Birthday Musings in Belfast

My Love gave me a present one year ago. The best present I could ever imagine. A present to feed my soul.

And today, I'm still in my present. As one of my dear friends wrote to me this morning, "it's the gift that keeps on giving"! Indeed it is.

Surprisingly, since arriving in Belfast a few days ago, I've been finding myself in a very reflective space. I think you can't but be reflective in this city of intense emotion and passion. And that, with the birthday on top...well...let's just say I've soaked in the tub for hours for the last two nights...just thinking. Reflecting.

Reflecting on the voyage so far. Reflecting on the amazing people I've met and the incredible experiences I've had along the way - taking me through a cycle of bursting out laughing, tearing up, then sighing, and back to the laughter, to start all over again.

I shake my head at my unbelievable good fortune to have found these people who have added so much texture and life to my voyage, and given even more depth and colour to an already beautiful artwork that was my life before I walked onto that plane.

I wonder if people ever really know the impact they have on others, from the smallest interaction, like a few jokes in a cafe queue at an Atlanta bakery, to the bigger ones, like a chance Vegas bar meeting resulting in a taken-up invitation to stay sometime, and the random foodie connection in Easter Island that will no doubt turn into a lifelong friendship, not to mention the RV door being generously flung open!

Thank you to you generous, warm, interesting, crazy people! You know who you are, and I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Of course birthday reflections aren't complete without thinking about my beautiful family and wacky and wonderful friends back home. I miss you. I love you. I can do what I'm doing because you're all there. Waiting for me. I love that. More than you can know.

And to My Man, who started this whole thing...well my love, I didn't know it would be this good. I didn't know we could be this good. I didn't know it would be possible to love you more than I did when we waved goodbye on 11 March 2010. But now I do. This amazing life we have together is risky. The risks we take leave me breathless at times, breathless with both fear and excitement, yet it's these risks that have made, and still make me, feel so much intense joy and such profound love for you, for me, and for us.

What a lucky woman I am to have all that.

And the thing that gets me every time I've thought about this over the last few days, is that there's still so much ahead. Crikey!

So. There ends the birthday ravings of a happy 41 year old in a Belfast cafe.

Happy Birthday to me!