It's fall and Tori Amos came on at random on my playlist. "Fast Horses" to be exact. This album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, isn't one I've really listened to all that much, mostly because when it came out I was just not feeling like the emotional roller coaster it would put me on. See, I've always been really sensitive to Tori's music. Sometimes it's not as bad as others, but usually, her music pulls something out of me; this girl that's really deep down in my core. She's a loner, she is broody and she remembers the growing pains of adolescence and the entire process of finding herself; the dark nights where the flicker of a candle is all that held her heart in her chest while tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

Happily, I'm not that girl anymore. To be more precise, I've grown beyond that girl and found my power and my happiness, what my life means to me and what gives meaning to that life and I try not to visit that girl very often. Of course, sometimes, when songs come on I catch a glimpse of her lying there on her bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the way the candle light flickers against the light fixture. She sits up on her bed, clutching her pillow to her chest, brushes that unruly red hair off her cheek and smiles at me, knowing that in time she will become the woman I am now, but that each struggle is what will get her there.

There's something about this time of year and Tori that just seem to go hand in hand. A time of reflection, when we recall days gone by and look ahead to what is yet to come. The skillful part of living, I think, is finding the balance between remembering the past, planning for the future, but being in the present for all the experiences that we are facing in the here and now that are currently shaping us into who we will be. Our future has yet to be written, we can make it whatever we want. And I plan to make mine awesome!