Pink Coyote

New Neighbors

Sweet.

Fairy Tale

This entry is for Diane who is the person who fowarded this poem to me. I wanted a record of it here so I can laugh regularly at it and be reminded of her dry wit and voice, which is what rang out when I read it.

Once upon a time in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle.

The frog hopped into the princess' lap and said: " Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sauteed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself I don't fuckin think so.

Fixated

I took these on Friday while the morning sun was shining bright in the guest room. Miles plays with this toy endlessly, sometimes color coordinating the shapes to the pegs and other times not. Off and on, on and off the wooden pieces come. It was great for him at about one year old when he was still finding the dexterity in his fingers. I've had to gorilla glue two of the pegs in as you can see because the toy gets so much use. Many toys that he has are very noisy or do not really stimulate his brain's wiring function.

I like this one, among others, because he is building, counting, creating, sorting, organizing, and deconstructing all to his own liking. Maukilo has some great building sets that we can't wait to get him when he's older.

I am currently exploring Zero To Three, an organization that educates the public and professionals about what babies and toddlers really need (and deserve) in the first years of life. They do address the childcare controversy, and I am not exactly certain where they stand, but I'll find out and report back. I am certain that they have found a nicer way to explain that it is detrimental to place a child with rotating caregivers or daycare that has not been found to fully meet each individual child's ever-changing needs than I have here.

As one reader here put it, we live in a regressive feminist climate. I have been turning this over in my mind since her comment was left and I am putting together in my mind that there may be a collective wound to the western female unconscious in which we feel a drive to have children, but then leave them to the care of others. My head is heating up, which tells me I may be crossing boundaries again. While I never intend to judge a mother's sacrafices nor creative choices, I want to ask my readers to softly, vulnerably, please take another look at this issue.

I know that individual moms have vastly varying needs and economic situations. I do very much respect our differences. I am a liberal. Not some Laura Bush robot who pours bourbon at ten and denies her dreams and authentic self. I don't know what it is like to be a single mom, or to live at or below the poverty level. I can't imagine raising a child on my own. I'm not equipped with the coping mechanisms to do it gracefully at all, I promise.

It is not my job to teach anyone or declare that individuals are wrong in their parenting. I've not said that here before, and this seems like a good time to put it out there. My impetus for bringing attention to this matter again and again is because I am continuing to see babies and children whose attachment and development are being sacraficed to the perceived needs of the parent. This confuses me deeply.

Previously I have reacted to this common phenomenon by sounding judgemental and angry. Today, I want to be curious. I want to know more. I want to look at my own earlier in life drives to fill a more masculine role and work, work, work fifty hours a week for someone who never respected all of me-but only the part that functions like a slave for the company. I want to look at how, thirteen years into that, I couldn't do it anymore. I want to look at the shift I made into self-employed businessperson, then to stay at home mom, and what that transition felt like. At times throughout this journey something has caused me to feel wholly inadequate because I'm not "Bringing Home a Paycheck" anymore and can't as long as I want to be my son's guide.

I want to look at how that value of BHAP has trumped almost every other drive in me, how I fight myself in order to make staying home during his early years my highest priority. I want to look at how I define my

self-worth. Before Miles, the sky was the limit, I could play on a male-oriented corporate field or not, my choice. I previously only defined myself by the K's, and that felt really validating.

Now that I am a parent, I do not get to be my partner's equal in the same way I was accustomed to being. I feel so vulnerable. I feel...unentitled to spend without asking or explaining and that gives me a pain. But I also had a child with the intention of making sure that he is safe and secure enough in his identity before he faces the world on a regular basis without me. I know I am blessed to have this choice. If I hadn't been interested in doing that, I wouldn't have brought him here. Truth be told, it took me eight years from "Hmm, I wonder if I might want to have kids?" until I gave birth. I TOILED.

I want to give him what I didn't get as a child: Full working knowledge that he is adored, cherished, more important than anything else in the world-even my bullshit identity hang ups, that I will do anything to procure his safety, his spirit, his divine right to existence. I do not want him to have to guard or defend his heart from lack of trust, and then unlearn that as an adult to be authentic. As I see it, he didn't ask to be born. It is my job to make his life as safe as possible, and to go there: into my shadow and face whatever it is that might prevent me from doing my job as his protector and guide. My love for him is not enough on its own. I owe him dedication. I need to ask myself again and often, what does that look like for me?

I also want to look at my rigid thinking, not always known for serving me well. Am I holding myself to such a standard that it will harm me, Miles or our family system? To answer that off the cuff, I would say that I am willing to make big mistakes (note that I could not previously allow this as I am a staunch perfectionist) with my son. I feel empowered with the knowledge that I can correct any pain I cause him, especially if I catch it early. I know that I will cause him pain. This brings me anxiety, but I know that I can make up for my mistakes and keep his heart safe.

