It's Only Money

I needed to see this this morning.

As soon as we stop valuing money so much, and stop basing our self worth and safety on how much money we have in our bank accounts ~ the grid system for money will dissolve. Money is an illusion that we created, an energy system (based on nothing) that keeps us bound, controlled and living in fear of not being able to provide for ourselves and our family.

Our distorted beliefs around money keeps us limited and unable to step into the power of our true source of manifestation and abundance which is through a direct alignment with our spiritual self. From the day we are born we are raised to be "good money makers", not powerful manifestors. Instead of doing what we love and following our souls passion, we end up spending a large portion of our lives misaligned with our true souls purpose, because we are so focused on paying our bills and having a savings account.

Because of the mass consciousness beliefs and thought forms about money, it is currently part of our program, so we are required to earn money, and because of this ~ we must also learn how to master it. Part of our mastery is not living in fear of our future due to our poverty consciousness, lack and limitations. In addition, we also need to learn to not live in complacency and indecisiveness.......which can lead us to not apply energy towards what we want and need.

As long as we stay focused on "what we want" and focus our energy in the direction of its creation ~ the universe will always support us, opening doors for us so we can attract to us what is needed for us to have a happy, abundant, joy filled life. It is our birthright after all.

I am feeling the urgency to increase my work hours to earn more money for the family, but am trying to balance that with Ryan's need for his mama (and my need to be with and enjoy my little baby). I'll definitely wait until he's at least 1, I had hoped to wait until January. It depends on how busy the husband's work is, because in the last few weeks he's worked less than part-time. I'm not wanting to increase my work hours but I am wanting a bit more financial stability and to start working our way out of debt instead of digging a deeper hole.

Here's to ABUNDANCE.

Breathe

Thinking of the turmoil in the world tonight- of riots in the UK, people frightened by falling stock markets, famine in East Africa. . . I keep inhaling the heat of rage and fear, and exhaling out cool calm.

We can do that you know- we can be little transformers. It's all energy. If we are willing to sit with our own or another's fear or anger, we can breathe it in, sit a little closer to it (I know it's counter-intuitive) and turn it around, using that powerful energy to send out what is needed, to generate deep cool calm peace within, surrounding the raging fires of fear and anger with the life-giving rain of compassion.

Of course, it's not you or me "doing" anything but making ourselves available to the Great Heart that holds us and gives us the free will choice about how we will use our own small heart to participate in the wholeness we share.

It's way of praying- and it doesn't replace praying with our actions, doing what we can, giving what we are able- but I have faith in all the different ways we can come together to co-create peace.

08Aug2011 Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

The Metal in My Head (also known as part 2 of My Deaf History)

This time I wanted to write about my cochlear implant experiences.

About 6 weeks after I turned 17, I flew down to Los Angeles with my mom to get implanted at the HEI down there. We went there because at the time very few implants had been done in Portland, and my parents wanted to go with someone who had much more experience (if it was now, I'd stay in Portland -- OHSU has an awesome implant team, and both of my husband's were done there).

After passing psychological testing and some auditory tests, we prepped for surgery the next day. I believe surgery was at about 8:30am and I woke up around 1-2pm, slept on and off, and was finally ready to go home at 6pm. (Nowadays it is even simpler -- husband was in at 10am and out by 2pm with both of his.) "Home" was my Aunt's house who lives south of L.A., and it was a nice place to be. I think I stayed 2 nights after the surgery before finally flying home. Meanwhile I had this huge bandage on one side of my head, and it was very tender, so sleeping was a bit uncomfortable for awhile.

When we got home it was Thanksgiving time and we decided to go to our Central Oregon ranch house for the holiday. I remember that we were given instructions that I could not go more than 5000 feet above sea level while I was healing, and the summit of the Santiam pass is approximately 4800, so luckily we were able to go over!

It was a month before I was able to go to my audiologist to have the cochlear implant put on for the first time. That was an exciting and strange experience. When it was first on and people began talking to me, I didn't hear it, but rather experienced sound as a "flooding" sensation, starting localized in the ear that had just been implanted, and growing until it affected my entire head, a process which took a few days. (Other people I know have described similar things, one person felt/heard it in his heart at first!) This sensation was very weird, and to say I couldn't even recognize my own name was an understatement, whereas before, with my hearing aids I would have heard and understood my name.

