TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Not to dream boldly may turn out to be
irresponsible,” said educator George Leonard. I certainly think that will be
true for you in the coming months, Taurus. In my astrological opinion, you
have a sacred duty not only to yourself, but also to the people you care
about, to use your imagination more aggressively and expressively as you
contemplate what might lie ahead for you. You simply cannot afford to
remain safely ensconced within your comfort zone, shielded from the big
ideas and tempting fantasies that have started calling and calling and
calling to you.– Rob Breszny
So this year was a real bitch, but I am ready to take 2012 and make it my love slave. How ’bout you?
Over the past few years I have always done a little retrospective in December and along with my bff made my Mondo Beyondo list. Some of these big dreams have come true and some have fallen behind, but as we usher in this new era I feel more and more compelled to follow my dreams in a radical new way, despite all of the IFs I feel I have. We all have those things holding us back, but I intend to make 2012 the year I conquer the excuses and move into the life I want to create for myself and my children.
If you haven’t noticed, there is a massive movement of brilliant people creating the lives of their dreams and at the same time spreading the word online about how they are doing it. People who believe we can change the world by doing work we love. Like Leo and Scott, and Chris and Kelly and Danielle and Kate and so many more of my online heroes who are rocking my world with their insights. Every day I receive inspiration in my mailbox, and my favorite topics revolve around the things I am working on as well such as getting out of debt, weight loss and healthy living, finding bliss and happiness, dreams, and whatever else comes to mind any given day.
The Ananda Project is all about expansion. What we focus on expands. I have not officially launched the project yet, I am still in preparation here on the blog, but this coming year it will be one of my main focuses up there with feeding the fam, getting out of debt, and some other things I am narrowing down to.
If you could have your ideal life, what would it look like? Not what you think you should have but what you really want. I am envisioning mine and working towards it, and in a couple of posts I will be setting my intentions. Wanna join me? Post yours and let us know about them in the comments.
Our brothers and sisters are there with us from the dawn of our personal stories to the inevitable dusk. ~Susan Scarf Merrell
Ask me who I am and inevitably the conversation quickly turns to my three siblings. The people they have become, and the person I am becoming, are thoroughly intertwined, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
I realize that not everyone beams about their siblings the way I do. I see myself in my mind’s eye stacked in order of our birth. I am the 2nd child, the oldest girl. As we have aged, however, we have become equals, and the best of friends.
This year our Thanksgiving brought us all together in one city, in one home, around one table, and my sister and I were blessed to cook for and host the feast. This was a special occasion, as in years past we have been scattered about the country or the world, and in this day and age it is amazing we are all centrally located. Moving “home” with my children earlier this year was in large part due to my desire to be close to these amazing people I am honored to be related to.
What I know is I never feel so whole as when I am surrounded by my siblings. When we are together the energy of our togetherness alone propels us. When we laugh, it is with years of common history, the chorus of laughter echoing behind us. No one else can understand the intimate threads of my past as they can, and only rarely is that a bad thing. Perhaps it is because the common tribulations we have endured brought us closer rather than tore us apart, as it may have other families. Perhaps it is that we can make each other laugh so hard that we cry. And we’ve had exciting adventures to round it all out.
Certain memories of each of them stand out in my mind as solid metaphors for who they are, and how I love them. I have written poems for each of them, and songs, and they are my lifetime muses.
When we were young, my older brother was my complete idol. I worshiped him as much as he dismissed me. Anything he did, I wanted to do. I remember laying on the floor outside his bedroom, listening to him play the violin, year after year. He and the sound of the violin are one in my memmory. The beautiful music of my big brother.
My younger sister is like my heart outside of my body, walking in the world. We possess an understanding of each other that no outside relationship could ever rival. Attending the same college, we were roommates, and now in our 30′s we are roommates once again. Whether cooking the Thanksgiving meal, watching reruns of Sex in the City, or visiting our father, together we flow smoothly. Still today my image of my sister as a child remains how she found her own happiness in every moment, no matter what was going on around her, her world was filled with beauty, and she still lives this way today making people’s special life moments perfect.
My youngest sibling, my little brother, is a hulking gentle giant whose hyperactive affection and infectious enthusiasm will make him live on forever as his 7-yr old self in my mind. He was everywhere as a child, neverending energy, and his sweetness and literal love for sugar are the cornerstones of my memories of him. He now spreads that sweetness and enthusiasm all over the world through his work.
