“How rare and beautiful it is to even exist”…

Dear Horizon, 

I can’t believe you’ve been here for 3 weeks already. When I think back to your birthday just 21 days ago, I realize that the world I thought we were welcoming you into does not exist anymore, and it will probably never exist in the same way again.

I waited so long for you, that it almost felt like my whole life had been lived before you showed up. When I told the story about getting pregnant (the miracle that is you), I always shared how wild and unreal it was to be making the transition to motherhood after having 46 years of my identity built around being a woman without children (in a culture that still doesn’t fully welcome you or make it easy to integrate when you don’t have children).

As a result, I spent a lot of time while you grew inside me contemplating the changes I anticipated going through when you arrived—adjusting from my lifestyle of entrepreneurial travel and freedom, giving up sleep, experiencing my heart living outside my body, you name it... I considered what it would be like to make so many significant adjustments after so many years without children of my own. I was beyond excited and aware of how profoundly different life would soon become.

But as soon as you arrived, the personal changes I anticipated making paled in comparison to watching the entire planet being thrust into a different world with no warning..a world where all of our identities and our way of life is being reshaped by an invisible force called Coronavirus 19. In your first few days at home, our world became unrecognizable. Never in our lifetimes have we seen anything comparable....Schools closing, parents becoming full time teachers overnight, gatherings of humans being banned in steadily increasing numbers around the world, countries closing their borders around the world, quarantines being imposed, restaurants, theaters and malls closing... markets crashing, seemingly endless numbers of jobs being lost within a few short days...and our front line of medical providers being unequipped to protect themselves with the basic equipment they need to face this onslaught. Every day of the last two weeks has brought with it new levels of awareness of the impact this invisible force has had and will likely continue to have on all of us.

Our phones and our social media platforms have quickly become our primary source of connection at this point as we cannot come within six feet of other humans. Our minds, hearts, and spirits are seeking to make sense of what seems unreal, impossible, like a dystopian nightmare we can’t seem to wake up from. So we smartly cling to slivers of good news- like dolphins returning to the canals in Venice, the skies being blue over parts of China that haven’t seen clear air in decades, and the abandonment of policies and practices that crushed those who aren’t in a position of power and privilege in our society for far too long. And to be honest, things had gotten so bad here in so many ways, it’s hard not to subscribe to the idea floating in our social media feeds that “nature is hitting a major reset button right now” that will leave us forever altered- for better AnD for worse.

In my opinion, that word AND is perhaps the most critical part of our ability to navigate this new world that’s unfolding - I just read a post on Instagram that said in part, “developing an awareness that good and bad coexists in this world is the essence of mental health” (Dr. Meghan Johnson). I couldn’t agree more. It reminds me of the story of Siddhartha listening deeply to the river —-“At first Siddhartha hears only the voices of sorrow, but these voices are soon joined by voices of joy, and at last all the voices are subsumed under the great sound of "Om." Realizing the unity of these voices, Siddhartha's pain fades away.”

I don’t think our pain over this pandemic will “Go away”, but I do believe that we can lessen the amount of suffering we experience. In our short-sighted haste to welcome “good vibes only” we have lost the ability to see the UNIty in “good” and “bad”, the coexistence of joy and sorrow...we have been so resistant to acknowledging and allowing the shadow, that we are now in danger of being engulfed by it.

The labor and delivery that lead to your birth was the most profound experience I have ever had of the coexistence of the shadow and the light, of flowing between the depths of pain and the peaks of joy - and ironically I survived it by flowing between silent prayers and loud oms that often sounded more like deep, guttural cries than anything holy.

There are many deeply meaningful reasons you were given the unusual combination of names you have. But your middle name, Horizon, has taken on a new depth of meaning in these circumstances. We chose it in part because we love the symbolism of the horizon as the meeting place of heaven and earth, and the intersection point of any two seemingly opposite forces that together create a beautiful reality, and the sense of adventure and hope in exploring life- new horizons are full of possibilities.

You showed up in our arms just as we and the entire world are being confronted with a force that will demand more of us than we can imagine from our current vantage point- we sit at the intersection of our past and our future, of our earthly realities and our limitless aspirations... of allowing our joy and our sorrow, our shadows and our light...Your first name means teacher among other things- and now every time I look at you, hear you, feel you I am drawn to the center of my heart and the reality of what it means to stay anchored to what matters most in life.... andI believe these will be the first lessons you teach us. In fact, you have already started, because mylove for you is calling me to spend this unprecedented season sorting out what truly matters most while the everyday existence we’ve clung to rapidly falls away.

