Radical Gardening

I have been doing some research the past few days on what I am calling radical gardening, which (for me) is a combination of permaculture (which is the only way I will roll), small space gardening, and all things gardening alternative.

After all this research my brain was kinda tied up in a knot with how to make this happen when we move into our RV in a few days. I have decided to take this one step at a time and adjust to living in the RV (and what kind of space we are looking at) before building a garden, but all this delicious information is going to percolate in my brain and grow in our lives :)) I'm very excited to share some of the cool information that I found! Enjoy the following delicious radical gardening buffet :)))

In January of this year, my friend, Kimra, first got me to thinking about alternative gardening spaces when she posted this blog post.

This is another fellow self-identified radical gardener, and so is she.

I am going to post a few links/pics to the stuff I want to combine somehow for us :))

I have GOT to find a way to make this happen in the RV. 

using shoe holders! (my friend, Kimra, adds her own suggestion for this in her blog post above)

This really has me thinking, too! 

gardening in reclaimed gutters

And another cool vertical option

I can see this one on almost any wall

Talk about alternative spaces!!!! Site and video

This has me thinking about towing a trailer garden

This Living Kitchen has me drooling

Okay, on the original site, they call it a flow kitchen -- I <3 both terms!

So those are radical gardening porn (heehee, I love that analogy LOL).

Here are a few links (brain pron?) that REALLY feed my soul:

Creating the Permaculture Balcony Garden

Gardening as a Site of Liberation

Proof that gardening can be cool: Anarchy in the Garden: keeping it punk by growing your own

Garden Girl: Home & Garden: Organic living tips, ideas, & inspiration

I feel very blessed to have personal access to fellow gardeners, like my mom (who has been gardening my entire life) and my friend, MB, who is my biggest source of permaculture inspiration ♥ She has taught me that permaculture is much bigger than just growing plants -- it's a lifestyle. Her blog is a testament to permaculture gardening and permaculture lifestyle ♥ Like her life, her blog is embedded with gardening, but I managed to find a good "Permaculture 101, as told in the context of MB" blog post, called earth as schooner ~ a permaculture analogy.

**EEK! Jumping on to edit to add a few links I totally forgot about other alternative gardening ways:

Container Gardening: this is uber-helpful (what and when to plant), practically a one-shop-stop for planning to container garden, another AMAZING container garden link

Square-foot Gardening

Carrying the Torch

I come from a long line of wild women on my mom's side of the family. For those who understand the significance of this, Kassidy is the 7th generation first-born daughter. Women roll powerfully in our maternal legacy. Let me tell you a bit about this legacy, as I was told...

My great great grandmother defied the traditional woman's role of homemaker and did something outside the home that she was passionate about (politics? business? I can't remember, but it was definitely viewed as a man's world). She didn't, however, pass on the baby-maker aspect, and had 8 children, who my great grandmother (who was the oldest) raised and cared for until they were old enough to care for themselves.

My great grandmother took the love of her life and her life on the road. She traveled for years with a man called Red (red hair), and they painted the sides of trucks for their next meals and their next destinations. It was said the family never knew when she was in town because she valued her freedom so fiercely. She, however, left her daughter (not from Red) at home to be raised by her siblings who she had dedicated her earlier life to raising.

My grandmother, it was told, would take off into the land behind their home with the dog (who was very protective of her), even as young as 2 years old. She grew up a wild child on wild land in Texas. Tragically she drowned in a river when she was only 18 years old (my mom was 6 months old, on the embankment when it happened). (I believe Najaia may be her reincarnation -- Najaia is as free as I imagine my grandmother having been, even at such a young age)

***Edit -- I found out that my grandmother travelled with my great grandmother for many years, until the family felt it was a problem that she wasn't getting consistency, and so she went to live with the siblings when she was older.**

My mother is the only generation I actually got to experience first-hand. She was a wild woman through and through. She was a total hippie, a definite gypsy (even before we lived on the road in my teens for 3 years, we moved at least once a year across 3 different states), an empowered and empowering woman, an attached mama only following her heart with little-to-no support from family. I was raised Pagan by a single mom before it was cool or common :)) Still, my mom reminds me daily that there is nothing to fear with growing older -- she has her own Harley (sometimes riding topless LOL), she goes on travels and adventures with her newest love by land and by sea, has a zen garden and an impressive vegetable garden, and she is not afraid to question traditional styles of thinking or living. My mom just ROCKS!

Insert me. I feel like I pale in comparison LOL Granted, I have a few years and at least a couple crazy decisions to live through before it would be fair to compare :))) I am not really creating a legacy. I'm just carrying the torch.

I am proud to live so authentically for my children, to pass the torch on to them :)) I already, definitely, see my kids continuing this legacy. We are definitely a wild tribe :)

I feel like I am cutting this post short, but my oldest has been waiting patiently for my computer, and, really, this blog is kinda the testament to the newest chapters of this family legacy. Living on the road is going to be just amazing, on so many levels. My friend, Cindy Leapley (who is passing their RV on to us), keeps telling me that I was made for this life. I really really was.

The Art of Falling on One's Face Gracefully

I wrote this earlier in the week but Blogger is not letting me upload pics right now so I was going to wait until that was fixed -- however, it still isn't fixed, so here it is :)  Just to clarify, I am not talking about the actual philosophy of this guy, of which I know nothing about.

