Pink Coyote

Summering

For the last week, the children and I have been staying at a friend's house near San Diego. We make an annual pilgrimage here to beat the heat, but most importantly because it is a tradition.

Each year our friends, affectionately known as "the twins", have their birthday, and we head down for what is always an amazing time away. It gives me a taste of living communally, traveling alone with *two*, and of managing my own self-care as I navigate being out of my own home territory for longer than usual.

I love that we have this tradition, and that our friend's doors are open to us. I'm so grateful for this message which has been coming through so loudly from so many of your comments in my last post. It's so very lovely to feel so welcome...thank you. I'm so excited by this journey and being away from home has given me ample time to develop more questions and answers about how to go about it.

Returning in a few days, we're just going to have a bit more time in the water and sun before heading home where my mind and my worktable are piled high and deadlines are looming.

But I'm not going to think about it until Wednesday....

Road School

 

The Tiki Ti is about to get a little makeover as she readies her sails and points coastward in the month of August. I have to make curtains to go over the little bamboo rods and she needs a major cleaning. I think it may be time for vintage hula boobie girl to retire as an indoor knick-knack.

My curiosity is getting the best of me and I have to know something. Which for me means that I have to do it. Rather than read every book on the subject and do lots of research, what generally works best for me is Julia Cameron's "leap and the net will appear" theory.

What I'm talking about is the idea I have in my head to take the kids roadtripping instead of Miles first year of Kindergarten (which would begin Fall '11). My thought is that we can explore native cultures, native plants, create a field guide from our findings, include plenty of local food, and spend a good part of a homeschooling year traveling. It is my dream to travel my children. It is so important to me that they get to experience the wonders of the American landscape well before they are grown up and have little time to fit in a trip a year!

I have a year to explore, have conversations with you who homeschool, a year to plan destinations, create strategies to keep them calm and cool in the car while dealing, no doubt with flat tires, and all manner of roadside bummers. I have one full year to find those who have done it and lived to tell about it. I have a calendar to practice hitching up, pulling in, squeezing out, parking her at a grocery store lot, keeping the right food on hand, and what to do when bears come knocking.

Basically, learning to be the girl scout I've always wanted to be.

I want to offer my wild children a different path. I want to show them and teach them about their environments and the soil. I want to see them surf the Great Mother and learn to speak the language of the plants, stones and animals.

 

I've been on a fiery rampage for weeks now as I've been clearing the last of the clinging, asthmatic virus out of my system. This weekend's jaunt to Yosemite Nat'l Park with treasured girlfriends was watery and cooling to my inflamed disposition.

The falls are so magnificent; if you haven't seen them, you are missing out. The giant Sequoias, Redwoods, Lodgepole pines, Oaks, and the blankets of flora on the valley were so soothing. The air was incredible.

We stayed on a lovely 180 acre horse ranch and soaked up the landscape, each other's love, our passion for growth, and bits that needed healing.

To Yosemite With Love

On the road...see you Monday, loves.

Give and Run

(Taken with my Palm Pixi)

Lately I've been giving away far too much of my emotional energy, to causes that are not nourishing me enough to continue on with. I'm always surprised at how willing I am to give myself away in tiny bits until there is nothing left for me. It's like carving off little hunks of flesh and handing them out to every hungry stranger on the streetcorner.

When it became painfully apparent that I was doing this, I decided something drastic needed to be done. It's been six official days since Ivy hasn't nursed. My hormones are wandering aimlessly and my mind is unconsciously seeking out ways to fill that space...the space of my baby not needing me in that way anymore. It's created a host of triggers, all terribly unexpected.

A voice inside has been urging me to "RUN"...and after a bit of thought, I decided to take it literally. I bought a new pair of running shoes and hit the trail at sunrise twice this weekend. It seems the negative energy was piling up on me, and it almost feels like it's chasing me at times (along with a mad case of PMS).

I can't explain how lovely it was to be up that early, all on my own, to hit the ground running and meet a physical goal. Other than giving birth, I have had no real fitness aspirations in over five years! I can't do gyms because I feel like a hamster. And there is not abundant nature here. But there is a bike path that runs through town, past a lake and through some trees and a park, where bootcampers run obstacle courses at 5 am and cyclists buzz past on my left.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a Great Blue Heron, a Red-Tailed Hawk, a lizard, a jackrabbit, a family of ducks and ducklings and a whole barrage of ground squirrels chilling on the quarry-like busted up cement rocks that lie on the side of the trail. At that hour, birds were  everywhere and it was not unlike a Zen meditation to walk and run along at the pace I felt comfortable at with nothing to very little circling around in my bean.

Rather than run away from the feelings that were surfacing, I felt like I was running straight into them, sweating them out of my skin and transmuting them into positive energy. When I left the path today, I began to evaluate how I deal with my reserves. It seemed clear that there are a few areas which need major improvement.

I give a lot of energy to the children, as all moms and women seem to give to their homes, families, and pets. This is the kind of giving that gives back, but not necessarily in energy. I also give a lot of emotional energy to friendship; and in most cases, this feeds me, too. And then there are some things that take without giving back. And after a while, the drain becomes more than I have noticed. It slips through the cracks of my awareness and I am realizing, with some urgency, that I have to bring that into balance. It is simply too easy to give myself away without replenishing the well.

This little lesson comes up again and again for me, surprising me with its varied masks and causes. When I do as I was taught, when stress is starting to siphon my tank, I come back to tending my own garden by giving my attention to what is in front of me, and to...my breath.

It is my simple confirmation of existence that needs no prompting, and it came to me that it is the only thing I truly have that belongs to me.

Doors

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite”. --William Blake

I've been photographing doors like crazy these summer weeks. Each time I see an old, weathered door, a big red door, a yellow art deco door, I must stop to take its picture. There is something about the draw to open and go through them that I am taken with at the moment. Perhaps it speaks of risk-taking, which for me comes back to faith. Faith that if I walk through, I will accept what comes with my choice and be glad that I chose to try something rather than play it safe. Going through most portals into unfamiliar territory has always taken me on fine adventures.

I think that becoming a mom has caused me to try to be far more careful about which doors I choose to go through, for fear of what the repercussions might be that would affect the children. And with the weaning of Ivy, which is now complete, the call to enter more adventuresome realms is just a bit louder.

The quest to seek, play, discover and uncover is strong for me. I keep trying to find a way to integrate my need for these things with my need to be an undistracted mother.

I'd love to hear how you do it, that is, balance your idea of what kind of mother, partner, friend you'd like to be with the things that call out so persistently. This is classic feed-the-wild-woman-archetype territory, so please throw your ingredients into the pot and let's swirl them all together and see what magic may come.