30 days: hope to do

5/30 - something you hope to do in your life

It's been on my wish list for a long time, now. I don't know when, or how, but it is a clear and present longing, and I hope it gets fulfilled in the next 5 years:

I would like to live on the beach for two years while the boys are young.

I want a door that opens to the beach, to experience beach-front weather, to watch the tide rise and fall, and hear the waves from my bed. I want to frequent tide pools and make friends with seagulls, to find beach sand in the boys beds and rinse it from their hair. I want to make our own curriculum, follow the rhythm of the days, and I want to write a book about it.

******

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.

Nevertheless, I am willing...

I dare to believe I am headed in the right direction.

I dare to believe our family life meets all of our needs.

I dare to believe I will meet my soul mate after all.

I dare to believe that being twins is the perfect thing for my sons, and that it will (and does) bring them happiness.

I dare to believe that I will be able to visit my East Coast family 2-3 times a year from now on.

I dare to believe I will find a career that truly channels my talents and my joy.

I dare to believe I can do this, and do it with excellence.

I dare to believe that I am a happy person.

I dare to believe that I will be loved for who I am, rather than for who you wish I would be.


Mondo Beyondo exercise, taken from my amazing friends Miriam and Korin. What do you dare?

no idle hands here

Just thought I'd pop in to say I probably won't be writing until Sunday. First, my camera's batteries are dead. Second, every spare moment is going into preparing for this Sunday's opening day at Montavilla Farmer's Market, where I will be one of the two artisans sharing a booth. I'm really excited and nervous. I've invested a LOT of time and goodly amounts of the money I have left into getting ready. I'll be there three times this summer, and I hope my items are well-received.


I've got some cloth produce bags made and something new, as well, these lovely garden prayer flags I made for our own garden last week. I've got 4 done, and I hope to have 10. I have SO MUCH to do before Sunday morning... and only 6 more babysitter hours in which to get it all done. Of course I'll have other farmer's market-themed cards and journals, and my printed things from Bamboo Village Press, but my focus has been on making these cloth items.

nourish

Wish me luck!

somewhere beyond here

The picture doesn't show it, but I feel so adrift, so stressed out, so lost these days. My patience has washed away under a flood of anxiety, and I find it challenging to make it through the days without terrible feelings of failure - failure to discern my path, to find enough creative and engaging things for the boys, to manage this household calmly and with the finesse I tell myself most adults possess. I ask myself every day how I ever thought I could do this myself, and then I remember that I am doing it, that I couldn't have imagined how it would be to parent twins in this situation (or that my pursuit of parenthood would give me the blessing of having two babies at the same time), and that I would not change any of it, no matter how hard it is for me right now.

The fact is, I am trying. I am digging deeper than I have ever had to in my life. I do come up with new things for us to do every day, we get out and spend time with friends, and I am working hard to prepare good meals and bake bread. These things are important to me, and despite my inner turmoil, I am doing them. I have no choice but to reach for something better, to find myself in the midst of this personal crisis.

To make sure I have various kinds of support and a structure to focus my thoughts of creating a more healthy life, I've decided to take Mondo Beyondo again - the online class I took in October that guides participants through a process of becoming clear about their dreams, and then pursuing them.

This is all in line with my stated goal of 2010 of finding my voice. I'm relieved that the class starts today and I can place my frenzied mind into a calm, positive space.

not so blomo

I guess I'm not cut out in my present life for daily blogging. I thought last night that I wouldn't throw in the towel yet, but really what's the point of just putting up a desperate paragraph right before bed? Then I woke up this morning and realized I'd forgotten to publish what little I'd written. So, I guess we're going to go back to old school blogging for now. Maybe next year!

Speaking of next year, I wonder what life will be like. It's one of those times when it's hard to see into the future. The boys will be more than two years old, talking and running and playing in all sorts of new ways. Will they be sleeping solidly enough that they will be back in a room together? I wish for it... wish that they have that brotherly togetherness as soon as possible. Will they be using a potty? Chatting and laughing with each other? Will I still be with them during the day? Running my own business(es) still? In school? Living in this neighborhood? Will I have dated at all? Will I be doing daily yoga? Found a love of cooking? Will we be financially secure? Health insured?

I've been spending a good deal of time giving voice to my dreams and sending any and all forces of momentum to those joyful wishes lately. We are at such a turning point... or at least I am, and the boys are along for the ride.

