It’s Thursday, so I’m Crafting my Life! Today I’m sharing a guest post from Amy Lee, about a conversation she had with a stranger. If you’d like to share a story from your own Crafting my Life journey, drop me a line and let me know!

Have you ever had a conversation with a complete stranger that helped you realize your life purpose? This happened to me.

Four months ago, I had the greatest conversation with a practicing counsellor from Los Angeles. For two hours, we talked about the emotional consequences of our jobs.

This lady counsels troubled children. All of them grew up in neglected and abusive environments. She finds it emotionally challenging to counsel them because most of their stories break her heart.

Since ‘the system’ only allows her to help the children until they improve in school, usually a few months, she doesn’t have enough time to help them work through the issues and move on with their lives. She knows most of them will eventually join gangs, use drugs to cope, or use their sexuality to find acceptance.

This counsellor reminded me that we humans are social beings. One of our basic needs is to want to be connected with other people. The connection with the ones who created us (mother and father) is the primary connection we seek. When this basic need isn’t satisfied, we will seek it else where, even if it’s self destructive to our being.

I thought about this afterwards. A lot.

During our conversation, I felt so lucky. Lucky that I was born into a family that cared about me. Lucky that I chose a profession that allows me to witness and feel love in its most elemental form. That conversation made me realize how important my job is. I provide mothers and each of their children the experience of feeling loved and being loved. I create a space for them to connect with their hearts and strengthen their relationship.

During a photography session, I feel the love the mother has for her child. I feel her joy, her pride, and their shared happiness. I see truth in them and they move me. Every mother and child I work with, whether the child is young or grown, inspires me to be a better mother, and a better daughter.

My conversation with the counsellor also made me realize how important my job is as a mother. I want the best for my children and I want them to live meaningful and purposeful lives. My duty is to love, nurture and guide them. My job is to help give them opportunities to find their strengths to realize their full potential. I want my children to live the life I envisioned for them because when they do, they will change the world.

This is my dream for my daughter. This is also my dream for all children and so this is my promise:

I will provide mothers with experiences, tools and resources to inspire us to love, nurture and guide our children to live meaningful and purposeful lives.

Photography is one of the tools to get to this bigger place.

With photography, I document the love between a mother and each of her children. I provide children doors back to the memories and the emotions of the relationship they have with their mother. These children will grow up knowing why they are loved, why their mother is proud of them and what dreams are bestowed upon them. I believe this is food for their souls.

I know what I’m doing is changing my world. It is also changing the world of the people I touch.

Amy Lee is the founder of The Connection We Share. She is in the process of building a blog to inspire mothers to raise children who will change the world. In the mean time, you can visit her Facebook page for her photography work. Amy has an 18 month daughter, Elle. She is proud of her daughter for being a fearless explorer. Her favourite memory with her daughter is hanging out in their backyard picking strawberries and smelling flowers.

It’s Thursday, so I’m Crafting my Life! I’m hard at work editing the Crafting my Life e-book, so today I am welcoming guest blogger Jolene Galbreath, who shares her personal and professional journey. If you would like to chime in and share your own story, please drop me a line – I’d love to have you!

I have lived with passion, enthusiasm, integrity, joy, depression, exuberance, painstaking organisation and wilful spontaneity. My highs have always been high, my lows have been unexpected and mean and all of it has been accompanied by the sense that I may be a fraud and that at any moment I could lose it all. Lose myself, even. It was not until I stumbled across Amber’s blog that something clicked into place. I realised that I was not living with intention.

As the daughter of a serial entrepreneur, I am inclined to believe that the drive to reach for the next big thing, to have a wandering eye for opportunity and the desire to try all things is partially genetic. I also feel that we, particularly women, receive a lot of messages telling us that we should be grateful for what we have and to just ‘be a bit more realistic.’ I think that phrase can be safely interpreted as a directive to lower your expectations and stop making waves. I’ve railed against such directives for as long as I can remember. I railed. Railing is exhausting–even when done well. Fundamentally, railing is reactive, it stems from a place of frustration and disenfranchisement. You have to plan so many contingencies when your life is a responsive one and even with good planning it can feel as though you are falling from one calamity into the next. What could I possibly gain from carrying myself as though I was lurching through life? I can see, now, that the drive to do as much, see as much, give as much and live as fully as possible was leaving me feeling like I was just hanging on, instead. My life was not so much crafting as it was a toddler’s attempt at collage.

