Last night I sat with a powerful woman drinking coffee in an anonymous strip mall. It could have been anywhere in America but it was halfway between where she and I were. A place to meet. And I we sat and talked she told me stories and I remembered some of mine.
I remembered being pregnant with Max. I remembered how tired I was, how much work it was just to be. How the simple act of walking from one place to the other would require me to rest, put my feet up, retreat. I remembered how on one hand I was doing nothing to actually grow this child and yet how I was doing everything to grow him. How this very creative act left me with no energy for anything else and yet…how it felt so strangely not me.
I remembered the not knowing, the fear, the waiting. I remembered the feeling that the end would never come or that rather I had no idea what the end would actually be like. How would I be as a mother? What would this child be like? What would it be like to cradle, nurse, nurture this child? How would it impact me as a woman? How would it impact my marriage? The answers to these questions were imminent but nevertheless hidden, unknowable, unfathomable.
I was changing before my very eyes, but at the same time I couldn’t see how. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
I was changing before everyone else’s eyes and friends and strangers couldn’t help but comment on the changes. The shape of my belly, the look in my eyes, the thickness of my hair. They all saw the changes but we all acknowledged these changes to be temporary. I had no idea what would come next. How life would be forever changed by this journey I was on.
I remembered the day that I sat in the airport and thought my water had broken. I called the midwife from my cell phone trying to keep calm. I was only 5 and 1/2 months along. She was calm and cool even as she told me the news. It could have been my water…But it could also equally have been a simple, small, harmless infection. I asked her what I should do–Should I get to the emergency room? Rush somewhere to save my baby? She said, “No”. There was no use in rushing. If my water had broken there would have been no saving. There was nothing to do but get on the plane and go home and sleep, hope that labor would not come. In the morning they would check me. A good outcome was all in the hands of faith–out of my control.
Pregnancy–this metaphor has sat heavy on my mind as I think here I am, pregnant again. Not with a child, but with a new life. I am in the words of my dear friend drinking her latte, “pregnant with myself”, pregnant with this next phase of my journey. I am pregnant with a life I cannot see, I cannot touch though I feel it stir inside me now and again. I wonder about it but now its out of my hands, mostly. I try to picture what it will look like, what it will feel like to hold this life in my hands and I know that there is no way I can imagine it, no matter how hard I try. I might as well just rest with my feet up for the process of getting to here has exhausted me so. I am doing nothing and yet I am tired. I am so tired. I have no energy left for anything else. Not for writing or playing my guitar or even gardening today. I am just so tired from the act of creating myself anew.
I think tonight about how so many generations of women spent their whole lives in the cycle of pregnancy, birth and the celebration of new life. I realize that now I am not that different, that none of us are. And while birth control or choices about family size have changed the physical realities of pregnancy, if we are honest we are in a constant cycle if only metaphorically–pregnant with possibilities and dreams, birthing of one’s self, creativity, and celebrating a new life, new growth, new beginning. Of becoming new again.
Last summer, on one steamy August night I sat on the couch. I was having another late night talk with Jackie. She lives just down the way. I wanted to sit with her on her porch and drink a glass of wine and tell stories. But Max was sleeping and it was late and I am, after all a single mom. “What you need”, she said, “is a roommate.” It was a leap for me to agree with her since I had come to value my solitude in the years since Juan had left but I leapt and I had to agree with her.
****
My roommate Odette and I were sitting hunched over the kitchen counter, counting cash and making plans for what to do to deal with her daughter Grace’s diagnosis with TB, the fact that her younger child Lillian too had been exposed, that her entire family back home in Africa was at risk for developing the disease. “Do you think everyone in the family should be tested?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, claiming her power as a matriarch. “Yes, I do.” Max looked at me with wide eyes, “Mom–will a TB test hurt?” I looked at him shocked. “We’re not getting tested baby,”. “But why not,” he said, his eyes still wide with fear, “We are her are family.”
Yes, we are. I think about the crazy path that took us from that moment in August to this moment now–this recognition that we are more than friends, more than housemates. That we are family. And I think, I never ever would have ended up here had it not been for a wild crazy leap.
