Homecoming

Me & C. outside the shop apartment the day of our first adventure. 

I feel odd being awake while my husband and children rest. I have laid beside them for a few short moments only, listening to the deep and steady draws of their breath. On one level, I feel it a blessing and calling to be with them. On another, thoughts are stacked within my mind like jagged pieces of glass, and I must write to relieve the pain and to realign the energy of my chakras. By writing down anything genuine, my throat chakra opens and becomes attuned so that all communication clears and flows with greater ease. One thing I've learned of late is not to fear being authentic. If I am being authentic, then my actions tend to explain themselves. I am being authentic now--curled in my husband C.'s chair, in the living room of the home he built beside the railroad tracks. I visited our old shop apartment tonight for the first time in almost three years. I originally left it in a flurry after returning from work back when I taught 7th grade at a public middle school. C.had planned this sudden exodus into our new home to be a surprise. He and most of our things were gone. Our friend Mark greeted me and told me that I had to go immediately. I didn't really say goodbye.

I guess moving right across the tracks somewhat dimmed the blow, as did my ongoing connection to the shop. C. still worked there, afterall. It was still the regular destination of daily evening strolls. However, all my focus was on the common areas--not the upstairs bathroom where I sat crouched in the very first contractions of labor with my firstborn child, not the bedroom where my future husband explained that I could not ride a motorcycle in jeans and carefully laid out his leathers for me to wear on our first adventure , not the living room where I'd stay up nights with my stepson when he couldn't sleep but his father could no longer combat the sweet seduction of slumber, nor the spot where I used to cuddle my daughter when she was so tiny and fit right across my chest, her tiny heart beating into mine. That old apartment is where my stepson came to stay for his first legal visit and where my daughter spent her first year on Earth. One night we took her to hospital in Atlanta and held her little hands while she lay across an x-ray table. The doctors told us not to let her lie on her back that night, so we set her up on a couch in the living room and held her and each other. For the first time, I really felt myself to be part of a family, a mother and wife. The old apartment was a place of breakdowns and breakthroughs, most of which I hadn't considered until its current occupants invited me to go up there and have a look around.

One thing I've gleaned from my 20s, along with not fearing authenticity, is that all relationships resemble those between precious prickly porcupines, which will endure minor wounds in order to receive each other's life-sustaining warmth and closeness. Bearing that in mind, the time I've spent in each of my adult homes has been over-whelmingly loving and besieged by fewer stresses than I imagine most families have known during a historic decade of economic depression and war. The raw energy within our loft gave birth to our life within our present house, and our life here has given birth to both our youngest son and our new careers, which have the potential to dramatically re-shape perceptions of both individuals and society. While these are still in the process of being realized fully, my rapid departure from the shop three years ago is evidence that change strikes with speed.

As for the loft itself, my recent tour revealed that it is still a rapidly evolving energy center--an amalgam of fear, confusion, peace, joy, sorrow, sweetness, passion and hope charged by an atmosphere of sweat, smoke, steel and song. Its inhabitants manipulate these frequencies in the manner that a welder makes his art and, alongside my husband and me, continue co-creating a story that will take us to other places when we've mastered the challenges of our present homes and embraced the joy they've contained.

Plan C

Well, I did not complete the 11 day challenge as planned, but my hodge-podge approach to viewing the daily videos seemed to reveal a general pattern which I’ve adapted to a little world view I like to call Plan C.  Feel free to really let you mind run with all the undertones of that title.  Now, check it out.  It goes something like this. . . .

CREATE  . . .  art, crafts, good vibrations, a nourishing meal, a new opportunity.  The form your creation takes doesn’t matter.  The act of consciously manifesting something is enough.

CARE . . . for others and yourself.  Share hugs, share encouragement, share a meal, clean up messes.  Acknowledge the adage that we are all fighting a hard battle.  Infuse your being with a pervasive sense of care.

 CONNECT. . .  with others, with nature, with yourself.  Connecting gives your thoughts a context and common ground on which to take root and flourish.  Connecting brings us purpose and relieves fear.     

