Angelina

Hi there!

I’m so excited to be a part of this site and come together with other mamas on a sim­i­lar path.  Travel is one of my pas­sions and it’s inter­est­ing in that I’ve often felt more alone, iso­lated and mis­un­der­stood at a local park or at my daughter’s dance class here in the States than being half way around the world in a dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent cul­ture where every­one around me is speak­ing a dif­fer­ent lan­guage.   Some­times it can be a bit of a chal­lenge find­ing mamas that see the world through the eyes of a larger pic­ture than through the main­stream eyes of the masses.  So it is our inten­tion here to build up a won­der­ful com­mu­nity that we can take with us wher­ever we go.

So, a bit of back­ground.  I was born in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia to Ger­man immi­grant par­ents.  My mom was a wild thing for her time and even though she pre­tends to be a good Chris­t­ian woman who dis­ap­proves of my meta­phys­i­cal ways, she really is  a meta­physi­cian in dis­guise her­self.  She is one who walks the walk of Law of Attrac­tion.  Our doors were never locked when we were kids even though other houses on the block were all get­ting robbed.  She would declare that being afraid of a break in was what caused the break in so we con­tin­ued to not lock our doors, and not get robbed.

But there was church.  Not every Sun­day luck­ily, but hol­i­days and then lit­tle spurts of going reg­u­larly and church camp in the sum­mers.  The thing that stands out most to me about church was how incred­i­bly bor­ing it was for one, but also that I just never believed the stuff they said.  I just could not believe in a devil– it always felt so humor­ous to me that adults could fear a crea­ture called the devil.  I have this the­ory that we do not get to choose our own beliefs– things either res­onate with us or they don’t.  And the whole heaven and hell just never did with me.  Even when I was very young– long before I was old enough to think about it logically.

I spent my high school and col­lege years as an agnos­tic not inter­ested in reli­gion or spir­i­tu­al­ity at all but delved heav­ily into anthro­pol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy.  I was also fas­ci­nated by the human body & began to study mar­tial arts.  That’s where things started to get inter­est­ing for me.  Energy.  It was through an early karate class that I began to con­tem­plate energy and it lit­er­ally kept me up at night.  Our instruc­tor would often shout at us to not go into self-pity or focus on our indi­vid­ual fatigue as we would drain energy from the entire class weak­en­ing every other stu­dent in there.    Our job was to add energy to oth­ers and thereby strengthen our­selves.    The first time the words came out of his mouth it was like a flood­gate open­ing.  I knew this infor­ma­tion.  I had always known it and was remem­ber­ing it in a very clear and dra­matic way.

After col­lege I took a job in Japan where I con­tin­ued to study mar­tial arts as well as teach Eng­lish.  It was there in a video store one week­night after work that my life really took a dra­matic shift.  I’ve always been very clear that I could not tol­er­ate violence-even as a small child when my broth­ers would watch Road Run­ner I would leave the room because I couldn’t stand all the sense­less vio­lence and vio­lence as a form of enter­tain­ment was beyond absurd to me so I chose video rentals care­fully steer­ing to the comedy/romantic com­edy sec­tions.  I picked up a cover that looked like it fit the bill.  How­ever, I could not read Japan­ese so I always had to go from just the pic­tures.  It turned out to be Shirley Maclain’s Out on  a Limb and changed my life for­ever.   I sat bolt upright the entire time with goose­bumps cov­er­ing my entire body.  It turned out to be a two part series and had the video store not been closed I would’ve rid­den by bike the 30 min­utes in each direc­tion at 10pm to get the sec­ond half.  I had to wait until the next night.  So, I did not sleep a wink and was incred­i­bly dis­tracted at work the next day.  For the next few years I devoured books at an incred­i­bly rate.  I could not get enough.  It was there in Japan that I found A Course in Mir­a­cles and the writ­ings of Mar­i­anne Williamson and also began my study with the works of Yogananda.

By the time I came back to the States I was ready for grad school, so I picked USM, where I could get my MFT license with an empha­sis in Spir­i­tual Psy­chol­ogy.  It turned out that I lost my inter­est in becom­ing a licensed ther­a­pist  and chose to just get an MA in Spir­i­tual Psy­chol­ogy and for­get about thee state reg­is­tered por­tion with all the hours.  I knew that what­ever I wanted to do would likely not work too well within the con­fines of Cal­i­for­nia State licens­ing.  It was dur­ing these years (mid 90’s) that I dis­cov­ered Abraham-hicks and began attend­ing Agape church, where Michael Beck­with is the head Rev.  I did not yet have chil­dren so all my free time was devoted to per­sonal growth and learn­ing.  I was fairly obsessed with work­shops and acquir­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.  I did Doreen Virtue’s Angel Ther­apy classes and became a Cer­ti­fied Spir­i­tual Coun­selor,  all sorts Reiki ini­ti­a­tions,  became a Cer­ti­fied Hyp­nother­a­pist,  Touch Ther­apy Prac­ti­tioner, and a myr­iad of other off-beat courses in every­thing from past-life regres­sion to rebirthing and even became an ordained min­is­ter.  I also became a cer­ti­fied doula and began attend­ing births, both in hos­pi­tals and home­births and began teach­ing Cre­at­ing Your Heart’s Desire classes using Sonia Choquette’s book, as well as work­ing as a Child Devel­op­ment Spe­cial­ist with inner city teen moms.

