I dreaded Christmas as much I as anticipated it for it was a milestone getting us closer to being a family of four again. Fourteen weeks total without seeing our main man since the beginning of September. Fourteen weeks. Doesn't sound all that much when I write it down. What am I complaining about. Am I complaining? In fact I am not. We are where we are supposed to be, in this moment of our lives merged together.

With the end of the year comes time for a little reflection. With this reflection comes gratitude pouring out of my heart. Amazement too. Strangely fear is not in the picture. So not in the picture. 

2016 will be the year Marlowe came into our lives. Marlowe, my Spiritual child. My girl who came to me before I even knew I could be pregnant. My baby who opened my eyes and my life to a whole new concept of Spirituality. My girl sleeping against my breast and loudly breathing through her nose as her mouth is busy sucking up milk in her sleep as I am writing. 

2016 is the year Gurvan manifested his desire to get back on a boat to make sure regrets wouldn't come knocking on our door in a few years from now. 
It's the year we both openly started talking about our angels and the energies out there, the ones listening to our hearts, our thoughts and our burning desires. 

2016 is the year we bought our very first piece of beautiful land when we least expected it. My intuition had me make this crazy move when he was away. I thought for a second that I had gone mad when really I was just listening to the whisper of the Universe handing this treasure to us. 

2016 is the year Manech became a loving and caring big brother. Also the year he found freedom on his big boy pedal bike (hey that's a milestone for a little boy!).

2016 is the year Gurvan took off on a plane without us for the very firt time. My heart aches. Manech's heart aches. I know our girl is missing her papa deep down in her heart as well. But we both know it is all meant to be. It is so hard but it feels right. We know now that things, anything, whatever we put our thoughts into can happen in what feels like a wink. Days, months, sometimes minutes...we try our best to embrace what is being sent our way. Distance is hard. Our strength is being challenged every day. For him being away from his babies for so long is the hardest thing he's probably ever done. For me having to face every single day on my own. No family around to take over for an hour or cook diner for the night. I didn't know all the strength it would take, and all the strength I actually had.

2016 has seen terrible things happen in the world. More wars. More sadness. More chaos. Lots of great Artists, Musicians took off. We have all cried, we have all been terrified, we have all felt terribly helpless. 
But as I am writing this I can't help but feel thankful for the life we are living. I believe prayers can be answered. I believe zillions of beautiful souls inhabit this beautiful planet. I believe Love is the answer to fears. I look back and love is what I want to remember. I look forward and love is what I see. In all its shapes.  

Happy 2017 you all. 

-love-

It's July 18th already. I have the hardest time believing that over half of 2016 is gone. How did this happen so fast. 

I want to remember. I want to remember every day, every minute as we settle in our life as a family of four. I know I can't, I know I won't remember it all. I know that all of the challenging times, challenging days, all of the exhaustion, frustrations even won't be nothing compare to the happy memories we are making. 

I want to remember the feeling of amazement that comes each and every time Manech threads words beautifully in his own way. Whether in french or american, his speech is becoming more elaborate with each day passing by. 

Manech my boy, you always seem to have a point. You taught us to listen to you very carefully. You can adapt the language you use depending on the people you speak to. You'll sometimes get excited and start speaking to us in english to then switch to french in the middle of your sentence which makes for very funny conversations. You need  e v e r y t h i n g  to be explained to you and remember  e v e r y t h i n g.  I need to watch my prolific cursing habit. Damn it.
You are a stubborn little soul hiding behind angel's eyes. If you let your yoghourt free-fall to the ground you'll give us that look saying "it's okay, no big deal", and you make it very hard not to laugh.

You are a book worm. I know one day will come when you won't want to snuggle with me anymore for a story-time so I say yes almost each and every time you grab my hand, holding a book (or five) under your arm. Today you took dozens of books off of your bookshelves onto our living floor and you declared that these were to be read today. A couple of hours later, as I was doing the dishes, I looked over my shoulder and there you were, sitting on the floor, quietly flipping through pages. 
Your sister follows the movement of turning pages and I secretly hope that she contracts the same virus. I know this is my job. To teach you both what I believe are the good stuff in life. Anyone who's been to our little home knows how much we love books around here. Whether to educate yourself or grow your imagination, I believe books hold magic. 

