My Day

I am sitting here at the Heartworks House (what we call our office space)....It has been a full day of speaking to people who love someone with cancer. Including talking to Eddie about his dad, my father-in-law who I love dearly. Then a close friend about her father-in-law, then a woman I have known for years, trying to suggest to her in a gentle way to allow herself to be open to what Heartworks can offer her family while she's in treatment for breast cancer. She's not biting... Holly is in the next room talking to Lauren about how to improve our sign up sheets for our meeting next week. A friend of mine is crying, dealing with depression. Cars are driving by on Rt 202...I am overwhelmed with the amount of suffering going on for people close to me as well as people I have never met before. I thank God that I am not in the mall right now spending money on clothes I don't need. I thank God I spend my time here at the Heartworks House while my girls are in school. Here I can be immersed in the suffering, and I am grateful. Not because I am a downer (though some would disagree) but because it is at least authentic energy and keeps me grounded in the reality of our choices- of how we spend our time. I can't cure my father-in-laws cancer today...but I can get organized for our next meeting and make calls to families who are living parallel experiences. I can do what I can with what is within my control. I feel like if I died tomorrow I could say that I did not waste my time on unimportant things. I take care of my girls, I love my husband, I drink wine with my friends, I never say "no" at a chance to sit with my mom for 5 minutes or 5 hours. People have judged my choices....that they are different from what they may do with their days....but I am living in alignment for what I have been asked to do on this Earth. And I can't cure cancer...I can't fix my friend's marriage....but I can raise money and deliver dinner and reach out and this means my day was well spent. And now I get to go home to my 3 healthy girls...the house may be a mess but they will be there and Eddie will come downstairs and I get to hang out with him tonight and I know I am blessed by these seemingly ordinary occurrences, but I know, after a day like today these are the exact things not to take for granted.

September 11, 2012

There is 5 minutes left to September 11th...I just got home from the Heartworks House after a meeting with 73 women. 73 WOMEN!!! Our biggest group ever. We lit candles, we prayed, we drank wine and ate chips and salsa. We had a goal for making $500 for Matthew Harms medical bills with pray stars...we still have to put the poster out at the fundraiser Saturday night and we have already raised $500!!! Amazing. My daughter Caroline painted gold nails on anyone who would sit with her...a way to support her little friend  Campbell who is 4 days into 1st grade living with a brain tumor. Caroline was sitting in the back of the room when we lit our candles and stood in a circle listening to "Amazing Grace (her Grampy's favorite song). she was looking at me talking leading their group of women in to a silent circle of prayer. I felt like she was understanding what the past 8 years has been about for our family. I felt like I was showing her what I have been doing with myself when I am away from Eddie and my girls. I thought that maybe she was beginning to understand the impact her Uncle John's life has had on the world.
My most sacred moments of the day are:

Realizing this morning that I did not bring flowers to John and Allison Horstmann's plaque at our high school and my friend Jim Davis taking care of it for me...knowing that this helped him with his grief over his lost friends as much as it helped me.

John's family being at the service with us. My mother sitting with his parents and sisters. His brother Jim standing next to me. Michael and Kathleen included in the circle even though they were not physically there. Later, they all came to the Heartworks House and I was able to show them what has been created in memory of their son and brother.

The sun shining so brightly. Years ago, when my father had recovered from tongue cancer to the pint that he could travel, he went to Florida. It was winter and he told me that he got off the airplane and stood with his face to the sun. The sun gave him new life. I tired my face to the sun, as I have so often in the past 7 years when the pangs of missing him overwhelm me.

Nieces and nephews scrunched on a brick wall next to Madison and Caroline sitting n a plaid blanket while the bell tower rang

The Monsignor Capik's voice during the homily and the memory of him sitting at Maryanne's kitchen table September 15, 2001. The stillness in the kitchen and the realization that he could handle it because he knew God.

