Our final home visit is scheduled in just under one week from today, and after that we should be a licensed foster home, waiting for our first placement! From our training (and just plain common sense), we expect that having a supportive community surrounding us will be essential to our success as foster parents. So with that in mind we sent an email to our family and closest friends explaining where we were at in the licensing process. We also used the opportunity to answer some questions about what our friends and family members can expect, as we know that our decision to foster will affect them as well as us.

In case you've ever considered foster care or have an interest in knowing more, here's a copy of the letter. Please keep in mind that this is a VERY brief overview of things, and we're still learning as we go, so it is by no means comprehensive. Or even totally correct for that matter. I'm sure in a few years from now we'll look back at this and cringe, but you've got to start somewhere. Experienced foster parents who are reading this, please feel free to add your corrections and/or advice via comments.

Dear Friends and Family,

As you know, we’re nearing the end of our foster parent training! Thank you for all of your support and love through this process. We are so blessed to have family and friends who have helped see us through to this point. Very soon the real work begins, and we’re going to need that love and support more than ever.

We know that our decision to foster will affect you as well, and we are hoping that this email will help to answer some of your questions and set us all up for success in helping these little people through this rocky patch in their lives.

We’ll tell you now that we’re sorry this is so long, and we’re sorry it sounds so bossy. We were trying to keep it as brief as possible, so it may sound a little “short” in some places. But know that we love you, and we don’t mean for it to sound “short.” If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask – we love talking about this stuff! Otherwise, we’ll let you know as soon as we get our first placement!

Love,
Jas and Mike

Placements to Expect
We anticipate being fully licensed and waiting for a placement by the end of next week. (OMG!) We are open to one to two foster kids, ages birth through five years old. We’re open to any gender or race. We could get a call for a placement the day that we’re licensed or it could be several weeks or even months before we get a call. The kids could be staying with us anywhere from a few days to several years.

Confidentiality
When we get a placement we will of course share with you the children’s names, ages, birthdates, personalities, and other such details. However the family history, reasons for placement, medical status, and other aspects of the foster children’s lives are confidential and we will not be able to share these details with you.

Pictures
DCFS policy is that pictures of foster children may not be posted online. We won’t be able to post or email pictures of the kids, and we’ll need your cooperation in not posting pictures that you may take of the kids.

Inclusion in Family & Gift Giving Policy
Other than confidentiality issues, we will treat these children as members of our family. We must insist that everyone respect this policy. The foster children will be treated equally to how Juliet and Dean are treated, especially when it comes to holidays, birthdays, or other gift-giving occasions. We never expect gifts for any of our children. But if you choose to give gifts, you’ll need to plan to give equally to all of the kids who are in our care at that time.

Behavior and Discipline
You may observe unusual or seemingly alarming behaviors from the foster children. Accordingly, you may also see us utilizing some unusual discipline techniques (varying from very easy-going to very strict). We ask you to remember that we’re working with a team of professionals on a behavioral and discipline plan tailored to each individual child. If you have concerns that you feel the need to discuss with us, please bring them up in private, away from the child. Comments like “Oh, can’t she just have the ice cream,” when said right in front of the child, can result in a major setback.

Also, DCFS law states that ONLY the foster parents are allowed to discipline the foster child. If you’ll be spending time with the kids, it will be very important for you to understand and adhere to this policy.

Holidays and Special Events
We LOVE seeing all of our friends and family for holidays and special occasions and certainly hope to be able to incorporate our foster children into these cherished events. However, some foster children may have difficulty with the stress of large groups, new people, new food, and higher expectations for behavior. We ask for your patience and understanding when we may have to miss an event, arrive late, leave early, or perhaps one parent has to stay home with a foster child.

What Do They Call Us?
Our foster children will have the option of calling us by our first names or “mom and dad.” We’ll invite them to address you with the same terms that Juliet and Dean use (grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, etc.).

What Do We Call Them?
No child wants to be known as “the foster kid.” We will refer to any children in our care as our kids, our son, our daughter. We ask you to please be sensitive to this, and do not refer to a child or introduce them as a “foster child,” particularly in that child’s presence. Feel free to refer to them as you would with Dean and Juliet (my grandchild, niece, nephew, etc.). Or, if that isn’t comfortable for you, you can refer to them as our child (my brother’s son, my friend’s daughter, etc.).

