Summer came and swept me off on a delicious two month mix of a little work and volumes of play and took me from the top, bottom and to both coasts of the United States. On paper it appeared that in between drinking in my grandsons and attending the U. S. Social Forum I would have plenty of time to hide away for writing and reflecting. I thought I would clarify what direction I wanted to head after over a year of having been devoted to being available to my toddler grand-nephew as he traveled his healing journey from cancer. I thought I could balance three grandsons, two grand-nephews, visits to Alaska, California, and Georgia while reshaping my work. Oh, silly me! What was I thinking!!!
I spent wonderful time with my three grandsons, and then traveled with my youngest daughter and her two little ones to spend two weeks in Alaska celebrating Connor’s return from his year in Seattle and a bone marrow transplant as a result of leukemia. This was my primary goal for summer, to see this bald headed little Buddha back running free with a full head of hair in his own back yard. During this whirl-wind series of adventures, as eager as I was, there was no time to work, to think, to plan, to vision forward. I was in survival of sorts surrounded by the energy of several people under three-feet tall. Everything I had nursed along prior to this had to fall from the screen of possibilities. At first I resisted, and it soon became evident that it was wiser to surrender. Surrender guided me to letting go of the rigid vision I had planned to welcome the shape it was meant to take for greatest joy and sanity.
This intense experience gave birth to the opportunity to ‘love what is’, to celebrate the task at hand, to go with the flow, to be happy regardless of circumstances, to face each challenge and trust where each one would lead me. I also had to trust that I could handle it’s organic flow and I could choose to shape my attitude when I couldn’t control the circumstances.
This is birth, this is happiness. It is the moment-by-moment challenge of letting go of a plan in order to love what is. Dancing with unknowns opens the door to limitless possibilities. Life is a process, an adventure, a journey that often leads, with each contraction and push, to a belly-laugh beyond what we can imagine and, when we allow it, reveals an even deeper sense of our power.
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