Holiday Treasures and a Family-Infused New Year!

Part of our New Year's Eve involved packing up the holiday decorations. As we only had a very small artificial tree this year due to location, I had to be highly selective about which decorations I brought. I didn't go for fancy or beautiful or the most expensive, I chose the photo ornaments the kids painted each year when they were little and the ones they selected each year that hold memories (like the monkey ornament that's missing a foot because my youngest, who selected it while shopping at Cost Plus Market, thought the foot of said monkey tasted great!). 

I also brought the Star of David tree topper that I made out of cardboard, tinfoil, a chopstick and some ribbon the first year in our new home to honor my traditions and as well as my husband's. It was meant to be a temporary fix until we could find or make a better one, but now, 18 years later, we tenderly keep this homemade tree topper alive for another year...and hopefully another after that. When I asked my boys if we should bring the tree topper this year due to its fragile state, they exclaimed, "Of course!" As if the idea of NOT having it was blasphemy! This is how ordinary stuff becomes treasure. And the treasures are the only things that made the journey with us this year. 

Our year abroad taught us a lot about treasures and meaning and the insignificance of stuff. I'm deeply grateful on this New Year's morning for the lessons we gained that year and which continue to inform our family life. Spending NYE last night with our boys, talking, reflecting, and collectively as well as personally looking to our new year, set my heart and my family on firm ground for this new year. I'm not sure we would have done it, nor that our teenagers would have complied if not for the year we spent somewhat trapped together and learning that organic and forced family time nourishes all our souls. 

May the new year bring your family nourishing time together as well as nourishing time for each individual independently. At least for me, the two feed one another and make the other richer as a result of the pairing. And may you find and make treasures--from stuff embedded with meaning and treasured moments captured in memories forever. 

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Happy New Year! 

Kids, Parents, and Too Many Holiday Presents

It didn't take us long to realize we had a problem. Our first holiday season as parents was an initiation into overwhelm! My husband and I each have divorced and remarried parents. That means between us we have given our children eight grandparents and nine aunts and uncles (premarriage)! Our first born was the first grandchild in the family. To add extra complexity, my husband's family celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas, while mine celebrates Christmas and Solstice. This equals two major gift giving holidays, multiple celebrations, and extended family that numbers over twenty! 

Through that first overwhelming holiday season, we learned valuable lessons. Here are some pointers we gained from experience.

1. Start Young. This is the most important advice I can give you. Decide when your kids are still young--like preverbal young--how you would like to navigate the expectations around receiving gifts. As one of my parenting mentors told me many years ago, "What kids get they come to expect." You get to decide what they get and in doing so, you also determine what your kids come to expect. Make decisions mindfully and thoughtfully or you will find yourself scratching your head when your kids are older wondering how come they expect SO much stuff! After our huge first year, we established that on Christmas our kids would get one gift from Santa, a single gift from my husband and me, and a stocking. Our sons (who are now 14 and 16) still expect this, and only this, on Christmas morning.
2. Organize extended family with the power of the wish list. After we learned that extended family loves to shower the grandkids with goodies, we started being proactive and strategic with our wish list. We knew we were lucky to have so many generous adults wanting to make the holidays special for our kids and excess was rampant. We started saying things like this: "Thank you for wanting to give our kids such beautiful gifts. This year we could really use your help with..." One year, we decided to build a play structure in our yard and asked the extended family to gift the boys with components of the structure. One family member gave the slide, another the climbing wall grips, another the swings, another the play steering wheel and telescope, and another the monkey bars. The play yard was epic! The kids loved it, had gifts to open from each grandparent, the boys were excited by the entire building process that ensued soon after the holidays, and played on this holiday gift for years (my 16 year old was "hanging out" on the swings with a friend last week).
3. Simplify and Be Creative. With multiple holidays to celebrate, we had to simplify and be creative or go completely mad! We decided that Hanukkah would be the festival of lights AND books. Each night of Hanukkah, our boys would get a new book. The night we would celebrate with my husband's family, they would select the book and give it to our kids. This not only helped to minimize the over abundance of plastic toys, it built the kids' library and kept it fresh year to year. As a side bonus of this gift-giving ritual, our boys are avid readers who love books.
4. Think beyond the store-bought gift. The year we lived internationally, we had to think far outside the gift-giving box. We were living out of suitcases and spent Christmas in a hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Gifts had to be practical and portable. My husband and I filled the kids’ stockings that year with coupons. They included such options as “pick the restaurant,” “pick the movie,” and “one hour of extra screen time.” Our boys treasured these coupons of power and used them judiciously. 
5. Practice saying "no." Yes, you can say no and the holidays are a great time to do so! You can say no to plans as well as to your kids' wants. Their wish list might be long or contain something big, but you can always say no. As a parent of two teens, I have a garage littered with reminders of times I wish I had said no. I wish I knew then what I know now. 
6. Role model the value of meaningful experiences beyond gifts. Holidays are not just about gifts. For kids to learn this they have to SEE us actively engaging in OTHER things with at least as much vigor and attachment as we demonstrate around gift-giving. For the last decade, our family has participated in a charitable event on the morning of Christmas Eve. It is an important ritual that reminds us of our good fortune while also helping others.
7. Make holiday traditions meaningful and memorable. Creating (or continuing) family traditions can go a long way in solidifying holiday memories and meaning. For our family, traditions and the absolute adherence to those traditions, have become more important to our teens than to us! For our boys, Christmas Eve IS going to my parent's home, eating raclette (don't ask), and playing charades. For them, Hanukkah is lighting the candles and eating
   
