Tuesday Tea Time!

Grab your drink & a comfy seat, and together we'll enjoy our Tuesday Tea Time!

Together, we'll smile at the unpredictable Spring weather & hold tight in the comfort of a warm mug in our grips. Some say tea is a hug in a cup.

Together, we'll share highs & lows & ins & outs of life as of late.

Together, we'll be, you & me, with our mug of tea, warm in our souls.

Together, there'll be tea, for you & me.

Together.

Tuesday Tea Time!

Hello Tuesday Tea Timers!

Northern MI has finally been kissed with a touch of true Spring weather. It's amazing the buzz of energy this brings to everybody & everything. We're eager to celebrate the warm weather & all that it brings. We've already been enjoying the usual Spring cleaning pieces of switching out our wardrobes, sweeping out the garage, putting the cushions on the patio furniture, & taking longer walks with the furbaby.

Over the past several weeks one of the biggest blessings has been people sharing their stories of life with me. The stories have spanned the ages, years, & topics. They have all been raw with life & spirit, & the sharing created sparkle.

For decades it's been taboo to talk about the loss of a baby (at any stage), mental health complications, & much of life. We seem to make these taboo pieces taboo simply by not sharing our stories around them. The reality is though, even if our stories are that we don't have words to tell our stories, that is our story. There are great stories told in the silence & sighs of life, as well as in the the screams & exclamations.

My story, in just the last year or so, has been greatly impacted by the realities of a loved one living with mental health complications that have rocked our world. And if you've been following tea times recently, you know that last month I delivered our first baby extremely prematurely resulting in her death & the loss of a piece of our hearts. We are a living taboo & our stories are one in a million.

Thank you to all for sharing the deep, below the surface realities of life with me. We learn how to react & care for one another in the taboos of life, when we live through these moments together. Living through these moments with y'all near & far is a blessed time of sharing our hearts with one another.

Tuesday Tea Time!

 Hiya Tuesday Tea Timers!

What a wild ride of life over the past month, to say the least. Many of you have joined in the abundance of tea consuming & good life discussions that can do nothing other than deepen relationships. Thank you for being part of community. As my friend, colleague, & mentor Dr. Terri Elton, has said about me, I thrive on community. Being part of a community that works to exist for the sake of each other is key to many a persons, if not all, well being.

For now our space for Kaia is complete. In its current state, 1 month after her birth & death, it has almost the most decor it will have. Providing friends come forward with art they wanted to make for baby Kaia, those pieces will be added to her memory space. In a few months we'll bury her ashes, and in due time her future siblings will be gifted the use & play of the books, blankets, & Beatrix Potter stuffed animals. The pieces that will always be a part of her space in our home will be her name blocks, framed foot print piece, a glass cross from the funeral home, a ceramic angel from her Papau's pharmacy co-workers, a few knit pieces, and a gifted piece of art or two.

The pieces have come together for today. Our baby Kaia rests peacefully in our hearts & more literally in the heavens around us with God who holds us all together (despite our attempts to break apart) & even more literally in her small pearl urn on the cedar chest in our room. We drink our tea & move along one day at a time.

Tuesday Tea Time!

Tuesday Tea Time!

Hello tea time friends. Have you ever had the experience of watching something on tv & then watching it come to life right in front of you? We all know the things we watch on tv are based from someone's (or perhaps many a someones) real life story (& the pieces of many stories). It's not often we actually believe our lives could become a piece of such story telling.

So much life has happened in the last year that not only have we joked about a movie or a book, but others have even suggested it. While we choose to acknowledge the hardships, celebrate the joys, & continue into the tomorrows, it's hard to imagine our crazy wonderful challenges as captivating for an actual media story. We've been friends since the Fall of 2009, a couple since the beginning of 2010, & JZ since Summer 2011. 2015 was a year of one scary life piece after another (ya know, mental health diagnosis, a few change of jobs, multiple moves, glamping & a trip to Japan) & then, just when we didn't think more excitement could be had in a year, we found out we were pregnant.

2016 is a new adventure with names to many of the wild life challenges, but yet much of the pieces leave us wondering. The wonderful pieces leave us to dream. And pieces of those dreams will become reality & we'll have new unnamed pieces that send us into further wonderings. The named pieces will give us the grounding we need to move forward one day at a time, piece by piece. And so we go with the courage to be (& simply be) & Life, Spirit, Sparkle as our guide.

For a glimpse of what we watched the night before Kaia was born & in our recovering days since, check out PBS/BBC Call The Midwife.