“So—What do you do?”

“So—what do you do?” That’s probably been the single most difficult and challenging question for me to answer. When someone asks my husband about me he segues over to how great a cook I am—but I’m really not that great, and I’m not being modest.

I study belief systems—pretty much starting, and ending, with my own. And, as one can imagine, that area of passion has taken me on many different tangents.

How did I get into this?

I guess I woke up too many mornings feeling like that victim I detested so much, thinking to myself, “Damn! I woke up again—here goes one more day to get through.”

And then I’d literally feel myself physically and emotionally bracing to plow through whatever painful something or other that I felt certain was headed my way. Even moments of pure pleasure and happiness were overshadowed by the next thing bound to trip me up and take me somewhere painful I didn’t want to go.

Truthfully, I have lived a blessed life—I was born a member of a wonderful family and I had parents who were the savory salt of the earth. Yes, I lost some people and friends very dear to me fairly early on in life as well as in more recent years, the passing of my mom and dad. But, frankly, my stories are no more tragic or beautiful than another human’s—just uniquely my own.

I know, and appreciate, my story like no other person can—and I’ve discovered that that is a responsibility I take both seriously and humorously. God blessed me with this gift of being alive in a human body that gets to experience TOUCH in all its many forms. So I decided that I wasn’t enjoying life enough and I began to work on adjusting my own attitude about it.

I have Dad to thank for making me so aware of the power of a belief system. I observed him in those final weeks choosing physical discomfort over relief, simply because he believed that petroleum-based lotions were poisonous to him. The oxygen tubes in his nose were drying out his nasal passages and a lotion was recommended to address it, but he was unwilling to even try it. For him, I could see clearly, that that petroleum-based lotion was going to be toxic if we tried to force it on him—he was so adamant about not going there.

There were many instances that summer with Dad and others that mirrored this power of belief for me—most of the beliefs were based in fear. And the thing that made me so aware of it was because many of the beliefs were the same as my own, or had been at some point in my life. This got me looking more closely at my own stuff and questioning whether it was true, or if I’d somehow made it true simply by accepting that it was so.

It got me looking at the concepts of research and facts—and I began to question whether an actual scientific blind study could be completely unbiased—or if the researcher wasn’t somehow unconsciously skewing the study to match his belief systems.

Some part deep down inside of me keeps feeling like this reality I’m living is actually a very grand illusion/playground—and that God gave me the ability to be the front and center creator of my own life, with His/Her unconditional blessing. I’ve just been UNCONSCIOUSLY creating this whole time, based on the acceptance as truth, by me, of suggestions about the way life is by others around me.