   latkes (OK...Hanukkah has also become the "book" holiday, but we did the best we could!). Thanksgiving is about sharing our gratitude, one by one around the table, creating and putting on a play in front of the fire after dinner with the other "kids" (the plays have changed over the years as the kids have grown, but the tradition is unchanged). I am certain when my kids are older, their memories of the holidays will be about these aspects. Rarely, if ever, will their memories be about the material gifts they received.

These are a few of the ideas we've incorporated into our family life with relative ease and joy. It hasn’t always been possible to maintain traditions to perfection, but we have done the best we can—going as far as finding raclette on Christmas Eve the year we were in Vietnam. We missed our family, but I can guarantee memories were made!

The holiday season can be a truly overwhelming time for parents and kids alike. 

What do you do to minimize holiday gift overwhelm and maximize meaningful connection during the holidays with your family? 

Things Don't Always Go as Planned

For the last three months I have been eagerly awaiting June 4th, the day I would get to welcome a group of birth worker sisters to my workshop space and home for a sisterhood retreat and sleepover. Together and individually we prepared for our time together: gathered necessary items, planned our time, prepared the space, bought and prepared nourishing and less nourishing food items to help us get through and celebrate this time together, made plans with our families for our time away from them, and journeyed from our homes to the location where this much anticipated event would occur. We gathered together in Topanga Canyon on Saturday morning with smiles and excited anticipation of our time together.

Everything was in place, just as we expected. Well, almost.

We got a note a week or so before our event from one of our sisters letting us know that she could no longer join us due to a health issue. Then another emailed the night before that she too could not join us as it just wouldn't work with her new family and another mama couldn't swing it along with a recent move and recovery from having sick kids. The morning of our special weekend, another mama emailed she just couldn't do it with everything else happening in her life. From 13, we were down to 9.

The 9 of us there, gathered, joined together, dropped in, and readied ourselves for our much anticipated retreat. Collectively, we created an altar and shared our intentions, moved our bodies, grounded on the land, and embraced the energy of sisterhood. This was going to be just as we intended! AMAZING!

Our collectively created schedule of events included movement, rebozo work, discussion/exploration of archetypes, fire circle ritual and singing, belly binding, and an overview of my dissertation (per request of the group). These were our scheduled modules. We also had many open times for swimming, talking, eating and the chance to share a glass of wine together in person rather than via social media, the thought of which inspired the weekend to begin with! You might say, we had a two page, carefully constructed, birth plan for our weekend.

And, as is often the case, the Universe had other plans.

At about 4:30 on Saturday, in the midst of our discussion about archetypes, my neighbor burst into our space with the announcement that there was a fire.

Did I mention we were in Topanga?

We stepped outside the bubble of our workshop womb to see a large billow of smoke rising across the ridge in front of us. Living in a dry chaparral environment known for its flammability, fire is both familiar and terrifying.

