Flow

Ever since we decided to make the move to the Dartmouth area for the year, my life has seemed to be governed by what I can only describe as flow (my friend, Jane, if she reads this, will be proud). Flow is hard to pin down and define, but to me, it seems to happen when you open yourself up to all the possibilities of your future by simply paying attention to clues that present themselves and then following them where they lead you. Kind of the way the Scooby Doo gang would always seem to find a tiny fortune-cookie size slip of paper on the ground and declare, "Look! A clue!" Only, real life clues are never that blatant. In essence, flow creates the music and rythm to which my life wants to dance as opposed to what I normally do ... grab the dials of the radio and fiddle with them until I get just the right song with just the right clarity and volume only to find the song is half over by the time I fix it and have to start the process over again. But for now at least, the coincidences and almost predestined events that have unfolded lately can only be described as eerie--thankfully most of the time it's eerie in a good way. I will be writing more about them through the year.

It started right before we were to fly to Boston when I learned that I had placental problems and probably should have been on bedrest. For sure, I should not be on a plane. I didn't know what to do, because quite frankly, I didn't feel that California was the place to be with its overcrowded waiting rooms when I had this incredible medical center and even better insurance waiting for me across the country. So, I called a trusted friend who is expert in psomatic psychology, and please don't ask me to define it as all I know is that it is a sort of therapy that doesn't require you to talk about your mother or cause you to feel worse before you feel better. He asked me to close my eyes and think about where my body wanted to be. (I know ... only in California.) I was facing East and I saw myself in an incredibly bright cheery room with an expert, but loving, medical staff fawning over me.

"Then, that's where you need to be," he said. It was less than a month later that I found myself in a large, cheerful hospital room with the most incredible medical staff on the planet helping me through one of the most painful moments of my life. I was where I needed to be and it was exactly as I pictured it--even if the reason I was there was not what I had hoped for.