"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"

During my last couple years of high school I took independent study art classes from our art teacher we affectionately called "Lab." My art during these late teenage years generally consisted of sketches and intricate inked designs intertwined with poetry--of my own and of others. Lab noticed my love for the power of words, quotations, books, and poetry, and gifted me upon graduation and a couple years later, two poetry books: News of the Universe, poems of twofold consciousness and Risking Everything, poems of love and revelation. The time I spent deep inside my own heart and head in high school writing and reading poems has helped shaped who I am today. Today during Savasana in my yoga class, with the rain pouring down on the glass ceiling, our instructor read a poem that nearly brought me to tears. It was a poem about what it feels like to be living. What it means to be alive. When you walk through a blustery winter day with your hair whipping in the wind and your face chapped, but you feel it all because you're alive. With all the bad news of the last month, all the death, all the grief and problems that seem to be floating around the universe, I think about what it means to be living. And I am grateful for ever feeling pain, facing challenges, being fearful, feeling love, and for hope. Because it means I am living.

A couple of those poems from Lab that remind me of such things:

"Sweet Darkness" by David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.


When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.


Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own. 


There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.


The dark will be your womb 
tonight.


The night will give you the horizon
further than you can see.


You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.


Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.


Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn


anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive


is too small for you. 


"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
or grief. I come in the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

"Change is the only constant."

I realize that most people would not consider me "laid back." I don't easily go with the flow; I have always either encouraged, created, or fought "the flow." Individuals like my brother or my Uncle Tom "go with the flow," in a way that makes them like-able and easy-going. But I like to plan and organize and materialize grand scenarios of what I think is the best decision. And it's not always the best way. I'm stubborn and opinionated, but I also have a big heart and emotions that can sometimes overcome me in inopportune times. I often hate allowing change to have its inevitable strength, yet I welcome it when it suits me. I seek change when it comes to promoting an open mind, as my many educational transfers/moves across states have been extraordinarily enlightening. But when a change is out of my immediate control, I can feel threatened and inferior. I can fight without reason, but with passion. I should have become a human rights lawyer, as my mom often remarks, in that I cannot stand a breach of injustice or humanity. I feel sick to my stomach over events in the news, and I draw upon my background in political science when I feel I have no other choice. But ultimately change is constant. Nothing stays the same for long. I won't be a restaurant server for very much longer, and I won't have just myself to worry about for the majority of my life. My goal is to embrace the changes that encircle me, to realize that I can plan for the future, to have an opinion and to care, but there are many things that are not up to me. I will fight the battles that I can fight, and endure what I must endure. In the end what matters most is who you love, what you love to do, and what your heart believes in.

"Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted."

I have been thinking a lot about family recently. The role that one's family plays in their life, their definition of family, or their relationship with their family members can vary pretty widely from individual to individual. My parents moved close to their parents after my brother and I were born so that we could get to know our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as we grew up. I spent childhood birthday parties and holidays surrounded by extended family members. Most of the family was within in a five hour drive from Portland, where I grew up. I saw my grandparents on a regular basis, and built blanket forts with my cousins. My parents took my siblings and I on family trips whenever they had the opportunity. I grew up with a strong sense of family, and a strong love for my family. I am so thankful for the importance of family that my parents instilled in us. Now I live about one thousand miles away from my parents, but only five miles from my brother and a few hours from my sister. I have been able to spend a lot of time with my brother and his girlfriend over the last year and a half, and have been able to be part of my sister's freshman year of college more than I could have had I lived somewhere else. These are the times that I'll look back on fondly, before we have careers and families of our own that may take us further apart. Regardless, I know that we'll always be there for each other. My parents are incredibly encouraging and supportive, and I could never be venturing on to graduate school with the strong sense of self and family that I have without how they have raised me. Regardless of who you consider family, be it friends or blood relations, I hope that you regularly acknowledge that you couldn't be where you are or who you are without those people in your life who love you more than you know. I realize I am lucky to have my immediate family, extended family, and both sets of grandparents alive and well, and I know others aren't so fortunate. Families can be crazy, erratic, non-functional, and dramatic. But they are your family, and they love you for you.

"Life is too short, so kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly"

During my lunch break today at New Frontiers, I learned that Tod passed away last night due to respiratory failure. I broke down in the break room, co-workers looking on concerned or uncomfortable with my sudden emotion while on the phone with my mom. I struggled through four more hours of my shift, almost glad to have the distraction of serving customers pizza and making them sandwiches. Regardless of trying to find a distraction to not have to deal with what actually happened, I've found myself plummeted in grief for the loss of an amazing individual, for his family's pain, for the future moments in his children's lives that he won't be able to witness. Amidst all the tears, and my sudden need to clean the kitchen and bathroom in some sort of frantic way, I get another phone call. An unfamiliar area code and mysterious number, but I answer anyway, feeling numb to any other thought. And among the dark, cold thundering rainclouds of the day thus far, I finally feel a little warmth. I'm told that I have been accepted to graduate school. My first acceptance after two rejections. The light at the end of the shadowy and long tunnel. So maybe in September I'll go to Colorado to study, to the state where Tod and Marti called home for many years. But for now I am heavy with sorrow, and heavy with hope.

"Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday."

I could not have come across this quote at a more opportune time. I have spent the last month or so in a mental state that needs internal mending and renewed consciousness of the goodness, love, and blessings that are bountiful in my life. So easily I have let stress, obligations and disappointments exhaust me, even though I know they are not true representations of who I am, but only roadblocks and challenges that I will overcome. It is easier to complain than to address the cause of distress. It is easier to complain than to acknowledge that my situation at any given time is probably far easier than that of many others' around the globe. I am adjusting my perspective. I am angling towards positivity and moving forward from what I consider to be 'problems.' At this particular time, my head cold and frustrations with other aspects of my day-to-day life are in retrospect just blips along the horizon. Funny how it sometimes takes something really bad for us to realize how silly our little problems actually are. My reality check is our family friend and neighbor Tod in his fight for survival. The miracles that happen everyday need to be Tod's miracle. The only power that I have is the strength of positive thought and prayer for Tod and his wonderful family. Our minds have so much more power than we may realize. Focusing on the negative will only yield negative results. I am sending out good vibes and love to Tod and to those who are suffering and struggling every day just to breathe, just to live. 

Count your blessings. I'm learning to count mine...