It’s the end of the year, and like many (if not most) people, I’m taking stock of all that’s happened in my life in 2004. Doing so reminds me again that authoring one’s life, living into one’s New Story, is not a linear process. There are ups and downs; achievements and missteps; times of great clarity and complete fog. And with our personal evolutions come periods of growing into who we are—sometimes not even knowing who we are. Our sense of identity can stumble on its way to catching up with who we are becoming.

Case in point: Exactly six months ago, I became a mother. And in this half-year, I have tapped into a love and joy so deeply profound I get tears in my eyes just writing about it. I was born to be a mother, and I was born to be the mother of my daughter Chloe. I spent 45 years on this earth without knowing, to borrow an expression, that there was a Chloe-shaped hole in my heart that only her presence could fill—which makes the blessing of her all the more miraculous, since she was born on the other side of the world. Going from zero on the parenthood speedometer to 60 has been an interesting exercise in mid-life identity-shifting; I remember the trepidation my husband and I felt—yes, it took two of us—when changing Chloe’s diaper for the first time. After our mission was accomplished, you would have thought we’d found the cure for cancer, we were so pleased with ourselves. And with each day, I find myself growing more confident in my new identity as a mother, more comfortable, more trusting that I know my child and I know what to do for her.

But along the way, other parts of my identity—things I’ve taken for granted as being a part of myself—have dropped away or gone dormant. Some of those things may be permanently gone; some are just being placed on a shelf for examination later. It happens with parenthood, as with other life milestones I’m looking at: 10 years ago I moved from the Midwest to San Francisco; seven years ago I began my relationship with my husband; five years ago I started my own business. With each of these markers has come change, shifts, a not-exactly-knowing who I am in each of these arenas. I had to grow into them, and in some ways I am still growing into them.

One of the things that composes my identity is my love for my garden—which has been completely neglected the last six months due to a baby who wanted my immediate attention most of the time. Recently, while on a rare trip to water (and, I muttered to myself ironically, to notice what else had died), I was amazed to see new growth in most of my plants: the nasturtiums I was sure had fried during the summer were out in abundance, and in several places; new little primrose leaves were pushing away their dried, dead predecessors; my hydrangea blossoms were resurrecting yet again. But the biggest surprise, and delight, was to witness two complete cyclamen plants pushing toward the sun where previously there had been only dirt.

So the moral of this story—this New Story—is found, once again, in nature. Nature has its own course, its own cycles of growth. Though something may die, even disappear, who knows what lies below the surface? New shoots can appear when and where you least expect them, perfectly timed by the Mystery to reveal their unique and colorful patterns. When you stop to think about it, the inexorable, unpredictable current of life is pretty bloomin’ awesome.

"What a difference a week makes!" I am talking to my friend Ilene, who has inquired about my baby and whether she still needs to hold her mommy's finger in order to fall asleep. I have reported that, happily, she has begun to sleep through the night on her own--and that this huge change in nocturnal schedule has happened just in the past week. "What a difference a week can make," she repeats, adding, "What a difference a day can make!"

It's true--and, I am fascinated to observe through my baby's experience, what a difference a minute can make. I have become so much more aware of how fleeting emotions (and the experiences that beget them) can be, if I let them. But too often we hold onto an emotion, forcing it to continue, because of the stories we tell ourselves about why we're feeling that way. Not so with babies. My Chloe can cover a spectrum of sentiment in the span of about 30 seconds, and it's always a delight to watch one of her little crystal tears disappear into the dimple of her cheek as she moves from frustration to laughter. Usually all it takes to elicit this response is raising my eyebrows and bugging my eyes out, which no doubt is a very funny sight indeed. But what a good reminder it is: that without our stubborn, cognitive massaging of it, an emotion can pass with a breath.

It is a spiritual practice, to notice an emotion, to be with it, without getting attached either to it or to the story of what we think caused it. What makes the difference for us as adults--why is it so much harder for us to let go than it is for babies? There are a number of reasons; but one of them, I think, is the capacity of wonder. For a baby, everything is new--there is always another amazing distraction or discovery to encounter, and even the must mundane item holds such glorious playtime possibilities (cardboard box, anyone?). It is a skill, and one that I'm hoping to relearn--to shift my focus from a frustration to a discovery; to remember what a difference a week, a day, a minute can make.

I lost my watch today--the one my husband gave me for Christmas a month after we became engaged, the one I've worn almost every day for five and a half years now. In some ways, the loss seems totally appropriate, for time has changed for me now--time means something completely different.