****
Back in August, Jackie and I walked the dogs and plotted about how I would find a roommate. Someone who would accept our terms but who would be nevertheless a good fit for us. But I needed someone who would trade heavily reduced rent for the regular babysitting and for agreeing to stay home so I could run over to Jackie’s for a glass of wine after Max had gone to sleep. Where would I find someone like that? The thought of finding anyone who fit the bill seemed downright impossible.
****
Tonight, Odette and sat at the table eating ice cream. We looked at each other and exclaimed, “What would I do with out you?” “NO…what would I have done without YOU?” “No what WOULD I HAVE DONE WITHOUT YOU?” Neither of us can get over the miracle of how we stumbled into finding each other when we needed exactly what the other had to offer.
The story of how she came into our life was magical, a story which will need to be told another day. I never needed to post an ad, I never needed to interview candidates. I found her and she needed a place to stay. We made the decision in a half hour sitting in the living room of a mutual friend. Cheap rent in exchange for cheap babysitting seemed like a really good deal. But what I never really understood was that when she walked into our house and settled in that I had found a long lost sister. That when she moved in she would bring sisterhood with her in her suitcase.
When Odette walked into our house back in September we both took a leap of faith. We had no idea what this experiment would have in store for us, how much we would each gain from this arrangement. We were two strangers who would have to deal with each other in pretty extreme and unusual circumstances.
She came to our house searching for her freedom and in coming gave me mine too. She came searching for a safe spot but ended up providing a safe space for Max. She came looking for a place to rest her head, but she instead has offered a shoulder where I rest on the nights when I feel weary or sad.
I am rambling here, not quite sure what or how I want to say. I think it something about leaping–about listening to your heart when it tells you to jump. I think it is about recognizing doors that open intentionally, answering prayers–about realizing that life unfolds in patterns that may not make sense at the time but with hindsight open with perfectly timed synchronicity.
The blogosphere is full this week of stories of leaping into sacred, scary places. Of feeling the fear and doing it anyhow. Of trusting and relaxing into what seems absolutely the right place to go. Of saying, “I got the life that I needed.”
I am not always sure why I got this crazy life instead of the one I had always imagined I would have. But one thing is abundantly clear to me as I get myself ready for sleep this night.
I am grateful for the leaping.
Late last night, my stomach full of yummy, yeasty homemade pizza, I lay down my head to sleep. Sleep was not coming though and so I was able to indulge (thanks to the magic of cheap phone cards) in a three hour marathon conversation with my dear friend Jen down under.
It amazes me, even now, that she and I found each other. We live literally half a world away from each other but our hearts beat at the same frequency. I can’t quite figure out how the universe matched us up, but in some ways, it almost doesn’t matter how. The fact that we are connected now is all that really is important.
Getting off the phone with Jenni I was drunk on the notion of possibility.
But I had called her in an impossibly bad mood. My last several weeks have been about meeting obstacle after obstacle–many of them homemade by yours truly–but obstacles none the less. I feel bruised and battered from the onslaught of “no good news”. I am a little bird flying into windows I didn’t imagine were there. My nose is sore from pressing itself up against the glass in so many of my little life venues.
The message I have been getting from the universe is this: Wait. Sit. No. And I have been angry. I want to experience: Now. Go. Yes.
These last couple of weeks I have started to sullenly accept the wait, sit, no. I am adjusting to this season, to this reality, to this place I am. This quieter place. This space of not now. But perhaps too much. Because last night I realized that I had given up on Now. Go. Yes. I had moved into a grieving spot for it.
Letting go of the need to move forward feels healthy to me. Closing myself off to the possibility of moving forward does not. Its such a fine, practically invisible line, but once I cross it I know it. It is the the border between peace and despair.
My friend Jenni, she knows about this line too and together we talked about the challenge of staying grounded in reality while still staying open the possibility that reality is going to shift and change. Indeed, it always does. When reality is not so rosy, it is easy to only consider the negative possibilities. We whisper to ourselves instructions to come to terms with the possibility that we might not get well, might not accomplish our goal, might not have a fairy tale ending, might not reach the finish line. But we feel so committed to helping our brains consider the negative that we refuse to give equal due to the other possibilities–we might get healthy, we might accomplish it and more, we might have the ending we hoped for or something better, we might reach the finish line and keep on moving.
I asked Jenni why we do this to ourselves? Why do we only consider the negative? Is it that we don’t want to be disappointed when the negative possibility comes true? But really will we be any less disappointed when the time comes? And by only considering that negative possibility have we actually taken a step to make sure that it is the only one that will come true? In an effort to prepare our hearts for the worst, do we actually start to ensure that the worst is what we will face?
Somehow keeping open to all possibilities seems to be the lesson of my week. To recognize that every moment, in fact every breath provides an opportunity for a new possibility to unfold. To learn to stay in whatever this moment brings knowing that the next brings a brand new world.
My friend Maya needs our help. The other day when wandering through the office she told me a story that made me weep. I need to tell it here and ask you all to help us.
Last Wednesday, two of her family’s oldest and dearest friends, Waheed and Nusrat Hashmi, an elderly Pakistani couple, were ripped from their homeby Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Hashmis were placed in detention near Cleveland, where they remain, clothed in orange jumpsuits, unable to see each other. They are likely to be deported this week.
The Hashmi’s story is a story of the system failing. Plain and simple, it is a story of it all going wrong. Dr. Waheed Hashmi legally entered the United States in 1973 as a Fulbright Scholar. Since then, he has worked with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and with immigration attorneys to ensure that he and his family have a chance to attain permanent residency in the United States. He followed the rules every step of the way.
Over a period of approximately 35 years Dr. Hashmi, a scientist, and Ms. Nusrat Hashmi, a floral designer, have lovingly raised their children, held jobs, paid taxes, contributed towards social security, and invested their time and talents to build a better Toledo community.Due to a series of circumstances and occurrences beyond their control, including oversights on the part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, some of which were revealed in documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, the Hashmis have faced several obstacles to attaining permanent residency but they never gave up hope of achieving what all immigrants want–a decent life for themselves and their children. However, as law abiding people, when they recently realized that their dream of staying here could not be realized, they voluntarily made plans to leave and return home to a country they had not been home for more than three decades. But those plans were interrupted last week when ICE showed up at their door and arrested them.
If the authorities had taken the time to explore the details of the Hashmis’ case, they would have learned that after Dr. Hashmi retired from the University of Toledo, the couple began the process of selling their home and leaving for Pakistan where a job was waiting for Dr. Hashmi. They were never given the chance to prove that they were in the process of returning to Pakistan. Instead, public resources were used to lock up this elderly couple who posed absolutely no threat or risk of flight.
At the Maple Heights City Jail, Dr. and Ms. Hashmi are being held in separate quarters, are unable to see each other, and their interaction with their children has been severely restricted–they have been allowed only 20-minute visitations during which they can only speak with their children via a telephone and across a glass screen. The trauma of the detention threatens the health of Dr. and Ms. Hashmi–both of whom have serious health problems.
As it stands now, they will never again see their home in Toledo. They won’t be able to say their goodbyes–to their home, their community of 35 years, not even to their children, who won’t even be allowed to hug their parents before they leave.
It is simply inhumane to hold two elderly people in custody for no good reason, especially when they were voluntarily planning to depart the U.S. The Hashmi detention is a colossal waste of precious tax dollars and does not make us any safer. ICE should lock up those who would do us harm, not senior citizens whose misfortune has brought them into the grip of a dysfunctional immigration system. ICE needs to do the right thing and release Dr. and Ms. Hashmi.
Please read more about the case and consider signing on to a letter to Julie Myers, the head of ICE. Maya and her family , are hoping that if enough of us speak up together the Hashmi’s can be released from detention and allowed to close up their house, say their goodbyes and start their new life with dignity. The unjust detention of the Hashmis is not at all an unusual case. The Hashmi family hopes that bringing attention to their case will help the push for immigration reform.
You can get to the online petition that Maya set up by clicking here. Please take a moment to go there and read their story. This should not be. It should not be. It should not be.
