At our Thanksgving dinner

when everyone had come to the table, plates full from the bountiful buffet at the U.S. Hotel in Hollidaysburg, PA, where I grew up, where my parents live, all twelve of us--Mom, Dad, Sabba, Julie, Gal, Ben, Jake, Max, Fred, George, June and me--Gal raised his glass and everyone put their forks down and stopped talking and Gal said we are thankful to God for everyone's health and for everyone being here and Aunt Gabby is my hero. She has been through a hard time this year and they way she went through it makes her my hero.

Tears came to my eyes and to Gal's when our eyes met; I was incredibly moved by his sincere expression and his acknowledgement of what my year has been and how I've experienced it. I don't know if I take in the idea of "hero" which seems kind of exaggerrated to me, but I would say to Gal, maybe I am a model? and I will accept that

because I think I can tell you what it is that I've been trying to write about all of these months and what I've learned and what I'm living:

that God is with us in suffereing; that life is a mystery; that challenging stuff comes at us, it's just the nature of the world that we live in. That being present to the suffering, not running or escaping from it is powerful. That being present to the suffering alleviates the suffering.

That here I am, a 38-year-old woman who fills blessed, full of hope, energy and optimism, even as I say that my life is full of daily challenges: managing Type 1 diabetes, working to remediate my son's autism, which goes through phases where things are working well and then phases where things just aren't. That I made it through cancer and cancer treatment and now have a stronger commitment to build a life of physical, emotional and spiritual health and that I have discovered to do so, I need to not run from subconsious thoughts or fears but let them surface and acknowledge them.

and that a sense of inner happiness can be there, even when the outside of my life is complicated, hard and messy. Which is how it feels some days, it how it feels today, in fact, with George being off his gluten-free diet and not sleeping well for two nights now. Which is how it feels now, sitting inmy pajamas, needing to shower, pay bills and straighten up the house. Today I'm sitting with the frustration of George not sleeping and even though we've been here before, where George's behavior and regulation goes off when his diet is off, it still feels like it's going to be a lot of work to get him on track and I desparately want to be on the other side, where's he's sleeping and functioning well again.

And yet, that being said, I feel so totally different from how I might have felt a year ago. I am still feeling what is happiness and well-being, knowing that the frustration is just a feeling, even writing that now, it is leaving me.

I'm going to shower now and go take a walk. It's cloudy out, overcast, around 50 degrees. While I walk, I am going to try and focus on my breath and meditate on peace and see what thoughts and feelings come up and out of my mind and then I'll try to return to my breath,

it's a process, I haven't become a monk or something or a spiritual superhero for goodness sake, but I have gotten closer to living the life that I want to live and I am going to keep writing because I don't think that I expressed it exactly today as I'm feeling it.

Happiness is inner and my life doesn't need to be perfect or fill anyone else's longings. I am responsible for my happiness. The place where I am empty out and breath is where I feel God entering me, supporting me on cold, cloudy days.