live free or die...and other state mottos that will make you wanna uproot your life and move there...

so i have been accepted to grad school and i move to new hampshire in two days...which i know begs the question...what do you mean grad school....and you would think that now that i have at least phsyically rejoined the "1st world" population and with so many really big things happening to me in the almost 3 months since my return that i would have done tons of blogging and communicating, especially since i no longer have babies on my hip or lack of technological "conveniences" to hide behind as excuses...and yet....here we are...me with a whole lot of untold stories and yet another huge major life decision that i have failed to keep the interwebbytonlandville informed of and you...well i don't exactly know why you are here...i thought my mama was the only one reading this until i started getting ridiculous comments from that sadly uninformed "anonymous" and calls from the newspaper...but i am glad you are...and at any rate...i figured that this new season of life (the one where i move to a land that actually has seasons...including this one i have heard tell of but is only legend in our parts..."winter") would be a good time to try to start this whole blogging thing again...we will start with my application letter...i think it sums this move up...the questions were what are your significant learning experiences in life, what is your learning/problem solving style...and question three...why antioch, why at this time in your life, what do you hope to gain personally and professionally, and what do you hope to contribute to your field...all in 2-3 double spaced pages...right...


At 29 years old, sometimes I feel I have already lived several different lives. I have been able to experience so many different things and learn so many different lessons...about myself, about people, and about life. I have done enough of my “dream jobs” already to learn that if I keep moving forward I will get to do everything I ever dreamed about. I have helped care for three grandmothers as they died, two as they lost their physical bodies, and one as she lost her mind. I live in a different way now that I have seen what both are like. I have given my heart to someone who didn't deserve it and learned what it means to lose yourself in someone else, and to have to go looking for the pieces and put them back together. I have spent a summer working with a blind man and learned what it really means to see, learned the difference between having sight and having vision. I have met enough people who have everything to learn that “having everything” doesn't amount to much of anything. I have met enough people who don't have anything to recognize that there is “really something” to such a life. I have tried being several different people and I have learned that I am not nearly as good at being them as I am at being me.

I am a nerd. I love to make lists, to read and analyze, to look things up. But if I am going to really learn something, I have to “put my hands to it.” In my teaching, I definitely tend to show more than tell and that is also how I learn best. I usually approach a problem by breaking it down and looking at each part separately. Sometimes a situation becomes a problem merely because we are not looking at it from the right angle. Solving a problem for me is like an adventure, or a puzzle. I like to figure out how things can be rearranged so they fit together and work instead of clashing. I am very direct and I like to address issues before they grow out of proportion. I feel that healthy communication is vital to preventing and solving problems. I always explore the logic of a situation, sometimes ridiculously so, but I ultimately tend to be a go with my gut, follow my heart, trust my instincts kind of girl.

Case in point, I have been carrying around literature from Antioch New England for over a year and from the beginning I have felt so connected to this school that I have never visited and these teachers that I have never met. I can't tell you why, but some part of me knew as soon as I started looking for somewhere to study Dance Therapy that I wanted to do it at Antioch New England. “Why now?” is a very good question, especially since the deadline to apply passed last week. I have known for a long time that dance has tremendous power to heal and restore the mind and body, to offer a person the space and freedom to deal with who they are and how they feel in a way that nothing else can. I have even known for a long time that this is the area of dance I wanted to pursue. But seeing it happen... watching the wall of a child's pain begin to crumble and seeing the beauty of who they really are begin spill out on a dance floor (in this case a concrete rooftop in Haiti)...that will change everything. The first time I saw that happen I wanted, with a whole new intensity, to know everything there was to know about using the art of dance to help people. Still, when I returned home, I hesitated to go after something so big. The moving...the money...investing 2 years and my whole being to one of my many dreams...

Then a baby died.

