Feature Interview link
February 8, 2010
For those of you who may have more questions about me and what I do, check out this link to an interview I did recently for the livemom site …
Motherself goes local …
January 26, 2010
Recently, I have felt myself drawn to creating a community of like-minded moms, women who desire to become more conscious and more present to their lives. If you live in the Austin area and feel this same yearning, check out the new motherself group forming soon.
Interfaith Holiday Parenting
December 14, 2009
Feeling the pressure of the holidays yet? If you are involved in an interfaith relationship, this article I wrote recently might be of interest to you …
Appreciating the strangeness
November 26, 2009
Do you ever have moments where you step back and reflect, “Wow, my kids are going to have memories of the holidays that are done this way, with me as the mother.” It sounds like a very obvious statement, but there is something really strange about it, when you allow yourself to fully inhabit this reality. We all grew up with our own family traditions, and we associate the holidays with how we were raised to celebrate them. But as adults, it is not always possible, or even desirable, to recreate or continue these family traditions when we now have in-laws, distance, divorce, or other factors that change the way we do things. So I stop this Thanksgiving and take a look around me: this is the way, so far at least, my kids will remember this holiday.
And I am the adult in this picture. Somehow when I think about Thanksgiving, I still picture myself as the child, sitting in the backseat for the long drive to my grandmother’s house, running around with my cousins and putting on plays, eating lots of dessert and passing out on the way home. I am lucky to have nice memories of this holiday, and I will always treasure them. But now it’s my kids’ turn. It is truly amazing to try to step into my children’s shoes– see the world through their eyes. Wow, I think, they are just taking this all in, going along with whatever plans we have made, finding their place in the way of things. What an incredible experience, to be a child. You never know what’s going to happen next, not really. You understand some, but not all, of what goes on around you, and while you can’t articulate exactly how you feel, you know when you feel complete and happy.
Maybe it’s not so different from being an adult after all.
The difference, though, is that now we do have some choices, which, of course, come with many responsibilities. My intent is to not get lost in all these responsibilities, but to still feel the wonder I felt as a child, realizing again and again that, wow, we are really the actors on somebody else’s stage, not only the central character of our own.
Vacation mind
October 19, 2009
This past weekend my husband and I decided to take the kids to the beach for a “family vacation”. I put these words in quotes because sometimes I think the two words don’t belong anywhere near each other in a phrase. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of wonderful things about traveling with children. My heart swelled watching my 15 month old learn to walk along the sand, carrying a pail over his shoulder. I laughed aloud seeing my 3.5 year old chasing the seagulls and jumping the waves in the ocean. Experiencing new things with children is truly amazing– it is like we get to experience them for the first time too.
But, vacation? No, vacation it was not. When I think vacation, I think vacation mind, the wandering, lazy mind I used to get when lying on the sand for hours, eating late and long seafood dinners with key lime pie, sleeping in as late as I wanted in the morning. These experiences are tabled, for the time being (at least until someone volunteers to watch the kids for the weekend!) But the real challenge, as I see it, is not that I can not enjoy a relaxing child-free vacation. The challenge is how can I access that vacation mind within the life I currently live?
This question may sound trite to some, but I find it essential to ask. I need breaks from my everyday ways of thinking, planning, organizing, detailing. I crave that spaciousness that often allows for my most creative ideas.
And so the real work is of a more spiritual, mental, and emotional nature. It means finding ways to take mental breaks in the day. A few minutes ago, I sat outside in the sunshine for 10 minutes instead of coming right in to the computer as soon as the baby went down for his nap. I let my mind wander aimlessly in the breeze once the kids are settled (for 3-5 minutes) at the playground. I luxuriate on those days that I get to stay in bed until 7am, and learn to see that time as a late hour. These mini-vacations are not a luxury, but an absolute necessity towards my overall well-being.
As my son said many times over our family trip when trying something new, “I like it, but I have never done it before.” Family vacations? I say we try to like them for what they are, instead of disliking them for what they are not. And vacation mind? I think we must find ways to really vacate our everyday busy minds, and do so daily.
