Boho Girl

me & cedar in our almost matching hoodies, before our walk in the mist yesterday morning, taken with phone

me & cedar at boho boy’s library yesterday, taken with phone

Just wanted to share these two shots taken yesterday with my phone. I do this all day long, to share picture messages with family and friends. It helps us all stay connected…and them close to Cedar and his growth (and personality and moods).

Yesterday morning it was misting out…a rare thing where we live. My favorite thing. So, Cedar and I put on our hoodies and drove to a park where there are trails and flowers and little hills and gorgeousness. I am realizing that Cedar is just like me in that he is uncomfortable in piercing sun but LOVES cloudy, misty days. He kept looking up towards the sky with eyes closed and his mouth open wide to catch the mist on his tongue. Big smiles, deep sighs…both of us sharing in this together.

Later I took him to my husband’s library. Did you guys know he was a sexy Librarian? How fun is it to see him in his element. Surrounded by the smell of books…his favorite things. Love watching him walk around and straighten them, with his long curls tousled around his face, his tie loose and his shirt coming out of his pants. He is so not a shirt and tie guy…but he makes it work and the fact that his outfit is barely put together, makes him even that much more sexy to me. I adored seeing him so proud of Cedar, holding him up on his chest, showing him around to all of his coworkers. This is a new side of him that I enjoy observing. A proud daddy with his puffed up chest. It’s also cool to see Cedar go to anyone with all smiles and helping that person to feel important with his gaze. Such a special spirit he is.

The second photo was taken in the library…after he had a little meltdown. I notice when he is around more than just a few people, he gets overwhelmed. He is so observant and soaks each person in to the max, that I wonder if he is an empath too. He often cries after being in a crowd and just wants quiet and soft music and a dimly lit room. So we gave him that in my husband’s office. A little slice of home to calm his nerves. Man, he’s just like his mommy…and his daddy too. All three of us need this at the end of the day. To quiet the voices, the sounds…to hush our surroundings and close our eyes to birds chirping or waves flowing or flutes and harps singing.

bella and cedar, living in the moment of their connection, canon 50d

Yesterday I was feeling a bit melancholy and struggling with living in the present. I was curled up on my couch, looking out the window, wanting to be somewhere else.

Somewhere colder, crisper, strolling my son down streets with funky boutiques and cafes and culture. I wanted to be in Victoria, B.C…heading from downtown towards my cute cottage of a house. A cottage near the sea and surrounded by tall trees.

Then I glanced over at Cedar and there he was completely fascinated with this plastic cover for a storage tray. He held it up to the light, pursed his lips, brightened his eyes, observing all its lines and curves. He was fully living in the present. Not longing for the past or wishing for the future. He was so in the moment.

So, I lifted him up and brought him outside with me. I found a tree to sit under with him. I told him I was struggling, that I wanted to be more in the moment like he is. He gazed in my eyes and tickled my face with his fingers and what I saw in him was complete acceptance. He reminded me to accept where I am. To revel in it. Not to push it away or attach any shame to it. So, I surrendered and whispered out loud to our tree all of my wishes of cool air and Victoria and ocean and trees and cottage.

Then something really cool happened. I felt like it was released and not so tightly wound inside of my soul. Like I’ve done my part in wishing and hoping and manifesting for the moment and I could let go and trust that my desires are there for a reason. So the remainder of our time under the tree, I was observing the leaves swish back and forth, feeling the softness of my son’s hand in mine, watching the cars drive to and fro down below the hill. And I realized something. I was suddenly living in the moment. So, I lifted Cedar up, touching his nose to mine and thanked him for being a little Buddha and bringing me back to center. He is so good like that.

cedar and me, taken with phone

Cedar and I do this quite often throughout the day. Explore one another’s faces. No talking. Just gazing, caressing and soul searching. It is so very intimate and bonding.

I wish we could all do this as adults more. Sit in silence together more often. Gaze at one another without feeling awkward or uncomfortable or too vulnerable. There is so much to be said in silence, in quiet…when it is easy to hear the birds, the wind, your breath…nature happening around you…together.

I remember last year at Squam, this beautiful person who had been reading my blog but we had yet to meet, approached me. She put a hand on each one of my shoulders and took in a deep breath, gazing into my eyes. Her savoring this moment was so unspoken and all I could do was tear up and allow myself to soak it in along with her. Words were unnecessary. I’ll never forget that because I realized I didn’t put up a guard of protection around my heart and start rambling nervously.

Why do we protect ourselves from moments like this?

{video by jen}

…and our dear friend, jen gray.

yesterday at the bohos, canon 50d

Yesterday I walked around quietly and in mindfulness that all of the hard work. All the pain. All of the weeping. All of the tear soaked pillows. All of the confusion. The unanswered questions. The fear. The longing. The aching of a wounded heart. All of it has purpose in my life now. The idea that our pain, our trials are present in our life not only to help mold us into our most beautiful and true selves but to help others do the same, is humbling me to the core.

Sometimes in our pain or in our stories, we feel so isolated and alone. But our stories aren’t just about us. Our stories are happening for others to learn from, love from, grow from and with this knowledge, it gives us more purpose. And with this purpose, we have more reason to keep going.

I’m going to keep it simple today and just say that…because that is enough to move mountains in our lives. In my life. Truly.

Today I marinate in the serenade of life purpose.

self portrait smooch, taken today with phone

I sent this kissy picture message (above) to all of my lovelies while parked outside of a coffee shop, about to enter into the lovely land of “me” time. I was feeling sassy and excited and alive. Sundays are the days I get to sit all day at a coffee shop, with headphones on, to work on my book and another project that I am keeping a bit mum for now. This was my sweet, darling husband’s idea. Bless him!

