Tag Archives: Our time in Now

Undefining Me

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Up early and down by the firepit in my Mystical Forest a few mornings ago, enjoying the dance of the seasons Missouri lovingly shares. I found myself pondering, “What is my purpose?” “What are my intentions?”

Shedding any use of labels to define myself, 15 years ago, when I left the inhumanity of what nursing was in Oklahoma. I spent many years in flux.

Being a society, a nation that more than ever has gone to characterizing individuals with labels. Not just words that delineate how people spend the majority of their time, but in the last 10 years, more than ever, mainstream media and Hollywood pushing the agenda of hate-filled labels.

I personally have no use for them. I find them self-limiting. People, over the years trying to define me; my children’s mother (fill in the blank, any one of four), a fitness fanatic, a hippie, (one I laugh at, especially after this year with the pandemic and enormous amounts of people returning to the country, and to the earth, to become more self-sustaining. I guess they all became hippies too.), and the one title I wear with tremendous pride, “just plain weird.”

Raised in a small, mostly Catholic community, the mind set was very narrow, most especially that of my birth mother and her rather large family. It was actually my free-spirited father, who likewise never fit into this community, that I was given the vision to look through a different lens.

Becoming aware when we moved to the hills outside Jefferson City, when my now 33 year old son was 2, and curious beyond all imaginable measures, we are born with a unique spirit. Each of us given a vastly distinct purpose before birth.

Walking the hills near our rural home, pushing my inquisitive toddler in his stroller, the shackles and chains imposed on me by my mother and her family, and the Catholic school and church, were finally released. I realized there was enormous untapped potential that lay within.

I was to spend the next decade exploring that potential as I nurtured not only my oldest high-spirited son, delving into his many gifts and talents, but also the addition of his two younger brothers, beginning to explore theirs as well.

A nurturer and healer at heart, at this point, also one by profession, as I began my career as a critical care nurse. I worked intensive care, running the gamut of health related maladies and life threatening traumas. What I viewed daily kept me keenly aware of living in the moment and that my time with them was temporary.

Being an incredibly intuitive, empathic person, I didn’t parent with a “cookie cutter” mentality, nor did I try to relive my childhood through them. Instead, I gave each of them attention where they needed it, including my now 14 year old daughter. They each had completely different personalities, therefore, completely different life purposes

I would/do tell them, “Be yourself! I can’t tell you who that is, but I will help you as much as I can to discover it.” My most important intention to instill in them being, “Have integrity!”

My many years of nursing had taught me innumerable valuable lessons. One of them being, your status and your wealth will one day mean nothing. If you can stand solid and strong in who you are, you will be able to withstand any storm. Thus far, the people they have become, they’ve proven my concept inherently accurate.

As my long, immensely rewarding decades of parenting children under the age of 18 gracefully eases into its final years, with the assistance of the pandemic allowing me to pull even deeper inward, I remain constant in my dynamic state. Undefinable, but ever moving towards a better version of myself. Searching even more closely for God’s/the Universe’s larger life’s purpose.

My challenge to all … Put down the labels! They are so self-limiting. For yourself, and for others around you. Put worry and fear aside! Open your hearts!

It is certain change is at our door. Help promote that change in an upward trend. It’s through broadening the expanse of our minds, our possibilities, that this country will turn back in a more positive curative direction.

I for one, know I will remain undefinable. I will keep evolving into the best version of me. Now more than ever, I know it’s a necessity … for the Revolution Begins With Me.