May 1st to October 1st, 2018 is a time when I will be focusing even more on the development and birth of my child, entering a miraculous portal of being.

Some resources I’ve found useful during pregnancy & want to share:

* “Nurture: A Modern Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, Early Motherhood – and Trusting Yourself and Your Body” by Erica Chidi Cohen

* Prenatal Yoga with Cara Costello

* The Positive Birth Company with Siobhan Miller

* Pregnancy Etiquette article by Jessica N. Turner

* On Being with Krista Tippett

A poem for you by Lucille Clifton.

“blessing the boats”

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Treya Killam Wilber shares incredible insights into living, dying, illness, and supporting each other in an article published in 1988, one year before her death.

“Attitudes and Cancer: What Kind of Help Really Helps?” centers us in the value of listening. I recommend this thoughtful, vital resource to everyone.

Hear Treya yourself, with this link to a short video recording here.

There’s also a book written with her partner about their journey together through the “Spirituality and Healing in the life and death of Treya Killam Wilber .” I’m going to be reading “Grace and Grit” soon.

Stock your first aid kit: http://www.kamwostore.com/Yunnan-Baiyao-Powder-p/sup00101.htm

Soothe soreness, encourage circulation, reduce scars with White Pine Trauma Balm: http://www.whitepineherbs.com/products/trauma-balm

Get thee some tick bite essentials: http://accordacupuncture.com/shoppe/lyme-treatment/

Find a Community Acupuncture Clinic: https://www.pocacoop.com/clinics/

Wonder a wonder and press “cast”: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l= .

Here we are in February of 2016, and on a day that has meaning of all kinds or none at all. I like to celebrate love, and want to share something from an author I love in honor of whatever this day means to you.

Annie Dillard’s writing is rooted in the Tao, and the graphic descriptions of nature are sometimes sharp as they are in this piece. If you choose not to follow the link to the full short story, may this serve as your valentine:

“The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.”

– Annie Dillard, “Living Like Weasels”

Full short story HERE.