Tacos and Tiaras

I'm just being all-zen-and-shit

Confessions

Allowing Everyday Magic from Your Heart

Beginnings, Confessions, Divine Orchestration, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, In Media Res, Kindness, Love, Luceat Lux Vestra, Mindfulness, Music, Perspective, Prayer and Meditation, Reflection, Sacred Rebel, Warrior Woman Wednesday

One day it just clicks. You realize what’s important and what isn’t. You learn to care less about what other people think of you and more about what you think of yourself. You realize how far you’ve come and you remember when you thought things were such a mess that you would never recover. And you smile. You smile because you are truly proud of yourself and the person you’ve fought to become.”

– tinybuddha.com
My backyard today, 21 April 2021

I have to begin this post with gratitude. I feel grateful for this moment in which I feel like I am fiiiiiiiiinally able to write another post. I arrived at a point in today where I could at least START typing…

I feel grateful that I arrived at a point in my life where I am less likely to stress myself out because something, like writing a new blog post, didn’t occur in the timeframe that I thought I would. I have seen so many times how when I allow it to flow, all of the bits and pieces, including ones I didn’t know would be part of it, arrive and then I am ready to tackle the task or mission.

Today was exactly that. I was talking on the phone this morning while I sat on the patio, and as I listened to kind and loving words being spoken, a male American Goldfinch came up to the feeders. He was the first I’ve seen in months, and his presence felt like a nudge. I couldn’t remember what symbolism is associated with the goldfinch, so I searched my blog. I mentioned the goldfinch in four posts:

  • The Goldfinch Speaks, 13 May 2020 – This one did not mention symbolism, but one paragraph stood out like a reminder that I needed to see because of how I could say the same thing about my past week:

    “I laughed and asked, ‘Why is everything a fucking metaphor?’ Seriously. My week has been one amazing thing after another when I am allowing them to come to me and happen instead of trying to make them arrive on what I think their timeline should be.“

    Another beautiful reminder from the same post: “Every time I consciously and earnestly say, ‘Thank you’ I receive more for which to be thankful.”
  • Meditating with the Birds, 17 May 2020 – Reading this post today brought to mind something else. My post suggests that mindfulness and being fully engaged in the present moment can be achieved in different activities besides typical meditation in order to feel grounded; however, I feel some of my greatest peace (that launches more gratitude) in ordinary moments when I realize that I had been completely focused and not for the purpose of grounding.

    The post also emphasizes having consistency and patience, especially when it comes to allowing arrivals. I only have control over my actions and thoughts and what I can do to invite an arrival, and from there, I have to be patient and allow.
  • Come As You Are, 9 June 2020 – I loved reading this and realizing how much unfolded since then: “My life has become magical, metaphorical, and mystical, and as the oriole reminded me, much of it comes from reconnecting with and continuing to heal my inner child. I’ve carried forward all of the things that brought me joy as a child. After many life and soul-journey lessons, some that made it easy for me to lose my way from my path, I’ve been working on learning, healing, and creating my future as I’ve always dreamed it.” Oh, if I knew then what I would experience this past week! 🙂

    Come As You Are focuses on bringing our authentic self to all things, and at that time I mentioned working for change: “IF you read my blog regularly, then you know my calling is a storyteller, lightworker, healer, sacred rebel, priestess… Therefore, my purpose is to stay with the bigger picture so that it helps you to be who you are meant to be and come as you are to working for change.”

    Being your authentic self is also key in another matter – aligning all the people, tools, and experiences that help us with our life purpose and mission. And also a final reminder from the post: ALWAYS BE KIND.
  • Timing: Arrival, Advent, It’s All Coming Back to Me, and I’m Still On My Way, 29 Nov 2020 – This post opens with the quote, “It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.” – Lois McMaster Bujold. In this post, I have a list of things that I didn’t see coming in the future, but they were all great things that happened FOR me and they arrived when I would truly appreciate and treasure their value.

    This post feels connected to my most recent posts, Magic Moments: The Princess of Spring and Inviting and Allowing Magic Moments. Only six days ago I used the Paulo Coelho quote, “We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments.” Two days ago I wrote my own quote, “Magic is in the heart of the believer.” The image on the post affirms, “I allow life to flow freely through me. I am open to experience this moment as it is.”

One more thing to bring forward from the penultimate post: “The Princess of Spring. Optimistic, Enthusiastic, Creative, Energetic. It’s time to go after your dreams. Do something that expands your horizons. Let your creativity take flight.” – Radleigh Valentine, Fairy Tarot. And my favorite part from the guidebook, “She exhibits an almost childlike exuberance for life that will have you smiling.” Agaaaaaaain, if I knew weeks ago how this message would play out over and over, especially this past week, I still might not have believed what was coming.

With all of that in mind…

In the past couple of weeks, but mostly since last Thursday, the day that I woke up and felt like it was going to be a magical day, I feel absolutely certain it was. Whether you want to call it praying or setting intentions to manifest, I have been receiving everything I dared to ask for from the universe. I am manifesting a life of abundance. Needs are met. Wants are few. I am living a happy, fulfilling, purpose-driven life.

