Knock, knock, knock! Are you living your dreams?

One Tuesday morning in August a woodpecker visited me at 4:30 AM and woke me up from a dream. It was pecking away at something with a pock, pock, pock sound that went on for several minutes.

My bed is positioned right next to a sliding glass door and a small balcony facing west towards the mountains. Though I live close to Mt. Takao and can see the green hills clearly, birds rarely visit me up on the 11th floor. As I sat up to see what the bird looked like, it flew away. Now wide awake I got up and made coffee.

With my coffee and journal in hand, I looked up the meaning of woodpecker. I determined the visit from woodpecker was an important wake-up call to start living my dreams. I could feel the call but I didn’t have a clear idea for how it could look. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was ready for my connection with spirit to play a more prominent role. It was still early in the day and I was excited and expectant.

It turns out that day was a wake-up call for my husband, Akira, too. He was scheduled for a routine colonoscopy which revealed stage 3 colon cancer. A wake-up call for him and a call to action for me. I knew it was ultimately up to Akira to recover. I also knew he would need a strong support person to research and provide the resources to do it.

Our bodies are naturally equipped with the ability to heal and restore balance. What we put in our body plays a huge part in this process. The moment I heard the diagnosis, I knew my job was to introduce alternative solutions to support his healing and then keep my mouth shut and hold the space for Akira to decide for himself how to proceed with his recovery. It’s his body, not mine.

Akira decided to go through with surgery. I was relieved to the bone when he said “no thank you” to chemotherapy.

It has been 10 months since that morning last August. Recent test results show that Akira’s body is strong and healthy, doing its job keeping cancer cells from having a party. Thanks to a plant-based diet and gallons of carrot juice, he looks better than ever.

Looking back, I still feel a sense of wonder at the remarkable way that day started. It was an unexpected day opening the way for many life adjustments. A course redirection for us both. Fortunately, I was awake and ready to face it. Woodpecker did not come knocking for nothing!

Here’s the deal. It would be easy to assume the reason woodpecker came calling was so I would be awake and ready to help my husband through cancer. Sure, that may be part of it, one layer of it and an important layer at that! But, I knew all along there was more…

Several months after surgery and long after Akira had gone back to work, I sat one day on the side of my bed and realized nothing had changed. I still wasn’t living my dream. I wasn’t even thinking about it. I had been so wrapped up in his recovery that once his health stabilized I felt lost. Even useless.

I sat on the side of my bed and thought I don’t want to be here anymore. I was satisfied that, for the time being, the hard work was done and it was finally time for me to focus on my own career again. But, I was bone tired. I didn’t want to make the effort to be Marci anymore let alone grow my business. I fantasized about going to sleep and waking up free from this incarnation.

Then I thought about it some more. If I were indeed suddenly released from this incarnation, would I have any regrets? I thought about the different business ideas I was pursuing. I thought about the skills I still wanted to master and the adventures it would be fun to experience. Nope, none of them were that compelling. I could let them go for now, perhaps include them in another incarnation.

Then I thought about the bigger picture. Part of the bigger picture means our growing capacity to feel, to project, to channel, to produce, to “be” love both today and throughout our incarnations.

I sat there on the side of my bed with the bigger picture until a small smile started to spread across my face. If I skipped out on this incarnation, I would miss out on the chance to grow my capacity to love. That I would regret.

I remembered woodpecker and my smile spread so big I began to cry. If being me and growing my capacity to love were the dream, I could live for that. I could live that dream.

So what does that look like? A few days later I started offering intuitive readings and committed to living my dreams.

My blessings and gratitude to woodpecker!