This time. Presence and Plans.

I do feel a bit like the liminal space continues. Like even though I’ve arrived in a sense, I have yet to arrive. I guess that won’t really happen until this very kicky baby is born and we have settled in to this new space beyond the room to room boxes and the clear sense of what was this fresh beginning.

I have been feeling sick and tired more again as of late, with sleep being the only real fix and I seem to need a lot of it. Interestingly, the best of the rest comes between the hours of 5:30 am and sometime before 9 in the morning which feels so incredibly late and ridiculously indulgent. Anyhow, taking it slow seems to be the name of the game, with a walk up the road here and the unpacking of a box there.

road walk.

Despite the fatigue, I do think that I have done a pretty good job staying active this pregnancy. I try to walk at least 2, preferably 3 miles each day. I have been practicing asana 30-45 minutes at a stretch a few times a week and making it into the hot room for some variation of the 26&2 at least once a week. As good fortune would have it, the teacher whose class I stumbled into in Montpelier shortly after arriving in Vermont happens to be 6 months pregnant with her 2nd, so to say I feel seen and supported in her care is an understatement.

I have also been really enjoying 2-3 strength and resistance based workouts a week, with a nice dose of pelvic floor practices thrown in, from the Expecting and Empowered dynamic sister duo. One of my students pointed me in their direction this spring and I have learned so much as I explore and work through their materials. It has in many ways debunked and transformed many of the ways in which I previously thought of pre and post-natal fitness. And as opposed to feeling left in the lurch when it comes to my physicality during this time, I find myself much more informed and secure in my choices. I am especially grateful that I have my hands on their postpartum guide for when it is time to begin traversing the sometimes dark and uncertain road of recovery. Interestingly enough, several months into my time with E&E I learned that one of the sisters is also my mom’s dry needler whom she has been seeing for a number of years now and who has no doubt helped her avoid knee surgery at the very least.

Lake Elmore

We head to Maine this Wednesday and I am still completely unable to wrap my head around the fact that it will take right around 6 hours to get there as opposed to 3 days. It is comparable to heading to my Aunt Nancy’s cabin in Northern Wisconsin. Unreal. We are all ready and yet not ready to go this summer. Happy to get to our island home and just rest and visit and play, but a little reluctant to leave our new mountainside home with the sweeping vistas and photo worthy nightly sunsets. I am a little nervous to leave the house with all of the unpacking that we have yet to do, knowing that I will be nudging my way closer to 36 weeks pregnant once we return and who knows where my energy will be at that point? As my midwife said last week, it will be time then to have our home visit which of course I in no way feel ready for and am in a bit of denial about.

Today I have a meeting with Constant Contact in an effort to become more organized in my work and my capacity to make sure everyone who might want to know is able to know what I am up to in my teaching and other antics. I am perhaps a couple years- or a decade- late on this, but none-the-less I am looking forward to streamlining a few things and making sure that I do not always feel as though I am speaking into a hollow abyss.

Firetower Pizza

To that end, there are just 2 more months to register for the next round of Practice, Wellness, Community at the early bird pricing. I cannot believe my good fortune in getting to spend some winter weekends in Prescott Arizona this year with my favorite co-teachers and a whole new group of earnest seekers. Plus, it should be a great adventure, all of this teaching in the next year, as I will have a baby (and a baby helper!) in tow and I will really get to practice walking the talk of all of this Life of Practice business. Let’s see how I do…. I am happy for the opportunity to live it both with support and with witnesses.

There is not much more to say at this point I suppose. Except perhaps the thing that I find myself continuously orbiting around as a mother in my family. It is not lost on me the gift of this unusual summer of becoming. This liminal space before 4 become 5 and before our new identities in community take shape here. I have all of this undivided time with my kids right now. At such unusual ages for having all of their attention. Once they are established in friends and activities it will all be different again. Or similar to how it was. And this will have been this little window of slow and concentrated time together. Time that in many ways I do not anticipate I will ever really have again with them while they are young. Never again in this way at any rate after the arrival of their brother. So I am savoring it. Even though thinking about it in the present hormonal cocktail that is my chemistry makes me cry oh so easily and oh so often. It is so sweet and special. This moment in time. And I am here for it. Present. Happy and Sad all mixed up together. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again no doubt, but time is a mother and she wants to love you and consume you all at once. And we will always loose. But perhaps I am learning that that is no true measure of all that we gain in our presence, in our loving.

Ha! Now I’m really crying. You? That’s enough for now. More soon.

Bear.

lots of lasts

It is Sunday morning. Our last at 307 N 3rd St. We pack it all up this week and head east next weekend. To say I am tired is an understatement. To say that our family is a little raw and tender is likewise an understatement. This last week alone, we navigated all sorts of lasts: my last group practice, my last privates, Eider’s last performances, his last soccer games, Maple’s last swim meet…. This morning Eider and Chris are at a lacrosse tournament for the last games with that team. All of the typical words: whirlwind, rollercoaster, barrage, all of those feel right for where we are right now.

My anxiety is up a bit as a result. I am a little wary of simply the sheer effort of getting our entire lives packed up and loaded over the next 4 days. I am acutely aware of the effort and output required for 6+ hours of teaching that I have scheduled for Friday afternoon. And, maybe above all else, I am down right nervous for the 1000+ mile drive that I need to make next Saturday and Sunday in order to arrive in time for our closing in Vermont Monday morning. The drive is not so much the thing. I do something similar at least once every summer and generally twice. The state of my 7 months pregnant body mind heart complex is the thing. I am worried for my state. It is real. I feel physically vulnerable which dovetails nicely into feeling all-the-ways vulnerable. Which I do.

I’m going to make it. And I am not without support. And I am confident it will make one heck of a story after the fact. But… still.

I think it is made more difficult by the steady low level grief I carry in my heart. As much as I am so clear that this is the absolute right move for my little clan it is still very real to be leaving behind the hard won fruits of the beautiful lives that we crafted for ourselves here. And I know that it isn’t really the end of most things, but more a shift into new chapters that draw such strong influence and identity from the ones we lived here. It helps me to think about it that way. And it helps me to take action in the direction of staying connected and engaged on a variety of levels. To the community. To my work. To my passions as they live in the work of both my family and myself.

So, I have been weaving together different strategies of a sort during this liminal phase. Looking toward ways of staying in the flow of my vision for my own path of practice as well as how to continue to support that trajectory for others. It is coming together. It is exciting for me. It buoys me during this transition. I have been plastering lots of dates up on the homepage and they are all driving my heart of inspiration. I am thrilled for all of the opportunities unfolding in front of me and am so whole heartedly eager to watch how it all comes into being. Even as I get ready for another very family focused stage of my life I am so inspired and grateful for all of the ways I can continue my work autonomous of my family, and yet, as ever, nestled deep in the center of that identity and force.

I truly do love dreaming up and then working toward ways of nurturing path of practice in myself, in my family and also in the folks who seek out that work. It feeds me. I like tending to myself and putting effort into staying fresh and dynamic with that. I like to scout out and then take action toward cultivating meaningful and growth oriented engagement for not just myself but for my kids too. Making sure that we have the soul food we need is possibly one of my most clarifying and grounding acts. And I love love love helping others get connected in any ways I can. To themselves. To their potential and purpose. To their truth. This is my purpose. And the heart of everything. It is the fuel behind my vision and effort around Life of Practice. And more recently, it is the motivation for my involvement with Beautycounter and my interest in assisting not just my family but anyone who wants to grow their confidence in making healthier choices for themselves and the planet. For me, it is all connected and I always lean in the direction of propagating connection and growth oriented decisions.

OK I’m out of time for this space this morning. Time to dive in to the lists. Thanks for reading this far. I am pretty certain that my next update will be from our new home on the mountain. And I will have lots to share in terms of what life is looking like and what comes next. Hopefully, by then I will have a newsletter that you can sign up for with some more streamlined ways of staying connected. Fingers crossed for me, yeah?

If you are so inclined, please check out our registry- I will be updating the ship address today because not another thing shall enter these doors that must be packed and moved!

And one last thing… humble brag perhaps? This morning my incredible local student body is having the first of what will be monthly group practices in Madison. Round robin leading style. Collective connection. I could not be more delighted at this development. It is the very heart of what I have wanted to build in my time here and IT. IS. HAPPENING. If you’d like to get connected to this group of dedicated yogis, let me know and I’ll send you their way.

So much love.

m

some new directions

I am so hormonal that it is difficult to distinguish what is what. My emotions are in a bit of a murky slurry as I navigate leaving a teaching gig that I have enjoyed for the last 6 and a half years as well as say goodbye to a supportive homeschool community full of deep and guiding connections, and embark on moving our growing family across the country to the side of a mountain. To say that there is a lot going on right now is a class act understatement. And yet…. And yet, I am so inspired by what is and delighted by what is to come that I am not ever clear if the tears are led by grief or simply the exhaustion of a 6.5 month pregnant, working, homeschooling, mama.

I recently took on a venture in direct sales with the skin care and cosmetic company Beautycounter. This may seem out of left field, but to me this is a natural extension and addition to the mentoring that I have been doing for years. After all, it is all sales anyway. Sales and rapport, as I continue to learn from my smarty-pants spouse every day. We are all selling something, whether we want to admit it or not, and I simply rather take a conscious and active roll in that selling.

I was introduced to Beautycounter by my former colleague from The Studio, Aja Lefebvre. Of all of the folks I have worked with in the yoga world over the years, Aja has stood out to me as someone with keen perspective, a lot of drive, and a lot of vision. She and I made a lot of cool shit happen together and when she moved on, I paid attention to where she went. However, it wasn’t until Maple began expressing interest in exploring makeup that I contacted Aja regarding Beautycounter. I knew that I really wanted to support Maple through her self discovery but I also knew that I wasn’t comfortable with her putting just anything on her skin. I have always sought out cleaner options when it comes to skin care, but some of it can be murky at best and is often very limited. We use very little as a family- and I certainly am not one for makeup more that once or twice a year. I gravitate toward oils and simple soaps, many made by my longtime friend Rachel from LuSa Organics. I also end up cutting corners when it comes to things like shampoos and conditioners and sunscreens. And at 41 years old and after 3+ years navigating fertility difficulties, I knew I needed to be watching what was going onto my skin and into my body with keener attention.