Something had to give before I gave.

Finding Amber’s blog was important in giving words and focus to what I was trying to do in my life. It was such a relief to find that I wasn’t the only one going through these transformations; that it wasn’t all handwringing, navel gazing and self indulgence. Looking through the posts, it was clear that Amber wasn’t treading water like I felt I was. My husband would tell me that he couldn’t work out what I really wanted to do. He couldn’t see why I was spending the energy holding onto Plan C, Plan D or Plan E when it had to be Plan A or Plan B. It felt like treading water to both of us and I had been doing it for so long that it threatened to take me under.

During this time, I was already training as a breastfeeding counsellor with the National Childbirth Trust (UK). A large part of the course is about reflective practice and being congruent. It was this process that prepared me to think about living with intention and crafting my life. I have always wanted to be a doctor. Well, except for the year when I was seven when I wanted to be a stewardess (as they were called then). The calling has always been there and as a student I had prepared accordingly. At seventeen, I was certain that I would be a physician working with the most vulnerable. The world was black and white and I was prepared to fix the problems of those who came to me. At university, I quickly realised that I knew very little of the world and I realised that I was in no way ready to be a doctor.

At eighteen I was living with intent. I set about becoming a scientist to learn not just about life’s what’s and how’s but also its why’s. I moved from the US to the UK. I completed a PhD in Biology, taught at a university, took up causes, relearned how to knit and sew, picked berries, canned jam, had children, and moved around. But somewhere along the way, the intent was washed away by the realities of just living. I still held the dream of someday being a doctor but was also keeping as many plates in the air as was possible–some because they were interesting and others because I felt an obligation to them. Each plate seemed important, I could think of none that could be put down. By the time I was a post-doctoral researcher with two children, an allotment and some chickens, my life was a full, sticky decoupage jumble.

Around this time last year, when we were still living in Aberdeen, Scotland, I knew that the autumn entry round would be my one shot at medical school. In each of the summers prior to it, I had considered whether the time was right, yet. Each time it was clear that I was not ‘there,’ yet. I visited and planned, contacted admissions, checked my qualifications. Plans, I had them. In the end, it was a case of the best laid schemes and all that when my husband accepted a post at the University of Bath. At the end of the summer of 2010 we moved to Bristol, England. A new city with new challenges and opportunities. Time for my one shot. I aimed at the moon, and as they say, I landed among the stars–at King’s College London (about 100 miles from our home in Bristol).

So, here I am. A mature student facing the challenges that so many women face when they have experienced a period of time from work, want to improve their education or attempt a change of field. As a non-traditional student, traditional sources of funding such as tuition loans are not available to me and the high street banks have recently withdrawn professional development loans for medical students. Like many women who have stayed home to care for children of other family members or who have otherwise experienced a career break, I am finding the lack of accessible funding a real barrier to returning to education. To get there, I am pulling out all of the stops and drawing on all of my experiences along the way. Time has become my most precious resource and I am grateful to have had a year of practicing living intentionally. Owning my choices and also my responses to situations beyond my control. Situations ranging from playdates that fall through losing time alone to get things done to coping with discriminatory funding policies. All that I have absorbed about living with intent, making considered choices, prioritising honestly and being congruent is coming together so that I might rise to the biggest challenge and opportunity of my life. I know that the time and energy I have invested in creating a social network over the past year will mean that our children will continue to have a relatively normal life. We will miss the endlessness of time that we have had this year but the quality of our time will not be diminshed.

And all that reflective practice? It will come in very handy when blogging about my experiences. I have been toying with the idea of committing to writing a blog for a few years. However, it has always seemed like a big commitment-it is one thing to generate early posts when you are full of ideas but to sustain it with new and maturing content seemed more than I was quite ready for. Now, I am thrust into a situation where I am hoping that my writing will support and enrich my dream. All of a sudden, I’m telling my story to anyone who will listen. I tell it with a sense of urgency because a dream that has been decades in the making may slip from my grasp if I can’t overcome a the age-old barrier of money. All of the work in reflective practice has helped me learn how to relate my experiences to the experiences of those I am in contact with and to explore their relevance and in the wider context of our lives. In many ways, blogging about my journey will be a great form of reflective practice because there will be opportunities for others to give feedback and I will also regularly be faced with revisiting what I have done.