I have had just as much fun playing with this rapture prediction over the past week as some. I've laughed at funny Facebook statuses and some YouTube videos, and celebrated vicariously through the "end of the world" gatherings that have resulted.

Now that the dust has cleared, I am hearing some more perspectives. Some were amused at the craziness of the prediction, and some are very angry that the guy "wanted" rapture to happen and that believers gave up so much for the cause he started. Some think he owes those folks compensation since his prediction that they believed and invested in didn't come to fruition.

I seem to have a minority opinion on the matter (no surprise to me in life anymore).

I want to applaud this man for believing in something so radical, for trusting his insides, and standing up for it regardless of public ridicule. And I want to hug him in the aftermath and assure him that it is okay to believe in things, to invest completely in something, even if you end up looking like you fell on your face.

In this society, we are really big on being safe -- even if you take a risk, make sure it's a safe one! And in this society, we are really big on "right"ness. We are so deeply invested in the importance of being right that we cut adventure and exploration and thinking short if it's "inaccurate".

How many parents will allow their child to believe something they don't see as true? How many people can sit in a car and allow the driver to accdently go the opposite direction of the intended destination? How many people think falling on one's face is a horrible tragedy?

This is all very common in our society (and maybe even bigger than just the US).

I'm the mom who just pauses when my son sings the A,B,C's in some crazy order that often leaves out entire chunks of the alphabet :) I'm the mom who is learning to sit back and enjoy the journey my kids' learning takes, instead of focusing on the destination. I'm the person who is loving taking risks, knowing that I have NO clue how some things may turn out, but the only real "end" is death, so I have my whole life to keep going. I'm the person who is learning to be gentle with my own learning and living, so as not to avoid falling on my face, but to leap up and laugh "I'm okay!" as I skip off to find another adventure.

The problem isn't falling on one's face (to me, that's a noble quality and proof that one is trying to live life to it's fullest -- maybe even that they are leaping toward things even further than they think they are). The problem may be in laying there stuck, or jumping up in shame and embarrassment and deciding to not chance something like that again. The art of falling on one's face gracefully entails expecting that it could happen when we are walking (or dancing or skipping, as the case may be), light-heartedly getting back up to one's feet, and relishing in the possible scrapes and bruises that are battle wounds of the fun of living.

I have literally fallen on my face (about a year ago). I was walking my friend's dog, and I felt inspired to run. It was a glorious feeling -- a rush of excitement and lightness and freedom. So, as I had done in my childhood, I took off down a hill. Well, my spirit seemed to be a bit faster than my physical body, and I tumbled down the hill face first (to the horror of 2 girls from our parkday group LOL). I leapt up laughing, feeling the aches and precarious numbness in areas of my body. And for the week or so that it took my bruises and scrapes to heal, I was reminded of that feeling of lightness and hilarity of how I must have looked. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat, even if I fell flat on my face again :)) Falling wasn't "proof" that I shouldn't have tried sprinting down that hill. Just because I fell doesn't mean I did anything "wrong" or that I need to get better before doing it again. Sure, I learned from the experience, but the goal wasn't to learn how to do it "right" next time.

I feel more light and forgiving about the whole experience.

This is flavoring my plans for this new road-living chapter of my life, too, or any plans I make for my life. I am learning to not only take the steps that ensure I will not fall on my face. It's okay to take the steps that may leave me face down and scratched up. It's okay to take risks, and the ability to jump up afterward is more important to me than the ability to plan everything to a "t" and ensure that every step is sure-footed.

Another part of the "rapture theory" analogy is the folks who believed his message and invested in it. Some people are really upset that they sold their homes and now have "nothing" to show for it. It seems that people feel these folks were forced or duped or deceived. I think they, too, fell on their face. They had faith, they took risks, and it didn't come to fruition (thankfully, for some of us). Is it really the guy's fault that they did what they did? Is he really to be held accountable for their choices?

It seems that he is kinda like an investment banker who invested in something that didn't work out afterall (assuming the folks who invested feel disappointment that the rapture didn't come -- in one of my psychology classes, we learned how folks who believe strongly in something like this can actually feel stronger afterward, even if the rapture didn't happen). As long as he spent the money the way it was intended to be spent, I don't think it is fair to hold him accountable in the end. He seems pretty genuine and authentic.

I will sit with these folks in their disappointment and validate them. I just don't see it as the tragedy that some are seeing it as. No one drank cyanid. They gave up stuff -- something folks all over the world/historically (my current self included) do for something they believe in. Even if they feel disapppinted right now, I feel they are better off for having had faith in something, took risks, and invested in something, even if it didn't pan out the way they originally planned. Life kinda works like that often, doesn't it? Who KNOWS what life journey those folks are on, what their life lessons are destined to be?

I'm assuming positive intent. I'm vicariously practicing the art of falling on one's face gracefully.

Nourishment

People talk a lot about nutrition. Nutrition, to me, is like the spirit, the head, meditation, yoga, tranquility, zen. Important in its own right.

Nourishment, to me, is more like stuff of the soul, living from the stomach, following one's internal compass without judgment, living one's truth. It follows whims and doesn't have to be quiet or reverant.

Nutrition counts the calories and the vitamins on a food label. Nourishment checks internally to see if it is hitting the spot.

Nutrition can listen to experts on what is healthy and best, but nourishment knows no one "outside" can begin to know what what "inside" me needs better than I do.

