My husband George often consults my intuition from the seemingly insignificant to the potentially important. Before I left for the day, he announced that he was expecting deliveries from 9am to 5pm that he might have to sign for but he wanted to take a shower. I replied, "I think the delivery will arrive at 11:40am. Plan your shower around that."
At 11:41am George phoned my mobile and simply said, "You're amazing. The package just arrived." I said, well, it's not me, it's just my intuitive awareness and I could've been wrong. Maybe I'm just lucky." Then I smiled to myself thinking, "Some women impress their partners with food. I impress mine with psychic prowess."
I received the call while I was with my toddler on her weekly play date at the mall. I was standing with my mini mom's group in Target as we were saying our good-byes. Kimi was very pregnant with baby number two. I blurted out, "I think this boy is going to born on Thanksgiving." She looked at me a bit askance saying, "I'm not due until December 6 and I haven't even dropped yet." That voice inside of me was still strong and I stuck to my prediction for the birth of her second child despite that her belly hadn't dropped yet and her due date wasn't for a few more weeks.
I left my gal pals and as my daughter and I were exiting the mall, we passed the escalators and something inside of me said, "Turn around, now." Just as I did I saw a boy, maybe five years of age, sitting on his feet while going down the escalator. I noticed that his shoe lace was untied and dancing with the grips of the escalator teeth.
My daughter was secure in her stroller, thank God, because I didn't even think about her safety in leaving her and rushing to the child who appeared to be in danger. I ran to him and was able to grab him as the escalator began to eat his shoe. I pulled him up with such ferocious velocity his foot came right out of his shoe. He was gripping me tightly with a mixture of fear and gratitude.
Suddenly, his mother appeared from the second floor screaming for her child. All she saw was another woman, one she didn't know, who was grabbing her son. Security arrived and shut down the escalator. I tried to yell up to the woman to explain what had happened but she didn't speak English. The boy hugged me and then ran toward his mother. I looked over to check on my daughter and she was safe.
There were two men at the end of the escalator giving chair massages who just sat and watched. It amazed me that they didn't come to help. In giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they just didn't realize what was going on.
Later that evening while taking my nightly walk on the beach, I once again heard a voice say, "Turn around, now!" When I did, I noticed a small fire on the beach blowing in the direction of the waterfront homes. I live south east of the recent Montecito fires and north west of the recent Northridge fires and the smoke and fear those fires incited was still pulsating inside of me.
I ran toward it to survey if it was just a bonfire or the act of an arsonist. It was an intentional fire going strong that someone had left. Surrounding it were environmentally protected dry patches of brush. Each slight gust of wind was picking up sparks from the flames and carrying them into the brush. I felt a sense of panic and immediacy to put this fire out.
I ran to the nearest house on the beach with its lights on, no one answered the door. I ran to the next and saw a couple making dinner trough their large oceanic view of glass. I'm an asthmatic who does not a run but I had never run so fast in my life. My extended family lives at the end of the street that led to the fire on the beach and my own home is just a few blocks from theirs. If I couldn't get help soon, everyone's home in the neighborhood was in jeopardy of being destroyed.
I was so worried about frightening the people in the house who I had never met as I came running, panting up their back porch to tap on their kitchen window. "Hi, I'm your neighbor. There's a fire on the beach. Can you help me put it out?" I said exasperated with a glistening face that inspired the woman to fetch me a glass of water.
She was British and calm as she introduced herself, "I'm Claire. This is my husband Jim." She said as if we were all about to play a game of tennis. "Still mired by dread and alarm I repeated myself. "There is a fire in the sand dune near your home. I think we can put it out but we should really go now." "Let's just call 911…" She quietly quipped. "I'm afraid that by the time they get here it may be too late. If we go now we can bury it." I interrupted. She nodded with her eyes. "Alright Jim, are you coming? Turn off the BBQ and cover the meat so that the cats don't get into it. I'll bring some lanterns." And off we went looking like a trio of Elmer Fudds hunting wabbits.
I hadn't realized how far the fire seemed when walking to it versus how close it felt when running from it. We finally found the flames and with two shovels were able to bury each one. When complete, we were all grateful to each other.