So Beautycounter caught my attention. I wrote out all of the reasons why I am into this company and why it feels right to get involved, but Maple told me that it sounded too much like an ad and she was right. So I deleted that. If you are curious you can follow the link above and read about them for yourself. Or you can ask me about it and I will be happy to chat you up. I realize that when I get into something I become a walking advertisement which can sometimes drown out the actual message, so let it suffice to say that Beautycounter is awesome and the work they are doing is making a real difference for the health of the planet.

At this point in time, we are on the edge of a real point of no return when it comes to planetary and personal health, and it is every single choice and action that makes a difference. I want to do everything that I can. It is about honesty, it is about integrity, and it is about accountability, and it is the very heart of what Life of Practice has always been about. So, as much as I love to support people in the pursuit of their asana practice, I am also passionate about educating people in the direction of their own empowered self-care and lifestyle choices. That passion is what Practice, Wellness, Community was born from. So this involvement with a business like Beautycounter is a natural extension of that same vision. I want to be a helper. I want to elevate what is good and be honest about what is not. I want to close my eyes at the end of every day knowing that I made some sort of further reaching difference, no matter how small.

So this new direction, along with getting ready for Life of Practice Mentorships, are what have a good deal of my creative attention right now. Mentorships will begin in October. They are available by application and will be on-going with a minimum 3 month commitment. The program will center around weekly asana practice with monthly refinement of goals and accountability. There will be one on one support throughout the month as well as an encouraged opportunity for postural and technical review and refinement. I am exploring an on-line coaching platform to host us, but it may just be a little more low-tech as often suits me best. TBD. Anyhow, it is not a bad idea to let me know if this is something that you may be interested in now, as space will indeed be limited.

Other than that, my last public classes are at The Studio this week. I would love to see you on your mat, but if we don’t connect, no worries, there is so much more to come…

xxx,m

not my dogma

I do best to let my intuition guide me. It is true for me as a parent and it has been true for me in home education as well. Neither were a path that I set out upon with much planning but rather were a direction that I felt myself compelled to take, guided by something other that my educated mind. Not that I didn’t then educate myself within the field to which I was led. I have. I do. More rather that my journey down the path of intuition has made clear what I have needed to learn.

This continues to hold true in our homeschool journey and certainly was alive when we first found ourselves making the choice to leave the compulsory education model. I am not the first to say that I had no idea what I was doing, and I certainly didn’t have a plan. Instead I was watching a vision of a different childhood for our children unfold inside my head and indeed inside my heart. One of more freedom, less restraint, of long stretches of time spent out of doors and learning led by desire rather than demand. I saw us surrounded by other earnest learners who were more interested in exploring the world and who they are within it than they were with the status quo and cultural norms. 

In the fall of our first season at home, we found ourselves living in a small town in the Upper Midwest with wonderful access to a sort of pristine rural authenticity as well as a relatively progressive and engaging small city. We also found ourselves living 2 doors down from a large Catholic family that also homeschooled. It was with some mix of hopefulness and reservation that I approached our contact with them. After all, we were all home for much of the day, especially in those early days when the kids were smaller. Having access to potential friends, right on your street, is one of the absolute joys of small town living. And a potentially, very real, downside.

The religious and spiritual background of my childhood was primarily nil. My dad was raised Catholic, sort of, and my mom had here and there attended the Church of Christ as a girl.  In an effort to connect with community she had taken us there for a short time after having lived abroad for many years. But in never really stuck for any of us and after another move, she never sought out a church community again. We were each baptized per some sort of automatic pilot that my parents were on, but without ever any context. We did not talk about spirit or grace, but rather I think my parents had what I can only think of now as an assumed Christianity, superimposed on them by the culture and with no real thought or engagement.

I was free then, as a teen and a young adult, to explore with vigor my own truths and ways of knowing and while I never connected to the concept of Athiesm, I was also a bit skeptical of the term Agnostic. I didn’t want to say that I didn’t know. That never felt right. Or true. Because I did know. I knew that there was a force, an energy in the Universe, far greater than I that held us each together and infused our lives with meaning and with purpose and with beauty and with grace. It is that knowing that led me first to outdoor education and environmental studies, and then later and much more deeply to the lifelong exploration of yoga and a more eastern spiritual influence. I came to think of myself as a spiritualist. I still do. And I have space in my heart and mind for all teachings that ring true, whether they come from Christ or the Buddha or the Sanskrit scholar or my cousin or my neighbor or my kid. I connect most deeply to a vision of inclusivity and wonder and it guides me on the path of living, teaching, parenting, and loving.

So, it was with an open, yet not naive, mind and some trepidation that I approached our relationship with our neighbors. As is often the case in a small town, there are generally more religious homeschoolers than secular ones and I was mindful of this in our daily interactions. Kids care very little for any of this, which is wonderful, especially when they have access to playmates that are not just their siblings. And with a house full of children who were mostly always at home, there were friends for both of my kids to play with most days.

It was mostly fine. It was immediately apparent that our kids had far fewer rules and a much larger range than theirs, which was to be expected I suppose. My kids would wander freely into their yard and across the street to the park whereas the neighbor kids were much more tentative. I had no qualms or objection to the signs and symbols of their faith as it surrounded them. Maple and Eider have been exposed to spiritual statuary and devotional practices their entire lives, as their contact to my yogic life has always been complete and seamless. So, when the neighbors would have their periodic seasons of prayer it was always easy and natural to my kids. For Eider, who has always been attracted to meditation and mantra, it was easy to say yes to an invitation to pray and say the rosary with his friends and their mother. It was mostly ok with me too. Mostly. Save one striking difference.

Maple has always lived half in and half out of fairy land. In many ways she is a Waldorf girl through and through. Her exposure to their approach toward early childhood education made a lasting and meaningful impression on her. She has always moved seamlessly between the magical and the mundane, weaving stories and crafting wonder as she goes. She used to have this book of fairies, artfully done, portraying a mix of mischief and mayhem and fun that appeals to kids. One of the neighbor girls that she was close to was particularly drawn to the book and Maple was happy to share it with her. So she took it home to borrow, but not before removing the jacket cover. I thought that was odd, but no sooner did she have the book home than she had to march back down the hill to return it as well as deliver the news that they were not to play with my kids for a spell. Not surprising to me, shocking to Maple.

And there is the difference. So began my kids’ education in the contrast between our worldview and that of Christian culture. That contrast to me was glaring. Why was it ok for them to invite my son to pray to a God that he has no claim to and yet not ok for their girl to look at mystical artwork from a tradition outside her own? It is confusing to me and I am the adult. 

It is either assumed that we live within a complete absence of spirit or that any spirit we do lay claim to is false, without merit, evil.  In the west, and in the US in particular, the predominately Christian culture demands that we conform to that worldview, whether or not it is our own. Our respect for others beliefs and our silence regarding our own is generally taken as consent and the price becomes our sense of self, our connection to our own truth and the validity of our convictions. This feels a lot like persecution to me and quite frankly, that is not the world in which I want to be raising another generation.

As they have gotten older, the kids have not maintained their relationships to our Catholic neighbors. In part because they moved away and in part because they just couldn’t continue to find common ground as they each became more and more aware of their own beliefs. Today, my son’s closest friendship is with a boy who I think thinks of himself as a secular Jew and my daughter with a Christian girl whose family is passionate about the Gospel of Inclusivity. They are all finding their own way in this new world. Carving out a relationship to spirit that feels right and true to them. Honoring themselves. Respecting each other. And I’m continuing to respect the process. Follow my intuition. I’m trying not to negate my own knowing by adhering so strongly to social norms and etiquette.

Because here is something else that I know to be true: when we have been able to put the specificity of our language aside and not get bogged down in whether the words for our experience are the “right” words or not, the deep connection to grace that I have shared in relationship with my religious friends is profound. Full of awe, mystery, and peace. Our words may not be the same and in fact might even clash, but the magnitude of heart and wonder is the same. My faith in something bigger, in a Universal consciousness, is expansive enough to make room for more ways of knowing, for limitless belief. What I feel negates no one else of their feelings. Nor should it. And I want the opposite to hold true. I want to make footpaths across this gap of faith in which I am not always conceding to organized religion but rather where we meet each other in the middle and hold space and honor and respect for one another right there. In the middle. There is plenty of open space.

conditions shift

Over the course of the last month or so I have been making it back to the hot room about twice week and practicing a hilariously modified pre-natal version of the 26&2. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, or better yet studying yoga with me for a stretch, then you know well enough how much I love this particular practice. I love love love how the beginning practice is accessible to really most folks and I also love how the practice develops past the beginning series with such a powerful emphasis on spine strength, mobility, and overall health. It just really works for me. I also really enjoy most of the teachers that I have met that share that practice. They are authentic and honest and by the grace of some sophisticated paradox are able to separate the man from the method- even though I will support anyone that advocates for a complete system overhaul and re-naming in which we no longer use the name of a sex offender to communicate said method…. but I digress.

Anyhow, it’s hot in that room and I am a big fan of less is more in terms of apparel for that particular practice so you will generally find me in some iteration of a sports bra and short shorts, essentially as free of garments as possible. This has been interesting with a physique that is ballooning on the front side and pretty much yields a locker room environment in which the only topic of conversation is my pregnancy. It’s fine. Really. I can handle it and I am polite. But really, wth with pregnant ladies bodies being fair game and open to conversation? In general I take the stance that we never comment on someone’s body. Even if we think those comments are well meaning or “positive” because we simply have no way of knowing what is happening inside the person and more often than not what is happening with the body is not an accurate reflection of what is happening with the mind or the emotions of any individual. It is simply not a fair gauge.

