Journey

Stay at Home Mum is Okay

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A funny and strange thing is just coming to surface and I’m going to try my best to tease it out and allow it to flow here in black and white. I think I bought into the idea of how hard it was to be a stay at home mum because I was doing it myself and I wanted to prove that it should be valued and that in order to be valued without being paid with money, that it had to be hard. It wouldn’t seem fair if it were fun and you were just staying home with your baby while your husband goes out and works his butt off so you can be at home frolicking with your child. It’s like if it’s hard, then it’s okay to justify the stay at home mum role. However, if it’s something that you actually enjoy and get into the flow and find your rhythm that becomes a new version of easy for you, then some how that isn’t okay. It’s like I’ve been trying to justify me being home by viewing it and sharing with others how hard it has been. Granted, it has been very very challenging, and definitely harder than anything else I have ever done, especially for this long. There was a turning point though, where I really was feeding into a loop that wasn’t so healthy while I was dealing with my own post traumatic symptoms after having a baby, which definitely include the role change and not feeling useful, which was compounded by not being able to provide breastmilk and not being as physically capable as I had been, so many things were tied up in that really.

I’ve come to it now that it’s mostly quite enjoyable, I really do enjoy hanging out, playing and enjoying time with my soon to be two year old. He’s really pleasant, he’s smart, he really brings out all of my emotions and I get to grow in ways that I haven’t before, all through my relationship with him. It’s really awesome actually. I do feel guilty that I am not providing financial income to my family, but I know that I am providing way more in terms of how my son will be in the world and how we will all be affected because of that.

So no more leading on to how hard it is, it only makes it harder. I’m now going to focus on the happy bits more, the fun and joyful parts of this role I am in. It’s okay to enjoy it. There are hard parts too, all the time. However, It’s such a privilege that I even get to do this, I’m now changing the page to where I look at it through eyes of playfulness, love, and joy.

Weaving Paths

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Life is so funny sometimes, most times really. I have noticed that people are weaved in and out of my life on a regular basis. Some of them I may have met, our paths had crossed, but nothing to fully keep us connected other than superficially on social media. That’s fine. The cool thing is that, as time progresses, the connection deepens, and we are able to communicate on a deeper level. It’s really beautiful.

I wonder if it also has to do with a lot of these really interesting and soulful people I met while traveling, after returning from Brazil, after diving into meditation. I was like a free radical at the time, not held down by anything. Maybe I didn’t open up completely, or maybe at the time they didn’t either. Maybe we didn’t have that one-on-one time which I find so valuable to be able to really connect with someone. Maybe it’s the wall of observation that I may put up sometimes, especially if I am new to joining a group. I like to see what they are about, what is going on, and then proceed accordingly. I wonder if that also creates a different sense of trust, or lack of trust. Who knows. Who really knows.

Gratitude is what I feel when my path and theirs reunites in this intergalactic inter web of life. It’s beautiful. I love getting to share and learning about myself and others in the process. I love that we get to catch up and allow that space to do so. Yes, thank you, more please.

Share My Merits

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Lately when I have been meditating I have been creating a focus specifically about acting on ways where I can share my merits with others. I am keen to contribute to the growth and the support of others so that they can grow in beneficial ways and in ways that I can help.

Throughout my life I have had the opportunity of massive growth, of personal reincarnation again and again, of reinventing myself, of being the phoenix that rises from the ashes, of being my own hero on my own hero’s journey time and again. All of these evolutions, all of these insights, lessons, and developed awareness is ripe for the process of using it to help others. Absolutely ripe. I want to, I will, I must help others be their best selves too. It’s a constant process and I know it intimately.

When I was a little girl I would always end my prayers with “and please help me be the best person I can possibly be.” Now that I am an adult I have internalised that and now add to help me share my merits with others. So it shall be.

Meditation, My beginnings

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Meditation has been something I’ve done since 2008, so a good 8 years now. I started out with teaching myself how to meditate while living in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I would lay down, with ear plugs in, and focus on one word, and then just keep going back to it it. This was effective and was a great start.

