This Authentic Life

• 2011-07-04

  “What does it feel like when you’re dancing?”  Authenticity at its finest.  (Jamie Bell, BILLY ELLIOT, 2000)

• 2011-02-20

  To be loved by you is an incredible gift. Those children were so damn lucky,

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  Love letter

  

  Thank you, Maddie, Nina, Grant, Greta, and Elsa, for teaching me … to get over myself, my pride … to embrace more spontaneity and joy … to remember and keep fresh all the children’s songs and hand games I ever knew …

  

  to let my heart keep stretching larger and larger … to become even more patient …

  

  to know greater boundlessness in love, to not fear saying good-bye … to embrace what is now …

  

  to enter the world of magical communication and love of children who cannot yet talk … to sit and breathe and rock and sing, to simply inhabit the moment.

  

  I celebrate your sweet blossoming lives and the honor of being a part of your journeys.  I will carry you in my soul always.

• 2011-02-17

  Missing you

  Hey I remember that you would talk with me too and love on me as you had with these children. They are so bless to have had you in their lives. I love your blog, it took me to a place not really to long ago when you where here and talking to me and teaching me new thing about God and what he thought and knew about me to be true. I love ya!!  You are so amazing  =-)

• 2011-02-16

  Good-bye, nanny jeans!

  

  I’m giving away all my nanny jeans, my Target T-shirts, and my tennis shoes with the purple polka-dot shoelaces!  The jeans now have proper holes in the knees from daily rough-housing with toddlers, the shirts have been bountifully blessed with baby spit-up, rice cereal, and other substances, and the shoes have been filled countless times with playground sand and dirt.  During the last 16 months when I’ve cared for 5 children (from newborn to 4 years) belonging to 3 different families, my nanny clothes have been worn and washed, worn and washed, every week without fail … next Monday it’ll be time for a new look.

  But first, let me remember …

  … how sweet-hearted Maddie couldn’t take her eyes off my red shirt while I rocked her and gave her a bottle.

  … how celestial twins, Grant and Greta, would smile and giggle as I lay each of them across my jeaned lap and sang to them.

  … how blue-eyed Elsa would place each of her small feet squarely on top of each of my tennis shoes, hold my hands, and “monster-walk” around her yard.

  … how curly-headed Nina would cover me from head to toe with chalk dust during our sidewalk chalk-drawing marathons.

  On second thought, I better save at least one pair of velvety-soft nanny jeans and a few shirts.  They’re perfect for house-painting and car-washing … and I may have the honor of playing airplane and building cardboard box forts again with a two-year-old sooner than I think.

• 2011-02-15

  Flooded with sunlight

  

  In one of my dreams last night I was moving into a lovely big upstairs bedroom, a generous room flooded with sunlight, in a large and rather funky older house, the kind with a rambling porch all the way around it.  The house was filled with intriguing, whimsically colorful rooms, all of them drenched in light, and my daughter and one of my cousins were moving into their own rooms in the same house.  There was a powerful presence of vibrant, communal feminine energy, everyone creating a fresh space for themselves.  I was thoroughly relishing moving the furniture around in my room, being creative without limitation … there was so much warmth and openness to work with.

  When I awoke I almost felt as though I’d had been flying, that’s the sense of weightlessness and freedom it left me with.

• 2011-02-05

  The surprising gift of hope

  

  For much of the month of January I felt as though I was crouched in a bunker, trying to escape the flack from incoming emotional artillery.  I didn’t even realize this had been my stance until several days ago when the “firing” suddenly stopped … that is, several days ago when I accepted a full-time, salaried job.

  Some of you who’ve known me over the last few years, or have read the earlier posts on this blog, are aware that I’ve been prohibited from working in a salaried position for nearly 2 years.  During this season I’ve worked as a nanny for 3 different families — truly a miraculous growth journey — while looking forward to the day when I’d have a higher and more stable source of income.  (Yeah, I know, stable is a very debatable term, used in this context.)

  Now that the long hoped-for salaried position is imminent, I feel utterly released and in touch with richer emotion than I’ve been aware of in a very long time.  I thought I’d been doing relatively well with staying present to the multitude of feelings roiling around inside me in the midst of so much change … but it seems clear that I’d still been guarding myself to some extent.  I know this because not long after I received my job offer last week, I experienced an electrifying depth of sensation, of movement, with regard to a few key relationships.

  For quite a while I’d been seeking to approach 3 significant people in my life with more honesty, generosity, and fearlessness … with varying degrees of progress.  In the reassuring light of increased financial security, I was able to see remnants of self-protective posture to which I’d been clinging, in these particular relationships … and rather quickly release it in favor of a more trusting, heart-centric energy.  Never in a million years could I have guessed there’d be this connection between a new job and relationships with which I’d been struggling. 

  What a surprising and life-authenticating gift — hope.

• 2011-02-02

  Ellen: beautiful, contemplative thoughts

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  May you welcome your own vulnerability

  

  May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation … keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.

  As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings … may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

  When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance … may your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

  When thirst burns in times of drought … may you be blessed to find the wells.

  May you have the wisdom to read time clearly and know when the seed of change will flourish.

  In your heart may there be a sanctuary for the stillness where clarity is born.

  May your work be infused with passion and creativity and have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

  May your soul find the graciousness to rise above the fester of small mediocrities.  May your power never become a shell wherein your heart would silently atrophy.  May you welcome your own vulnerability as the ground where healing and truth join.

  May integrity of soul be your first ideal … the source that will guide and bless your work.

  “For One Who Holds Power” (from To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue)

• 2011-01-15

  Goodbye (for now)

  I can relate to the mama-bear post in my “off-Broadway” sort of perspective. It IS a little different when the child is not your own, or even a human, in my case. But that mama-bear instinct, I think, is present in all women regardless of whether or not they have children of the own. In the case of my Charley, wanting so much to protect and to heal him, but being mostly powerless to do so, was a very difficult experience. Yes, Charley was just a pygmy goat, but I loved him and in effect, I was his mama. I hated to lose him, I hated having to make the choice to end his suffering, and hated the way it had to be done. But I am accepting, finally, that embracing the hard choices is a part of our growth, and gives us room to expand our hearts in ways that we can’t imagine without having gone through the experience. It is now over, it’s done…and I’m going to plant a patch of clover (which he loved) on top of his grave so I’ll always remember & love him.