Each life is precious. Each life contains meaning and purpose. It's not always easy to determine what your own unique purpose is. Often purpose must be created rather than discovered. Throughout the process of a Birthquake, opportunities to grow and create present themselves. From time to time you miss these opportunities, particularly in the beginning when you're not accustomed to looking for them. Once you are aware of their existence, however, you become more adept at embracing them. You begin to acknowledge the lessons that come to you. You begin to recognize your needs and explore your inner being, while responding more fully and effectively to the external world. You come to recognize that the meanings of your experiences have everything to do with the ways in which you perceive them. If you choose to value the moment, the lesson, the experience - then your life will undoubtedly have meaning and purpose. If you focus on what you are thankful for, what you appreciate and desire - then you will experience abundance. It has been pointed out on numerous occasions that those who have a purpose larger than their own individual wants and needs tend to be happier people. On average, they also live longer, too. If you choose to live your life in accordance with not only your own personal needs and goals but with the needs and sanctity of all living things in mind as well, your life will become the gift it was meant to be.

You're standing in the middle where many roads intersect. There are roads you have already traveled and unknown avenues still waiting. There are the places you've been which are stretched out behind you, and before you are paths which may lead you to lands you have always dreamed of or toward places you would never willingly venture. Your ultimate destination and total length of the journey remains unknown. You can't refer to the map - you can only create it as you go.

I wish for you the courage and the commitment to create your own profound and beautiful story. A story not without sadness and loss, for that is impossible in real life stories, but a story that is ultimately about triumph. You have the benefits of knowing the outcomes of the stories that have come before you. Learn from them, build on them, and improve upon them. I wish with all of my heart that your tale evolves into a love story filled with compassion, community, creativity, and caring. Bless you on your journey.

AFTERWORDS

For some time now, friends and family have expressed their concern regarding my apparent fixation with both the research and the writing involved in completing this book. There have been all too many days when I've worked from dawn until late afternoon, pausing to spend some time with my daughter and husband and to attended to domestic chores, only to return to work until the wee hours of the next morning. My intensity and obsession sometimes frightened those closest to me. One night, two of our best friends sat Kevin and I down and expressed their growing concern for my welfare. My behavior wasn't healthy they gently cautioned. As we listened to them recount what they'd witnessed regarding my frantic activity and long hours of work, Kevin glanced at me with a look of frustration and helplessness. I felt helpless too. I seemed out of control and it terrified me. Ideas and images bombarded me constantly, and I could barely sleep. I began to wonder if I'd developed bipolar disorder (commonly referred to as manic-depression) and secretly feared that I was on the verge of a breakdown.

I've always been a 'driver,' although I've worked on learning to relax over the years, and have managed to make some significant progress in creating a greater balance in my life. Yet, all of the sudden, for some reason which still remains a mystery to me, I found myself experiencing an urgency far greater than I've ever felt before. I remember during this time, someone close to me saying, "Tam, what if you make yourself sick? What if no matter how wonderful this book turns out to be, hardly anyone reads it, and you've allowed yourself to be consumed for nothing?"

I had no answer for her then, only false reassurances that I would slow down. And I did for awhile. But something inside of me eventually always insisted that I get back to my mission, and feeling neurotic, I'd heed the call.

Working on this book, while a solitary activity, has at some points felt like the most grueling encounter of my life. It's most definitely been during this process that I've ventured the closest to my demons. And I never want to get that close again. I can't begin to express how anxious I've been to close this particular chapter (my final chapter) out - to write the last line, and be finished.

What if my friend is right? What if this book, this mission of mine, fails? Amazingly, as I give this fear expression, it doesn't create the least bit of anxiety within me. Instead, what I'm feeling this very moment is a tremendous sense of compassion for all those people who've ever been pushed beyond what they perceived their limits to be while struggling to keep up with a dream. Bless them all. Bless them.

Will I regret what I've gone through to oblige this voice inside that's haunted me, demandeding that I bring it into this world, if no one else bothers to hear it? No. No, I can say even now, while I'm exhausted and burned out, that I will never regret the pain of expelling it.

Charles M. Johnston in, The Creative Imperative: Human Growth & Planetary Evolution shares that, "In a creative task, we leave behind defining value in terms of the acclaim an act brings, or eventually even in terms of whether what we created 'worked,' to ask instead how, and to what degree, it made life more."

For me, the process of writing this book has made my life "more." The wisdom and beauty of so many good people, both the living and dead, has touched me. I've truly experienced for the first time from the very depths of my being, both love and profound grief on behalf of those yet to be born. I've faced fears that I've spent the past two decades avoiding. And while it has hurt, really hurt, it's also empowered me. Montaigne once wrote that it takes courage to be afraid. Now I know exactly what that means. We all have tremendous reasons to be afraid, and we can choose to avoid our fear by hovering beneath the covers of our addictions, our jobs, our televisions, and the vast number of other hiding places we've managed to create. Or we can come out. Come out and face both the problems, and the opportunities that confront us. Come out and actively participate in the powerful and empowering process of co-creation. It's all waiting, and time is running out.

Chapter One - The Quake

Chapter Two - The Haunted

Chapter Three - Myth and Meaning

Chapter Four - Embracing the Spirit

Chapter Eight - The Journey

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