If I don't allow myself to make mistakes, (a perception) then when I do make them, I suspect I will go into denial about it (too painful too acknowledge when you are a perfectionist) and then I won't correct them with him and the damage will remain unhealed. This I cannot have. I did not become a parent to leave these things to chance.

I am stumbling in the dark at times, and it can be lonely here. I am healing my caged heart, breaking down the defensive walls and finding my truth and hopefully my humble, messy, acceptable, humanity. Parenthood pushes me to open: open when it hurts, open when I think I can't open any more, and then open still wider. This persistent healing and opening cycle is my very favorite of all of the gifts of motherhood, second only to the cheeks often featured in this little corner of the universe.

Owls Galore

This is a pastel I created when I was in the second grade. I love that one is a bit cross-eyed, it gives the piece a kind of Lucy and Ethel feel. I found it when I was packing last night and wanted to post it up in honor of Keri and her Momo. To your sacred pursuit of consciousness and the bright rays that illuminate it! May the truth deep inside you come up shining tomorrow and every day.

Clowning Glory + Creating

I have got a major ham on my hands. The lenscase did not leave his mouth for twenty minutes as he jumped about on the bed like a bucking pony wearing a bit and reins. This is the most fun part about parenting. I'm amazed that I get to watch a little baby turn into a BOY in front of my eyes as he discovers his sense of humor, fits puzzles together, has serious temperamental moments about things he decides he does and doesn't like, and exhibits the ability to climb on and off of a trikeybike thingy like someone out of The Wild Bunch.

Fun. Unfathomable fun. He is becoming every minute of the day.

I am nightowling it here again. I just can't seem to go to sleep at a decent hour lately. I've been journalling as if I'm going for a world record and my eyes are hot in my head under my glasses. I've done little this year save for packing and talking about packing. My creative cycle is coming back around. It's pecking at the pet door while I sleep, flashing colors across my eyelids fear-and-loathing-like and threatening to do something if I don't start expressing on a surface.

Creativity is so fickle, like the best and worst lovers I've ever had. So pushy! It is only slightly satisfied with a colorful sketch, a bit more full when I fill page after page, running the ink out of pens, elated when I spread out all of the art supplies and magazine cuttings, and over the moon for elaborate plans detailing my next big idea. During this dengue of a full moon holiday, a day without some form of creation is worse than not eating all day. It has a mind of its own.

I had cold cereal for dinner if that tells you anything.

Great Love

"Great love-the kind that illumines and transforms us-always includes a keen awareness of limitation as well. Though love may inspire us to expand and develop in new ways, we can never be all things to the one we love, or someone other than who we are. Yet once accepted, limitation also helps us develop essential qualities, such as patience, determination, compassion and humor. When love comes down to earth-bringing to light those dark corners we would prefer to ignore, encompassing all the different parts of who we are-it gains depth and power." --John Welwood

I would add: get lovin and make mistakes while you're at it.

More Birds

Owl is a lonely critter. Where does he belong but in solitary? Symbolically, he opens the door to the unconscious, stimulates lucid dreaming, and points to the shadows where secrets and wisdom are hiding.

What I like best about owl is that he reminds us that the light of the sun is ever alive in the dark of the night. I like to think we are all connected by our little inner sparks.

What quiet truths are owl's eyes illuminating for you?

Penguin

Did you know that a male Emperor penguin holds the newly laid egg on its foot to prevent it from freezing to the ice? He holds it there for two months until it hatches, protecting it with his feathers! He won't even eat until the hatchling is safe and mother takes over. I could bet that our papa penguin would do it for Miles. I may have to toss him a few bowls of mac n cheese from time to time, but the man is committed. We are so like the penguins, B has got the endurance and I've got the supercharged nurturing, boo boo kissing, cure all power for what ails the babe. Today that would be crowding dogs drooling up in his grill, too much walking practice and wooden food that tastes of splinters. Remedied by hysterical bouts of laughter at flatulance sounds, wearing my camera lenscover on his face half the day and quinoa and coconut macaroons. It is still freezing here, so outdoors is off limits for my blood. I ran out to the store tonite in eleven degree weather. There is a pile of bowl-shaped ice on the grass, a result of having to dump out pet water turned solid every morning and refill it. Our lucky animals get to sleep inside, one under the covers even. Moving day is upon us, yet we sat on the couch watching the first season of Angel, a Christmas present from my brother, and ignoring mountains of random items that are beginning to form just about everywhere. One more night of penguin love won't hurt.

