Moving On

This past weekend, my husband, son and I traveled to Chincoteaque Island in Virginia. It’s a favorite haunt of ours. Every spring, before their busy beach season, we like to go to get some peace and quiet, and see the wild ponies and other wildlife that roam neighboring Assateague Island National Park.

For 14 years now, we have been staying at the same cozy cottages. In the beginning, when money was particularly tight, we could always rationalize the annual escape because the price of our accommodations was right.

Over time, the choice to stay in these cottages became less a financial one and more a nostalgic one. We know the layout. They are just “right.” We reminisce about happy memories there as we create new ones.

This past weekend, however, we regrettably found ourselves noticing things we hadn’t before—the smell of smoke in the non-smoking unit where we were staying, the stained carpet where our son was crawling, how rundown things had become. Now that we were parents, we ironically discovered that the idyllic place we had fantasized about sharing with our family someday (perfect place to stay with kids, we thought) wasn’t quite so perfect after all.

After our first night there, we took a stroll down the road and happened upon a brand new hotel glistening in the sunlight—complete with balconies overlooking the bay. As we looked back at the cozy little cabins that still warm our hearts, we didn’t think twice. We checked out and into to someplace new.

I was struck by the realization that even when something in our lives was once perfect, the time might come when we’re ready to move on. It’s impossible to predict what we might be ready for instead until we get there. But when we have outgrown the current predicament of our lives, we know, and the choice becomes easy.

Once we were able to let go of our attachment to the quaint little cabins that had made us happy for so long, we experienced, what we called on our drive home to be “our best weekend in Chincoteague ever.”

Finding Treasure

“Why don’t you head north today?” my husband suggests.

He is talking about my daily walk. For the past week or so, I’ve been heading south to monitor the progress of a goose nest filled with five eggs. Nothing could possibly be as exciting as the nest, I tell myself.

As I put on my sweatshirt and strap my son into his stroller, however, my yearning for something new gets the best of me. I can always go for a second walk to see the geese later in the day, I think.

About a mile north of our home, I notice a fluttering in the trees overhead. I stop for a moment and tilt my head back just in time to catch a glimpse of a beautiful osprey passing by, so near I get a close look at the white feathers on its underside.

I continue, now noticing a few turtles sunning themselves along the water’s edge. I push the stroller closer for a look and the whole bank seems to leap into the water.

Not just a few turtles, I realize. Nearly twenty had been lined up, catching the sun. Now only two remain—a large one and a much smaller one, side by side.

“Look at the turtles!” I say to my son.

“Tir-tul,” he says, mimicking me like a parrot. It is a word he knows.

We travel together a bit further and are greeted by two white ducks. They come up to the stroller to say hello.

I position the stroller just right so Devin can see. He laughs with delight.

“Duck,” I say. “Look at the duck.”

He responds with another laugh. He has seen ducks before, but seems particularly taken with them today.

Perhaps sensing his interest, the ducks put on quite a show. They flap their wings, quack and preen their feathers with their bills.

“Quack, quack,” I say. “Ducks go quack.”

“Qu-k. Qu-k.” Devin tries to say quack. He laughs again.

Finally, the ducks wander off, as if finally accepting that, in spite of our enthusiasm, we have nothing to offer other than our cheerful company.

I push the stroller down the path toward home, my step lighter now than before. I am thankful I stepped beyond my comfort zone and tried something new.

Shedding Skin

I’ve been thinking a lot about our recent visitor, the Beluga whale. (See blog entry April 13.)

When speculating why a whale would venture into the Delaware River, one expert said freshwater—while not the normal habitat of Beluga whales—can help them shed their skin.

Shedding one’s skin. Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but that’s a concept that resonates with me.

Personally, I think the way reptiles and sea mammals do it seems so much more dramatic and appealing than our human process—one dead cell at a time.

On a soul-searching sojourn to Sedona last summer, I was sitting among the red rocks meditating when I noticed a cute little lizard beside me. While these little creatures are a dime a dozen out there, this one caught my attention because it was dragging behind it, attached only by its tail, its complete outer skin. Ready to be shed.

The first step to shedding one’s skin probably has a lot with accepting that a lot of what we are still carrying around with us we outgrew long ago.

That lizard knew he was carrying around a shell of himself. He turned around to see, his little head darting this way and that. I watched as he found a rock sharp enough and scratched, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing his tail until he was a little further along in the process.

The second step, I’m thinking, has a lot to do with figuring out why we want to do the shedding in the first place.

In my own life, when seeking to make changes, I often focus on what I want to become as if it’s “out there”—just beyond my grasp. Time and time again, however, I am reminded that everything I seek, I already am. Everything we want, we have within.

