.welcome to the world, amado.

Welcome to the world, Amado! A little guy who takes his time, isn’t rushed (unless it’s meal time). Estimated to make his debut somewhere between New Year’s Eve and January 3rd on the Super Full Moon but he wasn’t ready yet. He gave us a week of soft relaxing days leading up to his arrival, already balancing out my fast Aries ways with his steady Capricorn approach.

Then on January 5th he began to warm up for his arrival. Things progressed so quickly that I thought maybe he would arrive that night but when the midwives arrived everything slowed down and he decided not just yet. By 3 am the midwives said it was best to try to get some sleep and wait. He had his own timeline. Dialated to 5 cm, I tried to sleep through the contractions, exhausted and wondering if he would come soon or if it would still be a few days. When mornkng came I thought it was just going to be another low key day until around 1 pm things started to feel different and by 3pm contractions were close and strong. The midwife returned about 4pm, finding me in the dark bathroom bouncing on a birth ball. She agreed that he was ready to move things forward.

From here it would be a long journey that became more blurry and nonlinear and the night approached and a new day came. Each stage of labor seeeming to be without a reference of time. I dove into the darkness of birth, being pulled to another place without time or defined edges. I could still absorb my surroundings but they were like far off voices. I wore my eye mask for the birth, using it to block out all the sensory around me to stay deep within. I didn’t want to tempt my conscious mind. Just stay in the present moment.

It felt like ocean waves going deep within and then lightly pulled out to hear a voice offering food, a drink, a light suggestions. 

In and out in and out
Somehow finding moments of reprieve
Water broke
Ginger honey seltzer
Stay curious
Head at knuckles length
I am birthing the entire world
Fully dialated
Time to push
Lick of honey and salt from Jose
New spot
Another new spot
Holding hands
Pushing
Primal desires
Internal convulsions to open
Opening the way to Amado
Out of tub
Holding onto Mary Jo
Head born
Shoulders
Baby
In my arms
Turned over to see
To see his face
To know him
After so long
His bright eyes
Held in my arms
Mi amorcito
Unreal
That he’s real
This being growing inside of me is here
On the other side
24 hrs later
So much work together
The strongest team work never to be forgotten
It’s real after feeling so unreal for 40 weeks
Laid in bed just holding his sweet little body
8 lbs 13 oz
22 inches long
14.5” head circumference
A big healthy boy

Just the beginning

.the waiting place.

I find myself in the waiting place. It's a place we continue to find ourselves in life if we are present. We all experience the waiting place over and over again in small and big ways but there are so many distractions to provide an illusion that we can bypass the waiting place but with all seasons there is pause and transition.

This waiting place feels big and expansive, more unknown that I've ventured before. 

40 weeks +1 after a late night of rolling contractions, for awhile I thought today would be the day with the baby earthside, but around 3am things started to slow and dissipate to a silent pause, waiting again. So today, I'm gifted another day of slowness of waiting. 

How do we inhabit and hold this space - this gift and challenge? To exist in the unknown is such a real way. 

Like the waiting place, we are always in the unknown but the crossing from here to there - women to mother feels like the biggest leap. It's not really a leap though. As this deep expansive birth calls me in it's starting to feel more like a deep journey down into the darkness - into the silence - into the stretching of what my body feels like, the softness of my mind, the disillusion of time. The slow warm up between this being and I, to connect and start this big work together to leave his first home and come greet this world. To the next phase of learning how to live out here with us in this wild place, but for now - big pause. I've already left the waiting place. 

For right now, the waiting place is holding me. I can allow it to cradle me to be soft and sink deep in or I can resist. I'm trying to just be held by it. To enjoy and remember that life is all exerpeince, there is no real qualifications to put on it - good or bad - right or wrong - just being here in this moment. To be open to observe. To allow myself to be grateful to experience this place. It goes against so much to be open to it. It demands I unwind myself from my linear brain and desire to connect and compare. 

I don't know how long I'll be in this waiting place. I'm just here. I'm already learning though, I'm grateful for that. If I'm allowed more time I know my learning will deepen. Yesterday the big learning was to just enjoy it. To think of a yummy dinner and to watch a movie and to let myself release the day. 

My son was born January 7th. I wrote this 3 days before he was born.

.to be more like the river.

 

how can I be more like the river

let it go

to sit in the river and feel it pushing past me

i can't help but to be changed 

for the molecules of my skin to tingle with the fresh water 

with the pullin of the stream 

I lower myself amongst the big rounded river rocks, let me legs float 

like buoys to the top of the water

in the corner of the river where the fallen trees have slowed the motion

I look out at the beauty to feel so small amongst the pines

.june on an island.