Over time I began to experience sound more by hearing rather than by feeling. For months I had to frequently ask people what sound I was hearing -- siren, lawn mower, dryer beeping, etc. in order to learn to match the sound with what made it. (I still do this on occasion.) There was one particular sound that I would occasionally hear, but never had the opportunity to ask someone what it was. It sounded very metallic (robotic?) to me. I had no idea what it was. One day I was in my bedroom and heard that sound again. It was spring, and my window was open. Looking out, there was a bird sitting on a wire, and I could see his beak moving in a way that matched the sound. Aha! It took a long time for the sound of birds to go from totally annoying to something that sounds good, evidence of the constant and ongoing learning that one does with a cochlear implant. And that is never more evident than when I am able to upgrade the external component of the cochlear implant, as new and better models are made, but I'll get back to that.

When I got my implant, I had 2 years of high school left, so that meant 2 more years with speech teachers before graduation. I adored the woman who was with me throughout high school, and she did a fantastic job working with me on learning to listen with the cochlear implant so that I made rapid progress both with listening and with speech (I could, for the first time in my life, hear 'sh,' 'z,' 'ch' and thus was finally able to reproduce them!) We did a wide variety of listening exercises, but the one I remember most is when she would read a children's book to me behind my back and I had to try and pick out words and get the story. These were not familiar books such as "This is the story of Snow White" but were random books. Not easy to do.

Today I still wear my cochlear implant - 18 years now! And luckily the internal component has stayed alive (the warranty expires after 1o years). Each new processor brings an improvement in hearing and new learning of sounds. So glad I got it.

Some of my deaf history, part 1

I got a wild hair and decided to type up some of my early history in dealing with my hearing loss, a nutshell of this aspect of my life.

I was born hard of hearing, but my hearing loss was not discovered until age 2. At that time I was fitted with hearing aids, one in each ear. I did pretty well and had experiences like being astonished by the sound of the vacuum cleaner and running water. I would wake up in the mornings, stand up in my crib, and when a parent walked into the room I would point to my ear -- "put my hearing aid on!" I had a stuffed bear that I loved, "Bear-bear," and my mom made hearing aids for the bear using buttons and some pipe cleaner. Really cool.

Between the ages of 4-6 I lost more of my hearing (not sure why -- genetics?) and became profoundly deaf. I then had to quickly become GOOD at lipreading. Not an easy thing to do.

I somehow made it though regular, mainstream school, from K through 10th grade with nothing more than lipreading and copying my friend's class notes on the school copier. Okay, that wasn't really all -- I also had speech teachers from the local oral deaf school/program spend at least an hour during the school day with me. We would work on speech, schoolwork if I needed help understanding concepts, and also social and relationship issues. They weren't just preparing me to speak in the real world, they were helping to prepare for living in the world. I remember most of them with great affection.

November of 11th grade year I got a cochlear implant. This was actually something my parents had encouraged me to get since I was in 7th grade, but I had had no interest in it until suddenly one day I just up and decided I was ready to get it, and completely surprised my parents. In hindsight, I think this was because I realized that I had gotten as good with my speech and listening as I was going to get with my hearing aids, and if I wanted to get even better, I would need to get a cochlear implant.

So I got one. And it was very strange in the beginning, but it did improve my listening and speech. (And the whole story about that is another blog post.)

Back to making it through school -- nothing but lipreading and notes until 10th grade, then for 11th and 12th grade my parents paid for Real Time Captioning (RTC) just for my honors English class as I would get completely lost with the constant classroom discussions. (RTC is just what a court reporter does, but it is translated into longhand onto a laptop in front of the deaf person/me in real-time.) (We tried to get the school district to pay for it. Their argument was that in order for them to pay for RTC, I would need to be taking regular English AND failing. Jerks.)

I went to college and my parents strongly advocated for the university providing RTC services for me. (I was so lucky -- they kept the background dealings from me so I could just enjoy college.) I had a Ms. Somebody for the first semester or two who did the RTC. Then the university realized how expensive that was and found someone else to do it for less money. Fine. Then I think after my sophomore year, they really realized how expensive it was overall and told my parents "the next two years we will only pay for RTC for 2 out of the 3 classes that she takes." (They were already lucky because most students took 4 full classes a term, while I only took 3, with some half-credit classes added in that didn't require RTC.) My parents response? "Of the 3 classes that she takes, gather the 3 professors together and they amongst themselves can decide which of their classes she will only understand half of." My parents won.

Need to type up another post about my cochlear implant experiences!

Heart Song Rituals

So where to begin? My wonderful husband has been struggling for a long time to figure out what it is he should be doing in life. After many false starts, I think we've finally figured out what he is supposed to be doing.