Every bit of work I’ve done in the last decade to improve my mindset to invite abundance is paying off now. The keys? Consistency and patience in: living in constant gratitude, healing from past experiences that kept me anchored in the past and blocked energy flows, releasing fears or negative thought patterns that stemmed from someone else’s mindset… those are the first three things that come to mind, but I know it’s not just those… ALLOWING INSTEAD OF CHASING… gaaaahhhhh that was a big one! (That’s what she said! haha)

Those all are a part of being able to LIVE AUTHENTICALLY – hear what your soul is calling you to do as your life purpose and live it! Once I allowed my creations (blog posts, videos, images) to flow naturally in whatever way I felt they should be rather than what I thought others want or trying to follow a formula/model, I began creating my own unique work and building a following of social media friends who enjoy and appreciate what seems to be “The Princess of Spring” coming out of my creations.

I’ll affirm again in the same words I used in a previous post, my light shines brightest when I’m not trying to shine but am simply being… living… being me… interacting with others… doing my own thing…

… and I love how I feel from finding out through comments and interactions that what brings light and healing to others is so simple.

My laugh and my smile.

And those were never in what I thought was important for fulfilling my purpose and mission! Laughing and smiling… two of the most natural actions that I could do since I was a baby! I mentioned it before in LAUGHING: It’s Funnier When Someone Snorts or Pees Just a Little.

Things are falling into place and my mission keeps becoming clearer to me. And I feel grateful to everyone I’ve met and have yet to meet who in some way contribute to my fulfillment of my mission. I feel grateful that by shining their light, several helped me to get where I am especially by empowering me to step up and begin creating and posting content whether it was this blog site or one of my social media accounts.

I found the courage to take the first step… the second step… baby steps… LEAPS… regular steps… crawling at times… but always moving forward. I answered what I thought was my calling, but every success or failure keeps clarifying my true purpose as a healer and lightworker… a warrior woman… a priestess… a sacred rebel. And all of my gratitude invites more of what and who I need to keep doing my part to raise the vibration, spread LOVE, and heal the world.

I have a journal in which I kept notes from some of my card pulls. The reminders I wrote to myself on the title page come from Rebecca Campbell’s Work Your Light oracle cards:

“Warrior Woman. Have you answered your deepest calling?”

“Priestess. How are you being called to step up and lead? Let your life be your message. A leader has the courage to go first and shine a light on the path.”

Luceat lux vestra.

Let It Be

Compassion, Confessions, Family, Kindness, Love, Mindfulness, Reflection

Love is the condition in which the other person’s happiness is essential to your own.”

– uncredited

My previous blog post, Moment to Moment, was based on Facebook memories from 19 December. The past three days, I looked at my Facebook memories from 20-22 December. I had waited until the 22nd to announce that Mommy moved to a Hospice room on the 20th, and even though I don’t have a Facebook memory to remind me why, I still know why I did that. Maybe it wasn’t my mom’s happiness that was essential, but her dignity was.

I remember listening to the Hospice representative’s explanation of logistics combined with patient care, and she had her gentle way of leading us to understand why setting up a hospital bed at home was an option no longer available for Mommy.

By the 20th, my family realized that maybe within hours, maybe within days, my mom would be dead. Her medical team could only state what to expect in the natural flow of her condition, but the only timeline that exists is the patient’s own. Knowing exactly when was not going to make a difference in how we treated Mommy. And the best we could do was get my son home from California as soon as possible. I was in that ready/not-ready state of mind and heart until my heart reminded me to focus on my mom.

The purpose of a doctor or any human in general should not be to simply delay the death of a patient but to increase the person’s quality of life.”

– Patch Adams

I intentionally did not mention Hospice on “Facebook blast” not only because Jack reminded me about one’s dignity, but also and most importantly, because my mom deserved better than for people to mourn before she was even dead, and it wasn’t about me.

My family had already contacted everyone who needed to know that my mom wasn’t going to recover, and if they wanted to and were able to, they were welcome to visit Mommy. I was not going to deny anyone of spending time with her both for their benefit and for my mom’s.

Facebook memories… my mom’s final days in social media posts…

I reposted videos of my parents that I had taken earlier in the year in which my parents recall the story of meeting and getting married a couple weeks later and my mom’s response to “What’s the secret to a long marriage?” (By the way, she scoffed, “That’s a silly question, Eileen.”

I posted pictures with a lot of longtime friends-like-family, and I remember how my mom even from a hospital bed still seemed to try to do her best to be that sweet and kind hostess she was if you came by the house. I remember feeling slightly frustrated that she was trying to use her energy to entertain visitors, but now it occurs to me, what was the point of saving her energy? I mean, it’s one thing to say, “Rest so you can heal faster…” but resting so you don’t die so soon? Or maybe at the time I didn’t realize I wanted her to rest because she was already struggling to breathe in short gasps, and it was getting worse. And I felt my heart hurting as I watched her begin to suffer, even if pain medication was keeping her comfortable.