If that Beluga whale really traveled up river in pursuit of shedding his skin, he must have known that making a bit more space for the new version of him would be worth it, in spite of the risks he faced along the way.

Perhaps the third step is something the Beluga whale also knew—that shedding one’s skin requires getting out of our comfort zones, taking some risks, swimming against the current, and being willing to step away from the way everyone else is doing it, if only for a while.

The Art of Letting Go

My son has taught me a lot about letting go. Take tonight, for instance. He was finishing his dinner in the high chair, when suddenly, he made a marvelous discovery. There, underneath him, unbeknownst to him throughout the whole meal was a teething toy.

Not just any teething toy, mind you. This one was very special. It was in the shape of a rabbit, with a special hole for his fingers to grasp on tight.

The minute he found it, he started bouncing up and down in delight. He leaned far to the side, just far enough so he could pull the toy out from under him.

It took some maneuvering, some grunting and hard work, but finally he got it.

Even more excited now that his marvelous discovery was in his possession, he instantly held it toward me as if to say, “Get a load of this! Have you ever seen a teether toy like this one, Mom? Aren’t I lucky?”

More bouncing. Up and down. Up and down.

Then chewing. Chewing and chewing. Chewing and chewing. Imagine his luck--its surface was made just for this very thing.

He tried switching it from one hand to the next. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Then he thumped it against the high chair tray. Perfect. A musical instrument too! He seemed beside himself with glee.

Then, as quickly as the infatuation began and seemingly without another thought, my enthusiastic son scooted that very-special rabbit shaped teether out to the edge of the high chair tray.

It teetered there, precariously balancing for a moment. As if not quite satisfied with the haphazardness of it all, he grasped that very special toy in his pudgy fingers one more time and with a quick motion, lobbed it over the edge to join all the other toys he had cast aside all over the kitchen floor.

I myself don’t know if I would have been so quick to give up something that only a moment ago I had deemed so wonderful. But there he was empty-handed, ready to receive the next toy, whenever and from wherever it might appear.

I couldn’t help thinking of how many times I have held on tight to toys, possessions, people, places, clinging tightly even after they had lost their marvel, their usefulness, fearful of whether anything else quite so wonderful will ever come along again.

With hands filled, we are so much less able to receive the next marvelous thing headed our way. And as Devin showed me tonight, sometimes the act of letting go can be half the fun.

Waving At The World

My son is waving at the shower head as he takes his bath. He is laughing hysterically with joy, waiting for the shower to wave back.

He is nine months old, and loves saying hello to anyone and anything that catches his eye.

His newest friend is the set of windchimes hanging on our porch. He even tries to say it.

It comes out something like this.

“Wi…ch…” Again and again. Over and over.

He waves hello to the pot rack hanging overhead in our kitchen.

“Hello, pot rack,” we say, encouraging him as he waves.

“Hi-row, pt..rk..” He says, trying it out, chuckling to himself with delight.

He waves at a neighbor, a stranger passing by, the tree branches overhead.

“Hello, beautiful world, hello!” we say, as he greets the sunny world out his window with a wave each morning.

Devin James reminds us everyday what a joy it is to be alive.

Beluga Hits The River

Wonders never cease. Just when those in our area of the Delaware River were beginning to recover from the recent floods, a whale arrives to shake things up.

A 15-foot Beluga whale-now identified as named "Helis" and hailing from the St. Lawrence Estuary in Canada--has been spotted swimming up and down the water near Trenton, New Jersey. Passersby gathered to spot the beautiful creature today. Although I wasn’t among those to who saw him, a few lucky neighbors spotted him making playful splashes.

All this talk about whales had made me wonder what made this lone traveler (who if he is true to his breed, usually migrates in pods of two to 25) choose to get so off-course to take a 125-mile detour away from the sea, a 800-mile detour from home.

Everyone has ideas. Perhaps the flooding, some say. Perhaps the plentiful herring and shad in these parts, say others. But no one really knows for sure. Except the whale.

I can relate. Sometimes I get off-course too. Whether it’s worrying about what others think, watching the signs “out there” rather than tuning inward, or simply going with the flow—sometimes too much so—occasionally in my life I have looked around and wondered, “Now how the heck did I get here?”

Whether you call them epiphanies, hitting rock bottom or great awakenings, our detours, however painful, give our lives their character.

Sometimes wrong turns can be great adventures, giving us clarity and new ideas. Often, they give us the opportunity to shed our skins and begin anew, a surprising benefit freshwater has on beluga whales, experts say. Occasionally, detours take us to places more incredible than our wildest dreams, just by “accident.”

So, I say to the Beluga, whatever your reason for being here, be it a personal adventure, wrong turn, or perhaps even a blessing to those like me who needed to look at their surroundings a bit differently—-follow your soul home, my friend.

