SING

I remember being a young girl wrapping a baby duck’s neck in gauze, certain it would help the duckling with what seemed to be an issue in holding its neck up. I didn’t understand that the baby duck had a broken neck.

I could not alter the natural cycle of life, but I was able to offer compassion. And love.

I think about kissing my dad on the cheek and telling him to go in peace and that he was loved as he prepared to take his last breaths here on Earth.

I rub the palm of my right hand where I still feel Roo’s last heartbeat, my heart surging in gratitude for all that I experienced with Roo while she lived, and after she passed from this Earth. (If you have read To the Moon and Back to Me:  What I Learned from Four Running Feet you understand the experiences.)

I think I have always been destined to lean into the suffering that life holds.

And look for the beauty that is also present.

To see not a breaking apart, but the offering to crack open. To see that when the heart feels pain, it is splitting open to experience deeper love. To see not the loss, but the chance to make it matter that the loss occurs by choosing to embrace life.

If you are reading this as one of my email subscribers (and thank YOU if you are one!), you may be surprised to be reading another email given my recent communication about the completion of the hope quests. I knew it was time for the quests to end, and I also knew I was being guided that there were messages I was meant to voice.

Messages that look grief, pain, sorrow, trauma, and despair in the eye and offer a reframed way of seeing and hearing. Messages I am calling Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life.

My current plan is that Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life will be distributed every other Tuesday beginning July 18^th (though you are receiving this a few days ahead of the 18^th). Unlike the previous Hope Is quest messages, I am aspiring for the Blueprints to be Flash stories, meaning one thousand words or less. I wish to be respectful of your time while also providing value to you. Of course, as you know, you can always unsubscribe if what you are receiving is not bringing you benefit, and I always welcome emails with comments, suggestions, and ideas you may have for a topic you would like reframed in a future Blueprint.

Okay, enough stage setting. On to Sing, the first Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life.

The gift of Nature and the tiniest of souls who inhabit Earth.

Before Blueprints materialized and was only a guided feeling, while still dancing that dance of grace between the opposition of “give voice” and “I don’t know if I should,” we had a rainstorm in the night. The next morning as the girls (Kutana and Ginger) and I walked down our sidewalk on our way to go for a run, I saw a nest had blown out of a maple tree and was lying in the grass. The nest was mostly covered by a stem of fresh green leaves that had also blown down from the storm.

I had been asking my TEAM (spirit guides, keepers, ancestors) for clarity on what to voice, IF I were to voice. After all, I was in that dance! (Ha!)    Fast forward to the end of the day and we are sitting outside as a family (my husband, the girls, and I). Ginger, with a hunter instinct, and Kutana, who, well, is a bird dog both go over to the base of the maple tree and start sniffing the nest and near the nest. Neither do more than sniff, quite curiously so, but then both start to walk away. Both intuitively knowing there was a message soon to be coming for me.

A few moments later I hear what sounds like a baby bird singing. I check with my husband to see if he hears it, too, and once he affirms yes, I get up and rush to the base of the tree as the girls become eager to see what mom is up to. Surely there must be something they can assist me with. Or hunt.

My husband calls them back as I discover four baby birds scattered throughout the grass, three no longer alive. The fourth was not destined to survive without its mom, who I anticipate was somewhere in mourning certain her family had not survived the storm. Who had observed a nest on the ground like I had several hours before, believing the silence was communicating an end.

Not wanting the girls to act on their natural instincts, I picked up the four beings and moved them out of sight and mind of the girls. I asked this little one who I knew would soon leave Earth how I could make it matter this moment we were exchanging. This moment life was bringing Grief and offering a choice in responding.

Sing your voice on behalf of me. No more “should I?”  Sing.

You are now reading the first Blueprints thanks to a tiny soul who fulfilled its purpose while its time on Earth.

And who was able to know the greatest of all gifts we can give.

Love.

Namaste’

-Christine

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

― Václav Havel

P.S.

If you know of someone that would benefit from Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life, please pass this on to them. They can subscribe to future emails by visiting Christinehassing.com or emailing me at Christine@hopewhispers.net.