The gifts and the not-so-secret struggles of Motherhood

I gave birth to my son at 20 years old and the moment he was taking his first breath, I literally said out loud, “I want to do this again.” I still feel the same, and quite frankly, don’t think I’ll ever escape the desire to mother another, and another, and another (have you heard that enough here on the blog?).

But there’s this other side of mothering, beyond the warm fuzzies, nurturing, and the continual access to love. It’s the ugly part of mothering.

The ugly part? Okay, well maybe just the damn hard part(s). They are the things that make you think you have enough children already.

They are the struggles, and they don’t seem to be much of a secret. So let’s go there first, so we can move on to the pronounced goodness of mothering.

Worry, fear, anger, and guilt. It happens. Sometimes more than others. It can be real tough, but these are all feelings of being human. It helps to come back to love, to let go of perfection, to remember they have their own journey, and to trust life.

Making your marriage a priority. As a couple that married and made babies from the beginning, that had nearly no dates til a year ago, and have had someone sleeping in our bed with us for over ten years, I can say that it’s about the quality of importance your bring to this relationship.

It’s about the love, the support, the time to talk.

It’s about caring about their happiness as much as your own, it’s about that inconvenient thing known as compromise, and it’s about remembering the words of my dear Josh: “It was us before the kids and it will be us after the kids.” (you don’t want to be strangers to each other once the kids are gone, do you?)

I know how hard this can be.

As Mama’s we are wired to put our children first and all these messages of putting ourselves and our marriages first seem to go directly against nature.

But we can make our marriage a priority. We can see our relationship as an important connection to our families, making time for one another before choosing less imperative things.

goofylove

“The greatest favor we can do for our children is to give a visible example of love and esteem to our spouse. As they grow up, they may look forward to maturity so they too can find such love.” -Eucharista Ward

Finding time for your passions. I struggle with this one head on. My kids come first. It’s just how it is. In my opinion, it’s how it should be. This time while they are little and their heartstrings are so directly attached to yours is way.too.short. I soak that up as much as I can be present with it.

But, as the older two get a bit older, I can also see the benefits of modeling for them the beauty of following our own passions and paving the way for them to follow theirs.

But regardless, it can be hard to say yes to yourself.

It isn’t just the kids that need you. For most of us, there’s the kids, and the husband, and the homeschooling adventures/schooling, and work, and friends, and meals, and wiping butts, and gardens, and laundry, and breastfeeding, and bills, and dishes, and meals, and cleaning, and the animals, and the answering of questions, and the meals, and the meals, and the meals, and the meals, and all the cleaning that follows the meals, and the shopping, and the whatever else you or I think of after writing/reading this.

Of course, most of those can be lovely when you’re present and filled with contentment.

But life gets messy…there’s a lot to think about….a lot to balance….a lot of curveballs that make all of the above mentioned things seem like a true blessing. (Or rather, they’re a blessing regardless. Is it not a gift to have children to cook meals for, a family to grow food for, a home to clean, and butts to wipe?)

It can be tough to keep that perspective and tough to make time for your own passions.

But guess what, when you need to do something, or you really want to do something, you make time for it. And the best thing to do is to just be present with each thing. Single task (haha-does that exist for Mom’s?) and be here now as best you can. All we have is this moment, so give fully to whatever you are doing in each moment.

Finding time to nourish yourself. We are pulled, stretched, prodded, and picked in so many directions it is quite mad. But all I can say is you just must make time to simply be. Sometimes five minutes to lay upon the grass is all you need.

Okay, so let’s move on to the gifts of motherhood:

Birth teaches you so much. When we give birth, with our body and intuition as our main guide, we are taught complete surrender and trust. It’s this magical way of revealing the innate beauty and process of life itself. And when birth (or pregnancy) doesn’t go as we plan, it teaches us humbleness and acceptance.

Unconditional love. To have life inside of you and bring it through your body creates a love that cannot be broken by any condition.

