soy milky frothy coffee, as my eyes feast on at the wonder of another predawn morning outside my window. My heart is full and content, my body slightly weary despite a good night’s sleep.
I reflect on the treasure of a morning spent with Daughter, Granddaughter, and a dear and long-time friend we’ve known since Daughter was a toddler. The gift of talking with women who have walked complicated paths, and who are in your corner, is a precious one for Daughter to be granted. I wonder if she grasps the real richness of it.
As she stands on the cusp of change, wisdom is generously shared. Then we two, who have gone before, speak of intention and choices and late-in-life treasure, and warn of hazards and what to pick up and what to put down. And I think that we could talk for hours more given opportunity, but this is enough for now.
I sip my morning coffee and think how sweet it is that winding paths have brought us back to this place of long ago, and that some things are simply meant to be.
And dawn breaks, and another day begins with gratitude and intention, and I feel the world shifting.
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This month, I’m posting a link every day to a blog from the eclectic collection I read regularly. Linda Joy Myers, Founder and President of the National Association of Memoir Writers, blogs at Memories and Memoirs (http://memoriesandmemoirs.com/) .

I grew up with five sisters, so I tend to think of the world from the perspective of women. It’s an inside joke in our family that women rule! I loved this thoughtful post!