To You

  I hear about you and I see you on the street. You are running ~ there is nothing to you but bones and skin. I wonder how you can run you must be so weak. And yet you must be so incredibly strong. To starve yourself and work yourself...literally to the bone. Iron in your will power. I see you too, the one that has pillowed herself in layers and layers and who feels like nothing fits you, and how did this happen, and you want to feel free ~ to float and yet you feel like an anchor.
I see you ~ your eyes are empty and haunted; or you with eyes like fire; or you with eyes that are only embers; and you with darkness like a shroud; it emanates off you and I shiver at the black. And you! I see you always laughing and laughing and others laugh to, with you, but I know that sometimes, some days, you just want to be able to put that down and be sad, and tired, and to  let someone really in.
I see you ~ the angry one ~ you thought you knew who you were, and who you were going to always be. You thought you had it figured out, and you thought you were loved....but it all fell down. Your castle ~ you were the princess weren't you, and you thought you'd be queen? However the power had been given to a prince who turned out to be not so princely. Here you are ~ the castle crumbled, your princess robes torn and ragged and you are shattered. It's a lashing out in whatever way, shape or form, a crying desperately for someone to see deep down who you really are. Its a cry to be accepted and rejoiced over in exactly who you are ~ so you can stop the needing to control or manipulate or hurt or whatever it is that you are doing just to get by every day. It is the wanting to feel like you are enough and you always have been ~ that you are the apple of someone's eye ~ that you are someone's sunshine no matter what you do. That your beauty outshines every single other one in some precious way. That in your anger, darkness, pain, in your darkest hour...who you are has not been completely lost and that someone has not forgotten you.
Yet it seems like there is a force at work to try to strip that from you. Yes, there are some who really are princesses. They are loved so dearly and so preciously that your heart burns every time you see them. You love that they are loved, you feel glad for them, or you hate them...but you think ~ every.single.time...why not me? What is wrong with me? Why did I have to go through THAT? Why did this happen? Abandonment, rejection, manipulation, it all has us wounded. Each one ~ each one of us had to get through somehow. How did we cope We strive for perfection in life. We do our best at EVERYTHING and we do well. We grasp wildly for control and control all around us with an iron fist, or we lash out and hurt ourselves in all sorts of ways or we hurt others or we give up. It is a viscous dance that we do.
 So I see you out there. I see you walking pushing your baby in a stroller, I see you biking, I see you in the grocery store, I see you walking wounded, or walking proud, or walking ~ just walking. I see you sometimes crying, heaving with sobs while you drive or I see you screaming in rage, I see you shivering in the rain and in you ~ in you all ~ I see a piece of myself. I wish I could scoop you up. I wish I could take you back to before. I wish you never had to feel alone, or that time when you were so terrified you couldn't breathe, I wish that never had to happen. I wish when you were hit, or hungry, just all those moments that have brought you to now...I wish they never had to be.
This is the thing though ~ they did happen. Here you are now. It is now. We each have our story to tell. We each have our scars, our bruises, our souls that show through our eyes. We are us. Each one of us is beautiful, stunning, miraculous and precious. We have to go back and find that in us again. We have to know that it is there. The journey is long, it is exhausting, it is fraught with all that has been, but truth needs to be told. Truth sets us free. Bringing darkness to light ~ it sets us free.  Honestly ~ you are amazing just the way you are. Whatever is hurting, whatever is holding you down, whatever has scarred you ~ consider getting some healing, some help, consider letting it go. Often we hold onto our hurts because it is who we really feel we are. It has become our identity. Do we really want to let that go now?  It will be the hardest thing we have ever done, but I think we do in the deepest part of us know that letting it go will be eventually okay and I think we must.
You need to find out once and for all that
Honestly ~ you are amazing just the way you are.
If you feel like no one has ever told you that
Well someone just did
And I love ya
xo

