Guardian Crow

You made yourself known

With impeccable timing

Deliberate cadence in your voice

Raised above your brother

"Caw, I am here"

Caw, caw, I am near"

"Caw, I am forever watching"

Messages left behind

In feathered trails

Roosted above my sanctuary

Beside me on desolate paths

"Caw, I am here"

Caw, caw, I am near"

"Caw, I am forever watching"

You take the branches I shed

Building your territorial home

On a street you've known before

I'm under your watchful eyes

"Caw, I am here"

Caw, caw, I am near"

"Caw, I am forever watching"

I hear you resting near my heart

Uncanny encounters 

Transcending space and time

I'm grateful, as I answer you back

"Caw, caw, you will never be forgotten"

In memory of Jeffrey Weinberger, my son by choice. He is our Guardian Crow.

The Lines of Time

My face is graced
with the recording of time.

Etched with appointed
lines upon the surface.

Stacked horizons stretching across my brow,

the lineage of life's surprises.

Grooved verticals in-between,

the questions and the unanswered.
Disappointment, curiosity,
and determination
leaving the same deep marks.

The growing creases on my upper lip

exposing the journey of kisses.
Kisses as a mom, kisses as a woman.
All paving the way for more to follow.

Crow's feet webbed,

the channel for tears.

Eyes like the river's dance,
guided through moments
of laughter, sadness and joy.

Miles of smiles 

rippling like waves on the sand,
from cheekbone to cheekbone.

Lines drawn like those on a roadmap.
The surface reflecting where I've been.
The mirror, a snapshot of where I am.

But in my mind's eye,
a smooth surface prevails.
Who I feel I am on the inside
and spaces I have yet to discover.

Do Bold Things

The truth of this statement, if I had to sum up my life's mission right now, is all I would need to say. There is nothing like the passing of friends, especially when they are young, it's unexpected or when they are your own age, to send you into a cerebral head-spin around a few quintessential questions. "What's it all about?" "What am I doing with my life?" 

With the first friend, in this trilogy of loss, I was hit hard, very hard. Only a few days prior we had lunch together, making girly notes of her new coif, she was the epitome of her joyous self. With one single blow, that memory was knocked silly when another friend delivered the news that she had taken her own life. I've never known someone personally who made that choice and it shook me to my core. I stared at the portraits I had taken of her and combed incessantly through her social media pages looking for answers. Between the note she left (eight pages), her two brothers' crying her history of pain during the memorial service (one they didn't fully understand until after) and a quote from Niccolo Machiavelli, which I found favorited on her Facebook page, I came to understand. Mind bending.

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”

Some people feel that taking your own life is an act of cowardliness. I disagree. I have come to view it is an act of courage. My friend, whether you agree with it or not, made a bold move. When I read repeatedly Machiavelli's quote on her page, all I could think of was that she was letting us know, right there in two lines of text, that she had taken an action of risk, calculated and chosen very deliberately, not to suffer. "There, but for the grace of God, go I." With unabashed understanding and no judgment on her choice, I cast myself forward to take in all that she no longer would. In some strange way, I felt it was my obligation, more than ever, to live a larger-than-life existence, since I am still here. Bathing in the millions of colors in the sunrises and sunsets, taking the dreams of some-a-day and doing them, quitting on the things that silence my spirit, taking flight and mingling with the clouds. Doing bold and earthly things—now.

This is not where I thought I was venturing off to with my writing today. I imagine that this commitment to one year of writing is also taking a bold course of action. I've come to understand, more fully than ever, what it means to remain gifted with this life. She and the others are a consistent reminder to do bold things—in this life I am living. In loving memory of my beautiful friend, Anamarie.

What is on your "Do Bold Things," what I like to call my "Live it List?" What are we waiting for?

Writing For My Life

I have much to say going into my 57th year on this planet, volumes to share, but not everyone is up for swimming with me, in deep-end-of-the-pool conversations. At least not in person. Therefore I write. It is my time of contemplation where the in-spired thoughts are revelations that come up for air and out-breathed into the universe. Maybe read, that would be nice, maybe not—the intent really is writing for my life, giving it an acknowledgement and over conversation, the penned thought can live as legacy to a life long after departure.

I also have experienced myself time and time again, where during a conversation my wits of words and wisdom are not about me (not sure where they go actually), my exchange falling in short strokes of what I really had to say. Often holding my breath in depths of hope of finding my wits. I don't think they know how to swim.

Writing is a cathartic process, an artful expression of co-mingled vowels, consonants, punctuation marks and phrases. The words, paddling their way to the surface, are in no hurry. They know there are so many of them to choose from, they wait patiently along the writer's edge for their turn to dive into a verse, chapter or song.

I am—WRITING for my life, on behalf of my life, for my livelihood and FOR my life.

What are you doing that is acknowledging your unique passage through this journey called—life?

Loving Something Behind

Have you ever found a note on your desk or in a jacket pocket and for the "life of you," you can't recall why you wrote it down? So goes my note, sitting anonymously beside the computer keyboard. I looked over at the green sticky and its content of penned words: "Leaving Something Behind." My face scrunched up with a furrowed brow and mystically the word "leaving" morphed into "loving." I have no concrete idea how things like this arise, but I have learned to run with the thoughts handed down from—out there. The phrase "loving something behind," had a powerful ring to it, a positive, less melancholic chant to the idea of "leaving something behind." So here we go...

We will soon leave the Chinese Year of the Snake, and during the past year I have literally been shedding some skin. (You won't be seeing any pictures of that here!) Metaphorically, this past year has been in slithering rhythm with the anecdote of the snake. Molting away the old skin, leaving behind a former sense of self in stacked scales of sacred geometry. Each scale filled with experiences and life's lessons, and a profound vulnerability felt in that process. Letting go the people of "reasons and seasons," the layers of false faces rubbed off against the rough-rock journey—the path toward the new skin, the next layer expanded with a ready and willing brightness. The constraints of what no longer fits, happily left behind. Happily, yet not shed in the manner of running away from the past, or wiping the brow as if you dodged something. It is in the contrary context of embracing and loving all of the somethings, the somebodies and some former sense of self—left behind with love.

My dear and enlightened friend, Dave Towe, has these words tattooed on his arm: "In All Things Love." I thought of that quote this morning as I was writing, offering me additional confirmation that I was on the right side of my thoughts. If we applied the principle of love to everything in our lives, especially those experiences where we assign them with ill consequence, without fault or blame, we would simply love them for the value received. Any other way resides in the category of regret, resentment and shame. Those skins are hard to live with, and it is never too late to change "The Way to Love."

Is there something or someone you are holding onto other than in the light of love? I encourage you to take my idea into a contemplative moment, bring it into your heart and love that something behind. 

Note: "The Way to Love" the last meditations of Anthony De Mello—a transformative book given to me by long time friend Steve Alexander. It changed my point of perspective on my life as a mother, and what love is.