About Building Attachments
The question is sometimes raised with foster care if it isn’t detrimental to encourage children to become attached to their foster family. In fact, there was a time about 20 years ago when foster children were intentionally moved to new foster homes on a regular basis to avoid this attachment. We now know that learning to build attachments is one of the most important elements to living a happy and satisfied life. As children bond with us they gradually learn the joy that comes from bonding and how to trust safe adults, and it builds their sense of self-worth. If the child can learn to bond successfully, they can then repeat that bonding process with others throughout their life. This is a vital process, even if they are not with us forever.

The challenge is for us to bond, fearing the pain of losing the relationship when they leave. We expect that you may have this fear as well, but we ask for you to keep the children’s best interests in mind, and open your heart to them. 


That's all, folks. Peace out.

Note: After 8 years of working at Unity on the North Shore, a spiritual community in Evanston, IL, I have decided to move on. I delivered this last sermon on Sunday, January 22, 2012. I warn you now that it is quite a bit longer than my traditional blog post.

The theme for our Sunday lessons this month is “God = Woman”. Of course God is an energy inside of us, not a man or a woman in the literal sense. But just as there are masculine attributes of God, there are also feminine ones. By identifying and labeling these different aspects of Spirit, we – I believe – experience God a little more fully and tangibly.

It makes sense then, to examine the more feminine traits that make up the one almighty, all-loving power of the universe. So if we say that God = Woman, then we must start by asking what, exactly, is woman?

Women most often define themselves in relation to someone else. Actually, in service to someone else. The loving daughter, the faithful spouse, the caring parent, the doting aunt, the reliable employee. This is often cited as a flaw in a woman – she’s too attached, she’s too giving, she’s too generous. In fact, there’s a clinic diagnosis for this condition. A psychology article written by Jeanne Lemkau and Carol Landau in 1986 dubbed it “the selfless syndrome”, defining it as “a cluster of cognitive, affective, and behavioral symptoms seen in many women psychotherapy clients who have followed cultural prescriptions to seek satisfaction via self-denial and fulfilling the needs of others to the exclusion of their own.”

I find it interesting to note that this article was written about the selfless syndrome, but the authors wrote it specifically about women as they experience this condition, which of course begs the question are men not subject to fall victim to this so-called selfless syndrome

This “selfless syndrome” is also sometimes known as the super-woman syndrome, or the martyr syndrome. There are even connections drawn between selflessness and dependent personality disorder, which is a clinical diagnosis of co-dependency: the reliance on another’s perceptions for one’s own sense of worth.

Lemkau and Landau went on in their article about the selfless syndrome to recommend that “The primary goal of treatment is crisis management and symptomatic relief, followed by an attempt to enhance the woman's awareness of the role that a selflessness stance has had in precipitating the recent crisis and/or in maintaining ongoing personal, marital, and family difficulties.”

I’ll read that once more so that you can fully digest it: “The primary goal of treatment is crisis management and symptomatic relief, followed by an attempt to enhance the woman's awareness of the role that a selflessness stance has had in precipitating the recent crisis and/or in maintaining ongoing personal, marital, and family difficulties.”

Seriously? Selflessness is a clinically diagnosed psychological problem? Well then call me crazy!

Not that people go around referring to me as selfless on a regular basis, but I’m a mom. And I think almost every mom is, to at least some degree, selfless. I mean, for most of us the motherhood journey starts out by forcing us to become very physically selfless, as we somehow create and then grow a tiny human inside our very bodies. That little person in our womb literally lives off of our water, blood and nutrients.

Women are, quite literally, meant to give. We are biologically built to give life to the world. We are givers by nature, by divine appointment, at a very cellular level. But is this giving nature, this selflessness, a disease for women to be cured of?

I’d like to tell you a story. It’s the story of a woman who could be any number of women in the world today. This woman found a man in whom she very much believed. And so she decided to join her life with his, to be with him, to support him. She cooked for him. She accompanied him on business trips. When the day came that he took his last breath, she was by his side in death, just as she was in life. And although this could be any number of women today or throughout all of history, I am in fact speaking of Mary Magdalene, the ever-present, ever-faithful, ever-serving apostle of Jesus.

Why did Mary give so selflessly? Indeed, why does any woman give selflessly?

When Mary and Jesus first met, he exorcised seven demons out of her. It’s a hotly debated issue, what or who those demons were. True demonic possession? Mental instability? Sin?

The Bible, or any book, movie or story for that matter, is nothing if we fail to see ourselves in it. Those demons – whatever they were – were a barrier between Mary and the Holy Spirit. Jesus, a symbol of our Christ Consciousness – a symbol of our inherited divinity – somehow removed that barrier. He reminded Mary of her own inner Christ presence. And the demons – the barriers – were gone.