Waking Up

The hour is striking so close above me, so clear and sharp, that all my senses ring with it. I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

Rilke

Warm Inside

Most of the snow has melted from two weeks ago, but word is that we will be seeing some flurries this weekend. It's hard not to be able to spend lots of time outside with Miles, we both suffer cabin fever. But it's especially nice to curl up warm and cozy and read books and snuggle with the little imp.

I love this book by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman because it includes animals not often in kids books, a bouncy yet satisfying rhythm for a toddler, features yummy food mentions, (this always has the ability to stir something wonderful in my core, as in the teacakes eaten in Narnia and golden lembas of Middle Earth) great illustrations, and friendship.

I'm reading for me, too:

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
Celebrating Silence, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions and Cash, Liz Perle

I made vegetable pie again, except this time I added in a can of corn chowder from Trader Joes and I stir fried the veggies instead of boiling. Mmmm. Even better.

Can't live without tea.

Can't live without this face lighting up my life every day, from the lion roars in the morning to the monkey calls in his highchair.

True Love and What to Do

“What you feel only matters to you. It’s what you do to the people you say you love. That’s what matters. That’s the only thing that counts.” --Stephen (Tom Wilkinson), The Last Kiss

More now than ever.

Bring Bring

For a few years I have been devouring up books about archetype and personality disorders. I am beginning to believe from my experience of life thus far, that we "bring" our stuff to everything we do and each conversation we have. I don't like to think of it as if I am not an individual of my own making, but I think it kind of is.

If we try to undo or change something about ourselves in our lifetimes, I think it may be because we learned it (probably at a very, very young age) and it has become a part of us. This, in it's negative state, feels a bit parasitical. I find that I want to pick off certain qualities about myself that are deeply ingrained, like an elusive late summer chigger in my sock that is so difficult to locate and so irritating.

Personality disorders (as defined by the DSM) are pretty serious, but in their descriptions are lots of little features, which someone may possess as a trait, without having an actual disorder. I find it enlightening to know what causes these features to come forward in a person. Childhood experiences seem to form such a huge basis for how we interpret what happens to us and how we cope.

I have an alcoholic parent and grandparents, (so common, of course), so much of my healing deals with looking at the borderline personality. This is strictly my opinion, but I would have to wager that a very large portion of alcoholics are borderlines or have those traits. (They can go from loving to scary pretty quickly, causing a child to be anxious while waiting for the parent's mood to shift. Those who are impulsive spenders, reckless with money or sex, overeat, abuse substances, ruminate about other's words and actions, self mutilate, rage on friends, family or strangers, engage in feeling really guilty, shameful or self-loathing may also fall into this classification. There is much much more to it that this, but this is what stands out for me.)

This is a lot of unraveling to do in one lifetime.

Back to what we bring to our experiences(stay focused!): I have avoided saying certain things to my son because I have a negative association about them. "Ssshhhh" is one such thing we don't say around here. I perceive it as rude and as shutting down anothers feelings and words. If he has something to say, I want to hear it-no matter how it might hurt my ears. Iwant to comfort him without shutting down his process.

If you are a fan of Harvey Karp, then you know that Ssshhh is one of his famous 5 S's to create The Happiest Baby on the Block. I know Harvey's onto something. All of our friends think he is brilliant-and if you see the babies respond to his S's, melting like magical little malted milk balls in his hand-a stranger's hand!-you would believe him, too. But I still don't dig that Ssssshhhhing word.

A friend recently pointed out how I'm bringing that negative association to the experience, so of course it's going to feel wrong and weird to me. How I love this friend! I'm still not going to Ssshh, but talking about how I came to believe what ssshhhing would result in was enlightening and I needed that!

Here are some of my favorite reads on the subject of psyche, personality, archetype:

She - Robert Johnson (and also He and We)
Four Archetypes - C.G. Jung
The Moon and The Virgin - Nor Hall
The Heroine's Journey - Maureen Murdock (a major goodie)
Women Who Run With the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Understanding the Borderline Mother - Christine Ann Lawson

In the last decade I have turned to these more times than I can count. There is a pattern here, in these selections, that myth and fairy tale are used to describe experiences and personality tendencies.

I read because I want to stop bringing that earlier mentioned "stuff" to how I interpret the world. I want to feel that inner spark within me helping me be more courageous, more in love with the truth.

I admit, I want to feel whole.

Blasphemia?

A friend of ours recieved this book for Christmas, rather ironically!, and he and B stood discussing it in the kitchen on Monday evening. The girls bustled around the table serving black eyed peas, greens and cheese grits (our New Year's Day tradition) and I eavesdropped from the dining room, sipping my chardonnay and being a total chick who eavesdrops.

