This was 2014!

Even though I'm on an indefinite hiatus from this blog, I thought this year, of all years, I had to do an end of year post. 

Sure, the same sort of things happened this year that have happened in my previous end of year posts: We travelled (kind of), had visitors, Such Music grew and gained listeners and I have come SO DAMN CLOSE to finishing the final tweaks on this draft that I can taste the submission process (and it tastes like 2015!!).  

But truly, this was a year that announced itself like the earthquake that rocked our apartment 15 hours before I gave birth (while in labour!).  

It was a year that will forever be a marker of my life.

Since my white, three-holed Keds, braids and striped cotton dresses I've carried two dreams with me always.

This year one came true.

Oh for this was the year my body lived and breathed and gave and gave and gave anew.  

This was a year I discovered that the last, tiny tip of strength within you is really a mountain about to burst through.

   

This is the year I've been given the honour to watch grow...

and grow...

and grow...

and grow for the rest of my life.

This was the year I saw another side of the great love inside someone get bigger and continue to become more and more and more.

People told me I wouldn't be prepared for the sleep deprivation, for the utter giving up of your life in trade for becoming carer of another's. People warned me I could loose myself.  But in truth, Easton opened me — and so much more of myself climbed out.  

None of this means I haven't been brought to my knees over and over and over this year.  The truth is motherhood is nothing if not humbling and it is nothing if not devotion, if not love.  And oh was this a year of love, of greatness.  This year and all...   

Pause...

And then six months blew by.....

If there are any of you out there wondering if I've quite this blog...well, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure?

I want to say no, of course no!  But I also don't want to lie.

I'm finding a rhythm for the first time in six months and there are a few other ingredients I have to add back into the mix before I can commit to this blog again.  After that, if things are going well, I'll be back.  I HOPE to be back.  If you're still around, awesome!  If not, I totally get it! I realize this blog may not be interesting to most people, but it was an outlet for me, and at the very least another way for my friends and family back in good, old TO to get a better feel for my life out here.

But for now, I have to go where my heart is leading and get done what I need to get done....

Thank you to every person who ever read this blog, even once, even for half a post, even for a sentence.

I am FILLED with gratitude!

I am blessed beyond my fondest dreams!  

The greatest love of all

Before I gave birth every one told me that your labor never goes as expected.  I doubted my own instinct a lot when I was pregnant. For this very reason on of my greatest lessons I've learned (now that Easton is almost four weeks old) is that sometimes things can go the way you want them to. Sometimes the dreams you've been having come to fruition and all that you knew in your heart to be true is.

For this there is only gratitude, so immense, so powerful and so great it us unlike any I have felt before.  So I say, as always, thank you. Thank you for my body - for how it serves me, for how it serves the little one that came from it. Thank you for this new love in my life, for every challenge, for every lesson learned, for every moment I get to know my baby boy better and understand his needs, how to soothe him and care for him. Thank you for moments to myself! Thank you for the support of many so that my darling boy and I can thrive. Thank you for the man that has been loving and caring for me for 13 years and who now cares for US on a whole other level. To have him in our lives, we are blessed beyond our fondest dreams!  

I have never been more in awe of myself, realized the confidence I have and what I am capable of. I have never been more in love with life and it's process and it's magic. Sure, I'm having a great moment right now.  I don't feel like crying and have gotten (some) sleep - which is not always nor will very often be the case.  So I am taking this moment to say thank you, to every thing and every one that is out there. My family of three is connected to you in pure love.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for the birth of my healthy baby and the love that is growing, growing, growing. This is the year, the greatest year on record...so far!

Off to a Great Start!

Well, it's finally happened.  I've crossed over to the other side....

This is Tom and I with Victoria, our new car.  We got it so I'd have my own car to drive around L.A, now that walking 3.5 miles/day at least is starting to tire me out too much in this pregnant body.  I will still walk!  Oh yes!  I refuse to surrender to the LA culture of driving ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE when there's nothing but sunshine can clear skies.  But on the flip-side, it's bloody hard to get anywhere in LA without a car.  I've managed to do pretty well for my first two years here, when most Angelinos look at me sideways when I tell them I don't have my own car.  But the thought of being a tad bit isolated with a newborn and the difficulty of getting to doctor appointments or Mommy and Baby meetings etc. helped Tom and I decide it was time.  And for one woman who has always disliked driving, I have to say I LOVE THIS CAR!  It doesn't mean I'm totally comfortable navigating the highways of LA.  It's nuts here people!  But oh, dear Toronto friends, if you could see how far I've come! I'm so, so grateful that Tom and I can afford our beautiful Victoria and that I really do love driving this sweet, smooth girl.  She's helping me get over much of my driver's anxiety and that is a blessing!  Big Gratitude!

In the meantime, while I haven't been driving, doing my other freelance work, or teaching yoga, — and I've been doing a lot more of that lately which is awesome and helping to pay for the aforementioned vehicle — I've been working on this:

I've been slashing, and making notes and looking for places to cut, because this draft is a tad on the long side.  But I'm making huge progress!  Thanks in part to the help of my author aunt.  And in a few months this bad boy will be out of my hands and sent out...Before baby comes I'll be at the next stage with this manuscript - the submission stage!  Oh my goodness, I don't want to think about how many years it's taken me to get here, but the time is nigh, my friends.  Oh yes, it is coming very soon. I feel grateful that I've stuck through it.  Just to get to this stage after being a young early twenty-something girl and dreaming of getting here, I have!  And it's because of the support from my family and my love, it's because of my own perseverance. Even if nothing more comes from this I have to give myself credit for getting this far.  There's a lot of people that don't. 