Four weeks ago today, I started the chapter of my New Story that is the most profound, and perhaps the most permanent--I became a mother. My precious baby daughter is 11 months old, born in China last July and, as adoptive mothers often say, born also in my heart. I dreamt about her before she was born; and when I saw her picture for the first time, I sobbed with a fierce, immediate love for this child, my child. It has been no different since we were united in person on May 31--I have a deep, amazing, abiding love for her, my little Chloe Xin.

That's the good news. There's also the fact that the last month has been one of the most challenging of my life--truly, to paraphrase the Bill Murray character in Lost in Translation, my life as I have always known it is now gone. I knew theoretically that I was in for a big change, but theory can only take you so far. The reality is being so sleep deprived (I now look sentimentally at May 30 as being the last night I slept all the way through) that I created a Stephen King-like plot for a short story--and I don't even write fiction--based on my own recent experiences. Here's the outline: A young baby will only fall asleep if she can hold her mother's finger or thumb. If her mother gently tries to move it to slip back into her own bed, the baby wakes up and cries. Desperate for sleep, the mother decides that she'd rather do without a digit than one more night without sleep. The ending of the short story? The baby holding on to a severed finger, with others lying close to it--and her mom, though self-mutilated, sleeping peacefully nearby.

Those of you who aren't mothers may think this terribly macabre and twisted. Those of you who are mothers will totally understand! And that's what I've become: a mother, and a woman now utterly in awe at those who have preceded me in what Oprah (and no doubt others) has called the hardest job in the world. With a 25-year professional career that has included several demanding positions to compare motherhood to, I can say with certainty that Oprah's right.

Needing to talk about some of motherhood's demands, I called my friend Ilene--a beautiful and vibrant woman in her early 70s and the beloved mother of five children. Ilene listened to me, then counseled: "Don't keep track of the challenges. Don't think in terms of 'It's been a month since I've had a full night's sleep.' Just do what you need to do--just keep going."

It's wise advice for anyone embarking on a New Story, whether it involves children or not. Don't focus on what's difficult; just do what needs to be done. Pay attention to the progress and the pleasures that occur along the way. Because here are some other facts: Despite feverishly wondering if I'll ever read another book, or even another magazine, or be able to spend more than 10 minutes at my computer ever again, I have found new, unexpected, simple joys: The sight of my daughter smiling is pure sunlight. Her little arms lifting up for me is a salve to my soul. And who knew that there was such elation to be found in a poopy diaper (or even that I would ever actually be using the term "poopy diaper")?! Such commonplace happinesses...now common to me. I am blessed by my baby; in many different ways, she has made all of my time so much richer for me.

In my ongoing exploration of what it means to live a New Story, popular culture always provides interesting morsels to chew on—and once again I’ve found food for thought within a current movie. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which takes its title from a line by English poet Alexander Pope, the filmmakers pose a set of intriguing questions: What if we could erase painful memories—memories of an “old story”? Would our lives be the better for it?

I once worked with a Buddhist therapist who was so adamant about living in the present moment that she refused to define herself in any way at all: most probably she wouldn’t have used the term “Buddhist,” and possibly she wouldn’t have even used the term “therapist.” Her commitment was to remaining fresh in every moment, to not allowing herself to be constrained by preconceptions of any kind (except for moral non-negotiables). I have always been fascinated by her example, by her insistence on living a New Story in every single moment of her life. Yet, without an “old story,” one’s New Story loses some context. Part of the power of a New Story lies in its evolution, in what it came out of and was a response to.

Eternal Sunshine brushes against some of this subject matter; in one scene, the characters are aware that the moment they are currently experiencing will soon be erased. “This is our last moment,” one says. “What do we do?” “Enjoy it,” responds the other.

Indeed, in some ways this characteristic—mindfulness, paying attention to the moments of our lives—is the cornerstone of what it means to live a New Story. We can’t fully author our lives if we’re not conscious of how we spend our moments. Actor Viggo Mortensen, an accomplished poet, photographer, painter and founder of an art press, was asked about why he has so many creative outlets in a recent interview. His response? That our lives are short, and by expressing himself in these various mediums he is able to more completely remember the moments that his life consists of.

It’s an admirable intention—to honor the experiences of our lives by paying attention to them, enjoying them, remembering them. It is a deeply creative path, this commitment to live a conscious life—and truly one in which the journey holds more significance than the destination.