One of the pictures is of an escape to Wegman’s with my Besties, just to breathe air outside of the hospital. I was actually pretty good at taking care of myself – sleeping and eating – because I understood I had to do that in order to be there for Mommy and my family. And thanks to the daily snack cart and especially to visitors who brought food, I was eating well.

I felt guilty sometimes because I had not lost my appetite, and even when you’re not trying to compare your situation to someone else’s, if all you know is what others have said about their experience, you end up with an expectation of how things should be. There seems to be a societal norm of “I can’t eat!” during a stressful time. Then again, three years earlier, a few days after a car wreck that resulted in my vehicle being a total loss, my son exaggerated: “You really don’t stop eating after you’ve been through a trauma.” lolololol He’s kinda right, but I feel more like I’m middle of the road, neither starve nor binge.

Over those three days before my mom died, I shared some of the dry-erase humor that I was scribbling on the board in Mommy’s room because some of the medical team wasn’t keeping up with it. For example, some of my mom’s “Goals for Today – Next Pain Medication” were “4:20 fat budz”, “the ganj”, “because these kids are giving me a headache”, and “spark it at 4:20”.

Maybe part of it was humor as a defense mechanism; maybe part of it is being a lightworker (before I knew what that was) and naturally changing the energy of a room; but I know my heart guided me to focus on my mom.

Along with the Patch Adams quote, my Facebook memory on 22 December 2018 states:

My family and I appreciate all of the expressions of kindness and love the past couple of weeks. On Thursday afternoon, we moved Mommy to a hospice room so she can rest comfortably in her final days. She decided and documented her directive 18 years ago. This is a beautiful gift to us so we are not left wondering what she would want or if we are making the right decision. As she always emphasized, “Let me go in dignity and not with all those tubes and that ‘lipe’ supports.” 😉

Mommy still shows responsiveness to our conversations and antics through her small movements. She loves silly humor. She loves laughter. She loves the fellowship and love surrounding her. What you put out there comes back to you threefold. You are loved, Mommy. Always.”

– 22 December 2018 Facebook memory

I remember “knowing” that Mommy didn’t have much time left, and by making a statement, Facebook friends wouldn’t be surprised about her eventual death. I felt hopeful that they understood and respected my family’s decision to keep Mommy’s business private for a few days. I felt grateful to everyone who showed their support, but what I didn’t expect were kind words, telling me that I inspired them with how well or gracefully I had been handling all of it.

I have not changed my mind or heart on this – how we treat each other should not be determined by how much life is left.

We truly to do see what we want to see. Some people may be able (whether by knowledge, experience, or intuition) to see beyond the information they receive. Some people may have thought my mom was going to recover because we were still “having a good time”; others may have picked up on the unsaid, especially with the absence of my mom in group photos even though visitors were there to spend time with her.

My point is we always have a limited perspective on someone else’s situation. We only see what others show us, and even then, the way we choose to see/receive it is influenced by our own experiences, ways of thinking, and all the stuff that makes us who we are. I’m not always all-zen-and-shit. I still have moments of feeling angry over past situations when someone else’s ego was looking for the worst and came up with misinformation or a false conclusion, and my ego wants to set the record straight. Let. It. Be. The right people in our lives don’t need for us to clarify or explain. We don’t need to defend ourselves.

I owe no apology to anyone who told me they felt upset that they weren’t in the loop or that they would have done something differently if I had told them my mom was dying.

I also had moments when I was not all-zen-and-shit as my mom was living her last days, but again, I kept it off Facebook because it wasn’t about me. My family was there for my mom and for me. 22 December was the night I broke down. All of us – Chief Daddy, my brothers, my Keets, and I – were alone with Mommy, gathered around her bed, telling her it was okay to go. I really don’t remember what sparked it, but I fucking lost it, feeling everything in some mess of heart and ego. My dad was telling me that’s enough when I couldn’t stop crying, my face buried in the blanket covering my mom’s belly, and all I could get out was, “I hate seeing her like this!”

I was not selfless. I was not graceful. I was not strong. I was not letting it be.

I felt like I reverted to being a spoiled child, disappointed by an unmet expectation. I tried to let it be, but I couldn’t take much more of witnessing her suffering. I know it wasn’t about me, but I couldn’t understand why she would hold on to no good quality of life.

I may have felt angry after all the stories my mom had told me about witnessing someone’s transition. She made it sound like this lovely moment of telling someone they could let go of their life, and BOOM! last breath. She had held on for my son to arrive, and he was with us…

So after we all said our goodbyes and she was still hanging on and laboring to breathe, I know I was over it. I don’t know how I didn’t scream at her, “JUST FUCKING GO!”

I don’t know why I believed she had any control over dying.

Or maybe I was too short-sighted to know she did have control and was holding on for someone or something beyond what I knew.

Luceat lux vestra.