A good mantra can take you far, and you have gifted me helpful ones. Here’s a selection:

• “Here’s to the good.” —From Linds

• “One step at a time is good walking.” —From Shana

• “Breakdowns precede breakthroughs.” —From Amanda

• “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” —From Pema Chodron by way of Mlle_Michele.

• “Trust your grief to show you it knows. Lorenzo knows.” —From A.

• “Humans tend to justify prolonging suffering in the hope of a miracle.” —From Lorraine

• “Whenever yet another guilt thought comes up, follow it with and repeat: ‘This is not a God thought.'” —From Lisanne

• “When you can, try to think of all the people that love you and your wide open life with Ryan you have awaiting you still.” —From Angie

• “Maybe it’s not being cured, it’s about being constantly exposed and sometimes better than others and sometimes terribly triggered and sometimes okay-ish but never totally fine. Just, working on it.” —From Courtney

 

From my mom by way of The Dog Chapel by Stephen Huneck

 

Notice how the mantras spread out? How more words are sometimes required to get at what happened here? The simple and the not so simple–both help. Sometimes, I resort to a short list, a heart-pointed mantra of sorts. It reminds me the future is there for the shaping with the ingredients at hand. We know all too well that there are no guarantees, but there’s always a chance and things are always changing. I’ve made a similar list before, when I thanked all you angels out there, but that’s what a mantra is—something you chant over and over in order to go on believing. There’s a lot of looping and figure-eighting in Grief, after all. But repetition can also reveal new things. So, here’s even more from the list down in my heart that I try to actively believe in, especially on the days when it’s hardest to:

<3 Love. The ultimate mantra unto itself. This is where it should all come from, as my cousins reminded me this weekend. This is the most important way to fill the home. This is how the family grows, even when it’s just me or me and Ryan or me and Ryan and Ruby.

 

 

<3 Ryan and Ruby. First, my husband. The one strapped in next to me on this journey and who, whenever I cry or doubt, asks, “What’s the plan?” And I say, “We’re having a baby.” There’s no when or how attached to the storyline, but he’s the one who gets me to believe in it out loud. Then, Ruby Girl. I couldn’t love her any more. I couldn’t depend on her love any more. She is goodness.

 

 

<3 Finding home. The children at the orphanage, all 40 of them, most of whom I know by name and SIX! of whom I’ve now seen go home, either to a member of their own family or to a new Chilean family. Their little bodies contain such massive strength, strength they may not consciously know they have, but which is being summoned from them all the time—as strength like theirs, like mine, like yours, is. I see their personalities bubbling up and out. I know, without a doubt, I could love any one of them as my own. They make me want to do more with my life. They are not troubled lost causes; they are children in need. They are but one set in one orphanage in one city in one country on one planet.

 

 

<3 The life force that health affords you. This cannot be underestimated. I’m grateful it’s still in me, that the way partial molar pregnancies can go for the mother has not gone that way for me. I see it in Ruby, as she breathes in and out. It reassures me that a creature in my care can stay alive and thrive. It’s in my husband. It will someday, we pray, pass into a child who is both designed to live and to have a quality of that life in this world, never once forgetting Lorenzo.

 

 

<3 Hearts. All of Lorenzo’s that I’ve found. And all of yours that you’ve sent my way. The main aim of the Chain-Link Heart Project has been to discover all that hearts can mean and how they connect us. Your heart stories, like this one, have both fulfilled and elevated that aim.

 

 

<3 The future. It can’t be seen. We feel our way. Right now, I collect hearts. Just counting all of yours, we’re up to nearly 300 heart links in just three months. Let’s get to 1,000 by the end of the year, OK? Let’s turn them into a book and support heart causes. Let’s push the limits of the heart in ways we haven’t even thought of yet. If Love is the starting place, we can’t go wrong, right?

What’s your mantra? What’s on your list? What do you want to push the limits of? How can we help?