I generally stay out of discussions about God and religion, but with an atheistic husband, I tune in and see if I can learn something new.

The topic seemed to be about organized religion as child abuse, something I've never thought about. I'm from California! Eternal damnation is not discussed in the grocery lines as I imagine it might be elsewhere. And though I come from a line of quasi-baptisty-types, I've never actually been threatened with going to hell, even for the worst of my misdemeanors.

So the idea is that when little children learn about Hell and how you can get in there and not get out, and how very, very hot it surely is, it can be very frightening for them. I reckon they might envision the judgy "Hangman God" as Elizabeth Gilbert describes Him, sitting up on an ornate throne beyond the gates personally deciding the fate of naughty little children and slashing the heads off of thieves and such. I'd never thought about it, but this sounds really fucking nightmarish! I've never thought about what a child must think when they are threatened with eternal damnation.

Hmm.

Another weird thing that I didn't know was that atheists or those who question religion (i don't think he meant spirituality, mind you) cannot be elected to public office. Is this true?? Maggie, I know you will be able to enlighten me here. (Please note that I would have linked Maggie, but I keep getting redirected to some weird page with a dog and a scanty Santa on it.)

I'm on fire with the topics these days, but I'm just itching to see what you readers think. Could organized religion be considered child abuse? Go!

New Year Tortoise Journey

I went to an amazing gathering on Saturday because a friend called out for help. So often there is struggle, yet we don't ask for help. I want to honor everyone who bravely reaches out for reassurance and offer encouragement to those who still experience their challenges alone. May we all find our sacred circles this year!

While I sat in this circle of deep-feeling women, so in touch with their sorrow, anger, shame + immense joy, triumph, and gratitude, I felt very blessed to have this in my life. I sit with women on a really regular basis and it saves my life almost every time. I am surrounded by women well versed in sacred ceremony, feminine ritual and healing. How in the world did I get here? I suppose it isn't a mystery at all, but it does seem a lifetime away from my life in the city six years ago.

In our circles, we do a round of sharing first (after ritual smudging & prayers), which used to be really difficult for me. Being vulnerable has been a problem for me until the last few years. The mistress of ceremonies had built a fire outside and in the new year tradition, we all brought along something to burn up and let go of. I actually brought four things! One woman wore a snakeskin printed shirt and pants over her black leggings and top and when she spoke of what she would be letting go (her grown children as well as the shame of many past events) she peeled off the garments and tossed them on the altar. So cool.

One of the aspects of gathering in sacred ceremony that I like best is journey work. Shamanic healers use journeys to travel to other realms of consciousness to bring back tools and wisdom for the tribe. We typically use it to locate help and then, in sharing about them, give that information to those sitting with us to ponder as well. Helping oneself evolve is also, to me, of great help to the near and dear ones to us. As I see it, everyone benefits on this path of growth and healing.

Journey work is not always easy for me. My mind gets in my way, so I'm often nudging it off the path to try to be more open to the vision. Sometimes the process whizzes along like a dream, others limp along until a spark ignites and I can get to work.

In this particular journey, I met a guide whom I have never travelled with before, the giant tortoise. I think of turtle medicine to be about slowing down, so I was dazzled when I rode this giant reptile as he plodded along steadily, without being slow at all. His giant, elephant like feet clomped and I splayed over his shell, admiring the colors and striations as the events of my life passed along beside us on the blue and sandy evening landscape. I was in no hurry to get anything done, a huge lesson in patience that I need in this realm bigtime. I experienced some other unfamiliar sensations that don't happen often for me, also, with shapeshifting. My neck began to scale over as I lay my cheek on the shell, and I felt his medicine come into my body. We conversed about meditation and how reconnecting each day, each hour-to be exact, with my intention is what I must do in order to see that intention manifest. He also offered me some pink jasper for earthly assistance. I have this thing about clutching rocks, which the turtley friend in my unconscious was obviously privy to.

Tortoise medicine is a reminder that we will succeed in time over the burdens and changes occuring in life. They also tell us that we never face anything that we can't handle. They point to primal senses, rhythms and using skills appropriately. They ask us to focus on life's essential needs when we feel overwhelmed or hectic.

When the drumming callback arrived, I was still dialoguing squawkily with Mr. Tortoise. As I scurried up the rabbit hole and back to consciousness, I heard a horse whinny. The house mistress had put her beloved Sundance down on Wednesday, and I do believe he was galloping across the valley of my journey as I returned to her living room.

Wishing each of you all of the tools required for you to see the magic waiting for you in 2007.