Last week I had a side of the road chat with a relatively new resident to the area. “He said are you Lori?  Lori the Social Worker who worked for the government for a lot years then turn left wing, granola something spiritual or other, he said at least that is how your were described to me”.

I busted out laughing and said is that how I am being seen lately.  Funny to me because I have been who I am all my life, I have been a clean recovering alcoholic for 23 years, devout and disciplined in my practices, honest in my presentation of myself always, with an honest desire to help people stemming from my days of picking expired food out of the Bristol dump while the seagulls cried over head and swooped at me, crying myself because I was taking their food.  The days I sat on the rock piles, in the potato field at morning break enjoying a smoke that I had bribed from the digger man at age 10.  Those are the crystal memories that I hold near and dear to me, that drive me and push me forward in my vision, to teach what I have learned share what I know to be true of life.  To above all matters, Love everyone and seek understanding for others and myself and to help along the way if I am able.

As Janis Joplin says I just always asked for the right and privilege to be me in the World.  That is what I live today and if that makes me a left wing, hippie, guru so be it!  

I was told many times I would fail, and unfortunately persons of stature actually set out to ensure I would fail, tis sad sometimes how humans act,, but I assured all along the way that I would never stop and that my mission was not based in ego so go ahead do whatever you want to me to humiliate me, persecute me, condemn me but that does not work with this poor little country survivor girl, Poverty taught me not to be invested in that. Just kept my head down lived by my values stayed true to who I was through it all, never retaliated and continued to live in truth. That what I was taught as a child. it was hard and I so wanted to bust out and speak but I knew that embarrassing or belittling others was not the Way even if they did it to me.  My mother in law always said to me Lori you will be rewarded, I believed her and held on to that tightly.