I want to remember the way you look at your sister, 100 times a day. There's something with her hands too. You need to grab them, hold them, squeeze them all of the time. I can not predict what your relationship will be like but I want to give both of you the best chances to love one another like no one else. 

I want to remember how I manage to share my body so that both of you get enough of it. Marlowe nursing while you're having a bottle, resting against my other breast. This is routine around here. 

I want to remember the way you cover your sister's little bare-body with a swaddle so that mosquitos won't bite her when we're playing outside. 

I want to bottle the love I see in your eyes when looking at her, so that I could give you a shot of it the day you two get into a fight.

I can not predict the world you'll get to live in. If I think about it too much I'll start to worry because what's happening out there is not an everyday fairy tale. France, your other country, is in deep pain right now and so we are. 
But one day at a time, I believe love can make a difference. 
I believe a loved child holds strong chances to grow into a loving human being. 

At the end of each day, it's all the happy moments I remember when going to bed (way too late). 

Being able to sit-down and thread words together is becoming slightly more challenging with a baby that's not a newborn anymore. I sometimes manage to bounce her while writing but really, I like to be present with her. I don't want her to start her life thinking that this strange screen her mom looks at is more important than every cells of her. 
She is peacefully napping right now so here's to Life's Magic, the way I see it. 

I am very excited about life. I've always been. But just like any other human being on this planet, I have had my share of challenges to overcome. These challenges come and go. And the last couple of years have been challenging for us. I have talked about it before. The feeling of being lost, where to live, what to do, what to believe. I came to a point when I really needed some guidance but wasn't sure where to find it. One day I talked to an amazing woman on skype, very randomly. This was a little over 1 year ago and her words resonated very deeply with me. She highlighted the fact that I may be missing Spirituality in my life. Which was Oh so true. I have always rejected all kind of religious thinking. Raised in a Christian family, sent to Christian Schools, I could not stand the idea of belonging to a religion. And so I threw all Spiritual thinking out the window. Or that's what I thought. 
Then I talked to this woman, she didn't tell me I should start believing in this or that God, she just mentioned Spirituality and that was it. 
​
Throughout the following months, we managed to get our life back together. I believe we'd always been a pretty happy family, able to enjoy the happy moments but you know, sometimes you need to get some kind of stability and moving from places to places isn't the easiest way to feel grounded always. Fast forward, we moved into a new rental that we love and can call home for now. 
I could write for a few hours and still have thoughts to share but I'll try to take it easy for now. 
As months went by, I started reflecting on my life, and remembered how strongly I used to believe that challenges - whether they are fears, lost of loved ones, life questioning - will always bring clarity into my life. I used to believe deep in me that there was always some light shining somewhere. 
I remember exactly when this way of thinking started (even if it's probably been in me since day 1). It goes back to the day my mom past away. She had been sick on and off since I was a little girl and her life ended the day she had a heart-attack, in the middle of nowhere, in the country side of France, surrounded by us, my sisters, my dad and a couple of her best friends. We saw her collapse on the ground and she never came back to life. We said good-bye to her as she had been laid on a couch in our friend's living-room. I had just turned 14. 
The first weeks and months felt like a blurry really bad dream where I'd expect to find her waiting for me at home every day after school. But a bitter-sweet feeling quickly started to grow inside me. First of all I was able to talk about what had happened to my friends right away. I wasn't afraid to cry. And soon my tears turned into words and I started telling friends that I believed my mom had passed away so that I would be able to live a happy life. That by dying, she was setting me free. I know it sounds really strange for a young teenager to say such a thing and the truth is that I could not explain this strong feeling I had.
A year and a half after her passing away, I really wasn't happy living in my hometown in the middle of France. I asked my dad to go to a boarding school a couple hundreds miles away from home, in a town I had never been before. My dad was strong and wise enough to see that I needed a change of air and there I was, a few month later, starting what felt like a new life, me and my suitcase in a city where I would get lost every single time I'd walk out of school. I was the new kid, didn't know anyone. I wasn't 16 yet. 
Somehow I wasn't afraid to tell my story to unknown teenagers. Life was playing its Magic and I could feel it. I started meeting really cool kids, their parents who fostered me in the week-ends, their moms who had such an important role in my life as I was navigating my teenage years and later starting my young adult life.
Life was definitely on my side, I was feeling more alive than ever, more loved than ever and my words remained very strong : my mom had passed so that I could live the happy life I was meant to live. 
I am a mom now and let me say that I truly hope to be by my children's side for a long long time. But this is what I was given. And I remember how lucky I felt to be able to attend this boarding school. The butterflies in my stomach looking at the beauty of the ocean  through my window in the morning (yes, boarding school with ocean view, no joke!). I knew I was on the right path and again, couldn't help thinking that without my mom passing away so young, I wouldn't have gone to this boarding school. And for the record, after graduating, I never went back to my hometown, I stayed in this city where my heart had found new foundations.
I trusted life to be good, people to be kind and the future to be bright. 
From then on, a lot of good things happened to me as well as more challenges but the confidence in Life always remained very strong. Even when I found myself living with 100 dollars a month for 6 month, sleeping on friends couches, I knew something great was going to be sent my way. And it did. I had awesome boyfriends, kept on making more beautiful friends, traveled to beautiful places, I even have a mom-at-heart in New-Zealand!  She too had been sent my way.
I Traveled to Maui at aged 18 for almost a year  and knew deep inside me that I would be back for more. I had no clue on how I could make living in Hawaii a reality but the burning desire was in my heart and nothing and no one could take it away, it was the strongest feeling ever. Back in France, I was living my dream everyday in my mind, over and over again.
I won my green card through the lottery after being told I should try and both my kids passports will say : born in the state of Hawaii. 
I could go a lot deeper with life's magic, with everything that happened out of a burning desire for it to happen. 
But I never looked at it as if there was some Spiritual forces behind this. Because Spirituality used to equal religion in my mind. And I had thrown away the key to the door of religions. 

