Madonna of the Yarnwinders

Came across this marvelous piece of information today. Wikipedia is so randomly awesome.

The Mondo Beyondo List

This is a list of my dreams... I scribbled for 10 minutes, then another 10 minutes... then went back and organized & typed them in.

Some are very strange to say out loud... some I may or may not actually want... I just wrote what came out!


Medical dreams: Work with Paul Farmer, work with Zanmi LaSante in Haiti, Work with the Peace Corps, Trade medical care for potatoes, Live above my medical practice, Create a BFC in rural Georgia, Empower people for their own healthcare, Think about better healthcare methods, Ride a horse and buggy to visit houses, Work with Atul Gawande, Go to med school in Boston, Be a doctor traveling on a boat, Work hard, long hours, Save lives, Make a difference, shadow a rural doc

Alternate careers (or complimentary?): Be a midwife, Be a doula, Advocate and educate for natural birth, own a pastry shop like in Stranger than Fiction, own a bed and breakfast, be a cake maker/ patisserie owner

Family dreams: Homeschool/unschool/waldorf-school the boys, Be a good priest's wife, Have another baby, Make baby clothes, Stay home with my babies for a year

Adventures with the boys: Climb trees, Build a treehouse, Have adventures, build a playhouse, decorate boys room with dreams

Home dreams: Live on a cliff near the ocean, Live on a farm, Raise chickens and cows, Live off our farm, Have my own small house as a study in the back yard, Live in Africa, Live in the mountains, bake bread daily, live in Montemarte live in an old farmhouse, completely restore an old farmhouse/victorian, Have Amish furniture, Live in Amish country, find a good town to live in, have a little girl, be pregnant again, have a homebirth, small comforts: A comfy study snuggle chair

Traveling dreams: Return to Senegal, Travel every year, Stay in a castle, Spend time in Chicago, Take the boys to Africa, take the boys to PAris, Sail down the Seine, Travel the world, stay in a convent, go on a meditative retreat, Visit Madeleine L'Engle 's home, Visit Prince Edward's Island,Travel the east coast, visit Maine, Go lobstering and fishing, have a real honeymoon--white sands, blue water, an island, travel Europe with David alone--maybe summer before med school, without the boys?

Crafting & creative dreams: Make a Senegal Fabric Dress, Make all our clothes, Create a storybook for boys, Write/illustrate an imaginative book and get it published, decorate shirts with stamps, learn to wood print, take a writing class, develop drawing skills, learn to watercolor, knit a sweater, sew a big-bed quilt, sew my own dress, sew a long dress, Learn to build furniture from an Amish person, Design my own letterpress stationery, Own a letterpress, design cards, decorate the space around me, make a home, blow glass, create art & frame it

Relationships: Create a better relationship with my sister & my whole family, Better relationship with David's family, Find a tribe of friends, Find a soul-friend, Make friends with kids our kids age, make friends, have coffee with Paul Farmer, Shadow Paul Farmer for a day, ask Paul Farmer to be my mentor, find a female rural doctor with kids mentor, strike up a friendship with Amanda Soule, Stay in contact with people I know, write thank you notes to everyone, Stay in touch, make regular coffee dates

Reading: Read Dostoevsky, Read more Russian writers, read letters written by authors

Simplify: Get rid of our computer in the home, Unplug, Line-dry everything, Get rid of cell phones, Build some furniture, Paint some furniture, have a simpler life, get rid of clutter

Appearance/fitness: Dress differently - Berkeley/natural fashion-conscious type-loose but well, Get in shape by walking, not running, Bike, don't drive, Swim regularly, Weight 140, Wear makeup daily, have dreads, an inspiring tatoo, Swim regularly in the ocean

Character: be nice, find a life mantra, learn to be cheesy and feely, learn to talk like an artist, find my true color

Church: find a real church with real community, find a place we can be ourselves with our doubts and questions

Kind things for others: Send care packages to people who are deployed, bake cookies & give them away, grow flowers & give them away, help my parents downsize, encourage david in his writing dreams, be positive and empowering, cook healthy meals for my grandparents for freezing

Words for life

From the MB course,

"What if the items on your list were not hard won? What if they came to you in a different way? What if following your intuition, strengthening your courage muscles and saying yes more often was all you had to do to draw your dreams in? What if being willing to be vulnerable and ask for what you wanted was enough to set things in motion?"

