Amazement

            When I take the time to notice, there is always something amazing happening! 
                                                     Life itself is amazing! 


     Easily, many people become desensitized by the cultures we are a part of.  Incredible things are happening all around us, everyday.  Essential tools of life that we could not live without are often forgotten or assumed.  The fact that we continue to breathe, without thinking about it, or that we can break a bone and our bodies will regenerate and heal, again and again, is so amazing!  There is so much to be grateful for!

     Pregnancy and birth are seen all the time and might even be described as a miracle, but are often so routinely viewed that some of the sacredness of it can be lost in it's wake.  I am so grateful to be a healthy woman and to know how to grow life from within me and give birth to healthy children without even knowing how I do it and while hardly even thinking about it!  This is the most incredible thing I can imagine, the most amazing thing I could ever do.

     Satori is amazing.  Her lessons to me are amazing. Her lessons to so many others are amazing.  So many people who have heard of her passing have paused to hold their loved ones.  Several people I know who have been subdued by miscarriages have lifted pain that they had not known they would ever be able to lift, by sharing a part of Satori's blessings.  And our family and community has shared her blessing in being drawn together and strengthened in random ways of sharing in her life and death.

     One blessing I want to share ("my plug," I think and silently laugh) that I have found amazing is that J.C. Penny has a memorial package.  We had a portrait session there when Satori was 12 days old.  When we called to ask if we could buy more pictures from that day, we were offered a c.d. with copy rights waved and 6 free portrait sheets!  How beautiful that is!  These are the pictures I am sharing today.  Many thanks to this company for its generosity and compassion.  And how sad that this is common enough for this package to exist.  Blessings to all the other families who have lost their loved ones and sadly, all those who will.

     
     I believe the greatest gift Satori has given us all, is to remind us to drop into our hearts and to center ourselves from a position of love.  Some people believe that humans use approximately 99.75 percent of their brains every day, while the remaining .25 percent of our actions are guided through "intuition."  When we really check in with ourselves we are always directed in the best possible way.  To do this, we must clear our minds and go deep into our hearts.  This is who Satori Inchante is: the heart of awakening!  This is amazing!


     I will always hold our angel in my heart.  The only way I could ever really know her was from within. So while my heart feels such a deep and horrid heaviness, I call to her for strength and feel her love to lift my heart.  And no, it does not always happen so easily.  But when I am distraught with pain and thinking too much, I know I can think about who she is.  She is love.  And her love comes from her into me and from me into her and from us into all things.  Like a mirrored rainbow of all colors blended into all of life, shining into the pain and lifting it out of darkness.
 
    
 
 
     I am beginning on a sort of spiritual walk (in the case of this blog, perhaps spiritual "talk") to carry on her story, as I had carried her and will always hold her in my heart.  I do this so that it might help other people who feel this pain, or any kind of pain or heaviness.  And so that I continue to release my own weights from within.  And furthermore, to set free her love and messages to the world, even if only by putting it into words and releasing it...so that we may all feel her love and grow from within our spirits.




     Sometimes grieving involves allowing the body to take on illness and purge it likewise.  I have been very dedicated to honoring all the chaotic manifestations of grief as it occurs in myself and my family, while being very careful not to become ill so I remain strong for my family.  After a few late nights of blogging last week, I began feeling very run down and on the verge on illness. Blogging, for me needs to be done in the late night hours after my "wild ones" go to sleep, which is drains my ability to re-charge fully.  I acknowledge this and honor myself and my family by resting when I need to and honor all of life by writing when I am able.   Understandably, blogging will be somewhat sporadic. 

     One realization I have had is that strength does not mean taking on extra all by myself.  Strength is allowing myself to be present for the needs of my family, my own needs and those of other people, while drawing strength in from those who offer it, the earth and the many angels surrounding us in light, love and protective guidance...one source of which is my beautiful daughter, our beloved angel Satori.  This is amazing!

                                     "All things in life offer us opportunities to learn and grow... 

                                     sometimes those lessons are not without tears...

    those tears are to me a spring rain washing away the solemn grey of winter's sorrows.

                                     Tears that clear the panes of our greenhouses

                                         for songs of sunshine, urging us to grow.

                                                From the husky hearts of pain

                                        such seeds of love can only burst  forth anew

                                          with stouter stems and brighter blooms..." 

                                  ( ~ a universal message through my living angel of light, Michael ~ )             







  

The Satori Inchante Memorial Fund

                                Understanding the loss of a loved one is difficult.  
                         Coping with the loss of a loved one is even more challenging. 
                                Losing a baby has got to be one of the hardest, 
                                               most unimaginable things,
                                         even for me as I am going through it. 

     It is the oddest thing to feel I understand this great loss emotionally, physically and spiritually while at the same time feeling I do not understand any of this!

     Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me?  Perhaps she is on a great baby vacation and coming back I think...I don't leave my babies.  We go to the store together, to the park together, eat, sleep,cuddle and play together.  My kids are so closely bonded, almost always together.  I would have anxiety to be away from my infant for any length of time and refuse to do it.  But now she is gone and not ever coming back into her body.  

 

      I understand there are reasons she has transcended.  I understand the reasons are sometimes hard to understand.  I constantly have to remind myself that on a soul level ~ a spiritual level ~ I really do understand, which is what really gets me through this.  And yet I am still in early grieving.  I am still in shock and life feels surreal.

     I am not ready to face the world.  Every day tasks can seem so much more challenging right now.  And my children need my love and support to help them cope as each one of them is processing in his own way.  
 
   My husband however has had to go back to work and had less support.  I feel for him.  He absolutely needed to take a couple weeks off of work before he could function well enough to do his job.  His grieving manifested into a sort of insomnia at first and functioning normally was impossible.  But as head of the household, he pulled it together for his remaining family as our bills and now, the extra expenses keeps adding up.

The night Satori passed into the light, weird things began to happen.  Earlier that night, my oldest son opened the refrigerator door and the whole thing fell off!  The door fell in a manner that the inside hit the tile, breaking some of the shelves and the items on them.  At the same time, my 2 year old woke up screaming inconsolably. I was unable to even tend to the disaster because I needed to be with him and would not leave him to cry and walk into broken glass.

      Because we have not yet been able to function as our normal selves, the refrigerator, as I write, remains broken.  The door has fallen off a few more times, breaking the handle off of the door.

     That night the interior lights in the van also quit working.  The brakes sound progressively worse, an oil change is needed and the engine now has a problem.   

The kids became sick within days of her passing and I immediately began feeling pain in my abdomen, which I feel as I write this.
 

     
     But worse, our beloved cat, whom is my first companion into my adult family, is suddenly having health issues.  At first she was vomiting and falling into it.  Then only foam came up and now she tries to vomit but nothing comes up because she has quit eating.  When she falls out, it reminds me of the beginning of a seizure, but there is no shaking and she recovers quickly.  She is now so skinny and there is a green/yellow color around her ears, displaying signs of liver or kidney/urinary tract problems.

     If there was ever a time our family needs love and support, it is now.  And we have been so blessed to receive this in much variety!  Each person has something unique and special about them that can be shared. And so much thanks we give to everyone who has offered support and compassion. This means everything to our family.  I can not imagine going through this alone.

   One of these gifts came from a beautiful friend who helped me set up this blog and a pay pal account.  She even started this draft for me and included the pay pal link for the "Satori Inchante Memorial Fund." 



Satori has given so many gifts to me and to so many people.  One of these great gifts is that her transcendence has re-solidified the bond in many of my relationships. There are so many lessons I am learning or will learn from this experience.  One of these is the need that I have to receive right now, and to know that as a very giving person, it is OK for me and my family to receive right now.  



As individuals and as a family, we have never experienced any trauma as great as this before and I pray we never have to again.  Even my 2 year old says: "I want my baby, I want my baby!"  

If anyone reads this and makes a choice to donate even five or ten dollars to my family, I want to thank you and bless you right now!  And even if you can not donate money, I still want to bless you and thank you for sharing in our story, our very difficult story.

                                         Enjoy every precious moment,
         for life is full of moments and there are no guarantees besides death itself.

                                          ~ In love and light we all shine ~

Our Angel: Blessings and Tragedy

     To begin on a joyful note, I want to share part of the story of the coming of our angel Satori Inchante.  Her name is significant of many things, in many ways for our family. Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for "awakening, enlightenment."  Inchante comes from her Native American heritage.  In short, it is a Lakota term translating: "the heart of."  Together this translates: "the heart of awakening."  As the story is revealed, very deep meaning comes from the story of who she is, the story of our family, the heart of awakening for us and for many.

     After birthing, parenting and loving three boys, Satori finally blessed us with her arrival; my first born daughter.  I still almost can't believe I finally birthed a girl!  I felt her presence from the spirit world ever since my first son was born 13 years ago.  What an absolute blessing and honor to hold her in my womb and so peacefully bring her into the world in the warm waters of our birthing pool, in the sacred space of our home.
     She exited my body and entered our world on the evening of December 5, 2012.  She was so beautiful, full of color, weighing 8 lbs, 5oz.  After we exited our birthing pool, I rinsed off and headed to bed with her for as many days as I could.  Because she was my fourth child, the holidays were approaching, my husband had to quickly return to work and my sister-in-law was about to unexpectedly move into our house, our nesting time was a bit shorter than usual.  But we did our best to keep climbing back into bed as much as possible for the first 2 weeks to work on nursing, resting and bonding when we were able.  At 2 weeks old, with the arrival of my husband's sister, I was ultimately thrown out of our nesting state.

