Week 39 | See the Soul | Imagine People as Their Newborn Selves

Okay, okay. So I know I have babies on my mind right now, which is probably why I thought of this week's action. I still struggle with the judgmental part of my shadow that sees the outer shell, or politics, or behaviors of people before seeing their soul, and I don't like that. For me, part of being more mindful is seeing and then connecting with the soul in everyone.

I had to take public trans to work the other day and made this little exercise up while riding on the bus. When I noticed myself making assumptions about a stranger, I forced myself to imagine that person as a newborn. Yes, that also involved some judgment in picturing them, their entry into the world, the reception from their parent(s) as I envisioned it in my imagination. But it was a really effective tool in helping me move away from my judgments. In many cases, it brought tears to my eyes.. the simplicity of the conjured image bringing me directly in touch with these souls on the bus.

I like it. I'm going to try to remember to practice it every day this week. 

Week 39

Mantra | See the Soul

Action | Imagine People as Their Newborn Selves

ps - In an effort to keep this blog from becoming "A Pregnancy of Positive Intention" I am writing a totally separate blog for myself... that is public ... in case anyone wants to follow along my pregnancy. It's http://hopefulafterhellp.blogspot.com/ 

pps - My husband just called me a multi-blogger. Hilarious!

Week 38 | Love Better | Actually ask what you can do to love better

I haven't blogged for the past two weeks. I have gone deep within myself and posting felt too public for what I was experiencing.

Two weeks ago we received ecstatically joyous news, followed quickly by devastating news.

I am pregnant! I am 6 weeks along, due in mid-May, and very excited!

Just as we were settling into our joy and astonishment at having actually conceived the moment we decided to go for it, we got the heart-wrenching news that Brian's best friend in the world has cancer. He is okay. But the news shocked us, and triggered some deep fears.

For the past two weeks I have been acutely aware of the connection between life and death. It was in my last pregnancy, at the end, when I developed HELLP Syndrome, that I was the closest I've ever been to the connection between the two. And now I am there again, in part because of the life growing inside of me, in part because of the death that I averted last time, and in part because of our friend's cancer diagnosis. He's not going to die, already had surgery, and will start chemo and/or radiation very soon. He's going to be fine.

But all of this life and death stuff leads me to think about love, which, to me, is the only thing that really matters. Just as I was thinking about love, how I love, the people I love.. I read an article in Whole Living in which the author asked her family to tell her how she can love them better. I decided to do the same thing to mixed results. First of all, it's kind of an awkward question. And secondly, I'm pretty close with my family and they all sort of responded like I was being ridiculous. In any case, I pledge to do everything from shipping off 4 bottles of lemon ginger echinacea juice to our friends' house in the mountains to "cherishing family harmony," whatever that means. ;)

Week 38 

Mantra | Love Better 

Action | Actually ask what you can do to love better

A Note about Synchronicity

I was thinking back to the post from week 13 and wanted to tell you a little story about the pink t-shirt that arrived synchronistically in the mail.

It was 6 years ago. I was rounding the corner on a long year out of losing Poppy (my grandpa), moving back to the midwest from San Francisco, ending a difficult relationship, living on my own in Chicago, and working full-time at a really crappy job while working the rest of the time at the art center that my best friend and I had opened. Life felt hard. Really hard. I'd been through some things that strained my ability to feel my usual optimism. 

And then I took a trip with one of my best friends to visit another of my best friends in Amsterdam. Something about being with really good friends, riding bikes through those beautiful brick streets, over canals lit by the moon, and amongst lots and lots of other bikes... oh, and there was that exciting Dutch romance.. anyway, the whole experience was an awakening. The kind of awakening that was really a journey back to myself, and my usual state of optimism and synchronistic living. 

Within two months of taking that trip, returning to Chicago to find it gray, stale, frigid and unforgiving, I made up my mind that I needed a huge change. I knew something big was around the corner. I just didn't know what it was yet. So I decided to make the change myself, instead of waiting for synchronicity to do its thing. I made plans to move to Amsterdam to live with my best friend, an idea that was born, of course, out of the great awakening that had taken place there.

And wouldn't you know it? As soon as I had made a definitive plan, and emotionally detached from the gloom that I knew in Chicago, I walked into a drumming bar on a Friday night, and straight into the next chapter of my life, the synchronistic moment that was around the corner.

There was Brian. Living in a similar state of gloom, hoping for his own awakening, his own next chapter. We went out exactly 4 nights later and fell in love in a booth at a restaurant. Just like that.

Six weeks later he took me to "the lake" in Wisconsin to enjoy the holiday weekend and to meet his parents and his entire family of choice, people he had grown up with and loved his whole life. Second moms, second dads, best friends in the universe, more brothers and sisters than I could keep track of. What an incredible bunch!


As nervous as I was to meet all these people at once, I felt the love immediately. I will especially never forget standing in a warm cottage kitchen, watching the love of my life hold his best friend's infant son for the first time. This kitchen, in varying states of loving re-construction since I've known it, and where many a meeting of the babies, and many a long talk about life has taken place ever since, and countless times in the years before me, happens to be the kitchen of Brian's second mom, Judy. 


Judy just so happens to have welcomed me with loving arms, birthday cakes, book recommendations, borrowed cars in the mountains, and many other things, into their greater family. And Judy just so happens to have anonymously sent me a very cute pink shirt back in February that said "Keep calm and carry on," that just so happened to inspire me to blog about synchronicity...

So THAT, my friends, is synchronicity. And it's synchronicity at its best. 

Happy Birthday, Judy!!!!!! Much love!