Pretty fabulous, right?  And simple.  Complexity is a C-word we don't need.  I'm interested in the core of things. 

The Visions

"Somewhere beyond all ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field.  I will meet you there." Rumi                           

I close my eyes and focus on wrapping Earth in a rainbow.  Each color receives special attention: Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.  With my mind, I carry each ribbon of the spectrum across the surface of our spinning planet, cradling it first in one direction and then in the other until it looks snug—like a  dearly decorated Christmas gift or an infant in a sling.  Light radiates from the rainbow Earth, and, as it spins, the light pushes back the rainbow ribbons.  On its surface, some people’s souls glow brighter with the shimmering of the rainbows.  Others dim and fall away with silent grace and drift out into the universe like snowflakes sinking softly to the ground.  I think of a light glowing within my throat and the following words come to mind: Speak truth.  Be peace.

The next day, the rainbows have been replaced by candle flames showering the Earth in a warm-orange glow.  I see a crystal around my heart begin to shatter, and my mind draws rainbows around my husband and me, simultaneously warming us and cooling us down.  Flames burn out from people’s mouths as their thoughts catch fire around the world.  Then silence descends, candle light returns, and the soft glow comes from me. 

On our third day of meditation, my husband and I sat alone.  Instead of closing my eyes, I consulted my oracle cards to guide my mind through the chaos of its thoughts.  These urged me to stop pushing rivers and allow life to flow, recognize appreciation when shared and find a way to express myself with strength, grace and sincerity. 

Yesterday, I took my meditation in the park, nowhere near 11:11, as I strolled my infant son.  At home, my husband built a pretend world with my stepson after posting to Facebook his thoughts on God’s existence independent of religion, and my daughter napped deeply in the safe embrace of her room as I rounded a weatherworn track at the local park.  The vision that unfolded happened in real-time as I watched the birds ascend from the ice-speckled ground.  First, I saw a small memorial built to honor men who fell in war and, just beyond that, a steeple rising up through the snow.  Then, after the signs of politics and religion, was an empty expanse of sun-sparkling snow, spreading out alongside the railroad tracks, reminding me of Rumi’s field which exists somewhere beyond all ideas of right-doing and wrong. The thought, “May this be the future,” lit quickly in my brain.  Resting in his carriage, facing toward me, my sleeping son smiled, and we headed home.

Day 1: Gratitude & "One Love"

On Day 1 of his Ignite! Challenge, Alex asked us particpants to compile a list of 10 things for which we're greatful.  He also asked us to beign a new practice of taking 3 cleansing breaths and of identifying and embracing a theme song for each new day. 

My gratitude list

1. My husband.  There is no one else like him, but he is always spreading the awareness that all are one.  I’m thankful to spend my life with someone I love, and I’m thankful that the one I love loves me in return.

2. Our daughter Kyra Lena.  The care with which she treats her baby dolls and makes me imaginary tea and snarls as though she’s a little monster who likes to sing with abandon, give kisses and terrorize her brothers (who are at once her adversaries and her dearest friends) embodies the idea of balance in the most beautiful way imaginable and gives me faith in myself and everything. I’m thankful that I was able to have her naturally and that, after nearly 40 hours of uncertainty, she emerged healthy and strong into my arms.

3. Our son, Valor.  At 4 months, he radiates the purest love I have seen.  His smiles, his laughter, his determination and joy remind everyone he meets why it’s good to be human.  I’m thankful that I embraced my unexpected pregnancy with him and delivered him naturally as well, in less time and with less fear, than I did his big sis’.

4. My stepson, Aldan.  Aldan has a dream in which he consciously chooses to live and a flying pig tells him that he’s going to “rock on.” I’m thankful that, upon meeting the child on his first birthday, I watched him kick one baby-fat leg toward me and knew immediately that I accepted him as my child forever even though he did not enter this world through my body.

5. My house.  In a time when foreclosure is high and society is in flux, the flexibility of my freelancing lifestyle allows us to find a way to stay in the warm and protective walls of the beautiful home my husband built 2 years ago.  I’m also thankful that I live in a place where I can easily walk all the way across town, to a park and the store all the while watching the oddly captivating beauty of passing trains.