Not so long ago I had one of these "ah ah" moment when I realized that because we had been through one challenge after another one these past couple of years with drastic changes in our lives, I hadn't been able to feel as confident as I used to. And I told myself : "wait a second, where did that feeling go?"  Not only was I able to bring it back, feeling the butterflies in my stomach and in my heart again, thankful for everyday I get to live with my beautiful family on this amazing side of the world, but I was also able to look back at my life so far and realized that I had been able to accomplish quite a lot and that every time my energies were high and filled with love and hope and confidence, things would turn around in the most unexpected way and happiness would poured into my life. 
So while you won't find me talk about religion and a God, I am strongly convinced that thoughts do become things and since we have power over our thoughts, there are infinite possibilities for us to live the life we dream of. 
It's amazing to think that I have lived by these principals most of my life but never realized I was living by it, already creating the life I desired. 
The question may be that if I create the life I dream of, why do I have to face so many challenges sometimes...My best guess so far is that in order to reach that life, some things that are in place have to change, have to come to an end and sometimes, the only way [or the fastest way] can be brutal and unexpected and painful.

I do know without a doubt that the thoughts and the energies we send out into the world are way more powerful than we can imagine. 
Chasing negative thoughts have become somewhat of a fun game for me. It's not so easy. But the more I pay attention to negative thoughts when they come, the easier it becomes to acknowledge them and the faster I manage to throw them out of my brain. As I do this, I realize I get more smiles from random people everyday, I feel more loved, and I open the door to more awesomeness in my life. 
I know this may all sound pretty hippy slash new-age-ish but the truth is that it always feels pretty real. 
I believe that everyone can easily reflect on their life, look at some of the hardest, most challenging moments they had to face, step back and look at what happened after, what was born from these "hard time".  Someone they met, something they created, a cause to fight for, a new way of thinking, more love...
Everyone can reflect on their life and let the butterflies fill their heart, that feeling we've all had one day, trusting that there is something great out there for each and everyone of us. I believe that this feeling is key to manifesting our thoughts.
Being able to bring this feeling out and feel it everyday should be taught at school! 

Again there is so much I could say about this. 