And did I mention we were a group of BIRTH workers gathered together for this event...women both skilled and experienced in managing high stress situations with unpredictable outcomes?

Yeah. That's who walked out and faced this unwished for addition to our highly anticipated birth...I mean retreat.

The next hour was spent educating ourselves on the severity of this unwished for situation. What do we know? Where is it? What are the current concerns? What if we wait an hour? Are there other things we could try first? How are we feeling about this situation? What does my/our intuition say to do or not do?

Knowing what I know about fire, Topanga, and emergency services and access to information in times such as these, I tag-teamed my phone and computer, put on the TV and gathered my neighbors who had lost internet access when the fire began (they have a different service provider than I do). We set up command central in my living room and waited.

The birth workers also waited, as they are so good at doing. They went on with the afternoon knowing at any moment the next best thing to do might be to pack up and leave, but for now, we did not need to pull the plug entirely, rather simply adjust. Like in birth, time would give us more information and more experience with which to guide our next move.

Like we often have to do in labor, I gave myself a comfortable boundary within which to relax and wait: if any area in Topanga was put on mandatory evacuation orders or my area was given voluntary evacuation orders, we would call the retreat complete. No one wanted to. We had done so MUCH to get HERE to this moment. Our dreams and expectations were grand! In none of them did a major fire event enter the fantasy.

Time passed. The retreat group swam in the pool and enjoyed each other's company, with their stuff packed in case it became time to go. I stayed active in my living room command center. The moment came. A few fire zones near mine were ordered to evacuate.

I pulled the plug.

It was no longer time to wait or to look for alternatives. The time had come for greater action. As the sun began to set, we closed our retreat, not with the ceremony planned for the next day, but with a certain amount of haste and motion. We gathered for a group photo on the deck overlooking the smoke plume and said goodbye.

We had to walk our talk. We had to practice doing the next best thing. We had to walk our labyrinth of excitement turned disappointment not as a metaphor, but as real life. Yes, it was "just" a retreat, but the excitement and disappointment was no less real. We got to practice holding both emotions tenderly within our hands and hearts.

The doulas left and my shit got very very real. The letting go intensified as I went around my home looking for things I couldn't live without...treasures, photos, heirlooms and what I could leave to potentially burn...what to hold onto and what to release, even reluctantly.

Ash from the fire on the back windshield of my car. 

I had to help my teenage sons do the same. Boys who have lived in the same place their entire lives, young men who have gathered treasures and crap that now fills their shelves and some of which touches their hearts deeply. They too had to decided what to take and what to leave with the possibility, albeit unlikely but felt no less real, of never seeing any of it again.
My husband came home and we loaded our cars with boxes of photos we've been meaning to digitize for the last several years and other important items. Left behind were some surprises: my doll collection from my childhood, my box of high school mementos, my wedding dress. It was an exercise in forced clarity.

As we drove away after our Topanga zone was put on "voluntary evacuation" orders (a decision we made to role model being conservative in terms of safety and to support our emergency responders in making a tough situation as easy as possible for them). We had everything that mattered...our pets, our photos, a few special treasures, some heirlooms, and each other.

Oh, and at the last minute, my son grabbed a few chocolate bars left by my birth worker sisters intended for our retreat, and now soul food for retreating evacuees.

Things don't always go as expected. We plan, we prepare, we organize, we ready ourselves and others for the big event. AND then, we have to let go, practice being with what is, showing up for the moment, surrendering what needs to be surrendered, doing the next best thing, mourning the loss of what we had held with such excitement, and gathering clarity about what really matters.

Gestating Our Journey

I guess it should be no surprise that I didn't do a single post in October. Yes, it was a busy month, but I think it had more to do with how I was holding the trip last month. In many ways, I wasn't.

We've been home now just over three months. And while I jokingly answered the question, "so do you feel like you've settled in?" with the somewhat crass and somewhat realistic answer, "no, I'm giving myself a year," in practice, October was when I settled "back" in. It took two months. In the first two months back, the texture and flavor of the trip stayed close by in memory, thought and action. Unfortunately, in October, I lost much of that. We had a birthday, a death, a wedding and the Walk. I re-entered graduate school, fully. The boys rejoined activities, school and tutoring. I added a part-time job called "exploring high school options for next year" (it feels like a huge task!). And, I jumped back into my work taking on a doula client, adding classes and building my website (www.embodica.com). Yes, the trip faded further and further into the backdrop as "something we did last year."