I called George to tell him what had happened and he said, "Kryptonite beware. Superwoman is here!" When I reached my home he had drawn a large red "S" on a piece of paper and taped it to the front door. As I walked through the threshold my family gave me a heroes welcome and I once again gave thanks to my intuition, for all our sakes.
One week and one day later, Kimi had her second baby, a boy, on Thanksgiving.
While I appreciate my intuitive abilities, I can't allow myself to be this aware all the time. I just don't have a cape to match a telephone booth. Motherhood is too demanding to add superhero as a hyphen. Besides that, it's pseudo redundant, don't you think?
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
How To Be A Psychic Mama
I was born with psychic abilities, just as my mother and her mother were and going as far back as I know. It seems that some families are genetically predisposed to inherit psychic ability. However, just because you weren't necessarily born with it, doesn't mean you can't develop it. If you ever had an intuition, a "gut feeling" about something, you were using your own inherent psychic ability. Here are three tips to tap into your psychic mama.
1. TRUST your intuition when you have it. If you think your child is getting into something they shouldn't, or is in danger, or even having a moment of bliss that you'd like to share in, trust it. Intuition is like a muscle — the more you use it the stronger it becomes.
Each time you listen to it and you are right, you will feel validated; and that validation will increase your confidence, and your confidence will open you up energetically to receive more intuitive hits that will decrease your likelihood of being wrong. The key to trusting the unknown is a willingness to be wrong. If you have a fear of being wrong, remember that the only way to conquer fear is with faith; and faith comes from trust.
2. LISTEN more than you speak, especially to your children. Each person vibrates at a different frequency, like radio and TV stations. Your children have their own frequencies, and when you tune your receptors to them and listen to them speak about anything they have an interest or passion in, it can awaken their heart centers and create a way for you to link up to them psychically.
When I do readings for people on subjects that I know nothing about, I simply listen to them speak about something they have a great deal of emotional investment in. I let their words wash over me like a gentle breeze, and in doing so I begin to receive psychic hits on other aspects of their life and answers to their specific questions.
Some people create so much chatter and noise in their lives that they can't hear their own intuition even if it's yelling at them. Be quiet and become centered. Pay attention to what is going on around you. Find a healthy balance between engaging with life and simply observing. It's the difference between doing and being. Psychic abilities awaken when doingness goes to sleep.
3. CREATE a practice of energy work. This can be anything from breathing meditations, certain types of yoga, or my personal favorite — daily chakra aligning and cleansing while surrounding myself with white light and asking for guidance from my antecedents. This provides you with a conscious awareness of what types of energy you’re projecting and attracting.
Everything is energy, and usually either positive or negative. If you allow yourself or your children to be surrounded by negative energy while opening yourself up to psychic abilities, you run the dangerous risk of inviting the wrong types of energies into your lives.
Bring forth positive energy by being in your joy. For me it is music, writing, walking on the beach, etc. Try to do at least one of your joy triggers each day. This will attract positive energy and help awaken psychic ability.
Lastly, live your life with integrity, love, and gratitude, and it will be easier to reach an intuitive place and experience the psychic mama within.
word count 572
Originally published by BettyConfidential.com July, 2007
1. TRUST your intuition when you have it. If you think your child is getting into something they shouldn't, or is in danger, or even having a moment of bliss that you'd like to share in, trust it. Intuition is like a muscle — the more you use it the stronger it becomes.
Each time you listen to it and you are right, you will feel validated; and that validation will increase your confidence, and your confidence will open you up energetically to receive more intuitive hits that will decrease your likelihood of being wrong. The key to trusting the unknown is a willingness to be wrong. If you have a fear of being wrong, remember that the only way to conquer fear is with faith; and faith comes from trust.
2. LISTEN more than you speak, especially to your children. Each person vibrates at a different frequency, like radio and TV stations. Your children have their own frequencies, and when you tune your receptors to them and listen to them speak about anything they have an interest or passion in, it can awaken their heart centers and create a way for you to link up to them psychically.
