Leaping

June 8, 2017June 9, 2017 / still a dreamer / 15 Comments

This image is currently on my desktop and that little kid puts a smile on my face and makes me think.

When I look at her, I see she is doing exactly what she – a mountain goat kid – is supposed to be doing and what comes naturally. Leaping. She’s not thinking about it or getting all nervous about it or wondering will she twist her ankle if she leaps really high. She just leaps.

Were it that easy for us humans. Okay, I’ll speak for myself. Over the course of my life I have taken numerous leaps of faith, and often without any tangible safety net. Each time, I truly amazed myself because clearly, I didn’t think I had it in me.

I was musing earlier about the time when I got on a plane to Portugal at 21 years old to visit my cousin who lived in a tiny fishing village in the farthest point north of the country. I’d only been on a plane once, and never abroad. What was funny in retrospect is that I was too young and naive to even know what a leap of faith I was actually taking. My flight was delayed at JFK by 6 hours and was going to get me into Lisbon far later than my cousin and I had planned and I had critical train connections to make. There were no cell phones, no means of communication like that and I was alone. In my utter panic, because of course I had not thought to learn any Portuguese other than “Bom Dia”, I began asking about for help using my high school French and entreated a bi-lingual Portuguese gentleman to help me. He wrote notes for each of the two train masters and one for, hopefully, a cab at the other end. I arrived after midnight in the pitch black of the countryside, but got delivered safe and sound to my cousin’s house. How did I do it?

Over 10 years ago, I took a very conscious leap of faith to leave a secure job and go freelance so I could pursue my dream of writing and illustrating children’s books. My income was not even covered, but I believed that somehow, despite my many apprehensions, I would be okay. I’d be lying if I said that the time in between hasn’t had its stress, crises and challenges, yet I made it. Except for one thing. I haven’t made nearly the progress I had hoped towards my dream. The next leap is before me.

And that’s where that little mountain goat comes in. Sometimes we can feel like we are suspended in mid-air. We know we jumped; in fact it may have been necessary to jump, or we sorely need to, but how we land depends on us. I want with every fiber of my being to be as sure-footed as that little kid, who knows in her heart of hearts, in the deepest recesses of her mountain goat soul, that she will land safely and securely, most likely on all fours.

Søren Kierkegaard once said, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

I stand at the edge, breathe in my inner mountain goat, and leap.

Doors Opening in the New Year

January 5, 2016 / still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Doors-ClositerArches2 The beginning of each New Year spreads out in front of us – a year of promise, of dreams, of hopes and plans. I leave resolutions for those who are so inclined, and prefer to believe that I will take those steps in exactly the right time.

Ahead are the doors opening to what we dare to dream – what we’d most like to do, our heart’s desire, and how we can get there. Ahead are the doors to our imagination – to what we can create if just given the chance … to those we’ll know, who will inspire us, and whom we can inspire. The doors that take us out and through can take us in as well.

To all who stop by, I wish you the year of your dreams and the open doors to find them.

Finding Strength, Holding on to Hope

June 28, 2014June 29, 2014 / still a dreamer / 2 Comments

We can easily be unaware or forget how strong kids have to be sometimes, or to remember how strong even we needed to be at certain points growing up. I don’t know anyone who had a totally blissful childhood, and even those who claim to have had one? It becomes apparent in further conversations or getting to know someone better that that’s the way they prefer to see it or maybe need to see it. We all have had our share of problems and pain growing up – some more, some less.

But if we were lucky, we had something or someone to hold onto – a best friend, a pet, a trusted teacher or adult, or a passion that saved us. And that was the saving grace of Sugar Mae Cole.

Reading Almost Home by Joan Bauer, reminded me of how some kids need to be the strong ones, maybe even the parents, when really all they want and need is their parents to take care of them. In this middle grade novel, Sugar and her mother Reba found themselves evicted and homeless. Sugar’s father, who she refers to as Mr. Leeland, failed repeatedly to be responsible to his family, gambling all their money away instead. Sugar, 12 years old, got it. Her mother, in her delusion, still believed he was their knight in shining armor who was always going to come through, but never did.

The story at first reminded me of Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle, her autobiography, in which her mother always believed that everything was going to turn out just fine. She chose to see and never failed to point out the bright side in everything to her children even though they were suffering horribly. In either case, being the adult is a lot to ask of a kid when one or both parents aren’t grounded in reality.

Almost Home was a great story that drew me in the more I read. Sugar accepted a puppy name Shush from another little girl who foisted him upon her because her father was abusing him. Shush became an important constant in Sugar’s life, as pets often do for a child. The unconditional love offered by an animal is a phenomenally powerful form of healing. Sugar had something else – she wrote. She wrote poetry about what was happening in her life, and she wrote thank you letters to people frequently. She believed in the sweetness in life, though she found herself often struggling to find it during this time. She also had a teacher who believed in her and kept in touch even though Sugar and Reba had moved away.

What made this story such a winner is that I could easily relate to Sugar. I’m sure her reading audience does as well. One doesn’t have to be homeless to understand conflict and loss. Holding on to your dreams and hope in the midst of it all is the challenge, and getting to know this young heroine who wasn’t about to give up is what made this read so worthwhile.

Dreams and Plans

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013 / still a dreamer / 4 Comments

We all have them, right? And then something occurs in our lives and we can watch them go up in smoke. Or at least for a while.

But what I’ve found is that the phoenix can rise again from the ashes, except this time, the dreams and plans have changed, perhaps evolved. Or maybe are new altogether. In any event, they have been colored by that event and now they look quite different. Can you relate?

I was often told as a child that I daydreamed too much. It was made out to be a bad thing. But how do you proceed in life without dreams … something to hitch our stars to? It seems to me that when we lose our dreams or when they get mired in the muck is when we get in trouble. I never minded being called a dreamer. I still am, and it’s just fine with me. When I have no dreams, I’ve lost my moorings.

Recent events caused my dream of being published in children’s books to be pushed into the background, to be, at least for a period of time, not that important in the grander scheme of things. That happens. But early, early this morning – certainly before I wished to be awake – the dream was stirring again, and as I thought about it, a next step came into view … a plan. As I lay there, a number of things fell into place, and I knew what I would soon do. A dream with a plan … that felt good!

Sometimes we just make plans that arise out of an event, in my case related to my health. OK – that happened, what will I do now? Up until this morning, I didn’t really know. Not exactly, anyway. However, it seems my unconscious has been quite busy when I wasn’t looking. A number of recent events – a conversation with someone I’d never really had a chance to talk to, a book that crossed my path, a wanting to know what I should do – click, click, click – it all fell into place, and suddenly I had a plan. Ideas that had been more on the line of `maybe someday’ or `that seems impossible,’ suddenly seemed real and do-able.

It’s amazing when we have a plan, how much lighter we feel. It’s as if a fog that has been swirling about us has burned off and we are standing in radiant sunshine, arms lifted in joy and anticipation. A plan, enlightened by a dream, is a wonderful thing. The path may have pebbles or rocks along the way, but it glows nonetheless.

That old Irish blessing comes to mind, and I wish a beautifully lit path of dreams and plans for you, too …

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.