Now I can see that being a Jolene of all trades is congruent with being someone who lives with intent. I do not have to choose one or the other. It will still be messy and I can choose how I cope with the mess. A well crafted life does not have to be a narrow one. Perhaps best of all, a life lived with intention can be fluid with room for growth and change and, perhaps most importantly, changing your mind. I’m ever so grateful for having stumbled across Amber’s blog and, as a consequence, the other blogs that it has led me to.

Jolene is a student and scientist, mother to TheCollective and wife of TheOtherDoctor. She seeks out gezelligheid and strives to live in a state of hygge. (Also, she made me look up the definitions of gezelligheid and hygge.) Someday, her downfall will be precipitated by her utterance of the phrase, “Hey, I could do that.” Through necessity, she is crowdfunding her way through medical school, relying on the kindness of strangers. She blogs about her experiences at www.whitecoatbluestocking.co.uk.

Today’s Thursday so I’m Crafting my Life! I’m hard at work on the Crafting my Life e-course. While I work on that, I’m shaking things up over here. I’m continuing the “crafting your life” theme through January, in which I welcome guest contributors to share their journey with you. This week, it’s the awesome life-crafting Harriet.

Newsflash! Having a baby fundamentally and irrevocably changes your life. Suddenly, everything is subject to change.

In my pre-parenthood days, I had a stable 9 to 5 job as a communications manager for a small arts organization. In my spare time, I attended gallery openings and movies, hiked, met friends for brunch and sat in cafes lazily wondering what my future would look like. I was also stuck. I wasn’t happy where I was, and I didn’t have a plan. I needed something to shake me up.

The out-of-the blue arrival of my son Theo, now 18-months, did just that. A job that wasn’t quite doing it for me wasn’t a good enough reason to be away from my son. When my parental leave was up, I didn’t go back to work.

Since becoming a parent, I’ve had this dizzying feeling of being in perpetual motion and constant transition. “He’s sleeping! He’s not sleeping! He’s climbing! He’s falling! He’s eating. He’s not eating! He doesn’t need me! He needs me!” Despite this, I’m amazed at how many new things I’ve learned over the last year-and-a-half. I started an adoption blog, regularly comment on other blogs, and tweet with abandon (an embarrassing 18,700 and climbing). I’ve attended tweetups, mom events and sat on a panel at the Northern Voice social media conference. I’ve met some amazing women and their well-documented kids. I joined a business book club (this month’s book is Sociable by Steve Jagger), and try to attend momcafé for inspiration and socialization.

All this momentum led me to a few writing and PR contracts. By the time my EI ran out at nine months, I had enough work to justify going it alone. Since September, I’ve been working steadily with a local PR company doing research, blogging, social media strategies, outreach, and media relations.

Still, the quirky people who inhabit the border world of the arts were no longer part of my daily life and I missed them. When a friend suggested we podcast chats with artists about social media, I leapt at the chance. I’ve long held a secret dream of working in public radio, and our weekly podcasts allow me to experiment. I’m also on the Roundhouse Community Centre program committee, which keeps my toe in the arts.

But what about Theo? If you think I’m doing all this while he naps, let me laugh for a few minutes (ha ha ha ha). Firstly, he barely naps, and secondly he doesn’t watch Dora or The Wiggles (yet). If he’s awake, he’ll be on the counter pulling toxic chemicals or glasses out of the cupboards. We are lucky to have a nice setup where my neighbor, who lives below us and has a young daughter, takes him for one day a week, and Theo’s grandfather takes him for two days. I use these days for work and look for additional help where needed.

When I look at all that, I think “Wow, what a superstar I am!” On the surface, I seem to be on a roll. But I have challenges. Working alone with only my cyber-friends for company makes me feel disconnected and lonely sometimes. I get sucked into virtual black holes (Twitter, I want that hour back!) and I wonder about other dreams (radio and academics) and how to fit them in.