Nourishment is a kind of fulfillment and a feeling of substance.

Nourishment, for me, can be a green smoothie, or it can be a pint of ice-cream, whatever my soul needs.

Nourishment goes beyond food, though, too. Nourishment is physical, and it's also emotional and mental and soulful. Nourishment can come through spending some sisterhood time with a beloved. Nourishment can come from laughing through a board game with the family. Nourishment can come from a long (uninterrupted) candle-lit bath.

Nourishment is kinda like healing, without the assumption that there is some ailment to heal. Nourishment is like healing something that isn't wounded. It's like giving something a blessing.

The concept of nourishment fills some gaps in my life and in my family. I didn't want to see some things as "broken" or "hurt" or "needing fixing/healing". I can provide nourishment to someone who is not lacking in some way and I prefer to see people as whole and complete. The concept of nourishment helps me flow through the space I want to hold for people who I sense just need a bit "more". It doesn't have to mean there is anything wrong with what is.

My family is due some nourishment :)) In some ways it has already begun. Kassidy's computer broke a couple days ago, and she has been adjusting to an unplugged life, where the option for mental stimulation has been to connect with me and her siblings. I hadn't realized how absent she had really been until I realized how delicious it has been to spend more time with her. Without the option to spend every waking moment in her room with the door closed, she has been venturing out to compromise with Noble about what they can watch together on my computer. I really loved getting her and Noble their own things last year, so they didn't have to share -- it was perfect for the time (she was too angry and needed some space, and he was too young and had totally different interests), and now it feels perfect to have her interacting with us again on things. Having her interacting with us more feels like it is nourishing our family ♥

Speaking of nourishment, with this mostly-empty house, we have been able to really shift our energy to the basics (one of my biggest reasons for wanting to live so simply) like preparing food. I have been cooking/preparing up a storm in the kitchen :))) I look forward to Kass cooking with me in the future. She is an awesome chef, and we can have lots of fun working together to create ways of continuing to nourish our family :)) We were talking yesterday about her giving me 3 weeks of feeding her whole and nourishing foods. I very much believe that we are what we eat, and so Kassidy is currently Top-Roman and Arizona iced tea. I can think of more nourishing things I would love for her to be :))) I know what we eat impacts our moods and mental activity, etc. I look forward to seeing what path this diet may take her down, even if she chooses to return to her current diet after the experiment :))

A child who said she was too old to sleep with me a few weeks ago and couldn't sleep at night is curled up asleep at 10pm with her head on my leg ♥

I am already loving this life.

Let the nourishment begin ♥

The Rig

Alright, so some of you have been following this blog long enough to hear me say that I want the RV we get to have the same floorplan as the RV of our friends, the Leapley's. Cindy and Steve have been wondering since they bought it last year if it was going to be big enough for their family of 7, and we have talked on more than one occasion about me buying it from them. It just hasn't worked out that way, which has been perfect for both of us at the times :))

My friends left May 1st for their adventure. They planned for a vacation, not a permanent home, a soul journey of sorts to do some healing and living before coming home to plant some roots. They planned to be back in August for a wedding and were ready to pass their RV off to us at that point, because they wouldn't need it anymore, especially since they have learned that it REALLY is too small for their easy comfort. Since I want to be out of here before August (my lease is up August 1st), I kept this as my back-up plan, still searching and being open to how we were going to get some destined RV much sooner.

For the past few weeks, I have been feeling like I need to be in an RV immediately. Not the average, "I am ready", but "I was ready long ago, and now this is unbearable." I want the RV in front of my house already, so I can move in the stuff I want to keep and see very clearly what is left, so I know what to do with it. Right now, it all feels overwhelming, like the time between now and August 1st feels so far that it is hopeless to start too early, mixed with knowing I can't ever start too soon, because I don't want to be rushing around at the last minute. That push-and-pull is what made me sick, and the anxiety is what caused all the tension headache I had for 3 days.

So, this morning, my friends, the Leapleys, called to tell me that something completely unexpected and important (a different sister's wedding set here in July) has come up to interrupt their plans, and they are actually bringing the RV back next week and picking up their van for the rest of the trip (so they can move faster and cheaper and be back sooner). So, we are getting their RV next week.

Lemme just say that again. We are getting our RV next week. EEEEEEK!

This RV is perfect on so many levels!!!

• It is called a Travelcraft -- have you SEEN the name of my blog? Our Wildcrafted Life
• It has the floor plan that I was determined to have (with the extra seats already removed!).
• It has half the miles of the Jamboree that I wanted from a dealership.
• My friends have worked out most of the kinks over the last few months (and especially living in for a couple weeks now).
• It is already filled with the wonderful and loving energy of this AMAZING family <3
• It is like a quarter of the price of the Jamboree I was wanting!!!!!!
• But the best part, again: it will be here next week!!!!!!!!

Lemme show you a pic of a DIFFERENT Travelcraft. I don't have a pic of our's, but it looks kinda like this one (different colors, maybe a different year):

I know, it's older than the Jamboree and has aluminum siding, but I can't beat the price and the rest of the perfectness, so there ya go :))

I am SO glad that getting an RV finally caught up with me being ready to be in one already :)) I love when the universe unfolds to remind me that my pace is right and that it is okay to trust that it will all end up working out how I want it to, because it always does ♥

Okay, Dreads; Trade-offs; & a Soul Journey

I loooooooove dreads. Ja's dreads were, I am shameless to admit, one of the biggest reasons I initially gave him the time of day (or night, as it were). Noble's dreads are one of my top 10 favorite things in the whole world. I've considered dreads for myself, but keep finding that I love my wild curls even better.

