Far From Home

California is full of transplants. Many of my friends live far from home. A few have moved back home to be with family. I have not. It has been 12 years since I left Connecticut and my whole family. My mother just left us after visiting for a month and as she left, it was like home left with her. My entire being wanted to collapse and cry. I was driving on the 405 so I did not, but I crumpled and withered inside instead.
It's miserable being far away from my family of origin. As much as they can drive me crazy, they are from whence I came. I love her. I love all of my family, and to be faraway from them seems, at time like the most back-asswards way of living in the world. I can justify it with the golden opportunities we have here, my husband's great job, his family and all our cousins and the short distance to the beach and the snowy mountains. Then of course, there is the weather. The almost endlessly sunny days that lull us into a California coma of "we can do anything" because we can. We can plan a birthday party out doors in January at a park and get away with it. I can justify living here for the pure adventure of it all, but nothing makes being away from your Momma right.

Moments after she left I thought about what she said she wished for me, to "smile more and relax more...to take care of yourself first." My first thought, was we are just different. I am a "doer" and she doesn't get that I just feel better when I am busy. She is more of a go with the flow, mosey along and stop and smell the roses kind of gal. But then I thought about who she was when she was with us. She was of complete service. All she did was ask what she could do for us. She had her times of making art and relaxing on the back patio chatting with her friends, but for the most part, she lives her entire life to make others happy. She helped us by cooking, sweeping, playing with the boys so my husband and I could talk or work, and she made art with our 4 year old to prevent tantrum disasters.


Meanwhile, I often plunked away on my laptop, writing email after email to plan the national Moms Across America March to Label GMOs. I dashed about, volunteering, prepping for den meetings and hopping on calls with national leaders. The urgency to "get things done" was fed by the knowledge that I had a loving and free child care helper and I had better get done what I could, while I could.
After she left, I missed her and instead of wishing she would be any other way other than how she is (like for her to stop encouraging me to slow down and relax), I realized that the difference between her and I was zero. Although she was not working regularly to better her nation or the world, like I am obsessed to do, she is of total service to her family. And that is no less important. She gives of herself more fully and generously than anyone I know.

I cried to myself and a friend that I asked to commiserate with me, because I realized that on many days, I took advantage of her being here rather than taking advantage of being with her.

My mother's visit often seems like an opportunity for me to relax just a little bit in my motherly duties...my mom will often make breakfast for my kids while I sleep in just a half hour later, or wash the dishes while I talk to my husband alone after dinner or work on the Moms March after the kids get home from school because I know my Mom will play with them. But after she leaves I am filled with regret for not taking the opportunity to relax and just be with her.

My friend acknowledged my feelings and then gave me the freedom I as looking for from the heaviness I felt. She reminded me my sorrow came from my vast love for my mother. It is a breakdown for me that I was a brat to my mother even once while she was here. It is painful for me to be away from her. That is a miracle of love. My sorrow became my access to relief. I am grateful to have that love for my mother and be present to the contribution she is to us all...even for a month or a day out of the year...far from home.

Zen Honeycutt

"Health Come First" and How it Doesn't

My Mother used to bring a bowl of chicken broth to me when I was sick and gently chide me to put away my book, drink my soup and sleep. "Health comes first." she would say...homework, reading, etc...would have to wait. Now, when she hears the rush in my voice and weariness creeping in, she reminds me, from 3000 miles away, to take care of my health and I do. Most of the time.

For Halloween, I was sewing large round polka dots onto a white sweat suit to be the zebra-turned-circus-horse Character Chris Rock played in Madagascar 3 "Afro Circus, Polka Dot Circus, polka dot, polka dot, polka dot, Afro Circus!!!" and I could barely thread the needle. My eyesight is going. I am almost forty, I thought, and my body is going through those changes, that's just the way it is.

