Pink Coyote

The Juicy Details

Soujourning with women fills me up. Circling sacred is deep and personal to me, whether I'm the spaceholder or being held. Time in nature with incredible femmes lights my fire in all ways.

Such was the weekend at Teahouse and Point Reyes. If you've never taken a workshop at Teahouse, you must know how warm and inviting it is. The sun streams in the windows, falling across oversized mugs, piles of boxes of teas, little fists of stuffed grape leaves, open bars of spicy chocolate... The women who operate out of the space are well known in the arts community for prolific paintings and vintage-feel photos. They know their colorful, inspiring stuff.

Circle was held with fourteen of us, four journeys around the Medicine Wheel, prayer ties, a loungey lunch in the sunshine, and closing ceremony by Strawberry Creek. A few who came had not journeyed before, and all are exploring the various ways to see and think more symbolically and connected-to-nature about their lives.

 

As always, but not to homogenize how I feel about the power of women who gather, the caliber of dames was off the charts. And you know, my thoughts on this have nothing to do with what they do in the world, but with how deeply they are willing to go. Each time I sit in this distinct and never-ending shape, I am affirmed in my belief that every woman is a healer, every one a mother, a nurturer, a stewardess of the Earth in her own distinct way.

photo by Dominique Ridley

A magic moment during the third round occurred when each woman took a journey to obtain a message for the person lying next to her. A goddess with a goddess's name had received a blessing from Snake for her neighbor and we sat in disbelief when she was complete and the recipient stood up and unveiled a giant Snake tattoo that wrapped up her leg and up to her thigh. Magic happens, and it's very affirming and transformational. I think being seen by someone who doesn't know you and isn't attached, carries mystical medicine.

A magical meal was shared at Tacubaya, tortilla soup and chile relleno I won't soon forget.

More magic unfolded as we travelled out the next day to Point Reyes National Seashore, a no-longer-in-use turn of the century creamery with barns still standing at the edge of a Tule Elk preserve.

Elke May sounds a terrific lot like "alchemy"

I walked barefoot along the cool trail, where the Elk wander down, deeply breathing the air, drinking up the sun, and enjoying the company of some mighty fine women. Elk is a mother for me, sturdy and nourishing, comforting and serene. Communing with her energy ran my cup over.

Thank you SO much to the women who gathered and made beauty and medicine with me!

Weekend at Teahouse and Point Reyes Elk

This weekend unfolded beautifully beginning with a Saturday live Lodge journey circle at Teahouse Studio in Berkeley, CA with a very open-hearted group of women whom I would like to share with you here. Promise. I'll give a full report of the serious MAGIC this week.

Then it gave way to a hike out to Point Reyes Station, after winding up the curvaceous roads through a magical fern forest and past many clovery fields of cows.

photo by Elke May

I'm so grateful to my co-pilots, who kept me inspired, chatted, coffee'd and fed on our journey, and to SouLodge clansister Alara Castell, who created the below video for us to recount our magic moments in Elk country.

 

Yuks in the City

Thank you all so very much for your sweet comments and shares last week over the loss of my cat. It was a very difficult time and I had to key into my intuition in a way that makes me pretty uncomfortable until I'm certain that it makes sense in the end. This is that part of trusting the journey that I get to practice a lot. I've been sensing him around us and it's heartening to know that his extreme loving energy is still at work from the other side. I've been snuggling up to his brother and sharing my thoughts with him, which is nice. It is wholly strange to be a one cat household for the first time in almost 16 years.

Last week I joined an enormous group of freinds in New York City to celebrate a friend's showcase at American Songbook in Lincoln Center. Jonatha Brooke played for us in an intimate theater with Dar Williams and we were all able to get together in one place afterward for some communing, which did my heart so much good. It was a whirlwind trip, but so worth it to be able to support Jonatha's big moment sharing tracks from her tribute to Woodie Guthrie. She is our songbird of Squam Art Workshops and it's been a highlight of attending and teaching there to hear her cathartic tunes these years. Her words and voice move me to tears every time I have the blessing to see her.

The very best part of rooming with and seeing some of my favorite girls is that we laughed, laughed and laughed more than I really believed possible.

I left for the city not feeling altogether humorous, which is one of my best defenses for the crabby-gloomies, and I came home feeling released and clear.

 

Silly Swirly.

Sweet friends.

Beautiful Madison Park.