I always imagined having my dread-head son and my curly girly, and it seemed meant to be, as her curls are bigger and silky soft. One problem: she hates getting her hair brushed. She yells "No!" and runs down the hall and out of the house if I even try. It's a bit easier in the shower, when I can soak her hair in conditioner while I comb/brush, easy distract her, move slowly and mindfully, and do a lot of "emotional damage control" in a small confined space.

Well, it's been over a week since we brushed her hair, with everyone being sick. And today I realized that I understood why my stepmom just chopped all of our (her own, my older sister who is half Black, and myself) curls off to about an inch or 2 long. This is so much work, and it's losing it's meaning for all of us. As I brushed and imagined life in an RV, I released my attachments and submitted to "Okay, dreads." WHOOSH! Sudden alignment.

This is going to be a win-win all over the place! She won't have to get her hair brushed, the upkeep is minimal and requires a lot less stuff in the RV, less water it will need (which is a big deal in an RV that plans to live unplugged), and an added bonus -- it will be fun to see it grow long instead of out :))) Not that I don't love me an afro (have you seen my hair?).

Speaking of, I have decided now is the time to start using baking soda and apple cider vinegar for my hair instead of shampoo and conditioner. If I start now, it will give me about 2 1/2 months for my hair to adjust and transition, so it will be easy when we are on the road :)) Also, I am open to a dread/curls combo for my hair. We shall see with time :)))


A trade off..... I've enjoyed looking at ways to trade-off stuff/space with experiences. I mean, that's kind of the main goal of this adventure in the first place. I was thinking of leaving my foot care stuff and getting a pedicure with Kass once a month-ish! I'm hoping it will be some great me & Kass time. It will mean less stuff in the RV, which is always nice. And mostly, we and our feet deserve the pampering - the scrubbing, the detail work, the massage. Oh, the massage *melt* That got me to thinking what a wonderful benefit regular massage and chiropractic alignment would be for Kass and I as we realign our bodies and lives with healthiness and slow intentional living. Another way to align our life :)))


Speaking of healing, soul journey..... I kept thinking this was going to be a spiritual journey, but I am realizing this is going to be much more of a soul journey, tempered with a bit of spiritualness :)) I have known all along that this was going to be a journey of self and that it would require solitude, maybe in large doses. I thought I could find that "self" in snippets during days and in between visits. I thought I could eek by for the first couple visits and nab it in a larger quantity later in the journey, so we could hurry and get on the road and get out of familiar territory and not miss anyone during our far-shot trajectory.

At this point in my preparation for finding a deeper level of self and connecting with beloveds, it is becoming more and more clear to me that we need to take some serious time to ourselves before we descend upon anyone :))

We need time to detox from this "junk food" life, we need to adjust to being unplugged, and we need to do some healing and connection with ourselves and each other before we can really do a visit with you justice. Right now, I'm a little insecure about visits. I'm insecure about some bits of myself that are out of alignment or underdeveloped, and I'm insecure about my wild bunch. Not to say that you wouldn't love us in our imperfections or be fine with our wildness, but I don't want to compound those insecurities with the anxiety I would feel if I was insecure. I want to feel confident and comfortable, and I want to feel like we are healthy and well-adjusted. We all have some healing and adjusting to do before we start connecting with our tribe ♥

This is what I currently think the first couple steps of our journey will look like:

I think our first stop will be a reasonably-priced campground with gorgeous, natural, and quiet grounds to do the initial detox and adjustment, to work out the kinks close to familiarity. The plan is to have no Internet, extreme minimal technology, maybe no phone even, to spend about a month or two indulging in nature, immersing ourselves in the simplest family living, and some serious alignment. I am saying a month or two, but I really have no idea how long it will take to feel ready -- could be much less, could be even longer?

Once we are all ready to move on and get out on the road, our road freedom will begin. I have clue where we will start heading, because it will depend on the season, our budget, our priorities, and our newfound internal compass' direction.

There is a certain internal nourishment that comes with making all these plans. It's as if realizing what we need most kinda heals that part inside us, so we are open to the next priority in our journey. It started with wanting to take life one step at a time, then wanting to race around and see everyone, then it was about spending depth with each person, and now it is finding our inner alignment first. It's exciting to see what may come up next! I hope you don't mind being strung along on this internal journey <3 What I do know is that when we pull up to your house, we will all be better for it :)))

Why We Need Our Own Comfy Space

Some of you have been so kind to offer your homes to us when we pull through. Aww, such kindness, such innocence. You wouldn't believe what you were getting yourself into, and I prefer to keep friends loved ones and some sort of happiness with my kids that is not based on expecting or forcing them to be less "all of them" than they are.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how convenient it would be if we really could have just travelled in our van towing a pop-up trailer -- oh, the gas-saving fantasies I have! And then I open my eyes in my reality and realize why we need something bigger.