Not my baby exactly, but a baby that I had fed on the hour through a feeding tube with a syringe, that I had Salsa danced with because a Latin beat made her smile like few things did, that I had held during days and nights of pain and fever and the general misery that comes with AIDS, a baby that I loved but could not have saved. Somehow, losing her brought back into view the vision of all the children who are waiting for healing and restoration, the children and people who could still have it, the children and people I have always wanted to help. I realized no matter how crazy it seems to go after this RIGHT NOW, now is exactly when I want to start moving toward the knowledge that matches the desire of my heart. The pains being suffered by the child soldiers and the abused women and the bearers of disease and the victims of hate are being felt NOW. So who am I to wait around any longer? Even as I type this I realize how utterly melodramatic it sounds, like something you say to get into grad school maybe, but it is actually way more honest than anything I had intended to write when I started typing. That is exactly what happened and exactly why you have this application at all.

To be completely honest, I am way more interested in the information than I am the Degree or the Certification. I plan to pursue both in excellence, but what I really want is to know how to do this, and do it well. I will bring my whole heart, all of my ideas, all of my experiences and every ounce of energy and passion I have to my studies, to my campus, to my community, and to my field.

That is the only way I know how to live.

my sister home=amazing

recent conversations between us...

i thought you said i had to drive?

yeah, i did, but you veto-ed me.

since when do you listen to me?

it's this new thing im trying (eyebrow) we will see how it goes...




i need to throw up.

what..are you ok?

well, actually my heart needs to throw up. you know that feeling in your stomach when you need to throw up? my heart has that feeling.

i know exactly what you mean.

that is why i love you.




i wish we had a boat so we could smuggle your baby here.

we do have a boat.

you have really thought this through....

apparently when you live in a house with 20 babies you CAN actually begin to grow eyes in the back of your head....

so tonight i am up...there are a lot of reasons i could site...but its probably because there is a baby dying in our house...i am not even there...house sitting of all things...but my heart and my thoughts rest with aron...except they don't exactly rest...about a week ago the face of dying children began to narrow from a dark blurry idea to something more like an actual image...i was in the hospital where we take our children who have aids and tb waiting for an x-ray...i could sense tension among several staff that passed by and later my concerns were confirmed when they escorted two women through our hallway, both clearly weak...wailing and mourning, one calling out "petit mwen, petit mwen"...my baby my baby...now, i am the one who has been ranting for years about the state of affairs for children around the world...i know and am quick to tell people that 30 thousand children die around the world EVERY DAY because they are HUNGRY...not to mention those who are born with or develop other problems...problems that wouldn't have even been a blip on the radar for me as a baby in the states...but this wasn't 30 thousand mysterious invisible children somewhere....this was ONE baby...this was ONE mother...not mourning the global crisis we face...she mourned only one loss...a loss that filled her whole world...i was taken apart by the realization that the loss of this baby was in some ways just as big as the loss of all the ones that will have died that day...it was one baby...but i am certain the void couldn't have felt any larger if all 30 thousand mothers had been wailing in that hallway with her...we each clung to the child in our own lap...sick though they may have been they lived and breathed and felt suddenly heavier now that we were bearing the common guilt of surviors...but at some point we were each called in...got our examinations, picked up medications, had x-rays taken...bought some rice on the street...got on a tap tap...waited for our rides...everyone was different except that for each of us life kept moving while that mother laid in a chair holding her dead babies clothes...and now that reality has come home with me...once again i am facinated with how life and death, beginnings and ends, the sacred and the profane...they all lay so often side by side in our universes...we blow bubbles and dance with children then force food into a baby's sunken belly...comment on a drawing of kites and triangles while we change a diaper filled with blood...count racing heartbeats and shallow gasping respirations as wild healthy children dance and praise god with along with their favorite dvd all around us...pack a bag of food for a woman who you aren't sure can surive the walk home and then pack the bag of a baby now healthy and headed home with a smiling father...put away toys and time seizures...teach a girl with one hand to sew at the same table where you have scrubbed the burnt flesh of a nine year old with nothing but tylenol to numb her pain...cook and console and laugh and inject...cry and clean...teach and bury...somehow it is all part of the same thing...today dorothy and i stood side by side...me holding sterling and she aron...it was the weirdest moment as i looked into the eyes of a child in whom the lights seem to just be coming on and life beginning to emerge from and dorothy into eyes that seem to be drifting farther away slowly, almost carefully letting go...the reason it was weird wasn't how different their situations seems to be...it was how similar...one didn't feel like a success and the other a failure to me...both life and death are welcome to me...one is my companion for a season and the other my slave forever conquered already for eternity...and the same is true for these babies...life is a gift from god but death is merely a reuniting with him...either way they win...but its ridiculous and insulting even to pretend the loss isn't there...ive already seen it...already felt it...so who is losing, what is lost...and why...i haven't got the first clue...but maybe now i can sleep.

