Gandalf comes to our aid

We are moving towards Timmy´s 1st birthday. What a year, what a marathon we have behind us. Under enormous privations, understanding that we are still just at the beginning of laying solid enough foundations for ourselves in our new life here in the Azores, we have gone through this first year.

He is a happy, very healthy, extremely grounded and balanced baby and we get many comments about this, but nobody knows about the sacrifices and efforts we are putting in behind the scenes. Yes, we have gotten help. It was beginning with someone taking him for babysitting once a month for 2,5 hours which already felt like making a world of a difference. We could progress to up to two times per week when he was 6 months old, which was just lifesaving.

From our old friends and family from Germany and Finland literally nobody visited us in that time, at least my mother came for some days to Lisbon during my pregnancy despite still heavy bureaucratic Corona complications and for Timothy´s birth to Graciosa, and would be coming again for his first birthday.

I was getting sick on and off, my eczema was flaring very badly and my psychological state was also going south. I was in a bad state like I hadn´t been since my health crisis and complete crash in the end of 2014, since I had built up my bodymind and healed myself. Never wanted I to go so down every again! But where to reduce and limit myself more in order to lower the stress level and free some time and energy?

Relationship, love, what was that again? We were only working and surviving buddies, roommates.

Hobbies, beloved projects? We are both good at holding up the energy, powering through, keeping going with a brave face, not showing too much pain, finding smart solutions when cornered in to get some minimal life flow back. Like me starting to ask the wonderful ladies at the thermal baths in Carapacho to hold and entertain Tim for 45min so I can get a releasing soak in the healing pool or even Jan and me together.

In a separate article I (when I find the time) can write my detailed survival guide how we managed as highly sensitive parents with very awake and creative spirits to keep in the light (without numbing out (with food, alcohol, television…) and having to deal with a host of mental and physical consequences later). And all the little acts of love that are really making mountains of a difference in such a situation, that we were privileged to receive and came to understand their importance. There is still so much opportunity to do so much better as a society, life can be so much easier.

Yeah, learning to ask for help. I know, in the end everybody is in his own little world. It´s just to surrender to this fact. I just had to summon enough masculine energy and also prepare myself mentally for it to let someone into our little calm sanctuary and personal space again. We hadn´t had a volunteer for over half a year now. For the first time, based on what we have learned over the last years, I sat down to write a real ad and not just relying on the flow to wash someone at our shore.

And things were going amazingly and beautifully with the flow from there. Very soon I got an Email from… Gandalf! A Frenchman volunteering on the neighbor island of Flores, with our Finnish friends! Bringing a fantastic host of experience and skills and… he has even been a chef for a retreat center! And offered to cook for us. Something in my heart melted and softened (my moon is in Taurus by the way…).

We were talking on Skype but it was somehow clear that… everything was just clear. There were no words needed really. Somehow we all knew (and being totally natural about it) that there would be an invisible reason and layer of this meeting, beyond the hands on work he offered.

It felt like a super karmic thing to happen. Heavy spring storms were starting in the Azores, especially over Flores. The air traffic was almost completely stopped. I have never experienced this before (due to the weather; yes, it can happen that one or two planes are cancelled because of too heavy wind and fog, but this…). Gandalf was supposed to come on Wednesday and his planes just kept getting cancelled and cancelled. We kept communicating via WhatsApp.

Somehow he managed the impossible, finding the fine throughline, the tiniest openings, managed to get seats in the only taking off planes (he had to hop via several islands to come to Graciosa) and thus found the fastest possible way, always staying positive, finally arriving on Sunday morning. Everything stayed on a knife edge until the last moment, like the invisible forces were fighting over us.

We were hugging like old friends. He told us that he has volunteered for 9 years all over the world and is known for bringing good energy and happiness to the places. I just felt a huge relieve going through my system for this support. Gandalf felt like a high vibrational, positive power grid and like a silent agreement his energy field started to do something ordering with my energy field. I could almost see it.

In the afternoon a heavy thunderstorm with lightning and thunderbolts and deafening thunder directly above us broke lose. The energies started some recalibration process or something. Who had come into our house here? What alchemic processes had started to work their magic…

From the next days on the weather was beautiful, calm, sunshine. Jan, me and Timothy got all sick with a bad cold and fatigue. I just felt so rock bottom, also psychologically, my deeply nervous and anxious state now really coming to the surface, and now Timmy´s sleep was getting very bad, he couldn´t breath well through all the mucus. It was as if Mother Nature was really making sure that I would by no means fall into my old pattern to try to show no weakness, play the strong big girl and take care of my caretaker and Just.Get.Helped. Let me be pampered and loved up. We had been so strong, done everything the best we could under the circumstances. And Gandalf was just super relaxed, nonchalant, kind and patient, always in good spirit.

With good food. Oh what a joy this was, my endless thanks to Gandalf! Love really goes through the stomach, like we use to say in Germany. Specialized on vegetarian food he managed to perform magic with the very few things we had in our garden at this early spring time. While listening extremely well to my preferences, also regarding to my food intolerances. But we had very similar eating styles anyway. Real fresh simple food, no dairy, except butter and goat cheese, almost no gluten, no sugar or alcohol… Also occasional meat was no problem, so Gandalf prepared the best chicken legs I have ever eaten for us.

We could even make a little Thank You/Cooking Party for the friends who are babysitting Timmy regularly now.

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Yes, the ease and the joy was coming back for real. Even though it took us over two weeks to really deeply start to feel some recovery. Jan and I managed to do some things on our own together again, once we were really going out in the evening (which we already didn´t use to do before the baby).

We got a lot done, the men could cover the whole garden with wood chips, Gandalf was doing fantastic electric repairs on the house, I could get lots of writing done…

We even watched (it was only the second movie Jan and I watched this winter, we don´t have a TV set) the first part of Lord of the Rings (special extended, but we had to split it over two evenings to see it in the short time we have in the evening without the baby when he is already asleep, but to also get early enough to bed (11 is already way too late for me, especially in this time)) with Gandalf (we just had to do it *g* I so had to smile about the opening scene with Gandalf and Frodo. „You are late, Gandalf.“ „A wizard is never late“. Yes, Gandalf came in perfect timing. I visualized (and could really feel it in my body) lots of past months heaviness and pain falling down the abyss with the Balrog after Gandalf brought him to a firm stop).

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We could both go more into our polarities. Jan finishing the trailer for boat Henrietta. Me finally, from a real creative feeling, without any pushing, starting and finishing the artwork I had planned to have ready already one year ago for the birth. I could literally seeing the eczema on my hands which had come back and which I could not influence with nutrition heal in the process. Oh what a joy.

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On the final day, water diviner Gandalf measured our land and found unusually balanced energetics, no real problem spots, no extremes, and he could identify a few spots with beneficial magnetic energies for meditation and recharging. I always felt that our place gives me so much stability despite the Azores being in general intense from their energetic signature (a perfect place for being cleansed, letting go of heavy old stuff, going through necessary changes, growth, meeting one´s destiny). Gandalf also gave us some valuable tips. It was my first time to witness a water diviner in action, an incredible experience.

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Thank you Gandalf, for so much! So glad to hear that you will be back.

Life goes on for us with all its daily challenges, but I feel so much lighter, back being in love with life. We have entered a new circle of freedom and scope of action and are capable of doing the next steps.

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