Life’s Little Metaphors

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Have you ever felt like your life was being written and illustrated for you as you lived it?  And as you walked through your day the images around you strangely reflected your inner reality?

Over the last month, Attachment Mama has been hacked 3 times. Each evening I had some free time for personal writing and logged on, I would discover a new hack and had to spend the time to go through every single post and remove all the hackitude, change my passwords, blah-ditty-blah. Not sure who all saw it — but the last hack went beyond just inserting annoying text into all my posts and actually replaced my entire site with one page that had a scary Gothy face and the message “You’ve been hacked!”

What a weird, wired world this is where people that don’t even know you feel inspired to *$%^ with your innocent Mommy site.

Looking at this creepy face on my site and trying to breathe through it, find the humor in it (never got there) or discover the bigger message for me at hand — (has my focus on my children and how best to mother them been hacked by my 50 hour-week job?) — I went down memory lane to a chapter in my life with uglier metaphors that I can now laugh about.

It may be hard to imagine the currently health-focused me relishing a cigarette, but there was a time in my life when I found them extraordinarily enjoyable and didn’t give a hoot about long term consequences.  In fact, I loved them so much that I referred to them as my “smokey treats.”

Ahhhhhh. Blessed addiction.

The last time I smoked was the winter and spring before I moved from Boulder to Austin eight years ago. In a matter of a few months I had transitioned from well paid international PR manager at a high tech firm, marathon runner and singer for a 10-piece R&B band with charming boyfriend to unemployed (tech crash lay-offs), single (fully dumped), living alone (housemate moved to Denver) and soon-to-be band-less.

Did I turn to longer runs or yoga to work through it all? No.

Did I pound green juice to lift my spirits and strengthen my health?  Not so much.

Nah. I decided instead to pick up an old nasty habit that I had quit six years prior.

It was December, with plenty of snow on the ground. I would bundle up, go out on my back porch with my dog, and attempt to exhale life’s problems with an American Spirit while she took a dump in the yard. And then we’d both sit and stare at each other and the smoke fading into the sky while I rubbed her ears with my free hand.

Occasionally I would get inspired to pick up the dog shit in the snow and would shovel it up — often together with some snow — and toss into a trash bag I kept around the corner from the porch. I liked to dump my ash trays in there too.

Well, one morning following a sunny day when most of the snow had melted off, I sat mentally revisiting all that had gone wrong with smokey treat and coffee and heard the sound of our local garbage truck. I remembered the bag of poo sitting around the corner and rushed to grab it and add it to the trash can on the curb.

And as I grabbed the top edges of said trash bag, the snow (now water), shit and ash cocktail came pouring out all over my hands.

I really can’t tell you just how heinous this was. I think I scrubbed my hands with every soap and sanitizer in the house for 20 minutes.

Now you’re going to think I’m making up this next part for the metaphorical trifecta impact — but I promise you, I am not.

Following the manic hand wash, I sat down to call my new crush who happened to also be a smoker not happy about the habit to tell him about this craziness and how I could bottle up the shit-ash mix and we could both use it to quit. It was hands down the sure-fire aroma therapy way to quit smoking for good.

And while I was sitting on my dinky plastic patio chair talking to my friend, a bird flew by and shat on my head.

100% serious.

So that was then. I felt like my life was in the shitter and the universe reflected back my thinking.

This is now. Thankfully my commitment to health and wellness has kept me from going down the smokey treat path through this stressful year of balancing an intense job with mothering two little ones. When I forget that the universe responds to specificity — specifically the energy, the intention, and the thoughts that I project out into the world — life happens to me (or so I think) and I find myself in a pin-ball machine of response, reaction and survival. Hackitude.

When I choose to consciously express gratitude for all the blessings in my life and be very specific about the life I choose to experience every day and what I will gratefully experience in the future — new metaphors, possibilities and beautiful synchronicity unfold to reflect that reality.