Wednesday in the Sun

  Snow fell on the mountains last night. I woke up to ice on the windshield and the mountains looking regal in their capes of white. My daughter needed to get to school a bit earlier to practice her dance for the Christmas pageant and my son had to go to a dentist appointment that his dad had to take him to at 6:30am. It has been grey and dreary for days here. I am so thankful for this sunshine and the clear sky today. It is so easy to take little things forgranted. Yesterday I was given a reminder that in order to 'change' the state of my brain and my thoughts I need to surround myself in gratefulness. I need to be grateful in that moment. I need to not be grateful just in general but be grateful for whatever is happening in that moment that I put aside to focus on this no matter what is happening. It was a good day to start that again. I have a prism in my window to remind me of the glad game in the book Pollyanna. I have other little things to remind me of how far I have come and I am surrounded by blessing but I still often feel overwhelmed and down and completely void of creativity. I was supposed to set the timer today every couple hours and take a bit of time to focus inwards on my gratefulness. In this moment I am grateful for the warm blue winter coat my little one year old is wearing. It was given to us by a sweet friend. I am grateful for my babies red cheeks and bright blue eyes that can see. I am grateful for my husband who drove my anxious eight year old to the dentist today and took the morning off work. I am grateful that when my son has an anxiety attack I am feeling more and more able to manage without going into an anxiety attack myself. I am grateful for the spirit my little five year old has. She is so confident and bold. I am grateful for this house we are in and I am warm and safe in it right now. The power of the spirit of gratefulness is not to be denied. It is transformitive.

Yes It Has Been a Long Day

Pouring into wells of beauty and promise
Unfaded eyes, unjaded souls,
These children of mine
If each day I could add to their preciousness
With my eyes and voice and arms
Culture trust and foster truth
Rather than pour ugliness and frustration
Into the clean wells
Clouding with my issues and past
The insecurity, abuse and fear
Confusion and unrest
Answering unasked defining questions
With darkness
Pouring into wells of beauty and promise
Unfaded eyes, unjaded souls
These children of mine
Imperfect ~ yes
Sinful ~ yes
Full of promise ~ yes
My life's greatest dream fulfilled ~ yes!
If I could only hold this close enough
To my heart
Keep my strength anchored in the strength giver
Simply stop, listen, breathe, wait, pray, respond
Grateful

Traditions

     Traditions. When I was growing up we had some of them around Christmas time and from what I remember they were usually seasoned with stress. Holidays tend to do that with families that are not totally healthy and who struggle financially. There are wishes, hopes and dreams around holidays...You want to feel warm, and loved and safe ~but when food is scarce, you are relying on a Christmas hamper and relatives to get you through...well as much as you want things to be what they are 'supposed' to be often they are just the opposite. When I got married I really wanted to form some special traditions that my children (and myself) could look forward to and enjoy each year. Well that has proven a lot harder than I thought it would be. I have not given up though. I know that having traditions is so important in a family. It is about making memories and having little things to look forward to.
  Something I have managed to maintain is getting our Christmas tree as a family from the same farm for the last eleven years. The first year we were married my husband and I stole a tree from the forest. We didn't realize just how serious of a crime that potentially could have been. It was a Charley Brown tree and all the needles fell off before Christmas day arrived. It was taken out of our tiny first little basement suite stark naked. We had had no decorations so we had bought some ugly clear plastic icicles and not much else. It was an epic tree and my husband's first one. His family didn't celebrate anything growing up. The second year we were married we decided to get a tree one night after work. There was wind storm and it was a crazy night. We looked in the newspaper for a tree farm. We found one and called them. They said yes we could come get one if we really wanted to. I don't know what we were thinking but I guess we weren't. We drove up a mountain as tree branches were falling all around us, went out into a field, found a tree, cut it with a hand saw in the wind, put it in the back of our truck, and then were invited into their house for hot chocolate. We have gone back every single year.
  This year as we went to get our tree it was POURING rain. I had hoped for some snow but it was not to be. So we drove up the mountain to the tree farm and picked the tree. This year we had prepped the children that we were not going to fight over the tree and that we would take a vote as to the perfect tree and anyway that partially worked. There were no tears this year except ones that were falling from the sky. My husband just bought a 'massive' chain saw (I think it's massive) that he was super excited to use. This year we also do not have roof wracks on our vehicle. We had to get home with six of us in a van AND a Christmas tree. The children were prepped for that also. We did it. Our tree is now up ~ but we could only decorate the top half as the baby is a very busy one and is LOVING battering the tree with his hands to try to get decorations to fall. It looks even more amazing than usual as a result. So we did it once again. We kept up a tradition and our tree is up.