The sound of your gentle breath calls me to sift through the vast collection of values, beliefs, hopes, desires, expectations and dreams I’ve held about life- both ours and yours and separate the wheat from the chaff, the priorities from the preferences, the matters of love and human spirit from the concerns and fears of the ego. This will not be an easy path, but it will be worth it.For now, in this moment I am left with these lyrics from the song “Saturn” by Sleeping at Last...“How rare and beautiful it is to even exist”.

I love you so much...

Your mom

“Time is Emotion”

Dear Horizon,

This past Wednesday was your 4 week birthday. The other night as you fell asleep on my chest, I had a surreal vision of you as a young man. You were even taller than your dad and fully out there on your own. Then I drifted off to sleep, but the vision was so strong that when your dad came back to the room I told him in a slight panic that you had grown up already and it was way too fast.

Even after he helped me wake up fully, I felt the lingering sense of having already missed important and beautiful moments with you over this past 4 weeks, even though I have barely even left your side for more than five or ten minutes since you were born. The rest of this letter is my attempt to make sense of this and find something valuable to share with you in the future and with others going through a similar challenge right now.

So I’ll just start by saying this whole “postpartum in a pandemic” is so disorienting... in some ways I’ve never been more present- physically, energetically, emotionally, and spiritually.... but in other ways, I have never felt more distracted and unfocused... and presence is directly related to our experience of time, so this is a good starting point for my exploration.

I don’t know where the influence of postpartum hormones and the impact of too much tragic news starts and stops, but I often feel like they are rushing over each other in waves of wide ranging emotions. In the course of a day I might find myself flooded with oxytocin, crying in gratitude for the gift of having you and your father and our family in one moment, laughing at the absurdity of a Coronavirus meme, and feeling angry and disgusted over yet another failed attempt to secure toilet paper.

The thing is, I fully expected my postpartum experience to be guided solely by you and your needs-not a clock, to- do list, or calendar. I was looking forward to this season when for once the world tells those who gave birth that they can put their schedules and calendar reminders on pause (Albeit for an embarrassingly short amount of time).

But what I didn’t expect was that this unscheduled, sacred season of bonding with you would take place in a world now suddenly unmoored from any coherent sense of chronological time. The internet is flooded with memes that show how our days, weeks and time itself are all blurring together. My favorite internet finds so far are “what a long year this week has been”, and “is it Saturday or 2023?”

I wonder if that’s why I saw you as a grown man in my vision—because in some ways, every day since you were born 28 days ago has felt like a year. The new normal for most of us seems to be- by all observations I’ve made on social media that we have long stretches of non- covid related activities (Netflix, homeschooling, exercise, working from home, etc.) punctuated by varying doses of reality whether that be in the form of consuming memes, watching pressers, reading news articles, navigating our daily needs, and dealing with the ever increasing complexity of logistics required to meet them. (We need to set up an unpacking and sanitizing station outside our house at this point).

All new parents feel some sort of need to capture the precious and fleeting moments of our children’s lives- thus the endless options for journals and memory books. I signed up for this cool app to help me document your journey with us. Everyday, like clockwork, it texts me questions to answer about you. It’s so much more responsive than an empty journal waiting for me to fill it with stories of your first days on earth.

For the first few days I couldn’t wait to respond and upload pictures to the app, but as the days of shelter- in- place and social distancing have gone on, one seeming just like the next, I find myself wanting the app to ask me questions that matter more than “what’s my favorite feature of Jorah”. Questions that seemed perfectly normal just 3 short weeks ago now sound hollow and even insensitive in some cases. Even the more substantive question I got last night, “what’s one piece of advice you want to give Jorah” rings rather hollow in light of the circumstances we are now living in.

One piece of advice? One? I want to write books to you about what matters most, I want to upload pictures of every place I’ve ever visited around the world and describe it to you in vivid detail, I want to introduce you to the people around this country and the world that I hold dear in my heart. I want to do it all NOW- but it’s too early and too late all at the same time. Can the app please speed up time or take us back in time?

I need time to speed up or stop or back up——because if I’m honest about it, I realize that underneath my well practiced ability to shift my state and have a higher quality emotional experience, I am AFRAID - maybe even terrified that after all these years of waiting and praying for you that our time together will be cut short. No, we are never promised any specific time period for our lives - but none of us could have imagined the cruelty of a virus that ends so many lives so abruptly, separating us while we are healthy AND while we are sick.

I got a taste of the wrenching pain of victims and their families this week when our beloved 12 year old dog Mila had to be hospitalized via curbside drop off and none of us could see her for over 24 hours. I cried inconsolably imagining if the worst happened and I couldn’t be by her side. Thankfully she is home now, and almost back to normal, but the experience shook me.

