an insistent call ...

I consider myself somewhat of an expert in daydreaming. As a child road trips involved flopping about the backseat of my mother's cream colored Impala to find a comfortable and cool spot out of the sun (this being the era before air-conditioning and mandatory seat belt use) and staring out the window, creating movies inside my head to pass the time. To this day, I tend to fall mute on any road trip my interiority annoying to The Husband who would talk or listen to music. 

My nature is quiet and rather sloth-like.  Yet there comes a time when I must apply effort to channel the inner out.  A backlog of ideas, images, impulses to create a specific thing rattle around my head, distracting and disturbing the peaceful, easy daydream feeling.

So I find myself reaching for familiar structures of support as I seek to birth a fantasy long-held and only half-heartedly attempted in the past.  I know when I seek the freedom of creative energy I must exercise a fair bit of discipline and structure to constructive channel this energy.

I turn to what I know from 20 years of a yoga practice: show up daily, set a clear intention, be open, let go of my notions of what should or ought to happen (way too small for magic to exist in) and hold space for the unexpected to arise.  The foundation is hard work: I must do my part and then trust Creative Flow to come in and take care of the rest. To meet any Call is to suspend the rational, logical mind in favor of the spacious, daydreaming, anything-is-possible-when-you-step-out-of-the-way mind. 

Still, one must go in prepared ...

Practice is how I prepare for the magic.  Practice is how I clear space for the miraculous. Practice makes us more likely to be accident prone in the sense of hearing the Call and the grace in knowing it is speaking to me.  

I would love some company on this portion of the journey ... I would love to support you in making your way:




Further details and registration information can be found here.
Final days for early bird registration and bonus gift of a mentoring session.

There's no perfect time to start ... you just have to decide you can no longer wait ... you must choose to answer the Call before you can surrender to it ...

scattered pieces, scattered seeds

I've recently returned from a mini-trip and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I've scattered the contents of my Self along with my suitcase along the trail bringing me back home.

Actually, I DID grab someone else's suitcase from the airport shuttle van and only realized as I reached down to hoist it into the trunk of my car. "That's funny, I didn't think I had a luggage tag on my bag."  Fortunately the passenger who had my bag was rolling it towards me as I maniacally made my way hunchbacked and chasing down the van through the parking lot.

I was extra paranoid about my suitcase arriving with me as I was bringing back a meat mallet (a.k.a. still wet buck skin rattle) along with other scraps of flesh in plastic baggies to later sew into a hand rattle for my girl.

rattles drying ... mine is on the top, right hand side ...

Yup, this is my life!

cutting skin IS hard work!  Never mind that I am a vegetarian ... although powerful lesson in honoring the lessons of life & death passed on to us through these 4-footed teachers

I have embarked upon a year-long intensive study with 11 other like-minded sisters under the tutelage of this Wild Woman

Our weekend beginning with deep practice and gratitude for the animal guides who have stepped forward to support us in this work.  Our guide for our opening day being the equally wild and wise Witchy Nis.  

It feels as if so many seeds have been tossed onto fertile soil and now I am frantic as many many little seedlings are breaking through and asking for my attention and care.

Because then, there is THIS:

"Mythological images are the images by which the consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious. That's what they are. When you don't have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part. I think that's the purpose of a mythology that we can live by. We have to find the one that we are in fact living by and know what it is so that we can direct our craft with competence."

Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss (shared by Elizabeth Duvivier in her current course The Magic of Myth)

What is MY myth?  What is the guiding story by which I create/experience/interpret my life?  My SELF? It seems to me if I can figure that piece out, everything else will fall into place.

Such a tangle of thoughts especially for one whose mind is still trying to catch up with her body!  I am home but not returned yet from the journey I've begun.  


Someone was very interested in my new rattle (it is dry now and requires additional work, stitches tightened, grain added, additional ceremony and adornment)

Scattered seeds, shaking seeds, planting, tending ... Spring is arriving in her many forms. I think Persephone has some lessons in store for me ...

to just STOP

One lesson I try to embody for my girl is the importance of being self-sufficient when it comes to getting one's needs - and desires - met and in tending to  total (mind, body, spirit, soul) self care.  "Be a good friend to yourself," that's what I remind her and myself frequently. I own that I can be indulgent as a mother and as my own BFF.  Like crow, I have a hard time resisting shiny, pretty things.

