Hello dear global family! I’m sitting here in my office after a couple of whirlwind weeks. The crickets serenade me with a constant orchestra of life. The ducks make their way around the pond, splashing, waddling, dining on bugs or seeds and simply celebrating their vivid duckness. Schuyler and her friend Paige watch Sex and the City downstairs. I hear laughter and giggles. What a beautiful tapestry of vibrant energy — and then just like that every single one of those crickets fall silent. Nighttime approaches.

Life is an incredible web — far more connected than we would ever imagine. Death is a part of life that seems painful for us to embrace or in some cases to even comprehend. Shortly after I published my last post, the children’s dad died unexpectedly. This man had been my Aikido prince — my hero — the man that I envisioned spending my life with. I met him when I was Schuyler’s age. He was truly a master at the Japanese art of Aikido. He was a genius photographer. He had some rare gifts. And yet sometimes rare gifts make us particularly fragile. He was significantly older than I was but for whatever reason our age difference was a non-issue. Crazy things happened during our romance — aside from being flipped over his back and thrown onto the mat on a daily basis. We were living in New York when we met. We took an excursion to the top of the Empire State building and (kid you not) a heart shaped balloon floated up over the side of the building next to us. We were walking down 7th Avenue in Manhattan and a truck driver stopped at an intersection and yelled over at us that we had made his day. To see two people so in love was inspiring.

And yet life ebbs and flows and I believe that every relationship has its perfect life span. Its purpose.

It is now several days after I started this post. I write while listening to Christina Perri (Thousand Years) from Schuy’s Colombian ICU Playlist. Once again I am in my office. I marvel at how profoundly my life has been transformed. My mind wanders back to those nights in 37th Heaven. My heart yearns to stare upon that Miami nightscape right now instead of this jumbled pile of boxes, pillows and piles that now lies stored in my office. And yet, I know that beauty is as powerfully woven into the chaos of the moments of Great Change as it is woven into those moments of heart stopping awe.

I reflect on this beautiful soul who inadvertently fulfilled my wish to experience the gift of an amazing family. The best relationships aren’t always parallel lines. Sometimes the relationships that help to truly unveil who we are and who we are intended to be are the relationships created by the jagged edges.

As I look back, Life with its amazing sense of humor and poignancy freezes the frames where Nobu and I were back in the NY Aikikai. I didn’t fall in love with this man because he held me in a feathered nest. I loved him because he threw me to the floor — and unbeknownst to him taught me that I (and only I) had the power to get up and move the impossible.

Our life didn’t have the classic fairy tale ending that the Disney writers tend to create. And yet, as the remembrance ceremony for this noble prince of mine finished, I looked up to the sky and there was a rainbow. It was perhaps not the brightest rainbow, but it certainly was the loudest. As I drove home, for the first time in almost 30 years, as I crossed the causeway, there were literally two dolphins to my right cascading over the waves. Totally in unison. Separate yet in synchronicity.

I have no idea why things happen the way that they happen. Do I cry? Do I sob? Do I weep? Oh my gosh yes… And yet the beauty of my tears is that I am alive. I feel. I ask. I hope. I adventure.

I jump off the cliff and then do the best that I can.

Maybe life isn’t as much about being perfect as it is about just being who we are…

My son once said to me long ago that we might not have a “normal” family but that it was perfect just the way that it is. I will treasure that always.

We never know how life will see our greatness. For some of the greatest artists, that revelation—the revelation of our greatness— was conveyed and recognized after “death”. For the longest time, my greatest grief was that I wanted my children to feel a greatness in their father. I wanted them to be proud. I wanted them to know to their core why I chose this man.

Once again, life jumps in and gives us magnificence when we least expect it.

In his death, I suddenly see that they have come to know the gentleness, the hope, the vision, the mastery that I saw in him. The web unfolds. I can finally let out my grief and yet my joy. It’s a strange place and yet it’s where it was “meant to be”.

As I was out walking Tinkerbell and Frodo, I was stopped. I looked over to my left and there was a tree with at least 8 magnificent golden butterflies flitting from flower to flower. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t move. It struck me that these awe inspiring butterflies — truly a breath of perfection — were perfectly and impossibly engaged in their moment. They flitted from blossom to blossom. Each blossom was lusciously unique and yet each subtly different. My dear sweet wonderful members of this global family. We are each a special blossom on a very special tree. There will never be another blossom quite like us. Our “imperfection” is what makes us artistic, special and unique.

Let’s promise to relax into this world that gives us insurmountable challenge in the hope that we can learn to master courage and gratitude and possibility.

May we wake up each morning to the words of “wouldn’t it be amazing if…”

And may we discover that Life doesn’t intend for all of our greatest moments to come in the form of ease and parallel lines… maybe all of our greatness lies in the guise of the jagged edge and in the weird heart-shaped puddle on the sidewalk outside of our door….

Dear God Universe… thank you for the celebrations but thank you so much more for the moments that took my breath away and gave me the courage to soar….!