Creating a Tribe

Posted on by admin

Feeling connected is one thing that I know is essential in my life, and I am sure for almost all human beings. When I consciously connect and create community around me, I end up not just collecting people together, but creating a full on tribe. I’ve entered tribes in the past, I’ve helped form them, and currently my Sydney tribe is just so lovely full of mums and bubs where we all have each other’s backs and it feels great.

Feeling like I belong is highly important to my well being. I never fully fit in, hence why I usually end up forging my own groups, but sometimes it so nice to just be around others without actually doing anything with them.

For instance, studying with someone else nearby who is also studying, makes the process so much easier. Working on a project when someone else is also working on it, makes my focus much stronger. Recently I put a call out to the Lovely Ladies with Beautiful Babies asking if anyone just wanted to sit and watch me do the mundane task of organising my closet while our bubs played. I sent out the request on our group page the night before, and by the next afternoon I had a third of them rock up at my house in support! I love that, it made me feel so good, so supported, my tribe totally showed up!

Sharing Joy

Posted on by admin

Sharing of Joy is so important.

By acknowledging it, feeling it, and then sharing it, it becomes so much bigger, so much greater than it was initially. Or perhaps it grows to the size that it was already intended, which happens when given the chance.

It’s like a shiny air balloon where once it’s filled its brilliant and floats in the air catching everyone’s eye!

 

Crumby Butter

Posted on by admin

That moment when you realise that for as much bitching as you have done in the past about people leaving crumbs in the butter after buttering their morning toast, and you see yourself double dip in the butter with your crumby knife. Yes, that’s me this morning! Then I discreetly tried to fish out every crumb with my double dipped crumby toast butter knife to cover my tracks!

Gratitude and Meditation

Posted on by admin

It’s incredible feeling grace, gratitude.

I have worked with gratitude for a number of years intentionally now. Currently I am doing a 21 day Meditation that is being conducted globally online, it’s amazing to use the power of the internet in such profound and expansive ways.  Since I am in Australia, I get the meditation at night before I go to bed versus first thing in the morning, which I think is brilliant. So I listen and meditate, then fall into a nice slumber and allow my subconscious to really play around and absorb what I’ve just experienced. It’s wonderful.

The idea of gratitude being a loop is really interesting to me. I do very much believe that what you are, you give, and you will receive. I just hadn’t thought about it returning from the thing that I am feeling the gratitude for. More that I give out gratitude by feeling it in my heart, in my body, feeling all that energy of love and warmth and goodness, and putting it out to the world, or to the plant I’m gazing at, or to the loved one that I am thinking of. I hadn’t intentionally thought of it then returning from that specific person, place, thing or idea, back to me.

How powerful gratitude is.

 

Sad Happy

Posted on by admin

So many emotions running through at the same time. Playing with bub, he’s laughing, I’m laughing and this sadness creeps in. How can I be both happy and sad at the same time? My father is dying of cancer very quickly. I was only there with him back in the states just a few days ago. It all feels like a very strange dream and I am not sure how to reconcile it.

I don’t like that I was there for that reason, to be with my dad as he learned for sure that he had cancer. I did like spending time with my family as it has been so very long since I’ve seen them face to face, or laughed out loud with them on the couch, or shared an iced coffee or just sat quietly together. It feels like a dream that I was just in the hot summer of California’s central valley with all the dust and dirt flying around admist their major drought.

Escapism Lifestyle Fascination

Posted on by admin

I don’t understand this fascination with the culture that I grew up. It is all over the mainstream media. Living a life with a parent or two parents that are heavily into drugs and partying rather than being parents is such a challenge. Having different brothers and sisters from various parents and steps gets confusing, are they still your brother after my dad and their mom divorce?

People are complicated. I feel like it’s glorifying this lifestyle, or perhaps its just trying to shed light into it, I’m not sure. All I know is that it’s very weird to me seeing that I could easily be one of those characters watched on the tube.

Dad and Health

Posted on by admin

An emergency message

never good to get

call me, we need to talk

it’s not good

he fell a week ago

hasn’t gone to hospital

until now.

Scans, MRI, Biopsy

It’s been years since he’s been in.

Truth is he’s sick

he’s been sick for a while

He’s ignored it.

We have too.

It’s easier to ignore it than confront it sometimes.

This time it’s gone much further.

I’ve been trying to call him, to talk to him for months and months.

He’s been out of reach

no phone

out of reach.

Now it’s an emergency

masses in his body

around his lungs

around his heart

in his lymph nodes

in his brain

oh fuck.

he has to be in pain

and this is what pains me the most

i also feel bad that we haven’t kept in contact

he isn’t much of a letter writer

and doesn’t really do the whole internet thing

and doesn’t seem to have a phone

so the only way I know would be to actually show up

on his doorstep

hoping that is still where he is.