A piece of my days here in the cafe is spent going through the archives of my Chronicles of Me blog. The blog where I spilled all the deeply raw bits of our fertility journey. I have started from the very beginning and as this is my second Sunday doing this, I have only read through my first 6 months. What I am doing is writing down in a journal all of the wise nuggets that carried me through. What I also find myself doing is getting lost into a world where I haven’t been in a long while.

I think I am feeling tender today because I am really FEELING all of it. Here I sit in the corner of this cafe, up against a window and biting back tears. So many moments I have to look away from the screen and take a huge breath. I think so much of that comes from how I am reading it now objectively. The same girl, but a different girl. The girl that knows how it ends (or begins). The girl that just left her beautiful baby, kissed him all over, hugged her husband and took off to a cafe. Had I known way back then, where I would be today…it would have made my journey a bit softer with a cushion for the pain. But then again, I also sit here knowing that I needed to go through it because if I didn’t, I would be different than who I am today and I am so very happy with what the lessons did for my heart, my life, my way of BEing in this world. So in a sense, I am that parent or mentor or big sister to the old me, nodding my head, knowing I have to let go and let her go through it all.

Interesting stuff.

How could I have known way back then that I would be okay with adoption? Adoption was always such a beautiful thing to me. I admired it from afar. But while going through my own journey, I was so very attached to growing my child in my belly and birthing him into this world (literally). People assume because we adopted, that I was okay with it from the beginning as many blessed couples are. I don’t even remember if I ever shared here on my blog that I actually wasn’t totally okay or open to it for my own personal journey up until the very last moment. Whenever we got a phone call from our dear friend Tammy about a birth mom, it took me time to come to a space where I was open to hear more. This is why we had to take months off from the idea of it after the first adoption fell through. I just didn’t feel ready. I still felt attached to conceiving naturally and I had taken the fall through as a sign that it just wasn’t meant to be.

Even when we got the call about K, our birth mom that carried Cedar, I cried in my husband’s chest. I suppose to me at that time, allowing adoption into my life sort of solidified that we were going to stop trying, indefinitely. Logically, I understood that we would be too exhausted as new parents to try for another. I understood the logic that we are far away from living near family and with two little babes, I would need help. Then of course, there were those ugly voices…ugly untrue voices that told me time is ticking. In two years I will be 39 and blah blah blah. Those are the gremlins that creep in from close-minded fertility doctors, articles and hundreds of books that are all about the “last good egg” philosophy. A philosophy I find dis-empowering and I am not a fan of, nor do I believe in it down deep in my heart. But I digress…

I can remember many phone calls to loved ones where I wept, full of fear that if I adopted, I had to let go of this one precious desire I held so close to my heart. I knew that I longed to be a mother and raise a beautiful, conscious child and that is why adoption was an option for me, for us…but I also couldn’t let go of the desire to be pregnant. It was a vision that I held in my mind my entire life.

Then something shifted in a big way. Something I didn’t expect. Something that swooped into my heart without any movement on my part. When I first heard the voice of K, our birth mom, I knew…I just knew…she was carrying our child. My heart for this young woman, within just a few words whispered from her sweet southern lilt of a voice, grew to envelop the whole idea of what adoption was about for us. For us. Slowly, my heart was letting go of what I thought I needed and wanted and was accepting a whole new way of creating our family. I couldn’t get K out of my mind after hanging up the phone from that first call. I liken it to talking with someone for the first time, that you feel you’ve known all of your life. Or perhaps felt you might have dreamed of this person. A deja-vu of sorts. The feeling that you’ve walked with them, side by side, in another lifetime before this one.

Still…still, the weeks following that day, I suffered from the pain of letting go of pregnancy. I still had phone calls with loved ones where my fears crept up and I wept and wept. I still ached for that life and couldn’t fathom letting it go.

But then I met her. The first time she opened the door and looked into my eyes with her deep baby blues, I came undone. I saw her swelling belly and again, this deeply spiritual transformation began and I knew she was carrying my child. It was then and only then…one month before Cedar was born, that I completely let go of needing to be pregnant with him. It was in that instant. The moment I first saw her…and him in her belly.

My heart changed course and a whole new concept of growing a family opened up for me, for us.

If someone would have whispered this into my ear two years ago, I would have walked away from them full of hurt and frustration. I share this because I will never forget where it is to be where I was, wanting what I thought I needed so badly. I am grateful I have it documented on my old blog, just in case I do forget at times. Adoption is not for everyone. I know this. But the fact that I didn’t feel it was for us and now, now…I cannot imagine it any other way, is a testament to the idea that hearts can completely change course in regards to something we are holding onto so tightly.

Now I look into his eyes, I hold him, I smell his skin…and he is so completely meant to be my son. I have never carried or birthed a child but if I had, I cannot imagine loving him any more than I do now. I cannot imagine feeling any more the belonging and connection as a family that I feel with him and my husband.

Now where I sit with the desire to be pregnant is that it just isn’t there. Yes, yes…there are moments when I see a pregnant woman and I remember it all. Yes, I sometimes look out a window and wonder what it would feel like…but the longing isn’t laced with pain. Just simply curiosity and wonder. To me, the fact that I feel THIS differently is totally and completely wild to me. Perhaps someday it will change. Perhaps it will always be this way. Perhaps someday I will become pregnant with our second child. Perhaps we will adopt a second child. Perhaps Cedar will always be our only child. My thoughts just don’t really stay with those questions for very long and that feels so, so good.

So, as I sit here in the corner of the cafe and wipe my tears while going through the heart of a girl that once was, I believe and I have hope. I have hope that yes, our stubborn hearts can indeed change course. Change course to a path that is so very perfect for us…even if at one time we didn’t think so.