I am often asked by fellow moms how I manage to get “so much done” in the course of an average day. I usually get a sighing “I could never do what you do” response when I describe my normal weekday or weekend “fun” day to friends and family, too. But in fact, ANYONE can do what I do – you probably already do and just don’t know it.

I’m also often asked to share my process, and that’s what this post is all about… the Diva’s “get stuff done” process. (I promise to stop over-using apostrophes now. Switching to bullet points instead. )

• I have one big RULE that I stick to above all other organizational guidelines: I accommodate my human need for CHAOS in balance with my desire for STRUCTURE. Let me explain by showing you an image of my closet at home:

• I allow for distractions, conquer them, and move back to the task at hand.

Example: in the 31 minutes I’ve had this browser screen open, I’ve had to run and remove a non-edible plant from my 1 year-old’s mouth, give the dogs water because they spilled their dish, nurse my 1 year-old for about five seconds because he took a dive into the front door and needed a comfort nibble, and answered 4 urgent emails from my Boss. But I’ve also managed to jot down all the main points for this blog post on a sheet of paper and get some of it onto the screen. I deal with the distractions but don’t let them derail me. This is true of about 80% of my days. Sometimes distractions become your new plan for the day, and that’s where that whole accommodating CHAOS thing comes in handy again.

• I give myself 15 minutes every morning to prioritize and plan each day.

Is it always exactly 15 minutes? No. Some days are pretty cut and dry. Go to work from 9a-6p, hit the trail at 630p for a jog, have the kid in bed at 9p, fin. That took 30 seconds. Other days, you’ll maximize that 15 minutes down to the last millisecond! Use it or lose it, baby.

Today’s planning took the full 15 minutes. I have a day off from my full-time job, and I’m not afraid to use it.

• I set FUN goals and projects as well as HARD ones, so that I don’t get burned out on my day.

This may be as simple as adding “Eat chocolate and drink half a glass of red wine after dinner” to my list, but it could also be “Take the baby to the park and feed the ducks” or “Go to Disneyland and scrap the rest of the list”.

• I establish and stick to a routine, but for daily BASICS ONLY. I don’t try to routinize things that simply don’t like to be scheduled!

Example: I have a morning routine that includes feeding Diva Baby and the fur babies, Jack and Little Guy. I have an evening routine that involves exercise OR rest, depending on the day of the week, and again feeding Diva Baby and the fur babies, and of course nursing Diva Baby to sleep around 9pm. These are the only things I have routines for in the Diva house. Everything else is subject to daily prioritization and change. 

It’s easy to stay on target with my work goals and personal goals because I start and end my day with normalcy, but it’s also fun knowing that every day holds a potential new adventure.

And at the end of my life, adventure is what I will remember most. I embrace structure and focus because it allows room for more adventure than an unplanned life likely would. When I don’t have focus and vision, I also don’t experience much growth or change.

And while I don’t want to look back and say, ‘Well, that certainly went down as planned!’, I do want to be able to admit, ‘I did everything I ever dreamed I could and would!’

On Wednesday morning, I totaled my paid-off car in my first ever at-fault accident on the 405 freeway. I was driving distracted and slammed into another vehicle. No one was injured except my poor old Nissan Altima, which will never see the light of another driving day. I have never before witnessed the hood of a car folded neatly before my eyes, nor have I ever seen an engine smoking like an East Coast taxi driver before, but I did see both that day.

Gratefully, no one was injured.

On Wednesday night, my son was fidgeting at the dinner table and knocked my glass over onto my laptop keyboard, drowning my Toshiba Satellite in red wine and giggles. The laptop never quite recovered, either. Especially not the letter ‘L’ and the ‘Enter’ key. I didn’t realise how important the letter ‘L’ is when trying to update Facebook statuses until today…

A year ago, or even a few months ago, I would have rushed to Best Buy to replace the laptop. I would have considered (and possibly even caved in and gotten) a car loan to replace the vehicle. But since recommitting solidly to my snowball rolling dream of achieving Financial Freedom before Age 30, I have begun to see things a little differently.