A sibling may be the keeper of one’s identity, the only person with the keys to one’s unfettered, more fundamental self. ~Marian Sandmaier
I feel blessed to have my brothers and sister as a part of my life, and the closeness we share is such a gift I will never take for granted, for all this I am so grateful.
You are now three and my struggle is rushing ,
remembering to hold on to your tiny words,
pulsing between my daydreams of pressing thoughts
and the image of your silly faces
in the rearview mirror.
You make me laugh,
sing along sweetly to the radio, tell me a story
about how Winnie the Pooh dies and then goes to jail.
I am supposed to drive, steer, pay attention to the road
stay between the yellow lines,
and make enough money to fill this damn tank–
not to mention all those dishes in the sink at home.
I try to fit it all into this drive to school, so afraid to lose or fail,
and when we arrive, when you flit from the car
and float, fairy-like, to the curb
you are not looking forward,
only into this moment, the blossomed petals on the concrete.
Your eyes sparkle up towards mine and quick as a wink you
wave your hand into the pile of ivory petals, fling them into the air
so they drift in the breeze and swirl back to the ground.
My heart rips open like a seed
who knows spring is here, right now,
and we are her daughters.
It’s hard to imagine that a year ago I was living in northern Wisconsin in a spacious 5-bedroom farmhouse on 20 acres of pristine land. We were visited by coyotes and black bears and foxes and too many deer to count. The kids spent hours on the trampoline outside the patio door, chasing the new puppy up and down the long gravel driveway, wading through the creek that ran just feet from the back of the house. That farmhouse seems like a distant dream now, though I haven’t thought much of it nor looked back to reflect on the decisions that led up to leaving it. Life sped up, our little world shifted, and we rode like hell to try and keep up with the turn of events that I myself had set in motion.
I had a dream one night that I was singing into a microphone that was strung to the top of a giant tree. Three of my students were singing with me and when it came to my solo I was surprised to find that I didn’t hold back at all, I belted with everything I had as if it were my show, not theirs. When I woke I struggled to find the song in the foggy waters of my waking mind, but later in the day the song came to me, and once I found it I couldn’t stop singing it:
When I leapt into the unknown, finally honoring the empty ache in my heart where something had been lost for a long, long time, it didn’t matter anymore what surrounded me or how many bedrooms I had.
What mattered was coming alive.
There are conventional and condemning views of what I did, leaving my marriage in the time and the ways that I did, and those are exactly the same views which had kept me confined for so long in a place that shut down my heart. I imagine that when you wake from a big sleep, there is a lot that needs to be sorted. You’ve aged. Your muscles may have atrophied, and in my case I lost a sense of strength that had previously defined and informed me.
When you are sleeping, your loved ones hurt. They miss you, they wait for you to wake up. When my father was in a coma for 3 months, every day was a cloud of emotions and prayer.
One afternoon a year ago I spoke candidly with my best friend about my choices. After all, we have led virtually parallel lives at times, sometimes running ahead or behind but always finishing together. His words couldn’t have hit home more when he said “You’re back. I feel like I got my friend back.” He was right.
When you wake up, your loved ones hurt.
There is no way that I could deny then or now that my awakening caused pain in my loved ones. My little family was taken apart, though without too much screaming or slamming of doors or fighting over custody. It was relatively calm, mature, and business-like. Nonetheless, when I took my son to counseling and she asked him what he wished his life could look like if he could have it any way he wanted, he said “Mom and Dad, me and my sister, back at the farmhouse.” And that is the heartbreaking reality a parent faces when divorcing.
My children have gone through more than just the divorce and moving over the past year. Their dad has been seriously ill on top of everything else. But even through all of that, I know that what I did in following my heart’s desire was the only thing that would wake me up.
When Dad woke up he had to relearn everything. How to speak, how to write, how to eat. It has been a mix of grief for me and my siblings since, having our once dynamic and charismatic father become an almost entirely new person, living with traumatic brain injuries.
I’ve been relearning too. Even before the upheaval, I knew that forgiveness would be required. I knew I would most of all need to forgive myself for the pain it would cause my little family, and that was the scariest part.
Now my kids and I reside in 2 bedrooms in my sister’s house and I can count the number of possessions we own fairly quickly. We live in a metropolitan area where instead of a creek running by, it’s a freight train every 20 minutes. Even as I write this I have a huge grin on my face. Because I am so happy that sometimes I burst out in song. Because I can laugh with my kids and give them so much of this happiness I have found. Because I love what life is becoming.