Vipassana was introduced into my world in early 2009 when I ended up staying about 2 months at the Vipassana Centre in North Fork, California. I had returned from Brazil and was seriously needing to find my own centre, funny that North Fork just happens to be the exact centre of California too. All so very fitting. In Vipassana, specifically in a 10 day silent meditation course, you think of nothing. For the first 3 days you focus only on your breath, narrowing it down the little triangle under your nose. Then for the next 7, the whole practice is scanning the body from head to toe, toe to head, and spending time on the painful/hard/heavy places before moving on. Then the very last 24 hours, Metta gets introduced which is like the salve after doing this major work. Jetta is all about loving kindness. The best way I found for practicing Metta was to focus on myself being vibrant, healthy, in a place that I have been, or an imagined state of being where I am full of happiness. After I really feel that, then I would think about others in the same way, imagining them full of health, being so vibrant, and with the biggest smiles ever. I would think about Goenka the teacher, I would think of dear friends, I would think about family, and then people I have had challenges with in the same light, then I would think of people I have seen but have never actually spoken to, because loving kindness extends to everyone always. It’s a lovely practice. When doing it all together in a single “sit” you start for a few minutes on your breath, then move to scanning the body as the bulk of the practice, then at the end a few minutes of Metta. Any time the mind wanders, just bring it back, always bring it back. We would sit like this for hours on end for days at a day. Overall I have sat more than 50 days in silence like this, and have served on courses where I have meditated 6 or more hours a day while serving others. It was the ultimate reset and what I needed. I did the majority of this kind of meditation from 2009 until 2011 when I had moved to Australia.

I have kept the scanning part of Vipassana very much with me even if I haven’t sat in the centre, it just became a way of life, even though I certainly never sat the two hours a day they recommend after leaving. That was too much for me outside of the centre world.

Birthing a New World Part 1

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My son was conceived on a glorious day of love, a celebration of my marriage, which is also my birthday, specifically on our wedding day. We intentionally created him with love, had just weeks prior made a wish at a Shiva celebration asking for a healthy, fun, baby boy. We offered up our milk, ate some lovely Indian food, and made love each time with full intention and presence.

I started to get sick on the honeymoon, but didn’t think I was pregnant, just thought the circumstances of stress from the farm, getting over a flu, the exhale moment when the wedding is done and life moves along, and being out on an island in the Whitsundays taking trips out in the Great Barrier Reef.

By time we got back home, I knew I was pregnant. I still took a test to confirm at 4am with my first mornings urine which is supposed to have the best rate of truth, I wanted to be sure, and I was. I woke my husband up and told him excitedly, he smiled at me and then we went back to sleep. I was pregnant and it certainly didn’t take long, I had only taken my IUD out less than a month before hand. Everything was happening very quickly!

I had what seemed like a mini period after that, which caused concern, even though I was feeling nauseated. The GP suggested I go in to the radiologist to have a sonogram as soon as I could, so I booked the next appointment I could, and went in. As I laid on the table, I was scared, what if I had lost the baby? I was so new to all of this. My husband wasn’t available to come with me, so I was there alone, and I felt just that, all alone. Then all of a sudden there was a heartbeat, and I was both relieved that it was there and also sad that I couldn’t share this first heartbeat experience with my husband. I saw my insides on the monitor and baby looked like a little dot amongst it all, but alas baby was there. It turns out that was implantation bleeding, which can occur for some women when the egg plants itself into the lining of the uterus.

For the rest of the first trimester, I experienced the most nausea I have ever had in my life. I took ginger, I went to acupuncture, I ate small bites of food regularly, and it never subsided. I really pride myself in the fact that I can avoid puking if I want, every so often I just cannot handle it and I have to vomit, but in this case, for weeks, months actually I was so sick but never actually vomiting. I was hot, like burning up hot most of the time. The acupuncturist would try to lower my heat from my upper body into my legs, and it did work a bit, it at least gave me peace of mind and I was able to cope a little better. During that first trimester I had to really take it easy, but I couldn’t, not really.

Also during the first trimester, the climax of a big dispute of the processing plant tenants at the farm came, it had been building as they had not been taking care of the animals and we even had to intervene and feed the starving animals ourselves on the eve of our wedding night. The whole time during our honeymoon, we, more so my husband, had to deal with the issue, and it was intense. When we got back my husband had to get to work in Sydney, so I was there at the farm with his parents and a few woofers trying to make a presence and not let anything happen. They were hostile and very volatile and we did not trust them at all to leave peacefully. I was on edge and I know that certainly did not help my pregnancy. Along with that, the farmhouse upstairs has this incredible way of syphoning all of the cooking smell from downstairs to the upstairs where the rooms are. So every day I would have nausea and have to smell cooking flesh on the stove, it was almost more than I could bear. I had to ask the woofers to wear deodorant, but only a non fragrant kind. Nausea and farm life really don’t go so well together, with animals being slaughtered, carcases decomposing, and all of the chicken poop and animal smells that come along with a farm.

