Forever 26? NOT. Here's why....

 

Happy happy birthday my Love XO!

My daughter died in 2015 and she had just turned 26 years old. She had a sickness for a year and a half, and 12 doctors on two coasts who never figured out for sure what made this sickness. And we could not stop it leading to her (what I realize now) full recovery, which didn't take place on Earth.

But she is fully recovered and very much alive nonetheless. I've learned so much from her since her transition, and I am most grateful for her ongoing presence and her teaching me about what comes after.

She loved EVERYTHING from very small... 

To a little bit bigger...

To even bigger...

Such as tiny little Earth creatures, animals who accompanied her on her Earth journey, and her work as a studio photographer.

Jess in her element. Camera an extension of her body.

Looking up. She's taught me to do this too.

She loved me. So well.

She still does.

So here's why I can't say "forever 26" when I talk about her now. After her transition. Because she's still very much alive. Because she's taken everything she's learned back to her Heaven and she gets to ride with it in as much detail as she likes for as long as she likes with whatever companions she chooses out of all that ever was, is now, or ever will be. Wow.

Yep. She's taught me that TIME is simultaneous in her Heaven, so there's no past, present or future, just whatever she chooses to focus on.

AND she's taught me that there are no Earth boundaries in her Heaven, so she can experience whatever she wants to. The only limitation is her Celestial gift of imagination, which belongs to each of us. (Yay!)

Imagine that.

She's also taught me that she's had past lives. And we can access our memories of those right here and now by experiencing something called Past Life Regression. It's real. It's connection to the experience of our souls. And it's really cool!

And in her past lives, (as well as my own) we've BEEN married. We've had children. Families. Love. And we've been heroes and victims. We've been free in some lives and chained in others, by people as well as substances and the vagaries of life. We've ruled and we've slaved. We've caused harm. We've hated. We've healed. We've done everything. All of it. And we continue to do that, all of us, as we choose.

And there is no judgment except our own. She's taught me that after we transition back to Home, we feel all that we've caused and we decide on a deep, soul level what we want to do with that. And we come around again, bringing with us our soul choices. 

She's taught me that even though we go back Home, to our Heavens, we retain memory of our life experiences and we retain emotion as well as individuality. She's taught me that the soul is composed of ALL our memories and experiences. And where there's love, we often experience many lives together with our beloveds. Over and over again, in different ways. Yay!! We play. We're safe. Because we're essentially immortal.

Like Nature teaches us, we cycle back and forth, back and forth, between our Heavens and our Earth and other places too. To experience life. And life is just the spark of the divine b e i n g.

She has soared. She still does!

Let us celebrate the soaring of our beloveds. We come naked to this world but not without so very many gifts from our Creator, the best of which is Life itself. Experience.

Happy journeys my beloved. Always.

So when I think about my Celestial daughter who transitioned in 2015, I cannot say "forever 26." I just can't. She is. She IS. We are. We ARE. I am. I AM.

Wow that's so cool.

I breathe the air, something in me connecting to all the creatures here on this planet who also have physical systems that breathe the air, they're alive. And I watch the sun, rise, set. 

It's really not going up or down, but around.

Like us.

Good to ponder, that....

Namaste,

~Jen

 

What Makes the Best Present Ever

 

Colors! Read below to find out more....

Nope. The best present ever is not a thing, even though I uploaded a photo of this lovely spice rack.

The BEST PRESENT EVER is my husband's observation of the blossoming that's going on inside of me and his support of it.

His present made me cry when I opened it. Because his present said "I care. I see. I'm right here with you."

I work nights. I'm an artist. I write, I paint, I draw, I make beautiful beadwork, and I work nights because the sounds of the day are rather invasive and in order to listen, which is a huge component of all the work I do, I need quiet. With leaf blowers and traffic and people banging about, I can't hear, so I work nights.

Most times I'm in my studio. But sometimes I putter around the house quietly so as not to wake those sleeping. And one of my putterings lately involved rejuvenation. I noticed that on my kitchen counter I had something that connects me with my Celestial daughter's physical presence. When she moved into her new apartment in Oregon in 2012, I sent her a spice rack. Well, food is love, right? So I contributed to her kitchen, her cooking, and her love of others. When I bought it for her, I bought one for me too, just exactly like hers.

When she died in 2015, I did not bring hers home, but I guarded the one I had just like hers for a long, long time. It sat on my kitchen counter by the stove and I didn't use the spices, I saved them.

This year I am definitely feeling some sunshine and sparkle in my life and I want to push that out into all the corners and cubbies so I emptied all those spices never used, and I filled up a tall container with soapy bubbles and soaked them for several days. That container sat on the counter for a while. Then I rinsed them with vinegar and set them up to dry.

My intention was to buy new spices and fill these lovely containers up and use them! But I had been a single Mom for several years and knew the stretch of the budget and had been worrying in my mind about how I would be able to afford all these new spices even now - a luxury indeed. I figured I'd be able to sneak one or two in on the grocery bill every few weeks without taxing the budget overmuch.

Well Christmas came. And my husband handed me a box that was beautifully wrapped. I didn't know what was in it. It's been years since I've been surprised at Christmas because usually we talk about what we might like or need, and the other makes it happen, but we hadn't talked about this.

I opened the box. Inside there were almost 18 brand new little bottles filled with colorful fragrant spices. WOW.

I just sat there and cried. Because my husband had noticed. He had swooped in and fulfilled a need that I didn't even think to share with him. 

I said, "How did you know?"

He said, "Well I saw them on the counter and realized you were washing them and sort of stepping into bringing life to things and I wanted to support that."

Oh. Oh!

He went to three different stores to even be able to find all the different spices. And there was one he couldn't find. I'll tell you about it in a minute. ALL of these spices I use in our cooking all the time (from the jars that we keep in the cabinet over the stove), so this was a very cool thing he did. I spent an evening recently refilling these lovely containers and noticed that all of a sudden they were all very colorful! 10+ years of no use had made the old spices fade, no color, no flavor, just sitting there without appreciation, being guarded. Now they were absolutely vibrant! AND I'm using them, and every time I do, I feel the love of my daughter, the love between me and anyone I'm cooking for, and the love of my sweet husband.

Names are on the top of each container, so yummy!

So he was able to get all but one of the spices, and that was fennel. He went all over town, no fennel anywhere. He googled it but search terms are tricky so he was unable to come up with fennel as an herb or spice.

So I googled it and I can't even tell you how much fun that turned out to be so I'm going to share it with you.

I discovered a FABULOUS web site called nuts.com, where I was able to find fennel seed, which has to be ground with a mortar and pestle, no problem, we do that all the time.... 

Rob uses this to make his Greek seasoning,
which uses 13 spices, SO GOOD!!

But the site where we found the fennel seed is worth sharing because it's a business worth supporting for sure. Lots of organic stuff, and their marketing FAR surpasses anything else I've seen except for maybe the Geico lizard, who amuses me to no end. It is a delight. Here we go!

How is that for TOO CUTE ENTIRELY?! RIGHT?! I know!!!!

So we were able to fill up the last spice, and it was a true delight, as is using my lovely rejuvenated spices to make good food to share with all my Lovies.

Thank you Rob. Very special Christmas present indeed. He noticed, sigh...I am a lucky girl indeed.

Namaste, and do check out nuts.com because they have lots of other good stuff too!

~Jen