Always in motion.

Always memorable.

 

And...it's so good to be back home...

Yuks in the City

Thank you all so very much for your sweet comments and shares last week over the loss of my cat. It was a very difficult time and I had to key into my intuition in a way that makes me pretty uncomfortable until I'm certain that it makes sense in the end. This is that part of trusting the journey that I get to practice a lot. I've been sensing him around a lot and it's heartening to know that his extreme loving energy is still at work from the other side. I've been snuggling up to his brother and sharing my thoughts with him, which is nice. It is wholly strange to be a one cat household for the first time in almost 16 years.

Last week I joined an enormous group of freinds in New York City to celebrate a friend's showcase at American Songbook in Lincoln Center. Jonatha Brooke played for us in an intimate theater with Dar Williams and we were all able to get together in one place afterward for some communing, which did my heart so much good. It was a whirlwind trip, but so worth it to be able to support Jonatha's big moment sharing tracks from her tribute to Woodie Guthrie. She is our songbird of Squam Art Workshops and it's been a highlight of attending and teaching there to hear her cathartic tunes these years. Her words and voice move me to tears every time I have the blessing to see her.

The very best part of rooming with and seeing some of my favorite girls is that we laughed, laughed and laughed more than I really believed possible.

I left for the city not feeling altogether humorous, which is one of my best defenses for the crabby-gloomies, and I came home feeling released and clear.

 

Silly Swirly.

Sweet friends.

Beautiful Madison Park.

Always in motion.

Always memorable.

 

As always, it's so good to be back home...

 

Easing Into Monday

Today is the first day of SouLodge, and so I am pouring my energy carefully into that beautiful vessel and feeling conservative. I'm nursing a terrible headcold as a result of many things happening all at once.

The most unexpected event, though I feel right with how it all went down, is that I lost my sweet cat on Friday night. He crossed over in my arms after making it very clear to me that day that he was finished fighting the strange virus that took him over the week before. That day he lingered in doorways, lying between worlds and preparing himself for the journey. I wanted him to go in peace, and I also wanted him to stay...for me. He was over fifteen and we had many good snuggling and hugging years together. Still, you know how it is-you know how letting go goes.

The sweet and tender woman Lis Hofmann left this on my Facebook page, for which I am so grateful-in all moments of grief this will stay with me:

"Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time."

- John O'Donohue

I'm just taking it slow and steady.

 

 

Major Foxy Changes

When I created this painting in 2009, Ivy Tallulah was just hatched, nursing up a storm on my front, and hanging around on my back while I launched my Etsy store and fed my creative fire with all of that juiced up mama hormone I'd experienced with Miles, but had been shy about working through then.

Change, the graceful gypsy.

I was feverishly connecting the dots between my art process and my spiritual practice, and so a sixty-piece series was born over the next three years featuring creatures departing colorful cityscapes, and headed for the wild woods- as we who practice journeywork experience each time we relax into the drums and depart consciousness for wisdom that resides deep within us.

What was so important to me was to integrate all of the separate categories and classifications of my life and roll them into my everday muchness. I'd been practicing shamanic journeys once a month in circle, painting on rare occasion, when Brandon would take Miles out for a walk, and mothering in a compartmentalized way that was unbalanced, and yet I was so wholly absorbed and in love with. I don't think I realized that I could do them all at once and not one of them would go hungry.

It was a very big three years. Today I sat looking through some old journals, tearing out pages on which I'd written letters to the babies in my belly, to put in their special tin boxes for later. I'd written all of my dreams down, and my journeys too, and I could see now, seven years beyond the first page of baby notes, how I'd been planting those seeds of integration back  then. I don't know why it surprised me, how it all matched up-why is it that we wake up each day and think that what we're building and growing is something new, when in fact, it's been unfolding all of this time? I suffer a bit of Groundhog Day syndrome sometimes, I think. In actuality, life is rolling along like a bicycle wheel going forward and also coming back around to the same place over and over...

Tomorrow is a very big day. As was prophesied in the pages of my journals, I'd yearned for our family to all be home together then, working and living under one shelter. Yet with the past year being the toughest ever on my fourteen-year marriage, I believed that I'd be releasing the sacred contract on the Winter Solstice just past. I'd known for some time that a very old something needed to be let go of. But Superdad and I made an entirely different decision, on the turn of a dime. We resolved to bring him home from his day job and put our family firmly together, rather than stretching it apart. The old way is the model that most of our parents showed us, which reminds me of the post-war television show Mad Men: that Dad is away from home about fifty hours a week, missing out on being a parent for most of the babes' waking hours and too tired to nurture his own creative dreams while turning someone else's crank. This family/work/life model has never worked for us, and it's caused us much grief to be out of alignment for this long.