From the outside it may seem to others that so much has been lost. Yet if you peered into my chest, opened it up and looked into its crystal clear well, you would see that it is deep and full.
Finding our bliss sometimes means making very difficult choices and jumping the canyon we’ve been skirting once and for all.
Even if we hurt the ones we love. Even if they never forgive us.
Even if it takes a lifetime to forgive ourselves.
Are you in need of support around your divorce?
What if divorce were an opportunity to discover and claim the truest parts of yourself?
What if you had a friend who wrote you every day reminding you that you are not alone?
What if your children needed to see you this way to know what courage looks like?
What if you had a place to tell your stories with other divorced and divorcing mothers?
What if divorce were actually a bridge to your hopeful future?
What if there were an affordable way to care for yourself for the next year?
You are not alone.
Join me in having a Hopeful Divorce–click below for more info:
I tried so hard to be happy, I maxed out the dosage on my antidepressants.
I tried so hard to be happy, I meditated for hours, days, years at a time.
I tried so hard to be happy, I read books about how happiness is an illusion and life is suffering.
I tried so hard to be happy, I decided lovemaking was overrated and quit it altogether.
I tried so hard to be happy, I decided happy people were faking it.
I tried so hard to be happy, I thought I could eat my way into it.
I tried so hard to be happy, I told myself that someday it would all make sense.
8 years later it still did not make sense.
So I started running. And running. Not running away. No, running to shake out the stuck.
I ran a marathon.
I stopped doing the things I had told myself I should. I stopped trying to keep other people happy at the expense of my own.
Ever so slowly, I started to remember what happiness was. I had been searching for it high and low with nary a sign of it. Then it would sneak up and surprise me out of nowhere, welling from within, starting at my belly button and oozing like warm syrup to my heart. Spontaneous happiness!? What?
Seemingly impossible decisions were made. A marriage died and was buried.
Children were sat down and informed in the gentlest way possible.
Hearts broke forever.
There is no easy way to realize you have been lying to yourself for many years. But if you are “trying hard” to be happy, it may be a clue that you have forgotten what really makes you happy and gotten stuck thinking this thing SHOULD make you happy.
Have you fallen into this same trap before? How did you find your way out?
This morning I ventured quite a ways down the i-net rabbit hole and found a lot of goodies to share. I am more than excited to begin this very goddess-y exercise class here in Columbus to get in touch with the natural ecstasy of being in a human body. I can’t wait to check it out! I guess you could say I’m bored of my usual workouts.
Interested in following my bliss in a profound way, I have been researching women who have discovered their happiness through honoring their desires, not suppressing them. Burlesque dancing is the perfect example of a woman reclaiming her beauty after too many years of Cosmo and Vogue-impressed body hatred. For enlightenment on this topic, I have found these amazing resources:
Kitty Cavalier (be sure to read her very inspiring story)
Oh my, and I am sure these are just a drop in the bucket of the amazing resources out there for ladies needing to discover their womanly bliss. As soon as I can I am going to go out and get myself lipstick, lingerie, and more self-love with the help of these powerful women!
And my newest obsession is green juice! I call it my green goddess nectar, but it’s seriously addictive and amazingly energizing. You need a juicer, but here is my fave homemade recipe:
Pour over ice and prepare to be dazzled, makes enough for 2
P.S. One of my all time favorite entertainment goddesses Candye Kane is coming to town!!! I am so excited, if you are in Columbus join me for what will surely be an awesome night (and yes, she plays the piano with her boobs!!! You have to see it to believe it!)
Nothing about this past year has been comfortable.
No, it’s been divorce, family illness, the smack in the face of single motherhood, and to add insult to injury, I gained about 10 f-ing pounds!
I have bawled my eyes out more than I ever remember. I have been confronted with challenges I never knew I could face.
And you know what?
It’s AWESOME.
In the midst of it all I feel a welling of joy, tiny moments of bliss, snapshots of the beauty of life. Like the smell of my children’s hair when I kiss them goodnight. The re-connection with my innermost self. The arms of my family welcoming me home to comfort me.
There is great liberation in starting over.
Even after a long-hard stab at a certain recipe, we can always return to our comfort food.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Not to dream boldly may turn out to be