When I do readings for people on subjects that I know nothing about, I simply listen to them speak about something they have a great deal of emotional investment in. I let their words wash over me like a gentle breeze, and in doing so I begin to receive psychic hits on other aspects of their life and answers to their specific questions.
Some people create so much chatter and noise in their lives that they can't hear their own intuition even if it's yelling at them. Be quiet and become centered. Pay attention to what is going on around you. Find a healthy balance between engaging with life and simply observing. It's the difference between doing and being. Psychic abilities awaken when doingness goes to sleep.
3. CREATE a practice of energy work. This can be anything from breathing meditations, certain types of yoga, or my personal favorite — daily chakra aligning and cleansing while surrounding myself with white light and asking for guidance from my antecedents. This provides you with a conscious awareness of what types of energy you’re projecting and attracting.
Everything is energy, and usually either positive or negative. If you allow yourself or your children to be surrounded by negative energy while opening yourself up to psychic abilities, you run the dangerous risk of inviting the wrong types of energies into your lives.
Bring forth positive energy by being in your joy. For me it is music, writing, walking on the beach, etc. Try to do at least one of your joy triggers each day. This will attract positive energy and help awaken psychic ability.
Lastly, live your life with integrity, love, and gratitude, and it will be easier to reach an intuitive place and experience the psychic mama within.
word count 572
Originally published by BettyConfidential.com July, 2007
Reader Breeder
Today my daughter, Bailey, got her first Library card! I got a bit weepy as I have such a deep respect and appreciation for libraries and a great love for books. It was a tender rite of passage to introduce Bailey to the library and the nice librarians. They told us that she was their youngest card carrying member at 18 months of age. It's never too early to foster a love for reading.
One of my most special childhood memories is of my Papa (my grandfather) and the trips he and I used to take to the library twice a week. I was fortunate to grow up with a library just down the street, walking distance even by California standards.
Papa and I would go to the library on Sundays and, if I read whatever books I checked out by Wednesday, Papa would buy me a new book from the mall.
Each newly purchased book would go into our personal library collection. Most families refer to this as a "spare room," but in my grandparents' house it was always the library. I grew up with the wonderful illusion of thinking everyone had a library in their home.
The first book checked out was one Bailey chose herself. Papa was a wonderful teacher and example for me to follow in the freedom he gave me as a child. He always trusted me to choose my own books, and he never tried to influence my choices. I hope I can follow in his footsteps.
It's been said that books are our friends, and when I look back on my life I remember my past by the books I read just as much as by the people I surrounded myself with. They are the scrapbooks for the places I've traveled to, if only in my imagination.
It's essential to read to our kids every day, but it's special to encourage and create a space for them to enjoy reading to themselves too. My daughter has a little spot that she crawls into with her books. Relaxation is a learned behavior, and she looks forward to her down time with books as much as her parents do. There's nothing quite like sharing an activity together that is also an individual experience. Reading as a family often gives us a home that is at once quiet and yet also filled with adventure.
Names changed to protect privacy.
word count: 398
One of my most special childhood memories is of my Papa (my grandfather) and the trips he and I used to take to the library twice a week. I was fortunate to grow up with a library just down the street, walking distance even by California standards.
Papa and I would go to the library on Sundays and, if I read whatever books I checked out by Wednesday, Papa would buy me a new book from the mall.
Each newly purchased book would go into our personal library collection. Most families refer to this as a "spare room," but in my grandparents' house it was always the library. I grew up with the wonderful illusion of thinking everyone had a library in their home.
The first book checked out was one Bailey chose herself. Papa was a wonderful teacher and example for me to follow in the freedom he gave me as a child. He always trusted me to choose my own books, and he never tried to influence my choices. I hope I can follow in his footsteps.
It's been said that books are our friends, and when I look back on my life I remember my past by the books I read just as much as by the people I surrounded myself with. They are the scrapbooks for the places I've traveled to, if only in my imagination.
It's essential to read to our kids every day, but it's special to encourage and create a space for them to enjoy reading to themselves too. My daughter has a little spot that she crawls into with her books. Relaxation is a learned behavior, and she looks forward to her down time with books as much as her parents do. There's nothing quite like sharing an activity together that is also an individual experience. Reading as a family often gives us a home that is at once quiet and yet also filled with adventure.