And so after what must have surely been a profound spiritual experience in Mary’s life, she became one of Jesus’ greatest supporters. She believed in him, and in the good that he could do for others.

This woman walked away from everything she ever knew to follow Jesus. And follow him she did. In the Gnostic gospels it’s written that she became one of Jesus’ closest friends and confidants. At his crucifixion, when the male disciples kept their distance, she was at Jesus’ side. In the gospel of Mary, when, after the resurrection, the other disciples were fearful of speaking about Jesus’ life and teachings, it was Mary who told them to buck up and get on with the work that needed to be done. She devoted her life to supporting the Rabbi. Was that co-dependency? Did Mary Magdalene have “the selflessness syndrome”?

There’s a saying that “behind every great man, is a great woman”… I discussed this recently with a colleague, who felt that the saying was degrading to women. My feminist roots agreed. But my spiritual roots did not. So after further thought, I have come to realize that what I find degrading is not the sentiment that “behind every great man is a great woman”, but the fact that as a culture we feel we should find it degrading. For if we indeed mean those words, that behind every great man is a great woman… what power that is!

And yet, society would have us believe that this supportive female role is one of weakness. Our paternal culture has come to equate anything female with weakness, and so, sadly, nurturing and selflessness have also come to mean weakness.

Worse yet, feminine selflessness has come to mean selfishiness.

Lenkau and Landau give one final recommendation that in the treatment of “the selfless syndrome”” “The importance of trying to engage the male in psychotherapy by addressing his pain when relating to a selfless woman is emphasized.”

Isn’t that nice – to consider his pain when relating to a selfless woman?

I saw The Help this week. What a powerful movie! It’s a story about the civil rights movement told through the lives of housekeepers and maids in Jackson, Mississippi, who are “The Help”. A young white woman, Skeeter, from a well-to-do family comes home from college – the only one of her female friends to have obtained a college education – with a dream of becoming a reporter or a novelist. She begins speaking to “The Help” about their lives and experiences. At first they’re hesitant, but with time two women begin to open up and share their stories.

As the movie progresses more and more of “The Help” start contributing to what eventually becomes a book. This is all done in great secrecy because there’s a lot at stake for everyone involved. But it also becomes very clear along the way that the country – the world – needs to hear these stories. They need to know how these women are passed down as property in family wills, the things that are asked and required of them as less-than-second-class members of society, and the horrendous ways that they are treated by their employers. At one point Skeeter’s boyfriend finds out what she is doing. They have an argument which ends in him calling her “selfish” and storming off.

Women are often called selfish when doing their most selfless work.

As you know, this week marks the end of my employment here. Among the reasons for my resignation is the need to spend more time at home with my children. Mike and I are currently undergoing licensing to become foster parents. This next phase of our family growth is something that we are, of course, apprehensively excited about. The responses we’ve received to this news have run the gamut from applause and excitement to downright concern and nay saying.

As an aside, my absolute favorite response was from Brandon, a 4th grader in our Soul School classes, who, when his mom explained to him what we were going to be doing, looked straight at me and said with a twinkle in his eye “Wow! Well that’s big!” Yes, yes it is. That’s just about how Mike and I feel about it. It’s big, and we can’t say much more at this point. We’re preparing ourselves as much as we can for what is ultimately a totally un-preparable undertaking.

Many have asked why we want to do this. When I get this question I have to push aside my naturally defensive nature, which likes to read far too much into that one word. Why? Are they asking because they don’t think I can? Are the asking because they don’t think I should? Are the asking because they think this is a colossal mistake? Of course, when I remove myself from the situation and look at it objectively I can see clear as day that my defensiveness stems from my own self doubts. Can I do this? Should I do this? Is this is a colossal mistake? But whoever is asking those questions – even if, especially if it is myself, my answer has become my mantra: “If not me, if not we, than who?”

Yes, this journey will forever change my own story. Yes, it will affect my marriage in lasting and permanent ways. Yes, it will forever alter my children’s lives. But this work is mine to do. Call me selfish if you must. But I am woman, and I am selfishly selfless. And that, I believe, is the God in me. The divinity within that is yearning to get out – to hold up the weak, to cleanse the dirty, to clothe the naked, and to love the unloved.

This mission may require sacrifices along the way. Sacrifices of myself, of my plans, of my hopes, sacrifices of my children’s desires and sense of security.

