I Am
It’s time for a personal update that is all about Dawn the Person instead of Dawn the Mom. I’ve had an extremely powerful past few months, approaching age 40 in 2 years and really beginning to self actualize.
About twelve years ago I had a vision. In the midst of my twenties I felt like women didn’t have good relationships with each other in our culture and I wanted to create a place for them to come together, learn from each other, and support each other. Nine years ago I found myself at a retreat center in the pine woods of East Texas which is owned and maintained by an amazing woman who had founded The Fellowship of Comparative Religion, Glenda Taylor. I was enchanted with the retreat center, the woman, and the work that she has made her life. I called her a few weeks after that retreat and said, “Glenda, I’d like to apprentice with you.” When she asked what I meant by that I said that I wasn’t really sure, I just wanted to learn how to take care of a retreat center. Seemed like a good start for my vision. So I spent the next few years volunteering to cook for 2 womens retreats and 2 kids retreats each year. Being in the kitchen was an amazing way for me to absorb, learn, and grow. Then I started going out and spending time with Glenda alone. Asking her questions. It’s all a bit of a blur from there as I just kept showing up, attending retreats, asking questions, and slowly, ever so slowly, she gave me more and more responsibility. Earlier this year Glenda turned to me and said, “Dawn, you need to plan your own retreat.”
Now, Glenda’s done that a few times, told me it was time for me to do something that I had figured it would be years until I was ready for. It’s scary, but I not only have a strong belief in the tradition of apprenticeship but also an incredible trust built up from the nine years I’ve spent working with Glenda. I decided not to think too much about it and picked a date and sent out an invitation to a very large group of people who I thought might be interested in what I was going for. Since my love is comparative religious studies, I wanted to bring together a group of people interested in exploring their relationship with the Divine through the spiritual traditions from around the world.
In the past two months I’ve attended three retreats and facilitated one. I facilitated a coming of age ceremony at a retreat in October and for some reason the process for working on that ceremony and my retreat broke open an incredible new growth process for me. Who knows why or how these things happen but I suddenly find myself energized and expanding beyond who I was just a few months ago. My own personal spiritual practice has taken off in new directions with great enthusiasm.
It is now two weeks since I facilitated my retreat and one week since finishing up what I call the “fall retreat season”. I find myself physically exhausted, body aches with no other symptoms and a desire to go to bed for three days. Unfortunately that’s not an option so I’m giving myself permission to ignore housework and just focus on spending time playing with the boys. It’s a nice change for me and the boys are old enough to kind of understand that mommy isn’t well. But as my body wants to crawl into a cave, my heart and mind are burst open. It’s ironic and strange and wonderful.
My retreat went well. Even better then I had dared to expect. It put an incredible amount of trust and faith inside of me for the power of Spirit. The right people, in the right place at the right time. I created the intention, invited others to do the same, and together we joined with the Great Mystery to bring about deep, heart experiences. I have trouble explaining in words what this retreat and it’s experience mean to me. It’s so deep and so profound that I spent the two days after filled with constant love and compassion. And as I came out of that beautiful place, and back into my “norm”, a part of me is still digesting, still integrating, and still taking it all in.
I had an interesting experience with fear this fall. We danced together in a whole new way as right before both the Coming of Age ceremony in October and the retreat in November I woke those mornings to find my body responding in terror, while my mind was in peace. My stomach was nauseous, my head was hurting, my heart pounding. I was shocked to be experiencing these physical sensations because my mind was so at peace. What’s going on? As I explained to Forest and Logan, a part of my psyche was afraid and not as trusting as the other parts who had been so engaged in the process of creation for both events. It took a lot of deep breathing and internal conversation to calm things down. And I got to have a very cool conversation with the boys using words like “psyche”, “ego” and “parts of myself”. It was a shock to me to be so disassociated with that fear the way that I was, as much as feeling that way physically sucked, it was inspiring to know that all my physiological and spiritual work over the past 9 years had paid off in my ability to recognize that my whole being didn’t feel that fear, but a part of me did, and I knew how to work with that.
Earlier this year I was struck by the thought that I’m approaching age forty. When I was approaching thirty I thought I knew what that would be about. I threw myself a huge party and went out of my twenties with a huge bang. It wasn’t graceful or even safe, but it was a good way for me to seal the feelings that I was letting go of a whole lot of what had been my focus in my twenties. And that was ok. I knew that the thirties would be about being a grown up, in all senses of that phrase. But I didn’t know what “40? was about. In the past few months I’ve seen a glimpse. For me, forty is about seeing my calling move from student to action phase. I’ll always be a student, I love to learn, but there is a time and place for stepping into our personal power; of claiming our power, our connection with Spirit and publicly proclaiming our calling. Since this wasn’t a traditional four year college experience like I had in my twenties, there is no cap and gown, crossing the stage public proclamation of my new identity. But the change still happened. Back in my teen years I wondered what I would do with my life. A historian, a teacher, politics? And then I ended up in retail management, and then in Human Resources. All very important careers to share with the world. But always I felt unresolved. Until now.