But all bets are off with a pregnant bodied person. And I get it. We want to connect, to relate, to support. And often I will lead a little just to break the tension of the potential awkwardness of the moment, because a naked pregnant body can be intense and I generally like to cultivate ease in my surroundings. So there is that. But I do think we need to check our behaviors, especially as women, in the ways in which we treat a pregnant person as though their body is public domain and I think that the way we talk is a very basic way to become conscious of that. We have to fight for agency over these bodies at every turn and our reproductive autonomy is on the line in far reaching and dangerous ways. This is my 5th pregnancy. This will be my 3rd child. There was one I lost and one I chose not to have and the truth of every last bit of this is my right because this is my body and it is me that governs it. And generally, I do not want to talk about any of this in the locker room with my clothes off and my big belly and swollen breasts on the loose.

Ok, ok, ok. So serious. And here is my own hypocrisy… I actually love it more when my sister or my close gals pals will say something along the lines of: “Sweet jesus Meg, your boobs are freakin’ enormous.” In that simple statement of fact, I feel seen in my humanity and in the temporal and the very conditional nature of this human skin suit. I saw my bestie Sam 3 or 4 times over the course of this winter, each time a little further along, and each time she saw me she did just that. I felt seen and known and it was intimate. BUT SHE IS ONE OF MY CLOSEST PEOPLE. There is a difference. I could feel her loving me. Same as when my sister says anything, or my kids, or my husband.

Anyhoo… my two sense. For what it’s worth. Or not.

I will be back in this space soon with some updates on future programming. I am so excited as to how things are taking shape. More soon.

xxx

leaning into the flow... gratitude practice in action.

At the end of last month, as we were getting ready to teach the final weekend of the pilot round of the PWC, in typical Meg pack-it-in-tack-it-on fashion we simultaneously listed and sold our home in Mount Horeb. It was a whirlwind of 6 full price offers in under 24 hours, one of which we accepted 48 hours after listing. It was nuts. And amazing. And inspiring. And such an affirming sign from the Universe that we are indeed on the right path.

Of course, all of this came to pass while wrapping up a collaborative teaching program that was made from the stuff of dreams. Practice, Wellness, Community was a long-time vision of offering an in-depth study opportunity for earnest students that are not necessarily on the teacher training track. It became more than I could have ever hoped for and such a source of inspiration and growth-oriented collective affirmation that Rachel and Sam and I have scheduled dates to offer another 3 part intensive in Prescott Arizona this next winter. Can. Not. Wait. The page on this site is updated with those details now and we will have some promo materials going live in the next couple of weeks. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it countless times again, but holding space and teaching with and learning from my long-time sisters on the path is one of the most fulfilling and rewarding things I have ever done. Truly, this experience is not to be missed. The growth we each experienced and in-turn witnessed in all of the participants was at once humbling and profound. The relationships forged and developed will far outlast the span of our collective time together. So good. So important.

I think I could go on and on, but there is more to say in other regards…

I have been dragging my feet at announcing the next bit, and then reluctantly sharing it with folks here and there. It has been a long time coming and yet at the same time always felt so far off that it has been hard to make it real in the here and now. I have been private about it. And perhaps a bit superstitious as well. This June our family is relocating to the mountains of North Central Vermont. Chris and I have found the little spot that we have been dreaming of since the very beginning, and though so many things are about to change for our little family, many things will go on as they have. I will continue to homeschool Eider while Maple takes the year to explore 8th grade in the local school. The kids will both continue to engage in their respective athletic and artistic endeavors. We will spend more time exploring trails in the surrounding mountains as well as romping about in the local lakes and rivers.

I will continue to teach. Probably not public classes so much, that remains to be seen. I am certainly going to wait until after the babe arrives before I think about making any kind of move in that direction. I will continue to mentor and teach to folks one on one. This fall I will launch one-on-one remote mentoring for both the people that have been working with me in this capacity here as well as new folks who are interested in taking their relationship with practice to the next level. I love this work in ways that I could have never anticipated and I am looking forward to refining my offering in this domain. Obviously, it will look different than one on one with students in my home, but it will keep that depth of intimacy through a slew of touchstones including regular live video check-ins, on-going goal and accountability refinement, and additional customized support.

I plan on returning to the land of milk and honey a few times a year to visit family and friends as well as continue to help Alex in his teacher training programs at The Studio. Kathleen has generously offered to support me in building out my programing during these visits so that I may connect and share with the larger student body- for which I am so grateful. Sometimes I am so slow to see it, but the support I have received from Kathleen and Cass and so many other folks at The Studio these last six years has been everything. They have trusted me, believed in me, and given me the creative freedom to really explore who I am as a teacher in ways that I could never have imagined all those years ago. It makes me so happy knowing that I get to continue to visit and explore these relationships even through the passage of time and the shifting of space. I will also make sure to have a number of in-person privates available to folks during these visits- and hopefully some group practice opportunities as well!

As a final little carrot to put out- if you are so inclined- Sam Rice and I are scheming to run a 200hr teacher training in Vermont beginning in the second half of 2020. For ease of travel and life logistics, we are thinking that 3 intense 7-day weeks over the course of six or so months will make the most sense. Those of you that have been wondering about whether or not I was ever going to run a tt, well, looks like the time has come much to my own dismay and thrill. I will get some information out about that just as soon as we have some firm dates, soon I think!

Phew, this is a lot to download. So much apparently, that my computer has been crashing all morning in my attempt to get all of this information out into the ethers.

But before I give it up for now, I’ll leave you with two little solicitous food for thought items:

1. Wisconsin winters are long. Vermont winters are LONG. And mud season is real. I want to begin making a habit of some serious beach time in march or april and lead or co-lead practice intensive retreats. This is totally uncharted territory for me so I will take all of the suggestions and guidance I can get. I envision a re-union of long-time practice pals as well as the meeting of new friends. Someplace warm, beautiful, and lush, where our cold winter bodies can unfurl into ease and freedom and our minds can realign with clarity of purpose. Sound good? I think so!

2. I am having a baby! Ha! Surprise! And it has been a long long time since I traveled this path and as you might imagine we have very little for a new person. Other than a few hand-me-down hand knits (ok, we have a lot of those…) we have very little. So I did something that I have never done before and made a registry. Seriously. Not with Maple and not with Eider. I didn’t even make one when we got married- I think Chris did? Anyhow, baby stuff is cute, and probably important, so if you feel at all called to check it out, it is at myregistry.com under Meg and Chris Newlin.

Now, that really is it. For now. So much love y’all.

age gap

When we started to think earnestly about having another kid, Eider was 5 and Maple was 8 and I was nervous about the big spread in ages. Flash forward 5 years to when this 3rd seems to finally be on the way and I couldn’t be more optimistic about this big spread. And who knows how it will really be when it leaves the realm of fantasy and the 4 of us suddenly have a baby in our arms, but it does seem pretty sweet right now and I feel more than a little lucky that our kids are eager about the arrival of their new little person.

Perhaps it has a lot to do with how much I am really into the 3 and under crowd and that has rubbed off on them, or maybe I really did just get lucky. Maple has had her red cross babysitting certificate since the fall she was 11 and has been the neighborhood sitter ever since. She is constantly showing me things she thinks we should have for our babe and has even informed me that she would very much like to have her own baby carrier.

Maple and the sled tow she made for the kids at Eider’s birthday last month.

But it goes beyond that. She is bearing witness to something that a lot of kids her age don’t experience. And actually, I hadn’t really even considered it until she called my attention to it. I was in the bathroom the other evening oiling up my growing belly- side note: with my friend Rachels’s Belly Balm that I used when I was expecting Eider as well, the shit is that good- when Moo wandered in to chat with me, which she often does. We are an open door family and the late evening is such a soft time to connect with my growing teen.

At first it was just chatter, something along the lines of how her body is really a mix of her dad’d body and mine. She kinda pointed to my fleshy side and was like: see? I don’t have that… I reminded her that I don’t usually have that either but that I am building up fat for my future milk supply. At which point she changed gears completely and said: It is so amazing that I get to see my mom go through something so vulnerable. Not many kids my age get to see their mom like this and it feels so special to me…

And well, maybe it’s just the hormones but I am tearing up just writing it down now. Her insight and attention just keeps on blowing me away. I love that she is aware of the ways I am exposed with her. Tender, raw and, yes, vulnerable. It feels in a way like a bit of a pay off. All of the years that Chris and I have tried to be open and revealed with our kids while at the same time still shielding them where appropriate. She sees me. And sure, not always. She is still occasionally a belligerent teen. But she is often present for me in ways that I could have never anticipated and as we make this big journey together as a family, I could not be more grateful for her.

That’s all. I just wanted to share what I am seeing right now. It looks so good from here.

yoga, pregnancy, right now.

I have been chewing on a few things the last couple of weeks or so, as I sit with and observe my shifting form, my variable energy, my morphing identity. I am feeling so different in my body this pregnancy than I did when I carried Maple and Eider. Which makes sense. That was a long ass time ago. And I don’t feel bad. I feel strong and connected and good. Just so different.

I practiced throughout both of those pregnancies. Straight through. I took out the obvious things like twists or anything else that compressed the abdomen but I think I kept doing backbends until sometime during the third trimester. And the main reason that I think that I did, was probably simply because I could. I still had the range so why not? And while I suffered a small separation of my abdominal wall, it was pretty slight and my recovery both times was steady and I would say now, smooth and relatively easy. I was 28 and 31!!!

I feel different now. While I still feel capable of most of the usual stuff, strength and mobility wise, so much of it simply doesn’t feel right, and that has translated in my body mind as doesn’t feel good. It makes sense that it’s different now. I’m different now. Over the last decade so much has changed, and on a really basic level, one thing that has changed a lot is my body composition. With age and the natural shift in my hormones I have left the juiciness and fluidity of my 20’s and early 30’s and become leaner and stronger and much more integrated. I have moved with increasing depth into a relationship with my core that my younger self never thought possible. My mind is likewise different. It is much more integrated and refined. The parts of my mind that could once push or force my way through adversity and difficulty now pauses to watch, to listen, to observe. I think I have become more honest in my body-mind as a result. It feels good to be taking note of this now.