Names changed to protect privacy.
word count: 398
Dream Child
My husband and I met around Halloween of 1989. We had our first date near Thanksgiving. He flew me out to meet his parents for New Year’s Eve. He proposed marriage on Valentine's day and we married on The Fourth of July, 1990. Our entire courtship from meeting to marriage was roughly seven months and yet we waited 17 years to have a child.
Every year, right around Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would have a dream that I was giving birth to a little girl. Everyone around me said the dream was metaphoric and not literal. Dream books told me that having a dream about giving birth was symbolic of projects I was working on that I was giving birth to.
In my dream, after I gave birth, the baby always appeared as a young woman and would introduce herself saying, "I am your daughter; and someday, when you invite me, I am going to be born to you."
n the many years I spent considering the little girl spirit's birth, a play about giving birth was conceived and born of me instead. I was working as an advocate for foster care children; and as the numbers of unwanted kids in America rose past 700,000, the number of women who were no longer able to conceive and who were turning to in vitro fertilization grew exponentially. All this was happening concurrently with fierce evidence of global warming due in part to overpopulation. Under those conditions, the thought of bringing another child into the world seemed inconceivable to me.
I wrote and performed a one woman show on the subject matter and was deeply rooted on a soapbox with the impassioned opinion that if people wanted to have children they should take care of the ones already here instead of bringing more into the world. I did not know how to reconcile my beliefs about breeding and procreation with my spirit child and her periodic visits.
I was obsessed with the topic and it touched every area of my life. I frequently became engaged with others on the issue, probing people's conscience to inspire my own. I continued to go within for answers and listen to my still small voice.
In 2005 — on my birthday — while having my annual gynecological exam and ultrasound, my doctor spotted an egg in my uterus. She said, "Wow, if you go home and make love now, you could make a baby." That frightened us more than excited us. We did not go home and we did not make love. Nice birthday.
I had recently recovered from a series of 13 surgical procedures and a chelation detoxification regimen. I had mercury poisoning from botched dental work as a child. I had endometriosis and polycystic ovarian disease, and I was so severely anemic that I needed thrice weekly iron infusions for an entire year. On paper, my body wasn't capable of conceiving; and if it did, the likelihood of birth defects would be greater than normal due to the mercury toxins in my body.
I rationalized that my health was in no position to take that step nor were our finances nor my conscience for that matter. I did not want to be a hypocrite by saying one thing about breeding in my public life and doing another in my private life.
As a young married woman, I feared pregnancy; but as a married woman of advanced maternal age, I feared not being able to get pregnant, even though I had consciously made the choice not to have children. Knowing that the choice would no longer be mine to make incited a fear of a loss of freedom in me. Choosing to not have sex on a day when I was likely to conceive felt like having an abortion. I felt guilty for not taking that opportunity, but I knew that above all I was not ready psychologically to even invite the thought of that experience into my consciousness.
Once the opportunity passed that I did not take I felt saddened but relieved. I apologized to the little girl spirit for not inviting her and giving her the opportunity of life. That's when she began speaking to me, even when I was awake. She said, "It's OK. That was just to prepare you. I will come back again next year on your birthday and if you invite me, I will be born to you."
The metaphoric seed was planted; and my husband and I made a tentative plan that if my health continued to improve and the doctors gave the OK, and I could reconcile my public beliefs with my private beliefs, then we would try, just for one cycle, on my birthday in March of 2006. If it was meant to be it would happen, and if we didn't conceive right away then it wasn't meant to be and we wouldn't try again.
I told our little girl spirit our plan. She responded by telling me what she wanted to be named and insisted that we give her initials of BLISS. "I will be with you on your birthday," she said. I acknowledged her and the agreement was made. I never came to a place of intellectual reconciliation, but I did come to a place of peace about my choice to move forward.
