Hey Steem Fam

Hey everyone,

I'm a new user here and no matter what I do I can't seem to get my photos to rotate to be a normal, portrait vertical shot. So you'll have to just get a glimpse of the face to the name by viewing my avatar.

I'm not an amazing writer. I'm not here because I am the next published author or because I studied journalism or writing. Sure, I took some AP Lit and AP Language & Comp classes, but please don't come here expecting to read the most amazing English piece.

I love to write poetry. I'm an avid journaler. I love reading, although not in the sense that I breeze through books every week. My reading waxes and wanes. The books I'm currently reading are The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann and the Warriors of the Light by Paul Coelho. I'm constantly reading and browsing my bible, "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This book has been my guide since adolescence, and I am obsessed. As a woman who followed my own wild, instinctual nature prior to ever reading the book, it seemed only fitting that my father would own a copy he'd pass down to me and that my aunt (Steemit User @carolkean) would recommend it to me as well. It has since been a staple in my life and in my house. When I was pregnant I read passages to my daughter and even now, I read her excerpts of stories that seem fitting.

Random things to know about me can be viewed at my blog, www.mysticmaya5.wordpress.com. Along with some of my other musings from pregnancy until now.

I'm a rambling typist, I love to talk and write and babble and will never shut up if you give me the time of day to rant. I am a good listener. A psychologist/counselor by trade and now a new mama to a 6 month old baby, it's a skill I'm glad to have. Sure, I'm an interrupter at times. It was the only way to get a word in growing up in a loud family of Bennings & Codinas.

Mostly though, of all the things I want you to know about me, it's that I'm happy. I'm grateful to be able to say that for the past year, I've been the happiest I've been. I've struggled, I've had hurdles and obstacles before me, but I've been happy and have coped well with what has been placed before me. Motherhood (including pregnancy) has literally changed every fiber of who I am as a person, in so many ways, and in so many amazing ways. I'm grateful to my daughter, the greatest surprise, blessing and joy of my life. There is nothing better. I feel so full I could burst most days, even in the most mundane tasks like hanging cloth diapers on the line. I finally found what my tarot cards speak about so often. If you're a tarot reader, think of the 8 of pentacles in the Osho Zen Tarot Deck, titled "Ordinariness." A woman walking in the garden, picking berries and fruits off the trees. Such a mundane and simple task, and yet she is joyful. Happy to partake in the ordinary, every day chores of life. In fact, she is so happy, that she turns the ordinary, to the extraordinary. That's the type of bliss I've been able to maintain. And I'm grateful for it. For all of it. The ups, downs, good, bad, ugly, whatever. No judgment. Just living, and loving every part of this journey I'm on right now.

-M