So where does this land me right now? Doing a lot less in terms of asana that is for sure. Keeping it real simple and not bringing much stretch to what feels like a much stronger midsection than the one I asked to grow and stretch a decade ago. And having turned a lot of my attention in the direction of longevity over the last few years, I am keeping my eyes turned in that direction. Beyond what I am capable of in this moment, I want to stay connected to and rooted in an awareness of the life of my practice beyond this childbearing year.

But this is all me. It’s personal and intimate and feels like the result of a couple decades worth of mostly consistent self-reflection. And yet, right now I find this private truth affecting how I teach publicly and causing me to reevaluate some of my methodology in my classes. That is really what I am here to talk about in this moment.

Several years ago, I made the conscious choice to move away from the use of student demos in class. They seemed like they were becoming more about the student and less about the posture or drill and that felt divisive at worst, murky at best. Even when they are coming from a sincere place, student demos can be complicated and it is of course impossible to know how they are landing for everyone else in the class. Not to mention, the person doing the demo potentially feeling completely singled out and on the spot. I chose instead to do all of my own demos, as needed for the most part. I feel that I do a good job focusing the energy and attention on the pose itself and not making it about me. It’s imperfect, naturally, but I think it had worked OK. Having grown up in a method that used endless student demos I am perhaps more sensitive to this than I need to be, but I have watched demos land poorly in myself and in others. Instead of being something that elevates and connects they become something that fuels competition and comparisons. I think that it is difficult for someone before they are really established in practice to get the full benefit out of watching peers or folks with more experience or expertise in a particular area. It can feel threatening. And yet, it can also be immensely inspiring. I love watching people practice. I learn a shit ton from watching people do things that I haven’t yet found or refined in my own body. But I didn’t always feel this way and that is what I am sensitive to.

However…. I can’t do all the demos right now. Not even many of them. Especially if I want to keep my classes moving in the directions they are headed and not stall them out while they wait for the depth in my practice to return. So right now, I am choosing, again with eyes wide open, to use student demos in public classes. And I’m going to bring them in for the sake of the group. I want them to be rooted in the collective desire to grow and learn together. I want them to be in service of and elevate the whole. And I really want us to all be on the same page with this. So I’m going to talk about it a lot. Because it is complicated. It is nuanced. As are each of us. We are sometimes many people in a big space and that can be a lot of moving parts. But at the heart of all of the work that we have been doing together for the last several years is the creation of a community of practice. When someone who has more experience than you or has practiced and refined something that you have not yet and demonstrates that in front of the group, I want you to feel as though they are holding out their hand to you as though to say: I journeyed here from a beginning point too. I came here with the support of my community and my mentors and my own burning desire and earnest effort. And I am holding space for you to make this journey too.

And if you ever want to talk about any of this, I am here for that too.

some specifics.

In general, I do really put effort toward not mincing words, not telling only part truths, and not painting a more lovely picture than the one I am honestly living. I believe whole heartedly that honesty is our number one commodity, followed only shortly by trust. So, as of late, I have chosen to stay a bit concealed by virtue of absence rather than weave a not entirely true narrative. But, one cannot hide forever, nor would I really want to, so I am efforting toward a bit of rally and showing up as is, as imperfect, incomplete and unresolved as that may be.

I have been feeling mostly like dirt. The all consuming, debilitating variety of nausea and fatigue that generally dominates my airwaves has been more or less consistent and it has only been in the last week or so that I have started to perceive even the smallest glimmer of the inspiration of ideas that I have come to rely on as a foundational component of my identity. Nothing is more depressing to me than living life devoid of inspiration. And, in general, I find the diversity of muse available to me in my day to day, exceptional. To not be perceiving that is heartache.

I am still waiting for a blood work result. Which is perhaps taboo to even bring up, but again, discretion and silence, not my jam. And as much as I am trying to stay somewhat unattached until we have the results, who the hell am I kidding? I am attached. I both loathe and empathize with the part of myself that is holding space for disappointment and pain, and I am constantly aware that there is no limit to the shit-sandwiches any one person can be served up in a lifetime. And as much as I want to believe that we each deserve so much more than the pain, inequity, and injustice that life is full of, I am not naive enough to believe that just because we deserve a break that the break will ever actually arrive. Sorry to be such a downer. But I guess it is comforting to me to remember that I deserve no more ease in life than anyone else and that the only way to ever get there from here is through the inner work that frankly must be done as we traverse a world in which we each are wise to expect the unexpected. At least to a degree.

Also, I only have 1 pair of pants that fit. And they are not my best pair. I am in complete and utter denial that I should have to acquire different clothing to accommodate my growing midsection. And yet, I most likely had better take action soon. Ugh.

I have been practicing regularly. Not for long stretches of time, but 30-60 minutes generally. For the most part, it has not felt very good. I have felt short of breath, and awkward in my body. Disjointed, disembodied, or simply just sick. It was so long ago in my life of practice that I was pregnant, and everything about my body is so different. My practice has grown so much in the last decade especially and I am seeing the effects of that now, and in a different light, as parts begin to dissolve into this new temporary form. I pulled out Geeta Iyengar’s prenatal sequence this week. A bit earlier than I thought I might. I used it when both Maple and Eider were in my belly and it continues to work for me now it seems. It is peaceful. Powerful yet sattvic. I have used it in the past with pre-natal students and I think that it is so nice for the experienced practitioner. Who, as I have said before and most likely not for the last time, is more often than not, entirely underserved by pre-natal yoga as it is frequently served up and left almost entirely on their own to navigate their practice and their changing body unguided and unsupported. It is my belief, that this particular treatment of pregnant yogis goes a long way to reinforce the notion that there is no place, or at least a very small place in the world of intermediate or advanced asana for childbearing people, and by association for children or for parenting. I have been thinking about this so much as of late.

Anyhow, here is the practice that I have been enjoying. From Yoga: A Gem for Women by Geeta Iyengar.

Trikonasana, Parsvakonasana, Virabhadrasana 1, Ardha Chandrasana, Parsvottanasana: Intermediate stage, Parsvottanasana: Final Stage, Prasarita Padottanasana: Intermediate stage

Janu Sirsasana: Intermediate Stage, Baddha Konasana, Uppavista Konasana, Virasana, Supta Virasana, Parvatasana

Sirsasana, Parsva Sirsasana, Parvrttaikapada Sirsasana, Sarvangasana, Halasana: easy stage, Eka Pada Sarvangasana: easy stage, Urdhva Padmasana in Sarvangasana

Bharadvajasana: easy stage, Savasana

like it is.

Ok. My writing for anyone other than myself hiatus may be over. Good grief that went on much longer than planned. Actually, it wasn’t planned at all. It was more of a falling. I lost traction on my life and slipped off into tunnel vision, moment to moment survival, a hollow, desolate, uninspired terrain. I think maybe my life started laughing at me for thinking I knew anything at all and decided to serve up some big lessons regarding best laid plans and sense of self.

I have spent the last month and a half looking at my life from a distance. Trying to get a new perspective on the big picture even while I have mostly been trying to make it through one nauseating moment to the next. I have been in process with myself. Which isn’t unusual it’s just that I generally am a very out loud processor and am shit at keeping that to myself and well I just haven’t been quite ready to share the ins and the outs just yet. The caveat of course is that I generally transform through revelation and if I am holding all my cards close to my chest there is not much revelation to be had. Just a lot of digesting. But I am a truth teller and the act of wallowing in the mire of secrets is at best somewhat destructive for me.

So here it is, I suppose. Or the beginning at least. Incomplete. Imperfect.

I think, for the most part, I have always known that I have 3 kids. Maybe that’s weird, but it is simply just how it has always felt to me. I love Maple and Eider with my whole heart and while we are absolutely complete, there has always been another one nudging in from the periphery. Just about 5 years ago, Chris and I became pregnant by chance. At the worst possible time in our marriage to welcome in a 3rd. So we made the decision not to continue with the pregnancy for the sake of our relationship and healing and wholeness. Even in its rightness, I bear the pain of that choice always. The following year, we conceived again, but it was complicated and unclear in its own way and I wound up miscarrying at the end of the first trimester. This piece expresses some of that.

Running along side of this all is an on-going interest that I have long had in local foster-care and adoption. As well as my keen dislike of actually being pregnant. As well as the fact that I am not a spring chicken anymore. But instead of making any definitive decisions, we shelved it for a year. Mostly because Chris was really content with 2 and I was tired. I worked on moving on. I focused on all that I have and on making our lives as full and vibrant as possible. But the pervasive sense of this 3rd person just never quit. So in June of 2016 we began trying in earnest. Much to Chris’ chagrin and in many ways, my dismay.

And, well, we did that for a long time. I went to acupuncture regularly to support my fertility. I sought out unending counsel and support. I tracked everything. I spent months taking ovulation prediction tests and never once got a positive one. I pretty much started to believe that I was closed for business and that the only way that our kid was coming was not going to be by biological means. And I was fine with that. Chris was a little reluctant to take definitive action in a different direction- I think perhaps he was hoping we could just stay forever in that space of non-action and no results. But I think together we were letting go and loosening a bit around how we thought things would unfold.

Around the same time as we were beginning to lean into this letting go, we lost our friend, one of Chris’ closest guys for his entire adulthood, his primary inspiration in fatherhood and parenting. I processed that a ton this fall in this space. At any rate, it caused a shift in Chris, and he became much more clear on the expanding nature of a parents love. We moved into a new space of really being on the same page in ways that we hadn’t on this particular topic in years.