For years he has been fascinated with and educating himself about shamanism, plant spirits, and working with the energy that connects us all. In short, all that is woo-woo :).

But for me (and certainly him) it is more than woo-woo. It is real, to the extent that we've experienced it in many forms. His "education" includes reading many, many books on metaphysical subjects and 2 trips to South America to work with shamans and the plant medicine ayahausca as well as well as years of self-work.

Before I start rambling too much, what I mean to say is that he is really good at energy work, and it is evident that it is his life's passion. He has been doing this work for awhile now for individual people as well as our global community. It is time for him to expand this work to his local community.

He is available to do individual cleansings, space (home or business cleansings), blessings, and other work of similar nature. Sometimes this work can be done remotely (through astral projection), but other times it needs to be done in-person. Right now he is in the beginning stages of getting this set up, but if you are interested in having him do some energy work for you, he'd love to do it for barter or small donations. If he can get the ball rolling on this by doing this a few times, then we'll work on expanding it and making it a legitimate business. We already have a name picked out -- Heart Song Rituals. The rituals come from his heart and he does a lot of music/singing when he is doing this work.

Putting this out there now... and welcoming questions or comments.

Pumpin'

February 17, 2011: Whew, it's been so long since I've done a post here. Been so busy with life and then with work and it's so hard to find time free at the computer with both hands available. Currently baby is sleeping on my legs while I type...

On my mind... pumping and donating milk. Before R was born I knew I wanted to help out another mama. With Il Tonino, I had so much milk -- he was always drinking, spitting it out, and then drinking more. I never pumped regularly with him; the pump was such a weird thing for me. I remember the first time I tried it out I almost cried, I hated how it felt and had a mental picture of cows with those metal milking tubes on their udders. I prefer the picture of the old-fashioned farmer sitting on a wooden stool and using his hands to pump the milk out. Then I got used to it.

This time around I was excited. Then when Eats on Feets was set up on Facebook, it was perfect timing. I posted that I was willing to pump and was quickly contacted by 2 moms wanting milk. I started pumping for one who had a 3 month old adopted daughter.

The first month when baby R was 4-8 weeks old was easy. I would pump and get a lot out at one time. By the end of the month I had a big stash to give her, probably around 75-100 ounces.

Then December came, with all the holiday craziness. I found I just didn't have the time to pump, and when I found the time, I wouldn't be able to get much milk out, sometimes only 1/2 an ounce each breast. I soon figured out that If I wanted to pump, I would have to do it right after I got out of bed -- that was when I would have the most milk and could get 3-5 ounces out of each breast. However, if I missed doing that due to busyness or R needing to eat, there would be no pumped milk for that day. This continued into January. The mom kept contacting me and I felt really bad and guilty that I didn't have as much milk as I wanted to give her.

Fast forward to now -- I'm still pumping, but only when it makes sense for me.

March 31, 2011: Okay life is VERY busy with 2!

I started pumping every morning again in preparation for a conference, and was surprised how much I was able to get out. I think my supply must have increased due to Ryan growing. The last 2 weeks I've been traveling and thus have not pumped, now to get back into the habit again!

Anyway, to tie up this post, my thought that is if I had to do it all over again, I would 1) begin pumping a little sooner and 2) not contact anyone to donate until I had about 2-3 months supply in the freezer so I don't feel so much pressure to pump when I am busy. I would also keep a little supply around for me if baby R ever needed it.

Okay, time to hit 'Publish Post!'

Not Pregnant

Yesterday it dawned on me that, subconsciously, I felt like I was preparing to be pregnant again. I kept picturing a pregnancy test, that feeling when you first find out you are pregnant, the damn yucky nausea, etc. I realized that this was because this was my life for the last 2 years, at this time of the year. I got pregnant with baby S. at the beginning of February 2009 and with baby R. the beginning of January 2010.

Since realizing this, I have had to consciously re-imagine this coming winter, spring, and summer. I am picturing a winter and spring with no nausea and lots of great runs around the neighborhood. I am picturing summer in small little shorts, normal tank-tops, and none of the maternity clothes that I was ready to burn at the end of last summer. I will actually be able to tend to my garden this spring/summer, with a baby on my back, and see some results. I will be able to run around with my soon-to-be 5 year old son and wrestle with him and play ball. It will be wonderful.

Funny how this works -- expecting to be pregnant even though I have my sweet little baby with me. Perhaps part of it is because I want one more baby, but I am not sure that will happen. But it is truly a relief to tell myself that whatever happens, it will NOT happen this year. Yeah!