I’m also a sucker for stability. I feel better with a schedule and a regular paycheck. I like to know what the plan for dinner is and what we’re doing this weekend. So I try to stay balanced, because as unfashionable as it is to be balanced these days, I need a good night’s sleep, I need time with my son, I need fresh air and exercise, and I need to feel good. I try to achieve balance through craft nights, working in cafes, and getting outside daily.

I don’t know what the future holds but I do know that I’ve grown more in the last 18-months than I did in the previous ten years. I just need to stay calm, watch for the signs, and remember that everything is subject to change.

Harriet Fancott is a mom, web writer / PR associate, arts enthusiast, newbie podcaster and nature-lover. She blogs about open adoption at See Theo Run and about movies at www.karmavore.com. Her twitter handle is @harrietglynn. Sidenote: Glynn is her middle name, which came from her grandfather Gore Glynn St John (pronounced Sinjin) Ouseley.

Today’s Thursday so I’m Crafting my Life! I’m hard at work on the Crafting my Life e-course. You still have time to register, so drop by my Sign Up! page to find out more about that. While I work on that, I’m shaking things up over here. I’m continuing the “crafting your life” theme through January, in which I welcome guest contributors to share their journey with you. This week, it’s the amazing Alexis.

I’ve been following Amber’s “Crafting My Life” series with interest over the last several months – I think we’re all crafting our lives, whether consciously or not. We’re making decisions every minute, mundane or life-changing, and it’s been fascinating and thought provoking for me to watch her take time once a week to really think about what she values, and how she’s going to implement what matters to her in the way she lives her life. So I was thrilled when Amber agreed to allow me to contribute here. And then terrified. What on earth would I say?

And then in that glorious ten minutes of alone time that is my morning shower, I caught myself wondering what it would be like if I woke up one morning with no knowledge of who I am. If I suddenly had to look out my own eyes at my life as if I were a perfect stranger.

You know, like Quantum Leap. (Please tell me I’m not the only one old enough to remember that show.)
(Amber – No, you are not. I had a crush on Scott Bakula.)

What an interesting thought experiment: what would my life look like if I had the opportunity to see it, exactly as it is, but with no assumptions and no judgment? Like everyone else, I wander through my days with a constant stream of personal commentary going through my mind. Often, in fact I’d say mostly, that commentary is Not Nice.

What would it be like to just shut that voice off for a day? To drop the baggage I carry around every minute; to have no preconceptions about my body, my housekeeping, my mothering – my being.

What would that look like?

Well, first I’d have to fumble for my glasses, or it wouldn’t look like much at all. But after that, what? I’d get out of bed and have a look around. I’d catch my reflection in the mirror. What would I see there? Wouldn’t it be great to see my body as it is? To recognize its health and ability, not knowing I’m twenty pounds heavier than I used to be? To see my curves and strength, and not just the cellulite on my thighs? The thought of looking at my body without judging or hating any part of it makes me a little giddy, I must admit.

Looking around my home, maybe I’d see a pile (or two, or three, or infinity) of paperwork that needed to be sorted through. It would just be paperwork, instead a disaster-area of uncompleted tasks, unfinished business, and work I didn’t get done the day/week/month before. Maybe I’d see the dishes that needed to be done and laundry that needed be folded as just that, instead of guilt-inducing proof that I’m a terrible housekeeper. What a thought: to see things I need to learn to do, instead of evidence of everything I’m not good at. Crazy!

What would that feel like? It’s hard for me to imagine.

What would it be like to walk through my day with curiosity instead of judgment? How would that affect my behaviour, and my interactions with others? I think it would be incredibly freeing, to spend the day with my husband, blissfully unaware of how much it bugs me that he never replaces the toilet paper roll. Or to play with my toddler, absent the self-recriminations for shouting at him the night before to, “For crying out loud, stop doing parkour on the coffee table!”

What would it feel like to simply enjoy my family for who they are? To just be, in that moment, without half my mind telling me what I’m doing wrong?

I bet it would feel pretty good. Incredible, even.

