"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."--John Lennon

Have you ever planned on something really exciting, only to be disappointed in the end? Or maybe you had a vision of what you expected your life to be like, and then it turned out looking totally different? We all experience things that don't go our way or don't unfold as planned. This happens to everyone. And that can be disappointing. But what if, instead of judging these situations by labeling them as "failed," we use a different perspective and think of them as possibly even a "success"? You may have heard the saying, "In every cloud there is a silver lining." We would like to propose the possibility of: "In every cloud there is a pot of gold."

I know. I've been in it for more than a decade. Of course, the luxury of having a decade behind me is that I can 'see' things now I couldn't see when I was in it. The old adage, "Hindsight is 20/20," is true. But, I also know there are things I can't see even now-but I now believe and trust that things will unfold in their own time-and I can wait.

Over the course of this past decade, I lost three people very dear to me: a niece, my mother, and my soul mate. It seemed every time I was on the road out of grief, another Tsunami came from out of nowhere and would knock me back off my feet, pounding me into the surf, and leaving me for dead.  At least that's how it felt. During this same period...