May you be safe, well, and enriched somehow by being one of the few—if not the only—of your kind to have ever traveled these waters.

Splashing Color

I’ve been painting again. Dragging the brushes through the paint to create bright designs of motion and color feeds my soul in the way nothing else does.

For me, it’s a reverie—connecting me to the depths of my Spirit. I paint for no one but myself, the way a young girl’s diary entries are for her and her alone.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way recommends writing Artist Pages—three pages every morning to connect with what your soul is trying to say—to awaken the artist within in an uninhibited, safe, protected way.

My paintings are my Artist Pages, the seed from which all my other creations, and especially my writing grows. Painting lets me be more myself, somehow.

For me, painting is playing, having fun, allowing my soul to speak in the languages it knows best—color and emotion. When I paint, I don’t think about what my soul is trying to say, I feel it.

When I create the space to hear what my truest self has to say—and allow her to say it the way she most wants to—everything else seems to go my way.

Sitting in the Sun

One of my all-time favorite things to do in the whole world is to sit in the sun. Some of my happiest moments have been spent in this way.

On a first date with my husband, on an unseasonably warm January day, we laid back against the riverbank, my head on his chest, our faces turned upward, soaking up the winter rays. I can still remember way the soil smelled that day, like spring just around the corner.

When I had my public relations business, I would sneak away from my home office out onto the balcony. Tilting my porch chair back on two legs, I’d lift my face upward. I can still remember the way the sun felt as it prickled my skin.

Today, laying on a quilt with my husband in our yard, the glare was so bright, we had to close our eyes. Leaning back, feeling the moist grass between our fingertips, listening to the breathing of our son in the baby monitor, we both took deep breaths and were transported far away.

Just a few moments with Mother Nature are all I need to experience true bliss.

Feeling Grateful

Astrological expert I am not. However, friends who are have told me we are nearing the end of Mercury Retrograde—a three week time period when communications and the normal course of our lives have the tendency of going haywire.

Two days ago, my husband experienced his own taste of either astrological snafu or near miss, depending on how you look at it. While helping neighbors clean up their debris-filled property, a result of the recent flood, he found himself toppling headfirst toward the river. To catch himself, he jerked backward, only to find himself falling sideways onto a steel signpost buried under the debris.

The gash was deep and wide, and we spend the good part of the evening at the emergency ward. He is fine today, but I am finding myself feeling deeply grateful—grateful he is alive, grateful for life, grateful for so many things—health, happiness, home and helpful neighbors. The list could go on and on.

Sometimes when we feel an ounce of the misfortune of the world entering our own realm—-however unwelcome—-we become a lot more cognizant of what we have and compassionate towards the suffering of others.

As Mercury goes direct in a few days, and we experience a solar eclipse this afternoon--a great time for beginning anew, I'm told--I find myself feeling hopeful about the future, and grateful for all I’ve been given.

Waters Overflowing

As I sat today staring at the swirling water pummeling through what had once been our property, I felt closer to the tsunami victims than ever before. Somehow, witnessing the great and destructive power of the Delaware River near our home in this most recent flood connected me to those on the other side of the world in a way that news footage never had.

As we in our neighborhood clung to every bit of information offered about the rise and fall of the river, and all that news meant for us directly, I realized those living only a few miles away were no doubt going on with life as usual.

Just when I was feeling fully immersed in realizing the impact of this flood on “us,” I looked up. There, across the river in clear view was another neighbor, water not just skirting up her property line like ours, but completely covering the first floor of her home.

Suddenly, our troubles didn’t seem to matter so much. Funny how nature has a way of stopping us in our tracks and making us remember how interconnected we all really are.

Laurie Smith

Trust What You Know

Five years ago, I wrote a book. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, the book came to me, rocked my world, and I have never been the same since.

The experience of ushering this book into existence, for me, has been deeply spiritual, deeply personal, and deeply transformational.

On the journey toward sharing this book with others, a journey that is ongoing, I have learned, firsthand how even when we know something is “right” for us on every level, we can, for many reasons, still resist, kicking and screaming.

This blog is dedicated to helping others, who like me, are committed to nurturing their own intimate connection with a power greater than themselves—whatever they know that to be. This site is for anyone who is deeply committed to following where that power is guiding them to go, and moving through any resistance they may feel along the way.

I believe we are all interconnected, and that there are many paths to peace, transformation and divine connection—as many paths as there are people.

This blog is not focused on any specific religion or path, or telling you “how-to” do anything. I believe each and every one of us already have all the answers we seek because we are each intimately and directly connected to a power greater than ourselves.

Instead, I want to create a safe place where like-minded seekers can gather and support each other in trusting what they know. I want to inspire others to honor their unique spiritual experiences, move through fear and barriers, so that together we can create lives--and hopefully also a world--that soar.