I could not argue that others had no business breeding children and then breed myself. My only comfort was that as far as I knew I had never met anyone who consciously waited as long as I had to have a child and who had put as much thought into the social and political ramifications, to say nothing of the personal, than I had. This somehow made me feel different enough to justify being an exception to the rule. I didn't think I was worthy of being an exception but I felt I was and thoughts and feelings can be very separate things.
I kept flashing back on a heated philosophical discussion I had with my brother-in-law in the early 1990s. We were writing a screenplay together that touched on this area. He was writing the voices of the moderate to conservative characters, and I was writing the dialogue for the liberal perspective.
For every reason he gave in favor of breeding I would give him two in favor of not. Exasperated he finally just put his head in his hands, and after a few silent moments looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said one word, "Desire."
He went on to explain that for better or worse, right or wrong, he had a desire to have children and no amount of intellectual facts or figures was diminishing that sense of calling in him. If anything, it was only making it stronger. There was nothing I could say to argue against him. I felt I had a calling in my life to be an artist and I couldn't fathom someone trying to take that away from me so how could I argue it away in him? He had the last word in that debate, and it was a powerful one that has stayed with me ever since. He ended up having three beautiful, bright children who I can't imagine not having in my life.
But alas, I did not share his desire. I did not feel that need, urgency or calling to give birth to a child in order to be a mother. This only made me question even more if it was something I should even be considering. Comic Betsy Salkind refers to breeding as genetic narcissism. It was that very line that bonded us as friends because I had also used that concept in my play. How could I believe that breeding was genetic narcissism and yet still be considering participating in it?
It didn't feel like narcissism to me. The BLISS baby was her own unique entity. She did not really feel like an extension of me. She felt more like a friend I cared deeply for who I shared a lot in common with and who I enjoyed being around.
Have you ever had a strong opinion about something and then met a really nice likeable person who held the exact opposite opinion as you? Well, it was kind of like that for me juggling my philosophical beliefs with my BLISS baby spirit visits. The BLISS baby of my dreams kept coming back to me and with each visit she brought out a little more desire from me for her, in spite of my beliefs.
I began to form a friendship with her like I would with anyone who I heard from on a daily basis. I learned her likes and dislikes, her hopes and fears and more of why she had come to me specifically. She told me that we had always been together as spirits, and now we had an opportunity to be together as two physical beings as well.
She showed me pictures of our life together. I was able to view a movie in my dreams of her performing as a comic on a college campus. In a wakeful vision I saw her with her husband and children at my death bed. She introduced me to two other children — a boy and a girl who also wanted to be born to us — and they told us their names as well.
She had a great sense of humor, loved music, had a determined spirit, was super smart and had a passion for learning. I could see what she looked like clearly: light eyes and curly hair with a beautiful smile, nothing like me at all. I shared these details with my dearest friends and my best friend, my husband. He began to see her too and have brief encounters with her during moments of meditation.
As the days turned into months, my birthday was just around the corner. Inviting the BLISS baby to become our daughter no longer felt like a political or social issue about breeding, over population and unwanted children in foster care. It became about finally meeting this spirit in person who we had come to know through our dreams.
When my birthday arrived, the day of the deed, I felt like she was in the room with us which was both awkward and yet also somehow spiritually magnificent. It was a wonderfully romantic experience and not far from movie magic where it's easy to forget what's a documentary and what's based solely on fantasy.
It was beyond an exciting voyage to consciously choose to create life and still not know if it would be successful, not to mention carrying the pressure of living up to the agreement we made to only try once. What if it didn't take? Would we ever meet the BLISS baby?
I felt a bit like Tom Burdet in the Motel 6 commercial saying, "I'll leave the light on for you." She must have had a GPS system installed in her DNA because she never even paused for directions. We conceived that night, and five months later ultra sounds confirmed that it was indeed a girl.
I immediately felt that her personality was already completely developed and I was just the vessel that she was coming through. I was so completely certain of this that I wrote a public description of her in our baby shower invitations before she was ever born which later turned out to be entirely accurate.
There once was a flower of a little girl spirit. Over the course of infinite soul years and 37 earthly weeks, she made her caterpillar to butterfly transition from the ethereal into the physical. She was expected around Christmas and was born around Thanksgiving just like she had been in my dreams for 17 years. She was the perfect holiday gift.