It was so hard for me to be away from my husband, but I did not want to move to Sydney. I did not want to raise our son in the city, I did not want to move away from the group of friends I had made in country, but I missed him so much, that eventually in the 2nd trimester, I made the move down with him full time. As soon as I was in Sydney, in our new penthouse apartment, I hardly had nausea or morning sickness. By the way, whomever called it morning sickness may have been thinking globally at the time, because it is certainly not contained to one morning in one hemisphere, mine lasted all day and night every day at the farm.

During all of this, I had many different projects going on. I had hired on a coaching team to help me build my own business from scratch, which was becoming harder and harder to manage with my fluctuating levels of energy, feeling unwell, and a totally spacey head. I had a very candid conversation with one of the coaches, and she told me to stop doing it, if there was any advice she would give it would be to stop and not do it, being a soon to be new mother and trying to start a business at the same time was a disaster recipe, and that the most important thing was my child and to not make the same mistake she made by trying to do it all. She also suggested getting a really comfortable reclining chair to live in with the baby. I took her suggestions on board and she was right, although I will get back to it and finish what I started, when the time is right.

We also had the closing of the abattoir at the farm, which was a very big deal. There was also an internet business that my husband and I were getting into, which long story short, over a year of being dragged along, paying out our noses and still not getting to the point where we could sell the internet to others, Telstra finally got back to my husband with the contract. It’s such bologna that any independent resellers have to go through the one company which owns all the lines in Australia that were actually paid fro by the people before they fave it over to this private corporation, who more or less has a monopoly over all the lines across the country. Of course they don’t want competition, there is no reason for them to help someone compete with them, it’s a very flawed system. We didn’t think it was going to be such a big issue, but it was, had we have known we wouldn’t have been stuck into it as long as we did with our finances draining by the month.

Along with this I was still contemplating whether or not to take up the offer for Honours at University and to teach the Digital Marketing class part time. It would have to be all out of pocket as I didn’t have PR, and was considered an international student. The next question was whether or not I would be able to handle having a newborn, living in the Northern Rivers while my husband was in Sydney and trying to do it all. This had to wait as well.

I also started up a mini little network marketing business to help generate some income, which ended up me just spending a lot of money in the way of their products, which while the dollar was one to one, it wasn’t so bad. I sent out heaps of greeting cards and that felt really good, until the realisation that the only way you make money is not by having others buy your greeting cards, but they have to be distributors as well, it felt a bit strange, and I found that it didn’t work as well in Australia, especially as the US dollar increased in value, it became really expensive to keep this going. Eventually I stopped paying and my account has just enough to send a few more cards and then its done.

So there were all of these projects happening, lots of stress, and then a move, to a place I didn’t really want to live, but did because I wanted, err, needed, to be with my husband.

I started trying to figure out where to do antenatal classes that fit in with my husbands rotating schedule, I didn’t get into this alone and I didn’t want to do it alone. I found a birthing from within program in the Northern Rivers and it fit the dates in my 3rd trimester, and I felt better. I had luckily gotten in to the caseload midwife program at the local hospital near the farm where I could have a water birth and be assisted by lovely experienced women with the security of having the hospital as well just in case anything went awry.

There was still a lot of stress regarding the projects we had going on, but I was getting everything sorted one by one. Then at one of the ultrasound appointments, I was told that my placenta was low lying, and that if it didn’t move up, then I would have to have to have a cesarian. This was the opposite of the midwife assisted water birth I had planned to do without any kind of medication. I kept hoping it was wrong and was misdiagnosed due to me not drinking enough water so they could see inside properly with their machine. At the 20 week scan, we saw that my son was not shy at all and was showing his parts in full glory. I was going to have a boy. It was all pretty surreal and was happening.

After a quick trip back to the farm, I got back on the plane to Sydney and was required to show my letter stating I was okay to fly. I honestly didn’t feel very good at all. The day before I had spent a little time in the healing waters of Lake Ainsworth, a nearby tea tree oil infused lake, which happens to be my favourite lake in the world. I was told later that it was an aboriginal birthing lake, which maybe somehow my body knew that.

We landed in Sydney, I met up with a Uni friend and strolled the open gardens on a lovely spring day at Westmeade hospital, and I was tired, very very tired. I had only just finished my 2nd trimester, the baby wasn’t due for another almost three months, but I was so exhausted. That evening, I went to the toilet and found that I was bleeding, a lot of blood. Interestingly only a week or so before, as a precaution I booked into the local Nepean Hospital just in case I needed anything while I was in Sydney related to my pregnancy. We called and they said to come in, and this was the first of many experiences I had with the birthing suite. They wanted to monitor the baby’s heartbeat and to make sure everything was okay. Turns out everything was okay, and that bleeding was par for the course when it came to having a low lying placenta. After a couple of days they let me go home after it was clear that I wasn’t bleeding anymore. I was relieved and very tired.

