My two month blogaversary

It has already been two months since I last posted, marking another cavernous space wherein I have gone dormant, figuratively speaking.  Although, as much as being a bear this winter has its appeal, I have been busy doing my life work anyway.

I was struck by this post about showing up and being meaningful and it inspired me to say that I, too, want what I put out here to matter, to find what resonates deep within me with the hope that it might also resonate deep within you and make you want to carry the ripple far and farther out.

I have been hearing the galloping of the year of the wood horse approaching, feeling the drum beat of the hooves thrumming up from the earth.  Are you ready to trust your wild stallion and ride bare back through this year?  I am.  I shed heavily with  snake last year, with yet some patches of skin left to ruck off.  I realized today that I am ready.  Under all the changes and shifts, the angst and fist pounding denial.  Under the healing and the nourishment, there is the nugget of me who is feeling the light on her skin, the barest glimpses of the truth of who I am and what I am here to do.  Are you with me?

A glimpse of me and my world lately....

This Post Has No Title

This was not the blog post I started to write a week ago.  Last Friday I was going to talk about Halloween,  the nasty weather, friendship and finding community.  Then a vicious wind storm ripped through, breaking what would not bend

creating an electrical fireball and exploding  transformers, leaving behind crop circle burns on lawns

 melted lava 

and other Rorschach-esque metallic splotches etched into the sidewalks.

This was followed, on a personal level, by an allergic reaction to medication for a root canal gone wrong and on a global level, a painful awakening to what has been going on in Fukushima, the black rhinoceras being declared extinct and typhoon Haiyan rearranging innumerable lives.  

I no longer have the ability to make sense of a day, find platitudes or comfort at all.  The only thing I can do is witness.

Baby Steps

This past year I have often thought of this blog as "my poor neglected space".  Now I see it has been a concentration of silently counting my breaths in and out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and over again.  Baby steps, is what I need to climb back to my creative self.

While I've been gone I have started and stopped, feasted and fasted, struck out and held close.  I have been sitting in virtual circle and digging deep, excavating nuggets of gold and shards of fractured glass.  I have lost and found hope

meditated on chicken feet

and equally complex natural worlds unto themselves.

I have journeyed

and squirrelled myself away from the world

witnessed miracles

and came fearlessly close to nature.

I asked for one feather 

and received whole birds, and more.

Right now, I am making moon mandalas with Lisa Hofmann over here

while my heart cracks wider and wider and I am called to go deeper and deeper into the excruciatingly lonely practice of forgiveness.

On Gratitude, part 153

This week I was gifted with so much; through my friendships, lessons, inner evaluations, many of which drew tears.  I would like to share with you some gratitude that has made me pause this week.  

I harvested the last crop of mint from our garden

witnessed mushrooms in unexpected places

watched this thumbergia plant flower over and over again despite the calendar date.

I received this Frida Kahlo necklace as a gift from Sherry, my fellow Frida persona with who(m?) I share a reciprocal adoration  and who makes life more real for me on a day-to-day basis in so many unexplainable ways

I watched this spider catch many flies, grateful he stationed himself far *enough* from my house to enjoy observing him and his ways

Another extraordinary event that happened was that I was gifted a spot in Anne-Marie Bennett's next Soul Collage class, something that I have ached for over many, many moons and now, thanks to a very generous heart, will let me jump into with all that I can bring to it.   So whilst I thrash around in the shadows, I have been acutely aware of the ones who show up to light my way, spur me on and keep me accountable for where my feet trod on my path.  I humbly bow to all of you in thanks and gratitude for holding space for me, for loving me for who I am.  

Shadow Land

I have crawled under the flap in SouLodge for the next five weeks, or longer, judging by how long it usually takes me to go around the medicine wheel.  It is time to swim down deep in the shadows, stir up the mud, let it blind my vision and ooze between all of my bodies.  The form of my grief and shame and regret is that of a blob.  It is sticky, black, tar-like and warty with pockets of gaseous and noxious bubbles.  It covers my light, hides my smug superiorness.  It traps my capabilities, squashes my confidence that everything is going to be alright.  I blame it for all of my unhappiness, lack of confidence and lack of faith.  I refuse to take responsibility for it.  It is an aggressor and I am weak in its presence.  I succumb.  A victim to it.   It numbs me and then I judge silently in my head.  A harsher critic has never been known.

Owl came to me this week with messages of deception.  Layers to peel back, with the prize of the centre nugget of truth revealed.  Hornet and wasp have built my female warrior armour to take each one of these negatives spoken and alchemize them down to their own centre nuggets.  It is going to be a long, and very interesting, autumn.

Wolves - August Break

It has been a year since I started reading it

and now with only 100 pages to go I will confess it has hit me hard and deep. And I wouldn't have it any other way.  Awrrooo!

Views from my kayak

I haven't posted enough here since Blogger changed the format and every time I do show up here, it feels a bit frantic as I click around finding my sweet spot.