What makes me happy more than anything else is the beautiful perspective that this brings for our world. I used to worry about the world we live in (and still do every now and then), the wars, the climate change but I stopped watching the news. I now have Hope in People's power. I believe that if most of us (and there are billions of us out there)  decide to tune our thoughts to positive ones, decide that Love truly is the answer, then we can have a very powerful positive impact on our world. We can truly be the change we want to see (I am not claiming this quote, Gandhi was a lot wiser than I am). 
We can feel it everyday. It's actually quite easy to experiment. Wake up a morning and feel unloved, grumpy, not so pretty even, walk outside and see how people react to your energy (aura). Then wake up another morning loving yourself (yes self-love is important and has nothing to do with ego), feeling happy, smiling at your reflection in the mirror, walk outside and watch people faces bright-up as you walk by. It's that easy. And that hard at the same time because we all have "those" days when we'd rather hide under the duvet all day. But hey! That's okay! Little changes go a long way, I have been witnessing it. 
I also love that the world seem to come to a bigger awareness of our inner-powers. It's not a coincidence if yoga has become so popular, if so many people talk about meditation, if more and more people want to pursue a meaningful life, if positive-thinking, positive-parenting, positive-eating is starting to be seen more and more on the internet, in magazines, on shelves in bookstores.
It's fascinating to watch the Universe play its Magic and I am happy to open the door of my life to more Spirituality which equals to more universal Love forces to me. And no, I promise I haven't been smoking much patchouli lately.

Again, that's just me thinking out loud because why not.
Too many things have happened in my life for me not to believe there is something out there. 

"Who knows why we're here
It's whatever turns you on
Whatever makes you happy
That's the essence" - Derek Hynd

I went windsurfing on Friday. I was 5 months pregnant when I last surfed. I did not windsurf throughout the whole pregnancy.
That indescriptible feeling of freedom and joy that comes when sliding on the ocean got me high for a moment. I had not realized how much I missed it.  Everything connected again with the beautiful island we call home : body - mind - soul.  
After giving birth, our body and mind need to find their balance again. But our focus is so strong on protecting the life we've created within us, on loving and caring for others that we can forget what makes us happy, us as in our own entity. Priorities shift and we tend to think about our own wellness last, if at all.
What feeds our soul, our body, our mind will also feed our desire to love better, to care better and to live better. 

Here's a video to celebrate life, happiness and whatever it is that makes each and everyone of us so excited about. 
​

I started this little Happy-Bandits thing of mine just a little over a year ago. I was driven by the desire to boost my creativity but also to challenge my shy-ish-self. The one that used to send a clear message to the universe that 'really, thank you, but I'm not worth looking at, please come back in another life.'
A friend told me a few years ago that a blog would be a great creative discipline for me. She had known me for many years and I know now that she could see something needed to come out of me . Something, anything. There was a door shut that needed to be opened. 
I wasn't afraid to be seen by others. I was terrified. Or so did I convince myself. I wouldn't talk much about me but I was a great listener. I was the friend you'd come to when you needed to speak, the one that would comfort you before comforting herself, the one that would never judge, always be by your side and keep her mouth shut. I'm making myself sound like a pretty cool friend (did I mention I like whisky?). Well guess what, I am still that friend. The difference now is that I learned to speak up for myself, I learned that I don't have to please each and everyone, I learned to follow my instinct, to say no when I think no (there may be a yes escaping here and there but I am doing much better), I am in the process of learning that it is okay to receive as opposed to give always, I might even one day have the desire to celebrate my birthday and blow candles with friends clapping their hands and cheering me up...I might!
Believe me it isn't an easy process. I sometimes didn't know how to say no and got mad when a simple no would have worked wonder. I've had to learn to control the anger that would come when I wanted to speak up for myself but couldn't figure out the right words to do so. I am still learning. Most friends laughed when they found out I was getting into Muay Thai boxing seven years ago, then they were surprised when they found out how serious I was about it. I had found a way to express my emotions without feeling judged. I was learning to let go of my fears and boxing was my best companion on that journey (all the while shaping my body with pretty sweet muscles. #Lifebeforebabies.)