But I was all dried up! And pregnancy is a miserable slog for me! So we began to craft in earnest a plan for opening our home to a child who maybe needed us and whom we most certainly needed. And in the momentum of this, I began to do all sorts of things that I hadn’t done in years because I had been hoping to conceive. I certainly stopped charting my cycle. Thank god. I made not one but two long range tattoo appointments. I finally posted a piece that I had been sitting on for years thinking I’d post it when I conceived. Ha! I let go. I let go. And I moved on. I did exactly what people had been telling me to do for years but what I learned on the way is that letting go feels a lot like becoming something else and getting over some of the parts that were inherent in what you were before. It is a changing. At a deep and fundamental level.

So, what happened instead is I turned 41, I missed my period- which I had no idea of until my adolescent daughter who I am all synced up with told me I had- and I peed on a stick thinking “what are the fucking odds now???”

After some initial reeling, I’ve been re-grouping. Despite being just under 12 weeks and not in the clear as of yet- or, um, ever?- I’m sharing what’s up here so that I can hopefully free something up inside of myself that has been feeling stuck and disconnected. I guess it is a gesture of reclaiming authenticity in my new skin that I wasn’t planning on ever wearing again. It is so much more complicated than I anticipated. And I am not just referring to the ins and outs of being of “advanced maternal age”, even though that comes with a lot more complexity than being pregnant at 27 or 30 to be sure! I am like a human pin cushion, poked, prodded, constantly tested in search of something wrong. (Something must be wrong, right?!?) No. Complicated on a soul level. I am re-routing inside myself. Changing shape in my physical to be sure, but even more so within my inner landscape. And like I said way back when at the beginning of this post- thanks for sticking with me if you have!- I have been looking at my whole life from more of a distance. Tracking myself through time and space and making sense of old thoughts and impressions and the ways that they’ve evolved over time within me. Changing me so slowly over such a long stretch of time that I am somehow new inside myself. The same and yet wholly different.

OK. Thanks for making it through. I still have some hurdles to jump through before I can be certain of this baby, but I feel pretty certain…. if not a bit tentative still. Soon. Soon. But it feels better to let myself be seen instead of bidding my time. My path has always called me back to telling the whole truth and this is no exception I suppose. In the meantime, I do feel glimmers of my creative life taking root again inside of me and I hope to share more of that here soon. Life as ever is moving and expanding and there is so very much to take note of.

winter cold.

I went to bed last night with hunch that Maple had perhaps shared her cold with me, and after a sore-throated, runny-nosed, restless night….. it turns out that yes indeed she has. I am un-thrilled. Mostly, because I made her swim on Saturday with this thick-headed nastiness but also because I am hopping on some planes tomorrow. Flying with a head cold is an absolute delight. Am I right?

I am headed to the Old Pueblo for the week to connect with some of my tribe. Mamas and Sisters that I have walked through some fire with at various times through the last decade or so. Friends who have held my hand in my hours of darkness and whom I strive to do the same for, no matter the weather. Some days I am better at this than others.

One of us is crossing the 40 threshold and contacted us all a few months back to see if we could all make it to Tucson for her day. I have learned 2 big truths this year that I am trying to live by and they both presented in this instance. When there is a chance to be with your people, you take it. You show up. There are a million reasons to not, to wait, to put it off, to make another excuse. But with each year, month, week, day I think that we are all learning that this may be our last chance, our final moment to hold space with the people we love, and the price of putting it off may be bigger that we ever want to pay.

Or not. Maybe you will have more chances. But I don’t know that, do you?

The other thing I'm learning is that it is time to stop hemorrhaging cash. We are in our 40s for hell’s sake. Time for less debt and more savings. I am a slow learner but I am determined to figure this shit out and not always be in a panic about dollars.

So, what to do? It ain’t cheap flying across the country right during a major holiday. Contradictory intentions it would appear. But my hubs continues to be number one and as the date has approached and my initial decision to stay home was sitting heavier and heavier in my heart- he offered me both frequent flyer miles and himself as solo parent for a stretch of days. So we booked it and I’m headed to AZ tomorrow morning. I continue to win everyday with him.

And so, hopefully I am re-affirming both intentions. I refuse to let meaningful time with my people be overlooked. I want to give you a hug right now while we are both graced by these strong and able and breathing bodies. (okay, I promise to not breathe on you and yes I am washing my hands on repeat) I also commit to financial responsibility. I am keeping my eyes well open to what comes in and what goes out and making plans like we will live forever. Even while striving to love like it’s only today.

OK. Stay well. Love your people. Your presence is always going to win over another gift given, so breathe easy and stay awhile. xxx,m

the collective

Somewhere toward the end of our first weekend teaching the Practice, Wellness, Community program together, it occurred to me that Rachel and I have an almost identical teaching origin story. We were both taking classes regularly with Christina at Prescott Yoga- late 90’s, early 00’s- and I suppose it made perfect sense to Christina for us to cover her classes for her when she went away. So she headed south to Tucson for 10 days with JF and split her classes up among Rachel and I. We had no experience. We were teaching the people that we usually took classes alongside. And as far as I know, neither of us had any vision around ever teaching. So amazing the evolution of things. 20 years later and we have built so much of our lives around not just the yoga, but the teaching of the yoga as well.

I don’t think I can really do justice in words to how good it feels to be collaborating with 2 of my most longtime sisters on the path. It blow my mind how right it has felt thus far in terms of shared space as well as so seamlessly and gracefully sharing the seat of the teacher. Chris, who was our amazing behind the scenes support (and chef!) told me several times that he was really witnessing this beautiful fluid rapport between the 3 of us. Full of positive regard, mutual respect, admiration and love. With every day that passes between weekend 1 and weekend 2, I am becoming more and more clear that we designed this program not just because we saw the need for these teachings to come alive for this student group, but because we need them as well.

I have been teetering right on the edge in my home life. Overwhelmed, under-inspired, at an almost loss with my almost teen. Like there is not enough of me to go around and what there is is just about an unseen afterthought. I have been struggling. And the cold and the dark of course doesn’t help much. But I keep thinking about how Sam shared in our first closing circle that she is not just excited for how much the students are going to get out of our time and work together, but that she really feels something transforming in her as well. Taking root. Rising up. This project is for us as much as it is for the rest of the cohort. I was chatting with her on my birthday last week and I keep smiling when I think about the way her voice shifted and opened up into this bright tone I haven’t often heard when she relayed a moment of “bragging” about the program to a few friends in Tucson last week. Y’all! Sam never brags and certainly never with such bright light joy in her voice. Something is happening. And it is thrilling and right and just might be a lifeline.

Speaking of Bragging- we have been attempting to have a brag circle around our table from time to time. So challenging, and goofy, and yet another way in which everything that Rachel continues to offer in her teaching is jaw-drop profound and clear and relevant and approachable. She is helping me take ideas that have been alive in me for a long time regarding ownership and growth oriented group work and helping me bring them in to the light in ways that feel honest and natural and potent. Her work is accessible, and relevant, and as far as I can tell, not just timely for me.

Last night I taught the Monday night class at the studio downtown- which is often one of my most favorite teaching moments of the week. In big part because so many of the folks that study with me privately make it to that class. Generally they are a smattering throughout the classroom, but as this program finds its wings they have been magnetizing together into a powerful and cohesive collective energy. Their focus and their emerging connection and regard lifts me. They set a tone for the larger group that simultaneously prioritizes earnest attention, lightness of heart, and a sense of humor. It is everything to me in terms of a group energy that feels inclusive and supportive and authentic. It is beginning to feel like the living proof in the world of the very real connection that I have relied on over the years with my yoga family. The deep and abiding relationship of people like Sam and Rachel that been there for me in some small as well as some major ways for over half of my life. I want that for the people who study with me as well. I want them to have a community of support in which they are seen, accepted, encouraged and held.

So, here is the sequence from last night’c class. It isn’t particularly special other than that it felt good to be together and make shapes. Another Monday night of stepping into practice. Of stepping into the collective energy and trying to set the bullshit aside for a bit.

Here you go. Big hugs.

eka pada pavanmuhktasana, eka pada ananda balasana, succirandrasana, SPG 1,3, half lotus prep, setubandha

Virabhadrasana 2- parsvakonasana/ reverse warrior, trikonasana, parsva utthitta hasta padangustasana, ardha chandrasana

Standing half lotus, ardha baddha padmottanasana, eka pada bakasana prep

Gomukasana, eka pada virasana, Dolphin, Dwi Pada Viparitta Dandasana prep

Bharadvajasana 2, ardha baddha padma paschimottanasana, paschimottanasana

Savasana

giving, receiving

I am not a big gift giver. And as such it generally makes me uncomfortable to receive. I am only recently fessing up about this, but with more attention paid to a person’s particular love language I guess I am beginning to see my place in it all. I will occasionally make something for someone, but only when compelled, and generally only when I think they may have regard for wool and color and handwork in general. Chris says that I do a good job giving him gifts, but I think my 3 are the exception as I am close in enough to see the holes that can be filled, or where a potential need might be and I am not just arbitrarily bringing more unnecessary and unneeded things into their space.

I come from a family of gift givers. My daughter is one as well. They love showering the people they love with something thoughtful. It is sincere and genuine and I just do not fit that mold. Sometimes it can be wonderful- generally when the thing is a combination of necessary and functional- but most often it is uncomfortable and leaves me feeling more guilt than gratitude. And that is not to say that I do not make an effort, or do not show up with as much grace as I can around the whole exchange- because it is certainly an exchange- I just really wish that we could skip it.

I think that my love language is most likely time. That feels like the biggest commodity and a genuine marker of care. I want to spend time with the folks that are dear to me, even if it is not as frequent as we would both like it to be I at least aim to show up with my attention open to our time together to the best of my ability.

So, as I and most likely most of you scramble around to make sure everyone is checked off of your list, let’s take a moment right now to cut ourselves and everyone else some slack. In as many places as we can might we opt for holding hands and sharing some heart felt words. Or maybe we can make some cookies together or share a warm meal. And when we get a little more snow you can come over and sled at the park and laugh so hard we howl.

for my pregnant yogis...