My husband's last name is Bailey. My last name is Smith. She asked for initials of BLISS so we named her Bailey, Love, Isabella, Sage, Smith. She has five names to choose from, two of which are fairly typical another that is common and two new age, spiritual, dreamlike names for the new age, spiritual, dreamlike child that she is. She will carry forth both her mother and her father's heritage, and she got her wish for initials of B.L.I.S.S.
Now I am being visited by the other two spirit children as well, but again I find myself in a state of mystification. I cannot comprehend on an intellectual level the reality of having two more children whether through breeding, adoption or any means really. I feel so completely overwhelmed with just one child. But I continue to forge the family ties on the spiritual realm and leave the reality of manifesting on the physical plain to unforeseen sources of influence that may come into play. Perhaps those of fulltime help with cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping and childcare.
For now our world is content with Bailey. She is everything I literally imagined and more. She is our greatest joy, our bliss, our dream child.
Names have been changed for privacy’s sake but do connote symbolic likeness.
Word count 2,170
Every year, right around Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would have a dream that I was giving birth to a little girl. Everyone around me said the dream was metaphoric and not literal. Dream books told me that having a dream about giving birth was symbolic of projects I was working on that I was giving birth to.
In my dream, after I gave birth, the baby always appeared as a young woman and would introduce herself saying, "I am your daughter; and someday, when you invite me, I am going to be born to you."
n the many years I spent considering the little girl spirit's birth, a play about giving birth was conceived and born of me instead. I was working as an advocate for foster care children; and as the numbers of unwanted kids in America rose past 700,000, the number of women who were no longer able to conceive and who were turning to in vitro fertilization grew exponentially. All this was happening concurrently with fierce evidence of global warming due in part to overpopulation. Under those conditions, the thought of bringing another child into the world seemed inconceivable to me.
I wrote and performed a one woman show on the subject matter and was deeply rooted on a soapbox with the impassioned opinion that if people wanted to have children they should take care of the ones already here instead of bringing more into the world. I did not know how to reconcile my beliefs about breeding and procreation with my spirit child and her periodic visits.
I was obsessed with the topic and it touched every area of my life. I frequently became engaged with others on the issue, probing people's conscience to inspire my own. I continued to go within for answers and listen to my still small voice.
In 2005 — on my birthday — while having my annual gynecological exam and ultrasound, my doctor spotted an egg in my uterus. She said, "Wow, if you go home and make love now, you could make a baby." That frightened us more than excited us. We did not go home and we did not make love. Nice birthday.
I had recently recovered from a series of 13 surgical procedures and a chelation detoxification regimen. I had mercury poisoning from botched dental work as a child. I had endometriosis and polycystic ovarian disease, and I was so severely anemic that I needed thrice weekly iron infusions for an entire year. On paper, my body wasn't capable of conceiving; and if it did, the likelihood of birth defects would be greater than normal due to the mercury toxins in my body.
I rationalized that my health was in no position to take that step nor were our finances nor my conscience for that matter. I did not want to be a hypocrite by saying one thing about breeding in my public life and doing another in my private life.
As a young married woman, I feared pregnancy; but as a married woman of advanced maternal age, I feared not being able to get pregnant, even though I had consciously made the choice not to have children. Knowing that the choice would no longer be mine to make incited a fear of a loss of freedom in me. Choosing to not have sex on a day when I was likely to conceive felt like having an abortion. I felt guilty for not taking that opportunity, but I knew that above all I was not ready psychologically to even invite the thought of that experience into my consciousness.
Once the opportunity passed that I did not take I felt saddened but relieved. I apologized to the little girl spirit for not inviting her and giving her the opportunity of life. That's when she began speaking to me, even when I was awake. She said, "It's OK. That was just to prepare you. I will come back again next year on your birthday and if you invite me, I will be born to you."