Sometimes what may seem like an indulgence is actually a vital piece of soul medicine.

I am immersed in Elizabeth Duvivier's course The Magic of Myth.  We don't even have one week under our belts, but oh sisters!  Already it is yielding a lifetime of themes, models, and insights as we examine the story of Psyche and Amor.  This is The Story of stories; the model for so many fairy tales and archetypal struggles and journeys and is proving to be the template for the Heroine's Journey.

Inspiring stuff in the best of times ... and vital metaphor for the dark, dank and boggy passages we - okay, I - find myself in.

fighting the fog - interesting I added leaves falling from my hands

I'm not even sure I can explicate the emotional/psychic/energetic tangle I find myself inhabiting these days.  And I can't totally blame the constipation of the seasons for my torment. 

Somehow my energetic GPS got set to funk.  And I cannot fathom how to change the bloody thing!

I know myself and I know from experience that the only way through some patches is straight through them.  Chin up, eyes forward, march. My problem is rarely do I just walk straight on through.  No, I wave my machete, attempt a few tricky maneuvers, and otherwise flail, grasp, grab and push away.  All the gestures the Buddha has proved lead directly to pain and suffering.

So what am I learning from Psyche's journey?  It is such a rich story and really, we need to sit over pots of coffee or tea to discuss all the juicy metaphors but the core of the story is a young woman's transformation from mortal to goddess (and wife of a god and future mother of Joy.)  On that path she is given 4 tasks or challenges by Aphrodite (the goddess of Love and Beauty can be a vicious and bloody bitch, but that's another theme!) which are downright daunting, dangerous and overwhelming.  What is Psyche's initial reaction to each challenge?  To throw up her hands in despair and look for the nearest cliff to fling herself from.   

I know, not what we might want in a heroine figure.  But each time SHE gives up, a force (ants, an eagle, the voice of the reeds) comes in to assist her. Her first impossible task is to sort a jumbled heap of seeds - lentil, chick peas, millet and poppy seeds - into separate piles.  Hello?!  Sound familar?

In total despair, Psyche sits "motionless, gazing at the stupendously disordered mass." She does nothing; she just sits there.  But then an ant, taking pity upon her, rounds up all his ant buddies and while she sleeps they tackle the job.  

Now, if it were left to me, I would have probably ended up rolling around in that seed pile in a fit of total derangement making the mess even worse.  The gift - the insight - from this tale for me is to recognize when it is best for me to just STOP.

Do nothing.  By not taking action, action (the sorting of the seeds) occurs at a different level.  A level, I might add, which lies outside of our sense of control.  

I find myself at the point in my journey where I am to forge a new pathway.  On my journey, there have been no clear cut routes, no lovely forks in the road and a choice between the left or the right.  No, I appear to be bushwhacking my way through and the trick is intuit which direction calls to me, is leading me further and deeper towards the heart of my forest. 

To hear, I've got to quiet all the voices, the chattering of the inner mob; to know and recognize MY truth, my fortune cookie wisdom, I've got to be still. Wait. Allow. Trust.

And most of all - stop thrashing about.  Cease and decease.  Raise a white flag and offer peace to myself.  The very best kind of self care and comfort.

Weaving in here a current project with my girl - our Comfort Tin (or a wise soul has dubbed it - heart-aid kit) 

When overwhelmed, it can be a source of inspiration and wise guidance ...

new coordinates for one's energetic GPS

And following my own advice, I'm taking time now to re-program my settings, fill in the gems ...

After pausing, it will be time to clear space, check soil conditions, gather my tools and prioritize what exactly I want to grow - and harvest - in the coming months.  Thinking clearly about the seasonality of my own life ...

Longing has its own secret future destination and its own seasonal emergence from within, a ripening from the core, a seed growing in our own bodies. It is as if we are put into relationship with an enormous distance inside us leading back to some unknown origin with its own secret timing indifferent to our wills, and gifted at the same time with an intimate sense of proximity, to a lover, to a future, to a transformation, to a life we want for ourselves, and to the beauty of the sky and the ground that surrounds us.

(from David Whyte, Longing)