The “debt thermometer” chart on my wall marking my progress on those monthly payments will never reach its apex of red hot boiling freedom if I keep taking out loans and racking up credit card debt.

Committing to Financial Freedom means committing to creative ways of dealing with emergencies, too… creative ways that aren’t always the easiest or sexiest options, either.

I vowed to acquire NO NEW DEBT.

So here goes…

With my car still hanging in the balance of the insurance claims world (although, unfortunately, already declared DOA by the tow truck driver/assessor), I began researching bus routes to work. Instead, I got incredibly lucky and a friend decided to loan his Range Rover to me for a few months. Expect a future blog about just how much trouble a country girl can get into driving a Range Rover with a grill in the Big City…

A $500 beater loaner car for at least a few months… it will buy me time to settle the insurance claim, save a few extra bucks, and find my OWN beater to drive until I’m done with the debt snowball.

As to the laptop? Let’s just say thanks to the penny pinching advise of a good friend, I was able to get the keyboard situation resolved for less than $30. The screen still has a red wine stain across half of it, but it runs – it runs fine… and the new keyboard is more ergonomically friendly than the old keyboard. TAKE THAT, MURPHY!

Onward and upward, just like my ever-climbing debt thermometer!

Photo taken by T. Shaw 2012

So that’s the short version. I was raised in poverty, and I won’t go there with my son. And I have $35,000 in debt to kill off, slay, pulverize, what have you, before my 30th birthday smack dab in the middle of the Year 2015.

I hope I didn’t come across as pitiful and depressing in Part 1. I meant to be sobering. To myself. The fact is, $35,000 is a lot of money. But when I set up my budget every month, I don’t focus on what’s going out the door… I focus on what’s coming in.

Focusing on the positives is how I went from an unemployed, broke, behind on bills and terrified University “drop out” in the spring of 2010 to who I am today: fully employed, fully empowered, fully unafraid Diva Mom.

Focusing on what’s coming IN instead of what’s going OUT is how I function on a high energy plane where the Law of Attraction is always in full-swing and I am always bringing amazing good into my own life and the lives of those involved with mine.

And this is my Money Manifesto, my affirmation of just how I will get from Point -$35,000 to Point $0.00 on that Debt Snowball, wielding the Law of Attraction and focusing on the IN Game.

• My intensity comes from my heart. I am providing a healthy, happy childhood for my son full of financial, physical and spiritual abundance, because I practice self-discipline with my personal finances.
• My personal health is always priority. I make room in my budget for organic food and my gym membership/running group membership because when I am high-functioning and fit, I produce even more in my career and therefore roll a much bigger *snowball (*monthly pay down on debt = snowball).
• I never trade safety and security for a bigger snowball. I am willing and able to invest in a safe home, safe neighborhood and the best schooling situation for my son. But because I’m a powerful manifestor, I don’t even need to stress this provision!
• I teach my son by example that finance is fun and money is a gift from the Universe and our gift to ourselves and others. I practice giving and generosity of my time and resources to show my son how to be a “compassionate capitalist” – more on that in another blog.
• I follow a plan – written, spoken, shared. For accountability, I belong to a forum where I join monthly challenges designed to increase my snowball and slay debt faster! I love group motivation and thrive with deadlines.
• I educate myself continually, always learning new skills, mindsets, and approaches to expand my abundant lifestyle on every plane! I’m a voracious reader, and I listen to and watch informative documentaries, clips and classes to grow, grow, grow…

I was raised in extreme economic poverty, growing up barefoot in the boondocks of the Southwestern USA, shunning ugly hand-me-down shoes out of embarrassment (and, well, so I could bury my toes in the salty sands of the desert I called home) along with seven wild siblings and two harried parents.