mine and yours....

so some people came by to visit keziah before she left to go to the states for the summer and they brought us some lovely mangos...and a baby kitten....yeah. both kervens and cha cha were immediately smitten with the cat but not too surprisingly the cat favored kerven's calling of the cat and petting over cha cha's chasing and grabbing...hmm. anyway, i could feel a battle coming on over whose the cat was gonna BE...regardless of who it played with...i kept hearing each boy looking for "my cat" (or with cha cha "cat mine") but neither had heard the other so i was just waiting...to give you a little background 4 year old cha cha has moved upstairs and now shares a room with 10 year old kervens...so far cha still calls the room "room kervens" but you know how brothers can be :)...so anyway, like i said i was waiting to see just what was gonna happen with the kitty...until the other night...this is the conversation...

cha cha appears at the doorway to the kitchen after being put to bed...

cha cha, what are you doing up buddy

CAT KERVENS toilette (pooped) in MY ROOM!!

and just like that the cat became kervens'...tell me there isn't a sermon there...

p.s. the room still remains "room kervens" when it needs cleaning...tell me there isn't one there too....

my day...



wake up to the sound of children saying "brush brush stop" downstairs

(to those who do not teach pre-ks how to dance that is the sound of a shuffle being practiced)



walk down the hall to hi-fives for not peeing in my bed - whoo-hoo!

(i had given hi-fives to all the kids who woke up with dry beds...they were returning the favor)



sit in the rocker with isna just whispering in her ear all the beautiful things i believe await her in life...and how precious she is to us, to her adoptive family, and to god



teach cha cha how you hold a baby cat



nap on the floor with a four month old wearing two full leg casts (to correct clubbed feet)



employ some of the child rearing skills i learned at the MP and we decide as a family that



-baseball bats are for outside



-pulling up our pants happens inside the bathroom



-and we do not put lids on containers with kitties inside them



thank you ashley...i have benefited so much from your family's journey...



spend the afternoon dressed in a sparkly top, pink scrub pants, red high heels and a paper tiara...you guessed it...playing sharpay evans for my roomate's high school musical party...fabulous

instruct kervens on how to properly wear said red high heels without breaking them, or his leg

take the gran ti moun yo outside for a little tap dancin...hokey pokey, ring around the rosey, and i see the moon....

snuggle with my ti zwazo a little before bed

remind cha cha of family decision number two...underpants up THEN exit the bathroom

bon nwit tout moun...it was a good day

blog monster returns: rise of the tail end

okay...i did all i could yesterday or the day before...whenever it was that i started this monster blog to bring you up to date and i have a couple of things to say before i bring this beast to a close...

the first is that i realized after writing that first section that writing about this life that way is terribly ineffective b/c it isn't the general info about what i do in a day that deserves recording, it is those little moments that turn the world upside down, the crizazy things that one of the kids (or my mama) says at the breakfast table...it is the flashes and seconds of my day that deserve their own pages of remembering...not the boring overview...so i am sorry and i really am going to try to do better...