The metaphoric seed was planted; and my husband and I made a tentative plan that if my health continued to improve and the doctors gave the OK, and I could reconcile my public beliefs with my private beliefs, then we would try, just for one cycle, on my birthday in March of 2006. If it was meant to be it would happen, and if we didn't conceive right away then it wasn't meant to be and we wouldn't try again.
I told our little girl spirit our plan. She responded by telling me what she wanted to be named and insisted that we give her initials of BLISS. "I will be with you on your birthday," she said. I acknowledged her and the agreement was made. I never came to a place of intellectual reconciliation, but I did come to a place of peace about my choice to move forward.
I could not argue that others had no business breeding children and then breed myself. My only comfort was that as far as I knew I had never met anyone who consciously waited as long as I had to have a child and who had put as much thought into the social and political ramifications, to say nothing of the personal, than I had. This somehow made me feel different enough to justify being an exception to the rule. I didn't think I was worthy of being an exception but I felt I was and thoughts and feelings can be very separate things.
I kept flashing back on a heated philosophical discussion I had with my brother-in-law in the early 1990s. We were writing a screenplay together that touched on this area. He was writing the voices of the moderate to conservative characters, and I was writing the dialogue for the liberal perspective.
For every reason he gave in favor of breeding I would give him two in favor of not. Exasperated he finally just put his head in his hands, and after a few silent moments looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said one word, "Desire."
He went on to explain that for better or worse, right or wrong, he had a desire to have children and no amount of intellectual facts or figures was diminishing that sense of calling in him. If anything, it was only making it stronger. There was nothing I could say to argue against him. I felt I had a calling in my life to be an artist and I couldn't fathom someone trying to take that away from me so how could I argue it away in him? He had the last word in that debate, and it was a powerful one that has stayed with me ever since. He ended up having three beautiful, bright children who I can't imagine not having in my life.
But alas, I did not share his desire. I did not feel that need, urgency or calling to give birth to a child in order to be a mother. This only made me question even more if it was something I should even be considering. Comic Betsy Salkind refers to breeding as genetic narcissism. It was that very line that bonded us as friends because I had also used that concept in my play. How could I believe that breeding was genetic narcissism and yet still be considering participating in it?
It didn't feel like narcissism to me. The BLISS baby was her own unique entity. She did not really feel like an extension of me. She felt more like a friend I cared deeply for who I shared a lot in common with and who I enjoyed being around.
Have you ever had a strong opinion about something and then met a really nice likeable person who held the exact opposite opinion as you? Well, it was kind of like that for me juggling my philosophical beliefs with my BLISS baby spirit visits. The BLISS baby of my dreams kept coming back to me and with each visit she brought out a little more desire from me for her, in spite of my beliefs.
I began to form a friendship with her like I would with anyone who I heard from on a daily basis. I learned her likes and dislikes, her hopes and fears and more of why she had come to me specifically. She told me that we had always been together as spirits, and now we had an opportunity to be together as two physical beings as well.
She showed me pictures of our life together. I was able to view a movie in my dreams of her performing as a comic on a college campus. In a wakeful vision I saw her with her husband and children at my death bed. She introduced me to two other children — a boy and a girl who also wanted to be born to us — and they told us their names as well.
She had a great sense of humor, loved music, had a determined spirit, was super smart and had a passion for learning. I could see what she looked like clearly: light eyes and curly hair with a beautiful smile, nothing like me at all. I shared these details with my dearest friends and my best friend, my husband. He began to see her too and have brief encounters with her during moments of meditation.
As the days turned into months, my birthday was just around the corner. Inviting the BLISS baby to become our daughter no longer felt like a political or social issue about breeding, over population and unwanted children in foster care. It became about finally meeting this spirit in person who we had come to know through our dreams.
When my birthday arrived, the day of the deed, I felt like she was in the room with us which was both awkward and yet also somehow spiritually magnificent. It was a wonderfully romantic experience and not far from movie magic where it's easy to forget what's a documentary and what's based solely on fantasy.
It was beyond an exciting voyage to consciously choose to create life and still not know if it would be successful, not to mention carrying the pressure of living up to the agreement we made to only try once. What if it didn't take? Would we ever meet the BLISS baby?