Knowing what truly matters. These sacred, wrinkled, darling little precious beings are entrusted with our guidance and love, and from the moment they are born they know what truly matters. Breath, milk, warmth, and love. As they grow they show us how to be present in the moment, how to follow our heart, how to find adventure in anything, and how to forgive.

Mothering causes us to feel every emotion, sometimes in the same day. It isn’t always pretty, and for some it steals their sanity, their sexuality, their body image, and their freedom. For some it gives them meaning, a mushy heart, strength, and hope. It is the most exhausting, fulfilling, loving, and maddening role of a woman’s life. It is ugly and it is oh so beautiful.

love from my Mama heart to yours,

Stop withholding love

Ask yourself, “where in your life are you withholding love?”

Our first reaction to disconnection, resentment, guilt, anger, and fear is to withhold love. But withholding love feeds these feelings.

You may even be withholding love directly from yourself.

But, really, if you are withholding love from anyone in your life, then you are withholding love from yourself. We can not receive what we withhold.

Give love freely. It will heal anything inside of you that feels broken. Give love when it’s hardest to give. It will free you.

Thoughts for your heart,

The one thing we overlook when we are seeking balance

Sometimes I want nothing more than to be present with my family and my home. To be here fully, creating laughs and love. Sometimes I want to spend hours fine tuning our financial goals, or the visions I hold for this online world of mine, or our meals for the month. Sometimes I want to cook and clean and declutter and make my home feel like it’s pulsating life and homemaking. And sometimes I want to lay my body upon the earth and close my eyes for hours (too bad most of my yard is covered in chicken poo).

Sometimes I want to be and sometimes I want to do.

I have to admit it is often hard to make time for it all. It certainly isn’t the easiest thing to have so many beds to fluff (I don’t really fluff beds) and dreams to realize. (or a home full of five loved ones with their own feelings, direction, and needs.)

I once heard someone say that our lives are like gardens and each part of our life is a different plant. When you tend to any plant, you are tending to the whole garden (your whole life) making it all beautiful. I adore that analogy because it reminds me that it’s important to attend each part of it, when it needs to be attended to. Just as you harvest, fertilize, or water what needs attention in your garden, we must learn to nourish what needs attention in our lives at any given time.

But this post isn’t really about gardening or balance. I don’t even believe in balance. Balance is not achievable in the sense that we can give equal amounts of time to all the important things in our life on regular intervals.

Life is more seasonal and rhythmic than that. It can really help when we realize the different phases and seasons of our lives and our days, recognizing that certain parts of our lives need more water, compost, and sunshine than others, at certain times.

But the real key to this balance/gardening thing is understanding the masculine and feminine sides of ourselves and surrendering to them both.

The feminine is free and flowing, intuitive and trusting. The masculine is active and strong, driven and productive.

The feminine is being and the masculine is doing.

Women and men carry both of these essences inside; however, our society is rampantly masculine. We are on this linear path of accomplisheverythingyoucanineverywakingmoment. Ignore your body, ignore your loved ones, ignore what makes you come alive to do the less important (but “required” work) to the point of emptying ourselves and disconnecting from ourselves.

Even those of us who really make time to come alive, to slow to the wisdom of our body, and who open to love connection frequently can still struggle with this pull to do or be, to act or to listen, to rest or to nest.

The masculine builds the framework for our feminine to flow through. I like to imagine the walls and the hidden functionality of a home as the masculine, and all the smells, softness, nurturing, and inner functioning of the home as the feminine (and of course women can build the walls and men can cry tears inside them).

The listening of the feminine and the intuitive response helps to guide us, while the list making and action of the masculine helps us create results in our life.

We must open to the body-knowing intuitive part of our life, that guides us to rest, say no, take naps, feel the grass on our bare feet, nurture our feverish children, and cry tears.

We must follow our impulse to be proactive, make things happen, build strength and create tangible results.