the second is it really annoys me that what i put into this little box never ends up looking right when i post my blog...and when i come back to this little box everything still looks right here so i don't even know how to edit it to fix it...so forgive the ridiculous annoyance of the extra spaces, misplaces pictures, and words spelled out with one letter on each line...just take comfort in knowing that instead of wasting my life figuring out this mystery i just trust you to be smart enough to get the gist and i do something worthwhile with that time...like take a nap with a baby...

now where were we...ahhh yes...back in haiti....



well i came back to a ti zwazo that weighed a whopping 14 pounds and has turned into an eating machine...we laugh a lot now about the conversations we had when we first got her and were force feeding her 10cc of formula an hour through an NG tube...we would ponder over whether it was right to force a baby in her condition to stay alive after a certain point...yeah we aren't pondering that about her anymore...she even has one of the other children stealing from other kids and putting it on her plate...and her body is now an alarm clock for the kids' meal and snack times...she will be hanging out and playing and then suddenly go into super crank muffin mode...and without fail you can check the clock and you will find it is time for food...our prayers were also answered when she went to AIDS clinic...the docs are going to put her on the ARV's without treating her first for tb (we were concerned she didn't have the time or immune system left to wait that long)...they want her to be stronger first so she still won't start for another month but it is still a good thing...so keep eating bird!

once i got back into the swing of things it was back to homeschooling now amid a group of toddlers...funny thing is i think kervens was actually way less distracted than i was...:)

i also started dancing with the kids again with the addition of roseline who is a 6 year old staying with us while she gets better from some sores and gets her nutrition back on track...it was so great because all the kids were listening better than ever and jetline has even been coming up with her own choreography...and apparently they have been teaching roseline while i was gone b/c this child who has never danced with us and doesn't speak any english knew all the steps and even what they are called...and she gets crizazy excited every time i pull out our dancebag...i have to say i was pretty proud of my little dancers!

with malnutrition you get all kinds of side effects developmentally and so we have a lot of kids who are behind in language or motor skills that we have been encouraging to catch up...johnny j...one of our aids babies...keziah's aid's baby to be more specific....is one of those...recently he finally started responding to our constant urging and on a recent trip to clinic he randomly said my name in answer to kez's question "keyes sa?" (who is that?) and then on his 2 birthday he came over to me and climbed up just like normal but then proceeded to show me that he could stand up all by himself...because we have been BEGGING this child to show any interest in walking and talking before he was 30 we showed him LOTS of positive attention for his efforts...the result has been that in various forms "casey" is the new "it word" downstairs and walking is the new cool thing to do...so at the same time we have children of several different ages and different developmental levels all learning to walk at the same time and calling "casey, casey" non stop from the basement as they try out their new skill...its really quite facinating...remember this when you pay a kid a lot of attention for something... you WILL see it again!























i got to visit healing hands for haiti for the first and second time...we got poutchino fitted for a wheelchair and took our new baby in to have her clubbed feet cast...and so keziah went to a beach retreat for three days with a youth group and got barely any sun and i spent the day in a clinic and had a sunburn when i got home...ohhhh haiti...






















i made two trips to ti frer for tb clinic with poutchino and miltha and had three people offer me their chilren...

i realized that your whole perception of a luxury changes after you watch a child eat the candy coating off of an m&m and then eat the chocolate...


i had a few of those moments when you think there is something wrong with the computer screen...then you think you are about to pass out...then you realize that you have just been rocking a baby so long that you have forgotten that YOU are moving...not the images before you on the screen...but everyone has those moments, right?


i witnessed a baby leaving our house to go back to their family...my first one other than emily (who went to an orphanage) to actually be here for...it is a good thing but it was really hard to watch them walk into the ravine with her...bye bye bethsaica...





















and for any of you who think i am in anyway tough or hardcore you should know i am being bullied into a daily afternoon nap by a 14lb 2 year old...so yeah.

okay, this is not nearly everything...barely anything really...but its some of the highlights and honestly...this blog has been a shadow hanging over me and i need to move on with my life...:)



so if you are still reading...consider the monster blog slain...