I never felt all that poor, even if my earliest memory is of running around my mother as she stood in a bread line. But looking back on family photo albums (this was before Flickr and Facebook took over the world of photo sharing) of fading 35mm shots from the 80′s and 90′s, I definitely LOOKED poor. I was always dressed in layers of ill-fitting sweatshirts and homemade skirts and my socks rarely matched. (The last part might have just been my poor sense of style…)

Looks don’t usually phase me much, then or now, but what I do distinctly remember from my first 20 years is that my parents looked dangerously poor, too. Not their clothes. Their faces. They had the sad, tired, frustrated and chronically depressed expressions of America’s extreme poor. They walked with slight hunches, both of them, except on those rare occasions either of them had reason to be happy – and those moments are so rare in my memory, I can count them on one hand…

The overwhelming atmosphere of my childhood home was poverty. Nothing was “going right” in my family’s world, and about 90% of the trouble stemmed from my parent’s grim financial situation. Food stamps put food on our table. My  mother was a coupon goddess. Even so, we ate low quality meals. Organic wasn’t even a term I knew until I moved out at age 20 and began developing my own lifestyle.

A few days ago I was texting my Dad back and forth, asking him to come visit me (and offering to cover travel expenses). I can’t baby girl, he told me. We’re just too poor to make the trip.

I was crushed, and so was he. The poverty continues – and it isn’t all financial.

When I found myself facing motherhood at the age of 25, I vowed that I would never raise my son in poverty. Not poverty of ANY kind. I would not accept a low income lifestyle and I would not accept a low income MINDSET.

I promised my unborn son in 2010 that I would do whatever it took, learn whatever skill, and open myself to whatever Universal flow needed, to provide for him in a way that made his life as easy as possible… for as long as I’m alive AND after I’m gone.

But here I am in 2012, and my Debt Snowball is as high as it has ever been. What’s standing between me and true financial security for myself and my son is nearly $35,000 in consumer and student debt.

And the task ahead of clearing that up in just over 3 years, WHILE supporting myself and my son with NO child support in Southern California, feels overwhelming.

(To Be Continued)

I’m a goal-oriented (okay, oriented is too tame… let’s try “madly-driven” on for size) woman. I plot my days out, my weeks, my months, and my years. I write down my visions for mySelf, my family, finances, health, ideals, blah blah blah. And, remarkably, EVERYTHING that I am (and am NOT) today, I envisioned either voluntarily or involuntarily years or months ago. From my current income status (let’s just say it’s better than it’s ever been and getting better by the month) to my current health status (the ovarian cysts that plagued me for the year after my son’s birth have been subdued by a combination of herbal therapies and sheer will power… so far so great), my life is a conglomeration of Big Ideas meeting Life’s Hard Knocks, and the Big Ideas somehow always win.

The “formula” is called Deliberate Creation, and certain friends of mine such as author, entrepreneur, yoga guru and mother of 5, Taylor Wells, can probably teach you more about it better than the Diva can… whenever I try to sit a friend down and “teach” them the concept and the cohesion that is my approach to the Law of Attraction in Action, I end up sounding like a mushroom-high lunatic with her feet on a cloud of hukah smoke somewhere… and I’m really not.

I’m a modern career women and I manage a hectic company that services hundreds of demanding clients 24/7. I’m the girl who is famous throughout corporate for answering a client’s non-emergency call and resolving her request…while in labour with my son.

I’m a modern single mother, committed 199% to the nurturing of my son in healthful ways, and wherever possible, natural ways! I can’t always get there in time to get the entirely non-organic and definitely not BPA-free cellphone out of his mouth before he chomps down, but I can monitor my own diet so that the breast milk that constitutes 80% of his regular intake is as natural as possible.

But this is confessions time, my friends.

This Diva is not nearly as Green a Woman as either she used to be, or as she’d like to be, or as you probably think she is… and why am I admitting this? Because confession is good for the soul? Or… okay, maybe just because I read a constant stream of Facebook statuses and receive a steady downpour of text messages from friends who are beating themselves up for not being “good enough” by their own definition.

Guess what: Your Good Enough is Enough For Today. We can deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.