I am a spiritual retreat facilitator and a ceremonial facilitator.
Happy Halloween!
Logan was a scary skeleton and Forest was a scary (but oh so cuddly) dragon. They had a wonderful time getting dressed up and making it around the street trick or treating. They were little pros at the Halloween thing!
Logan loved his makeup and costume so much he kept running to look at himself in the mirror.
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| From Halloween 2010 |
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| From Halloween 2010 |
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| From Halloween 2010 |
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| From Halloween 2010 |
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| From Halloween 2010 |
Picnics in the Park
Fall has finally found us here in Texas and it’s absolutely beautiful. At the same time, the strangest thing has happened. The boys are just a few short months away from 4 years old and they play independently with each other ALL THE TIME. It’s magical not only because I find myself with more “me” time during the day but also because it’s so much fun to listen in on their pretend play. They can turn any object into an action figure (a wooden block, a lincoln log piece, you name it) and then create the most silly and interesting worlds and situations. I actually have trouble getting them out of the house to run errands or go outside to play because they will look at me and say, “We don’t want to go to the park, we are busy playing.” They have no idea why that’s so funny to me. Luckily the weather is beautiful so we can go outside at any time of day that we want, unlike the summer time, and neither of them takes naps any longer so we don’t have much of a schedule anymore.
This lack of a schedule is extremely weird and yet also liberating to me, someone who has lived and died by her schedule her whole life. I’ve thought several times about trying to create one again but find that I’m kind of enjoying my leisurely mornings of a cup of coffee while reading after breakfast and housework.
Since the weather cooled down and the boys have taken control of the schedule, the boys and I have started having regular picnic lunches at local parks. Throw a couple of peanut butter (and jelly for Logan) sandwiches and a water bottle in a small bag and away we go. Here are some recent images that I captured to share with you. By the way… who are you? Who reads this thing anyway? If you don’t mind, I’d love to have you comment so that I have some kind of idea of who reads this blog, just for curiosity’s sake.
Forest ooohing and aaaahing over a particularly pretty tree in the Target’s parking lot of all places. Kids really do remind you to stay in the moment and see what’s around you.
Forest striking a serious Fireman pose.
But there is that smile.
Speaking of smiles, here is Logan doing the traditional kid fake smile.
And then a real one.
This grin is the one that I get to enjoy regularly creeping across Logan’s face as Forest does something cute or funny. It’s a neat experience to watch one child make the other smile.
And here is Forest and how he’s making Logan smile.
I couldn’t resist posting this cute picture that Forest took of Logan exclaiming over some ants in the tree.
And here are some beautiful fall leaves that I came across at the park. We don’t get a whole lot of color here in Texas, not comparatively anyway, so this is a real treat and one of this photo is now my computer and iPhone screen saver as a way to capture that fall beauty.
How I Spent My Weekend
We bought a home just over a year ago and are finally getting around to making it “ours”. Our first project was to paint the boys’ bedroom. Logan loves color and had very strong opinions about wanting a dark blue room, we were able to get his buy in to add some green, using their curtains as our color source. The Home Depot Behr color computer scanner nailed the colors perfectly and it looks amazing. We still need to do the trim work at a later date, but for now Brad and I are really proud of ourselves and the boys love it.
It wasn’t excessively exhausting to do a 10 x 10 room and we were able to take time away to eat sushi with a wonderful couple last night and hold another couple of good friend’s four day old baby girl. But at home this weekend I patched drywall, applied caulk, sanded, painted, and cleaned up spilled paint on carpet. Having never done any of these things before, I feel an incredible sense of accomplishment and pride.
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| From paint |
Scary first coat of the green that was more like a 1980s florescent green in the can.
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| From paint |
Second coat of the green and it’s more of a olive with a yellow hue to it.
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| From paint |
First coat of the blue.
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| From paint |
The final product. Two coats of green and two coats of blue with a white stripe for definition.
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| From paint |
With furniture back in.
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| From paint |
Ta Da!
Perfection
I packed the kids, lots of changes of clothes, a random assortment of the foods they like to eat, and drove the three of us to my friend and mentor’s home for a 24 hour visit. Mind you, this home of hers is 60+ acres of pine forest in East Texas. As Logan said, “She has a really BIG yard!”.
