Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe.

Growing and giving birth to a human being is like being transported into another dimension.  It is the most magical, mysterious, and spiritual transition I have ever known.   I never wrote about my labor and delivery with Amalee, because while I am so grateful to have given birth to her, I was also so sad and disappointed I was induced (forced) into labor.  At 42 weeks pregnant I felt my body was trapping my child and they say the risks go up if you go past.  I still feel mixed about all the medical interventions with her birth and whether or not I should have been induced, but that would be a whole other blog post. I woke up on Friday morning, October 9th, 11 days past my estimated due date, at around 8:30am, to what felt like menstrual cramping.  I figured I was having another round of Braxton hix. My sweet mom friend was hosting a play date for our two year olds at her newer preschool location and I wanted Amalee to play with her frien...

As the earth spins routinely around the sun and summer fades to fall, I find myself almost a week past my due date. I remember this time, pregnant with Amalee. I was so excited and delighted and anxious to give birth and meet this person who has been forming inside of me for nine months.   I knew labor would be a challenge.  Our culture teaches women to prepare for one of the most painful experiences of our lives. But my body has been hit by a car going 30 mph.  While the pain has passed, my bones remember feeling crushed, and my insides know near death.  I have a traumatic brain injury and will forever feel the effects.  My skull and vertebrae fractured and healed. But the body, along with the brain, and babies and pregnancy are not simple things.  I remember my neurosurgeon telling me my brain had bigger dead regions then some of his brain injury patients who were confined to wheel chairs and couldn't speak.  I'm...

Happy people live in a happy world, sad people live in a sad world.  I believe everyone you meet is a reflection of yourself.   We make choices every moment.  Our consciousness creates a thought and sends brain signals to our mouth and body and we make a choice.  We choose what to think, what to say, and how to move our bodies through time. I remember first moving to my apartment in Boulder, Colorado.  I was so excited to be in a new place.  I had earned two jobs within a week of moving there, and after leaving a depression and dead ends in Portland, I was so excited for this fresh start. There were these two women who worked the front desk of our apartment complex and I saw them regularly whether getting quarters for laundry or asking questions about rent.  I made jewelry in my apartment and one of the ladies asked if I could make some earrings out of shark teeth she got in Hawaii.  She offered me three extra teeth to keep for mys...

Hikes in the Gorge with my dad are one of my earliest and most vibrant memories.  I think spending time in nature, virtually untouched by man, I have always been in awe.  I went through my first backpacking experience when I was 17 in the central Oregon desert.  It was 2007 and I didn't bring a camera.  But I spent eight weeks outside, learned how to build a bow drill set, set up shelter, and live in the wilderness.  Then in 2010 I went on another three month backpacking trip.  I brought a camera, but it broke the second day. I climbed mountains in Colorado, canyoneered in Utah, rock climbed in Joshua Tree, and climbed a 19,000ft mountain in Ecuador.  I was going to work for Outward Bound.  But then my accident happened.  And I went through two years of recovery and therapy.  And then I married my soul mate.  And three months later we were pregnant. It's wild how life can change in an instant.  Our experiences a...

As my daughter approaches two years of solid experience Earthside, my entire being is overcome with gratitude for her precious, original soul.  Every day, as a stay-at-home mom, I am observing her experience - seeing, hearing, feeling, knowing, hating and loving life for the first time.  Two year olds say some pretty strange and amazing things.  And I am forever indebted to the universe/God for allowing me to participate in this beautiful human being’s life as she tells me what the world looks like, seen for the first time, from a point of view that has never existed before! And its wild that we all had our own original perspectives once, two.  We may not remember because it’s always difficult to remember what we don’t have words for.  But we were all two years old once.  And we were all experiencing the world in such an original way that no one around you could give the words for it.  And if you found the words for it, usually no one co...