This is not a closeted attempt at demotivation, I swear. I want you to be motivated to improve. I want you to feel the energy shifts that happen when you take a stand, make a forward step, push your limits, shake your fist at the sky. I want you to question and insist, and I want you to change!!! If you want to. And I swear, if you come to me for help, I will be your BIGGEST cheerleader and source of information, too!

But I also want you to do something I personally NEVER DO and I’m willing to bet YOU forget, too. Take a moment… now… to breathe in deeply – and celebrate your progress.

Look back a day, a week, a year, a decade. Whatever, whenever. Find something, a marker in your past, that you have since bounded over (or maybe crawled around) and celebrate your progress.

Look back to when you still had that extra weight clinging to your rib cage, before you decided to lose it by eating differently, or moving differently, or thinking differently – or, more likely, all of the above – and celebrate your progress.

Look back to when you were working that job you hated, or were with that boyfriend who hit you, or were living with family who didn’t respect you, or blah blah you name it! And look at where you are today – and do it, I dare you! Deliberately FIND SOMETHING IN YOUR LIFE that you can CELEBRATE.

Mine are easy for me to list today, probably because (according to one of my friends) I’m a categorical thinker, so the list is always in my head waiting to be unleashed, anyway.

A year ago, I was in physical and emotional misery, living in a home I hated with a person I feared, struggling to nurture a newborn son and provide the Love I wanted him to feel (only the Love, none of the traumas) and recovering from the natural child birth that left me torn in places that do-not-easily-mend. It was MISERABLE. But in the interim, I have moved into my own home (a safe, healthy, beautiful home). I have built my income up to a high and consistent level enabling me to support myself and my son more than adequately. I have made friends and even business connections that will stay with me for life, and I have created – deliberately and fearlessly – a life all Divas would be proud to call their own.

A year ago, I was afraid I would never, ever “find love” because I, frankly, did not love myself. And over the past year, nurtured BY my tiny son (yes, he’s a nurturer!) I have learned to love myself. To see myself as beautiful, valuable, whole, and incredible. To embrace my multi-faceted nature, to accept my Cancerian moods and unpredictable nature, and to LOVE MYSELF.

You don’t have to go back a year, but I do ask you to briefly glance backward just long enough to recognise how amazing you are TODAY. And then, face forward, pick up yourSelf — and just keep swimming…



Love and light,

 The Diva

 I am creating a cleaner earth by choosing health for myself and teaching health to my friends! I am creating a sustainable approach to Life, on the physical level (ex: what cleaning products I use, what foods I eat, etc.) and spiritual level (ex: how I choose to frame my thoughts and therefore my impact on my peers, how I invest my energies in reaching out to others to inspire them to positive thought and action, too, etc.).

I am making wise financial choices and investments today so that I can soon create a habitat for myself and O Baby that reflects my desire to live peacefully, comfortably, sustainably and lusciously in natural surroundings!

I am always broadening my perspectives, embracing a constant evolution of mySelf and my Understanding of the Universe in which we, earth and her inhabitants, exist as a mere pale blue dot. I am always moving away from a geocentric conception, losing the entrappings of human religion and culture, and embracing a wide-eyed wondering view of the overall insignificance and impotence of my role as a woman, a person, a being in this infinite Universe – and in so doing, I am always learning how incredible my whisper of a lifespan is as I plunge boldly into Life on this beautiful, fragile Pale Blue Dot.

I am remembering that I have the power to be Happy every day – that by choosing how I approach challenges, I can reframe them in a way that moves me onward and upward. And that my increase, my prosperity, my abundance, and my health are absolutely at my disposal and in my power.

This idea was given to me by an old friend, a college instructor and single mom, whose bold life has always inspired me and whose bold “get your shit together” email recently shook me up.

Here it is – the good stuff first!

Ungoals

Releasing dependence on negative relationships and friendships, effective immediately and permanently. I do not need to invest my life, finances, and energies in those who do not re-vest or reciprocate in healthy ways. This includes professional, personal, and family relationships of every level. It’s basic Boundary-Setting with a dash of Divaesque Style!