UPDATE:
The Hashmis have been released! Our joint efforts on many fronts—grassroots, legal, and political—sent a powerful message to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Today is the start of a magical weekend. It is a weekend that already is brimming with love and community and kindness.
It is the start of the Bloggers for Jeni Auction. Please click over here to view some of the amazing objects in the store. There are beautiful prints offered by some talented Shutter Sisters. There are adorable baby clothes, a necklace made by this superhero, beautiful hand carved wooden bowls, products to pamper oneself. There is one special offering for a comfy day with one of my favorite authors Karen Maezen Miller. The auction will be up and running through Thursday May 1.
All of the money raised will go to support our dear friend Jennifer Ballantyne, a courageous cancer warrior and her 6 year old son Jack. Money will be used to help Jen get access to care not covered by insurance as well as provide a trust for little Jack, a charming boy who sings love songs to his mother each night.
Here are some things you can do to help spread the word and help us create some miracles for Jen and Jack:
1) Go over to the auction, find something special and bid.
2) Let friends and family know about the auction.
3) If you blog, please post about the auction and include a link to it.
Wishing you a weekend full of miracles and magic.
Last autumn, in search of rituals that would help me kick off the next phase of my life, I stumbled upon a little Chinese one. Its called something like the 49 wishes. A friend of mine had told me about it once and I had kept it stored away in my brain for the right time, the right place. Essentially it goes like this. You write a wish or a prayer on a piece of paper 49 times. You burn that paper and scatter the ashes to the wind. You do this for 49 days straight. Its a special kind of magic, setting your heart and mind on something–like a mantra. Putting it out into the universe and having faith that it will be delivered. For me this ritual was like plowing a field, making my heart ready for something to take root.
For 49 days I wrote this little phrase down “FEARLESS TRUE LOVE”. I haven’t told anyone this before really (except maybe Jackie) partly because I didn’t know what it meant and didn’t know how to answer the inevitable questions. Was I asking for permission to love myself fearlessly? Was I opening my heart to a rockin’ love affair? Seeking the gift of soulsistership and friendship? Maybe…all of it? Maybe something else entirely? I didn’t quite know what it meant to me but something inside me said “Just ask…the rest will follow”.
In the act of all that writing I must have drawn a magical door. It is a door through which people now seem parade into our life, boldly changing it with the blink of an eyelash. Some are folks who have known us awhile and love us well. But others just a year ago were strangers. Total strangers. In some cases they dropped by for a short while and left us with gifts to last a lifetime. In other cases, they moved in and continue to help us grow and stretch and blossom in new ways. I long to tell the stories of these strangers who have become dear friends and of the certain kind of magic that happens when people lead with wide open hearts. This spring I might just start.
This week, one of my favorite recently former strangers, wrote a series about how to encourage creativity in children. In one particular post, she urges us to teach our children to welcome strangers. I loved this post and embraced the wisdom in it. I have done it from the minute Max was born, sometimes against my better judgment. But I did it because I want to teach him that the world is good. Now don’t get me wrong, I have taught him well how to keep safe (do not go anywhere with strangers and always follow your gut when someone strikes you as icky and weird, and always stay close to a grown up you know and trust). I want him to know the joy of welcoming people into our lives and seeing life just open up in amazing ways. I want him to wake up prepared to be surprised about the wonderful things life has delivered to our door. Strangers are a critical ingredient to a creative life–whether you are a child or a 38 year old mama. So we talk to new people as we walk downtown, do our grocery shopping or play in the park. We ask questions. We follow-up. Its been life-changing.
On particular version of this magical portal for me has been this blog. I am forever amazed at who I have discovered coming through this way. I have found myself encircled in a community of women, strong, beautiful, brilliant women–soul sisters really. Women who have brought out the best in my writing, who laugh at my stories and who help me shoulder grief. It is a gift.
I have lately been particularly interested in connecting in “real life” with you amazing women I have discovered typing away. I want to know your stories. I want to hear how you ended up where you ended up. I want to invite you in and pour you tea and listen as you tell me what you dream about. Whether you live just down the street, up the coast a bit, across the country in a windy place or sunny space, or in a far away magical land, I want to make tea possible. Something tells me in the coming months, these and so many more wonderful creative women will be leaping through my door, virtually and really truly and I want to celebrate that, honor it and invite you all in for tea.