That crafty vixen of change has shifted directions again, making her way out of my dreams and into Ordinary Reality, as my own multi-faceted processes have integrated into one, so she has come forth to appear right here for the whole, in real time. I share this somewhat vulnerably, as there is plenty of risk at hand. Though I must say, that nothing is worth more than taking it. Deeeep breath.

Another page is turning in this story- as my partner will arrive home tomorrow evening after the last day of a twenty-two year career in industrial design, to champagne and children full of anticipation-a piece of emotional parchment that I have held close to my chest (like aces).

It seems we'll be pioneering a new model from scratch (like cream biscuits).

***

Fox is graceful change. She begins her process by opening up to new patterns she may not have considered before. Fox changes herself to bring about a desired situation, not unlike shapeshifting. She may use camouflage or invisibility to burrow under and blend in if necessary, in order to find out how she fits in. She listens carefully, creates comfort all around her, and tunes into her instincts. Her keen perception serves her well when the time comes to make a decision. Fox cozies up and protects herself before she trots off into her new adventure- expecting the unexpected, and willing to be guided.

Becoming a Shaman

Maria Sabina, by David Ryan.

Gotcha.

Did you think I was going to give you ten steps? Share how I became a shaman?

This is such a funny subject to me. Funny because today there is so much talk about who shamans are and what they do, what defines a shaman and the like. I'm immersed in the talk. It may be because not many of us truly know what a shaman is, or, so as not to insult the intelligence of those who do, suffice to say that care must be taken to wrap (or unwrap) one's head around the notion.

My feeble attempt to explain is that a shaman is essentially trained in the very specific and traditional methods of shamanism that are unique to indigenous tribes and cultures. By elder shamans. These healers exist in nearly every culture. They take great pains and make tremendous sacrifices to develop intense connections with the spirit realm and with their helpers and guides. And then they are asked to use that power to heal members of the tribe. Indigenous peoples attribute illness to a loss of spiritual power, and so it is up to the shaman to restore them to health with all of the tools and helpers they can call upon. Can you imagine such a responsibility?

I am not one who is qualified for this, which is probably why I'm really uptight about the word shaman. I have been blessed to have studied with a medicine woman (whom I've never heard call herself a shaman before, I wonder if she'd consider that audacious?) who lives very much like a monk or a nun and has dedicated her life to her spiritual practice and honoring her spirit helpers, to the exclusion of many things you and I would consider essential for living a modern life. I think that's why the word holds so much power for me-because I know a bit about what her life really looks like.

The very good news, however, is that anyone can have a dedicated *practice*, in which they honor the sacred every day, develop their intimate relationships with spirit guides and allies, consider the Earth and her resources as holy, drum, dance, sing, tell the stories, light the candles and fires, fast, sweat, receive the gifts that the Plant People have to offer, pray, meditate, create altars and shrines, caretake the young ones and the elders, commune with ancestors on the other side, work with sacred tools, talk to the animals, and revere life with gratitude.

This is what is sometimes referred to as a shamanic practitioner. I don't want to get all left-brain on ya'll, but you know- it helps to make clear distinctions. A great many people want to walk the path (that is made simply by walking) but have fear about what to call themselves (I vote for no labels, lest ye accept the dogma that comes with it) or fear appropriating customs. Borrowing from cultural traditions can be a very serious business, particularly here in our Native America.

A good rule of thumb, I think, (and I hope I don't have to eat these words) is that if something is practiced in many tribes or cultures, such as drumming, for example-it could be OK. Comparitively, if a friend taught you a song in his or her language, it would not be OK to share it with most folk. I sometimes have to work up the nerve just to sing them to myself, they're such a gift. It's like Grandmother's silver times a thousand. To tell you the truth, I wish I had more to offer about what is OK and what is not. Sacred practice is a very personal and intimate journey. Much must be determined by your own ethics, and then triple checked by going into the ancient well within for council.

The very best news is that this work is calling to many. It is needed in a BIG way.

