Another year has ended and a new one begins…  

As the light subtly begins it’s return, I find myself going even more deeply in, wishing almost that winter was just at it’s brink.  I finally feel like all is wrapped up, feasts and festivities, harvests and projects and all that completes an abundant year, filling me with such a deep gratitude I have hardly yet expressed.

So much awaits, so much to be excited about, so many directions to choose from for my busy hands and mind…but I hesitate looking around at the possible roads I could go down and knowing now, there is really only one place to go… and that place is in.

My second child is due in the end of February and though the new year calls out with possibility of new seeds to plant, new challenges, new opportunities and resolutions to take on, I know deeply that my real work is just to be better at what I am already, a present and patient mother.  Yes I will garden and make things and buzz around like a little bee, but I really wanted another baby and if having another is anything like the first,  I am in for a whole new birth of myself.

Maybe not as a mother, as that I am becoming more and more each day, I really don’t know what this birth will bring besides a baby, but I do know I can’t know and preparing for the not knowing is the work I must do right now.  How does one then prepare for the mysteries life will bring, how do we surrender to the deep unknown.  Our culture loves our resolutions and our intentions, leading us to believe that we are the masters of our own destiny…and maybe we are or at least the masters of our own minds…but how do we prepare for what we do not know, what we cannot see, contrive or control?

Well, I guess it is mostly becoming more and more present in each moment, especially those testy ones where things don’t go our way or as we had envisioned or planned.  Arrive to what is with a clear mind and open heart may be the best preparation one can do to birth, be birthed and really to live happily with what is.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a planner, even a manifester and woman of great will and vision, but right now most of that work is done…the seeds have been planted, the arrows aimed.  Now the softer, gentler, more accepting me must arrive and unpack, settle in and get comfy, because there is very little I can do besides be open and patient while waiting for baby, savoring every sweetness before thing change.

So here we sit, settling into a stillness yet trying to keep a good tempo, as we don’t want to get too still that a birth will rudely awaken us.  So awake and ready, open and calm, patent and accepting… lots of little mantras to hum along while this third trimester ripens my belly and my family into the best state of preparedness one can hope for as our new year blooms us along.