And what would I do?

I’m a classic procrastinator. I start out with the best of intentions, and then put things off and put things off until the deadline is looming, and then the deadline has passed, and then I’m squeezing out a frenzied burst of work at the last possible moment. I’m forever making to do lists and then not doing what needs to be done. It’s a pattern of behaviour I’ve struggled with all my life, and I don’t know why.

Well I do, of course I do. We all do: fear. Irrational, intangible, and devastating.

Just think what I could accomplish if I didn’t have the heavy weight of fear attached to everything I try. Imagine: looking at a to do list, completing a task, checking it off, and moving on to the next one. Just getting things done. Simple, right?

If I was trying to be cool, I’d tell you this is easy for me to imagine. But the truth is that I’ve had to get up and walk away from the keyboard a dozen times while writing this post. It’s astonishing to me to learn how uncomfortable I am with the mere thought of living my life – even one day – without judgment. I think I cling sometimes to that inner voice telling me I’m not good enough. Even though it doesn’t serve me, it’s familiar, and comfortable, and it gives me easy excuses for not reaching further and trying harder.

So today, I’m crafting my life. I’m going to work really hard at looking at all these things through a stranger’s eyes. Enjoy the moments, keep what serves me, discard what doesn’t. And maybe knock a few things off my to do list, just for fun.

What would your life look like if you looked at it objectively? What would you change about the way you spend your time? What one thing would you immediately start to do differently?

You can find Alexis at Wave the Stick and Vancouver Daily Photo. And you can find the super-cool hats for little boys that she makes at Chill Monkeys. Here’s Jacob last summer rocking his.

Today’s Thursday so I’m Crafting my Life! I’m hard at work on the Crafting my Life e-course. You still have time to register, so drop by my Sign Up! page to find out more about that. While I work on that, I’m shaking things up over here. I’m continuing the “crafting your life” theme through January, in which I welcome guest contributors to share their journey with you. This week, it’s the super-cool Julie Einarson.

I was recently handed the opportunity to re-invent my life. There are a few different ways to see it, really. A funded job search is one. “Terminated without cause” sounds a bit heavy. A fresh start is what I settled on. My mother prefers “fired” but that’s another story for a couch somewhere.

What a gift it has been. Given time and space to breathe, I ended up with clarity. Not just the kind they sing about, seeing clearly now, the rain is gone, etc. I’m talking about the kind of clarity that makes you catch your breath and hurts a little.

I was a cliché. I owned being “she who has it all” and scoffed at people who complained they were busy, automatically measuring them against what I navigated in a day and inevitably finding them nowhere near as efficient or spread as thin as I was. I assured myself my kids were growing up positive and happy, social and participatory, well-fed and clothed. But once I sat back and took in an unencumbered view of my life I saw a different picture. I was barely keeping it together. At work I was tasked with doing too many things, and was not doing any of them particularly well. At home my every move was a calculated effort to get the kids out of the house so I could get to work, or into bed so I could do more work.

Photo credit: Justin Glass on Flickr

Now I’m a role model. Someone I used to work with told me recently she is “pulling a Julie” and stepping out of the rat race. My choice to be content with a neat and tidy little day job surprised a lot of people. I am simply done with taking on more and battling monster jobs into submission. I have bigger and better things to spend that energy on. People register a myriad of things when I am asked “so what do you do” and I reply “parent, garden, run, write, eat, putter…” Few ask me to clarify what I do for a living after that. Instead we talk about what makes us people. Where our joy lives. What we do for fun and fulfillment.

My personal motto is “leave it better than you found it.” It could be a day – if you learned something, or helped someone, you leave it a better person. It could be a room – I’m a compulsive tidier. It is often my kids. Every day I see them evolve, absorb, experience. Yesterday I joined my daughter lying in a sunbeam with the cat. We discussed how dust specks in the air (okay, maybe not totally OCD for cleaning) were surely fairies heading off to play. It was a magical sweet moment in both our lives. I’m thankful I have the right perspective now to see that.

Julie Einarson served time in the corporate world for 13 years, perfecting workaholism while raising two amazing kids. In the spring of 2010, she rediscovered perspective and now enjoys volunteering, running, and having time to be the mom she always wanted to be. She prattles on Twitter as @Jule_E.