I have been sitting on this post for awhile. Like years really. I wrote this other piece a long time ago, back when my kids were small, addressing the importance of practicing at home with small children. There was more to say, but I was in the fullness of life as it was then, and well, I just kept sitting on this other post, thinking that I’d get pregnant again and have the opportunity to unroll what I had to say with some fancy photos and maybe even some sweet video content. But alas, none of that has come to pass. And while another child is most likely very much on the horizon for us, another pregnancy is probably not going to happen.

So, with the advent of many new pregnancies in my yoga sphere, the time for me to sit on my thoughts here has come and gone. And I very much have something to say on the topic. (Big surprise). I would love to offer whatever support I can to the longtime yogis who are choosing the path of parenthood and wondering how to stay alive in their practice while concurrently preparing to birth a new iteration of themselves. I have found pre-natal yoga as it is presented to pregnant folks to be feeble and incomplete when applied to any person who has an established seat in asana practice. I think it is best suited for those new to yoga who are looking to bring breath and gentle movement and connection into their lives now that they are expecting. It leaves the longtime practitioner unsatisfied and quite frankly, underserved.

Before I travel any further in this direction please remember that everything expressed here is my opinion. My understanding as it is right here right now. Utterly imperfect and individual. But also based on experience and exposure as well as conversations with and observations of fellow yogis. Having walked the path of pregnancy and childbirth and early childhood twice and yet so long ago, I am certain that my recollections, impressions and opinions have shifted over time and I am also aware that while becoming older is often in sync with becoming wiser I have no doubt that the same journey made by me in current time would most likely be laced with much more worry and concern and even perhaps an “educated fear”. Or perhaps more accurately a cultured fear as I indeed believe that we teach pregnant women to fear and doubt their bodies at every turn of their pregnancy. To question and second guess everything. To discredit their own innate knowing.

The caveat of course is that seasoned yogis rely on their practice for far more than the easing of tense muscles. Most have come to count on the mental clarity and emotional re-centering provided by the graceful alchemy of breath, effort and stillness. Our practice grants us access to ourselves, so that we may embody the truth of who we are as we are and not further dissociate from our own humanity. It is reorientation, renewal, restoration, reclamation. It is often, the way in which we ease ourselves through our days and show up for our lives as they are.

And yet, while I am absolutely an advocate of maintaining a practice throughout pregnancy, I do not suggest that maintaining a particularly strong practice is advisable. Again, all of this is unique to each individual and there is a vast sea of possibility that exists along a spectrum between what is gentle, pre-natal yoga, and what is a strong practice. You have to use your own lens to discern that. My mid-range practice is someone’s strong as well as someone else’s easy. But if we are training self-observation and listening, practice as something that comes from an authentic connection inside, versus something that is super-imposed from the outside in, then we are looking for that sweet spot already.

Because here is something else I know based on my own experience as well as observations I have made during other yogis journeys through pregnancy and childbirth: Strong yogis often have long and difficult labors. My labor with Maple was 42 hours start to finish and with Eider was 28 hours. I am also positive that had I not been laboring and then delivering at home that I would have had a c-section most likely both times. And I am not here to comment one way or another on childbirth, I think ALL ways that we birth is perfect, worthy and whole, complete and power filled. I’m just saying that my labor was crazy long and challenging. In part because I believe that the strength and tone of my pelvic floor made the decent of a fetal head down into the birth canal slow and difficult. I also think because I was well trained in withstanding discomfort through the steady use of my breath, I was able to disperse the tension of labor pain that should rather be gathering and building in order to deliver. I remember after the birth of one of my closest yoga buddies first child, we commiserated over the phone regarding the length and difficulty of her delivery- she indeed did need to deliver by cesarean- that the best exercise for pregnant folks might be simply lots and lots of walking paired with a solid pranayama practice. And while I never like the idea of giving up my asana practice, I still believe that we may have been on to something.

Wow. Congrats if you’re still with me. I do actually have some definitive thoughts on practice throughout pregnancy. My number one resource, which is the very same now as it was way back when I was first pregnant, is Yoga: A Gem for Women by Geeta Iyengar. This is a great practice tool for women of all ages and stages but is absolutely at the top of the stack when it comes to practice through pregnancy. It is detailed and specific throughout every stage and into postpartum. What I love so much about Iyengar yoga and it holds in pre-natal as well, is that they somehow manage to find a really effective union of conservative and intense. Plus, this manual is geared toward someone who has been practicing regularly over a long period of time who is simply moving through one of life’s stages in the form of childbearing. I still use it with all of my students and especially my pregnant ones. In the few years between Maple’s and Eider’s births, I began studying with a senior Iyengar teacher in Lacrosse named Chris Saudek. I was with her just about once a week for around 5 years. During that time, she took Geeta’s book and compiled and edited the pregnancy section into its own manual, Yoga During Pregnancy: A Guide for Iyengar Students and Teachers. I cannot find it anywhere online but I imagine that you could contact The Yoga Place directly if you wanted to get your hands on a copy. It is well worth the effort.

In addition to Iyengar Yoga, I believe that the method formerly known as Bikram, aka Hot Yoga, aka the 26&2, also has a pregnancy specific sequence with the regular and established practitioner in mind. While I wasn’t doing this particular practice when I was pregnant with the kids, if I were to become pregnant again, I would absolutely explore those variations as well.

I think that we are seeing more and more people who practice continuing to explore their practice through pregnancy and normalizing the strength and power inherent in child bearing. However, I think as with all things, we need to be discerning in how we let this affect our impressions of ourselves and our own stories around worth and lack. As I said earlier, I tend toward the more cautious and conservative end of the spectrum, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean easy, it also doesn’t mean that I think you should just listen to your body and let it tell you what to do. In fact, I think that there are a number of things that feel great to the body during pregnancy that may cause irreparable damage to our structure. For example, I think that after the second trimester, big backbends should not be practiced anymore as they put too much of a strain on the abdominal muscles. I think that any compression of the abdomen should be avoided. I think that extra pelvic floor exercises are unnecessary for yogis. This is a short list of most likely a much longer one but hopefully you get the idea. There is no definitive way, no black and white guidebook or answers and yet… I truly believe that regular practice is most often available to us if we so choose.

I listened to an interview this summer of a hot yogi who has practiced through 3 pregnancies. She has an incredibly strong and aspirational practice that she has cultivated over many years. What she shared about practicing through pregnancy really moved me and has stayed with me. She said that there will be parts of our practice that we have to let go of as we navigate pregnancy. They will come back but maintaining them over the gestational course is going to be counter-indicated and selfish. It is a time to practice both taking care of ourselves and our baby and just like parenting there will be times when one supersedes the other. I love considering this. Because so much of the practice is founded on the tenants of selfless service, and yet in the west in particular the practice has strong elements of being an entirely selfish exploration. I think that both are relevant of course. And another opportunity for us to cultivate discernment. To really be waking up to our choices and what the path of right action may or may not be.

It’s a journey. These are just some of my thoughts. Imperfect. Not even fully formed. But hopefully of some service to you.

new conversations

Yesterday morning I read a lovely post by my longtime friend about the real story of Thanksgiving versus the myth we were fed as kids and the truth of the stolen ground we stand on. It was a poignant post and at the heart of it was something that I have been sitting with for awhile, reflecting on often in this space and trying to make sense of in my own small sphere. We find ourselves, as a culture, in an unmapped geography of difficult conversations. Everywhere we turn, the old, out-dated scripts no longer serve us and are being tossed aside. We are waking up to the disfunction embedded in the lies that we grew up on and instead of carrying them forward into the next era many of us are attempting to loosen the grip tightened by generations of retelling of the same false truths. But there is no map here. Just this wasteland of past failures and a big longing to get it right.

I mean, I think I really grew up within a “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” lineage. Didn’t you? And while yes, it sucks to be an ass and I really do try not to be a callous jerk, sometimes the line between that and passing on the deceit and the denial is incredibly blurry. I want to be liked. I want to be good. I want to get it right. And, well, it seems that the time for that- if I have any hopes at all in participating in the movement toward a world with any integrity, any equity-has passed.

I am practicing at home. With my people. The difficult conversations over here seem almost endless these days as we navigate death, mental illness, implicit biases, regret. And as much as I am conditioned to smooth things over, to lighten the load that my kids and myself have to to bear, I am trying so hard to not travel that well worn path. Harder still is allowing these messy conversations to span out from my nuclear family into my social circles and teaching communities. I do, after all, have a desire to be liked, to be accepted, have the approval of the folks in my life. And I am scared of fucking up so bad that I loose that approval and there-in my space in the social landscape. But silence is no longer an option and is often construed as consent, which in and of itself is a whole can of worms.

I recently received a text from my longtime yoga teacher and friend in which she said: “It’s a dark time. I also think it will get worse for awhile…as a country. Inner life is more important than ever for survival. Literally.” I have been chewing on this a lot as I consider who I am in all of this and how best to show up in this new world. Where we have no maps and history only shows us what didn’t work. I do know that when I stay close to my heart and the truth that lives there, I have more faith in my capacity to show up and forge ahead. When I stay grounded in myself I remember that I can stand tall even in my short-comings and my shame. In my fear. After all, I am just another white woman waking up to my own complicity. And yet I think that there is a path forward for us. But it is not without more than a few casualties in the form of our pride, our antiquated myths, and our attachment to the status quo. But we’ve got this. We can do it. We just to have to be willing to keep on getting it wrong so that we may, sooner than later, begin to get it right.

Self! Care!

