Live Your Dream Life with Passion and Purpose

About a year and three months ago, Mark and I went out to visit Dusty Rose (a.k.a. Mom). I had plans to take pictures and to help her set up her blog. This would be a surprise for her – my idea since I had signed up for a blog challenge and she had ‘wished’ she could, but she didn’t have a blog.

Like I had planned, I ran around and took photos. We went through a few thousand (or so it felt) WordPress themes, and finally found one she liked. With the blog set up, we started to write her ‘about’ page or her ‘bio.’ I traveled back in my mind to figure out the timeline… she moved out there when I had just graduated high school. My brother and step-brothers graduated from high school there. I estimated that she had been living her dream for about 24 years. I began writing her bio… “For more than two decades Dusty Rose has been living her country-fied dream of being an artist.” I finished the bio and gave it to my mother to read and edit.

She looked at it, and said (very matter of fact way), “I haven’t been doing my art that long.” I just looked at her like, “Mmmm, well, yes you have.” She said, “No, I haven’t.” And, I was like, “Remember, you lived out her and you worked for the state, and then after about five years of driving 120+ miles per day, you quit and started doing your art full-time?” It was odd to be arguing a timeline with the person who was supposed to have lived that timeline. She looked at my suspiciously, but then I started matching my own timeline to hers… I was married and then I was divorced (after nearly 8 years), single for four, and I’ve been married to Mark for 10, so… well, that’s more than 20 years!

She couldn’t believe it. She literally, in her mind, thought it had been  about 10 years. Where does the time go?

And, that’s how our lives go. We dream. We create the dream. We live in the dream. Sometimes we forget to dream more – even when our world doesn’t really feel like a dream anymore.

I began to talk about how I remembered that her dream at the time was to quit her job and do her art full-time. She had, in fact, been living the dream for TWO decades! I began to say to her, “Mom, you are living the dream that you so desired many years ago. You are living the dream that MANY artists DREAM of… living out in the country, free to create as you wish, a full studio full of all kinds of art supplies, a big resource stash of reclaimed wood and metal at your disposal and a partner (my step dad) who can help you create anything!”

She nodded, but I could tell that she didn’t feel like this life was a dream.

I added, “Mom, if you don’t feel lucky to be living the life you are currently living, that just means you have an invitation to upgrade the dream. It’s time to dream a new dream.”

She listened, but I could tell she wasn’t sure that was really possible – perhaps, or even true.

All of this happened mid June 2010.

In late January of this year, I awoke to the idea to give my mom my treasured computer armoire. I called her and let her know I was ready to give it to her. The thing about my connection with my mother is that I’m extremely sensitive to her desires. If she needs help, I wake up feeling inspired to go help her. If she wants a new computer armoire, I wake up wanting to give her mine. This time, with the armoire, I could feel that she was ready for her own space. She had desires to have her OWN computer, her OWN desk and a yearning to have her OWN personal space. I see how easily my mom creates what she wants. I’ve always seen it – beyond the feelings of limitations, beyond the beliefs – and mostly because I’m usually part of the magnetic pull of her desires! A couple of months earlier she had said she would ‘pay’ me for my armoire if I was ready to get rid of it. I didn’t want her to pay me…at the same time, I wasn’t ready to let it go. About the same time she asked about the armoire, my step dad pulled Mark and me aside because he wanted to buy her a laptop and surprise her. Yes, her desires for personal space (she had been sharing a computer and desk with my step dad) were brewing.

Note… SHE did not go buy her computer, SHE did not go buy an armoire, SHE did not get someone to get her computer ready with all of the programs she needed. SHE did nothing but decide she wanted these things. The rest of us scurried around in the magnetic pull of her desire.

I believe that our conversation from June had been percolating… if you aren’t living your dream life, then what are you living?

When we arrived to deliver the armoire in February, we arrived to see my mom worked up. Not in a big way, but more in a way that was boiling under the surface. I walked right into the energy. I certainly wasn’t paying attention. All of a sudden, I took it all on. The anger. The frustration. The irritation. I began acting it out. Now, here’s the rub. I had been feeling similarly. Mark and I had had a long conversation on the way out to drop off the armoire. I was an energetic match.

Mark went to the store to get something. My step dad went to play Farmville. Mom and I headed out to her shop. I began to pay attention to what was bubbling up. I noticed a pattern in her that I also felt in me. It smacked of “I can’t because he wants something different from what I want.” I felt it with Mark. She felt it with her husband. I suggested four or five things, and every time she said, “I’ve been waiting on him to do it.” Soon, I could feel and notice the patterns. I was running the same patterns with my husband! Ack!

I harnessed the anger, the frustration, the irritation and declared, “Mom, if we aren’t living the lives of our dreams, then there’s only one reason… because we have not decided to! Let’s do it NOW – time to DECIDE!” I realized I had been holding myself back and making Mark my scapegoat. I saw the same in my mom. I had seen my step dad as someone who has always done what he could to give my mother what she desires. Same with Mark. He would do anything for me. What both she and I were bumping up against were our strong husbands who believe THEY know the best way for us to have what we desire. It wasn’t that they were trying to keep us from having what we want, it’s just that their way, their approach doesn’t necessarily feel good to us. We are both so sensitive, we tend to let things go instead of speaking up. We tend to dismiss, let go of things instead of making a big deal about it. However, in the process, we were mistaking this for ‘we can’t.’

Wow – what a HUGE a-ha! I knew it was time to shift this ancestral heritage. I knew I didn’t want to live this way anymore!

There we were sitting across from each other in my mother’s art studio. I started asking her, “Mom, what do you really, really want? No limits… what do you want?” As she spoke, I began to listen energetically…asking new questions as they came to me. Soon, she had her manifestation set. She was complete.

I’ll share tomorrow what has happened since then. It’s a GREAT story… I LOVE creation!