Lemme share a few fun reasons why, no, really, we need our own comfy space:

• my babies live naked
• you have yet to see my hair or my attire in the morning before I have groomed
• we have a large dog who sleeps in bed with us at night
• we are a family of 4 radical unschoolers -- have you any clue what that looks like on any given day?
• I am known to sleep topless at night

And some more serious reasons (no, those were not serious reasons LOL)

• we are going to be doing this for a long time, and having a HOME on wheels that we can safely crawl back into is part of the "this IS a healthy and responsible way of raising children" bit for me right now :)
•  our home will be set up for comfort, so your guest bed won't necessarily be more comfy than our bed -- in fact, I am determined to have the comfiest bed possible!

Now, having said that, there are a few things I look forward to at your house:

• a long hot shower
• maybe washing a couple loads of laundry
• mostly, just being with you during peek hours and retreating to our den when it feels right :))

I am very excited to learn as I go, about visiting people. We will be like temporary neighbors :))) That's the best part about living a nomadic lifestyle: everyone is our neighbor, especially at one point or another :)

Now, having just written that, I am realizing, you all are prepared for my kids and I, but my fur-son, Kai, is kinda glued to the hip (and when he isn't, he is digging holes and chewing things up, so he really needs to be glued to our hip). I have already learned about the necessary camping and site-seeing adjustments/alternatives that is going to require (especially since he is a big dog). How do YOU think that is going to impact our visit? Feel free to think on it and get back to me ;)

Current Plans

Hello, beloved one ♥

So, the path of life keeps shifting before us -- it's so exciting!!!! But it sure makes it hard to pin things down for other's :)) The only guarantee that I can give you is "I will be there when you see the whites of my eyes, but I will be there."

A couple things seem to have changed in the plans I shared before, and I wanted to share what those will be. Firstly, we most likely will not be keeping the house. We will probably be travelling by RV. We will probably be leaving in July (no later than August 1st -- the last day of my lease). We will probably be doing the 4 corners the opposite direction I had originally planned. We will be moving slower (gas prices and RV gas mileage -- yikes!).

I may take a quick trip in the van up to San Fransisco and Oregon, and swing down through Colorado for 4th of July (fireworks are illegal in California) to party with some loved ones, before coming home to sell the van, buy the RV, and get out of this house.

I will be stopping along the way everywhere we know someone. I don't want to miss anyone.

So, now the dates are a little wierd. I am thinking, if we are going through Texas in September, we may have to go to the Rethinking Everything Conference. I need to really sit with that and decide if this is do-able, so I can let other's know, in case they want to join us.

We have a month or 2 to poke around Texas and Louisiana.

We hope to be in Florida when winter comes, so we can play snowbirds this year :))

Once it starts warming up, we will head north toward Maine, visiting family and friends along the way.

Then head west (down into the Ohio area), where we can spend far more than a week with each loved one, if we want to :))

Then across to Kansas and into Colorado, and either to Washington and then down, or straight back into California -- our next trip will probably be up to Alaska, and we can head back up through the San Fran and Oregon areas then. The end of the trip is always the hardest to plan, because it is so far from where we are now, and it is so close to our next trip, that we never know the last few stops. But, I think you get the point of the current plan.

I won't know what we are travelling in, until we have purchased it and are living in it. I won't know when we will be somewhere until we are leaving the stop before. But I do know that each of you mean so much to me, and I look forward to being able to visit you unhurried. I will get there, I promise ♥

I have one other bombshell to drop on you all. I probably will not get a cell phone for the trip (other than an emergency prepaid phone). I think I am just going to get internet (especially since I can text from my ipod with it). I will see -- it's another thing I really have to think about :))

I look forward to some uninterrupted solitude, to sort out some inside reflection stuff. Just me, one book at a time, my journal, and an array of marker/pens to get creative. Some comfy spots with a beautiful view. Some whole foods. A heart and a mind full of infinite creativity and brilliance :)

I look forward to the weightlessness of living nomadically. I look forward to letting go of obligations and meaninglessness. I don't know how impressed my little ones are going to be with traveling, except to play with new friends and see cool new spots in nature to explore. I'm looking forward to living that simply :)) I want to type a blog post under a tree with a view, or explore a riverbank for hours on end, slide down sanddunes on a snow disk, have a picnic by a waterfall. I want my world to revolve around who to visit and what to see and explore in the next moment (I just had a Freudian slip -- I typed oment: OMent) :))

I look forward to being free of these walls and all this stuff :)) I can say that now without feeling a weight in my gut -- I decided I'm not tied to it, so I can find contentment in the dis-ease I was feeling about all of it before. I may be looking at a painted wall, but this is what my spirit sees:

I've Gotte Be Me

Me serenading all of us with a song that has been the soundtrack of my heart for the last couple days :)) In all my wonderful imperfections :))))) A gift of vulnerable perfection for you :))

I just love how I got stagefright and forgot the lyrics in the beginning LOL And how my voice sounded like crap because I am still sick! I love especially that I didn't care about any of that and made the video anyway :)))) And that I still shared it even after watching it LOL Here is to putting oneself out there :)))

by Sammy Davis, Jr.

Whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong

Whether I find a place in this world or never belong

I gotta be me, I've gotta be me

What else can I be but what I am

I want to live, not merely survive

And I won't give up this dream

Of life that keeps me alive

I gotta be me, I gotta be me

The dream that I see makes me what I am

That far-away prize, a world of success

Is waiting for me if I heed the call

I won't settle down, won't settle for less

As long as there's a chance that I can have it all

I'll go it alone, that's how it must be

I can't be right for somebody else

If I'm not right for me

I gotta be free, I've gotta be free

Daring to try, to do it or die

I've gotta be me

I'll go it alone, that's how it must be

I can't be right for somebody else

If I'm not right for me

I gotta be free, I just gotta be free

Daring to try, to do it or die

I gotta be me

Overthinking

I am infamous for overthinking. This from the mom who took 6 months of heavy researching before feeling comfortable pulling my oldest out of public school to homeschool her. This from the student who did avid research (complete with color-coded highlighting and post-it notes) on every possible major I could be interested in before committing to one in my first semester of school LOL

Overthinking is literally making me sick, though. Today, it gave me a migraine. So, tonight, I am deciding to be dedicated to clearing my head out. I went to sleep last night making plans about an RV that I saw yesterday, and spend my entire night of "sleep" in some nightmare pergatory of plans and stress and worry.

Enough is enough.

The good news is that I am getting more and more comfortable with being flakey LOL I keep wanting to be committed to something that I say I am interested in, but I am still swimming in a sea of options where one looks more appetizing than another at any point in time. So, I feel flakey when I post on Facebook that I can see us in that RV and that I want it, and today I have to tell everyone nevermind, it's not as perfect as I had hoped for it to be. And that wouldn't be so bad, except I kinda posted (and emailed everyone who I thought would care) last week about how I wanted to travel in my van with a pop-up trailer, which also fell through.

What I am realizing with each of these experiences is that there are so many different ways to travel, and that we are testing the depths of each one for our commitment comfort level. I should be proud of myself for backing out once I realize my lack of commitment afterall, instead of sticking with some plan just because I showed a lot of initial interest :) In addition to learning about travel and about travelling, I am learning about the process inside myself. And I am learning that although driving a veggie-powered radmobile is a dream of mine, it doesn't have to be this first step in my journey -- it can be a dream for another day.

The truth is, each of these modes of transport hold a different idealness about it, a piece to the puzzle of the ideal nomadic home. And any one of those specialities may feel more important at different times. Let me try to make a list of these qualities I have so far found to be important to us, and maybe you can help me send rockets of desire out into the universe to bring us what is perfect for our family :))

• the better gas milage the better
• pretty good ability to moderate the inside temperature
• spacious-feeling inside (including entry into vehicle)
• relatively short from bumper to bumper
• room inside to rip out some accessive seating for a kids table and a cat climber
• a loft-type bed above the driver's coach for Kass
• fairly modern appliances, lighting, and switches
• a dinette (2 benches with a table in the middle)
• bathroom at the back, spacious enough for this big mama to not feel crammed in
• a full-size bed tucked into a corner in the back for me and the babies, ideally (but I would sacrifice it for better gas milage if it made a big enough difference)
• upholstery on chairs that I can live with (leather is best, because it is easiest to clean -- sorry, vegan friends <3)

Okay, so I started this post a couple days ago, and I stopped writing it because I had a raging headache that has persisted for days. I didn't want to post it unfinished, but I can't put too much more effort into it right now, because my tension headache is threatening to start pounding again if I don't listen to it's plea for me to stop thinking about this stuff. Just gonna share some pics of the RV I *think* (today) I really want. The only thing I don't like about it is the typical RV gas mileage, which I wish I could somehow get around and still have everything I love about this RV inside and out. Meet Jam:

Letting Go

Another long video (sorry!) about my current processing, changes of plans.

More belly stuff

I started this a week or so ago, and am deciding to post it now, unfinished, since it goes along with my theme of living from my belly. Enjoy ♥

Some cultures believe that we do not feel with our hearts but with our stomachs. Makes sense, right? I mean, when I am feeling nervous, I get butterflies in my stomach, and when some guy breaks up with me, I eat a pint of ice-cream.

So, I have been thinking about my over-eating, and how it is rooted in anxiety, and how my anxiety is being afraid, and about how my fears are hardly ever really fears of something as they are just fear in and of itself, and about how I am always trying to dig deep to get to the bottom of stuff.

Maybe I have been exploring all of this underlying stuff as just another journey for the sake of knowing myself better, but trying to figure out what I am afraid of may be slightly pointless? Maybe instead of digging into my past for the answers, I can just soothe the present one experience at a time?

Living from the belly

In one of my last writings, I wrote about how I knew I wasn't lazy, but couldn't quite find the word, and then Law of Attraction jumped in to answer my request in the form of Tara writing an amazing blog post about how It’s Not Laziness You Need To Overcome (6 Things You Are Instead of Lazy). And it really fit with a quote I remember reading from Abraham Hicks last year about how you are not "procrastinating", it's just that whatever it is that needs to get done is not in alignment with where you are at in your life right now. I wanted to share that little synchrony with you ♥

So, I have been thinking a lot about anxiety. I have had a few things shift around and inside me that feel both liberating and insightful that I wanted to share. Firstly, I need to share this video with you, because it's all grounded in that.



I just watched that video again a couple minutes ago, and it made me cry. I want to speak from my belly. I want to LIVE from my belly. I want to know that divine feminine. I want to BE that divine feminine. I've been thinking so much recently about how badly I need a retreat. I started to have one, you know... Until I realized that what I need is much bigger than to avoid facebook and blogging. I need to exit this house and insert myself in some deep and serious mother nature. So, now I am in Operation Get-the-hell-out-of-this-house Mode. I am really contemplating not keeping this house. Who knows....