So here is a challenge–Leave me a comment on this post and let me know you are here. On Friday, Max and I will put the names of all the beautiful you who comment here in a hat. We will pick one of you lucky friends and will send you this beautiful hand painted mug (pictured above) made by Kara a new found blogging friend whose art speaks to me of magic and sisterhood.
Howdy stranger…Come on in and have some tea. We have a lot of catching up to do.
A little postscript: A shout out to Laura and all you other Philadelphia Flyers fans. Your boys skated well tonight. While I cheered for my Caps I have to call ‘em like I see ‘em and that was some rockin’ hockey played by the orange and black today, especially by Martin Biron. It will be an interesting week as we move into game three all tied up…
Last night as I was wrapping up my paid work, getting ready to come home it hit me. I am feeling so unfocused here at my job because it is all head–no hands. And I am itching to get out of my head. Get my hands dirty. Make. Do.
I have a job that is very much about thoughts–abstract ideas that get turned into memos, brainstorms that get turned into processes, random thoughts that get fleshed out through conversations, dreaming, and synthesis. It all happens in my head.
It used to be that I was most comfortable in my head. My head ruled the show. My thoughts were ever present, noisy, a little general trying to direct the winds of my life. Working in a heady job made sense. My brain, my non-stop thoughts, the ever present swirl in my brain–thats where all the energy was.
But over the last several years I have made a conscious effort to move out of my head and have realized that I am happier living through my gut and my hands. I am craving work where my hands lead.
I think about my acupuncturist alot. She listens, she watches, she observes. Then she thinks a bit, draws from knowledge . It is integration of heart, head and hands. After 20 minutes of talking and thinking, it is her hands that go to work. They take my pulse, they palpate to find points, they pick up and insert needles. They work. Silently. Instinctively. Very cool.
Truth is, I am happiest when my hands are leading. I love the moments in my knitting when I am not thinking–my hands just move, do what they do. I love training them to wrap themselves around a guitar neck. I love to hold a knife and chop chop chop–carrots, garlic, onions. I relish the feeling of instinctively reaching out to touch someone I love to make a point, to wrap my arms around a dear one, to brush their hair or a tear out of their eyes.
For any of my colleagues who lurk over here from time to time do not fear–I am not plotting to leave my precious job. But I am thinking I need to integrate my hands more into my life–to get rooted more in my hands. I am out of balance–too much head–no hands and my heart is trying to swing the pendulum the other way.
I want to build a treehouse for Max this summer. Saw wood. Measure. I want to spend hours feeling the sunshine beating down on me while I let my brain stop its chatter and instead hammer nails, one after the other. Build something out of nothing. I want to learn to throw a pot. I want to dig in the dirt. I want to hold people I love.
I think this spring I will focus more when I stop thinking and start doing. When I let my hands guide me.
Take these hands and let them lead me home.
There is a theme that is repeating itself over and over again in my life. It is a theme of magic, of things happening exactly at the right time and the right place. This lifetime, I am relearning about faith. And I feel like right now, at this very point, I am getting a crash course in it.
When I was a child, I had no problems with faith. I trusted blindly. I feared nothing.
But then, unfortunately I learned to worry. To doubt. I can’t say exactly when it started but I know by the time I was deep into my teens I knew exactly what lack of faith meant. I knew how to predict (and expect) every worst case scenario. I became an expert in disbelief . I actually remember counseling myself to plan for it all to fall apart so that I would be pleasantly surprised if it didn’t.
I suppose it was a way to try and gain a sense of control on this messy roller coaster we call life. I really needed to believe that I was in charge. That I could control what would happen to me on a daily basis. I can say that I almost earned a masters degree in seeking control. Ask my ex-husband. Ask my boss. Ask anyone who had to work on a project with me. I came armed with to-do lists and workplans and plan b, c, and d. Skeptism was my shield. I really believe that it would all fall to crap right without my carefully thought through plans. Needless to say, I put alot of pressure on myself to make sure those plans were right. And interestingly enough, the more plans I made, the more complicated and fierce, the less I trusted that they were, in fact, going to get me where I needed to go. It was an endless cycle of stress and fear.