Releasing need to have spiritual/religious identity and self-conception that fits with others’ world views. I am not a “Christian”, a “Buddhist”, nor am I an atheist. I am simply and only myself.

Releasing need to identify with a diet-based subculture. I am not “Raw”, I am not “Vegetarian”, I am not “Gluten-Free”, I am not “Omnivore”. I am simply and only myself, 100% Intuitive and Whole, and I am enough. My dietary choices are something that has shaped and defined me for years, and I’m releasing the need to be box-able in other’s eyes.

Accepting that I am capable of anything I dream and design to do, achieve and become. This includes earning a high income and total financial freedom and independence at a young age, traveling around the globe, learning multiple languages, giving heart and soul and resources to many lives, raising my son in a beautiful and nurturing way without requiring a two-parent home, and caring for my own personal needs and health sufficiently.

And now the fun stuff:

Goals

Taste 52 new wines... white, red, rose and you name it! One a week, and if I miss a week, I’ll catch up with two the next. I’d love to drive up into wine country, Napa Valley, later in the year when the trees are dropping leaves and the atmosphere is charged with electric winter chill… and wet my lips on every red, white, rose, dessert, sparkling, ice wine I can get my glass around. And I’d love to sample multi-cultural wines every chance I get – Italian, French, Australian, British, American… who else makes wine?

Pay off both remaining Credit Cards: This is a “financial freedom” goal related to my aim of being 100% debt free by age 30. Total pay-off of cards: $7400 by year’s end.

Go to a Laker’s game in L.A. – self explanatory, of course.

Ride on a real upside down rollercoaster! There is something in the core of me that feels orgasmic when I think about plunging falls and soaring heights. I’m a person of extremes sometimes masquerading as a moderate – yet, masquerading is the wrong word, for I am genuinely both these things. Roller coasters are evidently an expression of the Extreme Diva… only, not as impressive as, say, scaling Everest, since I would be strapped in. Right?

Complete a 10k and a Half Marathon. 2012 is my Year of Discovery. Discovery of my Self. Discovery of my physical abilities. Discovery of my personal capabilities. Discovery of who I am beneath the layers of who I’ve created myself to be in the name of survival and surThrival over the last quarter century. Discovery of just how endless my potential is in the face of extreme odds — thus, I’m going to push the envelope physically and I’m becoming a runner. Because it feels good (except when it doesn’t) and because I want to do this for Me.

As the year progresses and new challenges crop up, I’ll morph and work my way over, around, and through Life. This list is subject to change, but I really don’t think it’s going to do anything but grow… like me.

Signing off for now to go cuddle my almost-ten-month-old Diva Baby,

The Diva

Some of us are flying high, considering it the year we achieved our greatest goals – busted through our strongest limitations – realised our deepest selves.

I’m the moderate in the middle, as usual. The one leaning towards both perspectives, swaying between, comfortable in admitting 2011 held many choices I’d prefer to never recap or relive, but that it also brought many events and experiences that formed the new Diva, the woman I’m rapidly embracing as Who I Am… which is, of course, ever changing.

My son was born in 2011.

I received two promotions and two pay increases in 2011 that drove me ever-closer to my 6-figure income goal.

I moved out of an unhealthy, difficult living situation and into a gorgeous new home in 2011, one that I can call my own even if the mortgage isn’t in my name and never will be (I’m anti-home ownership for myself and will discuss my thoughts on that in another post.)

And I made several new friends and professional acquaintances who have expanded my world view so broadly that I am beginning to feel freer and more alive than ever before.

The Diva is ready for the New Year.

Hello, 2012.

A few weeks ago, my old friend Jen, a red-headed pixie mother friend from my acting daze in Arizona, sent me a note on Facebook: the family’s gonna be in your neck ‘a the woods in September, Diva! Want to join us for dinner?

Between that email and this weekend, I didn’t invest much mental thought in where my friends were staying. I kept thinking “San Diego, right?”