This weekend holds the annual television extravaganza known as the Oscar awards, and you can bet your money that I’ll be solidly ensconced on my living-room couch for every last minute of it. I am a movie lover from way back; I wrote Judith Crist as a ninth-grader asking for advice on being a film critic, wrote movie reviews for my high-school newspaper, and interviewed Steven Spielberg—who had just hit the big time with the Time magazine cover story heralding Jaws—as a 16-year-old student (this says as much about Steven Spielberg and his generosity of spirit as it does about me). For me, movies often hold clues to what it means to live a New Story, and I find myself combing through them for insights and reflections about life.

Last year, I saw a movie that still haunts me and which I highly recommend: Whale Rider. Filmed in New Zealand, the story follows a young Maori girl whose heart is full of spirit, conviction, and love for her grandfather and the ways of her ancestors. Fresh, funny, compelling and deeply moving, Whale Rider is a story that epitomizes the process of living one’s New Story; indeed, the tagline for the movie is “One young girl dared to confront the past, change the present and determine the future.”

Films can motivate us to do that—to examine where we need to confront the past, change the present, and determine our future. Like the girl depicted in Whale Rider (beautifully portrayed by Keisha Castle-Hughes, who is the youngest-ever nominated female for Best Actress), we can look with clarity and courage at the course our life is taking—and make conscious decisions about whether or not to continue down that path.

But there’s an even more compelling line that comes from last year’s film roster, and that’s an injunction spoken in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In it, the king of one realm says to another, “Become what you were born to be.” That is the clarion call to the king or queen within us all. That is the appeal to the heroic spirit that resides in each of us, which is expressed when we make the choice to live a new kind of story—a New Story—with the time we have. Ready? Set? Action!

This week I had the pleasure of having lunch with some of my “East Coast relatives”—my father’s sister, and one of her six children, and his son. Because I don’t often get to see that side of my family, the occasion was particularly enjoyable—and I realized later that the day we had lunch was the 13th anniversary of my father’s death, who was definitely with us in spirit.

During the course of lunch, the subject turned to—well, actually I was responsible for turning the subject to—politics, as both my aunt and cousin live in Vermont, and I wanted to get their opinions of presidential candidate Howard Dean. My 81-year-old aunt, who is petite and pretty and reflects her Swedish heritage, feels very positive about him, and went on to quiz my brother and me about how we felt about the upcoming Democratic primaries and the recent gubernatorial race in California.

Then quietly, and unassumingly, my aunt mentioned that after she graduated from Smith (also my alma mater) in 1943, she moved to Montgomery, Alabama, for a short time. She told the story of being so upset at the enforced segregation that constantly surrounded her, she decided to make a silent, yet deafening, protest. One day in 1944, upon entering a bus, she made her way deliberately to a seat…in the very back.

What a wonderful story—a New Story! And, hearing it, how proud I was to know my aunt—prouder still to be related to her. Eleven years before Rosa Parks made her historic and courageous decision, my aunt had made the same point from the opposite side of the bus—that we are all equal.

This inspiring example illustrates the power of a single, conscious choice—how deliberate action, even if just taken for the duration of a 15-minute bus ride—can spark the imagination and ignite the heart of anyone, and everyone, who hears the story. I will never forget this wonderful anecdote, told so casually by my beloved aunt.

What about you? What stories from your family history have illumined where you’ve come from—and where you want to go?

It's been almost two months since I last posted to this blog; after traveling back East to spend Thanksgiving with my husband's family, I got caught up in the holiday rush—and then took two more trips, one out of the country, in the next month and a half.

And—perhaps not coincidentally—for the last 30 days or so, I’ve had the cold-with-lingering-cough syndrome. Experiencing the various symptoms, I’ve been very aware of how much our health impacts our energy—and the enthusiasm we have about living our New Story. In the past weeks, I’ve noticed a marked difference in my normal excitement levels; I haven’t been as inclined to involve myself in as many activities, such as blogging, as I usually do.

It’s a great reminder to me of how important our health is to the development of our New Stories—how the art of renewal, being mindful to consistently replenish and renew ourselves, is very much a part of that process. Maya Angelou wrote that “The woman who challenges herself to invent herself daily displays sublime creativity”—and I would add that the woman who challenges herself to renew herself daily displays sublime wisdom.

I have learned, again, that when I don’t heed the need to rest and renew, the need will make itself persistently (and usually inconveniently) known. A dear friend of mine, Ilene Cummings, encouraged me to allow myself to just be with the following wise words: "You are doing exactly what is required right now. Here is a quote from Pema Chodron: 'Now is the time...now is the only time. Now is the path.' " Sometimes, to most fully live our New Stories, we need simply to pause, replenish, and trust that whatever is happening is, as Chodron reminds us, the path.