So the day the thought of having a blog came back , I decided to just do it. I was a mom now and not only was I learning to speak up for myself, I was also learning to speak up for my baby who couldn't speak yet. I was learning to make the best decisions for him, I was learning to say no to someone who really wanted to hold him when clearly he did not want to be held by that someone. I never doubted my instinct as a mom and it empowered the woman I was becoming. I wasn't terrified anymore, I was slightly afraid.
Of course I did not have much ideas on what I was going to blog about. Sure I had looked at tons of other blogs out there and thought I could become a great inspirational blogger, telling people what's cool and what's not. Well this never really happened. I'm not good at telling people what they should do and buy and what cream* will do miracles for their poshy eyes. I might share a wishlist here and there but that's really just so my family (and hubby hellooooo) know what to get me for christmas without having to ask for it (totally sneaky). I leave the do/dont to other talented bloggers out there (they are talented, they actually make money off of their blogs, dammit girl!). 

No, I soon found myself sharing stories about...myself! How narcissistic** can one become? (And why isn't anyone paying me to do so?)
The truth is that we had just gone through so much, from becoming a family of three to moving from one side of the world to another side to another side and back to the side we had left a year before (follow here?), no more jobs and three suitcases for a fresh new start (talked a bit about it here and here). Putting words on the chaos that our life seemed to be at that moment -just a little over one year ago- helped me move forward. With the migrants disaster happening all over the world right now, I didn't want to complain about my first world problems, complaining wasn't the point. Reflecting, letting go of the past, moving on and embracing life with all of its beauty and challenges..this is what this blog has helped me with. It's made me take time to sit down and focus. To look at me, my family in the moment to better visualize our future. It's helped me realize all that we have achieved. It helped me question our parenthood journey. I've even learned to thread words together in a foreign language! It helped me acknowledge our strengths and work on our weaknesses but most important and this is what has surprised me the most is that it's helped me connect with people. In a beautiful way. There's a tribe out there that has been making time over and over again to reach out to me via emails, messages, to let me know they liked what I was doing/writing, to tell me about their own stories and most surprisingly (from my point of view) : to thank me for sharing my stories, my thoughts...for speaking up. I have connected with women I didn't know before, I have strengthened already existing friendships, I even had a few men positively comment this little corner of the internet (men, you're weird).
My take-away here is that it took me years to create this space for myself because I was so afraid to be judged, to be told it wasn't any good, but the day I let go of fears and decided that I didn't care what people may say, I got closer to my tribe, closer to my people and most importantly (narcissistic**, remember?) closer to my true-self. I should have known better. It's not much different than the day I decided I was good enough to ride bigger waves windsurfing (there too, it took me a while to let go of my fear of being seen..in the ocean...pathetic). I am not making up some fake great-story, I am not saying thousands of people will read this and think I'm awesome, I am not even saying this is any good but this is me and I am thankful for the love each and everyone of you have given me. It has nurtured my soul much more than you'll ever know.
This Happy-Bandits thing helps me navigate challenges when they come and celebrate when they go. 
It might be a virtual world, I might be speaking to the unknown, but the voices are real.
I did not have much ideas on what I was going to blog about.
Sharing from my heart, exploring life and motherhood through photography and connecting with you turned out to be what I didn't know I would do. And love doing. 

* by the way, I don’t use a single cream, not that my skin is perfection but because the dozen of chemicals listed on the said creams freaks the hell out of me - do you know how little organic ingredients a cream needs to have the organic label..? Very little. (I don't use shampoo either but I'll keep my hippie secrets for another post!).

** I am sending birth announcement out, people think they'll get a photo of our baby? They should think twice, I managed to print myself up and make it look like a birth announcement....narcissistic to the top. 

I've had these photos in a file on my computer for a long time. Whenever I need inspiration and self-confidence I open the file and look at these women (there are quite a few more in the said file).
1- Amelia Earhart 1928 - First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
2- Anna Fisher - First mother in space in 1984.
3- Elle O'neal 1976- Woman skateboarder pioneer.
4- Early 1900 tattooed woman.

Not that I plan to fly any kind of space ship or plan to cover my skin with ink in this present life (though never say never).
But reaching my own dreams? Yes. And just like for most people out there, there are days when everything seems possible, when I can feel my dreams turn into reality and the butterflies in my stomach are very much alive and then there are those days when just the idea of making it through the day all the way 'til dusk feels like the biggest challenge of all, having to pick your battles between your 2 year old screaming for food and your newborn screaming for boob.
This week has been a fairly balanced mix of both but I would say that my energy is very much in tune with my dreams right now and even on those exhausting days, I have been able to feel the excitement for the life we are living, the path we are leading. And I opened this file, not because I felt desperate for comfort, but because I think these women are simply beautifully inspiring. They are a visual mantra for me. They scream " no matter how big your dreams, dream bigger". 