Turns out dinner was at Goofy’s Kitchen in Disneyland!

Diva Baby hams it up with his buddy Jen, Matron of the Disneyland Clan

(Life List Item #1… go to Disneyland.)

So I found myself driving through lazy Labor Day weekend traffic in downtown Los Angeles with a snoring Diva Baby in the car seat, chatting with friends on my Blackberry head set and managing to only get a little bit lost in Anaheim… then 15 minutes of wrong turns later, voila!

I was in Disneyland.

Thank goodness everyone there is trained to smile and wave, just smile and wave at the dipstick tourists. On the way between the valet parking and Frontier Tower, a 15-story blue glass building smack dab in the middle of Happyville, I managed to run my stroller into two posts, drop my diaper bag, forget to warn the parking attendant that my car was a beast to start thanks to a ridiculously ineffective outdated alarm system (and then forget to tip him later – I know, karma will find me), and that was just in the first half hour…

Fortunately, O Baby, being a patient chap, decided to sleep through it all... his usual tactic for coping with his air-headed Momma.

By the time I bumped into Jen (was it literally? most likely!) a few minutes later, I was so frazzled by my new-found clutziness (welcome to Motherhood!) that I had adopted the Disneyland stance of smile and wave. So I just smiled and waved numbly at the tiny red-headed figure floating towards me in a white bathrobe and after a quick hug, we were off to find the guys.

Dave, Jen’s musically-inclined actor husband and one of my oldest friends in theatre, greeted me with his classic half-smile. And the birthday boy, Xander, who I’d last seen when HE was a 6 month-old booby-loving baby, was now a dashing 5 year-old splashing around in the spa.

Originally the plan had been to bask by the pool, but the thick clouds overhead and occasional flashes of lightning on the horizon spelled doom for pool time. So instead we opted to walk through what I dubbed The Village, but probably has some other less faux-horror name since it was really quite a light, bright and cheerful place and not in fact a pseudo-1880′s frontier town where red flowers need be trampled lest we all get ‘et up.

First stop, BOOK STORE of course! Every last member of our 4 and 1/2 person party is a bibliophile, including Diva Baby (who prefers A.A.Milne) and Xander (who reads with all the airs and confidence of a third-grader despite only just having turned 5). We could have stayed there an hour, but dinner reservations were at 5:30 so onward we marched back out into the fray…

Did I mention my addiction to Legos as a child? I was a Lego-aholic. I spent hours, days, weeks of summer vacations constructing magnificent small scale cities, train tracks and space ships. My siblings and I used to enter Lego creations in the County Fair (and win ribbons!). We were into Legos before Legos were cool! (Okay, maybe not that extreme.)

And in Disneyland… there is a LEGO STORE! Not just a store – but a miniature Lego MUSEUM! Where you can find a red Lego airplane soaring on the store horizon… and a gigantic Lego giraffe with legs thick as tree trunks… and a Lego DARTH VADER that TALKS.

Jen, Xander and I were so enamored of this store that we tried to remove the Lego Door from its hinges and take it home with us!

But when the Lego Police strolled by we quickly fell into place and acted normal...

Then we were on to some random Dress-A-Bear-For-The-Same-Cost-As-Your-New-Car shop were people choose various and sundry parts of teddy bears and convert said stuffed creatures into heart-bearing, bling-wearing, birth-certificate-bearing family members… for a blingy price, of course. Though I’ve collected bears since age 2, I managed to skate out of there without dropping a single red cent. Mostly because I left my wallet in the car.

Soon, the ladies of the party were crying “Hunger!” and we all crashed at a charming cafe where it took slightly less than half an hour for our single order of onion rings to be delivered. (Hey, the bread was free!)

All the while, I was caught up in the enforced Happy Vibe of this, the Happiest Place on Earth – and I confess, the happiness came in waves and was mildly effortless. In fact, I didn’t have to think about it at all. Before too long, I was prancing around in a Minnie-Mouse-Ears cap, posing under sculptures of body-builder Genies, and spending my last paper dollar on Tinkerbell gear (hey, she’s a Pixie – I’m a Pixie… it’s a Pixie Thing!)