We find ourselves standing at the edge of the well, having made it that far, just having heard a distant call and knowing we had to walk. We're called "seekers" and such, those who follow the faraway sounds, right? Perhaps we know that stashed away in our biology are caches of memories of how to honor the sacred. Going there will not make us...anything at all- not a holy person, not better than our brother or sister, not to be rewarded. Little that we find there will support delicate, thirsty ego.

However, we make the trips into the unknown anyway, because we didn't come to the well to stand at the edge and wish.

We came to the well to remember.

TeaLodge Chat with Stefanie Renee Lindeen

I'm getting really excited for the end of the month, when I'll be holding the first live Lodge circle of the year at Teahouse Studios. There are nine spots left, so if setting the tone for your year of *spiritual creativity* in person is high on your list, then jump on in. We'll be using shamanic journey technique (Yes, I'll be drumming) to go inward for the inner council of animal totems, guides, ancestral healers, and helpers who will see us through 2012.

In the audio below, Stefanie Renee, partner at Teahouse Studio and mamaphotographer extraordinaire and I share a casual call to talk about about what the space is like and what we can expect when we circle together in Berkeley on the 28th of January... and in which I am unusually giddy and celebratory :) (Or maybe not so unusually)

 

TeaLodge-Chat-with-Stefanie

This is a one-day workshop, which takes place on Saturday. A group of us from the workshop will be going out to Point Reyes for a picnic on Sunday in the hopes of spotting some Tule Elk, so send me an email if you'd like to know more about how to get in on that after our day together. I hope to see you there in the divinely feminine room of cozy eastern sunlight...

 

 

Sacred Space. Whenever Possible. Repeat.

Gifts from Wendy & Satch

I've been taking some time to read again, which is something I can do between Lodges, and in Winter, where the season lends itself to snuggling down and reconnecting with the writings I love. The four of us were driving in the car on New Year's Day, a day on which I made choices to do little bits of all of the things I wanted to have more of throughout the year. Such as:

• Sleep nine hours
• Make amazing coffee
• Huge breakfast
• Green smoothie
• Read with kids
• Take a nap
• Connect with close friends
• Hike in the trees with family, explore and play
• Pulled cards
• Wrote a bit
• Took a bath
• Didn't freak out about anything

The idea was to create the blueprint for what every day life can sometimes look like by inviting all of those elements in to play on New Year's Day. Kind of a new ritual for me, but it was lovely, and I've found myself wanting to take the whole of January to set the tone for the year-which has got to be about filling up as much as I give out. Because it's not so much what we do, it's about how we feel- how we remember our days, right? If I was conscious of my choices, I usually have a more satisfied feeling at the end of the day. It was really about choosing energy.

Tonight, I lazily flipped open my copy of Medicine for the Earth, my favorite of all of Sandra Ingerman's books, and read this passage:

One of the missing pieces to all healing today is understanding the power of creating sacred space. Creating sacred space, as I refer to it here, means the vast energy created by people's individual energies joining together in a room. Today many people create sacred space by actually designing a room, an office, or a house in such a way that allows more energy, vitality, and soul to inhabit that space, but this is not what I am speaking of here.

Over my years of teaching I have noticed what happens when I create a strong container for thie group. Miracles! Why? Because everyone in the group can feel safe in opening up to the power of love. Here is a definition of power that I like to use in my work: Power is the ability to use energy.

When everyone in a room is focused on using their energy to support, love and heal others, that is exactly what occurs, and this is the energy that supports miracles.

In the practice of cross-cultural shamanic healing it is well known that the power of healing for an individual or for a piece of land is multiplied exponentially by the number of compassionate family, friends, and community members present at the healing. This occurs because the community present agrees to put their personality and egos aside, allowing for a greater spiritual energy to be called forth and gather the healing work.

Her work has had a tremendous effect on me since I was handed a copy of Soul Retrieval in 2000, but this book is the one I come back to again and again. It's messages are seared into me. It's affirmed all that I have learned to do instinctively, all that I have learned to do from others far wiser than myself, and helped me believe in the power of energy-negative and positive, and how we can raise it, quiet it, transform it, and make something beneficial and useful of it. I'm a Virgo, so I'm big on *usefulness*, as in "Thomas is a VERY useful engine!"

