So we had so much fun this summer I didn’t have time to write! Not only did we have fun but we sold our house and bought another! The best part of that whole process was the day we went looking at houses and the kids found a bunch of frogs in the back yard of one house. While Mike and I were agonizing about price, size, condition, location, and on and on, the kids showed us that we were missing the little pearls around us. The kids and that bunch of frogs they found had a ball! Do you know what it sounds like when two frogs kiss, what they look like when they dance or that they like to ride in pockets?

We didn’t end up getting the “Frog House” but we hope the will come visit any way!

p.s. Thanks to my friend Gabe, I decided that writing did not have to worthy of any literary awards or sound eloquent. I just needed to do it.

Mom vs. kids!

Oh, I love summer!   It is warm, sunny and relaxing!  Despite the fact that the kids are together 24/7  and think they need constant entertainment, it is really relaxing and fun.  If you have a child who feels school is torture, who struggles to fit their square little selves into round pegs, who constantly works to overcome the challenges of dyslexia, summer is a beautiful gift.  It is a time to breath, recharge, play, explore and be free! 

If you are a parent of child who feels that way, summer is wonderful.   For me, I get to see my son relax, smile more, and enjoy being himself.  Summertime is about having fun and being together as a family, not homework, power struggles, therapy, insecurities or judgement.  For me, and I think my son would agree, summer is the greatest thing!

Some people are just bursting with joy and for most, it  seems so easy for  to describe and feel joy.   Not for me.  I myself have struggled to feel, see and really know joy.  I have often asked where the joy in my life is?  Why don’t I feel it when there are so many wonderful things in my life?

I see now that joy to me is really more like peace, a calmness, a knowing, a being and appreciating.  It is like my son’s face above that says to me “I am…I am here…just the way I am supposed to be”.  Where is my joy?  It is knowing and loving my truth.

We all know someone who, right now, is faced with incredible challenges. Just today I learned that a client of mine is suffering from mental illness, more than one friend is struggling with the diagnosis of learning disability for their child, one friend may need surgery, another friend is suddenly a single parent for two months and yet another dear friend found out that his job as he knows it will change in less than three weeks and might possibly be gone. At my house, my just 10 year old son will be taking his black belt test is in less than two weeks and daily I am feel like I am falling apart under the pressure!

So what can we do? Obviously we can’t make disabilities or disease go away, bring about jobs or even take the pain of 500 jumping jacks away. We can however try love!

We can love each other through the process. We can and should hold each other in a space of love…visualizing each other surrounded and supported by love that has no boundries, no limits, where healing from disease or disability is possible, where  physical pain is managable and emotional pain is minimal, where each of us are living and working in a place that is congruent with our true selves and where our basic needs are met.

Then when we are done with that, we should hold ourselves in that same space of love, connected to our higher power, grounded and feeling our hearts, seeing ourselves surrounded by the love of the universe and its limitless possibilities! Just feeling that as I write takes the fear, doubt, pain and stress out of my own heart. Together we can change how the world around us feels just by seeing love, sending love, feeling love and believing in the power of love.

Can’t hurt can it???

Is there any good time to be unprepared? Possibly. A dear friend of mine, in her early 40’s, just lost her father. She is the first close friend of mine that is around my age to have lost a parent during our friendship. It really got me thinking. She said several times that she was really not prepared for her father to die. Although he had suffered a stroke, possibly several, and was unable to live independently, she wasn’t prepared for him to die. Arranging for a memorial service, figuring out what to do with her father’s body, what to do with the estate and simultaneously knowing how to help her kids deal with their grandfather’s death and grieve herself….a mystery.

My initial response was “Oh My Gosh, I wouldn’t know how to handle all that either”. My next response was thinking that when my friend was ready, I’d have her go over the process with me…so I could know what to do when it happens to me. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Get the details, know the facts, be prepared. It could only help, right? I am sure that being prepared for death has its purpose, its depth and timing, different for each of us.

For me, being unprepared for death, would have an important purpose. To facilitate the feelings of helplessness. To make me feel really small and tiny. To show us that me that I am not in control and that death is final. No amount of knowing (even by a psychic) could make things easier. Feeling helpless is a vital part of moving through the grief. It would be just like me, to try and avoid this kind of pain through thinking I knew what was supposed to happen, organizing, planning, delegating and working out all the details. I bet I could do a pretty good job staying completely out of my heart!

Instead, I have decided to allow myself to feel the struggle and helplessness that comes with being unprepared for death. Stay in my heart!

If you read this, please hold space for my friend Tundra as she grieves the loss of her father then go outside, take a deep breath and appreciate nature…in honor of her father.

I didn’t know when it would happen, just that it would happen. Well, it happened… on Easter Eve.
Ryan, my almost 10 year old, put two and two together….Mom looks,thinks and acts an awful lot like the Easter Bunny, The Naughty Leprechaun, The Tooth Fairy, The Toenail Fairy and yes, Santa Claus. Can you believe that?? He has asked before and I’ve always answered his question with a question. (i.e. What do you think?) Well this time my question answer wasn’t good enough and the truth be told.

It was really cute…for an hour or so after the initial disclosure, you could tell he was playing back his previous memories with a new awareness and asking me questions to fill in the blanks. Then came the realization that things would now be different for him. He could help keep the secret for his 6 year old sister or risk no more secret visitors for either of them. (A threat I am glad I came up with on the spur of the moment) He could also help with planning and carrying out the secret holiday missions. Yeah!

But, no more surprises for Ryan. That is okay though. For him, knowing is much better than suspecting and not knowing but not as good as being totally surprised. I’d have to agree with him on that!