Then in the hotel room, Xander entertained us all with his charming reading skills (seriously impressive child) and Jen taught me how to read Dr. Seuss books properly (was that 3/4 or 6/8!?). Diva Baby cooed, giggled, pooped, sipped milk and dazzled everyone with gummy smiles. And Dave snored underneath a starry wizard pillow. Classic Dave.

But I confess… like the giddy child-at-heart I am, the highlight of my day was Dinnertime. Because Goofy’s Kitchen is where I met the one true love of my animated-film-loving life… MULAN!

I didn’t just get to meet Mulan. She placed her hand on my shoulder (shivers), she called me a fellow WARRIOR WOMAN (!!!) and she goo-gooed over my son!

*melts*

However, the one thing I failed to do (of course) was have anyone snap a photo of me with my feminine-feminist goddess idol. Classic Diva Mom moment! A dream realised! A long-awaited fantasy springs to life! And the camera is forgotten!

Diva Baby forgives me. He knows we will be back... and when we are, we will have our Nikon D3100 Digital SLR camera at the ready!

But as I gushed to Jen, who was probably amused by the look of pure zoned out happiness on my face when Mulan entered the room, “I have to come back here! I have to come back here soon! A lot!”

Eloquence goes out the window when the Diva is in love.

But at least I have discovered that Mulan lives just one hour from my home, that Mulan is really Latina, and that Mulan says “y’all”. And if I’ve got any say in the matter, you can bet on it I’ll be back.

Addendum: Jen, Dave and Xander are first-rate Disneyland-going buddies. I owe y’all!

When I’m working through Depression or dealing with unsettling Home Life experiences, I find that doing small positive things on a daily basis takes me out of my own self-absorption and helps me channel my energies into positive action for myself… simply put, help others – help yourself.

When I browsed the KIVA website looking for a loan that made sense to fund, I found Esther, a Kenyan woman whose life felt similar – she’s a single mother, one child. She is independent, owning a home for her family. She believes in the power of education, and she is entrepreneurial…

Image from KIVA.org copyright 2011

I knew immediately my little $25 loan was going to a person who would throw her back AND soul into her Life. She would turn that $25USD into something powerful – and if I never saw “my” money again, I was happy. The Universe gives back to those who give back, and I’ve never believed anything I “owned” was really mine in the first place.

Thank you, Esther. I hope the day is soon here when I can loan $250… or $2500… and not just $25!

As soon as the Paypal transaction was cleared and I felt like a genuine, bonified giver, I was seized with curiosity not just about Esther and her life, but about her country, Kenya.

As a child, I loved to watch any foreign language films, National Geographic documentaries, and especially anything that had to do with Africa. If we played RISK as a family, I always had to “own” Africa. The irony of that – a freedom-loving child of hippies being content playing a militaristic board game with world domination as the goal? How American.

But even more than the documentaries, I loved the people and animals of Africa. From the blue-eyed South Africans to the raven-skinned Nigerian goddesses and the purple-eyed nomads… from the stinging sands of the Sahara to the murky Nile… the jungles where I could very nearly believe Tarzan of the Apes truly did roam to the green cities built atop tumbling shorelines, my childhood fantasies of Africa ran wild with vivid imagery.

The older I got, the less they were fantasies and the more my mind was filled with contemporary nightmares. Rampant disease obliterating a generation of forward thinkers, the stamp of genocide on every screen and in every face, the political forces whose intensity and violence terrified me, the dichotomy of the struggling people and the squashing powerlords.

Africa was like Mexico, but less familiar, less graspable. I spent years of my childhood inundated by Mexico’s stark contrasts… but Africa was still far away, never touched or seen.

It remains so today.

Funding Esther’s loan has opened a little window in a world strikingly different from my own – and yet, in light of my own current situation and creation – strikingly similar.

Another worldwide bond we single mothers share: breastfeeding.