To know a place like this
Waiting patiently for me to returnJust as it does for all the others it nourishes
Giving rest, permission, beauty, tenderness, slowness
Space to roam
Unkept overgrown trails
Offering itself undistrubed
Space to explore
Often alone
Just one-on-one conversations with the nature of here
a softness emerges within me
And I’m reminded of my tenderness

How to slowly start a day,
never before 9, best if you wait till 10
Start a fire
Drink coffee and tea
There’s no rush
Walk or ride a bike
Find the benediction monestary with the unlisted address
Sit in the chapel
Or attend vespers to hear the memorized psalms in Latin
I wonder how many times they’ve prayed these words in their life
Awkwardly trying to follow when to bow and sit and stand
Come back to start another fire
The day is ending but the light will go on
In June the days seem to stretch to very edge and beyond almost crossing the days with nights
With the blue light of dusk illuminating the lapping waves and nearby islands until well after 9 and the dawn quickly arriving some time just after 4:30
It won’t last long, the stretched days of June
Maybe I should
Just stay up
Go for another paddle on the calm water
The ferries are docked and the fishing boats are home
to glide on the open waters in the golden light but
my eyelids are heavy and the fire is out
One more island day

The world is on fire
I hope, even amongst the destruction + dehumanization, that you can find moments of peace and joy to nourish yourself
For the collective work, we are all being called to do to rebuild and reimagined who we are and who we will become

----------------

and such fitting words from Mary Oliver:

On Traveling to Beautiful Places

Every day I’m still looking for God
and I’m still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
Certainly in the oceans,
In the islands that lay in the distance
Continents of ice, countries of sand
Each with its own set of creatures
And God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with
Maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it’s late, for all of us,
And in truth the only ship there is
Is the ship we are all on
Burning the world as we go.

.2024 stitch journal.

 2024 was my second year to finish a stitch journal. I used a linen cotton blend leftover from my summer workshop at the Grunewald Guild, a vibrant mustard yellow with a royal blue #8 thread. I started with my word of the year - devotion - there's a few definitions for devotion. I was drawn to these two most - an act of prayer and the act of dedicating something to a cause, enterprise, or activity. For me, the word represented an open heart and mind - the dedication to being fully open + present to live and what it would bring. It was so fitting, as this year brought so much newness and unknown to me. Life is an experience and I am a devote student.  I stitched it in the middle of the journal/piece of fabric to remind myself every day. Then slowly started stitching blue circles, one circle for everyday. It feels so good to have compete my second year of this tradition/practice. 

I love having a piece to hold the year. A year of so much. 

.what can I learn.

 

What can I learn?

Two weeks at home with an injury that challenges my independence, my clarity, my peace 

I find myself more anxious to think that maybe I’m exaggerating
to base my progress on some secret expectation
To allow my hours to be disconnected from my pained body with a running mind

How can one have radical autonomy?
Not that I don’t need anyone
Not to lose my belief that liberation is only through community and that we are all 100% interwoven

But how can I be so fully and firmly rooted in myself and the deeper earth, that I ask for what I need without apology
I can sit in the moment with peace, patience, and understanding 

or at least understanding that this moment arrived unannounced uninvited but it came 

and my job is to greet it and 

be curious
be kind
be gentle
- with myself

To not ask why but
what do you need?

Can I listen closer?

To be so radiantly autonomous that I receive the request to rest and just be
To be so radically autonomous that I receive the interruption as the journey
To be so radically autonomous that I receive the discomfort as a sign to listen closer and to care more
To be so radically autonomous that I receive life in a way that makes me more tender
To be so radically autonomous that I receive it as a pathway to connect more
not less

.blue skies of January.

I came across a question this week that made me pause - what brings your unrestricted joy right now? - 

I think it's a blue sky

 

after the dark short days that feel like fleeting moments between the never ending nights

the surprise of a blue sky

the delicate yet vibrant pink/orange sunrise

the weak yet radiating sun rays enveloping me on a slow cold walk

it can feel like a deep exhale

a moment of resounding joy

the truth that impermanence is the only constant

the reminder of hope 

the hope of spring 

with all the complexities the unbearable unknowns lurking this year

maybe the greatest joy is the simplest of pleasures

maybe it can be as simple as a blue sky day

maybe it has to be, the rest is too much to hold

what brings your unrestricted joy right now?