I am curious to know what tricks people out there have to stay focus, feel inspired, lift their spirit, bring the happiness in their life and leverage the universe..

Oh and the boxing women? Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I love Muay Thai boxing, the punches, the kicks, the uppercuts, the sweat...it plays a big part in balancing my life (body, spirit, hormones, the entire package)  and I just can't wait for my body to be strong enough again for it. 

(Mahalo = Hawaiian for Thank you)

A few month ago, as I was pregnant with Marlowe, a friend of a friend asked me out of the blue if I loved being pregnant. I spontaneously said Yes! Of course. Then gave more thoughts to her question, looked at her in the eyes and said actually, no, not really, I don't truly love being pregnant. Here, I had said it.
Did the fact that those girls were drinking red wine while I was sipping my 10th glass of sparkling water influenced my answer, or change in my answer as a matter of fact? The truth is no. It did not. The more I was putting thoughts into it, the more I realized that I wasn't one of those women in awe with the state of pregnancy. The shining hair, pumped up skin (hello, I have been on a strict water diet for months..of course my skin looks okay, thanks god!), expanding breast....all irrelevant. 
The nauseous months, the exhaustion, irritability, hormones swing, back pain, lost of sanity (and lost of bladder control)...all made me feel like some obscur forces had invaded my body and I had not much control left over myself. 
Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate the insane beauty of creating life within my own-self. I do feel extremely empowered being a woman and giving birth to my children. I happen to love the actual birth process and could do it over and over again just to get that overwhelming indescribable feeling that comes once you push your baby out and meet her/him for the very first time.
But the pregnancy itself? Not so much. I do reckon loving the last few weeks and the kicks and movements while being in the expectation of the Day (that's probably because I never was overdue), loved secretly talking to my babies, but had it lasted 4 month instead of 9..That would have been fine with me. Very un-social, utterly sensitive, these aren't my favorite feelings.
The only other thing I do love about being pregnant is to be pregnant. Might not make much sense said that way. The point being that before Manech, I had a miscarriage and therefor I do not take any pregnancy for granted, I welcome it as an amazing gift from the universe (and from my husband, wink wink). Some ladies out there are lucky enough to be able to "schedule" their pregnancies (and often love to braaaag about it) but don't feel sad and alone if you don't fall into that category, I don't either. SO even though I don't love the state of pregnancy, I do love being pregnant. Follow me? Hate/Love affair! That's when your man starts pulling his hair off of his head (if any hair left, depending on how many kids you've had so far).
You may have been talking about babies for month, years with hearts and unicorns coming straight out of your eyes each time you'd hold a newborn, you may have recited Twinkle Twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are as your prayer each and every night ever since you met your man...it surely doesn't mean that those nine months are going to be the time of your life and I don't feel guilty saying so. It's okay to speak our feelings out loud. It might actually help other women feel better through their pregnancy knowing they are not alone. It's like talking about miscarriage. I had absolutely no idea how hard it could be both psychologically and physically until I went through my own, because I always only heard women talking about their pregnancies, never their miscarriages. 
Each human is unique, each woman is unique, each pregnancy is unique. No judgment should be made, ever. Some women may have a wonderful time while pregnant and fight the worst postpartum depression. I believe that our ability to share our joys as well as our struggles through the journey of motherhood is key to finding happiness and balance in our life as women, lovers, moms, friends and so much more. I believe in honesty.
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The lady who asked me if I loved being pregnant in the first place happens to be a mom of four. When I told her that I didn't absolutely loved it [being pregnant], she laughed out loud and told me she was an absolute mess during all of her pregnancies, yet the connection between her and all of her kids (and husband) is so obvious, so strong and beautiful to witness, I can say without the slightest ounce of doubt that those kids are not lacking any love and have been loved during their time in-uterus regardless of nausea or awful hormones swing. 
And if you asked me, I would tell you that giving birth to both my children were the most beautifully exciting hours of my life and even though I wasn't feeling my best-self throughout the pregnancies, I would do it all over again in a wink. 
Hate / Love.