Pink Coyote

Sponsor Giveaway: Gatheress

Shelley Henry of Gatheress is holding ground for us during this weekend's giveaway. She is a long-time SouLodge sister and deep desert relative. I have been dousing myself in her Raindance and Datura blends and have found both to be shapeshifters, reminding me of the landscape near her Phoenix homeland-warm and fierce, with subtle shifts taking place throughout the day. When I wear her oils, they feel as if they are working together with my chemistry, adjusting and balancing polarities all day long. They, and Shelley, exude MAGIC. It's a huge blessing to interview her in this space. Thank you for your good medicine, Shelley!

In Shelley's words:

Today I'm giving away two of the desert inspired aromatics I have created for Gatheress.  Both of the giveaways hold special magic, as people who have spent anytime in the desert will remember, the smell of rain on the dry earth, the scent petrichor.

The first fragrance can be found in the plant known as creosote, chaparral or botanically as Larrea tridentata. It is the most common plant in the desert near my home and it seems so magical to me that a plant in the desert is the keeper of this fragrance. The winner of this item will receive The Gift of Petrichor, 10 ml LARREA + a creosote wand.

Also being shared is one 10 ml bottle of RAINDANCE Botanical Perfume. This perfume invokes the warmth of the desert summer and the thrill of a monsoon on the horizon. It is the dance the desert dweller does with the elements seeking shelter from the sun and craving the rains to come.

Tell us what growing up Gatheress was like:

I am a multi-passionate creative butterfly, Arizona native and "born-again Botanist".  I spent much of my early life feeling really connected to nature & the outdoors.  My childhood summers were spent exploring the wilderness with my grandparents.  They lived in a cabin in the woods an hour from civilization with no running water and only a generator for power.   During one of those summer visits I made friends with an Alligator Juniper tree and I spent hours sitting next to her.  Any messages she may have shared with me are long forgotten but my whole family knows "Shelley's tree".    My early love affair with plants eventually led me to work in an herb shop as a collage student and ultimately to study Botany in graduate school.

What were your motivations for creating a botanical collection of your own?

Gatheress was born out of a need I had to root down and reconnect with the ground under my feet. So often people think of deserts as barren inhospitable places but those of us that inhabit these places know it is not the whole truth.  Deserts are vibrant places inhabited with survivors and a glorious amount of sunlight.  I want to share the medicine of this place and in the long run I aspire to use only plants that grow nearby and not exotics from around the world.  It is more sustainable and I want Gatheress to celebrate the wild beauty of Sonoran Desert and to share that with the world.  It will be a while until I am gathering local plants and making my own essential oils but that is where I am headed.    

What inspires you to create your synergistic blends?

I am inspired by the world around me and the things I see in my daily life, a plant that is in flower or the scent of the air just before a monsoon.  This season with Talisman Circle I'm shifting my focus a bit to explore the interplay of the elements; Air, Fire, Water & Earth and to see where that takes me.  I am curious to learn more about the elemental energetics of the plants around me.  

What is your relationship to your work? How do you love it and how does it love/take care of you?

I really feel like I have just grazed the surface of my work.  As I dig deeper and open myself up more to it, I feel more deeply connected to myself, my intuition and my creativity.  I also see it seeping into other areas of my life, for example my family is showing in interest in facets of what I am doing.  This is expanding my vision far beyond what I originally intended and in wonderful ways.  The conversation is just beginning, but the next year holds so much potential and I am really excited to see where it will take me.

Do you have any special rituals or a sacred practice that you engage before you get to work?

I work very intuitively and I pay attention to the moon cycles and the wheel of the year but really the plants lead me . When they are ready and plentiful the work begins. I leave offerings to the plants all the time even when I am not harvesting something.  When I created the scent Datura the plant was in full bloom in my yard and the hawk moth larva were feasting on her leaves.  I sat with her to listen and to learn what gifts she wanted to share, I left herbs and small stones for her.  There is not actual Datura extract in the fragrance as it can be toxic but it is very much infused with the spirit of our conversations.  

Mmm vibrational medicine. So potent.

What do you love about making magic?

Because I spend so much of my time working in solitary I feel really blessed to work in collaboration.  I love the degree to which people are willing to open up and be transparent. The scents that are created become so much more than a perfume made with favorite scents.  They transform into sacred talismans that connect people to their own path. 