Realizing I have also been unusually tired and because health comes first, I went to my Iridologist, who looks into your eyes, take a photo which is analyzed by a very high tech computer system and she points out all the mineral deletions, physical symptoms and causes for pain, sickness or issues in your body.

She could see that I had muscular pain on my scapula ( amazing! It had been hurting for months and I didn't tell her!) which was causing pain up my neck and muscles tightening across my face and restricting the blood flow to my eye. My right pupil was significantly smaller than my left pupil and could be the source of my eyesight blurriness. Completely correctable and not a function of just getting old.
This is preventing me from just accepting deteriorating eyesight, getting glasses and living with the blood flow being restricted to my eye and brain. Who knows what problems that could cause over time? Blindness? Brain deterioration? I went to a holistic doctor who focuses on cranial work, who said that the pain stemmed from my liver, which was over taxed from filtering toxins. She did some kind of massage to my head and liver and I left feeling completely better. I will also go to an eye doctor and maybe get glasses, but I will not ignore the cause and continue to monitor my neck pain as more than just bad posture, but as the a sign my brain is not being fed the blood it needs.

She saw that my stomach was acidic, causing a likely hood of more allergies, adrenals were overworked which causes very low energy levels, fatigue and irritability...and that really effects my parenting and confidence.

She then saw that white foggy lines around my pupil showed deep concern for osteoporosis, a serious lack of calcium and weakening of the bones. It's the reason why my grandmother hunched over constantly. But she was in her nineties...why was I getting this in my thirties? I eat very healthy food, lots of greens which supply more calcium than milk! I was shocked but so grateful to be able to know this and take a high quality calcium supplement for the next six months (which she does not sell or make money from) and then I will go in for a bone scan. This is preventing me from permanent spinal curvature, lifelong pain and being aware to not get wonky and do risky things that cold have me easily break a fragile hip. Hip surgery is tens of thousands of dollars and months in recuperation.
An injury like that would greatly impact the function of my family.
And a western medical doctor would never see these things in a regular checkup.

Why do I share all this? Because none of this is paid for by our Healthcare system, and that's just ludicris. I also believe that many of our health issues, including mine are related to GMOs in our food. According to "Genetic Roulette" movie,GMOs are sprayed with and injected with glyphosate, which is chelator, meaning it hugs the nutrients in the plant and strips them away to kill the weed. 70-85% of the food I was eating up until a few months ago, had this chelating chemical in it. I believe that a huge number of people who are mineral depleted now are experiencing this because of the glyphosate in our food which is hugging onto and depleting our bodies of the important nutrients we need. We then get sicker and experience liver overload, muscle aches, pains, fatigue, rashes, inflammation which can result in weight gain, auto immune diseases and more.

Alternative health care, and paying more for organic food is preventative and saves me and the insurance companies and the government tens of thousands of dollars in the future. It allows me to function as a responsible member of society and contribute, rather than site on the couch and take in disability. Alternative healthcare has us truly put health first, and out future first. And eliminating GMO's sustains our health.

WHY then, isn't the government promoting preventative healthcare and organic food?
Because it doesn't occur to them that health really does come first. Money does. Their jobs do. They have it all mixed up. They should listen to their Mommas.

Zen Honeycutt

Let's Get it Done!

I am sitting in the office of a director of a major hotel in Irvine. She is savvy business women who has graciously welcomed time with me to discuss Zen's Purple Garden. On the cork board behind her is a post card that stands out "Do or Don't. There is no TRY." I comment how I like the post card. I am a firm believer in committing to something in life, or not, and following through. She agrees and shares about aspects of her job that require following through, even when you don't want to. We get that we honor deadlines, do what we say, commit. We exchange a look of recognition of someone who has integrity, someone who is trustworthy.

Later, I see the news. Obama has declared about health care "Let's get it done!"
I agree. I don't know all the details of the reform, but I get that it is a step forward, not perfect, not without gaps, but a step forward. I do get his commitment to the best possible bill with "what's so" right now. As I watched clips of the health care conference last week I sighed with exasperation at the antics of the opposing members, turning the conference into a battleground of analogies and jabbing words versus honoring the time carefully created to CREATE.