     16 days after Satori's birth was the winter solstice, referred to as "the apocalypse."   While many people called this "the end of the world," this time actually is about a time of transition, better known as a "spiritual awakening,"  which I will write more about later as it fully relates to our whole experience.  All of the holidays that occur in this season were now well under way.  We were very busy, especially as I was the only driver in the house and had to relay my husband to work and back as well as help my sister-in-law adjust to a new city, help her find a job and then take her to work and back between 2 jobs (4 times a day round trip oftentimes, plus 2 times there and back for my husband and everyone's extended errands.) And then we had two sets of out of town company visit consecutively!  This is just a portion of the chaos, also including homeschooling and re-adjustments for my other baby, now 2 and for the family as a whole.

    I made sure to have special time with all of my children, often holding Satori and nursing her while I was busy with the boys or cooking.  And yet I feel regretful now that there was so much business and so much time in the car during these sacred newborn weeks...

     I called her my sleeping angel as so much of her life at this time was spent sleeping.  I thought it was a blessing, being such a busy mama, still healing from our birth and looking forward to the rest of our lives awake together.  And now I regret how many times I laid her down to sleep while I tended to her brothers and the piles of dishes and laundry.

     It pains me so very, very deeply how suddenly and how profoundly the lives of my family and myself changed so quickly.  On February 10, 2013 our very precious and beautiful angel of light crossed over, back into the realm of the spirit world she had just come from.  I thought, mistakenly, that I would be with her into my years as an old woman, present while she most likely would one day choose to carry on the linage of our family.  I wanted so badly to share the bond that only a mother and daughter attains.  At the time of her death, I was still in awe that I finally had my long awaited baby girl with me in life!

      I lost my baby before I even had lost the weight from carrying her in me.  Before my body had healed.  Before she had begun to awaken more.  We had only just received her name after many weeks of asking for it to be revealed to us.  I never got to experience so much of her.  I never got to watch her become whomever she would beautifully be!  And oh how it hurts!  How very painful it is... To be a mother without her child, without my baby girl.  My breasts are still filling with milk to sustain her 3 weeks later...how I wish I could sustain her.  How I long to hold her.  I never even got to put a dress on her or watch her hair grow long and braid it...the things this mother of three boys longed for quietly all these years.
     
     And I am so immersed in my mothering!  I feel alive and happy mothering, as if it were the only thing I were born to do, to nurture these amazing souls.  And though I treasure each one of my boys so incredibly, I always knew she was connected to me.  I always knew she was coming!  And I waited so long, so patiently for her.
     
     And yet, just as I knew she was there all those years, I know she is still present and always will be.  She really is our angel, just as I called her since the time of her birth.  Now she is invisible.  No I cannot hold her, see her, cuddle her, feed her.  But I can go deep into my heart and feel her.  I can talk to her and learn to hear her.  My children and husband and I have her as a spirit guide to protect us.  And while I long for her in the body of my child again, I try to remember how blessed we are that one of our angels manifested into a body, if only for a moment, to bless us and allow us to see her in a form somewhat different than she now is, and yet the same, still with us, always.

     Our story will unravel in many different ways and times as it is meant to.  But it is important that I share our story, her story, as I am able.  Her life and transition called death did not happen in vain.  She is part of a greater awakening of this planet and for many souls who share space on earth during this evolutionary time.  And as time progresses, her existence; the revealing of her truth and joy and the spreading of her innocence and love will touch many and only become clearer as to what this experience is really about.
     
     The cause of her passing is the kind that is unknown, often referred to as SIDS.  And yet I understand it on a soul level, that it was her agreement to be here just a short time and she simply zapped out of her body, peacefully in her sleep...peacefully how she had entered into this life from the womb only 8 weeks before.  8 weeks, the number of infinity.  Satori is truly infinite!

My Message to You

  

I’m not here to console you; I’m only here to give you a message, from the

 product of your love.

Watch the sky, find that shining that twinkles just right, that’s my glistening 

eyes and that’s where you will find me. 

In the morning crisp air, with a soft kiss on your nose, that’s where you will 

find me. 

That desert snow fall that makes the hairs stand up, that’s my arms around 

your neck, and that’s where you will find me. 

When you feel that tug on your heart when you watch my brothers play, that’s  

me hugging your heart, and that’s where you will find me. 

You will find me in mommy’s and daddy’s eyes, in every crashed wave, in 

every rain fall, in every sprouted flower.  This world needed me to spread my 

energy, my innocence and love into everything and everyone, so that’s where  

you will find me. 

I’m with you and everyone and everything you touch. 

Close your eyes and take a breath, and that’s where you will find me. 

            With Peace and Love Forever and Always, 

Satori