We're back from vacation. Missing these:
But sleeping in my own bed last night was bliss! I've got a few blogposts in the works in my head, but I will probably be spending most of the day unpacking, doing laundry, and restocking my refrigerator. So, in the meantime, I thought I'd give you a little sneak peek of part of my new website: the "About" page. Just in case you've been wondering...
who is this "Buscando la luz," anyway?
I'm a mom of three, doula-in-training, soon-to-be book author, lover of mountains and trees, wannabe photographer, and a Mormon. I have a school psychologist husband I call "Ax" in the blogosphere, two daughters born in hospitals, a son born at home, and a two-year-old shih tzu we call Boston. I grew up in a variety of places (Arizona, Utah, and Massachusetts), traveling often between divorced parents. I graduated in April 2003 from Brigham Young University where I majored in English (with an emphasis in editing).
In December of 2007, I turned to Blogger as an outlet for my passionate drive to share what I learned and loved about birth, taking on the psuedonym, "Buscando la luz." When I started that blog, I was coming out of a difficult phase of my life. I had spent the previous year or so full of anger and frustration about the world. Following my second daughter's birth, I became ill repeatedly, culminating in kidney stones. Those illnesses weren't surprising considering all the negativity and darkness I felt weighed-down by. Then we moved out of the basement where we lived to cute old house with lots of sunlight.
It was incredibly refreshing moving to that sunny little house. We had literally let the light back into our lives, but I still needed to let the light back into my heart.
Then one day I found and checked out a copy of Dan Zanes' album, Night Time!, from our public library. The pure joy and beauty of that music changed me. In his version of "What a Wonderful World," the end of the song has some lyrics not found in the original---a lullabye interspersed with Spanish phrases:
Sleep mi bebe, we are all here
Buscando la luz in the city
So that you may hear the laughter
El cantar y el gozar through the night
Arruru mi nene, arruru mi nena
Y que duermas con los angeles
Arruru mi nene, arruru mi nena
Y que duermas con los angeles
I loved how the song made me feel. I especially loved the Spanish phrase: "Buscando la luz en este mundo." It basically means, "Seeking the light in this world." The song and that phrase was exactly the mantra I needed at that time in my life. Seeking the light in this world. As I bathed in the warm light in our new home, I also began filling my soul with light and positivity. When I decided to take on a blogging psuedonym, I knew exactly what I needed to call myself: "Buscando la luz." And that's what I try to do. No matter how discouraged I become by the problems with maternity care in the U.S. (and other countries), no matter how many horror stories I am bombarded with, I'm not going to stop seeking out truth and light and goodness and sharing what I discover. I am and will forever be "seeking the light."
So you can call me Buscando la luz, or "Busca," for short. Or you can call me by the Hawaiian name my mom gave me nearly thirty years ago: Lani. And, coincidentally, this light-seeker now resides in the land of year-round sunlight--the Valley of the Sun, AZ.
Now I'd love to hear about you!