As a Mom and business person, as a wife creating a life with my husband of ten years, I am constantly getting things done. I am doing doing doing. There are days in which I take my often protesting, screaming baby in and out of the car seat, bringing my older boys to school, to errands, grocery shopping, to play dates or doctors, over twelve times. And that's just the car seat, that's not the highchair or diaper changing table. I bend, lift, squat, clean, reach, scrape food, wipe butt, sweep, scrub, cook, blot, dab, put away, wash, fold, pack, remind, direct, ask, command, walk, pick up, drop off, console, cuddle, pat, tuck, dress and hug, countless times during the day. I get it Done! Moms do.

And yet with all that doing, I rarely take time to think about who I am being...what is my experience of myself? Who am I to my children? To my husband? Do they enjoy being around me? Does my husband really look forward to coming home? Does he just like to come home to get away from work? Or to be with Me?

When I can take my mind off auto pilot and stop just doing doing doing...I look into their eyes and get what all the doing is about. What REALLY matters. And that's not what I am doing for them. It's who I am being with them.

Tonight, my husband looks at me with gratitude and sweetness in his eyes and requests that my sons tell me that I am amazing after a good dinner and bonding conversation, ( I love him:). My 4 year old looks at me and says "Momma, you are really really really really really reeeeeeeeeeally amazing!", and I get that it's not because of the cooking, picking up an dropping off, cleaning, packing lunches or bedtime tucking in. Being there and doing those thing is great, the health care conference was a good idea, but who I am being, who they are being about it, makes all the difference in the world.

When I let Bodee help cook and guide his hand gently, even when he makes a mess, or when I commit to being on time to drop off and pick up and I am, with a peaceful smile, (huge breakthrough for me, I used to always be late)...or when I hum lullabye, even when I am dog tired, and Thank God for all the beautiful things in nature, for my boys, with love and gratitude in my off key song...being patient and trustworthy, being love...I have a feeling that that might be what he appreciates so much.
Or it could be that I get what really matters to him and I buy him a pack of gum now and then...who knows.

My point is Getting it Done is great. Let' s do that. But let's also think about who we are being please, Congressmen and women. What are you creating and who are you being about that? People's lives are on the line and this mother cares about people having access to health care to take care of their families, and be healthy, now.
Thank you.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

What I Don't Know

My husband walks into the bedroom this morning with his laptop, eager to share a video he found online of Michio Kaku, a world renowned physicist. My attention is yanked from a teen love story on Saturday morning TV and into my husband's world of outer space. I am mildly annoyed but also curious about what could inspire such excitement from my husband.
Michio is speaking about the concept of, what if what exists is not a UNIverse, but there are MULTIverses...that our universe is like a bubble that is expanding inside a space where multiple bubbles/universes are popping up and expanding, continuously...that genesis is not a one time occurrence that happened in the past, but is continuously happening. What if nirvana (his background is Buddhist and Christian) is not a place to get to but actually the space in which our bubble, our multiverses expand.
Whoa. What a way to wake up.

He answers the interviewers question about coming up with this theory by describing how, when he was a child, he used to stare at the fish in the koi pond, and see them as scientists. What if the current theories were made by scientists that were like the fish? The fish see only side to side in the shallow pond, the concept of "Up" and out of the water, and other ponds, does not exist for them. As a child he wanted to grab the fish, or the scientists, and pick them up out of their water and show them the other ponds, the other possibilities.
My voice in my head begins talking at this point, and saying "Wow, if we teach our children at school that this is the truth, that there is one universe, there is this that happened in history, that that is the one way to draw...than we actually limit what they can create inside of that "truth"."
We limit their world with the past. Knowing the way it IS and teaching that, in one context can limit. In another context, it can empower.