Today’s Thursday so I’m Crafting my Life! This month, I’m hard at work on the Crafting my Life e-course. Advanced discount registration for people on my email list ends this weekend, so sign up at CraftingMyLife.com if you haven’t already! While I work on that, I’m shaking things up over here. December’s theme is “crafting your life”, in which I welcome guest contributors to share their journey with you. This week, it’s the fabulous Sarah.

A large part of my life is spent working with others. From the kids at the preschool, interacting with clients via email, phone or in person, to keeping the daughter happy and healthy, and loving the husband (and friends and family), there’s not a lot of down time. Yeah, yeah – I’m not alone. I know most of you are crazy-busy people living the same type of life. But, when do you make “me” time? Really. When DO you make time for yourself? I want to know so I can do it, too!

Well, I started thinking about it, and decided I should figure this out myself. I shouldn’t rely on others to help fix me – I need to be able to fix myself. You see, I was starting to twitch a bit, to not be so shiny, and be a bit ornery. Let’s face it. I was a lot ornery.

Something had to give. It was time to change my ways and really get serious about taking care of me. “I” should be a big part of my life, just like working with others. At the end of the day I feel so fulfilled and proud to have helped and encouraged others in a positive way. It’s awesome to be working with young minds promoting creativity and healthy self-esteem. I’m glad that others find my writing informative and educational, and want to read and use my ideas. Most nights I sleep pretty snug-as-a-bug in my bed with a warm fuzzy feeling deep inside.

But, I was still getting a bit rough around the edges due to lack of “me” attention.

In fact, I needed a lot of assistance all over the place. My wardrobe consisted of clothes from 1990, my hair hadn’t been cut in quite awhile [Amber: 6 months for me], and I actually didn’t own any closed-toe shoes. Being a mom is awesome, but it totally sucks out all my motivation to be a hot-mama. I’d lost my internal drive to look good. It just didn’t matter anymore.

It was time for a “me” intervention.

I started by making an appointment at a salon and blocking off time for the husband to take care of our daughter. Both of these things instantly made me feel guilty (typical). But, I was determined, so I stuck to the plan. I shared with friends and family my intentions of getting to know “me” again and caring for myself. I figured if I told others about my plan, I would be more inclined to keep up with it (you know, that internal fear of disappointing others…).

The hair cut went well and it felt great to do something without the babe. I also did some shopping all on my own and purchased a real pair of shoes that didn’t go flip-flop. I gave myself an internal pep talk and promised myself I’d keep it up. It only takes a couple of minutes in the morning to toss on a quick application of mascara and shiny lip-gloss, right?

I stuck to it for a week. Then I was back in the yoga pants and living mascara free.

No, I didn’t fail. I finally realized that, yeah, I would love to look kick-ass every day of the week, but I don’t. How I look on the outside doesn’t change who I am on the inside. I’m not in high school anymore and even though the majority of the world
still judges the book by its cover, I’m a happy and well-adjusted human being.

My husband thinks I look hot, so I should, too.

During my “me” time experiment, I learned that it is important for me to make a date with myself once a month. I totally benefited from taking the time to do something just for me. But, putting extra stress on myself to “look the part” wasn’t
necessary. The kids at preschool don’t care that I’m not wearing the latest winter-trends. They just want to squish clay. My clients don’t care where I picked up my eyeliner. They want motivational articles.

So, at night when I’m all tucked-in-tight, I still fall asleep with a smile on my face and am way less testy the next day. I’ve found the way to balance my “me” time with my regular routine – and it’s working.

I’m still wearing the tinted lip-gloss, though. It makes me smile a little bigger.

Sarah is a part-time stay-at-home-mom to her daughter and part-time preschool teacher that likes to write a lot. When she’s not doing fun art activities with her babe or making something yummy in the kitchen, she’s busy cleaning, organizing, diapering, and working toward world-wide peace. Sarah has a degree in art education and has worked with kids of all ages for over 10 years. In her free time, Sarah likes to read books, take naps, and eat chocolate. You can find more of her writing at sarahlipoff.com.