As women, our cyclical nature governs us and when we open to the phases of rest and productivity that we naturally cycle through we will find a new way of existing in the world that fosters ease, natural accomplishment, and an unwavering trust in life.

Here are four ways to better balance the masculine and feminine in your life:

Understand the cyclical nature of being a woman. This is exactly why I wrote In Her Moon. When you fully understand and embrace this innate tool, you will feel the struggle of trying to “balance it all” fall away.

Enhance your feminine by making love while being fully present, napping naked in sheets with the breeze flowing through the window, spending time with other women, and creating, creating, creating. When I say creating I mean anything that comes from the heart. Writing, making a meal with love as the main ingredient, painting, creating a flower bed. And remember to heed to what your body tells you, always, and make time to fill your reserves.

Enhance your masculine by following those feminine inspirational peaks up with some soul centered action steps that will produce results. Put the feminine sparks into actionable steps on paper, so that when you are feeling that productive fire you know where to act.

Be here now. Be present wtih each moment. Be where you need to be. Everything is good for something. Go back to the garden analogy. Water what is wilting in your life and your whole life becomes healthier. It is all connected and if you can give yourself what you need, when you need it, life will look and feel, smell, and taste a whole lot lovelier.

Life can be a mix of living from your gut and being pro-active in making things happen. We can intertwine the feminine and masculine in ourselves to nearly erase overwhelm, fear, resentment, and any other stinky feeling that pops up from time to time.

Balancing the feminine and masculine is about trusting and following the rhythms of life and yourself, being where you are and going where you want to go.

As always, I have nothing to leave you with but love,

Gratitude and Sadness

Sometimes I feel gratitude in my heart and sadness in my belly at the same time.

Do you know that feeling? The feeling where you are undeniably grateful for your life and all the beauty it holds, so much so that your heart feels content. Yet, so sad for the pain and grief of the world, or your own struggles, that your belly has that subtle butterfly anxiety.

Like having a constant understanding of what a blessing it is to have my breathing, vibrant, and loving children in my life to love and hold and guide, when bullshit like bombings and shootings are ripping hearts to pieces.

Like loving life so much for the gift of choice, and feeling sadness for the things we may be “given” in life that we don’t really want to face.

Like realizing what a gift it was to give birth to three of the most beautiful children in the world (of course I’m biased), even though miscarriage was to be part of my story. Sunday was the “expected due date” of this last pregnancy I lost, and I found peace by taking the sac from my freezer and planting it in the ground with Spring flowers (pic above). It doesn’t mean I didn’t feel a bit of grief when I thought that a sweet, wrinkled, and sacred newborn could have been a new member of our family this month. And yet, I fully know it was never meant to be. But this is how the gratitude and sadness come together as one.

Like the touching-on-so-many-levels emails I receive from readers, like you, who express gratitude for my words, and at the same time share some of the darker parts of your life. Eliciting gratitude for your support of my blog and sadness for things you’ve shared with me. I can never express how much I appreciate every single reader, every comment, and every email. Even the quiet ones who read and stay silent. I love you all. I appreciate you all so much for allowing my words to land in your inbox. I am honored that you listen, when all I am doing is simply sharing what is inside of me. And I am so very honored by your courage to share your stories with me. Thank you.

This all reminds me of the reasons I am absolutely smitten with the PBS show Call the Midwife. It’s the only show I watch. I don’t even have a TV, so I have to wait til the day after the air day to watch it online. I love it so much because it is full of some of the greatest beauty; birth and life. As well as hardship and sadness most of us will never know.

I have cried more this past year of my life than ever before. Not because of sadness, nor gratitude. But because my heart feels torn open by this very thing known as life. I have found that by being open to it all – the ease and the pain – we can feel our joy more fully and never lose contact with all the gorgeousness life holds.

All these things are a reminder of the blessings and fragility of life. Of the gratitude and sadness we all face. Of the real and raw struggles we must know, and of the gracious gifts that are right in front of us. Of the joy life can truly be when we allow the sadness too.

