What it Is

It is has been quiet around here, huh? Not intentionally, or yes, maybe intentional.

February was an ass kicker. There was so much going on with sick kids and the push and pull of a relationship in flux. Throw some wildly imagined dreams in there and it served for a pretty rough month.

I alternately find myself enchanted and intimidated by this whole idea of dreaming in public spaces. I mean, I put it out there for any person passing by to read. And in the putting it out there it gained some steam, some shape and started to seem like a real possibility.


What I am alluding to is that my dreams have been professed and I fell in love with one particular one and started to fixate pretty hard on it…the whole get in the vanagon and leave thing. Step one :: find a vanagon, right? Which we did and which I loved and found so enchanting. But then I saw Tim’s demeanor start to shift a little bit and then things took their own turn in his life and some of the whole ‘stars are so aligned’ part began to get a little off center and then we had the whole family involved in the discussion (one of the downsides of living communally is that everyone knows your business)…and in the mix of it all, I found myself crushed and disappointed that my so-called life partner was jumping ship on THE most important dream of my life.

Now, a few days later and a few discussions later and the passing of the worst PMS I have had in years and things are starting to look a little less rocky. And I am finding a new equilibrium and some new realizations. They are pretty new and tender and still re-orienting themselves but they are good ones. My biggest realization is that things do not have to happen on a specific time line, especially the ones I set arbitrarily. There is no rule saying that we had to get the vanagon today and be in it by August and be able to juggle all the things that would need to be juggled in order to leave for months at a time…

Realizing that and accepting it have helped me immensely in the last few days. It is so easy for me to get wrapped up in the ideas I threw around in my Mondo list and I found letting go of this particular dream opened up the possibility of a few more.

And so the latest plan has me a step closer to meeting some of the people that I have ‘met’ through this medium and seeing an old friend in New York in August. And maybe getting to Canada much earlier than I thought. Both trips would be for much less time than I anticipated but that is okay because now both trips can happen.

And there you go…Mondo off track and on track. Sorry to recap it all as an event already occurred…I am not very good at writing when things are not going my way. Just never have been good at blogging the more challenging aspects of life and relationship, intimate details always feel like secret details in the moment.

A few things helped bolster me during the last month and it is good because otherwise I might have just turned down this blog. I’ll make sure to post them up here, but for now, I will just let this out and remind myself and any reading that dreams can happen, sometimes in the most mysterious of ways…

They start as seeds, needing to be planted and left alone, given some water occasionally, then left alone again...

And sometimes the path of least resistance is just the right path to take.

More Action :: More Mondo

I wonder sometimes about the list, about the Power of the List. I posted about lists way back when on my other blog, about how the mere act of writing helps in manifestation. It is heady stuff and might be some of the reason I had such a hesitation when it came to writing out The List. It seemed to hold so much significance for me.

I have been meaning to write a bit more here about the changes since Mondo began, but I am hesitating in another way. Afraid maybe to admit that dreams can come true? And in truth because a part of it is hard...to wonder if it is okay to admit to the Movement in the dreams. But then, that is the whole reason for taking the class, right?

Okay, so after that long and probably unnecessary premise..here it the thing. Dreams in action are awesome but dreams in action are work. The next thing I want to talk about is the Teaching.

There are a few dreams in there about Teaching, about going back to become a Doctor or maybe disseminating my collection of information. I was not terribly surprised by them showing up, more that I am surprised by my lack of movement in the direction of Teaching.

When I embarked in my profession as a Physical Therapist I immediately knew my calling. I knew that I wanted to take on the area of Neurological Rehab, the grey area of strokes and brain injury and spinal cord severing (no pun intended, believe me). I knew what I wanted but was immediately overwhelmed by the reality. Rather than sink into oblivion, or even worse, inability to help, I sought to find the right way to approach the challenge and found a brilliant mentor (albeit an asshole) that gave me the frame work to approach the treatment and the challenges with clarity and focus and some success. It was magical, the knowledge he helped unlock and the way it transformed my treatment. For many years I practiced in the field, finding great reward and always aware that each individual had a story that was written in their body which would help (or sometimes hinder) their recovery. It was always challenging and emotional work, and I am not one for the whole 'distance yourself from the patient' approach and the work took its toll.

A few years before the boys, I started to scale back my work, went part time, still working in the rehab setting but not as a team leader, rather as a sub. I found myself almost satisfied with the positions I held, but I also knew I could not do that and mother at the same time. It would be too much, I have no switch between work and home and little did I know it would be twins in the cards for us. The week I got pregnant, I resigned from my Rehab position and signed on to a home care service.

And then for two years after I was really really busy. Really busy. I kept my toe in the door with occasional patients and regular inservices but did not really return to work until last March. Since then, I have been immersed in the quagmire that is home health. It is the best and worst job I have yet to hold. I control my schedule, I have no office but the one I make, I have a distant but accessible supervisor, I have 70 pages of paperwork per patient, I have a laptop always at the ready and always at their ready and a roster of patients that usually push 70 or older and have all the concomitant issues that go along with that.