And the sacrifices extend beyond Mike and I and our household. We’re aware that we’re asking our parents to love new grandchildren, and then say goodbye. We’re asking our nephews to befriend and call “family” these… strangers. We’re asking our friends to accept our shifting priorities, and to listen as we cry without reminding us that we chose this life.

Yes, there is no doubt: this is selfish. But I’m done apologizing for and explaining my selfishly selfless choices. Just as Mary Magdalene, I am woman. I am God. And I am selfless. I invite you, my fellow women and men, to join me in finding your inner selfless Goddess, and bringing her forth. Let the world see her light, and be not ashamed of it.

“Whaaaatttt? That can't be. Surely the Sassacks I know, the ones who are committed to spirituality and progressive parenting, don't give in to the Santa hype!"

Ahh, but we do. And we don't even do it just because it's the thing to do. We haven't simply followed the crowd, repeating what our parents and their parents before them did without questioning. No, we put a great deal of thought into the decision to "do Santa". Well, that's not exactly true. Truth be told, we've always done Santa with our kids simply out of tradition. But this year I've heard a lot of rumblings about not doing Santa. And much as I love my progressive parenting posse (i.e. acquaintances I've met at various parent, mom, and family groups that I now keep in touch with mostly via Facebook), I’ve given it some thought, and I must disagree on this Santa issue.

Parents’ reasons for not doing Santa are many and varied, including not wanting to lie to their children, not wanting to scare their children about some strange guy breaking into the house in the middle of the night, not wanting to force their children to sit on some guy’s lap, and not wanting to give credit to someone else for giving the presents. I suppose those are all valid enough reasons. But I have my own reasons for wanting to do Santa with my kids.

Imagination is an art form that is dying. True imaginative play takes time, space, and solitude - three things which our children have precious little access to due to societal pressures and the subsequent devaluation of these commodities. We overbook our children so that they’ll be smart enough and talented enough, providing them very little free time. We clutter their spaces (and their minds) with “educational” toys that do all the work for them. We bombard them with media and socialization through television, music, and playgroups, allowing them very little alone time in which to hear themselves think.

Additionally, we fail to see the value of imagination, and often we’re actually scared of it. Take for example children playing cops and robbers. This is the child’s way of working out the what-ifs in life: choosing between good and bad through play, instead of in real life. Rather than seeing the value of this, parents are quick to admonish any violent play-acting and put an end to it.

Believing in Santa is much-needed exercise for the imagination. It is fun, and it helps children to feel precious, valued and worthy. These are all things that our children want and need. Why not indulge them?

Juliet loves shopping at Costco. She loves it mostly for the free samples they give out, but also because usually the person checking our receipt when we leave will draw a smiley face on the receipt for her. Oh to find such pleasure in such simple things. Sigh.

Yesterday as we prepared to leave the store I handed my receipt over for the usual cart inspection. Juliet said in her quiet, high-pitched voice, “Please can you draw a smiley face?” The elderly man started poking around my card saying “What are you missing?” I wasn’t buying much and at first I thought he was joking that I must have forgotten to get something. But he kept saying it in his gruff, curt tone. When he finally said “What word are you missing?” it dawned on me that he was asking Juliet to say “please”. (Mind you he didn’t look directly at her even one time during this entire exchange.) I smiled and explained that she had said “please”. He argued that he didn’t hear her say it.

I left a bit confused and upset. My daughter had done the right thing – she had said please. I had done the right thing by sticking up for her and for what I knew to be true. And I’d done it nicely. But still, this man chose to be upset because a three year old asked him to draw a smiley face, and he thought she hadn’t said please.

And what if she hadn’t? Would that really be so terrible? She didn’t demand “Draw me a smiley face now, old man!” Even if he hadn’t heard the word “please”, he still obviously heard her question, which was very sweetly and politely asked. What is our obsession with making children say please all the time?

I understand the value of manners. Before Juliet could speak she learned sign language, and at fourteen months one of the signs she used most often was “thank you”. She has repeatedly been praised by strangers when we’re out in public for her very polite manners. When someone does something nice for her or gives her a gift her immediate and unprompted response is almost always “Thank you, that’s so kind of you.”

But the fact of the matter is that we don’t expect adults to say please each and every time they make a request. And when they ask nicely without saying please we certainly don’t say “What did you forget to say?” When I ask for cheese at the deli counter I might say “I’d like two pounds of the cheddar.” When I ask my husband to run an errand I might say “Mike, would you drop off the dry cleaning on your way to work?”