Last night I read an article in the Atlantic that called you Generation C. The author asserts, “As we’ll see, Gen C’s lives will be shaped by the choices made in the coming weeks, and by the losses we suffer as a result... As Gen C grows up, foreign plagues replace communists and terrorists as the new generational threat...”

Sounds disheartening, but somehow it made me feel better to see that “they” have already developed a “label” for you and your peers and even identified your generational threat! Labels bring comfort in uncertain times, and even seeing pandemics such as this one described as the new generational threat you and your peers will experience, endure, and fight normalizes our current situation to some extent. “They” even joke about the future day when people of your generation might choose to just skip the covid vaccination that ironically shaped so much of their lives.

So back to my desire to collapse time end experience everything with you, the closest I can come is to write about them now- while we are both here together. I trust that reminding myself of the wisdom and teachings that have elevated and shaped my life will add a healing balm to my own process of grieving along with a world that will never be the same. May they serve to remind me that although this is certainly my first pandemic, I have spent years carving out deep grooves on healing pathways that will always be there to serve me when I seek them. I pray that the intensity of having life stripped down to the barest of bones in this season will give me clarity on what truly matters most.

So to come full circle with where this letter started documenting my anxiety about losing time with you, this teaching from Tony Robbins is such an important guide- “Time is an emotion. A feeling. A way of looking at life that provides an emotional state. Think about it. How do you know how long something really takes other than by how it feels? A minute can feel like eternity when you're not fulfilled.”

Sure this could explain how we collectively don’t seem to know if it’s Saturday or the year 2023, but how can we be fulfilled in the midst of unprecedented global grief? And the answer is we can’t —— IF our fulfillment is in achievement or most of the things our culture has traditionally valued —-but it absolutely can be- IF we find our fulfillment in growth, gratitude, and contribution.

I want to be about the business of harvesting moments from my memory bank that cause my heart to swell and soar, and hunting the chance to grow, be thankful, and give to others in my present condition, no matter how challenging it is to do so. I saw an Instagram story of a well known teacher suffering with covid who told everyone about the practical ways she was working to recover AnD how her practice of gratitude was really the only thing bringing her any real relief. I believe the reason is simple- gratitude and the positive emotions that are created from growing and giving drive us toward LOVE.... which cannot coexist with fear.

So what would the app have asked me this week if I had a choice in the question?

What would you tell Horizon is the key to living a fulfilling life and making the most of the time he has to spend on this planet? We are living our way into the answers each day with gratitude and growth and emotions as our guides.

 I love you so much, Mom

“The Ache is Love”

Dear Horizon,

I can’t believe you’ve been here 6 weeks already! I started writing this letter when you turned 5 weeks, but as you’ll see it’s turned into another deep exploration of what matters most to me at this time. I am once again ignoring the questions in the online baby journey app because I don’t / can’t yet have any “favorite places to take you” and our daily routines are far from normal. But once again, I am driven to ask deeper questions, both to tell you more about me, your dad and family and to capture what this season of upheaval and grief across the planet is creating here in my own heart and inside our home. This week I want to talk about fear, uncertainty, protection— how to allow both the beauty and the terror of life. I want to talk about it now because I am experiencing both in this fresh, new season with you.

Let’s back up a bit so I can share with you part of my personal story and lived experience. I have spent most of my professional life as an educator. I rarely have nightmares- much less recurring ones, but the one I will never forget started when I was a first year teacher. It was always about losing someone’s precious child. It always went the same way- I would be standing face to face with a panic stricken parent trying to make my mouth form the unutterable words “we can’t find them”..... Thank God this never happened. Not once- but that didn’t change the depth of terror I experienced around being responsible for children’s safety and well being . I wasn’t even close to having children at that time in my life, but there was nothing worse that I could imagine than any type of harm coming to someone’s child on my watch. So you can only imagine how this nightmare intensified when I became one of the youngest principals in New York City and went from being responsible for 25 kids in a kindergarten classroom to 600 plus kids in a K- 8 school almost overnight.

When I left school leadership to create my own company ten years ago, the imprint of those many years I had spent being responsible for the seemingly endless health and safety issues for hundreds of people seemed indelible. My experiences covered the spectrum of emergencies to long term systemic challenges, all of which created an overwhelming sense of responsibility for someone so young and “in charge”. I’ll never forget the countless interactions with detectives and officers from the 23rd precinct (East Harlem), the frustrating safety team meetings spent arguing about the best way to keep so many damn doors closed (and this was before school shootings really escalated in our country), and even navigating the fear and policy nightmares another virus related crisis, H1N1, created for school leaders. Safety and protection was a heavy, heavy burden to carry- and I’m not even including here the ever present weight of trying to create the conditions for psychological and emotional safety.