When my marriage started to fall apart, so too did my illusions that I actually was going to be able to control exactly what happens to me. I struggled for a long time with that lack of control. I couldn’t make Juan come home. I couldn’t make Max happy. I couldn’t stop the tears, the hurt, the disappointment.
But right smack dab in the middle of that shit, something beautiful took root.
As my illusions of control slipped away, the only thing I could do was put one foot in front of the other and breathe and trust that if I did that I would keep moving forward and that I would live.
It was a slowly grasped lesson, this learning to trust thing. But like a rock which I finally have been able to nudge down a slope, I feel it accelerating at a rapid rate in my life. The more I trust that I am being held by someone greater, the more I trust my inner wisdom and own intuition, the more I give up needing to control and instead decide to just go with the flow, the more abundance and joy flows into my life, and the easier and freer I feel.
It happens in big ways, ways I have yet to really even begin to write about, but it happens in small ways too.
Like tonight. My darling housemate, a trained chef who cooks like a madwoman, had carefully planned and cooked a feast for friends who eat with us each Tuesday. But work meetings and traffic jams and college interviews kept them from our door. We sat in our house at 6pm with food to feed an army and just our little weary band. It could have been cause for dismay and cursing at the traffic and work Gods. But she and I both feel that things happen for reasons and really that the food would not go to waste. The cancellation was not a cause for disappointment but an opportunity to make magic happen elsewhere. We got on the phone and started calling around. Our very first phone call was to a friend who had dinner guests coming supposedly with food. But they were not yet there and the children were hungry. “Come” they said, “bring your food. We will make a party for them when they get here we will all eat like kings”. And so we did. Sure enough when their friends arrived they had been held up and did not have much with them. A ready made dinner supplemented with the little they could bring was nothing short of a miracle. A tiny everyday miracle–the kind where it seems that things unfold exactly as they should.
I am reminded today as I go about my day, how life just does seem to fall into place. Flowers blossom without our efforts. When we relax into ourselves, we blossom too. Love and joy bubble up, even when we didn’t try to make it happen. Opportunities cross our paths that change our lives almost magically. Sometimes growth, beauty all the good stuff–it happens despite ourselves. We learn, we grow, we fall in love and end up in beautiful places.
Last month I wrote about my friend Jen Ballantyne. I say she is my friend but she is my hero, really. She is a single mom, just like me. She is beautiful and artistic and creative and an amazing and generous friend. She is also a brave warrior against cancer.
For those who don’t know Jen’s story, you must get thee to her blog. There she gives you the real deal–beautiful stories about what it is like to have stage 4 colon cancer. What it is like to parent a six year old. What it is like to be a brilliant, creative, shining light who is facing possible death so early. Jenni is fighting for her life while she struggles to be a single mom and provide quality care to her sons. She is in the fight day in and day out, bravely, smartly, gracefully slogging it out–all the while finding time in her day and love in her heart for the likes of little old me and many more lucky women who call her friend.
Jenni’s words daily inspire thousands of women across the globe. And a few of us have been struggling as we read, desperate to find a way to make a difference in her life thousands of miles away from us.
I’d like to let you in on a little magic elfwork I am cooking up with the beautiful Jen Lemen and the stunning Bella at Beyond the Map. And in doing so hope you will join us as co-conspirators.
We are organizing a group of her blogging friends to raise funds to help pay for her treatment and those forms of care and pain management that will not be covered by insurance: acupuncture, massage,naturopath, etc., as well as create a trust for her son. These are things Jen desperately needs, but can’t afford. This is help she won’t ever ask for, because she is too worried about everyone else. So (with her permission) we have decided to take matters into our own hands.
We are going to host a charity auction, through ebay, and all money made will go directly to her care and to a trust for Jack.
Sound interesting? Want to be an elf too? We need help!