Always in gratitude for you,

8 things to do when things are hard

You know we all have our days. Or even our weeks where things are tough.

Where we feel burdened with our own selves.

Where we feel buggered by our thoughts, overwhelmed by the choices we are facing, worried for those we love, exhausted in only the way a Mama can be, saddened by far away family members, or unsettled with a yucky feeling.

I’m not there now. But I’ve been there. I go there sometimes. We all do.

Am I right?

I think so, because you are human, right?

For some reason there’s been a bug of “hard” in the air lately when I speak with women. And so my inspiration comes this week in the form of a toolbox called “What to do when things are hard.”

1. Identify the essential. I don’t want to sound like a woman standing on the same ole’ soapbox, but I just can’t emphasize this enough. It’s worth bringing up in more than one blog post. We gotta’ know what is important to us, in this moment, in this phase of our life, in this beautiful whole life of ours. And we have to work really hard to weed out all the rest, so that our hearts can be filled alongside of our lives.

2. Ask yourself, “What can be done?” Cliched a bit, but when you are worried, anxious, sad, or afraid of something, ask, “what can be done?” If nothing, then please let it go. If the only change that can be made is your perspective than change it. If something can be done, then do it.

3. Scoop those you love close, and love them more. I spend far too much time thinking of the importance of loving those in your life too deeply to ever take them for granted. Of course I do take them for granted sometimes. But I know that holding those I love close, feeling their warmth, and sharing love and connection makes every thing easier.

4. Take an online break. I have learned to deeply appreciate the internet, for it facilitates magic and has helped my message reach many beautiful corners and countries. But I also know how anxious, how imperfect, and how harried it can make us feel. I know it can be a time sucker to see more, read more, and do more, and to never really get to the important things in our lives.

My best days are when I am laughing and loving those in my home, when I’m holding my head up to the open sky, and planting my bare toes down into the earth. I have certainly found magical connections online, but we must set those down for what magic lies right in front of us. Take a day each week, a weekend each month, or a week off each season to be only present with what is right there looking back at you.

5. Use music. Songs have this ridicuously beautiful ability to shift us, while giving fluidity to the feelngs we hold inside. It is quite amazing. Put some on and allow it to bring forth your joy or to release your pain.

6. Fresh air. Really, I just said that, even though it is likely to get a “duh” response. But seriously, we can always find all these things to do inside that we forget to get outside. But what it can do for our moods is profound. Go outside, right now, and take a deep breath. I’ll stop typing and do the same… Done.

7. Clear the clutter. I don’t like stuff. Really, I don’t. Well, I mean, I do like selective stuff that holds heart and meaning. But “stuff” often feels like it gets in the way of what’s really important to me, and so I am a devoted declutterer.

Tuesday, my sister-in-law came over and I was under the spring spell of refilling jars and herbs and making my kitchen space more inspiring. I started explaining to her that I was Spring cleaning, etc. She said (paraphrasing), “no, that’s not true, cause you just did this a couple weeks ago, and I know you’ll do it like 19 more times in the next year.” And she’s right, cause it feels so good.

8. Let it be. If you’re low, let it be. It interests me that some people seem to think they should be so steady and giddy on life all the time. That’s beautiful, for sure, and we all shall aim for that as long as we know we will fall sometimes. We can still be strong and positive and trusting even when things are really tough. (click to tweet)

As always, I send beauty, love, and gratitude your way.

xo,

What do you plan to do with this one wild and precious life?

“Tell me, what do you plan to do with this one wild and precious life?”

It’s one of my most favorite reminders by poet Mary Oliver.

On another note, a ‘Stop doing it’ list has been one of my most favorite tools in the past to help me get clear on what the heck I don’t want to be doing.

Let me just say, none of us should be doing anything we want to stop doing. Our lives really are too precious for that.

The first thing I stopped doing was trying to be a perfect Mama. From there I slowly began to clear and crack open the truth of my life and how I spend it.