For at least 3 years after leaving school leadership, my body would intuitively feel any type of energetic or visible disruption in an environment - whether it be on the train, in a school I was consulting in, or even a shopping mall. I felt like some kind of border collie on constant watch - ready to intervene and protect at any cost. Still I had no children, but there was nothing more scary to me than to be unable to provide shelter and safety for a child.

Years later I would discover that I have a strong part of my personality that seeks to control my environment. In fact, it’s probably one of the most defining parts of how I show up in the world. “They (my type) use their abundant energy to effect changes in their environment—to “leave their mark" on it—but also to keep the environment, and especially other people, from hurting them and those they care about. “ (The Enneagram Institute). I love this part of me- (exploring the enneagram may be another letter or a few letters ) but for now let’s just say that your mother experiences extreme inner challenges when I am unable to impact (or control) the environment for myself and those I care about.

So if I’m really honest - the combination of my personality and the imprint of a lifetime of feeling responsible for the safety of lots of kids might be why it took me so long to have a child of my own. Over the years, I have subscribed to the wisdom of this quote/ “the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can reasonably withstand” (Tony Robbins)... and while this pandemic has exploded the power of this truth for everyone whether you agree with it or not- for me it opens up a deep truth that I believe can help me ease my fears.

While I feel I have lived in an expansive way- mostly driven by love and not fear- I think I knew deep down inside that applying this acceptance of uncertainty thing as a parent was way too far beyond my capacity. Perhaps navigating the inability to create safety in a crazy world (which existed LONG before the pandemic) for a child of my own was just far beyond my limits for most of my life. And seeing just how many things can happen over the decades of being an educator just added to the challenge.

But the universe always conspires to provide the lessons I need, and I am now getting the chance to practice allowing uncertainty when the stakes are highest for me, because holding you is like holding the universe of all that matters in my arms. Looking at you reminds me of every good thing I have ever tasted or experienced in this life. Praying for you connects me to the deepest hopes and dreams buried deep in the soul of my humanity. And growing in love with you in these unmeasured hours while the world has nearly stopped spinning on its axis has pushed me, in the words of one of my favorite poets, Rilke, to the limits of my longing.... to allowing everything to happen to us—-beauty and terror.

Because the truth is, there really is no other way to live than to accept that life is made of both! In the work of the French writer Camus who wrote a story called “The Plague” in 1941,

“When it comes to dying, there is no progress in history, there is no escape from our frailty. Being alive always was and will always remain an emergency; it is truly an inescapable “underlying condition.” Plague or no plague, there is always, as it were, the plague, if what we mean by that is a susceptibility to sudden death, an event that can render our lives instantaneously meaningless. “ (Camus on the Coronavirus by Alain de Botton).

I personally do not believe our lives are ever meaningless, no matter how long they last or how they end- but I do believe that this idea of the frailty of life is the same one expressed in one of my favorite songs, Saturn, I wrote about in my first letter to you..... “how rare and beautiful it is to even exist”. This helps me keep perspective, helps me anchor into gratitude and LOVE.

We are traveling through what, for most of us, is the ultimate uncertainty when there is no “safe place” to retreat to...

• When we are worried about every single person we know on the planet on some level

• When we are grieving the loss of connection, of experiences, of life- and while many are lacking even the most basic needs- food, shelter and safety.

I realize that no matter how hard I try, I can’t possibly protect you from every danger this world holds. In fact it is abundantly true that I couldn’t protect you before this world changing event happened - but at least I could pretend- or block out most of the terror. So while this virus has clearly decimated any pretense about life and death, I find great solace and a response to the ache this reality leaves in my own heart when I read the words of Glennon Doyle in her recent book, Untamed...

~~~~~~~

“The ache continues to take me with it, and now I am somewhere else. I am in the ache. And suddenly I understand that I am here with everyone who has ever lived and ever loved and ever lost. Right here, inside the ache, with everyone who has ever welcomed a child, or held the hand of a dying grandmother, or said goodbye to a great love. I am here, with all of them. Inside the ache is the “we”. We can do hard things, like be alive, and love deep, and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the earth with her arms, eyes, and heart wide open. The ache is where you go alone to meet the world. The ache is LOVE.The ache was never warning me: this ends. She was saying: this ends, So stay.”- Glennon Doyle

~~~~~~~

I love you so much. While I cannot promise you the protection and certainty I long to give you- I promise to show you to the best of my ability how to embrace uncertainty, be at peace in the “ache”, and go to the limits of your longing over and over again. Thank you for being here now. If I were to feed a question to the app this week, it would be “What would you tell Horizon about about going to the limits of his longing / desire in an uncertain world?”

Camus Article: Opinion | Camus on the Coronavirus - The New York Times

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like a flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.