1) If you have or know someone who has, items/s that could be auctioned, we would be grateful for any donations. We are open to receiving all offerings. Some folks have already pledged to donate hand made items and art–handknit pieces, jewlrey,prints, zines etc. Others have offered things that perhaps they were getting ready to auction off themselves (that kitchen aid that you got as a wedding gift and have never used….). The only consideration is shipping costs. For example, if an item is heavy and expensive to ship, we just want to make sure it would earn enough money in the auction to balance this out. If you have an item to donate please email us at weloveyoujen at gmail dot com and let us know what it is and we can get you the information on where to ship the items. (We will handle the fufillment from one central location in Chicago) We are asking that all the items be sent to us by April 18th so that we can photograph them and get them ready for the auction. If you have questions, feel free to email us here as well.
2) Help us drum up donations. If you have likeminded friends who you think might want to contribute to this cause please share this post with them. Also, if you have a blog, please help us by posting on your blog too. You can send people who want to donate to welovyoujen at gmail dot com.
3) Help us publicize the auction itself. Check back here and when the auction is up and running, we will have a link to it. Please let your friends and contacts know about it. Post about it if you can to help us drive traffic there.
4) Got other ideas? Please email them to us at weloveyoujen at gmail dot com. We are doing this as a team and are hungry for new ideas, thoughts and are willing to take on other partners!
We are not a non-proft. We are just a gang of women coming together to support one of our own. We are rallying behind Jen because the reality is it could be one of us and we strongly believe that this is what community does. But alas because we aren’t a non-profit we can’t offer a tax deduction for donations. We hope you, your friends or contacts still can help out anyway.
Of course, we ask that you continue to hold Jenni in your thoughts and prayers and continue to support her through leaving your comments and warm wishes on her blog. I am a believer that prayer and love can do wonders to heal, if not the body then the heart and soul.
We are continually amazed and inspired by what a small group of women and their friends can do. Won’t you join us and spread the elfen magic?
I am writing this post from a glass walled conference room named the “Hollywood Room” named for its view of the Hollywood sign on the hills. Ahhh…Los Angeles. Can you feel the glamour?
I am here for a rare work trip. Pre-Max I was a road warrior–on the road almost weekly–jetting back and forth all over the country in the name of social-justice. I have traded in that life for the sake of mommyhood and I am tied to the home office, reluctant to travel, happy to mind the budget and supervise staff and leave the exciting campaign work for others. I am starting to loosen up on that restriction in bits and pieces–for the right meeting, for the right project. Leaving Max at home still leaves me tied up in knots even though I know he is held lovingly in the arms of our community–that I am leaving him with more sets of substitute parents than most kids will know in a lifetime. But now that I am here, this little business trip, the conference room, the morning breakfast with colleagues, the laptop computer that I whip in and out of my backpack like a pro–it all feels a bit like heady–it is a window onto my old life when “Very Important Work” was front and center in my life and I was brilliant and bold and exciting and adrenaline flowed through my veins from 9-5. Now don’t get me wrong–adrenaline still flows through my veins but the surge comes 5-9–my key hours with Max, my truly very important work. No matter how exciting the work project, coming home to Max each night is entering a special kind of heaven.
But still I have to admit that I am loving being here. From the minute I walked into the Echo Park home of my old colleague and dear friend Eddie to a spread of cheese, olives, apples and veggies from the farmers market and good red wine I have been in a different kind of heaven. Being away from Max, I am more comfortable stretching my brain and wrapping it around the work problems, even as I pine for him.
And then, after this meeting is over, I will be off to a different kind of glamour. I am headed out to the desert with five of my dear childless friends for a grown-up weekend. We have rented a cabin on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park. We will hike all day and then come home to cook crazy gourmet meals while we drink bottles of red wine and sit in a jacuzzi under the stars. It feels decadent to think of this and I have to admit my Catholic school girl guilt is bubbling up as I think of it. How can I call myself a mother?
But what occurs to me as I sit here, as my colleagues stream in, as I need to sign off now to shift gears is that I am more than a mother. Even though it is my proudest title, it is only one and the other pieces of me need to stretch from time to time. So let us raise a glass of wine to all of us and our full, juicy selves–the women, the brilliant strategists, the ones who need to stretch their arms up to the moonlight in the desert.