She goes on to talk about the words she uses for what she wants in life/how it will come to her are "Fun and Ease."

What words would I use for what I want in life and how it will come to me?

Honestly, I think that a struggle is important to me--it is hard for me to enjoy things that are too easy because they seem boring. I want to fight for something, and to earn it and to win it. Its along the same vein of why I want to challenge authority, to practice medicine in a counter-cultural way, to fight the powers that be. So, I think, "Challenging"

But at the same time, I want things to be fulfilling and to be joy-filled, and to know that I am following the right path for me. I want a sense of peace about the journey, about the path, about knowing that this is what I am meant to be doing. And, I think if I am following my dreams, no matter how challenging they are, I will feel peaceful in knowing that I am following that call.

So, "Challenging and Peaceful" are my words to describe what I want from life and how it will come to me.

Mondo Beyondo List Idea Generator

I've already completed my Mondo-Beyondo list, but its in hiding for a few more hours!

Right now, I'd like to see what other dreams I can uncover in my mind, with that in mind, I'm using Jen's Idea generator to see what I can find out... :)

1. Who would I love to meet?
- Paul Farmer on rounds in a boston hospital, Isabelle Allende at playgroup with her grandkids, Madeleine L'Engle at a book reading (before she passed on), Alice Waters at the Berkeley Farmer's Market, a homeless man over dinner at my house with my family around the table, Ruth Reichl at the re-launch of Gourmet Magazine, Dr. Remen for a coffee break at UCSF, Souyoung Scanlan for cheese and wine and stories, Amanda Soule to share children's wisdom and letting my children experience the practical dreamworld she has created for hers.

2. What would make my heart sing?
- 2 weeks in a stone-floor Italian country house with a spring-fed swimming pool, kind neighbors, a small farm, hills for the boys to roam on, and fresh produce for nightly cooking & feasting.
- Living on a farm. In a simple, creaky-floored home with a porch & swing. Sipping sweet tea on the back porch with my husband's arm around me while the rain comes down on the crops. Watching the boys whooping it up in the rain, running in circles around the yard.
- Simplifying & decluttering--having only what we need to live--meaningful things.
- Giving medical care in exchange for what people have--a bag of potatoes, a chicken, fence repair. Living above the office where I practice medicine. Making house calls.

3. What childish playful thing would bring me joy?
- Running around in circles--in the pouring rain.
- Running through a cornfield.
- Making snow angels.
- Climbing a tree and sitting there for a few hours, just thinking.
- Finger painting.

4. Where do I want to go?
- Italian countryside, Senegal, Germany, Australia, Anywhere in South America, Belize, Portugal, Prince Edward Island, Seattle, Maine, NYC, home to family, the rural south, Northern California

5. What gifts would I love to use?
- Listening, baking, sewing, imagination, teaching, making people feel special, understanding what people are really trying to say, organizing, solving problems, rebelling against authority, giving a sh**t, seeing a need and figuring out how to bring a solution, empowering people, giving money away, using money wisely, saving for my kids.

6. What kind of chance meeting would feel miraculous?
- A rural doctor, who is a mom, who loves simple things, and has made a difference & is down-to-earth and will share her expertise
- A group of passionate medical students who care more about homeless healthcare than about med school itself
- Berkeley Free Clinic people moving to GA and helping me setup a healthcare clinic with access for all
- Someone who knows how to write grants, or has connections to grants, who can bring the write people and money and supplies together to help get a rural clinic started.
- A public health researcher who needs assistance who will take me on to study infections disease/rural challenges and will help me get established to publish paradigm changing studies on infectious disease and rural health