Gratefully, I have gotten really good at only putting things on my schedule I really want to do. Things that really reflect my family, myself, and our values.

I like to think my life has always been precious and a bit wild. I like it that way. I see it that way. But I am continually needing to tweak the behavior patterns that I want to stop doing. You know the things that habitually happen?

Life is filled with good stuff. One of those good things is how life will show you the way if you are willing to see it. Life has certainly been showing me the way and waiting for me to stop doing all the things that are holding me back.

So, this week, what I have for you is what I plan to stop doing with this one wild and precious life of mine. Hold me accountable, purdy please. And warning: there’s a lil’ cursing up ahead because I’m giving myself a little hard talk. I’m all about gentleness and trust, but sometimes you know you’re the only thing in the way anymore.

This post is for me. And for you, if you need it. These are things I need to stop doing so that I can start doing more of what I really want. And they may be things you need to stop doing too. So, if you need a little nudge, feel free to pretend I’m cursing at you too.

1. Stop being so damn wishy washy. Just choose and commit. Just decide and friggin do it, Falan. (Yup, I’m there. I know exactly what I want. But I’m slowly going after it. I’m not committing because I’m unsure. Or I’m waiting to see what others are going to do before I decide. And yup, it’s unproductive, makes things feel hard, makes me feel frustrated.)

2. Stop sleeping in. Okay, so I’ve had the luxury of sleeping in my whole life. Well, other than my schooling years when my poor mother had to try like hell every single morning to get me up. But you know what, my kids are home schooled which means we start our day when we want to. A beautiful thing for sure, but also not so good when we all tend to stay up late and sleep in. It’s worked for a long time, but I am craving a different routine.

5. Stop breaking your own commitments. Okay, so this simply means when you make a deadline, don’t break it. You are too precious to not meet your own goals. Got it chicka?

6. Stop with your excuses. Yup, I got those too. But announcing them to you, and all the beautiful ladies who stop in and read my words, is a commitment to myself to stop. You can stop with yours too.

8. Stop forgetting how gorgeous and sacred your life is. I’d never do that. Really. I’m good here : )

Ahhh, that felt good. Thank you for listening.

Off to live my wild and precious life now. It’s your turn to make your own ‘Stop doing it’ list. And precious and wild woman that you are, please leave a comment below of one thing you plan to stop doing. I truly want to here it!

I leave you with love (and no curse words),

Giving Birth to Yes’s

If you know me even a little, you know how smitten I am with birth. Actual birth, where you get to be the portal to welcome life into this world. The birth where you surrender to something so powerful and beautiful and transformative that you finish on the other side with a certainty of something bigger than yourself. The birth where you are enveloped in a strength and beauty that seems entirely magical. Because it is.

Well, I crave that kind of birth all the time. And quite honestly, I don’t think that feeling will ever go away, no matter if I have one or ten more children. But obviously, I can’t go about giving birth every day just to feel that?

Or can I?

I’ve recently been considering the ‘act of birth’ in the way I live my life.

You see, there are many moments in my life where I am on the edge of a transformation, and I feel fear begin to take over. That fear of the unknown. Like the fear you have when you worry your baby may not be healthy or your home birth could go wrong. But these are moments in my life where I can literally feel myself nearing expansion; yet, I feel the resistance of fear and its attempts to contract that expansion.

There are many moments in my life where I’ve said, “yes, absolutely, let’s go for it!” I’ve lived a lot of my life from my heart and tend to throw caution to the wind quite easily. But lately I’ve noticed myself getting too comfortable with moments of “no, not yet, let me get a few more ducks in a row before I live my life fully.”

What? I don’t like that.

So, I am taking on this challenge to give birth to more “yes’s.” To break through the fear, to ride the discomfort, and to reach the beauty on the other side. To allow life to meet me half way and co-create that beautiful birth of seeing some new dreams come true.