Since we lived in penthouse apartment that was a walkup, that meant I had to somehow make it up 4 flights of stairs to my bedroom. It was horrendous. We had to move. We had to move for other reasons as well. We had these two older Sri Lankans who totally leached off of us for more months than I care to admit. My husband didn’t want to deal with it as he had his plate absolutely full, and they kept promising they would pay rent. We took on two additional housemates on top of them to help pay the rent, so there was a full house on top of it all. We started looking intently for another place to live that was clean, nice, and not too expensive. I had been looking when I would come to Sydney from the farm and just couldn’t find anything that would work, the one place that did was then pulled last minute and rented to a friend of the owner. By chance, we were directed by a real estate agent to a place we hadn’t even noticed online, and it was the right one, so we signed on, things were looking up. It was a ground level, stand alone two storied town house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms with a a cute backyard. Perfect for what we needed and it was brand new.

I had another bout of bleeding a week later and again, we rushed to hospital, this time there was more blood than I’ve ever seen rushing out of my body.

To be continued.

Life is about the People

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Life is All about the People

About Relationships

That bridge us together

That help us to see ourselves

That help us to grow.

It’s a blessing when you find the people whom you resonate most. It’s a gift and should be taken as so, with gratitude.

As many times as I’ve stood in front of amazing natural beauty, it is when I am with another person that it really feels full. I can experience so much on my own, and it’s been essential for me in my journey. However, the blessing of partnerships along the way have made it so special.

 

Learning through Experience

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I often say that the only way I know anything or have learned anything in life is because I have experienced it myself, first hand. This is how I operate in the world. I need to do something on my own, with my own hands, using my own body, with my own thoughts, in whatever environment I am in, so that I can learn and be in it to gain from it what it is. I am like a sponge in that respect, I take it all in, everything I can around me – the people, the smells, the culture, the overall feel of the energy around and I do my best to find myself amongst it all.

Since I definitely have some empath kind of traits where I take on the feelings of those around me, accompanied with the understanding that this is how I learn, I have found myself in many bizarre situations. I have learned so much about life and about what I want based on what I don’t want, which has been based on my own personal experience!

Perhaps this is also why when I’m in a new situation or environment that I am so open hearted and open minded when I am there. I embrace it all and then sort it out. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just learn by others stories, which I do to an extent, but truly, the deep learning for me is in the doing. It always has been.

 

Ratha Yatra Hinduism Festival

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My contact experience with Hinduism seems to be growing now in Western Sydney. Today we just happened to look up what was going on in the area and there just happened to be a Ratha Yatra festival happening nearby.

As soon as we parked and started walking towards the park where it was held, a parade processing was just starting! All the colours, the smiles, the dancing, happiness, symbols, drums, bagpipes, and chariots were enlivening! It was incredible! We were invited to dance along and be a part of the parade, which we did and danced in the streets for blocks and blocks! We helped pull the chariot along as part of the festival activities and I was overwhelmed with joy! It was all happiness, all good will, people holding hands, holding our hands, sharing in the event so freely!

Afterward there was a huge vegetarian feast completely free of charge and it was incredible! The thousand people or so all enjoyed the delicious homemade food while sitting in the park on this lovely sunny winters afternoon. It felt so good to be there and everyone genuinely looked like they were having a great time, the kiddos that were young, the teenagers, the adults, the young families, the elderly, it was incredible!

From the openness, the lack of judgement, the happiness, and good vibrations I’ve experienced at these Hinduism events, it certainly makes me feel very grateful that I no longer go to church and quietly sit in the pew hearing stories poured out like I did as a child and youth. Life is truly a celebration and I LOVED this experience today!

Eel Totem and “Great Change”

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Three weeks ago I graduated from University. Since then I have gone through a series of different emotions, running fast, then slowing right now, and even sprained my ankle! It’s an interesting space to be in where there are expectations of what a new graduate does, as in gets a typical job works and makes a little money. However, I haven’t wanted to return to something or a way of life that I have previously experienced, so I have been feeling the pull towards that familiar route and simultaneously a strong push away from it. It’s not that I don’t want to spend my time making valuable contributions to the world using my new knowledge and positively impact the world. I do! It’s just that old way of working does not appeal to me. Trading my life for someone else’s goals and ideas when I may just happen to find them on a job board is not appealing to me.