And while I'm not editing away...Tom and I are working on this:

It's our official "Before Baby Peters" list.  That's right!  We have a list — with only 12 weeks or so to go until baby arrives.  Bah!  I know our lives will be changed forever pretty soon and I've never been more excited, more grateful for a life change (though trust me already-parents, I'm not expecting this to be easy in any way, shape or form).

At 30 weeks I have to say I'm really starting to feel the spirit of this baby inside me.  Not in gender terms but in a whole other way — just a presence that I feel wrapped up in, in awe of and so utterly grateful for.  Every time the baby moves in my belly I'm filled with great laughter. I can't thank God, the Universe, Spirit, enough!

And on a side note...it's my Mom's birthday today.  Happy Birthday Mom!  You all know how important she is to me.  And if you don't, read this. 

  

This was 2013!

Our second year in LA has been a BIG one.  I wrote a new novel from start to finish, then polished off another one. I became a certified RYT 200-hour yoga teacher, assisted a second round of teacher training and completed an 85-hour specialty certification in prenatal yoga.  And I also started teaching yoga!  Me!  The girl who cried in 2012 when she had to teach a sun salutation to a group of teacher trainees because she was terrified of speaking in public — and now I have two classes a week of my very own!  I never expected I would get to this point teaching yoga and how much I would love teaching.  I never thought I could write a novel in three months either, but I did that this year too!

Tom and I also had six sets of visitors in 2013.  I went back to Toronto twice, went to Hawaii with my little sis, made a trip to NYC with my Mom and my aunt, Tom and I visited our little niece and family in Vancouver and then we partied in Calgary for his best friend's wedding. We also took multiple trips to Palm Springs — with my aunt and her family and with friends — and then we had a little getaway of our own in San Clemente.  This was also the year Toomas 4Everest Peters launched his digital record label, Such Music — and the label had a stellar first year!  Then the weekend after he launched the label he broke his neck on an ocean wave in Malibu.  While he was healing I broke my toe.  We spent 12 weeks together in our apartment while he healed, learning to be humble and above all reach for a whole new level of gratitude.  Every day we are grateful that he made a full recovery (along with my little toe).   But you know, there's a lot a young married couple can get up to when they're stuck in their apartment together, even with broken bones...

It turns out 2013 was also the year we embarked on a journey, of receiving one of life's greatest gifts!! 

And so these were the events of 2013, but in truth, this was the year...

...we saw for ourselves how quickly life sprouts up and on and how joy spreads with it

This was the year of knowing you will always find your way back to the people you love

...and that together you can visit the places of your dreams.

 This was the year of discovering that you can set goals and you can surpass them

and that life will always find a way to help you express what's in your heart.

This was the year my eyes opened wider to the evolution of spirit within each of us, the beauty that resides within us all. 

I realized like never before that we are here to go for it.  We are here to express. We are here to share what we love and always, always, always, create from the truest parts of ourselves.

We are here to remember the cliche that life's greatest loves can be born out of life's greatest heartaches (or something like that ;)

especially if you're able to laugh your way through.

 Because the truth is this won't be the last time you'll need to reach for a higher place.  The truth is that the thing you never thought you'd get through is over now, or it's on its way to being over, because it all ends sometime.  It all changes.  So if it's at all possible, keep in mind and take heart that there are joyous occasions around the corner.  There is love like you have never known.

This was a year of love, this was a year of greatness, this year and all...

Life surging on and overflowing

Thank you for the crispy bits of roasted potatoes.  Thank you for information falling into my lap just when I need it and better yet before I realized I did.  Thank you for time — to connect, to relax, to breathe and move and to discover.  Thank you for the moments I remember to recognize my freedom. Because I know that freedom is like life, ever changing, and it might not always exist in the same way, so thank you for how it exists in my life right now. And thank you for boot weather.  Thank you for live music and community and teachers who hold the space.  Thank you for my person, the support he slips under my soles so I can feel myself growing.  Because I know I'm growing, it's just that sometimes it feels more like sinking and so I'm grateful for him because he reminds me that backwards steps can be forward steps.  Thank you for all the pieces of the universe that we don't understand.  Thank you for surprises.  Thank you for open hearts and surrendered spirits. Thank you for life surging on and overflowing.  Thank you for this moment, right now, right here.       

Something out of nothing

I finally got around to watching this TED Talk by Amy Tan about where creativity lies.  She makes some great points about the serendipitous nature of creativity that really resonated with me so I thought I would share.  If you have 20 minutes and are so inclined:

Life is good right now.  In fact, life is great.  I feel awesome, am back in a schedule doing so many things I love: writing lots, teaching yoga, practicing yoga, hanging out with friends and my best friend and life-mate, good old Mr. Peters.  I'm just really grateful to be right here.

I'm feeling really good about the revisions I'm going through in this next draft of my book and confident that I'll be done with this draft very soon.  Then...(duh, duh, duh) it will truly be time to send it out!  It's taken me a LONG TIME to get even close to this stage (much longer than most writers I think, from what I read in the blogosphere), but I haven't given up!  It's been a good 10 years since I committed to the idea of writing stuff for people to read and I'm really thrilled I've kept at it.

Yesterday I was in a bathroom and I cam across this:

Thoreau's quote made me smile because, after all this time, I can't believe that's still the direction I'm going in. I've had a lot of help and a lot of love from people to keep me on track, but reading this I'm reminded that patience really pays off.  I haven't realized a lot of my dreams yet, but because I'm going in their direction I feel like I'm living them.  And when I'm out of my head and in my body, when I'm breathing in the present moment, I realize that if you're living any stage of your dream, in some facet you're already there.

So, my dear ones, GO CONFIDENTLY! You may just end up realizing the life you've imagined for yourself is happening right now.