I have been having some sweet experiences like outdoor art for everyone

\

finding polar bears during an extended, parching heat wave

and out houses right off the secondary highway

not to mention thinking I was candidly photographing a heavily tattooed man only to get home and find I wasn't so candid with my camera.

Life has been hard and strange and exhilarating and I still don't know which direction I am headed any given day. The best I do is show up and sometimes muck along, sometimes grab the brass ring. Just when I thought I had tempered the change blasting through, I feel yet another wave of light and shadow shaking me up and making sure I am exactly where I need to be.

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Releasing Ceremony - Welcoming Back the Light

Working in the Negative

This week when I have risen at my usual hour of 5:00 a.m. I have noticed that it is still kind of dark outside. The first sign that the days are, in fact, shortening. May I sigh now? Riley's summer vacation is officially half over. I have a feeling the second half will go faster than the first half and yet when I think back on this last month, it hasn't necessarily sped by. Yes, I have often looked at the calendar and thought, "Egads! Already July ...fill-in-the-blank... Maybe it is because I have done so much with my time, I have travelled, helped a friend prepare to make her move back to the southern hemisphere (hi Sally!), spent some time grieving, and some time digging deep and learning more about me and what we casually or not so casually call "this life". I have also started another group blog with my animal communicator friends. One thing I learned on that journey was that I am not walking this earth alone in my grief.

And yet it's all baby steps.

Tuesday and Wednesday this week were tough, tough days for me and it reflected on my relationship with Riley. Our kids are so receptive, so reflective of who we are at any given moment. At least mine is. My moods affect his moods and well they should. But whenever I dive into a funk, I often surface with quite a bit of guilt. Guilt for being snappish, needy in my own way, unable to give freely, I cocoon.

The shadow side of ourselves is a fascinating study. I don't like spending a lot of time there, but I do visit, take day trips, short breaks where the dark is acknowledged and embraced. It is no mistake that at this time I took up my rusty old Speedball lino cutting tool,

the one I bought for my first year university printmaking class, and started cutting into some of the stock of rubber blocks the Queen of Arts had generously given to me a little while back. Cutting away the background instead of working the foreground was where I needed to be. I, successfully, cut a small heart and a crow shape I have often used in collage.

Another sense of negative space came this morning when Riley pulled a loose tooth. Another dark space, showing promise of new growth.

An aside

I have been giving myself permission to express my anger lately. It might be contributing to helping me feel better emotionally, even if I am not making many new friends and startling a few old ones. As an example, Riley said to me before supper, "It's OK, you can stop being mad now - my homework is done". In theory this is great, if I can manage to let go of the guilt that comes with blowing off steam.

November So Far, Examining the Dark

At the beginning of this month I made a commitment to myself to examine the dark. Since then I find I have been less affected by the actual shortness of the days. I will admit that as rotten and trying as October was weather-wise, November has been, so far, a pleasant surprise. We have had an extraordinary amount of sun and some warm temperatures but only a degree or two above normal. The last few nights we have had some very hard frosts. And in the morning I find myself noticing the beauty of this:



and this:


and how our soccer field looks like there is a dusting of snow when it's really just frozen dew:


Walking the dogs by the water this morning we noticed that the ducks are still here although they are starting to congregate, as they will, in clumps of hundreds, facing south, assessing the conditions for their upcoming flight. Here is a pair that dared to come close enough to us despite the canine presence:


Since Trish at Buttercup Beret lauded me for my brutal honesty today, I will admit to having eaten an entire 200 gram bag (slightly less than 1/2 pound) of these since the beginning of this month:


This may have contributed to my surprisingly light mood. Or not. But today I wasn't even bothered by Friday the 13th.

Further Chronicles of the Dark: The Saboteur

I have been sitting on this card for almost a week. When I first pulled it from the deck I laughed, then felt kind of devastated.

From a deck of 80 cards, I managed to find this one. According to Caroline Myss, the Saboteur is one of four archetypes we all have in common, the other three being the Child, the Prostitute and the Victim. My Saboteur and my Victim often walk hand in hand. Just when I think I am past much of that behavior, it surfaces and I get to look it boldly in the face. Again. I can look back on my twenties and see how I was so mired in personal discovery-hormonal-reactionary-overdrive and that helps me when I spend time with people of that age. It has given me an insight into the angst that grows from adolescent angst. My thirties were slightly better. Everything calmed down somewhat but the Saboteur would often surface with self destructive feelings and actions of not being good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, talented enough (you get the idea). And now being able to look back on my forties I feel as if personal growth has sped up. Conceptually, what used to take me a decade to work through, I feel I can "get" in a couple of years. In theory. Both light and dark attributes are pretty dark to me, the light is described as, "Highlights your fear of self-empowerment and the changes it would bring to your life". I do fear some of the changes, I do want certain guarantees. I'll bargain with the gods and goddesses - give me this but don't take away that. I want to let go of the trapeze and yet the fears are paralyzing. This, in a nutshell, has been my week with the saboteur.