Offers have been coming my way that are not traditional as well, which I am very thankful for. None have fully resonated with me though. It’s not like they aren’t totally suited to me, because they are, it’s just that I don’t feel passionate about them. They happen to be jobs that are in line with my interests and the way I operate in the world, but for some reason that voice inside of me isn’t saying “GO GO GO”! Instead what’s happening is that I spend a heap of time deliberating if it’s a good idea, and it usually is, and if the pay will be enough for me and for the most part it has been, but there’s something vital missing. In all of these offers I’m still pushing someone else’s agenda which still does positively affect the world, but I don’t feel energised by the thought of actually doing the work to do it.

Obviously I am curious about myself as I witness this space of transformation. When I truly think about what does appeal to me, it is the ability to be my best self, make a difference in the world, make and complete highly ambitious goals and live a high end lifestyle. This is what I want and I am researching and learning about how others have done it and are doing it to gain some insight and inspiration. What I want is to combine all of my awesome into one package and deliver it in a relatable way to others. What I want is to inspire change in others like I have been inspired over the years and help people live in their best version of themselves. I want this for others because I want this for myself. I want to be happy and generous and kind and appreciative, and I also want to inspire others to also find their key qualities.

I truly believe that I can change the world but I know it will take collaboration and trust. I choose to live a meaningful life where I feel great about what I do every day, where I look my best, and I present my very best version of me.

Of course as I’m coming to all of this, the outside world reflects something so interesting and shows up as a guidepost on my path. Where I live there is a duckpond, it’s lovely. There are brown ducks, black ducks, a couple of white ducks and I took down some toasted bread for them this evening. Well, as I stood there passing out toasted treats to the ducks, I noticed an eel! Not just one but two eels! I’ve visited the pond countless times, not once have I ever seen this! I watched them and saw that the ducks left them alone and the eels left the ducks alone, they just both lived together. Every once in a while a duck would mistake the eel for food and give it a nibble but the eel just went along on it’s way.

As soon as I got home I looked up what an eel totem represented and lo and behold it all about awakening the kundalini energy of the serpent and “Great Transformation”! That the eel watches and takes in all the information and at the opportune time moves forward with ease. I know I am going through a major change and to have this reflected in the outer world still amazes me. Perhaps I needed to be reminded of the divinity in nature and in the world so that I can further honour it and allow myself to fully be present and accept that I will get everything I want as soon as I want it enough to just be it.

 

Final Exam, Final Semester

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This morning I have a final exam in Digital Marketing. This is the very last exam I have as an Undergraduate. There is an intense feeling of excitement and heaviness mixed with the completion of my Bachelors and this stage of life. There is a comfort in the stages of growth, however, each chapter must come to an end so that the story, my story can progress.

Without a doubt I am an eternal student. I have a curiosity about life that never ceases. I find that learning is available in every interaction, in every moment, it’s just up to me to realise it. Undertaking formal education is very different from my self-guided exploration, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I like the structure, I like the guidance and oddly I think I like deadlines within reason. I also appreciate that my courses have been very holistic in nature. Perhaps its due to the fact that they have been primarily Marketing courses this last year, but my professors have crafted such a wide variety of materials into the learning experience and it’s made it all that much more rich. When a guide/professor is experienced and they share what they have learned along the way with passion and enthusiasm it is like magic, where time and space in that moment cease and it’s all about the expansion within it. This doesn’t always happen, and it isn’t with every professor, in every class, in every subject, but when it does happen, it is one of the most joyous experiences at a higher learning institution.

Heading into this exam I have a High Distinction, which is the American equivalent to an A grade. I have excelled in the projects that have been required including a Digital Marketing Business Plan and a full Case Analysis on the largest social media platform at the moment, Facebook. I do hope that I can express what I have learned and the insight I have gained along the way in both formal and informal education about this topic in the exam today! I know I’ll just need to relax into it and let it come out of me as it’s all in there.

Perhaps this heaviness will pass after I am done. Perhaps the heaviness is due to the restriction of transformation, that moment where all things are tight and limiting until freedom is gained and a new beginning is made. I’ve had many transformations in my life and thankfully have lived very fully within each of those chapters, this one as a returning student is no exception. I’m very glad that I returned in my 30s. I have been able to get so much out of the subjects from this experience, a vast different from the social experience which I would definitely categorize during my first time at University when I was 18.

We’ll see what happens next! I’m sure it will be good, really good, it always is!