Let’s admit it: Life feels crowded. Sometimes the days are so packed with sick kids, work deadlines, to do lists, errands, and exercise, it is as if we are in perpetual sprint—our blenders stuck on fastest puree—with very few slower moving settings in which we can pause to let the breeze of spirit in, to receive the soft sacred influx of this most sage wind.

I’ve been thinking a lot about giving recently. In other words, I’ve been experiencing how the simple giving of our attention—not of gifts or any other highly coveted thing, but of our own undivided open-eared presence—is perhaps THE ultimate act of generosity. Our attention is indeed a powerful show of selflessness, whether we’ve given it wholly to a pet, a loved one, a colleague, or someone we barely know.

What an adventure my pregnancy has been. And how totally wonderful and scary that I am in this blessed place, on this life-changing precipice, yet again!

If there was ever a time to cut myself some slack, it has arrived. I am just not able to be the perfectly humming, organized, and get-things-done machine I am used to being. Scratch that, I am not even close!