Children are learning and growing and trying to figure out the rules of our society. There is bound to be a learning curve, and they’re not going to get it right every time. I don’t get it right every time. So please, be gentle and realistic in your expectations. And don’t expect more of them than you would of your adult neighbor, co-worker, or friend. Don’t expect more of children than you would of yourself.

Every Thanksgiving my side of the family spends the holiday at my parents’ lake house in Wisconsin. We all live within five miles of each other, and yet each year we drive eight hours round-trip to spend some time together. The house is in a relatively rural area, so we spend the weekend cooking, eating, reading, playing board games, and watching old movies. We even go out and cut down our own Christmas trees. It’s good old-fashioned family fun. Kinda corny, but its tradition and we love it.

Unfortunately this year our kids came down with coughs while we were up north. Everything was fine all day long: other than the occasional cough or drippy nose you wouldn’t know they were sick. On our second night there both kids went down to sleep without incident, but halfway through the night they both woke up screaming.

It’s never fun to have sick children, and it’s far less fun when you’re all in one bedroom, sharing walls with several other families who are trying to sleep. We gave Juliet juice and Dean a bottle. We gave both kids a natural cough medicine. One would quiet down and the other would get louder. Then they would switch roles. We tried lying down; we tried pacing the small bedroom. We tried what seemed like everything and anything for several hours.

Although Dean wouldn’t let me set him down, he finally did allow me to lie in bed with him cradled in my arms. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, but at least I could get a few minutes of sleep here and there. And I’m not quite sure how this happened, but Mike and Juliet ended up lying on the very narrow section of hardwood floor between the bed and the dresser.

We “slept” like this for a couple of hours and then Dean woke up again. This time I was able to nurse him back to sleep pretty quickly and actually lie him down in the portable crib where he stayed asleep!!! I climbed back in bed, and Mike joined me. As the sun crept over the horizon and the sky lightened just outside our window, we held hands. I whispered “There’s no one I’d rather be miserable with then you.” He squeezed my hand and we drifted off to sleep.

That’s marriage, folks. And a happy one at that. Life isn’t some magical fairytale where you ride off into the sunset and… I don’t even know how to finish that sentence… swim in the ocean by day and feast on fine seafood by night day after day after day for the rest of your bliss-filled life? Whatever it is that supposedly happens after that ride into the sunset – it isn’t real life. Real life is messy and sometimes miserable. But your spouse is the person you’ve chosen to endure this journey with. So if you want to be happy then you must continue to choose this person, moment after wretched moment. Of course they’re not all terrible moments. But the truth is that a lot of them are. So you might as well like the person you’re with.

Yesterday, after being out of town for a week, I took Juliet out for a special mother-daughter lunch so that we could reconnect. We went to Potbelly, where she ordered chili and then chose a table right in front of a young man who was playing guitar. Juliet has always been drawn to music, so periodically our conversation would come to a lull and she was content to just sit and watch the musician. At one point she turned her gaze from the guitarist to me and asked “Is that my Uncle Paulie?”

“Uncle Paulie” was my brother, Paul, who died just four days before Juliet was born. Even though Paul isn’t with us physically, we’ve tried hard to keep his memory alive in our family by talking about him often and showing the kids pictures of their uncle. Juliet will sometimes brings up Uncle Paul out of the blue, so the question in and of itself didn’t surprise me. The interesting thing, which Juliet has never been told, is that Paul was very drawn to music himself. In fact, Mike and I inherited his record player and record collection when he died. He had eclectic taste, but particularly enjoyed the work of Bob Dylan.

I told Juliet that no, this wasn’t Uncle Paulie, to which she asked “Who is my Uncle Paulie?”. How do I answer that? How do I tell her who this person is – this person who is so fully formed in my memory, and yet she has never met. She’ll never have the opportunity to establish her own relationship with him. We’ll never know what kind of an uncle he would have made. Juliet will never know her Uncle Paulie outside of what I choose to tell her about him. As I’m thinking the guitarist starts playing the first few chords to a song that sounds vaguely familiar. He begins to sing…

Mama, take this badge off of me…
I can’t use it anymore.

I fight back the tears and try to figure out how to tell Juliet just who her Uncle Paul was – who he still is to me. I struggle to fit an entire life into the space of a single sentence that will be digestible to a three year old.

It’s gettin dark, too dark to see.
I feel I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door.

But before I can find the words, the question is gone as soon as it has come.  Juliet is saying “This was a really good lunch. What was your favorite part?”

Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Dinner time always seems to be stressful at our house. I’ve been told that’s a fairly universal phenomenon amongst families with kids, but knowing that doesn’t really seem to make it any less traumatic. A few nights ago we had a particularly taxing dinner hour. Mike was late coming home from work, Dean wouldn’t sit in his high chair so he was on the floor crying and clinging to my pants while I was trying to cook, and Juliet was sitting at her seat asking (i.e. yelling) for more juice. To top it off Miles (our dog) was on the other side of the baby gate whining to be let into the kitchen so he could lick my baby’s face and eat food off the high chair tray. I snapped and yelled at the dog to go lie down. Loudly. After a few seconds of stunned silence Juliet said “Wow, that was a loud one. Could you… maybe next time you could say ‘Miles please go lie down.’” Gulp.

One of the most helpful techniques Mike and I have found for conscious and positive parenting is to tell our kids what we want them to do instead of what we don’t want them to do. It works really well with Juliet, particularly when she’s feeling cranky or demanding. For example, when she orders “I WANT MILK!” we respond with, “A nicer way to say that would be, ‘Can I have some milk, please.’” Hence her sage advice to me.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about viewing life through our “God Goggles” to find what we are looking for. But the truth is that it doesn’t really matter what we think we need or want, because what we’re meant to have will always find us. As the Buddhists say, the Universe is our medicine.  And I’ll add to it that everyone within the Universe is our own personal sage, here to teach us the exact lesson that we need to learn right now.

Whatever you may be looking for, be open to the unexpected lessons and advice that pop up along the way. It may even come out of the mouth of your three year old. It may often come out of the mouth of your three year old!

P.S. As a side note - Juliet has a second-cousin (also three years old) whose name is actually "Sage". And she says all kinds of cleaver things. I couldn't stop thinking about her when I was writing this blog! So if Sage or her parents read this... hi!

This week I posted a link on the Seeds of Support page to this article, written by a mom whose 18-month old son will likely die within the coming months or years.  It is a sad and touching story, and a harsh reminder that death is an inevitable part of every life.

This is the sadder side of life: the ugly truth that most religions prefer to skip over – they preach living without sin so that you might have a happy afterlife, without saying a word about the fact that you will, indeed, die. New Thought authors and motivational speakers also steer clear of the topic of death. They teach about using affirmations and positive thinking to heal, as though it will somehow help you to avoid death altogether. And while the power of a positive attitude and the advances of scientific medicine have both certainly proven themselves useful in postponing death, the fact remains that death is an unavoidable part of life.

Still, I feel that affirmations and positive language are useful tools that certainly have a well-earned place within spiritual living. When Juliet is feeling less than 100% we try to say that she is “healing” rather than using the word “sick”. Mike and I feel it is a small but important distinction: “sick” is a label, an indefinite state of being, whereas “healing” implies a transient and temporary state of action.

I’ve had my own share of “healing” experiences, starting from my very first breath, when I was born with a dislocated hip. My parents had to learn how to care for a newborn in a full body cast. When the cast was removed I remained in a large metal brace for the first year of my life. In second grade a virus settled into my hip and I spent weeks (months? I honestly can’t remember now) on crutches waiting for the bone to heal and muscle strength to be regained. A few years after that it was discovered that I had scoliosis – a curvature of the spine – and I had to spend those already excruciating pre-teen years wearing a hard plastic back brace. A few more years and we found a fracture in my lower spine – it’s still there today. And some day I will die. I don’t have a terminal illness (not that I’m aware of, at least), and I didn’t have a prophetic dream of my demise. But as far as I know everyone dies eventually, and I have no compelling reason to believe my story will end any differently.

Yet, affirming wholeness is a huge part of my spiritual practice. But wholeness is not perfect health. My affirmation isn’t about trying to avoid the unavoidable. Rather, it’s about accepting the totality that is my life. Just as I strive to accept my short stature, wide hips, and discolored teeth, I also strive to accept that aging, illness, and yes, even death, are parts of my life experience.

Of course, none of that attitude helped much when kids were teasing me in middle school because of my strange posture (yes, I did have that whole zen-spiritual-positive attitude thing in middle school – just not in the middle of being tormented). Nor did it do me much good when I was entering my 48th hour of labor with my firstborn (no, I am not exaggerating). But throughout both of those ordeals, and countless others throughout my life that I’ve conveniently forgotten, I still knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I was whole: that my life was perfect, even in the midst of this seemingly imperfect situation. Because life is perfectly imperfect. I am perfectly imperfect.

I am whole. Even when it feels like there are holes in me. Because I AM more than I am. If I can remember this one simple concept and model it for my children, then I’ll have done my job as a mother.