I felt a bit like Tom Burdet in the Motel 6 commercial saying, "I'll leave the light on for you." She must have had a GPS system installed in her DNA because she never even paused for directions. We conceived that night, and five months later ultra sounds confirmed that it was indeed a girl.
I immediately felt that her personality was already completely developed and I was just the vessel that she was coming through. I was so completely certain of this that I wrote a public description of her in our baby shower invitations before she was ever born which later turned out to be entirely accurate.
There once was a flower of a little girl spirit. Over the course of infinite soul years and 37 earthly weeks, she made her caterpillar to butterfly transition from the ethereal into the physical. She was expected around Christmas and was born around Thanksgiving just like she had been in my dreams for 17 years. She was the perfect holiday gift.
My husband's last name is Bailey. My last name is Smith. She asked for initials of BLISS so we named her Bailey, Love, Isabella, Sage, Smith. She has five names to choose from, two of which are fairly typical another that is common and two new age, spiritual, dreamlike names for the new age, spiritual, dreamlike child that she is. She will carry forth both her mother and her father's heritage, and she got her wish for initials of B.L.I.S.S.
Now I am being visited by the other two spirit children as well, but again I find myself in a state of mystification. I cannot comprehend on an intellectual level the reality of having two more children whether through breeding, adoption or any means really. I feel so completely overwhelmed with just one child. But I continue to forge the family ties on the spiritual realm and leave the reality of manifesting on the physical plain to unforeseen sources of influence that may come into play. Perhaps those of fulltime help with cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping and childcare.
For now our world is content with Bailey. She is everything I literally imagined and more. She is our greatest joy, our bliss, our dream child.
Names have been changed for privacy’s sake but do connote symbolic likeness.
Word count 2,170
Chess For Kids
There are four universal abilities that I wish I could bestow upon every child: how to play a musical instrument, speak a foreign language, enjoy a physical discipline (dance or sports), and how to play chess. One can go anywhere in the world with three of these ways to communicate without words. To communicate is to connect. The more we connect to others the more connected we become to the world at large; and connection is both a gift and an art form.
Chess teaches the art of thinking things through before acting but with a conscious mindfulness of time management while incorporating intelligence and intuition as well as creativity and logic to make each choice. It's also fun and can inspire joy, especially among those of us who enjoy laughing at ourselves.
Games and sports are often synonymous with competitiveness. However, chess is one of those great activities in which participants can play with the intention of improving their game rather than merely to compete against others.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for children as people and am always impressed with how they form conclusions based on observation, logic or intuition. Each child thinks with unique aspects of their brain depending upon where they are on the spectrum from learning disabled to gifted and yet they all possess genius in their own way. As a chess teacher and a mother I am privileged enough to witness this first hand; it's thrilling and fascinating.
Chess is arguably one of the most complicated games to learn; but for a child with an porous sponge of a brain, it's nothing more than additional information. The most brilliant minds among us are often children under the age of ten.
Please check local community based programs for chess classes. I guarantee it will be an investment in your child's future in more ways than you can imagine.
word count: 315
Originally published by BettyConfidential.com August, 2007
Chess teaches the art of thinking things through before acting but with a conscious mindfulness of time management while incorporating intelligence and intuition as well as creativity and logic to make each choice. It's also fun and can inspire joy, especially among those of us who enjoy laughing at ourselves.
Games and sports are often synonymous with competitiveness. However, chess is one of those great activities in which participants can play with the intention of improving their game rather than merely to compete against others.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for children as people and am always impressed with how they form conclusions based on observation, logic or intuition. Each child thinks with unique aspects of their brain depending upon where they are on the spectrum from learning disabled to gifted and yet they all possess genius in their own way. As a chess teacher and a mother I am privileged enough to witness this first hand; it's thrilling and fascinating.
Chess is arguably one of the most complicated games to learn; but for a child with an porous sponge of a brain, it's nothing more than additional information. The most brilliant minds among us are often children under the age of ten.
Please check local community based programs for chess classes. I guarantee it will be an investment in your child's future in more ways than you can imagine.
word count: 315
Originally published by BettyConfidential.com August, 2007
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