But, November is bringing aspects of the trip back to the surface and I welcome the visitor. Yesterday, we had brunch with another family we met on the road, also from Los Angeles and also traveling the world for a year. Our trips overlapped one day in Paris even though our overall itineraries were quite similar. Before they arrived for brunch, I asked Brent what was sticking with him from the trip, anticipating the kinds of questions I would want to ask of our fellow travelers. Asking the question to ourselves as well as connecting again with our "kindred spirits of the road," brought our journey back to life.

It's not that I want to always be living in the shadow of "our trip." It's more that I want to consciously integrate and grow from the experience. I do not want to simply "settle back in" as if nothing has happened and I/we haven't changed. If that were true, what would the point BE of doing a year away? For me, integration and growth are primary. There was a way that October was both settled, but also somewhat asleep. There is, actually, no way that our journey can go completely underground as it lives in my flesh now, but like a practice done every morning for a year that is then skipped, the ritual of it was missed. The effects of it were there, but the practice of noticing them had gone silent.

November already feels different. We touched our trip yesterday with our friends. We felt it last night as we all cuddled on the couch watching John Adams until it was well past bedtime. It was alive in our house this morning as Brent and I practiced Ashatanga while the boys puttered around making food, being silly and totally together. And then we went out to breakfast, ordered coffees and played cards.

It is not these particular activities that bring the experience to life, but the emotional quality of family and lack of routine that infuses our spirit with something...different.

Maybe for other people, those moments would be commonplace. For us, they require a certain amount of conscious effort. Not because we don't desire them, but because life in LA has other plans for us. Take this past weekend for example. One of my boys was gone all weekend due to a birthday sleepover party and a long desired night with his grandma. We had no such conflicting plans for a year. No one needed anything of us. This fact alone was a huge difference to life here.  Saying no is a practice and one that does not come easily for us nor receiving it easy for those around us. Every weekend could be like this past one. I don't think it is any coincidence that today, a holiday, we felt so free to be in trip mode. Today was not a weekend. Today, like our trip, fit nicely into liminal space, space that is neither normal nor sacred. Totally ours.

In fact, as I reflect today on what was different about our time on the trip it can be summed up as that, liminal...it was neither this nor that, but other. Pregnancy is like that too. It is neither the time of being without children nor is it like full parenthood. You could say that we were pregnant for the year we were away. We are still birthing ourselves as new beings every day. And like it often is with newborns, the first three months were altered and other.

Perhaps now, as we enter our forth month home, I will actually begin to feel how my new skin is shaped and shaded rather than only feeling its newness. Perhaps now, I will be able to step into the liminal space that feeds me so deeply when I desire it and with consciousness. Perhaps now, I can move forward knowing that the changes gestating during the trip have been born and I am transformed with or without awareness of these shifted parts of Self.

I am back. But I am not back to normal. I no longer know what that is. I am settled in. But I am not settling.

I am altered forever and I am grateful.

~Britta

P.S. It is my guess that this blog will become less and less about our trip, re-entry and family travel in general. I plan to still blog, but more of the content will be about my journey with dissertation writing, birth work, and of course family living. Feel free to change your subscription status if you no longer wish to receive blogs of that sort.

Sharing with you all in this way has been a huge privilege and joy. Thank you for following along.

Audiobooks, Routines, and What it Means to be Home

Audiobooks are a part of our life--before, while traveling and again now that we've returned. While traveling, we listened to audiobooks (most often referred to as "books on tape" proving the age of the parents carefully selecting books for our family's education and entertainment). We listened to many while in Europe as that was where we most frequently rented a car and therefore could share in an audio experience collectively. We attempted to choose books that through the use of history and fiction could bring a place to life in an historic way for our story-devouring children.