One of the challenges set before us in Mondo Beyondo was to dare to speak our dreams out loud, so I'm going to put myself on the line here and send my most immediate wish out there - to you, to the Universe, the angels, the goodness and abundance and constant flow of generosity and love that moves in the world. I tell this to you with the hopes that you will cherish and dream this wish for us, too...

I wish to be given a home to live in for the next year.

What a huge dream. What a bold thing to ask for. I so deeply want to be home with my boys for the next year, and having a place to live would give me that opportunity. I don't want to cart them around for other people who only have a care-giver's relationship with them to educate them for this next critical year of their development.

I remind myself that the world is full of possibility, and that there may be just the right person who needs us to care for their home for a year... a reciprocal dream. I remind myself that it is not greedy or lazy or selfish to dream and wish that this could come to us.

Please, friends, wish it with me. A home for a year.

dream schemes

photo and prayer flags by Catherine Just

A group of lady friends has been gathering at our home on Thursday nights. We come together, this small group of tight-knit friends, to set aside a time during the week for hope, for positive change - for our dreams. Over the summer, I had thought about having something like a devotional gathering every week, a time set aside to gather for prayer in whatever way spoke to each participant, and that wish for a positive time of reflection seems to have emerged as our dreamy Thursday nights.

This week, we took inspiration from one of my fellow Mondo Beyondo participants who made a beautiful prayer flag gardland out of her wishes and dreams. You can actually meet Catherine, this wonderful mama and artist, by visiting the blog she keeps about her sweet son Max and their family, or check out her brand spanking new Etsy shop, in which she sells her beautiful prints.

We sat together, seven friends, talking about our wishes, clarifying affirmation statements, envisioning how each of us would design our own prayer flags. I had foolishly thought we'd do this project in an evening, but soon after we started (I have a tendency to seriously underestimate the time it will take to do almost everything), it became clear that this get-togther would only be a jumping off point for us to create such an intimate and meaningful physical manifestation of our deepest desires.

In case you're thinking about creating prayer flags, I thought I'd share not only the photo above, taken by Catherine of her own prayer flags, but two links that have come my way since last Thursday.

The first is an article that gives a how-to for making Tibetan prayer flags with kids.

The second is a lovely blog post about an art installation of a canopy bed, where the canopy is actually made from the white ribbony streamers, each with its own wish. It's so delicate an beautiful - the friend who sent me the link said she's thinking about doing her prayers this way, and hanging them in a tree. How gorgeous - I just love the image of her words - her dreams - being carried in the wind like that.

How do you give voice to your dreams?

black ops

(I'm just going to announce here that I'm attempting to participate in this November's NaBloPoMo. Not really sure if I'll succeed in putting up a blog post every day, but I'm committing myself to it now!)

I've been wanting to tell you for a while that I'm taking an online course about Dreaming Big... it's called Mondo Beyondo, and is taught by two amazing women Jen and Andrea - and I learned about Andrea in the summer issue of Artful Blogging. Way back in Week 1 of the course, we were tasked with sharing some of the affirmations we were given. I sort of sat on this assignment for a while, waiting until I felt a Calling to put one out there. Some people left them in library books on Post-It notes... others left slips of paper in cafes or on bulletin boards.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I knew what I was going to do - write out one of the affirmations on the driveway of my close friends and neighbors. The days went by, though... I wasn't sure which one to write. These friends have had such a challenging year - so many unforseen expenses, so many changes in course, so much bad news... I didn't want to put something there that would seem shallow.

One night, as I lay in bed waiting for Max to fall asleep, on a day of more hardship for these friends, it came to me. I came downstairs and told Laurie what I was going to do. She stayed with the sleeping boys while I gathered up the sidewalk chalk and my camera and took a nighttime stroll to their house a few blocks away.

Something Greater Is Holding You

I felt so much joy and excitement, kneeling on the driveway, leaning on the chalk to leave them a message of love in the night. I imagined Ryan finding it in the morning on his way out to work. I thought of Korin coming across it when she came out to bring her daughter to school... and it felt so GOOD to be able to do something unexpected, something lively and joyful and "unnecessary". The night air, being alone, doing something creative - it really was a great exercise in service.

This week, I bought a huge tub of sidewalk chalk. I have a feeling my days of evening graffiti writing are only just beginning...