What I think we sometimes don't realize in our virtual society, is that energy is created behind the scenes, in everything we do. An online living room, such as this one, shows you what I think is worthy to share, but I also come here to flesh out my mistakes and show a bit of underbelly from time to time. What I have learned within six months of Lodge and hundreds of amazing women doing the soulwork with me, is that we all have the power to raise energy, to transmute the negative, to inch ever more slowly towards love, beginning with ourselves. We must begin to trust that if we can transmute what works against us inside of us, then it will show up that way outside of us.

I'm not talking about perfect behavior or not having human flaws, clearly that's not what this is all about-but, how to love ourselves through our humanness by allowing the Divine in to shine down a bit of wisdom now and again.

I took a journey to the Upper World last night to see what my protective energy field looked like-I'm always afraid that I will create a brick wall when I need protection- and that has not served me well at all. I will keep the medicine close to my heart, but I will say that it was a magnificent show of clarity and imperviousness, while allowing for a vast flow of love around, in, and out of me. I felt held by the Universe, in a safe and beautiful container which allows me to do all that I want to, with the boundaries in place, and what I have to give moving freely. It was a gift from Source that made me feel, for a snapshot, able to deal with the human foibles that I create by being me every day. Like spinning in circles at an onslaught of breakfast commands with no coffee, and yelling to regain control in the kitchen (I dislike that I yell at or near my children more than anything else). The vision held me throughout the day as the eruptions that take place around here bubbled and spat. I didn't cease to raise my voice, but I also didn't flog myself for it.

And this is why I thought it was interesting that I opened the book to page 99 tonight and read the above passage. Community energy + heart intention x balanced boundaries = Sacred space. Integrity. Hope. Healing. Vitality. Inside and out. Whenever possible. Repeat.

 

OMG She Stole My Life!

Something I give a lot of thought to, consciously and abstractly, is the phenomenon of women comparing themselves to others. Do men do this? Honestly? It seems like nothing blows a hole in a nicely rolling tire more than the feeling that someone else is doing it better than us. Or, ever get that false sense of confidence from thinking you're doing it a bit better than at least one other person, so that carries you a mile or two, until they ride up on your ass and pop a hole in that flimsy theory, too?

There are so many things to stop a woman. Too many.

I remember picking up Spilling Open by Sabrina Ward Harrison when I was in my late twenties, (headed back to art school) and upon devouring it, thinking, "This young and beautiful artist stole my life! Tart!"

I don't know that I really believed it, because though I have stumbled over my perceived inadequacy many times, seldom have I been stuck in a creative quagmire for long. In the end- not long after reading Sabrina's works, whom I'd erstwhile fashioned a graven image of- I discovered that, indeed, she did not steal my life, and that my very own life and expression of it was waiting for me just up around the bend- and that I could feel free to meet it whenever I was ready to face that my expressive arts weren't really going to look like the work of those I admired. The whole process was going to be a bit rougher, more informal, messier, tattered around the edges, fumbling, frustrating, sometimes even foolish.

I am blessed to create what I create, to birth what I birth, to hold a safe container for others' messy processes to wriggle out into the world. My extremely original writerly comadre Marybeth told me that it's the midwife's job to sit on her hands and sing songs in the other room, while all-the-while trusting that mama can do it, that baby can do it, and that all will come into being just as it is meant to. I'm so grateful to her for this metaphor.

Sometimes we have to do this for ourselves. Ego and Personality can sit, godparentlike, in the other room, singing sacred and holy favorite hymns, while true path is born from the unconscious into the conscious realm. Shamans laugh at this reality we live in, calling it the illusion, while the inner realms- journey and transparent contact with higher dimensions-THAT is reality. It is that very transcendent place which birth occurs from.

No one can touch what happens in our dreams, in our journeys, our active imaginations, and meditations. The sacred realm is ours alone. And though we are all connected beyond space and time there, unified, spirit-wise, what is very deep within us comes forth when we make the journey inward to meet it.

What I mean to say, really, is that we can strike an agreement here. We can agree that we are not afraid of each other. We can agree to trust that my baby will not look or act like your baby once born. We can agree to do the innerwork to the best of our abilities in order to honor our one precious life and the expressions that beg to be birthed. You can do this, and so can your sweet, creative lovechild.

I'll keep the fire burning and the songs singing in the other room while you labor.

 

************************

Desire to Inspire winners are Laura and Joanna. Email me with your addresses, lucky ones.