This year, may you be centered in your hearts

A long-digested, very belated, 2024 wish

Spoiler alert: we have another baby boy in the family, Leo!

The best gift anyone can give themselves: mediation

Last September Kuang went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Though I feel a better description of it is a silent meditation bootcamp. He came back elated, the happiest I have ever seen him, and from my perspective - the epitome of the man I always wanted to marry. And all of this, despite comically uncomfortable conditions while at the retreat - like sleeping in a tent at sub-freezing temperatures at night, next to freight train tracks and a daily 2 AM 15-minute long HOOOOONK, vegetarian food (a travesty for Kuang), and no twitter or YouTube. He also came back full of resolution for me to go on similar course. And this despite him then having to take care of Ari alone for 10 days without daycare.

Then at the end of December I went on the same course - though at a different center, so no train and tent for me, and generally much more comfortable accommodations. It was a very intimate experience to spend 10 days in silence with myself, with no distractions from electronics and other external sources. And it was during these 10 days that I formulated the new year’s wish for 2024: may we all return to ourselves, may we all be properly centered. Despite half a year having gone by already, I still want to extend this new years wish to all of you.

Some context:

The two meditation courses that Kuang and I went on straddled what turned out to be some of the darkest months in our lives. October 7th shocked us to the core, and the shock reverberated and deepened with everything that has been happening in Israel and around the world since. I am still reeling, still digesting and trying to regroup. The ordeal sent me retreating deep within for cover, where I stayed for some time, and where a part of me still is hiding in shelter. Even writing this has been much harder for me to get out - I have been trying to write ever since the meditation course. These months highlighted to me how important it is to embrace what and who we are, proudly and visibly. Because if you keep your head low and try to hide then you get 1938. And perhaps more importantly, if you don’t embrace your all, you lose the most valuable guiding posts for your life.

The aspiration of being properly centered within myself is something I have been working on for a while in my personal work. Due to various reasons, ranging from my childhood circumstances to personality, this is a skill that I have always lacked. My parents lost the baby they had before me due to a heart condition, and shortly after I was born they divorced. I grew up as the only child to a single mom working most of the hours of the day to make ends meet, who was still recovering from something that I don’t know how one can recover from, in a Finnish household in the midst of a predominantly Kurdish neighborhood in Israel (mostly Kurdish Jews who immigrated to Israel after being expelled from their homes), visiting my dad and his new family in the US. Always very different from everyone, always trying to merge and focused on the people around me, never feeling securely footed on the ground. Surely not one to chart my own path confidently.

So, ionically, part of my transformation when Ari was born was a much stronger connection to myself, which expressed itself, among other things, in my adherent choices regarding parenting and my career switch. Through Ari’s early days I learned to better listen to and trust my intuition, something I wish for all new mothers.

Then about a month ago, as life would have it, in the midst of everything that was and is going on: Leo joined our family and Ari became a big brother. So here we go again on another journey! Each one of us individually, and all of us together as a family. Exciting to see what little Leo will bring to us.

Finally, the wish:

In what is left of 2024, may you all reduce the noise and hear yourselves, have the clarity to follow your gut. May you return your focus to your heart’s center.

-Niva

^^^ big brother giving little brother an orientation on life, blowing his mind.