I love my patients, I love their individuality, their stories and history, their desire to stay independent and assertive and home. But, uh, home care ain't rocket science. Not at all. It is rare that my skills come to the fore. Rare that they are needed at all.

Anyway, last week one of my colleagues called with a question. Se had a CVA (stroke) patient that she was finding particularly challenging and she wanted to know if we could meet and brainstorm some treatment ideas. I love this colleague, she was the one that helped me find a place at the company, and I told her 'of course' and we met at Starbucks on a Saturday morning. Within five minutes of talking, taking in her description of the patient, her concern regarding treatment approach, I had a treatment plan formulated and we were off.

It was like slipping into a comfortable pair of scrubs. The instructions flowed easily and she was so open and receptive to the new information. After an hour we took a break and started talking about Teaching. She told me I should and I know she is right. I was surprised by the way the information has just become ingrained in how I think when it comes to patient care, how accessible it was even after years of disuse.

And it reminded me of some of the things I once thought about. Like walking into the PT department of the school quite literally down the street and offering to TA a class in Neuro. Then eventually teach the class, preparing the students for the reality of the Rehab unit, not the theory.

It is a small step, just a little morning meet up and discussion, but a glimmer of the future. A reminder that I still can walk into the school and have some chops, know I can back up the claims.

And then Monday after our meet up I picked up a home patient with a classic CVA, a perfect candidate for rehab. The reason he was not in rehab was because he is also a hospice patient so he was sent home in a bed after his stroke. He cannot do much, but he can do some. And he does not want to die lying down. And that I can help with. And so it all works in very interesting ways. Interesting is not the word but I am not sure what is.

Mondo might be.

Photo by Tim...his orange trees, he loves them

Lesson 20 :: Learning

What can you say you have learned over the last few weeks? What do you know now that you did not know before…about your dreams, your self, where you want to expand and believe and grow?



I have learned that I needed to write out the dreams and place them in a physical space in order to better honor them, realise them, allow them some breathe and life.

I learned that I can trust letting them out, letting others read them when and if they want to, and that no one would take them away or giggle in my face or say it is all so silly. Instead they cherish them for me and with me.

I have learned that dreaming is lovely, but hard work, taking some extra time to cultivate and nurture does require a shift of attention inward and that sometimes leaves less energy for the outward. And then the flow shifts and Life demands a bit more attention and I now find I can trust in the fact that my dreams, small and delicate, are still finding enough sustenance to be maintained, to be there.

I have learned that just when one needs kindred spirits, when one feels lonely, it is the perfect time to be vulnerable and open and trust that they will come, your tribe will come, they will hear a call and then they will appear.

I have learned to listen, to look up, to dance a little more, to trust a little more, to make that call, write that note, speak that word, meet that eye, take that photo, and then breathe it in.

I have re-learned the art of dreaming. I am not done, not even totally proficient, but I feel well on my way.

And I have added Atlanta, GA and Melbourne onto the list of places that I will need to be someday.

Food for Thought :: Mushrooms

Many species of mushrooms seemingly appear overnight, growing or expanding rapidly. This phenomenon is the source of several common expressions in the English language including "to mushroom" or "mushrooming" (expanding rapidly in size or scope) and "to pop up like a mushroom" (to appear unexpectedly and quickly). In actuality all species of mushrooms take several days to form primordial mushroom fruit bodies, though they do expand rapidly by the absorption of fluids.

Weird way to open this post. But I walked outside for a moment in the dark to breathe the cold wet air, to find a little relief from the small projectile vomiting child, the undone work, the uncooked dinner, the other small and raging child, and I spotted these. Tiny brown glistening mushrooms, and away I went.


I spend so much of my time conversing with myself in my own head, lots of conversation going on in there, and some become blog posts. So, I saw these tiny beautiful mushrooms and I thought about my Bio class in college. Where I learned that mushrooms are an expression. They are an offshoot, of a greater whole. Of a underground network, spreading and pushing and moving. A network that lays under, unseen and unknown, the depth and breadth unknown. And then it is fed, given some lovely fluid and it becomes seen. It comes up in faerie rings, or sometimes threads itself through a whole forest.


A colony of Armillaria ostoyae in Malheur National Forest in the United States is estimated to be 2,400 years old, possibly older, and spans an estimated 2,200 acres. Most of the fungus is underground and in decaying wood or dying tree roots in the form of white mycelia combined with black shoelace-like rhizomorphs that bridge colonized separated woody substrates.

It is called mycelium and it can span acres. Can you see that? That area, that amount of space taken up for one being of one genetic makeup, one living and breathing being? Can you believe it? If the small and lovely and tasty mushroom can take up that amount of underground loveliness, why can't our dreams?

And so it is. Our dreams need fluid, need food, need sustenance. And as we feed them, they take root and express. They may not be a lovely little faerie ring, they may be tangled and unruly, they may seem to pop up miles apart, acres apart, small little caps that you walk by..but they have the same Mother, the same root. And yet, they are the expression of our Self, clean and clear, able to push through macadam and sing.

Do you see this, this expression as part of your dream? It does not have to be linear, it does not have to make sense, but it has to become, be nurtured and fed and then expressed.

Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room. (Thank you, Harold and Maud).