Pink Coyote

Spring Medicine Weekend

M touches Auntie Chris's tummy belly (TB).

Off for another round of gathered women to celebrate the magical changing of the seasons and commune with nature.  This group always seems to gather when my body needs mass quantities of rest or nuturing of some kind.  This week my neck and shoulder are giving me such grief!  I'm looking foward to sitting by a fire and asking someone to put their healing hands on me.  I need to plug in and recharge!

I'll be thinking of you from far above sea level...

I don't know where the time goes.  The days look so different now that I am working and a parent.  I don't think I realized how things like writing blogs and reading blogs would fall to the wayside, among other things.  The funny thing is that I blog in my head every day!  I will lie awake writing about my day or about a miraculous moment.  When I never get around to putting it here, I feel somehow like a part of that moment becomes lost in the flurry.  This format has become like a little photo journal of motherhood and creativity, airing my laundry and sharing plans for the future.  It is sometimes difficult to just let my blog float around unattended out here in cyberspace, knowing that I'm not keeping up on it.  Somehow just sitting in the discomfort of the things I can't get to is good medicine for me.  Being quiet with uncomfortable feelings is something I don't love.  This must be a big reason why at times I've filled my clock up with people and events and work and all of those consuming things. 

I am still doing too much.  I've got a retreat in April, one in May, a vision quest in June, a proper vacation in September, and clients who wish I was working more.  I don't practice what I'm preaching to all of them, which is to slow down!  I do try. It seems weeding in the garden is never done. I'm noticing what comes up for me when I put the brakes on everything.  The stillness makes me anxious.  A fear that I'm missing out on something or that life might just very well pass me by occurs to me.  Or lonely feelings from my childhood creep in, coupled with a boredom I don't fully understand, but it feels like life isn't working and that I must do something to make it work. 

Doing healing work has a surprisingly grounding effect on me in the middle of all of this "doing". While I'm working, I feel like the hands on the clock are moving slower.  Do you ever feel like this?  That when you are doing a work you are meant to do, that you are suspended in time?  Though the physical labor part of it exhausts me by days end, I feel of great value in my community and I come home to put my babe to bed feeling fulfilled.  Right now, I have time for little else (besides retreating with women, apparently).  Some items on my life list must wait for a while before I can nurture them into giant sunflowers, as now is a time to keep my nose to the grindstone and my eye on the prize.

Circling

I met with my mountain circle this weekend for our quarterly pilgrimage inward and into nature, and my heart always comes back feeling so full.  I LOVE retreats.  It is the way I  most love to formally recharge.  Each new year I make lists of how I plan to take care of myself better so that I'm a happier mom & partner, better bodyworker, savvier businessperson, fulfilled artist...often the lists include eating more whole foods, planning more creative excursions, taking workshops from people I admire and want to learn from and stretching my comfort zone in all areas of my life.  I find that retreating with women-for a day or for a week at a time-gives me the longest lasting and most inspiring results to step forward into my world with.  A shaman brings medicine to the tribe after journeying into the outer realms of consciousness for information and guidance.  When I come back from time away, I always feel like I've grown in some sacred way.  I always learn something valuable about myself and those I'm circling with.  I've come to rely on this time with other women.  I'm pretty sure my life depends on it.

Be Who You Are

"What blocks most people from manifesting their dreams in life is their fear of being who they are.  Sometimes this is a fear of non-acceptance from others.  Sometimes it is a fear of failing.  Sometimes it is simply because their whole life has conditioned them to live in a manner entirely alien to who they really are. 

Once you 'be' who you are, then you must do what is necessary to be you."

--Ted Andrews, Animal Speak

Good Little Deaths

It seems that everywhere I turn, the people in the various communities that surround me are experiencing little deaths.  From a shamanic point of view, we journey to undergo psychic death of an idea or something we just can't seem to figure out, in order to come back with the energy and perception of someone who has been born anew.

I find it exciting to know that I live during a time where people speak openly about what it is they struggle with, that healing comes to us when we refuse to repress our mistakes and weaknesses.  I am so thrilled that my son gets to grow up in a generation where many of us embrace that it is okay to make mistakes!

Like mythical heroes, we get to leave our challenges behind and plant our feet firmly on the path to our adventure of self-discovery and greater conscious awareness.  We can choose to be "unstuck" from the sticky mess the generations before us may have been mired in, and blogging, meeting with, and talking with friends helps this process unfold.  It seems that by exposing our stories, we find ourselves acting out or embodying the plots of the heroes within us and rising to heights up and beyond what we may have felt set up to do.  This is so inspiring to me.  I feel grateful.

Today seems time to move further into my journey. 

"Today there are support groups and twelve-step programs for almost everything.  Just a few years ago, people were embarrassed if they had to see a psychologist; now they discuss their therapists over lunch with their friends and colleagues.  We have seen a proliferation of self-help books that have avid readers. Ours is, in some ways, a culture that wants to get well, and one increasingly open to spiritual as well as scientific means for getting there."--Carol S. Pearson

GREAT JOURNEY RESOURCES THAT NEVER GET OLD:

The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell (or anything by Campbell or Jung).

The Heroine's Journey, Maureen Murdock.

Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places, James Hollis. (sounds dreary, but really a good resource for any challenge any of us face-great, too, for anyone with residual anxiety, fear, doubt, angst, among the other depressed states)

Soul Retrieval:Mending the Fragmented Self, Sandra Ingerton (a good source if your soul was really abused by neglect, abandonment or trauma).

Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner. 

The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, Carol S. Pearson

and, of course, anything by Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson. 

How will you hear your truth speaking to you today? 

Rest in the Nest

I don't think anything could have prepared me for feeling as tired as parenthood has made me feel.  I've never been one to be able to burn the candle at both ends for too long without feeling it, but lately I feel I could go to sleep for days.  My fantasy is that my dreams would work through all of my mental quandries and I would wake up feeling refreshed and recharged.

Working as a massage therapist means that I deliver much-needed rest and healing to others, which is a strong declaration for anyone once they claim that service for themselves, don't you think?

I think being an older mom means that I don't have the energy these twenty-something moms have (Nina).  This makes it really difficult for me to decide whether to have another baby, which is on my mind a lot lately, too.  I can't imagine feeling this tired three or four years from now!  Miles usually sleeps through the night in his room and has been doing this pretty consistently for nearly a year.  I feel like I need to pay back the deficit from all of the moving, travelling and sick nights back in the summer. 

I have got to take this season to slow down.  I think I need to strategize. Do you know of any tricks I might try? Here are some things I thought I could do to try to recharge myself:

*Do less.

*Make fewer plans at night and on weekends.

*Hire a housekeeper.

*Eat power foods.

*Cook for the upcoming week on weekends.

*Take my vitamins instead of letting them rot on the shelves.

*Exercise.  Hello!

*Try to sleep in one day on the weekend.

I'm sure there is an antiquated copy of Women's Day magazine lying around in a local thrift store that has all of the answers.  That would be too easy.  Send your amazing magical remedies my way and help a Pixie out.