I subscribe the the Sunday Paper, a newsletter from Maria Shriver. I love it. It is positive and inspiring and full of love. You can feel it when you read it. Below is an excerpt from this past week's Sunday Paper. I felt compelled to share it with you. Please read and enjoy.

I Don't Want to Live a Small Life

by Mary Oliver

I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,
open your hands. I have just come
from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do

Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.

The other day, I came across the above poem from my great friend and mentor, the late Mary Oliver. Its opening lines made me stop and think.

“I don’t want to live a small life,” she wrote (and she certainly didn’t). “Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.”

Open your life indeed.

As Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close this coming week, and as summer officially gets ready to begin, those words seem like a perfect calling for each of us. It’s a time to look within and ask how we want our lives to move forward.

I know this has been a surreal year so far. And I know it feels somewhat surreal to be re-entering society. Life feels different because it is. We are all different in our own ways. How could we not be? That’s just the truth.

Last week I wrote about bravery. My brother Timothy said to me afterward, “I think there is something I’m being called to do in this mess, but I can’t figure out what it is.” “Are you looking?” he queried me further. “Is there some truth we need to stand in more openly?”

I told him I think that each of us is here to be brave. And when that moment arises, we have to be ready to seize it. In the meantime, we must continue to do the work that we are here to do.

The truth is that none of us are here to live small lives. Not you. Not me. In fact, describing a life as small or big misses the point entirely. Our souls have huge callings and when we live out our calling from a place of truth—from a place of integrity and from a place of love—our souls have tremendous impact. So the next time your mind tells you your life is small, push back against that. The next time your mind tells you you’re small or you’re unimportant or fearful, allow your soul to burst forth. See the love you have as a source of power and goodness.

What I’ve come to know after decades of being on this Earth is that when you see another human being for who they are and love them, that is a huge gift of transformation for a person. You are here to live out beyond labels, out beyond fear. You are here for a reason, so get living.

As we look forward—not to a new normal, but to a new reality—may we each take a moment to look first and foremost at our own lives.

Are we open? Are we ready? Are our hands outstretched? Are we ready to live the life that awaits us? The one that is calling us forth? These are the questions each of us must ask ourselves because we were not meant to lead small lives. No, we are not.

This is the time. This is the moment. Our world needs your presence. It needs your soul to clean up the mess, to light up the sky. The moment is now.

Are you ready?

Love,

Maria