sum ergo sum

Thinking about my daughter and her brief 19 years on this planet has given me a new feeling about my own life. I am so fortunate to have had so many beautiful years with her. Her passing has made me embrace my living children with tremendous love and affection. I have a new respect for all the living beings on this planet and a complete appreciation for how we each affect each other’s lives. Every life is important and special and I know we are here to live fully with no regrets. In the last few weeks of her life I had the privilege of spending lots of time with her. Together we found an apartment in Denver. We moved her belongings into our new place, laughed about being schoolgirls and roommates together. We dreamt about or future and all the new possibilities. We talked about how excited she was to graduate from massage school and begin her career. We drank wine from mugs and shared a meatball sub on the couch. Life was so thrilling and bright for her. I know as she was dr...

Thank you all so much for the tremendous outpouring of love and support and compassion and kindness. It has been a nonstop flood of love flowing towards our family. All the food, flowers, gifts and sweet words of comfort have meant so much to our family in this terrible time. We all thank you deeply. A few words from a mother’s perspective. When I was in labor with Juliana the midwife told me, that natural labor is the most amount of pain a body can handle before it dies. Going through her birth brought a sense of confidence in the knowing that I survived. However, I believe she was wrong. Feeling the loss and grief over my daughter’s death is more. Its not only a physical crippling sensation it’s a literal suffocating fog of the deepest sadness I have ever experienced. The worst nightmare materializing and not a thing I can do but feel every ounce of excruciating anguish. What I understand from this experience is pain is Natures Tenderizer. Its an opportunity to intimat...

CrossFit Fitness goals Recently turning 44 and feeling so great in my body I wanted to do a little physical self-evaluation. A measure of my fitness and health so that I could work to improve all of it Today I ran ¼ mile in 82 sec. last time I timed this 400m sprint it was 94 sec. I then continued to work with my dead lift, (which I haven’t been working on due to a torn hamstring.) Today my dead lift is at 205, hamstring feels great. The work out its self was Angie, 100 pull ups, 100 push ups, 100 sit ups and 100 squats. All of these things were inaccessible as a young person. My 20 something body had no idea how to move properly and definitely didn’t have the strength to do all of this work in one day, in my case 1 hr. I am so pleased that all of this is now apart of my everyday life and my world has become so fun. Due to CrossFit my fitness level has sky rocketed. I feel confident about being able to jump into any activity and perform well. Hiking with frie...

 Messy mind~ What we see in others is only possible because it is present in us. “You spot it you got it,” a fun phrase I picked up from Colin Tipping’s book Radical forgiveness. Or how about the old saying when your pointing fingers you have 4 pointing back at you. This is huge. Being able to spot the bits and pieces of our personality that need work, by examining the way we judge and condemn others. I have always been fascinated with the mind and the connection to soul and body. The mind is a marvelous conundrum full of interesting perceptions. It is not to be trusted. Truth is a matter of perspective, everything can be twisted by the mind. My understanding of this concept “you spot it you got it” has put me in a curious place of investigation. I look at what I am judging about other people and then turn it inward. I Find the puzzle pieces of my fractured view and then understand what it is in me that needs some work. What I have come to over the years is I ...

Insight What a crazy world of emotion and illusion and projection I live. Let me explain. Years ago as a young person filled with excitement and wonder I left my family of origin and decided to give life a go. I wanted to test my self, see what I was capable of. I didn’t have a plan just desire to make my life great. I moved to a snowy college town got three jobs and enrolled in school. As life became difficult I started to doubt my self. My excitement became less and less as the workload became harder and harder. I did what most young ladies do when they have no real experience with their own empowerment, I asked for help. I started to believe that I couldn’t do it on my own and I needed to be saved. Damsel in distress! My favorite hero was, and still is, superman. I needed a Superman to rescue me. Sure enough on cue he did. I met my husband and I was saved, we were no longer individuals but a couple and two minds are way better than one. He was full of ideas and ambi...