Jaime Mathis and The Words

This post is for my healing and for all the other women who have experienced miscarriage and not known how to talk about it, if it's alright to talk about it, or felt completely side-swiped by the actual process of releasing the possibility of life.  There's a lot of blood when you have a miscarriage at 12 weeks. According to the How Pregnant Are You sites, the fetus is the size of a lime. I have to say these words because for the last 36 hours I've been bleeding and numb. Yesterday I cried and groaned and wailed for a half hour because that was what came out of my body along with used up air and spent effort creating life. I really wasn't expecting this. I woke up Thursday morning with a little dried blood on my legs but thought, "That's ok, I'm having a child. This is nothing to be concerned about." I was so sure I was having this baby in spite of all the reasons my body could have to let it pass. Yes, my life is filled with uncertainty rig...

A blank page can be as intimidating as waiting for an inevitable change to take place. I sit here, staring at empty space, a thousand thoughts in my head, a million feelings racing around my body and wonder, "How do I decide which ones to apply to the canvas? What makes one more valuable than the other?" Ultimately, the choice rests with me. What I decide to focus on. What I give importance to by simple virtue of my attention. It seems like such an innocuous thing, what I spend my time thinking about, which feelings I choose to name and sit with...but the longer I watch how reality coalesces, the more clear it becomes that my one Ring of Power is all about the Eye. Inner and Outer. What do I choose to look at. Because no matter what shows up...Trump or global warming or brain tumors or babies, I get to decide what to hone in on. As many of you know, life in the Eld-Mathis family has been beset with rainbows and thunderclouds since the beginning of this year. You've al...

Everything was very dramatic 12 days ago. Flying around the world, discovering things growing in Tobi's brain, being pregnant, private doctors. The days following our arrival back in Portland have been decidedly anti-climactic from an external perspective and yet, like ripples on a pond post stone throw, a new life has been inexorably emerging. With Tobias' new Rules of Engagement, for example, he is exploring the relationship dynamics between public transit, the weather and his energy levels. You'd think on first glance that not driving wouldn't be SO hard, yet it reaches into so many aspects of life in these States. Of course there is the personal level of him not being able to jump in the car and just drive to the store if he forgot the cheese for a dinner recipe. There is the relational aspect which not only makes it necessary for him to ask for rides from his wife but also, his wife (me) being acutely aware of wanting to support his mobility and hence feeling...

Life feels like it's speeding up--anybody else feeling this? When I say life, what I really mean is significant change. Sure, my life has had a bunch of shifts in the last few weeks, not least of which is finding out that I'm pregnant and on track to have a small babe sometime in September, but it's everywhere. Yesterday, I found out that an acquaintance died climbing Mt. Hood on Tuesday. I think about Miha a couple times a year and usually see him at the company Christmas party, we go dancing afterwards in a group, he's just a lovely, fun man. Then on Tuesday, out of the blue, his face pops to mind...a memory of us dancing after the last Christmas party and feeling like he was such a good spirit. The next day, Tobias tells me he's dead. It was like a baseball to the head. What a fucking tragedy. Full stop. Where'd that one come from? Of course people die on mountains all the time, but what are the chances of an experienced climber falling on a well estab...

Sitting in Love Cafe (lion in Danish) with Tobias the morning after being told he has a brain tumor, the world is both realer and bizarre than ever. The good news of course is that it is non cancerous right now and small and easy to get to. I am thinking of it like a PAP smear where they tell you they've found irregular cells that are pre-cancerous and recommend removal or some such. On the one hand it's like "Hooray! Little brain threelesses are much better than other things that could be happening!" On the other hand it's like, "Brain threeless." In case you're wondering what the hell a threeless is, it's what we want to happen rather than the additive nature of the standard word for these things. Work it out. Just count down one and add the opposite of less. A friend asked me last year what advice I would give her father who was going through cancer, since I was a survivor and all. I'm reminded of that now.... ...in reflecting on...

I am sitting in a plane flying across the globe to be with Tobias in the hospital. The light is purple outside and the setting sun paints the wings a glowing peach.  It is so beautiful I can hardly tell if my heart is beating in wonder or at what I am flying into when I land in Denmark.  My intuition tells me it is both.  In the last 72 hours Tobias has had a seizure that left him unconscious and without a front tooth after hitting his head and face in the fall.  Scans have revealed something that is as yet, undiagnosed. In the last 9 hours I have packed myself, gotten Espen situated with my wonderful sister Jackie and her family and boarded a plane. In the midst of this flurry of action and rapid choice making, feelings flow like melting glaciers. There are questions—What do I say to Espen so he knows I need to go the Denmark and that he is safe? How do I step into this unknown and keep my heart open, my mind clear and my body healthy? What ...

I started ghostwriting in my 20s. It didn’t occur to me at the time how creating words for others to use as their own would inform my own ideas on personal expression—I just loved writing and wanted to help great ideas grow some legs to stand on. My first assignment was for a Cal-tech theoretical physicist who wanted to explain the mechanism of external chi within a quantum healing field. The mandate--write the story line for a comic book that would make concepts like coherence, the unified field theory and the importance of bound states accessible for mass consumption and application.  Then there was The Godfather of the modern vegan movement—a former Silicon Valley OG who had come up with the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He had made his fortune and now turned his focus onto movement building within the fields of health and personal transformation. I was hired to craft a vegan manifesto for him. Not only should it channel his passion and vision for veganism ...