WE ARE NOT ALONE

"The one comfort that all of us can take is that we are not the 
only people on the planet who have something to swim against. 
We are not alone in our battle to disprove a statistic."

SIGNS OF LIFE
By Natalie Taylor

Everyone has their something. Their thing. That sad part of life, or that difficult part, or that self-doubting part that makes living just a little bit harder sometimes.

And it's good for each of us to remember this as we go through our daily lives.

It's so easy to view life through our own tunnel-vision... it seems quite second nature, in fact, to see every situation only as it might affect me: good or bad. I do this. Of course! Who doesn't?

I visited New York City for 2 days and man, if everybody wasn't in my way! There was somebody blocking my path at every turn. We went to the American Museum of Natural History, and my favorite exhibit was closed due to a private party. Didn't those people know that we were only there for those few hours and I wanted to show my 2-year-old daughter the life-sized blue whale? Why were they doing that to me? This is, perhaps, a petty example. But what I often forget to think about is that everyone is just trying to live their life, too. They have somewhere they need to go - and maybe I'm getting in their way. They might be celebrating a very special once-in-a-lifetime occasion at the museum. Who knows?

In Signs of Life, by Natalie Taylor, she loses her husband in a freak accident just over a year after they were married... and she was 5-months pregnant with their first child. Awful - yes. But one of the things I noticed as I was reading it was that she had incredible amounts of support and love from her husband's family and friends. Even though they were going through their own loss, their own grief - losing a son, losing a brother, losing a life-long friend - all of those people also looked beyond their own pain and saw Natalie grieving and helped her in whatever way they could, however they thought they knew how.

John Donne says "No man is an island..." and I couldn't agree more. There are so many parts of life that would be so much harder to get through without someone to lean on - or many someones! And there are hopefully an equal or greater number of things in life that would be so much less joyous if we didn't have someone - or many someones - to share them with.

It's easy to slip into the self-loathing or the "why me" places. But I'm continuing to learn that it's much better when I think of the bigger picture. Harder - yes. But better.

For more quotes collected from this book, visit Borrowing Wisdom. 

Disclosure: I received a copy of Natalie Taylor's SIGNS OF LIFE to read and discuss as a member of the online book club From Left to Write. The thoughts and opinions expressed above are my own. Click here to purchase your own copy of this book.

BEDDING FOR A BIG GIRL

A baby no longer, my daughter is well on her way into true KID-dom.

We don't have the Terrible Twos - we have the Independent Twos. And I'm fine with that.

One of the things she's SO proud of is her new Big Girl Bed... complete with painted quotes by Papa Ayers and fun alphabet bedding.

And although she is very pleased with herself when she can get in and out of the bed "all by myself"... and that she can turn on and off the light switch "all by myself"... it's still really nice when Daddy cuddles up and reads to her, so she doesn't have to do that all by herself.

BOY BUDDIES

Our daughter happens to have 2 favorite boy buddies: Eric & Alan. She loves them. A lot.

PERSONIFY THE CHARACTERISTICS YOU HOPE TO SEE IN THE WORLD AROUND YOU

BIG CHANGES

"[It's] true what the strategists say about hearts and minds - you have to win them both. 
We will change our ways significantly as a nation not when some laws tell us we have to... but when we want to."

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver

Almost a year ago, my husband and I started talking about pursuing a very different kind of life.

I was a year into my thirties and he had one more to go. We recently celebrated our first child's first birthday. We lived in New York City and both had jobs with Big Titles at Important Theatre Companies (theatre with an "re", which is how you know it's legit). We had a throng of friends and colleagues with whom we brunched and had discussions about art and life. And paychecks sufficient enough to provide for a 2-bedroom apartment (with incredible landlords who baked us homemade cookies and Greek dishes), a superb and loving Montessori day care environment for our daughter (since we both had to bring home the bacon), and enough discretionary funds to dine out several times per week, take in the occasional movie at $13.50 each, and even splurge for a taxi once in a while.

Becoming a mother was something of a paradigm shift for me. I remember vivid moments of recognizing true animal instincts within myself when I felt my daughter needed protecting. My months of reading about the wonders of breast-feeding left me searching for more information about how to provide the best solid foods for my baby once that transition was upon us - and that led to eye-opening (and somewhat frightening) documentaries like Food, Inc. And though I'm not sure I could honestly claim that Food, Inc. was the catalyst, my husband and I began to fall into a documentary rabbit hole with stops at the doors of No Impact Man, Waiting for Superman, and Blind Spot... spilling us out on the other side of the looking glass, and leaving us spinning with dozens of questions about what kind of world our daughter would live in when she was in her thirties.

These concerns about food production, environmental impact, educational deficiencies, and oil dependency drove us to months of reading everything we could get our hands on, (including possibly biting off more than we could chew with an abundant Amazon book order) so that we could prepare ourselves - as individuals, as a couple, as parents - for an unpredictable future. We were starting to firmly believe that "the next twenty years are going to look very different than the last twenty" and we knew deep down that we would soon be making big changes.

One of the pillars of our many life-altering discussions was the clear desire to live closer to family, particularly our parents. In the summer, we came to the decision that, when the time felt right, we would move to the Northern Maryland town where my husband grew up... infinitely closer to his parents and other family members, and a few hours closer to mine in Ohio. Yes, this would be a culture shift - a big change from our life as New Yorkers for the previous decade - but we felt it was important, necessary even. So with several months of planning, saving, finally resigning from our Big Title jobs, and saying our goodbyes to dear friends - we made the move just one week ago and we are now embarking on what promises to be a fascinating journey. Learning how to grow our own food, to be more self-sufficient, will be among the very first steps. 

In my last week at the Important Theatre Company, a friend and co-worker of mine landed a job working for the Obama campaign. I remarked to her that our departing emails would be so different, hers reading something like, "Amy is leaving us to work for the President of the United States!" and mine somewhere along the lines of, "Rachel is going to - um - grow potatoes."

Another colleague of mine came up to me: You aren't really going to go grow potatoes, are you? Because if you are, we need to talk. I believe she meant well by that comment. I do. Possibly she was eluding to my excellent skills in administration and management. At the time, I shrugged in response, but my heart's answer feels clear to me now: Yes, I am. I am going to go grow potatoes.

For all the delicious-sounding recipes found in this book, check out AnimalVegetableMiracle.com.

For more quotes collected from this book, visit Borrowing Wisdom. 

Disclosure: I received a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE to read and discuss as a member of the online book club From Left to Write. The thoughts and opinions expressed above are my own. Click here to purchase your own copy of this book.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRACE

Happy 2nd Birthday to my daughter, Grace.
You take up so much room in my heart!

NOELLEPHANT

My younger cousin, Noelle, suddenly turned into this awesome 20-year-old... well, okay, it probably wasn't all that sudden. But as she and her family live on the west coast and we live on the east coast, we only see each other once every few years. Tragic! She, her younger sister Jillian, and their parents are super lovely people - and I wish we could see them more often.

My uncle was always one of my favorite relatives, because he was funny and taught me how to play pool and played the guitar. He told me stories about how he drove from Ohio to California when he was college-aged, and I thought that was so cool. Then one Christmas, when I wasn't yet 10, he brought home a great lady he met out west and we all celebrated their engagement! I was in middle school when Noelle was born and I've enjoyed watching her, mostly from afar, grow up and become her own person.

Thanks to the wonders of technology and the World Wide Web, I've been able to "see" them more often (hello, facebook). And now, Noelle has her own blog: Noellephant. Great name, no? I am so looking forward to hearing more of her own voice and reading about her adventures. Especially with her infectious smile and sense of humor.

And Jillian's in high school already (what?!). I love watching these two lovely ladies become their true selves... especially when their true selves are super cool.