Anyway, so back to anxiety. When I think of living and BEING from my belly, and anxiety, and my over-eating, and my history with food and depression and self-searching.... I realize that my eating is not a borometer of what state my life is. My stomach is the foundation of what my life is. It's the path I want to walk, and it is my inner guide, my compass. And anxiety, anxiety is exiting my belly and entering my head.

I've talked about grounding myself in my truth when feeling and talking and connecting. I have been connecting with my belly! Grounding myself has really been coming from my belly. And I ask myself, what would life be like if I lived it from my belly? And my answer to myself is Wow. Just wow.

I would know that anxiety was a fear of the path my stomach would take me down.

Anxiety is the draw away from my belly. Anxiety is being afraid of honesty, being afraid of the truth.

Can I just say that again? That floating restlessness that makes me want to climb out of my fingertips from my brain is me trying to escape what is true.

Wow. I am crying again.

So, what is true?

What true is that little bits of stuff come up during the day, during my interactions with people, and I rush off in the other direction to avoid those bits. Social anxiety.

What's true is that I'm afraid to be all of me.

All of me. Embracing every bit of me that I resist and judge and fear and adore and am afraid to let out of the closet.

And I will tell you something about my fears. I have been educated so well on so many "shoulds" that I am afraid of letting them go. I feel like a small child who wants to run and play in an open meadow carefree, but my parent is telling me about all of the things that I must do instead. And I cannot BEGIN to tell you how strong the urge is to just walk away from it all. What are they going to do -- take away my birthday?

So, this is the deal. I am going to start working on this house (more than just shifting stuff around and taking pics to post on Craigslist). I am going to start taking loads of stuff out to the garage for a garage sale, and loads to stuff to the dumpster -- sorry Mother Earth, I wish I had the energy to sift through everything and find it all homes, but part of the problem in the first place is that I horde so much stuff for possible future craft projects to avoid filling the dumpsters in the first place! I rescue stuff from the dumpsters, so I am going to use that to justify this chance to just call it all quits.

I have to walk away. I need to go on this retreat like LAST WEEK, so I need to get my butt moving.

I have been feeling the need to just BE THERE already. I am tired of the sage advice about the journey and shyt. You don't understand. I've been on this freakin journey, and it has been great, but I am bursting out of here and I need to do it where I need to do it (over THERE).

Next month (if not sooner, goodness!) we will be on the road. I am ready to be out of here. Over ready.

I can't wait to go find my belly life. I can't wait to get back in touch with my belly, to ground myself in it until I am unshakable and unappologetic. Until it is so my truth that no "obligations" or "shoulds" can weigh me down or penetrate into my space.

Currently, I am like a 3 Muskateers candy bar -- soft chocolate shell with a super-soft nougetty center. I want to be more like an M&M -- a hard candy shell with hard chocolate inside that melts in your mouth, not in your hands :))

There is so much in my current life that I am uncomfortable with, that is out of alignment with what I know to be the truth I want to embrace and live. I cannot WAIT (literally), to drop all of this and move the heck on to greener cobblestone paths :))))))))

Alright, enough talk! I'm off to start working :D

Getting to know you..

I am so excited to share my newest most amazing blogging/national tribe building/connective way of expressing myself to you :))))) I hope you enjoy! It's long, but I'm worth it :))

p.s. -- Blogger must have gotten word that I was about to hit the road, because there is a new feature on my blog posting options, as of today: adding a location to each post :))))))))))))

I Think This is It

***note, I only included names of people whose blogs I can link to, so don't feel left out if I didn't include your name ♥

So, this is our travel plan -- disregard anything from the past that might be confusing, and take this account as the new whole deal :)))

In mid-to-late June, we will have an appointment that may dictate what day we actually get out the door, so I can't set up a launch date at this time. What we have decided to do is leave the house and plants and cats with my brother until November and tow a pop-up trailer with our minivan. This enables lots of things.

Firstly, I know my van is good, and I just will never know with a used RV (and the ones in our price range are like 20 years old!). Also, our van gets 3 times better gas mileage than an RV would, and for a family who wants to hurry around the entire country to see people, this matters very much right now.

A pop-up trailer is perfect for us, because it will be light enough for my minivan to tow and provide the basic necessities (a kitchen with fridge, a dinette, and 2 big beds with the option to convert the dinette into another bed), which will make a perfect little need-meeting home-base when we are in transit or transition so often for an extended period of time.

And leaving the house allows us storage for the stuff we want to bring into an RV but not into a van/pop-up trailer set-up. It allows me time to take care of some bigger projects that I'd rather not force to get done with everything else I need to do by June. My cats get to stay in the comfort of the home they have known for the last year-ish with my brother who has lived with us most of their lives and love very much. We get to have a mailing address and someone I trust to check my mail for me. And this allows us to have my brother fix the house up for probable-move-out (without my kids and dog thrashing it along the way) upon our return, while my brother gets to stay somewhere for very little rent and responsibility while he saves up to do his thing.

So, we head out in mid- or late-June and will drive California Highway 1, which goes right along the ocean coast, so we can soak in one of the most gorgeous drives in all of America. We are going to stop in the San Fransisco area the first night and stay for a couple days visiting loved ones in the area and seeing some sites.