In Peru, we listened to Turn Right at Machu Picchu which beautifully brought to life the story of the controversial Hiram Bigham III as well as the landscape of the area we personally explored on our own trek. In England we listened to The Constant Princess a quite fictionalized story of Catherine of Aragon and her life both in Spain and England. This one was our first big stretch of inappropriateness as the narrator discussed details of her wedding night as well as other less child-friendly forays. I quickly learned that my quick-twitch action to turn the volume down as adult scenes arrived only served to bring attention more fully to them. I soon gave up my meager attempts at censorship and let the story expand young minds beyond the bounds of history. After that, we got looser rather than more restrictive and launched into two Dan Brown novels while in Italy, Inferno and The Da Vinci Code. We followed those up with the heart-wrenching and beautiful one two punch of The Book Thief (set during the Holocaust) and Angela's Ashes (set in Ireland during the Great Depression). What we listened to wasn't easy stuff. It made us talk. It was too much at times for not just our kids, but for all of us. AND our books brought to life through story some of the intangibles of history in a way that facts, figures and even photos have a difficult time doing. Our connection to people (fictional or factual) gave more heart and context to otherwise somewhat distant experiences. All our stories were just that, stories...based in some historical time and place, but stories.  We were enthralled and connected to history and to each other. 

Here in this ordinary life, audiobooks join us on long road trips, carpool and for me as I tootle around town running errands or returning from carpool without the car-load of kids. Currently, my carpool is devouring one book and I'm listening to a few others, one story one, one more of a self-help type, two to work with different audiobook moods.  Today, while listening to "The Gift of an Ordinary Day" by Katrina Kenison (recommended by a dear friend as a memoir she thought I'd like in both style and content) I found myself drifting off while she spoke about what home really means to her and drifting into what it means for me. For her, home was the routines and structure that defines a life being lived wherever it is rather than a house. Home, she says, can be created anywhere. This last part of her musings I agree with, home can be created anywhere, but for me I am bristling with the whole concept of routine especially as a cornerstone of home.

It has been over a month now since returning to L.A....five and a half weeks since we collected our suitcases at LAX for the last time on our nearly year-long journey. The first few weeks I was floating on the joy and fulfillment wake left by the experience of so long away, away and together with family. My first real break, the first real moments of slipping away from that current that allowed all to be well with the world even when it wasn't, happened when the kids started school. It was the routine associated with home that splashed water into my mouth while I floated and sent me thrashing around sputtering and flailing.

I have fantasized about the boys going back to school, of languid hours of "me time" awaiting after school drop off, opportunities to attend yoga classes I love and the simple routines I have adored in the past like making my tea or coffee and making my way back to my desk to immerse myself in the project of the day. These mental fabrications and travel-rough-spot-salves are based on a way of life that use to exist in some form in a time before. Like the author I'm listening to, I found solace and joy in regularity, routine, and an organized calendar. Today, these things seem to make my skin bristle and I ponder the change.

While it use to be that routine and rhythm gave me and I know my kids comfort, a predictability to life. Things around could get cacophonous and we could all grab hold of the side-railing called routine. Our lives were busy, crazy, overly-filled, but we had our routines and they steadied us as the rest of our busyness dodged us this way and that.

Craziness has met us here...much of it self-inflicted. We rented out our house for a year and came home to the challenges that follow leaving our quirky Topanga home of 15 years in the less than caring hands of others. Knowing we needed a car for our trips to Mammoth, we sold mine requiring a new car purchase within a few weeks of our return. And, we gave away most of our living room furniture along with the Sharpie on the pillows and food stains on the cushions, ready to make the break from the sofas of our children's childhoods to ones their more grown-up selves could maybe, just maybe appreciate and enjoy without the love that requires personalization of a juvenile type. Without anywhere to sit and the acquisition of first a rug and then a highly unique, albeit beautiful, coffee table in Morocco sent us to hiring an old friend who is also a designer to aid with what we thought would be refinishing the floors, painting the walls and buying a few pieces of furniture, but grew into far more. Yes, the craziness of life here met us full on!

What surprised me though, was that the routine of regular life back here didn't offer the comfort it usually use to. When I could look on my calendar and see YOGA on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I knew I had "me time" carved out and scheduled. That use to give me a sense of joy.

