Three more days to go until I return to paid employment. This last week spending time with the kids, Stephen, and my parents, who were visiting, felt extra sweet. On more than one occasion I’ve talked to mama friends about how to balance home life with working outside the home. I look at single moms and wonder how they manage. Staying organized helps of course, but we’re all just doing the best we can. And I’ll do that, too. Life is messy right now and it may get messier, literally, but that’s okay. We keep moving forward.

And now on to my favorite things this month. I’ve been enjoying listening to Natural MD Radio podcast with Dr. Aviva Romm. She’s an herbalist and fellow Yalie (she received her MD from Yale Medical School). Not too long ago Stephen’s mom sent me an article on the link between depression and inflammation in the body. At the time I had never heard that discussed before, and then earlier this month Dr. Aviva released a podcast called Tumeric for Depression in which she addresses this connection between inflammation and depression. If you haven’t heard her podcast, check it out on iTunes. She tends to focus on women’s health and children.

Have you seen El Abrazo de la Serpiente? It’s a black and white film, perfect for Stephen, and it was about plant spirit medicine, perfect for me. I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.

I’m currently reading The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant. The story begins with a Jewish grandmother telling her granddaughter about her life growing up in Boston in the early part of the twentieth century. I’m enjoying the book so far. It is reminding me of how important it is to gather the stories of our elders, especially for our children born in the twenty-first century. Stephen and I had a chance several months back to interview both of our parents to hear about their lives before they were our parents. The recorded interviews are gifts we’ll give our children one day when they are older.

I smile as my own story is unfolding. I’m 38 years old, and yet my life experiences have been far from boring. As I begin this path of social work once again, I realize I am not the social worker I was six years ago. I bring to my work my mothering, my herbalism, my wild woman nature, my blogging, my daring to be afraid of the unknown yet my strength to stay open and keep sharing. My life is changing yes, but the creative force in me must find a new path. I leave you with this short excerpt from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., which I may have quoted before but I think is worth reading again:

Creating one thing at a certain point in the river feeds those who come to the river, feeds the creatures far downstream, yet others in the deep. Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, is fed. That is why beholding someone else’s creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone.