Greetings Friends,

At Natural Awakenings we focus on the positive news not the negative. This September issue is our “Inspired Living” issue. What inspires you? Is it a sunrise? Or a blank canvas promising hope for something beautiful to come into being? (More about this later.) This is how I feel each month as we put together this wonderful magazine, piece by piece, with educational, empowering content enmeshed with informative, creative advertisers who provide a variety of unique services to the Gulf Coast area. Together with my team, we are designing a beautiful thing every month! In the following pages, I’m pleased to present creativity in healing and health, and other inspired articles such as “The Art of the Written Note.” These things are profoundly important and personal to me, and I hope to you too.

September is also a month for new seasons. Football is back, Fall is in the air, marriages are happening, babies are being born, kids are going back to school—they are leveling up to a new grade, they are making new friends and they are learning new and exciting things. Speaking of babies, my granddaughter, Annabelle Larae Austin came into this world to dazzle us, humble us and remind us about what is good and pure. Born August 18, 7lbs, 8oz, the daughter of my son Zach, and Brianne Austin, she has already captured my heart. She is the blank canvas promising hope for something beautiful to come. She will be inundated with love and care. She will know the hope of Jesus Christ her savior, every day of her life. She will know she is His. She was born for a purpose, and I can’t wait to get to know her.

That brings me to my close… I look for inspiration in people passionate, kind, caring people who search for hope and for answers in unexpected places. Today I received a weekly email from a friend with a message: Empty your cup and keep an open mind in everything you do—a receptive, beginner’s state of mind. He says “Our biggest folly then is to believe that we know it all. It’s like surrounding ourselves with a fortress wall that prevents the entry of anything new from the outside—a barrier that ultimately restricts learning and growing.” He goes on to say, “Thus, the only way to experience something completely different and new is to keep an open mind, by removing all previous traces of knowing, and creating a state of emptiness. What you know is the familiar. It may have worked in the past, and helped you deal with old situations, but it may not be useful in the present or the future.”

Each new moment brings with it its own set of dynamics… and nothing in your past can ever prepare you for it. A Zen proverb sums up the idea aptly—“Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting something go every day.” Moving from knowledge to wisdom is the ultimate aim.

So, empty your cup, clear away what was and get ready to experience a new way of thinking and living!

God bless you and keep you until we meet,

Michelle Smith, Publisher