When my friends rave about my talents and gifts, I am sort of stunned! When I reflect on any success I have enjoyed, I first think of my husband's love that makes it possible for me to blossom.
Then I am thankful for being a third generation person with retinitis pigmentosa; I have seen how my grandmother and mother coped with blindness. This helps me to choose my response.
And importantly, my yoga teacher and friend, Sundari Sitaram, taught me about Fearlessness, and ' not Hiding. This poem sums up my philosophy:
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life by Dawna Markova
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