Standing with my brother and saying the Our Father together

My sister Maryanne laughing

Talking about John, the wind whipping up and 16 balloons floating up in the air filled with written love notes at Jockey Hollow

Heartworkers preparing the Heartworks House for our meeting all day while I spent time with my family

The texts, calls and emails from people who love me (Sue Ostrander, what a gift, a story (book)  for a different day)

My gratitude for Madeline and how we came to know each other

The mediation room filled with candles, pictures and prayers

Spending the night with conscious women. My deep loves who understand me and want what I want- a deep connection with God and freedom from the bullshit

My time in the parking lot with my friend Andea

The back up at the front door of people coming into the meeting

The 73 women that left their houses to come join us in our efforts

Running out of candles, chairs, glasses and spinach dip

The $500 already made for the Harms family

The $1,000 we are going to be able to send Chis Meade, a man in CT who we have never met before to pay for medical bills

The look on his friend's faces when we told them we can do this for him

The image of my sweet Caroline sitting in the back of the meeting room and remembering being 5 months pregnant with her on a 24 hour ride home from Colorado 11 years ago this week.

Sitting at the Heartworks house over a glass of wine until 11:00 with Heartworkers that just didn't want to leave

The time with my Kelly who is a sole sister of all sorts XO

Lying my head on my pillow tonight next to my Eddie knowing that I have done one small part today to honor John and everyone else who's life was sacrificed in a spiritual awakening for the planet

Good night and thanks for listening even though I don't tell people I blog so very few people read it :) XO

Prayers for Tomorrow

I spent today at the Heartworks House getting ready for our meeting tomorrow night. We are in the process of transforming the Meditation Room into a place filled with pictures of victims of 9/11, active military men and women and pictures of war torn countries from all over the world. Our prayers reach far and wide to anyone ever affected by terrorism. Heartworks remembers that we are a country at war and that horrific acts of hate are not some thing in the past, but happening as I type this blog entry. There are families escaping territories with nowhere to go. We pray for them tonight.
Tonight I want to say thank you to every single person who did something for a family after September 11, 2001. Thank you for paying such close attention to the loss. It is my greatest hope to continue on the standard that you set 11 years ago to any struggling family that crosses the path of Heartworks.

We pray tonight for all people being retraumatized by the anniversary
We pray for everyone who misses someone
We pray for every first responder who is struggling with health issues
We pray for every human being affected by terrorism
We pray for acute awareness and gratitude of our freedoms and safety
We pray for all political leaders to act from a place of grace rather than ego
We pray for healing around the globe

I am watching the coverage on TV. I do this every September 10th before I go to bed. I was in Colorado in 2001, far from any of the trauma. I watch it now because I want to pay my respects to the people who were not so far away. Who still have nightmares and anxiety from the things that they saw that day. I want to pay my respects to the first responders and witness, even if it is from the ridiculous safety of my couch a fraction of what they witnessed that day.
I will never forget. I will never forget the events or what people did for my family. Besides my husband and daughters, family and friends,  nothing else is more important to me than to pay forward what has been done for my sister and her kids.
Thank you.

The Ronan Song

 Below is a note I sent to my Heartworks Advisory Board members today. They are 9 women dedicated to the ideals and principles of Heartworks. They are very tolerable of my emails that ramble on and on about my thoughts about life, Heartworks and everything and anything in-between.

So….when you are done reading this email, your assignment today :) is to google Taylor Swifts performance of her new song "Ronan" at the Stand Up to Cancer Concert that she just sang over the weekend. She had read a blog by a woman who's 4 year old son had died last year and she and the mother wrote this song together.

 I got an email about it Saturday from Heartworker Beth B to watch it. I ignored it. Then last night I got a text from Katie B about the same song. I put down what I was doing and listened. I watched Taylor Swift sing and bawled my head off. I allowed God to penetrate my anxious thoughts about the legal issues being presented to our group by another non-profit, the dirty laundry piling up in my basement, how Heartworks is getting ready for the  9/11 meeting, how many people are coming to the fundraiser, the new pimple on my chin, figuring out the carpool schedule for Madison's soccer this week. 