So here it is in ALL its' glory. In this house most of the decorations are from my grandma, my granny and ones the children have made. I put on probably four decorations on this tree and the children did the rest. This is the baby batting at the tree with his hands knocking down what he can. Our house smells like a corner of the forest and I love the twinkle of the Christmas lights late at night when everyone is finally asleep. Christmas is soon..............I need to keep reminding myself, 'It will be what you make it.'
xo

Enjoy a Quiet Moment

    I picked up this little vase one day while out with my friend Rachelle. It was a couple years ago now. It has survived four moves somehow and has lived on a couple different window sills and been the vessel that bouquets from my children go in. It is a constant reminder of some very important things I wish I had known from the beginning. When I became a mother and before I was a mother I had not learned the value of self care and just how nurturing it was for the soul. It was a long journey (and is still a struggle to this day) to realizing that I needed to take care of me regularly if I was going to expect myself to keep caring for others well. I had this idea that others were supposed to take care of me and desire to take care of me. I did not feel loved if this was not happening. It really was the case of me not loving myself. Love is an intense word. To love myself and to love yourself means something different for everyone. When I bought this vase I was in an antique shop and it had been a whimsical and inspiring day. I had been going through a lot and little Holly Hobby in her dress blowing in the wind, standing in a field just evoked all that I wanted to have in my life at that moment. If you stop for a minute, close your eyes, and let yourself quiet ~envision where your most happy and favorite spot in the world would be. Once you think of that place ask yourself why. Mine is in a field beside a stream. I am under a tree and there is a gentle breeze, the gurgle of the stream and birds singing. The air is warm and wild flowers abound and there is the aroma of peace. I think that the reason I find this picture the most comforting and happy is because when I lived on my farm as a young girl when I was sad or lonely or overwhelmed I often would go and sit in this little garden someone had planted and it was right by a creek. Other times I would go out into our back field and just sit silently among the grass and just be still. I knew already that being out in the air and the open filled me with something I needed the most. Sometimes when you can't be where you know you'd do best or heal the fastest you need to bring that feeling or that moment or that reminder to right where you are at. This little vase is that for me. I am in my kitchen at the sink a lot and this vase sits there, often with a flower or two that a child has brought for me, and I remember. I am reminded that I need to 'Enjoy a quiet moment now and then.'

Guardians of Our Valley

   It was grey and misty...just a typical December day here in our valley. The cloud's shrouded the valley in a thick blanket as the mountains rose majestically above. 

And You Are Eleven

   When I was very young I heard about a girl that was going to Africa to work with orphans. Something caught at my heart strings and I worked hard to raise thirty dollars that she could take to help them. I remember how good I felt deep inside that I had accomplished this. I thought thirty dollars with so much money. This also was the first time I remember thinking about orphans, which led me to think about adoption. All through my growing up years I felt a peace and a desire to adopt a child or children when I was able. When I got married I knew my husband also was fine with that concept. We had not really thought about when we would adopt and I dont think we thought we would adopt as quickly as we did. Tomorrow my oldest daughter turns eleven and she is our adopted one. Tonight I took her out to get her long hair cut into a cute bob. We had a really happy and special time together. It was monumental for her and I in our relationship. We have come so far.
  Our journey to adoption was not easy. I don't think ANY journey to adoption every is. We lost a baby and I subsequently got cancer from the miscarriage. I went through seven rounds of chemotherapy and then was told I might never be able to have children as a result. My husband and I were devastated on a lot of levels from this as it happened around our one year wedding anniversary and we had not had much time to build a foundation of strength and trust. However as a result of all this we decided to become foster parents because we were doing a lot of respite for foster families and we wanted to keep our options open. Take Note: If you are wanting to adopt through the Ministry of Children and Family becoming foster parents first is a good idea. So we took the courses and became foster parents. We were not thinking of adoption at all. During this time we were doing respite for a young girl who was pregnant and then also after she had the baby. Through a whole series of events we ended up being asked by her to adopt her precious daughter. It took a lot of time, a lot of tears, a lot of faith and stress....but she became ours. We fostered her first while the adoption process was happening. We had an open adoption and so the birth mother and birth family were heavily involved in the first couple years. It was so hard for me to feel like she was really my daughter as her heart was so pulled in so many directions. I usually bore the brunt of her stress and pain. Our connection, or lack of, went on for a long time. Eventually though as time wore on I started to learn more about attachment. I started to understand how to bring about connection.
  Tonight as my daughter (who moved in with us when she was a year and a half) busily makes cupcakes for her party tomorrow and entertains our little fifteen month old, and I type ~ I am overwhelmed by it all. By all the blessing. Adoption is so so so so so hard. It is heart breaking and such a journey and yet it is one of the greatest gifts of all. A child gifted to your heart ~ Our family has come so far and I am ever grateful. Happy birthday my love. You are a treasure.