October Founder's Letter
October 2023
Dear Friends,
In early December of 2015 I was on a beautiful island in the Caribbean. My heart was BROKEN. I had just learned a few weeks before that a pregnancy I desperately wanted and prayed for wasn’t viable. We had implanted a microscopic bit of material filled with so much love and hope into my womb in early November, just after my birthday. I had every hope and prayer in the world riding on this guy.
We called him Uno because he was the only one out of eight embryos who had survived genetic testing in that round. Losing those other seven embryos was another tragedy I lived through before shifting my perspective to gratitude for having one genetically tested embryo to implant. It just takes one.
I had vision boards and sat in daily meditation rituals visualizing Uno splitting into two. Even though I was so grateful for this one embryo I was also clear that I really, really wanted more than one child. I was already in the "geriatric" category for pregnancy so I thought maybe this was my last shot. Let him be healthy and happy AND let him split in two I would pray. Seriously. I did this for weeks. Uno did not split in two. Uno implanted and was happy inside for a bit which was the greatest joy in all of my life, until it wasn’t. He died. The high was so high. The low was so low. I was exhausted by the process. Emotionally drained and damaged. I stopped believing in miracles.
As I stood on the deck of this beautiful little casita in one of the most idyllic places in the world I was sad. I was looking up to the stars as I often did, searching for meaning, for peace, for understanding and solace. I was thinking of Uno as I had hundreds of times before with longing in my heart. In that moment, I saw a shooting star streak across the sky. I smiled. I couldn’t believe it. It was the third time in the two weeks since I had lost Uno that I was looking up, thinking of Uno, and saw a shooting star. The Universe was talking to me. I knew it. He was talking to me. When I tuned my ears to listen to something I heard in the distance, in this same exact moment, I heard the iconic song by Journey blasting at a beach side party I had left early to tend to my heart. “Don’t Stop Believing!” he sang, “Hold on to that feeling...”
What?! Was I actually having a conversation with the Universe? It felt as if I was. The shooting star shifted my awareness, the song came it, I heard the message as if it was there just for me. The unrelenting yearning in my heart was so pure and unadulterated in those moments of deep grief I truly feel that God/Spirit/The Universe was holding me. I never felt anything like this before. I was cynical about God in the past, confusing it with religion and not feeling it was for me. I didn't buy "God" as it had been sold to me through the Catholic church. Through my steadfast and unstoppable aching for my mama heart to be met, I heard God and got to know God for myself. God shared many things with me on this journey. Most importantly, you are not alone. I am here. You are OK. There is peace under all the turmoil inside. Go deeper. Be more quiet, more still. I am here. Always.
The message I got that night buoyed my spirit. Don’t stop believing. I am here. It made me smile deep, deep inside like I knew a secret inside my heart that my mind wasn’t quite aware of yet. It helped me continue to release my expectations and the illusion of control and just continue to surrender to the unknown. I didn’t know how or when I would be a mother, but if it was something that was this alive in my heart for this long and was this unrelenting then I could relax and know it is not there just to torment me. I could trust and allow the feeling to inspire me from a place of curiosity versus judgment, blame and victimization.
It was at this time that I started to become free from the burden of my attachment. In my most vulnerable, sad, attached time, I started to let go. It was something people had suggested to me for years and it would anger me when they said it, “You just have to let go then it will happen…” Oh, how I hated to hear that. I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. And I truly believe it’s not helpful at all to tell people to let go because they can’t otherwise they would. It has to come in time. It has to come when you are too exhausted to swim upstream anymore. Because our will is strong and it feels like failure to let go when it is the opposite. It is freedom. It is finding a sense of trust that is greater than the fear of not getting what you want.
The knowing of what it feels like to surrender to Spirit has never left me. The quality of my life improved so much with that emotional/psychological shift that I knew and I know I can never go back. I am forever one who will surrender. Even if I don’t do it immediately, I will do it eventually because I know. I know it is the way to freedom and what I want more than anything, more than having children, or anything I think I need, is freedom. This journey of surrender not only gave me a sense of freedom and a cherished relationship with God, it also gave me children, two of them actually, from one egg that miraculously split in two five years after I had prayed for that with Uno. Miracles Happen.
Here we are at a time in our world that is so dark it seems we need a miracle to achieve peace. I am getting this same message, “Don’t Stop Believing”. There is so much horror and so many people and other beings suffering in our world while people are profiting from murder and selling weapons of murder. It seems so pointless and archaic to deal with conflict by murdering others. It seems unbelievable. And yet, it is everywhere we look. My heart aches with the same sincerity it did when I lost my babies. My sadness for the mothers and fathers burying their children and for children aching for their mothers and fathers is deep. I feel helpless and yet I also feel a knowing that we are one and that one day we will all wake up to this knowing and things will be different. I believe it. And the first step in achieving a miracle is believing in miracles. Don’t stop believing.
Sending Love and a BIG WARM HUG to all of you for being part of my journey. You can read my latest Aspen Times Column HERE about being a light in the world. We need YOU! We need all of us to believe.
Gina