I let myself listen to the song and connect to the tread of suffering in the world, the suffering in my own family, the suffering of my friends, of Heartworkers and neighbors and strangers I have never even met before. I wanted to work on Heartworks before going to bed. I sent an email to Mary, the friend of Amy (the beautiful woman who lives in Bville, has breast cancer, came without any hair on her head to the July meeting) to ask when the date is for the drawing for the beach houses. She wrote me back that they had to do the drawing last week…because Amy has gotten very sick, very quickly and is in her final days and the needed to get the money to them…..She shared with me that when Amy got in the car after the meeting she said she is coming to help as soon as she gets better…

So early this morning I went on an early walk, listened to "Ronan" no less than 20 times in a row and went to the Heartworks House to sit in the meditation room. 

I hung up the American flag with the names on it of everyone who was killed on 9/11. I put out the article I found about Syria. I began the process of transforming the room into a quiet place of reflection for the meeting Tuesday night. My vision is the meditation room filled with pictures and stories from all over the globe of acts of terrorism and war. It is important on Tuesday that we do not all just bow our heads in a robotic gesture without feeling what it means to be alive on the planet right now. That there are countries being torn apart and having "9/11" days over and over and over again. When My sister's husband was killed, the world responded. She was brought food and given money and  people did anything in their power to make her life manageable. There is a woman somewhere tonight, her house is being bombed and she has nowhere to go. No lasagnas being brought to her, no soccer coaches welcoming her children back to practice, no lawyers, doctors, orthodontists, teachers or mechanics showing up on her doorstep to help her. No resources to call on. And I think as Americans it is important for us to realize how different our experience is with terrorism than most of the world. 

The "September 11th pit" as I call it is slowly growing in my stomach. Between the song about Ronan, New Heartworker Amy from Bernardsville sitting in the Heartworks House 2 months ago and now she is getting ready to let go of this life after a courageous adventure with Breast Cancer, thinking of Garrett on a camping trip last night with his 3 boys under the same tent, thinking about going to sleep on September 10th 11 years ago and crawling up the stairs the next day to tell Eddie to turn on the TV….I feel in sacred space and basking in the love of my life. The blessings that are right in front of me that I take for granted everyday. My gratitude for all of you and all the things you put up with from me, for the vision of Heartworks. For your commitment. For your internal work so that we can always be coming from a clear place when we intermingle in other people's lives. So please be patient with me if I seem "particular" with my vision for Tuesday's meeting and my reasoning for things…I am never trying to be anal or bossy, just intentional. If you feel I am off course with something, please share your thoughts in case it is the mud in my own eyes keeping me from seeing a certain view. The world seems so lost in the "busy" and Tuesday is a sacred day of opening, faith, trust, crucifixion and resurrection for me. I don't necessarily feel sad, I feel reverent. 

I am staying open to the pit in my stomach, knowing that it is my physical body processing the contradictions and complexities of life that we so willingly look at through Heartworks. I do not want a "normal" few days…I want to be dedicated to my family and the work we are being called to do. I want to be open to love. Eddie just texted me from Madison's soccer game that he misses me. (so friggin cute!)  I want to be open to the love God is blessing me with instead of being too distracted to notice it. 

I pray that I am able to do this

I pray that every woman who needs the meeting Tuesday is able to get there

I pray that ideas and organizing comes easily to us for meeting nd fundraiser

I pray that we can stay focused on why we are doing Heartworks

I pray that we all feel God's deep, unfailing love for us

I pray that we can live intentional lives of receiving and giving.

I pray. 

I encourage each of you to be intentional this week within your own lives. Come to the House and help if you are pulled to do so, there is plenty to do. 

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO ME 

I loveyou all XOXOX M

Later today I received another email from Heartworker Mary telling me that her dear friend Amy who came to her first and only Heartworks meeting in July, had gone to God last night. My laundry is still piled up downstairs. I still have a pimple. But my day was full of love. I had lunch with my mom and my sisters and nieces and nephews. Eddie and I watched Madison win a soccer game and we  hung out with our friends tonight. I am acutely aware of the life around me. I am motivated to live as clearly as I can and to love as much as I can while I am here. I thank God tonight for my healthy body and the opportunity to go to the Heartworks House tomorrow and prepare a space for 40 women to come and remember 9/11 and ray for peace. From terrorism, from cancer, from life.