Today is Wednesday. My calendar reminded me this morning that I had yoga at 9:30 with one of my favorite instructors. It is the most organized of my days; I drive carpool, do yoga, shower, run a few errands including grabbing much needed groceries and head back to drive the other side of carpool. Organized, reliable, steady, and today...rather than refreshing me I felt parched as I unconsciously drove to my awaiting appointment with myself. My energy started to drop, a dark mood cloud flowed overhead, and Katrina Kenison read on and on about home and everyday life. Unlike last Wednesday when I felt this same response to a similar day, today, I caught myself. I got off the freeway early, found a Starbucks bathroom in which to change out of my yoga clothes, got back into my car and sat.

That was the moment of truly gifting to myself "me time." What did I want to do? What would truly be self nurturing? Most often the answer to that question is yoga, hence the reason it lands on my calendar as a place holder for personal time. Today, however, the effort of yoga felt like too much. In yoga there is a lot of surrender, but there is also quite a bit of effort, the two the ha and tha. Life is offering plenty of opportunities to exert effort. What I needed today was surrender, care, attention and a chance to express myself.

I drove my nurture-needing-self to the salon. I got my eyebrows done and picked the more expensive "spa-pedicure" complete with massaging chair and surrendered. Letting go into the moment, I closed my eyes and felt into the care being offered to my body by the mechanical hands at my back and the four hands touching my body--two on my feet and two on my hands. In the past I might have been busy with my phone or my thoughts while such luxury was bestowed, but not today. Today I practiced the yoga one of my primary teachers assigned to me years ago, but that I doubt she meant it for a spa day, I "presenced" each moment. This meant no judging, no good/bad, no preferences, just being and receiving the gifts offered exactly as they were being given, fully. The yoga of spa day and routine breaking. My mat stayed rolled up in my trunk and my yoga practice so far today has been deep.

Now, I sit waiting for my lunch, finding expression in words to an audience of ether. I reflect down at my toes, unfamiliar now "done" as they haven't been in over a year in their previously customary silver polish and I question what it means to have a "home." No, for me, now in this new incarnation of myself, home is not found in routines or rhythm, schedules or well organized calendars nor in complete itemized to-do-lists.  Home is a feeling within my body. I found it last night as the boys and I played "Mille Borne"while eating a far too simple meal for my previous self of bagel pizzas and frozen peas. Home is the moment shared with a friend in a yoga studio on Tuesday while she hugged me and communicated her understanding of my altered state of being. Home is the moment this morning in the bathroom of the Starbucks where I changed clothes and didn't buy coffee. And home is now, in these moments while I explore the landscape inside me, when I slow down enough in the craziness and busyness that has been a hallmark of my life here, to reflect and listen to the voice and silence inside. Home is not in the routine, but the moments of truly living that routines often mask rather than bring fully to life. Home is this moment, this feeling in my body right now.

I like home...wherever and whenever I can find my way there. Location is not necessary.

While some places are easier than others, home can be with me anywhere. In fact, home was often easier to find while traveling, than it has been since I've been back. Too often I've responded to my day out of habit and routine and in so doing killing my sense of home. It has been the ways I've broken those and acted most differently to situations and people that have brought me closest to home here. So while I am still surrounded by boxes I plan to allow myself to unpack them slowly, impulsively when called for rather than adding them to a to-do-list. We'll see. I may not be able to hang like this for long...practicing responding rather than giving everything structure, but right now that sounds like good medicine.



 

Coming Back...Still living out of suitcases

Back.

Yes, we are back. It is a strange sensation really to be here and at the same point so very normal. We are altered and changed in ways we know and have yet to discover. We came home to an empty home, our master closet covered in cat pee, roots growing into our septic line that needed to be replaced, and more and more and more.

Somehow, I flowed with it all last week. I paused many moments in every day to reflect, look around or rest in the chaos. As the inevitability of living in the guest house with all our stuff for several weeks turned into a reality, we did our best to make it an adventure, just another one along the path of others we've walked before. I was feeling somehow incomplete that our trip was only 11+ months rather than the well rounded year, but now, I think we'll be doing great if our lives are more or less settled by the time we pass the year mark.

We are still living out of suitcases!

We're making it work. Yesterday, after no longer being able to take it, I broke out the cleaning supplies and went to town on the kitchenette and the bathroom back here hoping to make it all just a little more tolerable and a little less India-like. But who am I kidding! In India we had daily housekeeping that came with the apartment we rented so cleanliness was not an issue...here however, it just needed some strong elbow grease and with no housekeeper in sight, I tackled it myself!