Maybe you are at a big transition right now in your life. Maybe you are trying to birth something in to the world, or birth a new part of yourself.

You see, as women (and humans), we are continually giving birth to the makings of things throughout our days and to the newest expressions of ourselves.

As a woman, that creation gestates and births from your womb, just as a baby does

The same important keys of actually birthing a baby can help us birth new parts of ourselves and moments of our life with a lot less fear, anxiety, or worry.

Together, let’s bring more of these in to our lives:

1. Surrender. Do you realize how often you stand in your own way? Do you recognize the moments where you are being called to do something with your life. You feel inspired when you think of it, you feel excitement, you feel a sense of freedom. But when it comes time to get the ball rolling and make tangible actions toward it, that’s when the fear says “hello, how ya’ doing? I’d like to make this a little hard for you. To give you a chance to grow, expand, trust, surrender.”

It’s like that moment of transition, in labor, where you think “oh no, go back, too much, scared, why, how…?” And then there it is; the other side; the beauty, the birth, the baby.

Soften into in to the expansion and trust. Surrender.

2. Ride the waves. Those moments of life that feel tough, those parts of our dreams that feel too hard, those moments in labor where the contractions engulf you. Ride it, lean in to it, open to it. The journey will be much smoother and will be led with heart and body wisdom.

3. Let it bubble up. That thing inside you that wants an expression in your life. That part of yourself that really wants to be born. That dream of yours that has been whispering sweet somethings in your ear for years now. That excitement of what waits on the other side. Let it bubble up, and bubble over, into a first step that will dissolve the fear and lead to a fresh from the yoni “baby” on the other side.

Go birth yourself. Say yes. Live your fullest, most impregnated life; however that may look for YOU. Click to Tweet

Love and appreciation for you,

The breath of my life (Gratitude)

If someone asked you, “what is the breath of your life?” what would you say? What is the core, the center, the unshakable thing you come back to time and time again in your life?

For a long time I’ve wanted to share with you what mine is. But it seems so hard to formulate it. To tell you how much I am driven by gratitude.

To tell you how I scoop my family up and place them in my heart every day, and leave them there for a reminder of what is important, dear, and sacred in my life.

I want to tell you how many days I feel like so much, too much, can get in the way if I let it.

From the time I was a young girl, I was very in tune with the possibility of loss, as well as the sacredness of this moment. I don’t know if it was fear, as much as an awareness. I always felt the importance of holding those close that you love, for they wouldn’t always be there.

The importance of being present and living fully, for these moment are lost to memories.

I was the daughter who left my parents notes to read each morning, until I moved out at 19. Just simple notes that said, “Hey cooool folks, Hope you have a great day. Drive Safe. I love you.”

This carried over in to my marriage when I’d leave Josh sweet notes each morning, like “I love you, Honey. So grateful to be married to you. Be safe and Have a good day.”

I wanted them to know I loved them. I wanted to create meaning at every turn. I wanted life to be full of reminders of all the things that were important. I feel fed by this awareness that our time, with these people in this particular life, is finite.

Sometimes this awareness does shift to fear. I believe this to be true for any mother. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the loss of each moment and my fear of not embracing it enough.

So again, I scoop my loved ones, as well as the intentions for what I want my life to be, in to my heart and leave them there. I get clear on how I want my life to look and adjust what needs to be adjusted. I come back to the gratitude that breathes meaning into my being.

Here are three ways for you to do the same:

1. Savor it. Savor every last drop of the goodness your life is filled with. Soak up that youthful love you feel with your partner, the beauty of the growing pains of marriage, the darling chubby cheeks of your sweet baby, the laughs (oh, the laughs), the rough and tough moments of expansion. Savor the shit out of it all. Place it in your heart as a reminder to lead with gratitude. As a reminder that no matter what your life looks like you share it with love.

2. Identify the essential. Oh, I love this one and have mentioned it before. But, lady, how I want you to know the importance of living only the essential. Fill your days, to the best of your ability, with the very things that add sparkle to your life and your loved ones lives.

