The birth of Koala Cuddles!

So on Friday, Jamie was in bed cuddling with me as he does every morning. He has taken to sleeping with me at night as a security measure. Many of you, I am sure, if you think back will know the reason for this. He is 7 and I have no issue with him doing so considering what he has undergone. So he falls asleep beside me on the couch and then I take him to bed with me when I go to bed with me. I will stand him up on the couch and say arms and he wraps his arms around my neck. Then I say legs and he wraps his legs around my waist. He then sleeps with me at night and before we get up in the morning we have a bit of a cuddle session. And let me tell you this mom loves it! So at various points and becoming more frequent, Jamie will climb on top of me and lie tummy to tummy with his head on my chest and my arms wrapped around me. As he was doing this Friday, a picure flashed through my mind. Koala hugs!

Now this is what we look like, if you can imagine Mama koala lying down on her back. If you notice they are tummy to tummy and babe has buried his head into Mama. Here`s an alternate view of what I am trying to get you to envision.

The really amusing part of this all is this: when Build-A-Bear opened, I got each of the kids a bear and recorded a special message in it to each of them. A personalized message specific to them. Lo and behold what did I get Jamie?  You guessed it: a Koala Bear. And so for him and me, we now have Koala cuddles!!!

the heart

The heart is foolish at best. It sees life through rose coloured glasses. Although wounded, it can have the capacity to still love, and that can cause one to forget the pain and walk blindly into something one knows it should stay away from. It's quite a dilemna to sit in. When you are weaves a spell over you that pulls you in a direction that your head knows it not to your good. So how do we balance this? How do we decipher which way to turn. For my head and all the heads around me are syaing one thing and they all make sense.......but my heart says another. It says everyone deserves another chance, it says everyone deserve to be granted mercy and grace, it believes in the ability of people to change and it believes the best in EVERYONE.

The heart, well my heart, also takes into account its own wants and desires, and those factors do come into play. And so I find myself gearing up to walk into a situation next week where my head knows that its perhaps not a smart move but my heart sings a different song.

The hears is foolish thing..........

wierdness

So to further my post from yesterday, I was chatting with a co-graduate student and my life coach as well as a dear friend. I seem to be doing some ruminating as of late. Overall there has been a weird sense of unsettled, scattered and an overall concept of being out of control. However, there doesnt seem to be the usual angst or panic around it. Instead there seems to be a sense of calm or peace. And currently its a bit of a love hate relationship that I have with this current state of being. And it does take some getting used to, to not live in a continual state of chaos. And to be honest, the adrenalin is part what used to get me through all the time. I could count on surviving, cuz I had to and I had the adrenalin rush to push me through. Now I don't have that, and I am not sure a) that I like it and b) how to deal with this. And I thoroughly understand the benefits of not living in the state of chaos, less toll on your body and your mental, physical and emotional well being. But here's the thing, my adrenalin rush from living in chaos and surviving has been like having a best friend that is always here. I could depend on this friend to never fail when i needed him. And now, he seems to have disappeared or is maybe simply taking a holiday. And there seems to be almost a bit of grieving that goes on with it. I mean I had a long term friend who was integral to my survival and he seems to be gone with not even a good bye. Not sure what to do, i want him back although I understand that perhaps he was simply here for a time, to save me. But even more I want to thank him then. That is something that we teach our clients. As a child you no doubt learned certain styles of coping and lets face it, they may no longer be appropriate but they were there for a time, and they had an integral purpose...........YOUR SURVIVAL!!!!!!!! However, they may now be doing you a disservice as they are no longer healthy or appropriate. As such, they need to be honoured and grieved, for they were a part of you that helped you overcome what you needed to overcome. So, if you find yourself in a similar position to me, do yourself a favour, honour that gift that you had, treasure it and grieve it as you let go and learn into healthier ways.

And so I sit, in this between the spaces place. I seem to be hovering in between the past and the not yet. Its a wierd floaty space....seems kind of void and empty, nothing to really hold onto and somewhat surreal. Its like there is this place where I sit and watch things go on around me and I remain untouched but it all..........

things that make you go hmmm

Blogging

I must say that i am in a bit of a conundrum. I am sitting feeling that so much has happened in the recent past and I feel as if I am on the verge of so much more happening and I don't even know where to begin, which is also weird cuz usuallyl i can write.

So....let's see I had my first intern client last thursday, taht seemed to go well. And I have a client that specifically requested me and I have managed to work our schedules so I can see her. That is good. I have some buisness things in the works in which some extremely exciting things are happening. I saw the wonderful reaches of humanity today as people stepped otuside of themselves to help out a friend's son. It was wonderful too see some good and it should be celebrated in this day and age when all we hear is economic crisis and all we read is one horror story after another.

I am in the midst of some self refleciton, two big ones for me in the past little bit, one to do wiht the handling of feedback and one to do with my sleep....

I was faced wiht the possibility of H1N1 in my house.......that wa a shock and it was overwheming to sort through all the things that I was going to have to do...but alas, God kept us safe from it.

I find that I am living in more peace, there seems to be a lighter air about me. My unfilled dreams don't seem to weigh so heavy and I am not sure why....perhpas its the same thing that makes me think I am on the verge of a breakthrough cuz although crisis still goes on, I seem to be sitting above it.