When I reached 30 I decided to start my own fam­ily and have my own chil­dren.  I was so cer­tain I would raise my chil­dren in a par­tic­u­lar way and I luck­ily had already fig­ured it all out with my vast prepa­ra­tion!  phew.  Oh, ya, that’s not how it turned out…  My first daugh­ter was born pre­ma­turely in a hos­pi­tal set­ting.  Some­thing I never imag­ined.  She required life sav­ing surgery after her birth and I learned more about myself and my group of friends than any other period in my life.  Many of my friends were already well into Law of Attrac­tion and we all believed that we cre­ate our own real­ity.  So, when my baby was born 6 weeks early and was in a hos­pi­tal room hooked up to wires and cords and needed ‘exploratory surgery’ to fig­ure out what was wrong with her, I received calls from many of my friends that went some­thing like, “Talk about get­ting what you don’t want.”  in a very smug tone and, “Well, I guess you were vibrat­ing more on the level of what you didn’t want than what you did want.” or went into process them­selves say­ing, “If this hap­pened to you, what hope is there for me?”  I also got a ton of advice from ‘alter­na­tive’ moms about what I should be doing in the hos­pi­tal.  Absurd advice that would’ve killed my baby like, “Make sure you demand that they put breast milk in the IV rather than sugar water.”    What I did not receive was com­pas­sion or sup­port!  This was a HUGE learn­ing for me.  Yes, we are on this path that does require we take per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for our real­ity but it doesn’t mean we ought to become insen­si­tive to the human expe­ri­ence.  I had a lit­tle baby that the Dr.‘s had to cut open to try to find some­thing wrong with because her body wasn’t work­ing.  That was my cur­rent ‘real­ity’ and it would’ve been really nice for some­one to just be with me where I was with­out giv­ing me advice or try­ing to point out to me how I must have got­ten there.

So, one of the major goals of my par­tic­i­pat­ing in this site is to just be with each other where we are.  Not try to fig­ure out how we got here or blame each other or point a fin­ger.  Just acknowl­edge that there are many rea­sons that  we are where we are AND to sup­port each other in where we’re want­ing to go.  We all have suc­cess sto­ries to share with each other to inspire each other and can­not judge what’s in another’s experience.

When I got home from the hos­pi­tal with my first born and found the jour­nal I had been keep­ing dur­ing the preg­nancy I saw in my own writ­ing my inten­tion for this birth:  “My inten­tion is to con­nect with the soul of this baby as it enters the world in a very pow­er­ful and inti­mate way.”  was one of the things I wrote.  Dur­ing the birthing process, a Dr. reached up inside of me and told me that it felt like the baby did not have a skull and would be born with her brain exposed and would likely die within a few days, but I would be able to hold her dur­ing that time until she tran­si­tioned com­pletely.  After those words were spo­ken to me, I left my body and soared through the cos­mos with my daugh­ter.  We flew around and con­nected in a very real way.  I told her that I didn’t mind if she changed her mind and didn’t want to come into her body at all since we could con­nect in a non-physical way as we were in that moment.  I had no attach­ment to her body any­more and we had a fab­u­lous time.  Then she came out alive and with a skull.  I was still so con­nected to her spirit that I had a hard time relat­ing to the lit­tle clump of flesh in my arms.  The Dr.‘s all wanted to rush off with her and do tests and what not and my sis­ter who was at my bed said, “Should I with her so she’s not alone.”  and I remem­ber lit­er­ally laugh­ing and think­ing, “Alone?  How could she be alone?  She’s not even in her body!  She’s right here with me.”  It turned out she had a bowel obstruc­tion and was not able to poop.   The amni­otic fluid had become quite toxic form­ing a very thick sub­stance all over the baby that the Dr. mis­took for brain.  They were able to do cor­rec­tive surgery and she’s been fine ever since.  But in look­ing back I did get my intention.

For my sec­ond daugh­ter, I just intended a sim­ple, easy home­birthing expe­ri­ence know­ing that I can get to know her after she arrives.  No need for a dra­matic encounter of souls!  I gave birth to a 10 lb baby with­out a sin­gle push in a birthing tub in my fam­ily room.

I share these sto­ries as a way of remem­ber­ing that we each have our own inten­tions in cre­at­ing our real­ity.  My friends quickly moved into judg­ment of me ‘doing it wrong’ and get­ting what I didn’t want when I ended up with a hos­pi­tal birth.  But none took the time to ask me what I thought was going on.  And quite frankly I was in no place to even con­tem­plate it until my baby was out of the hos­pi­tal and safely at home.  I love when Abraham-hicks always says, “You can’t get it wrong and you never get it done.”  So, let’s be play­ful and just have a good time cre­at­ing, co-creating and re-creating.

We are in this phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence together, so let’s be kind with each other.  Let’s be patient and under­stand­ing and be will­ing to not judge each other as doing some­thing wrong!  Let’s be sup­port­ive and car­ing and encour­ag­ing of each other through this process of life.

I look for­ward to mak­ing many more friends here and widen­ing our sphere of Mamas!  There  is often a lit­tle bit of a void in the arena of spir­i­tu­al­ity and chil­dren.  So, we want to know how you are apply­ing all of the won­der­ful infor­ma­tion out there to moth­er­ing and to the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of it.  A par­tic­u­lar pas­sion of mine is to explore other cul­tures and explore how they are par­ent­ing.  This has led me to cre­ate my own pro­duc­tion com­pany, The Lit­tle Trav­el­ers, where I travel around the world with my girls explor­ing child­hood in other cultures.

Wel­come to the Meta­phys­i­cal Mamas!