Dream Awake

 "I'm currently living it. When it's ready to be written you'll find it here."

Does my raw and inescapably passionate perspective sound weird to you?

Well, let’s take off more clothes shall we - love can feel right fucking wild. Completely untameable. Too mysterious for our control freak brains and, at times, far too soul-satisfying to let in. Every climax has an upward flow pausing momentarily in empty silence. For some this spacious silence triggers every regret, unspoken word, all of our uninvited shame, unmet desires & denied dreams. And so we avoid the climax. We avoid the timeless, raw, liberating perspective of the empty space. We avoid fear and so, we avoid Love.

Love’s like a sunset over the ocean after a long hard day full of stress. It’s like the rainbow that appears when sun & rain dance. It’s that feeling we get when we’re touched by nature’s extravagance in the midst of life’s chaos. It slows us down.

Love can take over time and expand our consciousness to include the freedom and relief of...

The stalemate is melting. Shit, I wish it would melt faster. Hmmm, or do I? Cause perhaps if it did, I wouldn’t have such an intimate relationship with my own reflection - getting to remember the child I once was and certainly at times, still am. I have a better target now for my own ‘Jamie version’ of unabashed happiness anyway. Who doesn’t want that!?

Plus, I kinda like taking the time to really observe myself ebb & flow between the woman I’ve become & my inner innocence. I revel in feeling all the parts of me, traumatically broken apart by destructive storms & mini human disasters, re-entwine themselves into one cohesive expression - Jamie Lynn Sullivan (that’s ME. What’s your name?). Perhaps if I sped through the challenging experiences of life I wouldn’t be such a master navigator of our human emotional experience. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to see everything I can see when I look into you. Gosh, you’re...

    What happens when you have everything you need? What’s left? What comes next? I’ll tell you, death. Death comes next. Maybe not the next day, or decade, but death eventually comes, closing our eyes to the material of this world and guiding our drifting consciousness away into well, I’m not sure actually. I’ve learned that a large number of us are quite concerned about this experience none of us will escape - handing our precious bodies over to death. You telling me you never think about it? Let me tap into your psyche and I’m sure we’ll discover a different answer. I thought I wasn’t scared really until I recognized I was frozen in fear. A 35-year-old woman inside of my 40-year-old body all but panicking at my slow and steady approach to “happily ever after” just about stopped me in my pursuit of “joy after trauma”.

    You see, I’ve been truly happy in my life. I’ve also come close...

    I wonder what symbol in this vast world represents hope for you. For me, it’s the moon. When I was young my mom and I used to stare at the moon. “Can you see it”, she would ask, “the man in the moon?” We’d be sitting on the couch in front of the picture window. Oh that window. So many memories. I bet you have many memories too, some warm, some sad. Some I’m sure that animate your soul to do great brave things. Our window faced our quiet small town street and was framed by the roof of my best friends house along with the forest and stars that lived in front of our home. My bodies hands and feet were so much smaller then. During those years, if you listened closely enough you could always hear the laugh of a child on the wind. Our blocks were full of children playing freely back then. I myself was usually found blowing with the wind at the teeny tiny top of our magnificent large as life maple tree. As a child, those times I was...

About 6 months into my “new life” our house-mate announced she was pregnant. As exciting as that was for her and her husband - those words threw me back to that groggy moment only months before when I was being wheeled into a surgery room to stop my pregnancy. I couldn’t breathe. Of course the world goes on, ain’t nothing gonna stop that but, as a compassionate human must do with her own heart, protecting my vulnerable healing spirit was my priority. My sorrow was far too fresh to be able to witness excitement and growth of a family I so dearly wanted but had just found out I could not have. I had done a lot of traveling in my twenties, so I proposed to my husband we get rid of a bunch of stuff, store only what we love, and fly away somewhere. I was talking with one of my besties (a goddess the same age as my mother yet more like a sister from another time than anything) telling her our decision for our next move on our healing journey. She offered up her...

    Home now, I felt like a little girl who’d been sent into the woods to live in the forest. I didn’t know what to do with myself. All my drive, sparkle, my Joie de Vivre - it was all gone. Everything around me, as familiar as it was, was truly different. Nothing held the same value. Where I could normally look to ignite inspiration I found emptiness. My projects, my offerings to the world, suddenly felt irrelevant. To me, I had been let down, and let my lover and child down in a most important area of life, were my gifts actually useful after that?? Where I would look to connect and offer inspiration, I found it was me that had nothing to give. Where I’d enjoy comfort and indulgences I found more emptiness - lifeless energy. Even though I was in a proverbial forest with life all around me - I felt nothing. Maybe you’ve been there before?

    Where Mr. B & I lived we didn’t know too many people that well yet. So it really was a...

“They didn’t come and wake me up, no one called, how long have you been awake for? Have you been alone? Has the doctor come yet?” I heard my husband say in a sleepy voice trying to stay calm. I stared out the hospital room window with nothing but silence inside me. “The doctor was here but I was still pretty groggy.” I said. “I’ve only been awake for about an hour. A social worker came too babe.” Actually the social worker was there beside me as soon as the doctor left. She was sweet and kind and brought to my bedside the love of a grandmother. I was surprised and grateful for the quality of care. How lucky was I. Not many have so much thoughtfulness with them as they wake from a shocking situation. To this day I feel gratitude. Imagine a world where all of our systems are set up to support not only logistics but the heart as well.

    Quiet filled the already sombre room. I needed to slow down time, to still feel like our...

So now we understand that the girl who, for many a full moon, diligently and successfully protected her light, came crashing down. We’ve learned a bit about a certain boy meeting that certain girl, and we’ve unraveled into the deep vulnerability of true surrender. From love to loss, from light to darkness, from true north to truly lost - let us continue to follow this heroine's journey. Let us continue into the darkness. Follow me if you're not comfortable in the dark.

It was mid day and I was in the passenger side of my sister-in-law's vehicle traveling to emerge. Mr.Brady’s sister and I are very different. She was a Jimmy Choo shoe play hard work hard woman, I was a sustainability junkie with a big playful attitude and a fire to change the world. Till that day at the ultrasound, we were polite but not well bonded by any sense of the word and, she was to be an aunty for my child. So I was excited to have her there to represent the other half of my babies family....

 Mr.Brady and I moved in together after 8 months of “communing”. I wanted a change, he wanted a happy family.

I was up for the whole thing. We picked a place that gave us a great environment and awesome sauce younger neighbours who had a dog we also loved – they were all super playful and big dreamers like us – we had lots of fun. We’d come home to cookies at our door and we’d take their dog when they had to work. We lived across from a park in a quiet mature neighbourhood a convenient distance to the stellar university area. We had big trees, a river valley, and cool cafes all at the reach of our legs. Side note: The wonderful park across the street is where I would go at night to smoke the occasional teeny touch of weed. I was anal and opposed to drugs since my first major boyfriend dramatically overused the stuff …and many other drugs but, wise Mr Brady reminded me that it’s okay to let loose once in a while. Even though...