I remembered going to art school and learning techniques in one composition class. This is how you draw perspective, this is how to draw a cone, which is all great, there is a foundation. However, I was a "good student" and took the path of the realist art, always trying to make it perfect,limiting myself to make it look REAL, do it right.

I begin to imagine if I were an Art teacher now...I would teach more like my sculpture teacher taught, begin to show them how to draw a circle,in the context that this is One way, not The only way. I would ask them to create many ways to draw a circle. To take charcoal in hand and draw on the paper pad... and they might suggest a paintbrush and paint (still using hand and tool and paper, notice) and we may progress to pouring sand (still using hand but not a "tool") and then further still perhaps to sitting on the dirt and drawing a circle with one's rear end... or rolling clay into a ball, making found trash into a cone shape or gluing leaves into a cornucopia shape, all circles in some form. We might pour wax into a mold that is the negative space of a circle, use other shapes that are not circles to make a circle...the possibilities are endless...there is no right answer.

It occurs to me that in child rearing, school, learning something new, business methods etc...that I often think there is one way, A way, when in fact, I may be being like the fish in a shallow pond, or an artist using simply my hand and the one tool I favor. There are many ways. As I guide my children, I am committed to have what they learn at school simply be A way, not THE Way. To take what they have learned and expand on it, to help them find the other ponds.
I see this and I am free and excited. Before I often dreaded the resistance and drama homework time created with my 7 year old. Now I can see that the way he is learning to do his Math facts is A Way, and he can expand on that, create new uses for math in ways that I can't even imagine. So there is no pressure for me there, there is no strategizing on my part that needs to be done. There is no One Way. We can learn that way and then create multiverses of other ways... Ahhhh Freedom!
As I write this and listen to my husband laughing with our three boys. I am so present to his love for life, his hunger for, not just knowledge, but for the not-knowledge, the Unknown. For it is inside the Unknown that we create something new. Today I am going to look for what I Don't Know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZiROWO6iVs

Dad and Thorns

My skin stings with fresh wounds from rose bush thorns. I reach far into the nest of diseased branches and dead spiny stalks to a wily green branch and find a new nub of growth. I cut 1/4" above that nub, slanted, just like the online pruning guide recommends and pray that that is the RIGHT place to cut for glorious growth in the spring.

That reminds me of my father pruning at my childhood home in Connecticut. Every year he would go out armed with clippers and a chain saw and unleash what I saw as vicious cruelty upon the trees and bushes on our lush green 100 acre wooded property. The main 15 acre landscape was dotted with pear, apple, plum and cherry trees and he would cut down the branches to a naked skeleton.

This was wrong to me. As a child I was angry with him. I took the side of the tree, wanting them to grow wild and free, unfettered from how my father wanted them to be.
I had the same resentment for him when he told us to go to bed, deny us from playing before we completed our chores, or told me I could not get a drivers license at 16. I just wanted to grow as I wanted.

Today, as I cut the rosebush back in Southern California, I can now see the opportunity for new growth that I am creating. The energy of the plant needs no longer to go to sustaining an old branch. In the spring a new branch will grow from that nub or a new shoot entirely, and create a gorgeous rose that will become nectar for birds and insects. By cutting back old growth, we create new.

As I grow my business, cutting back in areas that are not blooming, I give more energy to the areas that are and I look forward to the new opportunity that will spring forth. It may seem harsh at first, but it is simpler, cleaner, fertile and focused.

As my children grow, we guide them to cut back on behaviors that no longer work for them. My eldest finally got up in the middle of the night to pee last night, my youngest is naturally beginning to wean. From the absence of those previous behaviors shall spring forth a new way of being that I can hardly wait to get to know.
Thank you Dad for pruning, for guiding us. I know now the love and commitment to nature that lies deep within your roots and mine.


Zen LaBossiere Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

As I pruned the bushes my 15 mnth old toddler wanted to imitate me. Daddy gave him a safer tool, a hole punch, and this is where he put it.