constant thinking and worry, and my resistance to let go of that which I said I no longer wanted. I also began to notice how grace appeared in my life in simple and small, yet miraculous, outcomes. For example, the willingness of the property owner to work with us when we were behind on rent payments, the manner in which I was led to the exact work situation and professional environment that served as “fertile soil” to enhance my personal growth, and the like-minded individuals I met along the way were but a few examples of how grace unfolded. These experiences, in the manner and time in which they occurred, pushed me to thoroughly examine my self-sabotaging habits, beliefs, emotional patterns, and ways of perceiving and being in the world. It was not pretty to look at the mess I had orchestrated, but, when you sincerely want change, you can no longer hide. You won’t be allowed to hide because, in order to grow, you will have to take responsibility for everything in your life. Everything.
Now, years later, as I read the guidance, it makes perfect sense. I share this with you because I have come to see that although the guidance was pivotal for me and came through me, it is not solely meant for me. It is also meant for those who find themselves in similar situations of distress, and are open and willing to cultivate a connection with a higher consciousness to better discern where life is trying to lead them.
With repetition and simplicity, the guidance addressed the following themes of the human condition:
In addition to the loving energy I felt as the guidance came through, I began to feel a bit calmer each day. Over time, my mind began to interpret fewer situations as stressful. I was able to remain more centered and be less agitated by external events. I wasn’t as susceptible to being emotionally triggered into a state of fear, anxiety, anger, impatience, sadness, or depression. I did still experience these emotions. However, I became less and less pulled around by them. There was less agony and, instead, more openness to new possibilities.
Knowing that we can see ourselves in the stories of others, it is my sincerest wish that the guidance from these meditations is as helpful to you as it has been for me. It is my wish that you will grow to trust yourself; that you will trust the inner guidance that is available and within you. It is my hope that you will seek out the opportunities for personal growth that lie in mundane and long-term struggles, and come to know that nothing we experience in this life is futile. With hindsight, it becomes clear that struggle and triumph both serve a higher purpose for personal growth. And finally, it is my greatest hope that you too will have the courage to let your crisis become the catalyst that ultimately leads you onto your highest life path. So often it is said that “meditation helps” until it almost seems like a redundant Hallmark-ish cliché. I can honestly say this is absolutely true. Meditation does help. Meditation can help.
It began in a way many great ideas come about, over a dinner conversation; or at least what are hoped to be great ideas. It is a tranquil, sunny California afternoon. Dennis and I drive out to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner and to pick up Greyson and Mckenna. From the start, my mother isn’t merely interested in being Granny. She is interested in co-parenting. She wants to be a part of every single aspect of her grandchildren’s lives, including supporting a single-family housing situation for them.
At the time, Dennis and I live in a two-bedroom apartment. We want to buy a house, but the housing prices in Los Angeles are out of control. A single-family home in LA would sell for close to $600,000, and would likely require major renovations!
Although Dennis is doing extremely well with work, and our income is close to $80,000, we know we won’t qualify for a home loan. His credit history is okay, and mine consists of fickle “relationships” with Nordstrom, Citibank, Discover, and MBNA. Having been laid off two months after Mckenna was born, my income is one-third of my teacher’s salary and has an end date. I am receiving unemployment, which is available for a specific amount of time. Although we are having a decent year with income, we need a stronger financial story to be approved for a home loan.
While at my parents’ for dinner that afternoon, the inevitable conversation about the housing market and when we would purchase our first home comes up. Normally, I give Matt an I’m-not-sure-so-don’t-ask-me-any-questions type of answer, but, for some reason, I speak candidly. He, along with my mother, raised me since I was in the second grade. He was my biggest intellectual advocate, always encouraging me. He knows what’s going on with the housing market because this is what he loves to talk about—mortgages, interest rates, refinance rates, and home ownership—and today, I want to talk housing. Somewhere in between his explanation of the financial benefits of homeownership, the kids playing in the den, and Anderson Cooper’s perpetual Breaking News report on the upcoming 2004 presidential election, my mother asks, “What about the house on Forty-first?”
The “house on Forty-first,” as everyone in my family calls it, has been in our family for over twenty-five years. It is the first house my mother bought on her own as a young woman in the ’70s. At the time, I was an only child, and lived in the house with my mother and grandmother for several years. On Forty-first, cousins my age would visit from Houston and Maryland to spend summers with us. I remember one summer night not being able to sleep because I was so excited to go to Disneyland with my cousins. I gave myself a stomachache from anticipation. And the milestone to surpass all childhood memories happened when my mother took me and my cousins, to the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to see Star Wars for the first time. We were beside ourselves in our new movie clothes as we rode the escalator down to see Princess Leia, Luke, and Darth Vader!
My young-adult cousins in the LA area would stop by almost daily to see my mother and grandmother. We held family barbecues, Sunday dinners, welcomed neighbors as extended family members, witnessed family arguments and drunken rants between uncles and nephews, marriage break-ups, and births, and, from time to time, a visit from my grandmother’s sister from Texas, while we lived in the house on Forty-first.
In addition to summer visits with my cousins, my fondest memories on Forty-first are of times with my grandmother. Her presence held our extended family together. While my mother worked, and within the leisure of an elderly person’s routine, I spent ordinary days deepening the connection of love with my grandmother. Once a week, before 7:00 a.m., I peeked through the front bedroom window to watch her greet the neighborhood milkman, who delivered fresh milk in glass bottles to our doorstep in exchange for last week’s empty bottles. She and I would often walk to G&J Market around the corner to buy thick-cut bacon and eggs. When we returned home from the market, she would soak the bacon for what seemed like hours in the kitchen sink, in a little soap and water. Later, the smell of fried bacon and eggs and baked biscuits drifted throughout the house while we sat at the kitchen table and ate a late breakfast. Afterward, in her favorite worn smock and slippers, she would shuffle through the kitchen holding a cup of coffee, while beginning lunch preparation for the inevitable visits from her sons and grandchildren, my uncles and cousins. On Forty-first, it was just us women. My biological father never lived with us. I have vague memories of waiting for him to pick me up, and of him leaning against his car in front of our driveway. He was never invited inside like everyone else. It wasn’t until years later, on a morning walk with my mother, that she casually revealed a forgotten memory of how I used to wait for my father, who sometimes did not come when he said he would. Little did I know it would take years of crisis to spur the awakening necessary to work through the abandonment I came to associate with the simple act of waiting.
My mother and Matt still own the house after all these years, but rent it out to the daughter of a family friend we met when we moved in. The family friend, who rents the house, and I played together decades ago with the other kids on the street. One summer afternoon, several of us were outside playing and found an old pair of open handcuffs with no key. I can’t recall whose great idea it was for me to put the handcuffs on my wrists, but I did. I put them on without the slightest consideration of how they would come off. Three hours later, after extended