ur happy place for 2/9!

photos by niko this weekend....me & dino.

welcome to ur happy place : a refuge for body mind and soul for the week of 2/9! with valentine's day coming up my thoughts have been on the idea of love and what i've learned about it over the years. how do we love? here's a bit i'd like to share with you.

we are living in such turbulent times. spiritually we are being asked to evolve into our greatest selves and part of the upheaval we all feel is related not only to a personal but relational call to do so. our relationships truly offer us an exquisite opportunity to wake up and live to our highest capacity. if we are in sync with our partners for example, we experience a sense of harmony, grace and well being. we feel supported and we offer this same support. we feel unlimited and worthy of the best life has to offer us.

we know however, that life is never static and our souls crave movement, learning and growth. i believe this is why we are here, after all. i wonder if you've noticed, as i have, that our growth spurts are not always parallel to our partners. you may be on a bender of new experience, gaining valuable insights and moving at the speed of light while your mate is still standing at the starting gate. i've worked in session recently with women who are awakening to a more inward and spiritual way of moving through there days; listening to the intuitive impulses, feeling urges to make changes in lifestyle, or altering how they go about making choices. they want to stretch their wings and remake their lives. not surprisingly, some of them have run into resistance from their mates. who is this woman? and where is my wife/girlfriend etc?? why is she rocking the boat? which can mean ,why is she rocking my comfort zone? herein lies the real grist of relationship. what then do we do? can we learn to work in concert playing our own instrument in time with our mates ? or do we have a soul recognition that tells us it's time to branch out and fly solo?

dino and i have had times of great harmony over the years, bliss even, especially in our early years. but as we encountered life's twists and turns, a lay off that eventually meant selling our home and leaving the town and friends we loved for example, we were thrust into the unknown. we struggled to hold onto our sense of self, to care for our individual needs while keeping in mind our commitment to each other. i reacted stubbornly, with anger and resentment at first, having no intention of uprooting my life to move to a town i'd never heard of, in a place where i knew no one, and had no connection to what so ever. it was a painful process for me to release my life, my business, my community and a geography that nourished and filled me. choosing to go with dino was the right thing for me to do, to live with him full time rather then seeing each other on the weekends with me on the cape and him in central massachusetts, two hours away.

the three and 1/2 years we lived there were some of the most bittersweet of my life. We became a family there, having niko, which was a huge life transition. when niko was four months old, dino was offered the job of a lifetime which meant travel, long hours and ha! him working away from us only to return on the weekends! if nothing else we can count on life to have a sly sense of humor. located as we were in a remote area, these times brought me a profound connection with nature, a place where i found great solace and healing. trekking out in the woods with our dog, bandit and with niko nestled in his snuggie sling we'd leave behind the isolation of the four walls and enter a world of sky and light and never ending wonder. being on my own for so much of the time i learned about resilience, deep courage and the power of a mother's heart. but there was no denying that the hardships of navigating through the new world of motherhood, being stretched beyond my endurance in every possible way, took its toll on me and us.

we took on a different meaning and with so few social resources, finding a sitter was nearly impossible. we had no family within easy commuting distance nor had we gained the kind of friendships that allowed share care of any kind.we were both exhausted with niko's quirky sleep patterns. "our time" faded away and so did the life we shared before parenthood. dueling responsibilities to the boys each with their wants kept me pulled this way and that. when i look back at pictures of myself from this time, i see a smiling woman in most of them. for all of the memories of what living there took from me, she reminds me that it also gave to me and created a new kind of us.

we left there having overcome trials that instead of breaking us, brought us closer. we learned to reinvent our rhythms, to appreciate a good night's sleep, and to savor the rare uninterrupted meal. we gained a beautiful child who lit up our days in ways we never imagined possible. i had the pleasure of falling in love again with dino, not simply as my husband but now as niko's father.

birthing niko initiated me into the mysteries of my woman's body, reunited me with my woman's wisdom, instinct and intuition and delivered me back home to the Great Mother, a reunion that grounds, informs and enlightens me to this day.

in the years that have passed dino and i have traveled lots of hills and valleys. life has asked us to risk being more honest, more brave, more understanding, more of our souls. as far as dino is concerned these days, already generous in his loving, he seems to draw from a well of unending generosity, of tender caring, of kind gestures. he is the one who buys flowers every week just because, the one who sees me as beautiful at 5:30am bed head and all, who tells me he has loved "all of my bodies" pre and post baby and each one in between. he's the one who can't wait to come home just to chat. through my marriage with him i claimed the roles of wife and mother and realigned with my deep feminine nature. with him i've had a most precious example of what it means to love. he has taught me how to forgive when i don't really want to, how to laugh when i want to scream, how to dig down deeper, to commit again and again. i am more fully my soul for having shared my days with him. am i lucky or have i chosen wisely? maybe a little of both.

i wish for us all to find love in this life. though so much of what i know of love has come through my bond with dino, love is limitless. we can find love in the eyes of a friend, a lover, a child, a stranger. it makes no difference. may we find it first within our own deep hearts and then within each heart we meet along the way.

happy heart day!


until next time...xx