NURTURING LIFE

Have you ever felt a desire developing within you like a seed, to nurture and help grow life?

Me, too .

While on a road trip across America, promoting my book Change Your Life Through Travel, I’d take breaks, and return home for a while.

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During one of these breaks, Jim and I spot several quail babies apparently abandoned in our walled yard, as the sunny afternoon wanes into a freezing night. In a clumsy and comedic capture, we corral them into a cardboard box.

Now they sleep on the sofa with me, on each side of my neck, like big, feathery earrings.

I feel their downy bellies, their warm bodies, their little feet, scratching against me. One sits on my ear; I can hear its heartbeat.

Every morning, when I first hear the scritch of their tiny claws on the cardboard floor of their make-shift nesting place,I jump out of bed. Feed them with an eye dropper. Clutch them to my breast like a possessed parent.

These little chicks own me. They have moved into my uterus and made a nest.

 “I thought I heard my kids in here…”

 

 Birdnapper

Jim suggests I will need to take them on the road with me, as I’m due to continue my book tour shortly. Painting the scene of a future book talk, Jim says, “Now that would be a crowd pleaser: Imagine walking in with three quail chicks following in a line behind.” He tells me of a Tucson man who had a quail as a pet. The quail would jump into the man’s pickup every morning and travel to work with him.

I feel the tugs and do not want to leave the chicks behind.

Their mother reappears. Three days later.

“It was a good thing I came home from golf to end the standoff between the birth mother and the bewildered birdnapper,” Jim teases.

“For three days, the birdnapper was showing her chicks to neighbors like proud baby pictures. She was obsessed with smelling them. Poop on me? I don’t care. She counted the minutes until she could wake them up from their ‘nap’ so she could cuddle them. All she wanted to do was to totally love and protect ‘em…

“As it was revealed in news interviews at the time, the birdnapper clung absolutely to the babies, wailing and whimpering, telling the quail mama to go and make more. These chicks were now hers.

“Fortunately, the birdnapper’s sense of reason prevailed and nature’s order restored. Counseling was recommended for the woman, but she’s hell-bent on doing self-improvement rather than getting outside help. She intends to heal through travel – extensive travel…”

“There you are!”

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How can we apply this experience to enrich our own lives?

1. Feel your desire to love and nurture life, and consider how you can best express it.
2. Remember: Someone who loves and nurtures life promotes this in others; and focuses on building a society where life is nurtured and loved. As Uell S. Andersen says, “By working with love we add all things unto ourselves, and all things unto humanity.”
3. Experience: When we give to another, we give to ourselves; reminding us, again, how we are all connected.

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Jillian Robinson is a Certified High Performance Coach whose passion is to help people live their best selves with the consistentfeelings of full engagement, joy and confidence. She loves to interview and coach changemakers and parents committed to positively impact young peoples’ lives. Her vision is that, someday, personal development will be taught as commonly as math and science. When you participate in her programs, you become part of that positive change.