Sometimes I think that I confuse feeling soft with feeling sad. It is a dark and heavy season in the Upper Midwest full of so much dull inertia. Which doesn’t match up to the practical demand of this time of the year at all. Between teaching at home, teaching yoga, various activities and events, we are quite scheduled without much down time. And because I really do love it all, what I let go of is what is truly just for me alone. I’ve given up my time by redirecting it toward other explorations and obligations, forgetting as I go my obligation to myself. And it really isn’t all sad and bad- I have a curious mind. I’ve drawn in more things that stimulate that curiosity, more reading and writing projects, and there has been a lot of recent travel. I’ve slipped away from myself somehow, from my own sense of settled inside. Things are throwing me off, and I’m stumbling a bit in my effort to maintain presence in my responses.

Chris and I returned from a long weekend away last Monday, and while we had a truly lovely time with each other- away, alone, together, for the first time in several years, re-entry was such a bear that it almost negated the time away. We knew going into it that it wasn’t a great time to be away. We had both been gone quite a bit recently and with the upset and grief processing in our family we knew that it might be more difficult than is typical. And it was. My mother was with our kids while we were away and let us know that Eider was crying most every time that he had a moment alone. We face-timed with them both every day we were away, sometimes more than once. And on the first full day home again, I think Eider was a little lost to discover that while our return brought relief, it didn’t do much for the sadness living in him and that upset him even more. Maple, who had been really pushing her feelings down in our absence, to be a comfort to her brother, was finally able to allow herself to unravel. She will be 13 in January, and while I imagine some of her behaviors are becoming more refined as she approaches teen-hood, she still has the same strategies that she always has. When she needs closeness she pushes and jabs and repels.

It is almost like I am living in some shadow dream of my own unworthiness and there is no recourse, I simply have to sit there and take it. Wait for the tirade of insults and weaponized words to pass over (and often through) me. She knows me and she knows my soft places. My fears and my sadnesses. My regrets and my shame. And when she is pissed or upset or scared or hurting in any way, she takes her knowing of me, our shared intimacy, and drags it out into the open to claw it into pieces, rip it to shreds, poke painful holes into it, while holding my face up close to it- peeling my eyelids back to make sure I do not miss a moment of her exploits.

I can generally weather this ok. I am usually quiet and patient waiting for it to pass. It is the most difficult thing that I ever have to do. Especially, because I am pretty sure that underneath the insults she just really wants closeness. A hug. But let me just say that it is almost impossible to open your self and hug the person who has just experimented on your body and your mind to see how much words really do hurt. Sometimes I snap. Yell at her, try to be punitive in some way… take away her phone. She usually just laughs at me when I try. It’s hard to write this down and perhaps it’s hard to imagine how a mother could let her daughter run rough shot over her like this, but, well, parenting is hard. People are complicated. There is no map for any of this shit.

There are highs and lows for all of this. The best gauge I have is my ability to check in with my breath, continue to feel my body, and allow myself to recover with relative quickness once the storm has passed. However, there were recently two instances of these big episodes that left me undone. Stuck in fight or flight with the cortisol pumping through my bloodstream in a way that left me feeling sick and hopeless. With a thought in my mind that I haven’t had in years. One that I ignored in the past, tried to push down into the cave of my unconscious where it only festered and bloomed into a roiling dark shadow that threatened to capsize my entire life. You should know what my thought was. Because it seems simple and common and natural at times. Of course. But I am here to say that this thought is a warning. A message from inside that things are not well and that action is required. Soon. Now.

The thought I have that scares me more than anything else is: I do not want to be this child’s mother any longer.

For me this is a signal. A message from the shadowland. And this time, instead of pushing it away, I grabbed hold and followed it down into the narrow canyons of my self to see if there was another way. Because what this thought really means is that I am overwhelmed. That I need some help. Some support. That now is the time for me to begin vetting a new therapist and get myself back in the chair. Because I need help and support to raise these people up. Parenting them is not synonymous with sacrificing me. That is not the price.

And while I look, I can do a few other things to help myself. Clean up my diet. Watch my consumption of the things that inflame and trigger. Do my me things. But remember to not always be doing. Rest my curious mind and spend more time simply breathing. Being. I’ve got this. And you do too. Life is about forgetting what we need. And then remembering. And then forgetting. And remembering. On repeat. We relearn our lessons as we go. No shame in that. Realistic expectations.

the thinning veil

The leaves are really coming down now. Each wave of rain, each gust of wind, more leaves like tree shadows skirt the ground. It is so beautiful and temporary. Poetic and melancholy. Once it dries a bit my neighbors will fire up their blowers, one or 2 more times yet this season, and then all of the color will have left, sucked up and out of the year. Then we will really be in our downward, darkward march. Northern Winter. I love it and I also dread it. It is so deep, so endless, and until we get big snow, so immensely dark. We all must self-generate our light. Which is one thing to say and another thing entirely to do. It is not a concept here, it is an imperative. Build the light inside, or slip away.

I really do love it. Every year at this time, at Halloween, at Samhain, I feel the thinning of the veil between worlds, the seemingly real and the hidden, like a thinning of my skin, a tenderizing of my soul. And I get so ready, so eager, for casting off all of my color, my bright summer persona, and just embarking on the real with myself. With my people. With you.

Every morning Eider crawls into bed with me and with a mix of excitement and desperation, asks me when it will snow??? He has always done this. Maple too. Once the leaves begin to change and fall it is a daily and almost urgent ask. Winter calling to them. The cold. The play. The deep expansive quiet. Breath melting snow. Their affection for the season has transformed my heart in relationship to winter. Where for many years there was dread, now sits a soft and eager invitation. A sweet readiness. A hello. I hope it is always like this, my heart lit up by the magic of winter that my kids planted there.

Chris has been away all week, 2 moderate trips consolidated into one longer one, the result of having flown unexpectedly out to Maine the week before. It is not unusual for me to be on my own for long stretches with the kids and the house and the animals and the home schooling and the teaching… it is part of our design. The kids and I are quite good at it, falling into our own rhythm and flow. I enjoy it and yet it is also hugely exhausting for me as I attempt to do it all, inevitably shaving things down at the end of the week. And while my kids are both used to it and do well without their papa for a spell, it is always more difficult for Eider who depends on Chris in a way unique to their relationship and so distinct from me. It was especially challenging this week as Eider is in the middle of processing really big feelings in the wake of our friend’s passing.

Intuitively, I know to keep Eider more busy in general. He needs a tighter schedule than Moo. His idle time can unfurl often into the overly somber and melancholy, and now is no time for extra of either. He loves the things that he is involved in. They are well rooted in the fabric of his life. A beautiful mixture of sport and music, wild play and thoughtful skill. And this week, I was so glad to watch the ways in which those activities and their resulting relationships support him as he processes grief and looks with new light at his own moods and feelings, seeing them both with a bit more weight- more at stake in each.

This showed up for him in everything this week. In soccer as he had to navigate back from a fierce temper, apologize, own his emotions, and move on without shame. In fiddle as he acknowledged the sublime joy of playing with a group of people and how that high is long lasting and delicious in ways that a video game seldom is. And in his Wild Harvest group on Friday, when he let it all out with his mentor and a friend. Made bare the story of what happened and his pain and sadness and despair at the permanency of that choice. I’ve spoken about that before in this space, the gift of mentorship in my kids lives, in my own, and it was never more clear than it was this week. He revealed his heart and was held there, and seen. Acknowledged in a way that is so different than simply trying to make it better and alleviate the discomfort of big feelings.

Wild Harvest Nature Connection

I am so lucky for this support in our lives. But make no mistake, it didn’t just happen. I sought it out, we sought it out. We have chosen to fill our lives with more engagement that keeps us up close to the real and are wary of too many of the trappings of the sleeping world. It is hard to be alive, and we each need all of the help that we can get. Not the help that steers us away, but the help that keeps us close to the truth in our hearts. The tenderness there. The vulnerability. The deep capacity to endure.

my sweaty lacrosse player

I am also beyond lucky to have a spouse that makes himself available no matter how far away he is, to gently walk his kids back into heart and into breath and into grace and into love. And that bears mentioning. When something is right, when something is good, when something works: say it. Take note. Pay attention to that as best you can so that you may build up deep reserves of connection to what is sweet in your life. Because many times, that is what it takes to carry you through the darkness and into the Light.

what to say

Every year in fall it always feels like it is happening too fast. The leaves change and the light shifts and the temperatures drop and my transition from outside to in feels anything but soft and gradual. Everything is hurrying up in order to slow down and it is not exactly gentle. In fact, I think the word that I would pick, right here, right now, is harsh. This year in particular as we hurry to get it all buttoned up for the winter everything seems to be falling apart. Our water heater went. The furnace is about to pop. My perspective and clarity have taken a nose dive.

A little less than 2 weeks ago we lost a friend- family by love and marriage- who I think it never occurred to us that we could loose. A pillar. A steady. An emblem of a place and time. For Chris, he was his first and most real muse for what he wanted to live into as papa. Patient. Attentive. Kind. Fun. Funny. Engaged. Earnest. The winter that Chris spent living with him was what solidified his desire for his own family, in many ways it was what launched him toward me and the lives that we have built together.

But now his loss and the particulars of his death are launching us into conversations that no parent ever wants to have with their kids, especially not so close to home. And yet. These are the conversations we are having. And I do not just mean my little family, even though that is certainly real for us. I think that more than ever we are being asked to talk about hard things, things we rather avoid, things that will never go away no matter how hard we long to look in another direction. And I get it. I really do. I have spent much of my life in the Midwest where we all learn from a very young age that it is our job to keep others comfortable, avoid conflict and ignore the elephant in the room at all costs. Status quo. This probably has a lot to do with my square peg round hole complex. Consciously, I have always pushed back against this, I think Chris has too, and certainly we have been raising kids who are a lot more comfortable talking about a wide variety of things that I never could have as a child. But mental health and suicide are not light fare. Nor should they ever be. Ever.

I have no idea what to say. I am feeling my way through the dark. Working as best I can off of instinct, suggestion, and whatever research I can manage. But when you talk to a kid about hard things, when you talk to a child who is grieving and you are grieving too, you have to meet them with your heart forward. You have to look them in the eyes and hold their pain and resist the urge to lighten it up or lift their burden. Grief is a roller coaster. It is non-linear with no real end. And suicide grief is a ride on a whole other level. Fast and furious and super fucking sneaky and insidious. Plus, kids, like adults, are unique and themselves and as such there is no map for how they will process anything.

