EPISODE DESCRIPTION: I love my birthday, and I carry all the people who've made up my beautiful life into every birthday with me. Join me as I reflect on, well—you.

Episode theme song: ‘Raise Your Glass’ by Ziggy

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, welcome back. Today is the day after my birthday. Happy Monday. Happy—well—happy a lot of things. I'm happy because if you know me, you know I love my birthday. And if you don't know me, well, you're probably going to hear about it at some point.

Now, this weekend I am at the beautiful Surfside Coast of Texas, the Gulf Coast, and my girlfriend and her dad and some of her relatives actually came down to celebrate. 
 
Yeah, birthdays. There's just something about the impromptunesss of a show, about thoughts getting on and talking through just what's up for me, And there's so many things that I could say. Sometimes they're organized, sometimes they're jumbled, such as thoughts that are fleeting, which you know, to me, as you know from listening to this show, are all thoughts. 
 
But again, some land with a lot of nostalgia, some land with inspiration, some land with encouragement, and some land with despair and regret.

And today I want to celebrate the thoughts that land of both nostalgia and gratitude and encouragement because I, for one, feel there’s no better day to reflect on this than the day after my birthday. Which, by the way, I think once my birthday on the 13th is celebrated, the rest of the month is about me too. So, uh, move over Thanksgiving because it's still my birthday,

Back to the nostalgia and gratitude piece. I'm eternally grateful for my family and friends, and that goes for friends who have come and go or gone in my life. That goes for friends whom I still consider friends and love dearly, but who have decided for whatever reason, that I am no longer part of their circle.

And I specifically want to say something to them today because I don't get to often enough, and chances are they won't even hear this. But for me, I believe in the connection of the heart, and I believe in prayer, and I believe in the collectiveness of our souls. 
 
And I, well, let's just go back to what I've been thinking a lot about, and that is I made a decision in January of 2020 to, I made a decision that was, for me, a heartfelt, very soulful decision to go a different direction with what I was doing with my career.

Basically going from working for a company, a family, to going back out on my own. I think I was trying to fit myself into a situation in my life that didn't quite feel like it fit me. There are a lot of reasons for that, none of which are good or bad—they are just the reasons, and once I knew I needed to go a different direction, my soul started giving me signs of how much that was the truth for me.

So I made the decision to move in a new direction, and I lost a lot of people whom I dearly loved as a result of that. 
 
Now, could I have done it differently? Maybe. 
 
Could I have not been as emphatic in my decision to move along? Possibly. 
 
But what I know I couldn't have done is not have made that choice.

I've made other choices that have caused people to stop being in my life or stop being in my life to the degree that they once were. And so it's helped me to reflect, and it's interesting being at the beach because I'm a mountain girl, but despite the fact that I love fresh water and running streams and the changing topography of mountains, there's something equally.. Well, I can't say ‘equally’ because I do prefer the mountains and fresh water, but there's something beautiful and powerful and expansive about the ocean.

It's like the breath of Mother Earth. It's like the horizon goes on forever. There is no end. There's something about it that helps me recognize that I'm a small speck in a large universe. And yet as that small speck in a large universe, I am infinitely capable of limitless things—just like all of us. 
 
 [Obviously, birthdays create some profundity in me.]
 
What I want to say is all of the people that I think about on my birthday, because my birthday for me is a time of reflection of from whence I came, from where whom I've come. From the beautiful mother who created me in her womb and birthed me into the world, and the father that helped her with some of the magic formula juju that she needed to create me in the world. 

And my siblings and my huge Rellihan Clan, and my aunts and uncle on my dad's side and my cousins there—all the things that ripple out from those humans and then all the people I've met in my life over time, and all the beautiful events and things that ripple out from.

Included in that are the people that I've lost that are no longer in my life and I love them. I won't stop loving them. And certain people from my recent past are still like family to me. And there's something beautiful about that. 
 
Is there something sad about it? Yes. I miss them and yes, I wish it would be different or would've been different, or could be different, but they're with me nonetheless. 
 
And so today, on the day after my birthday, I celebrate every one of them. To those of you who are listening and I've never even met, to those who are listening to whom I am incredibly close, to those who are listening, who are keeping me at an arm's length, I love you and I'm so grateful for you in my life. 
 
I will forever be celebrating my birthday and you will be part of it. 
 
Have an amazing week. I'll see you tomorrow. 

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The podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jenée Arthur.
Cover art by Jenée Arthur
The songs used in the individual episodes have been licensed for use.