ode to the dandelion: part three

*outline, done!*

ugh.  i've been putting this off for too long.  because it is so hard to gather my words.  and i am getting to the meat of the story.  the personal connection.  the vulnerable stuff.  

december 2011 was a dark time for me.  i wanted a baby SO badly.  i put my whole life on hold waiting for it to happen.  it was painfully hard.  anxious.  stressful.  disappointing. scary.  unpredictable.  all of that.  i knew that i couldn't continue living that way for long, and happened upon a '40 days to personal transformation' yoga workshop.  i signed myself up.  knowing that come hell or high water i was going to transform to something else, because stressed out and depressed doesn't suit me!  

see here, here, here, and here for more reflection about the yoga workshop.  

i started 2012 off on an amazing journey.  and i am still, to this day, reflecting on what i learned about myself during that 40 days.  it should be called 40 years.  

part of the reading for the class was to read "peace is every step" by thicht nhat hanh.  if you haven't read it, and want your life to blossom and grow, then read it.  it is the kind of book that you can pick up, open to any page, read a short essay, and put back down.  and its beautiful.  the words.  

and the dandelion on the cover.  that is the dandelion that got me thinking about a dandelion tattoo.  i think that as i was experiencing the *transformation* i realized that something big was happing in my life.  what i was participating in was going to make it onto the timeline of my life.  huge stuff.  live changing stuff.  i was getting my money's worth.  and then some.  and so i said it out loud a few times "i want a dandelion tattoo" and pat didn't take me seriously.  but i thought about it for months.  and worked it out in my head.  and kept coming back to it over, and over.  because deep down in side, the dandelion is my totem plant.  it is me.  i am it.  i have been for all of my life. 

think about it.  if you know me- you know that i am proudly stubborn, i am fiercely determined, i don't give up, and if i want something i figure out a way to make it happen.  plus- i love the color yellow.  dandelions are just like that.  they keep coming back.  annoyingly- maybe?  but they quietly set root under ground, deep roots.  and if you don't get it all, it works real hard to come back to the surface and blossom again.  

i lost that part of me last year.  i gave up for a second.  i traipsed around in despair-ville and forgot who i was.  forgot that at the core, i am a fighter.  and a doer.  and a happy, glass half full person.  an idealistic optimist.  just like i made peace with the dandelions in my front yard, i needed to make peace with the *weeds* in my life.  i don't get to control what happens to me.  i don't get to choose when it happens.  or how it happens.  but i do get to choose if i am going to smile or not.  if i am going to live or not.  and if i am going to do that like a dandelion or not.  because i think that dandelions do it gracefully and beautifully.  

now the funny part is, one doesn't just learn all of that and get it.  and never have to learn it again.  i learn it EVERY DAY!  every day i am reminded of the hard times in my life, because things are still hard.  sometimes it seems like this has to all be a big joke.  and someone is going to pop out of a secret doorway and say *just kidding!  your uterus works find, your tax bill is wrong, and here is a new car!* but it isn't going to happy like that.  probably.  

in the mean time.  i get to look at this:

every day.  and never loose track of my roots.  of my core.  of my connection with nature.  and dandelions.  and that little heart on the third leaf from the left?  i can hardly talk about it with out crying.  but that little heart is there because alice is amazing.  she enhanced it from the original artwork so that it was more of a heart.  it was a surprise.  i look at it a thousand times a day.  maybe more.  because for me, that heart is the heart of my future family.  that is cooking up somewhere out there in mother nature.  and will be.  sooner rather than later.  whenever it may be.  until then.  i smile.  

and when i can't, i look to my dandelion, because it has saved one for me.