As I watch nature quenching the thirst of all those spring flowers out there wanting to grow and bloom, it reminds me of how important it that we do this for each other too.  It was so nice to make coffee and breakfast for my friend who is immobilized with a severe knee injury.  To be able to sit on the bed with her and talk about anything on our minds.  It was wonderful to support my husband in his growing self awareness and then to help him pick out his first pair of glasses.  (They make him look really hot!)

The only way I am able to do these things today is because there were amazing friends doing the same for me over this past week.  One person brought me care packages of pedilyte, chicken soup and drugs to make me stop throwing up.  My husband held me while I cried after a heart wrenching day at work.  Yet another friend gave me an incredible massage and showed me how to release heart pain. 

WOW!   Just like the rain feeds the flowers with nutrients, the flowers feed our spirits with beauty and the cycle goes on and on…

I am very aware this morning of the gifts and blessings of my life…like a friend who is teaching an exercise class for free, getting to soak up the sun and the views in Sun Valley, Ryan doing very well attending school full time and reading like a maniac, having time to myself to get treatments, Julianna transitioning out of an uncooperative stage,  Mike and I going to counseling, being able to save for a family vacation to Legoland and getting a great deal on a condo during a sold out summer season,  friends who are willing to watch our animals, a wonderful place to work and two new knitting projects to name a few!

These are some amazing gifts and I am thankful.  But here is the crazy thing…I notice that I am spending less time thinking about these great things and more time thinking about something I need to let go of!   What a smack in the face.  It would seem that it would feel better to let go and get on to focusing on the bounty that surrounds me.  It is obvious that, what I need to let go of, is keeping me from really appreciating the work God is doing in my life. So just do it!  Right?  Easier said than done.  

It is so hard sometimes to let go.   I’ve been praying for a change of heart, change of mind, cutting cords, talking about it, talking to it, writing about it, visualizing it….but it is still there.  So this morning in my quiet time, the answer I got was LISTEN!  Talk less, do less and listen more.  God is working in me and on me to let go of this situation but it may take time.  The gifts around me are there to encourage me as I struggle with transformation, remind me of how blessed and loved I am even while I am feeling the pain that accompanies letting go. 

I honestly didn’t know what it meant to be grounded, much less know how it felt, until recently.  I used to hear people talk about it and suggest working on it but I really didn’t know what the heck they meant or why it was so important.  I also didn’t know that I already knew how to do it!   

I could give you the electrical engineering definition of grounded:  the reference point in an electrical circuit from which all voltages are measured, or the Webster definition:  mentally and emotionally stable (who me?).  The definition that I did connect most with is: being fully present, physically, emotionally and energetically. 

Unfortunately,  none explanations will really helped me to understand how to do it.  I think that is because being grounded is not in my head or in my mind’s understanding.  For me, being grounded is rooted in my heart.  Once I learned how to connect to my heart, to feel the love that is in and around me I could begin to feel safe and supported.  That was the first step in being able to be truly present in the moment.  It is from there that I could be aware of my physical body, my physical surroundings and notice how they affect me.  Then I could be safe to acknowledge and feel the emotions and energy with in myself and flowing outward. Noticing and connecting to my heart, first, reminds me to acknowledge and connect to my higher power, my soul and spirit and align with the support of the universe.  

I was already doing this in small ways…when I prayed, meditated, journaled, read, worked, held my kids or sat and enjoyed nature.  The key for me is to do it more…as I get the kids out the door in the morning or help them with homework, as I welcome Mike home in the evenings, when I am rushing or when I’m tired and upset.  What a wonderful difference it makes when I am grounded in my heart.  I feel it in myself and in how others respond to me.

So I’d like to encourage you who are wondering about being grounded or want to practice being grounded to try connecting with your heart…become aware of all that is there and see how it feels.  Be in your heart and speak from your heart.  From there we can all grow our roots to the earth and feel our selves connected to each other in love.

I had an idea for this blog early last week when I was feeling more like a goddess than I am today.  I guess this will be an exercise in faith (in myself) to write at this present moment, as I am feeling worried, tired and unsure. 

I bet many of you didn’t know I was a goddess.  I too had forgotten that about myself until recently.  It sounds conceited, to say the least, but it isn’t.  It is beautiful!  We all have a picture of our true essence buried somewhere in our conscious or more likely our subconscious.  Finding it, seeing it and feeling it is an amazing gift to ourselves and everyone around us.  When I was able to do that myself, it was overwhelming.  I recognized it immediately.  It is what I am all about, what fills my heart and resonates with my soul.  The word that came to me was goddess.  A goddess of all that is me!

Then I asked myself who can sees that goddess in me?  My Dad, my Gram, my first love Jon, my old friend Todd, my new friend James and my best friend Anne, to name a few.  There are specific memories or times that I can recall, with each of these people, where I felt so beautiful, appreciated and full of love…just like a goddess.  I know that their love has helped me see that in myself. 

I also know there are more people who can see it too, like my Mom or my husband…but I don’t think I let them or I am not aware.  That is the painful part.  I am aware that seeing and feeling like a goddess depends a lot on what I allow.  I see that when I hold back my true essence, for what ever reason be it hurt, insecurity, anger, or sadness, that goddess is no where in sight.  That beautiful person with robes of love, understanding, healing and laughter…is gone.  How sad.  That is exactly the person who needs to some shining through to guide those relationships to a new place of joy and peace.  When I am unaware of who else might see it, I miss the affirmation of being truly seen and the chance to return the gift.

So with this awareness and honesty I intend to move forward as the goddess I am, to fulfill the purpose of my heart without holding back.  I challenge each of you who read this, to spend some time sitting with the idea of your true essence and see what comes up. I see you as amazing and beautiful….do you see it too?