6. Warm running water.  Somehow, we always find a way to afford this luxury.  With warm running water, everything will become clean eventually, and the knowledge of this brings me peace.  Throughout my life, nothing has been quite as conducive to peaceful, healing meditations as a deep soak in our claw foot tub or a powerful shower that stays hot.  I have warm running water to thank for that.

7.  Food.  Somehow, we always have enough, and most of it is very tasty and increasingly healthy, largely due to my husband’s desire to help our family evolve our consumption practices .

8. Internet.  Sounds weird, but I’m thankful for this web of connections that allows people to share information, increase awareness, practice free speech and instantly chat with friends new and old.  It also allows me to work as a teacher, writer and entrepreneur and is available at my home and, lately, in hotspots all around the world.  Were it not for this technology, I would not know about Alex Obed’s Ignite Challenge, and I would not be able to share my progress with you.

9. Payment plans.  Like National Parks, just knowing they exist brings me peace.  Not everything must be done at once.  When we’re proactive, we can take things one step at a time and look forward to the release that will come when all debt is resolved.

10. Art—as it exists in all its form, natural and man-made.  Art—a word that, by defying definition, reminds me that not all good things must be so easily defined.  Art—the ultimate form of creative expression which brings us back to ourselves and reminds us we are more powerful than we believe.

One. Two. Three.  Breathe.

CLICK HERE TO ENJOY MY SONG--A melody heard 'round the world

Waking up is hard to do.

Waking up is hard to do. 

As a child, I would be overcome by the sensation that nothing that happened the day before was real.  My parents lived in such a remote universe that my “alternative life” as a teenager who actively volunteered with human rights groups, worked on a literary magazine and drove her friends to all parts of town in search of adventure and youthful thrills just didn’t seem to fit with the minimalistic perfection of my bedroom.  This mistrust of my perceptions was always compounded by the early morning feeling that life around me was kind of settling into place as though the very particles that made up my bed, bookcase and mirror had shifted forms during the night. For a few fleeting moments in the morning, my room would feel much more like a movie-set than the familiar and constant haven it was intended to be.

In college, the sensation that my surroundings weren’t real persisted but shifted.  I would wake thinking I was in my childhood room to find myself stretched out on the dorm lawn with my friends, nuzzled in my tiny cot across from my distant roommate or, later, lying beside my boyfriend who may have been thrashing about in the throes of seizure brought on by low blood sugar and diabetes.  Calling an ambulance in those days almost became rote action, as did reaching for a tube of glucose and then racing off to class on foot a mile or so away.  Once, I was standing outside the journalism building during a tornado watch.  I saw a wall of water hurtling toward me.  It passed over my body without me feeling anything except a quick rush of wind.  It was not until a few seconds later that wet water drops smacked into me, soaking me from behind.  Much of my college experience can be understood in terms of that awakening : I faced life head-on but didn’t register what I was happening until it had already left me, shaking but still standing, in the distance.

Now I wake up to my husband breathing steadily beside me and my infant son rustling the blankets in his bed.  Upstairs my daughter may be stomping around making pretend tea and practicing expressions in her mirror.  Every other weekend, and sometimes many days in between, my stepson will be shuffling around downstairs rooting through his siblings’ toys, tinkering with crayons and peeping into the mysterious cavern that is my home office.  I wake up feeling simultaneously stressed out and peaceful.  What debts must we pay?  How will we ever pay them?  What tasks must I do to maintain my house, my jobs, my sanity and health of my husband and kids?  This is the stressful part.  The peace comes from the simple acknowledgement that we are all here together –united by love and uplifted by my adult interpretation of the sensation I had as child:  Reality is not fixed, so I’m free to create a world in which all our needs are met.  I’m no longer living with people whose visions are out-of-step with my own.  I have the freedom to manifest a waking dream.  I’m not sure how I got here, but it’s awesome.

Welcome to my blog Rasberry Relief: Nourishment for Women.  What visions stir your soul as you lift your face to the morning sun?