Breathe. Believe. Receive.

Thanks for sticking with me with the hack sabbatical.

Is anyone still there besides my Mom?

Posted in Mama Self Expression | 9 Comments

Vision Boards and the Law of Attraction

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Monday, January 3, 2011

Anyone else see the “The Secret” when it came out in 2006?  I remember being quite inspired by it when we watched it just prior to my first daughter’s birth. The Big Secret is essentially that we’re all intended to have an amazing life and that we create every moment of our life with our thoughts. The film explains the Law of Attraction —  how we attract into our lives anything that we give attention to, regardless whether it’s positive or negative.

Before this movie existed and all the talk about the law of attraction took hold culturally, any number of practices and tools existed that essentially help activate drawing in that which you seek.

Vision boards are something I’ve done off and on for over ten years. They are fun and powerful manifestation tools. The idea is to take pictures you like from magazines or that you print off the web and put them in a collage on a poster board or foam core board. Ideally all the pictures bring you joy and represent your passions and desires. You can choose to add text and drawings too. I read one suggestion to include copy at the bottom, “date created (today’s date)” and “date manifested.”

It’s fun to look back on ones that I created several years ago — especially my first vision board in 1999:

This one was pure stream of consciousness. It was one of the evening exercises at a life-changing retreat I attended in Colorado called Women’s Quest. We were told to go through a stack of magazines and cut out anything that looked attractive to us and not stop to think about it.

Women’s Quest rocks by the way. I went to three retreats over the span of a few years back in my single, corporate chic days and I hold the intention of taking my girls to one when they are older. Super empowering, adventurous, and fabulously feminine.

I’m struck by two images that I see now in my old ’99 vision board that are mind-blowing to me.  The first, which may be hard to see, is a picture of African American children in choir robes.  With absolutely ZERO clue in 1999 that I would be doing this — shortly after moving to Austin in 2003, I began volunteering for a charter school for under-served children in Austin, most with African American and Latino heritage. During the 2004-2005 school year, I was the school’s volunteer choir teacher.

The second one that I’m drawn to today is the picture of the young girl with her arms outstretched in joy.  Check out this picture of my sweet Sadie:

I didn’t do another vision board until 2004. When I was ready to get married and was fantasizing about having a beautiful wedding with dark pink and orange flowers, and chocolate-colored brides maids dresses.

This was my secret vision board that I stashed under our bed when my husband and I were living together, not yet engaged.  Kinda hard to see in this tiny picture…but if you click it, I think you see something larger…and then there’s pictures from my wedding a year later in 2005.

Now. When I look back at the much fancier board that my husband and I made together for 2010, I find myself scratching my head a bit.

Some things on the board manifested quite beautifully: Travel (for almost free), Getting Published, Getting a Job. Practicing affinity and compassion.

Others – not so much.

Namely:  EXERCISE which is all over the board for crying in the drink! And the others were specific numbers around total money earned per month in 2010 which didn’t happen. That’s supposed to be my husband’s future ripped torso (close….really close) and that’s supposed to be me jogging blissfully through the woods and wearing skinny, hip clothes (not that close on either….)

I read these two quotes on The Secret’s web site tonight:

Do whatever it takes to feel good. The emotions of joy and happiness are powerful money magnets. Be happy now!

You can intend and create everything you want for the future, through the simple process of gratitude.

Which reminds me of the Gratitude journaling exercise which I fully intend to re-ignite this year.

As far as the vision board, ideally it is posted somewhere where you’ll do more than barely notice it. One person suggested having it on the ceiling above your bed.  Since we’re selling the house and have showings on a semi-regular basis, we’ve opted to keep our vision boards stashed away.

We intend to redo our boards for 2011 this month.  And as soon as we’re in another home, we’ll make them prominent again. Since we attract into our lives anything that we give attention t0 — best to have visual aids some place that draws our attention!

Posted in AP & Self Care | 4 Comments

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