Even if we haven’t talked since we told him that we were expecting a baby

about a year ago now

I still wouldn’t ever want anyone to be in pain

especially not those that I love

especially not my family and close friends.

My sister said he was all choked up when she came back into his hospital room after we hung up

I could hear the strain in his voice, he couldn’t even say I love you back

and it was killing him and I could hear it and I couldn’t do anything

I was bawling and I didn’t want him to know that either

this pains me too.

My father has always been a very strong man, stubbornly strong

and even now he is still that way.

There is a part of me that feels like I need to come to grips with the fact that my father will likely die, soon. The other part of me is asking should I still hold onto threads of hope that he will somehow make it through this? With hope that the doctors will be able to reduce and remove the masses in his brain without majorly affecting him, that he will then be able to continue living his life. That he would then go through Chemo or Radiation or both to eradicate the rest of the masses so he will then be able to continue living his life. This isn’t about me, but I feel like I need something to hold onto because all of it hurts, all of it.

I live on the other side of the world, a 17 hour flight minimum. Baby’s passport will take at least 15 working days from yesterday. Time is short. Every day, every minute counts. It’s so easy to take life and all of the chances. I’ve been living my life, married now and haven’t been back to visit my family once in five years. I did strangely say that I would either be back in one year or five years when I left the states, I just wasn’t expecting nor wanting this to be the reason why.

He is just 60 years old. He isn’t even at retirement age yet. Not that he has a typical job, he hasn’t since I was just a wee little one. Most others of his generation bought into the work all your life so you can take it easy when you retire at 65 and live your golden years relaxing. However, that is the time when the body slows down, the health issues start creeping in. My dad at least was determined to make his own rules and live life how he wanted to, on his own terms, not saving anything until retirement age, burning like a holy roman candle, a mad one he is.

 

 

Fallen In Love

Posted on by admin

It’s taken me a while. Baby A is now 7 months old in actual age and I have just full fallen in love with him It feels great. I love to see his sweet smile and the way he looks at me. I love to watch and learn with him. I love to give him hugs and hold him close. I love to have fun and play with him. It feels very good.

I’ve loved him for some time, in varying degrees. It is nice to finally allow myself to fall in love too. I know he’s going to live, I know we are both healthy, and I know my husband is in love with us both too. It is important to me that my husband is in love with Baby A too. I really want us to be a family of love, of full love, not just between mother and son or father and son or even mother and father, but all of us in love together, as a unit, as an alliance.

The feeling of being in love is so magical. It makes me feel very good, it makes me happy. It makes everything in life so much more viivd and brighter. It makes life more joyous, and any perceived challenges as laughable and something that is kinda funny. The power of love is incredible.

I feel a sense of relief as well. It has been a rough patch for all of us and I’m glad that we are finally moving on with our hearts, minds and bodies.

Here’s to love!

I’ve Come So Far

Posted on by admin

After reflecting upon some of the choices I’ve made romantically in the past, I came to the conclusion that I don’t have any regrets, but if given the chance to do it again, I would go about it differently. When I was young, I was so very naive, which is a major part of youth. I was reckless at times not realising how my actions affected others. I was definitely foolheartly and definitely went by how I felt, let my primal urges dictate what I was doing. I also drank quite a lot and it was in these times that my more questionable decisions occurred.

I was hashing this over and sharing it with a girlfriend yesterday and I realised that I have come so very far from where I was to who I am now. I am thankful that I have gone through the tumultuous times that I have from my previous life, but I am even more thankful that I have come through to the other side of it.

Personally I have evolved so much. I have reinvented myself so many times as well. I have given myself the opportunity again and again to grow and change… and I continue to do so.

Mum and Bub Group

Posted on by admin

I am so amazingly grateful for the Mother’s Group that I’ve dubbed the “Lovely Ladies with New Babies” that I have here in Western Sydney. We meet every week and we just hang out, commiserate, share, and just are there. If all relationships are just a matter of being there for someone when they need then I truly do have ea relationship with these women. We laugh and cry together, we are vulnerable and able to really support one another. Having a new bub can be isolating, it’s hard work and it’s non-stop.

Today we all went out for a movie together and we rolled in like 10 prams deep and it was great! I felt more energy while out today than I have in a very very long time and it felt wonderful. I love having friends. I love that they are all in the same boat right now with bubs who also cry, poop, decide not to sleep, who grow out of clothes quickly, who know what it’s like to be in this situation right now. It’s truly a blessing.