7. What would I like to learn?
- How to set up a rural clinic
- How to empower people
- How to balance family and healthcare dreams
- How to support my husband in his dreams
- How to raise joy-filled kids with wild imaginations, tender hearts, and love of learning.
- How to keep a house organized
- How to save lives
- How to encourage natural childbirth & nursing
- How to make my own clothes
- How to sustain ourselves on our own produce from our own farm
- How to trust in church again
- How to find a tribe of friends
- How to sustain friendships over distance

8. In what miraculous way am I longing to surrender?
- To surrender my self-concern and strike up conversations with strangers.
- To thank the mothers I see who nurse in public
- To put aside my lists and stay down on the floor, playing with the boys all day
- To surrender to the call of the outdoors
- To surrender to household duties without avoiding them

9. What expressions of gentleness towards myself would be a dream come true?
- Not worrying about my weight
- Finding my innocence and true self and honoring that
- Finding my frivolous fun self, and letting the serious goal-oriented self rest a bit

10. What emotion am I longing to experience?
- The relief of fighting for and helping someone to live despite the odds.
- The pride of the first day of Medical school
- The joy of watching my boys discover their life's joy
- The joy of watching my husband fulfill his life's calling

Refocusing on the dream

(Summarized/Paraphrased from Mondo Beyondo lesson):

- Goals are easy to chart, take you from here to there, are measurable and can be useful to help us develop stamina. Sometimes they are slave drivers.

- Dreams are off program, distractions, and have glaring holes in logic. Fill us with aliveness, to the edges of our imagination, to take joy more seriously and help us to be more alive.

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I found this lesson really interesting because it is so easy for me to get the two confused. Even with my big, huge dream... med school, there have been a hundred times I started the process and then stopped. It seems like each time, the stopping was related to the dream becoming goal-oriented--becoming more of a step by step check off the box kind of thing. Steps in a process towards of a goal, instead of a path to a dream.

I 've noticed that when this happens, I start to lose energy & motivation. Med school has been such a dream for so long... many times when I have started to move towards it, I got bogged down in the process a bit. Or, sometimes life happened and it had to be put on hold. But, no matter what happened, the dream was in the back of my mind. And there are certain things I do that help me refocus my goal list and connect it back to the dream.

So, when I get bogged down in the logistics and overwhelmed by the step by step process, or discouraged about my odds of success... here are some things that draw me away from the goals, and closer to the path leading to the dream:

1. I read.
- "Mountains beyond Mountains" about Dr. Paul Farmer--my ultimate hero, a sort of guerilla/rebel medicine practitioner & committed advocate of healthcare for the poor. I once heard him speak in Berkeley and got to shake his hand and speak a few words with him afterwards. After I quieted my racing heartbeat--I realized that he must be the most gracious and present person I have ever met.
- "Jacob Have I Loved"--in the epilogue, the older sister becomes a midwife in the Appalaichan mountains, saving the life of a newborn twin, and finding her own identity, finally.
- "Anne's house of dreams," where Anne Shirley's husband begins his work of doctoring a small seaside community.
- "Caring for the Country" - A Pennsylvania rural doctor program with in-depth profiles of rural physicians--I find the female doctors who are mothers a particularly rewarding read.
- "Kitchen Table Wisdom" - A UCSF Doctor's stories from her training as a young Physician, her personal struggles with illness, and her eventual career change to counseling for those with terminal illness. Although her personal story is woven throughout, the book is really more about the wisdom she has learned from her patients--wisdom applicable to life & to medicine.

