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January 3, 2019January 20, 2019

Going Back to Basics

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Time to Get Back to Basics

It’s been a lifetime… Well, actually, it’s been 3-years since I have really mustered the courage to change my pattern.

Kurt and I made a decision to go back to basics. It’s amazing how far off track we’ve gotten and it is time for a change. Kurt and I started Ra’Co in 2012 – can you believe it? It’s been nearly 7 years since we wrote our first post.

Who Are We?

We are both wildly ambitious with our own careers – and we like to work a lot. But in the last year, we have found ourselves truly drifting apart from each other and growing independently, not together. We have also been very focused on the children, work, and personal development.

It’s been a rough November and December, re-entering into a daily pattern after having not spent any real time in the past two years together. The man I live with, have had children with and have crafted a life with have mostly communicated through WhatsApp on an as needed basis. That’s just crazy! There are so many reasons why things have gotten THIS off track, but the fundamentals don’t really matter. The point is we are getting back to our roots.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_column_text]

W H A T W E R E W E

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Striving For?

[/vc_column_text][vcex_spacing][vc_column_text]When we started Ra’Co the goal is still the same as it is today – to hold ourselves accountable for our actions and to create a community of online people around the world. We also wanted to do it together and to invest time in our relationship by working together.

The community we want to create is one that gifts the next generation (our children) with a more sustainable life because let’s face it, the world is not in a good place. Ra’Co is really not that complicated – Our #1 goal is to create a constant balance in all that we do which is the baseline principle (Raw + Cooked Food = Ra’Co).

The Moment of Change

Most of the time, there is a moment in time where you realize you have to make a change. Kurt and I both felt it individually. For me, it was the combination of two guiding statements in the last three months:

Early in the fall, my wonderful friend and running partner Maria said, “Everything in life is a compromise. No matter what you do, you will always be sacrificing something.”
My wise Mother said this week, “Honey, the only thing you can count on in life is change.”

They are both right. I can’t even remember what the topics were although I can imagine the 1st one was about traveling for work vs. staying home with the kids and the 2nd one was about Zai’s recent crazy outbursts.

What Happened Next?

The statements somehow snapped me back and pushed me in the direction towards my internal self. I have spent the last three years, the total time of Zai’s life, reaching outside of myself and my family into the world. I spent endless hours having parties, events and supporting Kurt’s art career. I tried a million new kinds of projects. I took a ton of risks. I failed a lot – and in the end, I was searching for something I did not find. What I realized with these two statements is that the compromise I was making was my desire to craft my own path and feeling like the hard sacrifices would seemingly disappear if I fulfilled the void with friends and fun. On the contrary, what I found is emptiness and frustration within myself.

So I find myself here: 3 days after my 38th birthday, energized, excited and reinvigorated to set my intention for 2019 inward and grow as a more complete person on my own journey, that I am controlling.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]

M Y P A T H

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Forward

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Get back to writing. I realized on this break, how important writing is to me and my central self.
Continue working on thoughtful communication with myself, my husband and my children.
Make each month a progressive month forward – select an item and work towards changing it. This month is DRY JANUARY. See how I am going to stop drinking here.
Find strength within myself through exercise and consistency.
Learn a craft – in this case I want to learn how to take and edit photos.

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August 18, 2015December 27, 2018

Tips n’ Tricks for How I am Coping with Baby #2 Pregnancy

It’s just how it goes. Round 2 is never easier than Round 1. You know too much, and likely you already have at least 1 other munchkin jumping all over you and emotions are high all around, especially with the existing munchkin.

I have had a terrible go of it from day 1 – nausea, vertigo and exhaustion plagued my 1st trimester and then we spent the 2nd trimester traveling and searching for a new ‘Home.’ Here we are finally in the 3rd trimester and I am already bigger than I was at full term with Iza, I am eating meat and dairy again and totally disgusted with myself, and I have a little girl whose emotions are so out of whack from our combined hormones. And this is all totally normal – in case you were wondering.

The good news it that Zai is extremely healthy and happy. He bounces around all day and night and seems to be progressing nicely. The doctor is very happy with the progress and very reassuring about all the rest.

Likely if you are in your 3rd trimester all of the above will sound normal to you. Here are some tips on what I am doing to get through and maybe some will be helpful to you!:

Eating tons of frozen fruit. That’s right! I take fresh fruit, cut it up into small pieces and freeze it. With Iza I was obsessed with frozen sweet peas, with Zai it is fruit. I also sometimes make ice cream or popsicles using Coconut Milk and frozen fruit so it is ready to go anytime I am craving.
Yoga, walking and swimming when I can. I take lessons since I am not disciplined enough to do it on my own, and I have worked it out with girlfriends who are also pregnant to keep it interesting. With yoga, I was constantly frustrated with my lessons until I started listening to my body and adjusting accordingly. Don’t be afraid to not do as much, but push yourself when you can.
Complaining often to release the tension. I have prepped my family that this is a unique time in my life and I just need unconditional support and the ability to be self indulgent right now. I have given myself permission to vocalize how I feel even if it sounds like a broken record. It is important to get the feeling out and to not harbor it.
Playing as much as I can with Iza. With the new baby in arms reach I am worried Iza will feel left out. This is a common emotion mother’s go through when they have to begin dividing their love, so I am doing what I can now (against intelligent work decisions) to spend as much time with her as I can. When I need a break, I do offer the iPad and don’t feel guilty about it. Now is the time to balance energy, time and experience.
Isolating our emotions. It has been really hard on my marriage with Kurt to be constantly interrupted by Iza’s crying and her frustration with me, and even harder to not let it effect our relationship. We have had to work really hard to isolate our emotions to the moment we are in and to remember to come back together at the end of the day, regardless of what the day has unfolded. Carving out an hour to splurge on a TV show together goes a long way.

If you want to get in touch to chat about what you are going through, I am here to be part of your tension release program. 🙂

April 16, 2015January 19, 2019

Everything in Life is a Practice

In life, it seems everything is a practice, and no matter what decision or choice we are faced with the practice part is the constant:

It is a practice to stay and a practice to go when it comes to my career.
It is a practice to be a parent, but the practice also to find a different way without children.
It is a practice to love someone, and also a practice to live with them every day.
It is a practice to work with a client, but it is a practice to not have any clients.
It is a practice to have a family and to have family obligations, and a practice to have a family and not be close.

We are definitely in a ‘searching’ phase of our lives. Some of it might be indecision or misdirection, but a big part of it is a balance. We want to achieve the ultimate level of success by giving ourselves both time and dollars. It has seemed like pushing away from all that we know and graduating to a level of thinking that is not widely supported is both good and bad, but either way, any decision we make is a practice.

Our day to day practice has always put experience first instead of responsibility. We often see responsibility as a roadblock to creativity and one that stifles our opportunity to grow, but we have found recently it does not have to be the case. Responsibility can actually act as a set of boundary lines to help push us forward in a directed manner…almost establishing ground rules.

Perhaps a bit esoteric, but in the months and years to come this will be honed in, refined and ultimately a perfected daily practice; we will master our ability to ‘practice’ over time.

Photo taken at Ren Zhi Ji Mount Baldy. Kurt stands near the infamous Roshi.

Kurt practices Zen Buddhism and maintains at least 2 sesshins a year at the Ithaca Zen Center.