These are challenging times for most of us.  Fear, anger and depression are everywhere.  In the past two weeks three of my friends have come to me for comfort and help.  I cannot remember this happening in such a short time period in my entire adult life.  Why so much trauma in such a short time?

I believe that with the economic changes in the world the old way of being is dying.  Linear time no longer works.  The dependable job that you trained and kept for life is no more.  Living in the same house until retirement, a rarity.  Even retirement at the age of 65 is questionable.  Many of us have lost our retirement, jobs, and houses.  No wonder people are stressed out.  So what do we do?

Go with the flow, think outside the box, cluster together, and help each other.  Many adult children have moved back with their parents.  Adults living in single- family homes with extra bedrooms are renting out rooms.  Trust that you will find caring, loving people to share your space and that the universe will provide.

Making meals together not only saves money, it also produces less stress than doing it all yourself.  Right now my 29-year old son and his girlfriend are living with us.  Often we share meals.  It is much easier to cook for four than two, plus I get a break from the same old food.

We also take care of each other’s pets and plants. When one of us goes away there is someone to watch the house.  I think communal living is the wave of the future.  Having large homes with one or two people in them is not good for the planet.  It just doesn’t make sense any more.

I invite you to look at your life and evaluate how you are living.  Remember to be grateful for what you have, ask for help, and go with the flow.  If the old ways are no longer serving you make changes. I really don’t think the old ways of living are going to come back.  For me time is spiraling faster and faster.  There is only now and the future is open to change every second.  These can be wonderful exciting times if you transmute the fear into love and help one another.

Be Love,

Christine

Mario has been living in is own apartment now more than four months.  Often people ask him, “How do you like your new home?”  Mario responds with,  “I needed to move here for my brain.  My home is with my mom and dad.” 

Last week my friend, Virginia came over to Mario’s apartment for dinner.  She asked Mario the same question:  “How do you like your new home?”  Mario gave her the usual response.

Virginia thought for a moment, pointed to Mario’s heart and said, “This is your home.”  Mario smiled.  I got all excited and acknowledged what she had said.  “Your body is your home!”

Virginia went on to explain to Mario.  “You are sort of like a turtle.  You take your home with you where ever you go.”

This was an epiphany for me.  I believed that my body was my temple, but never thought of my body as home.  As a temple I only felt connected with my body while in meditation, out in nature, or in a spiritual place, or doing what I believed to be spiritual things.  How limiting for me.  When my body is in pain or not working as I would like, I actually hated my body and would think or say, “Please God release me, I have suffered enough.  I just want to go home.”  Home for me was being in a limitless form as spirit, without a body.

Now I am reevaluating my truth.  If my body is home I will never be “homeless,” even if my shelter or material house is destroyed.  I can move to another house, live in an RV, hotel, car, hospital, it doesn’t matter, I will always have a home: my body. 

This is a very comforting place for me to be.  I like it.  So I have decided that my body is my home so I had better take good care of it.  Clean out any garbage, exercise, eat right, and most of all, enjoy it.  As Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said,  “There is no place like home.” 

Another enlightening quotation I like is from Teilhard de Chardin:  “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Be Love

Dear Family & Friends,

It has come to my attention that our books are being sold on Amazon by Brundel Books for $2 new.  Some how they got a hold of the reject books I sent back to iUniverse when it was first published.  These are inferior quality books and I am not getting any royalties from their sale.  In addition iUniverse told me that there is no record of any Amazon sales being made!  Many of you bought books on Amazon.

If you have receipts or have an idea when you purchased the book e-mail me.

I have got to get to the bottom of this scam. I cannot compete with $2 sales and I do not want inferior books out there.  The Internet is a blessing and a curse at the same time.  Please help me uncover the dirt.

Be Love,

Christine

People ask me how Mario likes living in his own apartment.  Mario is not thrilled about it and it has been an adjustment.  When I asked Mario the same question he wrote,  “I needed the movement Mom.”  That is so true.  If you get stuck in the same routine your brain can get lazy.  Besides when Mario is at home I am a bit of a “ hover mother.”  Sometimes staying in the same comfortable life style is not in your best interest.  A little challenge now and then builds character if not brain cells.

Every day is an adventure with Mario.  He has spent four weeks in his new apartment already.  It is amazing how this all works out.  Every day a different caregiver comes in at 9:00 a.m. to help get Mario ready for his day.  Some days his goes swimming at the Y.M.C.A.  On other days he goes to Dr. appointments, walking, shopping or out to lunch.

Most of the time it takes him until 1:00 p.m. to get ready to leave the house.  Mario moves slowly and what takes me five minutes to do will be an hour for Mario, like eating for instance.  He prays over the food for as long as it takes for me to eat it, but maybe those prayers are a part of the reason he continues to improve.

He usually returns to the house at 5:00 p.m. because each caregiver works an eight hour shift.  So what do we do for the night?  Every night I go over and prepare dinner for Mario.  Mario takes a nap and my husband Mark comes over around 7:00 p.m.  We all have dinner together until one of four friends comes over to spend the night with Mario.

We asked for help and we got it.  How loving these friends are to help us out.  If it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have been able to move Mario.  He is not ready to spend the night alone yet and my husband and I do not want to sleep in a one bedroom apartment every night with Mario!

We are looking for someone to share the apartment with Mario in exchange for caring for him at night.  They cannot have any furniture and are not only limited on space, but freedom.  A roommate cannot have friends over and must be drug and alcohol free.  Mario lives in HUD housing so you cannot have a criminal record to live there either.

I have no doubt that the perfect roommate for Mario will appear.  Just like all the other miracles in our lives.  It is the how and when that are yet to be determined.  It is kind of fun waiting to see what the universe will provide next.

BE Love,

Christine

In the book “Raising Mario Twice I talked about the hope of getting Mario into his own place.  I didn’t know how or where, but kept the dream alive and affirmed, “somehow, somewhere, someway, Mario would move in 2010.”

With a challenged world economy and social services cutbacks, I wasn’t optimistic about finding a group home for Mario.  I thought maybe book sales would rocket and my husband and I would buy a house or condominium for Mario.  Maybe we could exchange care giving for rent.

Book sales are improving, but not going well enough to purchase a home for Mario.  Yet every day I kept saying, “Mario will find a place to live outside of our home sometime in 2010.”

This March after a meditation on finding “The perfect place for Mario,” I picked up the mail.  There was a letter from an apartment manager of a HUD housing complex for the mobility impaired.  In a couple of days Mario could have an interview for an apartment if we were still interested.

I had filled out an application three years ago for an apartment and by now had forgotten about it.  A year ago one of these apartments had come up, but Mario was not ready.  Lately Mario has been walking around more and more with a cane so would he still qualify?  I talked with Mario about moving.  He said, “I am ready, Mom, I am ready.”

I made the call and it turned out that Mario was first on the waiting list!  He still needs a walker most of the time, as long as a doctor wrote, “permanently mobility impaired,” Mario would qualify.  His doctor wrote the diagnosis, permanently mobility impaired.

Mario interviewed, we signed the lease, and he now has his own apartment!  He still needs assistants day and night, but does more and more for himself.  It is his house and beautifully decorated.  I asked for help from family and friends and we received pots, pans, pictures, lights, decorations, dishes, microwave, blender, and a TV.  Everything matches and flows with good energy and love.

We believe in miracles and the Universe provided everything we needed for Mario.  All I had to do was ask and be ready to receive.

By Laura Casey, Contra Costa Times. Published: Friday, April 9, 2010

Read the article.