THANK YOU, beautiful!

Leave a comment to enter, and if you feel called, share a bit about your relationship to the Plant People-to which do you feel a strong connection? We'll select two winners on Sunday!

Meanwhile, enjoy 10% off in the Gatheress shop until March 01, 2013 with coupon code LOVESONG. 

 

***Congratulations to KIM and MADELEINE!***

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Keep Making, But No More Fighting

Saw this over at Skinny LaMinx this week, and it keeps coming to mind. The bit that stands out is, "the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work."

Looking back on my artwork after a year of creating in a very different way, I just keep trying to sit down and learn again. It's fun, invigorating, and also rough going at times, and my mind does flip flops at night about the body of work I'm creating now. Is it clean enough? Am I allowing it to speak for itself or am I interrupting? Coaching it to be more pleasing? 

 

Working hard gets missed sometimes in our super-paced lifestyle of often oddly rapid rewards (or face-plants). I enjoy working, and so I just keep doing it. I like the pace that I'm growing at as an artist and gatherer of women, and I'm happy with most of what I've created. I'm with Ira, although, I think I'm going to try surrendering my way through. I think I've spent quite enough time fighting with myself in one lifetime.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

― Ira Glass

Still Spaces

Making Ropes

If one day I see a small bird and recognize it, a thin thread will form between me and that bird. If I just see it but don't really recognize it, there is no thin thread. If I go out tomorrow and see and really recognize that same individual small bird again, the thread will thicken and strengthen just a little. Every time I see and recognize that bird, the thread strengthens. Eventually it will grow into a string, then a cord, and finally a rope. This is what it means to be a Bushman. We make ropes with all aspects of the creation in this way.

-San Bushman, as quoted by Jon Young, What the Robin Knows. 

 

Connecting matters. The soul knows that we are all kin, and it seeks to form the threads and ropes that bind us together to creation, with it's mystical origins and evolutions. Connecting to each other, but also to the natural world and creatures around us, helps us repair our relationships to ourselves and to one another. It broadens our scope of vision and makes more room for differences, and yet honors our sameness: our drives to be fed and full, well-exercised, and furthering the goodnesses of life.

The old ones remind us how to make the ropes, if we can only sit still to watch and learn.

Fertile Floodgate

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

-John Steinbeck

Besides creating secret artwork for the book project I'm working on, Shamanic Painting as a Process is being developed more deeply than I'd imagined it could be! During the workshop at seaside Esalen, I'll be leading my group through a unique process that I created, complete with auric visioning and painting your guides from journey meditations. With as much focus on seeing with the intuition/psychic abilities as in technique, the week is going to blow the doors off of our big yurt. I know I'm going to learn so much about my own process just formally teaching it. I've never had the time or space (or resources) at a workshop to teach it ALL, which means this gathering has me all bouncy.

Once the creative floodgates open to a thing, there's nothing to stop it. I love the rush that comes with flushing something out into the open that's in total alignment with higher purpose. Do you know it?

Monday is hippity-hopping off to quite a start this lovey dovey week.

Sponsor Giveaway: The Mama Earth Project

Celebrating the pivotal points of the Sun during the calendar year and honoring the transition of the seasons is something I love to do-which is why it's so fun to share this giveaway today.

Prolific and vibrant mama, Elisabeth Stone, is giving away THREE seats in her upcoming Spring Equinox course for The Mama Earth Project. 

SPRING EQUINOX is a great e-course for wild women as well as mothers!  Most of the discussions and activities are written and created with the family setting in mind as I, myself, am a mother to two.  Since my first child was born, I've sought to find ways to connect to the seasonal changes of Mama Earth as a family and this e-course is what I have always looked for as a resource, but could never find.  So I created it myself to share with others that may seek more celebration, magic, and community.

The first weeks will be preparatory, cleansing, and meditative. The second half of the course will be outward, creative, and celebratory.  Topics covered will include sacred sexuality, seasonal symbols, animal guides, body/mind/environmental cleansing and detox, food and herbs, checking in with our goals and visions, learning to balance with the equinox, moving with Mama Earth, and moooooore!  There will also be an abundance of ideas for involving children in the excitement of the new season as well as a community of amazing women sharing their thoughts, stories, and beautiful energy.  We are crafting ideas and traditions to continue year after year.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m Elisabeth M. Stone – a 20 year old mother, wild woman, coach, lifestyle blogger, herbalist, nutritional consultant, and Earth activist. I chase after my two daughters, Eden and Ostara, full time while simultaneously running my personal blog at www.elisabethmstone.com. I write e-courses and workbooks when I’m not doing consultations, putting together postpartum care packages for local Seattle mamas, or crafting herbal goodies for Wild Mother Organics.