It doesn’t get much richer then walking through the trees, hearing the hawks cry, collecting shells from the creek, picking veggies from the garden, watching lizards and butterflies sun themselves, playing guess who made that huge hole in the path.
Self Portrait #1
One of my blog friends, Laura, is many things including but not limited to: mother of twins, runner, career woman, and photographer. She did a post today encouraging more pictures of ourselves and suggested Friday’s for these images. My fancy camera is on loan right now to a friend who is expecting a baby soon and wanted a good camera for taking photos of the delivery, so I’m going to use my iPhone.
I started off this adventure with photos of me with the boys simply because we were hanging out together when I thought about it. So yes, these are those photos you take of yourself while holding the phone out. And I loved how they turned out.
Me and both boys
Me and Forest
Me and Logan
More from Washington
All of these pictures from Washington state were taken with Brad’s iPhone so they aren’t the greatest but they sure are good for what they are!
Ice Cream!
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| From seattle 10 |
Forest
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| From seattle 10 |
Logan
Logan wanted up on this “seat” and worked really hard climbing around some much bigger boys to get to it. Once there he didn’t want to come down.
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Outside my parents house, the boys just loved the beautiful color contrasts here. The boys had lots of fun with their monkeys from the zoo.
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| From seattle 10 |
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| From seattle 10 |
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| From seattle 10 |
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| From seattle 10 |
Playing checkers with a young lady at the Fort Nisqually Living History Museum.
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| From seattle 10 |
Playing on the driftwood at the beach.
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| From seattle 10 |
Logan loved looking out across the water.
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| From seattle 10 |
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| From seattle 10 |
Evergreen State of Mind
We just returned from a six day vacation to visit my parents at their home near Tacoma, Washington. I am madly in love with the Pacific Northwest. The mountains, the trees, the ocean, it fills all of my senses with ecstatic rejoicing.
The boys had only been there once before, at four months old for my grandfather’s funeral and Brad had never spent time there. We made a point of just being outside every day, soaking in the perfect weather and the beauty of nature. I loved sharing it all with my family and how much they loved it, too.
We enjoyed the zoo, an old fur trading fort, three beaches, an incredible seafood brunch buffet, three playgrounds, Transformer movies, and lots of evergreens.
I have to say that there isn’t much in life more fun then seeing your parents be grandparents. I was just as often brought to tears of happiness seeing the boys with my parents as I was at the beauty of the place.
Here are a few images from the trip with a few more to come in a few days. I may even pull together some of the video Brad took.
Dragon
Old Navy brought us a great surprise today when we went to buy some winter clothes during their baby clothes sale. I’ve always resisted shopping for clothes out of season because it’s really hard to even think about long sleeves and long pants when it’s 90 degrees plus and 100% humidity outside. But I figure I need to learn to take advantage of back to school sales, so there I was at Old Navy. And there it was, the cuteness, a dragon costume! Forest requested it for Halloween and I couldn’t resist. Could you?
You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello
It’s been a week now since Forest said good bye to naps (Logan gave them up about 6 months ago) and I find myself with no official child free break during my day. Surprisingly, the timing seems to be very nice because the boys are so good about playing with each other that I find myself with lots of time during my days to work on house work and my projects. Just a few months earlier and it would have felt painful to my ego that struggled to find time for itself. But these days the boys imaginations run wild and my main job is to provide conflict resolution. Fights between the boys are mainly in two categories, fighting over a toy or being angry at the other for not playing the way he wanted to play.
I find myself very fulfilled lately as my personal life goals are fruitful lately. I am coordinating a ceremony for a friend expecting her baby in a month, a ceremony for a young lady who recently turned 18 and planning to facilitate my very first retreat in November. I’ve been apprenticing for the past 8 years with my amazing mentor, Glenda, who can be found at The Fellowship of Comparative Religion’s website www.towardcommonground.org. She said I am ready for my own retreat and I’ve learned that when an elder tells you you are ready, you are. It’s been so nice to be able to sit down on my laptop and start writing away with emails and ideas for these various activities and actually be able to accomplish something while the boys play away.
It’s meant so much to me to be able to accomplish something. Household chores are important and of course raising the boys is as well. The time that I spend with them reading stories or looking at pictures, answering questions or showing them new scenarios for playing is incredibly important and fulfilling. But I have been longing to accomplish goals for me, things that fulfilled me with a more immediate end in sight then 17 years from now. And here I am.
So for all the other twin parents out there, those in the pregnancy or with infants, fear not. It does get easier and easier and by 3.5 they are playing with each other so well that you might even get an entire hour to yourself!