2. I volunteer.
- Right now, I'm half-heartedly volunteering at a local Domestic Violence Shelter where I answer the phone and help manage the shelter. Its not that I don't think its an important issue--its just that sometimes I think institutionalization of services can detract from their efficacy on the individual level. I found most of the staff there to be somewhat dehumanizing/disrespectful of the folks they are there to serve. I understand that rules are important, and I'm sure that they have been burned in the past by people breaking their trust, but I really wish there was more compassion. (whew! didn't mean to write that much). Anyway, I keep going because I feel like I can make a difference just by saying hello and showing interest in the kids, and talking to people like people like peers--not like people who I am doing a huge favor to by allowing them to stay there. Anyway--it reminds me of how important humanizing work is to self esteem--just as important in a medical setting.
- One of the most meaningful experiences of my life was volunteering at the Berkeley Free Clinic for two years. Here, I truly confirmed this is what I wanted to do with my life. After working my full-time job during the day, I would race just a few blocks over to the free clinic on Friday nights to begin my shift as a volunteer medic. Most of our clients were homeless with respiratory infections, some were students who wanted their privacy protected for STD screens & treatment, some came for our free TB tests. Being a part of something so revolutionary, so crucial to the community, with such an impact on individual lives--It became such a huge part of who I am. Its one thing to talk about healthcare access and who has "earned" it in the abstract--its a totally different thing to be washing the feet of a homeless man who can barely walk from his blisters, dry and bandage his feet, help him find a place for food and shelter... such basic things that we often take for granted... ok. off that soapbox.
- I volunteer because it reminds me that giving a shit and doing something about it, really does make a difference. And for selfish reasons, it reminds me that this is what I want to do with my whole life--not just in my free time.

3. I listen.
- I go to a coffee night on Tuesday nights. The ladies are all ages--college age, to I think, some with grandkids, and sometimes a 12-year old daughter comes along. I love to hear and to learn from their stories. Although we talk about all kinds of things, I've learned a lot about illness and injury from them. About good and compassionate doctors, but also about medical horror stories. Its all I can do to listen with huge eyes when I hear about the horrid way some doctors address their patients, the patronizing speech, the disregard for family's involvement in treatment plan, the just plain poor clinical skills... it reignites my passion for medicine & for being a doctor that listens to patients & recognizes that is probably more important than any drug or treatment regimen.
- I listen to podcasts on rural medicine--individual stories of doctors far from big hospitals, challenges of language and culture clashes, access to care, how to be a doctor and have a family so far from many conveniences.
- I listen to my grandparents and their health concerns, as hard as it is. I am in denial that they will ever pass on--I just can't imagine it.

4. I study.
- I use the Student Doctor Network forums, to learn from other's experiences in medical school, to figure out what steps they took, what I should be thinking about for residencies, research opportunities. I also use this for encouragement--they have a great forum for non-traditional applicants, great advice and "Hey I've been there, here is what worked for me" stories. I love the wisdom and the (mostly) kind words in this forum.
- I review my anatomy books, physiology books, the biology section of my MCAT-prep books. Doing this just makes my heart beat a little bit faster as I dream about learning more about the human body & biology, about cutting into a cadaver, about interviewing standardized patients for evaluation... the butterflies in my stomach remind me that I'm not just excited about a medical career--I'm excited about the actual learning process of medical school!


Doing all of this somehow helps me to remember that medical school & a medical career has always been a dream of mind--something so close to my soul & to who I am. When I can refocus on the dream--the goals & steps & logistics & lists are helpful again... they are leading me to my dream!

Childhood dreams

My dreams at 10 were for my Dad to come home safely from the Persian Gulf.

I also dreamed of running away. Sometimes, I would see myself living in a tree, sometimes I was hollowing out a hay bale and making myself a cozy home inside, sometimes I was living in my grandparents attic, while my parents searched, but never found me.

I wanted to be a writer and I loved writing screenplays which my siblings & visiting cousins would act out while I directed & edited--strange science-fiction meets emotional human drama, always with people lost then found.

I mostly dreamed about finding a kindred spirit friend and planning more pretending games--building forts in "Sherwood forest," dragging our wagon through the fields in "Oregon trail." I lived in a world of dreams!

What were your dreams in childhood?

True You

For the Mondo Beyondo course, I took a look at the 4 people I admire most, listing out all their traits I admire... A very long list! And then I took those that appeared most often. And I was shocked (shocked!) by most of them.

What I loved about this exercise is that it revealed my hidden values--what I was admiring in other people that I didn't realize out loud that I admired. I shared this list with a loved one who said, "Of course! Those ARE your core values"

So here they are:
1. Down to earth (aka free from ego)
2. Passionate defender of high ideals
3. Wonder at the world
4. Creative teacher for children
5. Interest in other people's stories
6. Makes lives better