Young thing! Your life is just beginning! It's such a HUGE blessing to see your generation rocking mama consciousness.

I am also the creator of The Mama Earth Project community blog.

How do you balance being mama with doing your creative work?

Hehehe… I don’t. I have basically trained myself to thrive on 4 hours of sleep at night. This way I can devote myself to the girls during the day and manage to achieve some kind of a “work day” once they’re asleep. I am also learning to schedule my days of the week as themes. One day I will focus on research and writing, the next I will focus on formatting blog posts, the next crafting, etc. It is a creative endeavor, finding ways to involve my oldest in my magic-making.

What does a typical day of creating look like for you?

Seriously, it looks like Pandora cranked to maximum volume on the Louis Prima station, Ostara eating lentils in her high chair, and Eden and I running around making artwork, doing photo shoots, tending our plants, practicing yoga, etc. In the evening, it is utter chaos to my husband. But he doesn’t understand that, yes, I am able to function perfectly well doing 7 different things at the same time. He just thinks I’m crazy. In a good way.

In a biologically wired for multi-tasking way! Gotta love us gatherers.

Do you have any special rituals or a sacred practice that you engage before you get to work?

I cannot bear to function without my vision boards (smothered in magazine cutouts and doodles), a quick 5-minute meditation session, my full-sized whiteboard with an array of marker colors for visual planning, and something raw and crunchy (like carrots) to mindlessly devour while I work. Usually I’m so frazzled after a busy day of singing the ABCs and stepping on wood blocks that I just need to cleanse my mind with burning some sage and cleaning the house before I even wrap my mind around peeking at my email inbox. Rearranging and cleansing my surroundings always helps me to find my center (especially when the house is dark and quiet).

Leave your comment to enter and tell us how you celebrate seasonal transitions, or how you would like to this year.

Elisabeth is also offering us a promo code for 15% off in her Wild Mother Organics shop as well as The Mama Earth Project shop using code PIXIE15.

Thank you for sharing your creative, seasonal practice with us, sister!

Elisabeth's blog: www.elisabeth-stone.com

Community Blog: www.themamaearthproject.com

**CONGRATULATIONS to BOHO MOM**

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Nothing Else Will Do

"Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

-Abraham Lincoln 

What are you building? It's a question I've asked here many times, and it shapeshifts, serpentine- gaping wide in fear, and a holy, healing, ladder in confidence and honesty.

In the race to become faster, more responsive, more seen, smarter, loved deeper by more, much becomes lost. Lost is the loneliest word in the world, is it not?

I've been moving with the seasons, the creatures, and the life-death-life cycle for many years; this slowing-down quarter seduces me to stop and self-reflect, to be a dormant seed in the cold Earth, rather than birth, birth, birth, without rest.

I awoke several nights ago with an aching in my bone marrow, I've never felt anything like it. I could feel it at the center of my being, and I listened carefully for it's name.

There is medicine that is made privately, insights which do not require sharing, and grounding energies found in solitude and silence. I'm finding that I'm enjoying my forties in a way I couldn't have imagined, and I believe it has everything to do with what is kept close, and sacred, what can never be gauged by measurable results or expressed in language. 

Wishing you a deep and graceful satisfaction when you're alone with the ache of what is true. Nothing else will do, you know.

Milk the Soft

“The inner is foundation of the outer
The still is master of the restless

The Sage travels all day
yet never leaves his inner treasure” 

-Lao Tzu

Home from three juicy trips to the bay area in less than a month, and I am ready to simmer in my nest-pot. This place of gathering has gone quiet with all of my off-screen movement, and it has to be okay. The paintings that will accompany the words of my book are busy weaving themselves in color, while a part of me remains observant...in the margins in black and white, stirring soups, reading stories, kissing boo boos, and noticing life's endless circles.

Wishing you moments this winter which take your breath away, an unseasonably sunny day to go outside and soak, to milk the soft, still season by being tender and aware.