Labor Pains

I remember those final days of pregnancy with such clarity. I wanted to be able to unzip my skin and jump out as the weight and pressure of new life was ready to burst out. Well, 'm pregnant again - this time with a book project!

I might be the nearly crazy mother of 3 but I'm not crazy enough to take on a 4Th child at this point. Instead, Guardians of the Vision: Parenting for the Birthright of Potential is on its way. Expected delivery date is September 2009 - which coincidentally corresponds with its conception date back in January 2009. As with my other pregnancies, I feel the same mixture of fatigue and excited anticipation. I feel the restless agitation of "Is it time yet?" coursing through my veins and a keen desire to "just get on with it".

This is a project I conceived of as a way to move beyond the isolation that parenting 3 young children. I craved intellectual stimulation and more than the typical "how to" manual advice available in the current marketplace. I, like so many, am tired of listening to depressing news, reading horrible headlines and being subjected to "ain't it awful" stories. The challenges I face daily as I move through my life with young children has fostered an enormous ache in me for meaningful, soulful conversations that are both realistic and inspirational.

Although I am no Polly-Anna, I have always felt that in spite of everything that seems to be going wrong in the world, each and every one of us carries the seed of potential for rapid, mind blowing, exponential, course-correcting change. Too often, that seed goes dormant in our childhood and somewhere in our mid-life, if we are determined seekers, we start to nurture that seed again. Imagine a world where we bloomed where we were planted - without long fallow periods! Our children, the children of this world, have the capacity for the rapid acceleration required to keep pace with our reality - and so do we. We can chose to be awake and alive, nurturing our own potential as well as theirs - or we can continue repeating the past and getting more of what we've already got.

I am so honored that Louise LeBrun agreed to co-create this project with me. As the creator of the WEL-Systems(R) body of knowledge, I have her to thank for the information and experiences that helped me become a living expression of my own potential. I don't want to watch my children disconnect as I did, and wander aimlessly through their lives for the next 30+ years - I want them to burst out of the gates, fully connected to who they are and how they can create the world they desire. As a fellow blogger and contributing author, Amy McNaughton shared with me, "My mother gave birth to me but Louise gave me life." This is the power of a WEL-Systems perspective - the discovery of how to be fully alive. Nearly all parents have the best of intentions. They do the best they can with the information they have. WEL-Systems(R) offers us compelling new information to consider - information other generations never had access to.

This book is the beginning of a legacy I want to create for my children and children everywhere. It really is about us - the Guardians of the children inhabiting this world. We must discover and nurture the seed of potential, our capacity to create and shape our lives, and then become the Guardians of that same potential that is present in others. Potential is a birthright that belongs to every single human being on this planet.

I am in great company! Each of the 10 contributing authors in this project has a unique perspective and experience to share. They are a diverse group that represents a cross-section of parents, grand-parents, and others who are Guardians in a much larger sense of the word. They come from all walks of life. I am very grateful to each of them for sharing the wisdom of their experience and entering into the "parenting" conversation in a broad, new way - courageously helping to redefine an old paradigm - one that has been absolutely fundamental to our culture and instrumental in defining who we have become. It is time for a new conversation and these folks are amazing pioneers who answered the call and gave me hope and inspiration for what is possible for each of us, individually and collectively.

As we now move forward from final edits to pre-press, I find myself sighing deeply, tapping my toe and ready to burst - it's the final few weeks before an important birth! Stay tuned for more updates.

PS:
To those readers who have been willing to wait for my return to blogging, my sincere thanks! Expect more entries and some excerpts in the coming weeks from Guardians of the Vision, my own manuscript in progress entitled Something More, along with other observations about living a creative life while caring for kids, geriatric doggies, adjusting to life in a new town and my return to my "day job".... lots of material these days!