3. Quantity and quality. I know there’s a lot of folks rooting for “quality” over “quantity,” and yes, I think that is true in some dynamics. But to me, for our home, it’s absolutely quantity and quality. For me it’s the quantity with my kids and husband that make time for the quality. It’s the quantity that leaves a lot of moments for spontaneous conversations, snuggles, laughs, and support for sad days or shifting days.

When it comes to your kids, they will go off and live their own life. As Mom’s we can’t suppress their growth in a healthy way. So, spend all the time you can with your children why they are little. Soak them in. I tear up as I write this, because it is something I know to be so true. Don’t wait for them to grow up, or for you to get older, to see that it goes by “so fast.” See that now.

Keep a lot of room in your life for your family (however that looks), because without connection and space for connection, we don’t truly feel the blessings in our life.

Keep everything sacred to you in your heart, and your life shall be a true reflection of your love.

Click to Tweet “Scoop your loved ones in to your heart every day. Leave them there for a reminder of what is important, dear, and sacred.”

With love, always, always, always. Thank you for being here,

The Key to a Meaningful Life

Josh’s arms around me. Telling me he loves me. Laughing. Dreaming dreams.

I felt an urge to share with you what my heart seems content on believing is one of the best ways to ride the ride of life, and love it. It’s something I know to be completely true for me, my family, my marriage, and my life.

These past two weeks have been a bit full for me. A bit too full of some less-than-ideal feelings. With a weighted worry of an extended family member, three kids who caught some sort of bug, a chicken who disappeared (I love my chickens like crazy), and a couple other unmentionables, I felt that heavy feeling that comes with these kind of moments in life.

But that is where the key comes in.

The key is to lean in.

To lean in to all of it. To face it. To feel it.

To lean in to your most wildly wonderful, explosive feelings of beauty, and to lean in to your darkest, deeply disturbing, worry-worty, sometimes sad feelings.

By no means were these past two weeks dark or deeply disturbing. More just uncomfortable. Disruptions in the moments of a free-flowing life.

But I wanted to share this with you because I am human, and you are human. Which means you and I both have felt the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, thus far in our life.

But one thing I know for sure is how we experience these moments means everything. It means the difference between a life of yuckiness and a life of fantasticness. (yes, I like to make up words.)

There is no difference, really, to the feelings we feel. Good and bad. They are really just different ends of the same piece of rope. They are just different expressions of our humanness.

The good ole analogy of a tree works well here. Trees face the darkest of nights, the glorious sunshine, the beauty of life and birth in the animals and fruit, the refreshing rain, the terror of storms, the frigid piles of snow. Yet, usually the roots stay strong. They stay rooted, just as we can do when we lean in and live all the seasons of our lives fully.

In all the moments of our lives, we are either opening or closing. Expanding or contracting. Feeling or suppressing.

Lean in to all the moments of your life with presence, love, and appreciation. Without the lows we can never really embrace and truly feel the highs. Take it all in and find the beauty and the realness in pain, the expansiveness in fully feeling, the openness of your greatest joy.

Some of the hardest moments of life have sincerely led to some of the deepest love I have ever felt. It’s the moments of facing our raw discomfort that helps us to fully engage and grow from those moments. To build our resilience and to strengthen our trust in life.

At my home we’ve created a bubble where we cradle feelings and let each other stay there just long enough, supporting one another through all the moments of life. Where we guide each other back to the joy, faith, and unwavering wholeness that is in all of us. Where we celebrate our joy in moments of unbelievable amounts of explosive laughter and love. Where we feel our struggles just as surely. And we bring gratitude along through it all.

It was a journey to get there and is a journey to stay there. We are human, just like you.

It’s seems nearly the purpose of life. To lean in completely. To take responsibility for the way your life looks and for the way to see the world. To understand that we all have our journeys to walk and that we must walk them fully, no matter how they look.