Maple is my deep empathy child. So she goes right into the pain of her cousins and their mom and feels their loss instead of her own. She is gentle and generous and so magnificent. And then she’ll sit down with me to work on some math and rips me a new asshole that she can populate with cutting insults and abuses. Her process is at once soft and violent, and she aims to hurt- but it is also somewhat straight forward and understandable, and while painful to navigate, it is not impossible.

Eider on the other hand is an existential child. He has always been concerned about death and the end of consciousness and “the void”. As much as we have endeavored to introduce him to world views that support peace and connection, that doesn’t prevent him from experiencing the profound hopelessness that it sometimes is to be alive. So, knowing this, I waited to talk to him about the particulars about what happened until Chris and I returned from out east. I thought for a moment before I left that I could avoid those details all together, but then my mom relayed to me that he would cry over dinner, put himself to bed early and then not get up til late in the morning. When I first got home, he was an uncomfortable combination of clingy and provocative. So, I picked him up from fiddle and while we waited in the car for Maple to finish swim team practice, he crawled into the front seat and we sat facing each other so that we could talk about what happened. He sobbed. And howled. Let his head fall all the way back and his mouth drop open so that the deep wail from all the way in the belly of his soul could tear it’s way up and out.

We talked about what it is to feel sad and still have a spark of happiness in your center. We talked about how sometimes even that spark can go away too and that that is ok, but that we need to ask for help when it does. Even though the asking might sometimes feel impossible, we have to do it anyway. We talked about medication and that because something bad happened in relation to a medication doesn’t mean that all of those types of medications (anti-anxieties, anti-depressants) are bad and in fact they can really help a lot of people and that he doesn’t need to worry about our friends and family that take something. We talked about how it is hard to understand things that are not straight forward and that have so many potential outcomes and that it really sucks that this had the outcome that it had. It is sad that our friend is gone. It will never not be sad.

I have no idea what I am doing. But if I am learning anything about being alive right now it is that I cannot wait until I have it figured out before I act because that is never going to happen. I have to do it anyway, even though it is imperfect and even though I am probably going to make a mess of it more than a few times. Just because we don’t know how to have a conversation doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have it. Blinding flash, right? Just try. Open your heart and make the effort. Your vulnerability is the seat of your courage. Fuck it up. Stick your foot in your mouth. And then try again. Amend yourself. I am talking to me here because I am in it and I am you and we each need to stop allowing our fear to ever stop us from showing up for each others suffering. In the words of the iconic Mark Hunter: TALK HARD.

gather

No sooner did we arrive home from Scotland than everything feels like it is falling apart. What started as a little traveling head cold sunk it’s claws in to becoming a full blown chest infection. And of course, we arrive home with lots to catch up on. We are busy reminding ourselves that we are homeschoolers and this ramp up coincides right with the big seasonal ramp up of yoga workshops and events… it is suddenly cold fall and yoga season in Wisconsin. I have various deadlines scattered around my calendar, much of them self imposed writing ones, and so of course I have found 10 other things to help me procrastinate until the add ons feel like imperatives too. It’s busy. Which is tiresome to even say, but not bad. Not bad. It is life. Even coming home to my kids loosing their health care coverage this week, not bad. Life. Complicated, sure. Requiring my immediate attention, absolutely. And all within the reasonable scope of adulthood.

But then on Wednesday we found out that we had unexpectedly and tragically lost a dear friend. One of Chris’ closest. And all of the other shit feel just like that, other shit. We are sad and confused and reeling inside the matrix of sudden loss. We are holding space for each other and our kids as they navigate the first really real death in their lives. We are gathering ourselves up to travel out east tomorrow to hold space for family and friends and let our love be bright inside the space of our grief. I think that I have much more to say about this, but it needs time and it needs tenderness, and it needs for me to spend more time with my people and time within the consideration and conversation of mental illness. We are each of us so fragile. And the expectation that we can ever use our mind to heal our mind seems unrealistic and somewhat absurd to me at best.

So this weekend, once I was done with my teaching commitments, I cancelled my only private and allowed all of the wheels to fall off of my functionality. I skipped the medicine making collective meet-up in favor of staying in bed and the tub and back in the bed again. I knit a bit. I read. I held my people. We went on a walk in the rain in the woods, all 4 of us and the dogs, and did our best to let it all go and just be. Just breathe. Get muddy. Laugh a little.

And now it’s Monday and here we go. I wanted to drop in here just briefly in the spirit of keeping it real. And this is most likely my only open window of the week. I wanted to say that I am looking forward to teaching Monday night yoga in the big room downtown and bearing witness as people come together with themselves and with one another and breath and movement like a prayer. It is healing for me. To gather up my pieces, hold them all with love, and begin again. Then, I’ll be gone for much of the week with Chris but back for the weekend. Group practice is this Saturday and I am really looking forward to sharing space with folks then. Right now that feels like what is important, as much as I need time alone, I also know the power of community to lift us up, hold us well, and love us deep. Soon.

don't wait

Sometimes I joke with Chris that he is living my best life. He works long hours from home and often will spend a stretch of days barely leaving the house. A bit of a shut in. Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? I LOVE to be home. I love practicing at home, I love that I can often teach at home, I love having my kids home. I love it. When the kids were small and we lived on a chunk of land with lots of animals and a jumbo garden I too spent stretches of days never going anywhere. We are in a different era now, of course, with friends, and sports, and music, and activities, and many more teaching commitments on my end. But there continues to be a part of me that is always wishing to get back to that slower, home centered, time.

It’s never just one way though because the other big truth is that I am restless. I love to move. I need to move. Move my body, move my location, move my mind, move my perspective. And one of the major reasons that Chris and I chose home education in the beginning was not just so that we could maximize our time together as a family and at home, but also so that we could get out into the world together and do more, see more, explore the world together. As two people who never really liked school (ahem, at all ever), we wanted to make a big effort at giving our kids more of the childhoods that we wished we could have had. That is a bit of what we all do as parents, right? And obviously, I’m not saying here that we want to mold them into minis of ourselves and superimpose our interests on to them, but rather that we wanted to create a life with connection and freedom at the core with space to explore who they are and who they dream to be.

Eider sized.

Plus, we wanted to travel. Chris and I are compatible in loads of ways and one huge one is that we are excellent travel companions. So, it makes sense that we wanted to get up and out into the world with the kids right from the beginning. I wanted them to have fluency in travel. Ease. That meant going places regularly. We flew loads until Eider was 2 and suddenly we were looking at 4 airfares. And then since that we have made an effort for airline travel once a year to keep them comfortable and flexible with it and have also taken long road trips several times a year besides. Now we have kids that are pretty proficient when it comes to hitting the road (or sky). BUT THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT IT IS ALL SMOOTH SAILING! Of course they bicker and pout and raise a holy fury from one of us or the other from time to time or even with a regularity, but this is not a post about that so much. However, you must know that it happens and we are trying to let it help us all understand that travel is often uncomfortable and that is part of the point.

Mostly, what travel and holiday have looked like for us is getting somewhere and then hunkering down for a week or so. Place based. Colorado, Tucson, Sanibel, Islesford, the UP… We get there and we hunker down and do our thing. Other than an epic 3 week road trip I took with the kids and Almanzo when they were 9 and 6 (and 1) where we vagabonded around the Southwest- I am pretty sure there is a post somewhere in the archives of this blog from that adventure.

Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness

On the road to Glencoe

But now they are equipped. They are capable. They are ready and willing and excited for bigger adventure farther afield. So Maple’s trip to the England with my mom and then Eider and my trip to Scotland to meet them, couldn’t have been more appropriately timed. It was the perfect introduction to travel abroad for both of them and with a just so itinerary that kept them both engaged and curious and enthusiastic. I have been longing for these trips for so long. I think that I didn’t even know how much I was hungry for them. As someone who spent a good chunk of her childhood living abroad, it has always been at the forefront of my mind that our kids should have a global awareness as much as possible. I just always wanted them to know, that our way is not the only way and that we are each a product of our culture no matter how much awareness we have around that…

(And a quick pause here, because I am about to really advocate for big travel as a family and I am well aware that I am privileged beyond reason to have access to the means and the support to make this kind of travel happen. But there are other ways to support a global awareness for our kids. One way is as easy as visiting your public library and picking a country to study. There are brilliant podcasts and documentaries out there to support us. My kids learned the most about the castles that we saw on our trip before we even left by scouring the Netflix documentary series of Great Britain’s castles. Also, eating a wide variety of culturally and regionally specific foods, whether out or made at home, is a great way to introduce cultures to your kids. And this is all just the tip of the iceberg. It starts at home. It really does.)

Leault Working Sheepdogs

… It feels like time now. I’m scheming and saving for the next adventure. Because suddenly, overnight almost, our kids are ready. They want to visit museums and talk about art. They want to wander the streets of a foreign city and converse about history. They want to try new things. They are ready to experience the ways in which things are both different and connect over what’s the same. They are ready. I am ready. And if I have learned anything as a parent at all, it is that time is short. We don’t get a lot of time with these kids. And often, they are ready for the next phase of things before the adults even realize that we have arrived at them so if we wait we really might miss it. Familiarize them now. I always am so thankful that I continued to do my thing and pursue my interests regardless of my kids age. Sometimes with more ease and expanse of time but never as something separate from them. Let them know what you love! Let them experience your world, whatever that looks like. Orient them around your joy so they know to prioritize their own.

And, now, let me know all of the places that are so great to travel as a family! What was amazing? What was unexpected? Where did you journey to with your kids that really made your hearts sing? I want it all! Because as much as I strive to be a home bound shut-in in my day-to-day, I want to see the world too. With my kids hands in my hands whenever possible.