So that brings me once again to this not having something to blog about. there seems to be a sense of privacy that is exisitng in me right now and I don't rightfully understand it....so i apologize that I don't seem to have much to say. I did promise that I would be authentic though and I don't know that it gets much more authentic then this......

Life coaching

So, one of the current ongoing things to do as of late, is to get connected with a life coach.I have often thought of doing so but their going rate is pretty expensive. Nonetheless, I have always seen that as being an assest. Having someone by your side that is about your best in any given situation, having someone to bounce things off of, to check ur actions in with, to get an outside perspective on, it's a good thing. Now, I'm sure there are a lot of people that think that it would be a waste of money, but the productivity benefit outwieghs the cost.

Take for instance procrastination. now this is something that many people often struggle with. The benefit of having a life coach is that they have developed knowldge in these stupid quirky things and can provide you with strategies to overcome them. Not only that, but hte provide accountability as well as being someone who is rooting for yoru success which can be a handy thing on those days when life just did not go as planned.

take me for instance...I have grown up with a lot of habits that were working for me in the time that I needed to use them. however, i am grown now and these skills that were of benefit to me for a period of my life are no longer of successful service to me. however, I still operate in the same manners as they have become habit, they are comfortable and because they had worked for so long, my brain has a hard time understanding that they are no longer working.

along come my life coach...he provides me with strategies to ovcercome these quirks that are no longer successfully servicing my needs, and he is invested in my success. He is a great cheerleader and for the times that I find that I am having a hard time that day pushing through, he is there on the sidelines supporting me, encouraging me and believing in my success even when i cannot see it.

and yes for some it may sound cheesy to pay to have someone motivate you and believe in you but from where I sit and from where i have come from this is an amazingly powerful thing

9/11

Today is the 12th day of September 2009. Yesterday marked the eighth anniversary of the terrible events of 9/11. I wonder how many took a moment to stop and remember: where were you when you heard the news? what did you do? were you struck by the horror of the situation? did you sit, as I did, in front of your tv and watch in shock as the twin towers game down? It was a surreal moment for me, it felt like I watched a horror movie and yet some part of my brain insisted in telling me that this was really happening as I was watching. Did you sit in shock as I did, and watch people choose to jump and plummet to their deaths? Do you remember in gripping detail as I do or have you chosen to forget those images and remember in a general sense the events of 9/11.

we need to remember. we need to relive and remember to feel the horror of what we felt that day. We need to...for a number of reasons....we need to remember in order to honour all the innocent victims, the moms and dads, the children, the aunts, uncles and cousins, the husbands and wives, who through no choice of their own were innocent bystanders and had their lives taken from them in the most brutal of ways.

we need to remember in order to honor the ones left behind, the now childless parents, who will never understand the kind of brutality that took their mommy and daddy from them. we need to honor the parents who have now outlived their children-every parent's nightmare. we need to remember to honor the young lovers who had their fiancees and dreams taken from them in one fell swoop. we need to honor the grandparents whose grandchildren will never again sit at the knees of gramma and grampa and hear the stories of back in the day.

we need to remember to honor the emergency personnel-the paramedics, the firefighters, the police force who risked their lives. Some lost their lives that day in the line of duty as they did all they could to save those in the towers and fight against the unseen enemy for at that time, as well all watched the twin towers blow up and fall, we knew not whom we were fighting. many emergency personnel did not give a thought for their own lives that day but rather went into burning and falling buildings in order to save their fellow man.

for you can guarantee, every year on 9/11 the children remember, the parents remember, aunts, uncles, cousins friends grandparents remember. you can guarantee each of the emergency personnel who fought that day and lost their brothers and sisters in the battle DO remember. they remember the horror of those events and we too MUST remember.

history is doomed to repeat when we start to forget so as we pass another anniversary of 9/11 please instead of giving a passing thought to that day, instead of glossing over it with a casual "oh ya, its 9/11 today," force yourself to once again feel the horror that you felt that day and hold your loved ones close, thanking our Lord that it was not you!!!!!

Honour our brothers and sisters who lost their lives that day by remembering and thus not allowing this to occur in our world again. For that day, we no longer remained canadians and americans...on that day we became family...brothers and sisters who lost one of our own.

IT'S NOT OK!!!!!!!!!

I am sitting here after learning that once again i was played for a fool. my heart lay in pieces around me and I am running out of glue. never mind glue. I am running out of desire and strength to pick them up and put them back together. i will, rest assured, i always do. this is really getting old. and yet even if I wanted to, I seem to be incpable of hardening my heart. But I need you to know, THIS IS NOT OK! Guess what guys? I cry....and the tears are real....i bleed and its red like you and it is not okay to play me for a fool so that I do cry and I do hurt. pain and people in pain is not good and that includes me. at the bottom of this blog, I ask you to hold my heart gently, for it is here that you will see me vulnerable. So this is me in all my glorious vulnerablility. My heart got ripped out one more time, and now it lay in shattered pieces on the floor around me. And you need to know. IT IS NOT OK TO DISRESPECT PEOPLE AND PUT THEM IN THIS KIND OF PAIN. IT IS NOT OK. So would you please just stop it. before you act, stop and think of the consequences of your actions and the effect that they will have on another. stop and think would you appreciate being in their shoes? If you answered no to those questions, then STOP IT, cuz IT IS NOT OK. I'm real, my heart beats and hurts like yours so take not please and treat it and me accordingly. I am not here for your gain, and I am not here for you to toy with. I hurt too so stop hurting.