(Note: I keep another site called Sunshine In Winter. It’s where I got my start writing and blogging and figuring out how to string words together in meaningful reflections that I could share. Today was my 6th anniversary on Sunshine, so in lieu of a weekly update here, I thought I would share the words I wrote over there – – as the core and the heart of my truth holds the same wherever I’m writing.)

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It’s funny how small steps can accumulate and lead to bigger things.

We don’t always know where we are going when we take the first step, but years later we can look back and see that we were on a journey the entire time, we just didn’t realize our own destination.

Six years ago I started this blog.

At the time it was a way to process rediscovering myself after my divorce. There’s been a lot of shape shifting on Sunshine over the past 6 years; exploratory essays gradually shifted to exploratory prose and poems gradually shifted to mostly just poetry after I had a little growth as a writer and subsequently started another site under my writer’s name.

But I’ve kept Sunshine around out of a certain sense of fondness as this is a space of becoming.

The words here reflect those initial single girl lessons on what love is and what love isn’t, transitioning from being single to being in a relationship to being married, the unexpected loss of my brother and the grief journey I took afterward, and finding myself again after loss which led to my eventual move to Kauai.

Sunshine has seen me through an awful lot of change and growth. I learned to be a better human here. I learned to be a better writer here. I learned a lot about growing up here, and I’m attached to the words I’ve shared throughout the years.

There are many fragments and pieces of self that when puzzled together reflect my greater whole.

We don’t know when we start something where exactly it will go. This never has been a terribly successful blog by blogging standards. I’ve never had a big following. I’m horrible at reaching out and engaging with other’s pages. My posts never get a lot of likes, and I don’t get a lot of traffic.

But those are only markers that define success by external standards predetermined by statistics, norms, and what somebody else says.

What about my own standards?

As I write these words, it strikes me that I’ve done exactly what I set out to do- – start a blog, stay consistent, and always always always share posts that represent my authentic truth.

Because that is really what I’ve learned in all these years of writing – – that the most important thing for me is that I live, and as a byproduct write, my truth.

Wherever my truth finds me at that particular point in time. In fact, that is the key to my greater life lessons as an intuitive-introvert-empath heart who has never really fit the molds of this world:

• Just live your truth, and in the living make your own mold.

• Don’t look for validation from others (validation truly is something we can only give ourselves anyways).

• Find ways to be who you are meant to be, even if you have to create it yourself.

• Don’t expect everybody to get it – – not everybody is meant to stay with you on your journey and that’s okay.

• Above all else, learn your own language of the heart, as it will serve you in every situation and always bring you back to the highest truth of yourself.

That to me has been Sunshine In Winter: a place where I’ve learned my own language of the heart and shared that language with others.

Love is a universal language, and while we all may speak it a little differently, there are so many beautiful intersections where we see, agree, hear, feel, and beat in unity. So thank you for those who have intersected with me, I’m grateful you’ve read these words and they’ve resonated in some shape or form.

Let’s keep being ourselves, living our truth, growing our hearts, learning our own language of love, and finding those gorgeous places where we intersect.

Love,
BethAnne

(Art by Elena Khomoutova)