Last week was actually pretty easy, especially all things considering. All around it was mayhem, dust, boxes and very very little space. Every day experienced appointments with workers helping to make the transformation from house to home. In the end, we got the kitchen unpacked and readjusted in the new more efficient way (glasses in a different cupboard!) and relocated to the guest house.

While we were traveling, we envisioned having a pool party this past weekend, thinking 5-6 days of being home and we'd be more or less ready to both host and receive our friends en mass. How wrong were we! The house is hardly ready, but perhaps it is just the outer manifestation of what's going on inside. Perhaps it is the chaos of the physical that can allow the mystical inner change to do what it needs to do.

We almost went to a festival type thing happening in Topanga last Saturday night. It sounded fun in one way, local youth bands playing a concert for local youth and parents in a way that happens seamlessly in Topanga. What's not to like about that type of event, especially with a teen now in the family?

In all frankness, nothing was to like about that for me. It actually, once here, the idea of that sounded like a unique type of hell. I couldn't imagine mingling socially, not yet. Don't get me wrong, I love people, but I haven't really had to be engaged with friends and acquaintances for a year. My "Social I" got a long well-needed rest. That part of me is not my favorite part of Self anyway. Too easily it can become hard or fixated, in Buddhist terms, "reified." If I were to go back into a social situation so quickly upon my return what would happen to that softened un-reified I've so enjoyed getting to know within myself?

Instead, I've been testing her out slowly, tenderly, acknowledging her newly formed skin. The biggest test was going to my family of origin exactly a week after our return. Perhaps because only 2 of my 7 siblings were there, I managed well. The overwhelming energy of the Bushnell Clan might have been my undoing, but instead I flowed, even expressed myself and my needs clearly when the opportunity arose to do so.

Even car shopping worked well enough. The details of that exploration is a blog in itself to come later! Suffice it to say, I went to 16 dealers in 3 days (10 of those on one day!). Finally, I gave up on the car idea, realizing that expecting myself to know which car is right for ME when I'm not sure who ME is, is a bit ridiculous! I'm borrowing for now and if I have to when my friend return wanting their car back, I'll rent. Why build the idea up that it needed to be tackled to drive carpool. Seriously, we've only rented cars all year and it's been great, easy and not a lot more expensive than buying/leasing when you break it all out.

All that said, the wave that I had been riding from the emotionally lovely arrival at LAX through this weekend that made it all seem like just another fun adventure...well, that wave started to go back out to sea and I was left wondering if I would have to tread water while waiting for another wave or if I might find myself a surfboard so that I could hang, in water-meditation-style, for the next wave.

As it became obvious that the fluid-joy-filled-everything-is-so-awesome wave headed out to sea my surfboard needed to be made from deep self-care. I noticed that I hadn't blogged or even journaled once since being back and the only time I stepped on my yoga mat was when I took a miss step and my foot found it all folded up, ignored.

So tonight, I write. I miss it. On our trip, writing became a form of reaching out to others but perhaps more importantly, to myself.

This blog is a purge, but also it is a reconnection. I don't really know how many people have been reading our blogs this year. Very few comment, if ever and they end up in people's inboxes to be filled, archived or deleted, but when that happens, before or after reading, is a mystery to me.

A Topanga friend stopped by unexpectedly the day after we returned home. She told me that as she walked up our driveway she got a flutter like one gets with celebrities when you know all about their life from reading headlines and they know nothing of you nor do they even know you know their stories. She had been following along all year, more or less silently and had become a part of our journey. Really?

And, my father-in-law (one I pretty much knew was watching our every move) said that I needed to keep blogging so that he wouldn't go into withdrawal as each morning, along with his cup of tea, he read our blogs or Facebook posts and view our photos.

So this blog is for me, but it is also for Dana and for Colin and for anyone else who enjoyed reading about our journey and would like to have a peek through the window of our re-entry. It has really just begun and as I realize the power of blogging for my own psychology, perhaps more will come...even after the airline miles ticking upward slow to a crawl and then to a stop altogether, the journey continues.

I continue to ask myself, "who am I now?" and "how have I been altered by this experience?" and more. Perhaps I'll discover threads to some of these here, in the written word with an unnamed audience in the strange community of cyber-space. We'll see.