So, lean in. Lean in to all that it means to be a human. A woman. A mother. A wife, a partner, a lover. Lean in to those moments where you get goosebumps because life feels so good. And lean in to those moments where you’ve lost your footing a bit and the fog is waiting to be cleared.

Love, as always,

7 Things that Stand in the Way of your Joy

One of the most comforting and expansive thoughts we can have is, “I have a choice.”

I’ve noticed 7 things we seem almost wired to do, they are so common. But guess what? We aren’t naturally this way; we’ve just programmed ourselves by making the same choices over and over again.

The following seven things, in my opinion, are choices that rob us of our joy.

Joy lives inside of you. It’s about worth and choice and space to feel it.

I want all women to get comfortable looking inside themselves, where they hold the truth of all they need to know.

Open your heart here, and ask yourself as you read through these, “Is this me?”

1. We exercise and eat to look good vs. feel good. Who do you want to look good for? Yeah, maybe it’s yourself. But really we want to look good because we have an image of what “good” looks like. An image that someone else/society set for us. Get your imaginary scissors and cut it right out of your mind.

I was at a conference last October, and in one of the classes I stood in a double circle with over 40 women. We had to pass through the circle staring into each others eyes for a minute or so. Obviously looking into a “strangers” eyes was terribly awkward at first. But guess what I realized? What I saw? Every.single.woman was beautiful. I mean that with my whole heart. Looking at these women’s eyes and the markings and lines of their face revealed a bit of what was inside them and it was breathtakingly beautiful. We are all from the same source, right?

And the only thing that matters is how you feel. How you feel in your body. How you feel about yourself. Moving your body is an essential. Looking like a magazine or Instagram shot is not essential.

2. We’ve allowed our linear driven selves to drown our cyclical selves. Imagine me screaming this with a loving intensity: “Women are cyclical!” We have an inner guidance that helps us to weave in and out of moments of great productivity and refreshing rest. Practice integrating the masculine of planning and executing with the feminine flow of following our feelings.

3. We try to fit-in instead of being ourselves. How often do you make choices based on how others will perceive you, or react? Why can’t we be enough just the way we are, for who we are. It’s YOU that makes you YOU. We want to see who you really are so we can be inspired by your willingness to be you. We want to see that you are real. No more sacrificing your true self for what you think the world wants from you.

4. We stay closed-off from play. Play is a critical part of well-being and joy, I believe. But play can only find us in the moments we are open. Wide open, or at least a little cracked to let the light of playfulness in. How often do you allow silliness, spontaneity, laughter, and shitting-on-the-rigid-rules you set for yourself?

5. We absorb too much information. Blogs, twitter, Facebook, Instagram, emails, magazines, television shows, local magazines, movies, and who knows what else sucks us into this vortex of know-everything-or-else-miss-out. Ladies, let some of it go. Really, it’s okay. You can’t absorb it all. You just can’t. And quite frankly, you shouldn’t want to. When do you slow down and absorb yourself? When do you stop and hear who you are vs. what everyone else it telling you to be?

6. We keep doing something are hearts are done with. Be it a job, a relationship, a home, or really anything. We stay with it because we don’t see a way out. We allow things to drain our life force because we are scared of a whole-lotta’ things. Small steps come in here. Small steps to let the world know you are ready for something else.

7. We seek extraordinary. We are always seeking more exciting, bigger, better, further. But guess what else I believe with all my heart? The ordinary is the extraordinary. When we add up all the moments of our life; the glorious and the gloomy, the madness and the mundane, the adventurous and the habitual, it is all extraordinary. For every one of us. You may seek an extraordinary life, but when you “achieve” it you’ll likely see that you were already living one, and it was really just extra-ordinary.

What choices can you make to let in more joy? How can you allow the crack of light that lives in you to spread into a deep chasm of the deepest joy you’ve ever felt?

With a cozy hug,

Falan Storm

Making Meaning from a Feminine Heart