• KD's talk about emotional healing,...getting to draw what we want in life.....
  
  
• The nice beds at the hotel...:)
  
  
• Eating wonderful food with wonderful people.
  
  
• Meeting new people who really didn't seem all that new...well-behaved new people. LOL
  
  
• Sharing my artwork and getting to see others' work.
  
  
• Feeling safe away from home...that's not always the case.
  
  
• Feeling that my program got a nice kick in the pants, feeling reinvigorated to move forward.
  
  
• The sunshine, oh the wonderful sunshine.
  
  
• Starbucks right next to the hotel (two sausage and egg muffins for a snack).
  
  
• Getting to pet KD's dogs.
  
  
• Listening to the peacocks.
  
  
• Talking with David about when we were kids and played fast pitch with the pink rubber ball.
  
  

I could go on .....

it was tons of fun!

• Getting to know my roommates.
  
  
• Being awakened by someone when my alarm didn't go off (trust.)
  
  
• Sitting in old town with Terri and Desiree listening to the pan flutes.
  
  
• My Navajo doll from the Christmas shop.
  
  
• Food, omg, Duran's lunch and Joy Lynn's dinner and John's gift of his blue corn pancake (thanks John.)
  
  
• Flying Star patio.
  
  
• The co op.
• Being away from San Pedro, California.
  
  
• the mountains, hearing they were made of quartz, desiring to be 'quartzed.'
  
  
• Small group sharing.
  
  
• Crying (you'd never know it, but it doesn't happen that often when I'm alone.)
  
  
• The hotel and sense of a safe place to be and sleep.
  
  
• The soft beauty of desert.
  
  
• The AA meeting at 6:45 and our gift coffee cup.
  
  
• Sunday morning at Starbucks, half-marathon racers with their 'signs on.'
  
  
• *Gloria and I laugh/cry on my birthday night.
  
  
• Feeling loved, feeling home, wanting to know the desert.
  
  
• Gretel's compassion for me.
  
  
• Kathleen's reassurance.
  
  
• Everyone's faces at breakfast, every day, never forget any of it.
  
  
• Melanie's children in their pajamas.
  
  

(there's more, but I know you have your own….)

I have been trying to think how to write what I loved about ranch this year and decided I just need to write about it as joy dots.

• Seeing old friends and feeling like we have been together forever and that a year apart physically is not actually 'being' apart because we have chats and the lists through which we connect during the year.
  
  
• Meeting new friends and feeling like we've known each other forever, realizing again it's because of the connections already made through chats and the lists.
  
  
• Kathleen's presentations about how we sugar-sensitive people feel pain more deeply and how we use sugar and other addictive substances to keep us alive. And how 'doing the food' helps us 'hold' the feelings as we learn new ways of coping with and transforming pain.
  
  
• Sharing together in group what we want within the next year and how we can come to believe that not only do we deserve it, but concrete steps we can take to get there.
  
  
• Having delicious program-friendly meals organized by Kathleen and David that provided us with the opportunity to just relax, laugh and be together informally.
  
  
• Beautiful New Mexico weather with abundant sunshine and a view of mountains to the east from my hotel room. One morning I woke to Venus bright in the dark sky just before dawn, and it took my breath away.

As I've written these I realize I still can't capture in words the feelings of being at one with the people, the messages, the purpose of Radiant Recovery. I've been doing the program for 15 years and have been to as many ranches (well more, because I also go to Euro Ranch). I say every year, 'this was the best ranch ever,' and I've meant it.

Which means to me that the experiences of ranch have contributed to expanding and deepening my appreciation for the growing sense of not only okness with who I am, but an understanding of the power of love that builds as we share together our experience, strength and hope with each other.

And so....while these words don't seem adequate to describe all I took away from ranch, they are at least an attempt to share the radiance that I feel now in the aftermath. Who would have thought that just starting with breakfast every day would have led to this!!!!

• Looking at why being sugar sensitive makes us particularly vulnerable to wanting to *use* something to help us deal with emotional pain. We feel deeply, and experience pain more intensely. Sugar is soothing and we get hooked early on.
  
  
• Looking at how our brain chemistry affects the way we look at the world and how we experience reality.
  
  
• Looking at how what we eat can support either balance or imbalance and how the imbalance can seem real even while it is distorting everything.
  
  
• Exploring how doing the food - the steps - can have a profound impact on our feelings.
  
  
• Visioning what we want from our lives and how to call in the things that will support what we most dream of.