Oh boy do I miss you all.

I have written a dozen blog posts in my head but haven’t had the time or energy to write them.

Life has entered a new spurt of intensity and I’m proud to say that being aware through out it all is working pretty damn well.

And I could really use a long week off!

First there was the gorgeous Writer’s Spa and all the depth and intensity and lack of sleep that involves. (I can’t seem to sleep much in Taos.)

Then I went home for a few days that included clients and work and family and my radio show before a four day coast to coast press tour for Real Networks. I’m helping them research and talk about this amazing phenomena – how women over 40 are using word, puzzle, and card games at sites like Real Arcade to take care of themselves. Truly, it is a whole new world. Women are playing games for pain management, insomnia, problem solving, work place stress, grief, and instead of descending into shadow comforts. Yes, clearly the game playing can be a shadow comfort but many of the women recognize that too. One women I interviewed said she knew if she was playing too much she was avoiding something about her life. It was a blast to work with the Real Networks crew and an honor but it was an unplanned trip… and not a lot of sleep (getting a theme?)

Then home for three days, filled with love and clients and did I mention I did the final edit of the new book while on the plane? Did I mention every flight was late and flying without water, chap stick or lotion and having to check your luggage really sucks? Yet I felt amazingly okay – which is so new for me. Mostly travel and having to "do" sucks me dry. Yet being centered and checking in with my heart and praying and working with my energy is working.

Then off to Art Unraveled (planned many months ago) with my friend Lain for four days of frantic fun. We have been mostly long distance friends yet it feels like we have known each other forever. She was the perfect person to be with when I learned that Dad may have cancer in his neck. That the cancer may be spreading aggressively. A new level of mourning and fear. i just kept sobbing I don’t want to lose my daddy.

Then the news it might not be cancer and I was home from the conference but not home because Chris picked me up to go straight to Snohomish to sleep for a few hours before Lilly’s final soccer game of Big Foot – an annual tournament. Then home to have Mom call that Dad had fallen and wasn’t making sense.

He’s in the hospital now with a small bleed in his brain. We are on are way back over. There’s a strong chance he’ll be fine.

Yet how can I convey both the unreality of having my father sitting in his favorite chair not knowing if he was back in their house in Florida or in Washington or seeing his frail freckled back when the tech opened his hospital gown to apply electrodes? Both the simple truth of death approaching and the tender happiness of being able to still be together. The unreality of having the same doc and the same nurse in the same emergency room (yes the same actual room) attending us as we did on the night Chris was admitted just slightly over a year. The heart to heart with my Mom about what we are facing on the ferry ride home last night at 11:30. Doing my radio show this morning with Angeles Arrien about the second half of life and talking about Dad and for once, my sister is listening to the show and hears the news Dad is in the hospital from me on the radio…  (Can I just say she never listens?)

All I can say is I feel blessed and steady and normal and very tender in the midst of this hyper reality.

There is strong hope that Dad will make it through this and there is a chance there’s no cancer in his neck. We’ll know more today and tomorrow.

I’ll keep you posted and I’ll also post some of the very weird art I made this past week.

Love!

Jen

What sustains you at times like this?