Then we will head up into Oregon along the 1 and 101 to visit my dear MB and the Oregon green mountainy coast sites <3 On June 30th, we will head out, to Washington for our first Rainbow Gathering, which goes from July 1st-7th. A tent and airbed will have to do while we are more focused on connecting with a family/community that I feel like I have been searching my whole life for ♥

Once the Rainbow Gathering is over, we plan to spend another weekish in Washington with loved ones in the area and checking out sites :)) Then, we are going to spend the rest of July tracing the northernmost states east. I will be spending some much-needed solitude time to reflect on the Gathering and life and what all of this travel and connection means. And the kids will be exploring nature and our family ties.

We have about 3 weeks to slowly head east, with the "plan" being that we will spend August in the Ohio area. I say "area" because Ohio is actually only one of the states we will be setting up home (including Illinois and maybe another state or so that I am not certain of). I am hoping to spend about a week (give-or-take based on driving time) at a time in 4 different places in the "Ohio area", visiting dearly-missed family in Chicago and friends like Kristin and Abby and Laura and other non-bloggers like my longest-friend, Amy :))

When September comes, we hope to be off toward Maine, to see my dear Nikki/Starcat, other dear loved ones along the way, and some soul-healing sites (like, hopefully, a hike up the tallest peak on the east coast, to be the first ones in the U.S. to see the sun rise that day). Then we will follow the entire east coast south and see many loved ones (mostly family on the kids' dad's side, sprinkled with dear friends like Jen), until we find ourselves in Florida for the rest of September and maybe part of October. The kids' dad lives in Florida, as well as some other loved ones that we want to spend lots of time with (Kim and Grace!!!!) <3 We may drive down the Florida Keys (or at least some of them), and I would like to follow the sun across the sky one day (watch it rise on one coast and set on the other coast).

The last leg of the journey is all up in the air. Partly depending on whether certain events are going to take place. Partly depending on our budget. Partly depending on the dates and how long we spent in Florida. Partly depending on if we want to relax more, race home fast, stop a million more places, or any other variation of these things.

These are some of our options:

• loved ones in Texas
• family reuinion in Oklahoma in early October
• family/friends in Kansas
• loved ones and sites to see in Colorado (we used to live there, so I anticipate this taking a lot of time)
• sites to see in New Mexico
• family in Arizona
• family and friends in east California, like Kimra

If we rush back to our house from Florida, in the least, we will stop to see folks in Texas and maybe in Arizona (but that is close enough that we can visit them again in the near future, if we don't have time or energy to stop and make camp again before racing home). If we rush through this time, our next trip will start off spending a lot more time in these places we will miss. Yes, I already have a second trip (more for sight-seeing and such) percolating and formulating.

For those of you who are more visually-inclined, our trip will look roughly like this:

That is about 6 months, all 4 corners of the continental U.S., a multitude of diverse landscapes, and lots of connection. It will be a food experience-extravaganza, an adventure of the senses. I am aiming for a formula that looks something like this:

• 70% time with beloveds
• 25% time solitude/me-and-the-kids time (some of this will be during driving, some during transitional camping days, and some during searching out sites that heal the soul)
• 5% of our time purely for site-seeing (that means more for the sites than for the inner healing the sites might do)

This trip is more for the people than the places, but needs a good flavor of places, too :)) We are going through the north first when there is less chance of weather that will be too cold to enjoy sleeping in our pop-up trailer. We will be driving through the north east during September when we should have some of the most spectacular views of fall that I have ever seen (my favorite season). We plan to drive back along the south during the colder months, in hopes that it will be the warmest areas of the US during that season (and the coolest times of year for those desserts!).

The trip will determine what sight-seeing we will actually have time for, and a lot of our trip will be learn-as-we-go -- like how well the babies will do for the driving part of the whole journey, as well as the constant transitioning part. I will follow their needs. I want to move slowly and make sure we all feel like our trailer is homebase, just with different views :)) Google Maps calculates that we could make the trip in 6 days, 5 hours. Stretching that out over 6 months feels slow and relaxing (the point), so we shall see how that actually translates.

When we get home, we will decide what we want to do at that point. We may want to stay in our house (for who-knows how long), or we may want to ditch the house and get an RV-as-home, or we may want to continue in our van/pop-up trailer set up (maybe with some improvements, like a solar panel system and an outdoor shower and an awning and a storage container on the roof of the van), or we may find a whole different idea at that point :)) I love options :D

The main goal for this trip: see the people we love. Because as soon as I realized we could buy an RV and go see all of you, and then calculated the cost of gas and maintenance, I realized that it would take way too long to see some of you further-away-beloveds. So, this trip is about meeting/seeing everyone and getting a feel for long-term traveling.

Real full-timing, for me, will be when we have no house (crazy octopus leg squiggling outside of my tightly contained jar of responsibility). That will be true freedom for me. Of course, if we get rid of the house, we will have to find a solution for the cats. I don't think they will be comfortable in a pop-up trailer or a minivan LOL If we had an RV, I would preserve a special spot for them ♥ But an RV takes me back to my original delima of gas mileage and maintenance. So, we shall see. The beauty of living a nomadic life, is that change and creativity are embedded in the foundation of thinking, and this leavess infinite possibilities :)))