Defining Moments

The last week has been full of these...defining moments.

For me, it's been where a whole lot of events have come together all around the same time. Trying to describe it, is the difficult part. It's where life changing events have come full circle, culminating in a string of epiphanies, which these events have triggered (sorry to talk in riddles).

My life changing events?...loss of my martial arts club and 'family'...loss of my health, fitness and confidence...the birth of Philomena.

My defining moments?...the realisation that 'martial arts' alone does not define who I am, and that I am once again living my genius...my recent physical transformation - the person I see in the mirror now matches the image in my head.

As far as the birth of Philomena, I suppose there have been alot of defining moments since her arrival. And no doubt, there will be many more. However, only recently my defining moment, was reversing out my MIL's driveway. I was on my way to a MMA (mixed martial arts) event down the coast yesterday, and was saying my good bye's. Philomena was standing at the front screen door waving, and saying to me "have a fun time Mummy...goodbye...". I said thank you and goodbye, and as I reversed out of the drive, and started to accelerate down the road, she was still standing there at the door waving and saying "goodbye Mummy, goodbye". I got all choked up watching her, watching me and saying her goodbyes. I got choked up, because it was then that I thought of how I am going to feel, when the day comes very soon when she will be waving goodbye to me at the airport, as I leave for Kapooka. I was choked up thinking how damn hard it's going to be, to say goodbye and leave my only child and not see her beautiful face or hear her voice...her giggles...feel her hugs and kisses... for 28 days! What made it worse, was that AW told me that when I left she was rather sombre and asked him, "is Mummy coming back?".

I've also taken it upon myself to organise a school reunion. 2010 will be 25 years for the class of 85 for Springwood State High School. It's been two weeks since I've started to contact people, and I've been amazed at the positive responses and excitement.

I've recently made contact with past (martial arts) students and friends.

I've been trawling through all my old photos throughout my life, reminiscing and thinking about all the changes that have taken place. Making contact with people from high school has been an amazing experience as well, as well as catching up with those people who were such a big part of my martial arts life. Something I haven't been able to bring myself to do until recently (as in the last 6 months), was to revisit what happened in the past (my martial arts past) and come to terms with it. And then finally feel acceptance for everything that has happened. So rather than look at all the bad things that happened, and continually focus on the regrets, I've been able to find closure and open my heart and mind to new opportunites and learnings.

I once again have the heart, mind and enthusiasm of a 'beginner'. I'm an open book with blank pages, ready for a new chapter in my life to be written.