Leg Go or Let Be

The pit in my stomach tightens as I desperately grasp onto the picture of my life

"But it looks so good in my head," I plead.

Me..sunkissed, wavy hair, wearing a polka dotted dress that hugs the curves of my feminine body

My hand caressing my rounded belly, feeling new life

I dance in the open fields as I  relish in watching the satisfaction my ginger bearded husband receives from stacking logs of wood one by one by one...

"This is how its supposed to be! It's just before completion!" I protest, digging my heels into the ground. But the more I dig the the heavier my heart becomes.

10 years ago it started as a whisper easy to cover up with the daily routines of life, adventures, and plans for a distant future

Now that the future is our present the whispers of doubt have caught up with us

We admit to ourselves that we jointly collaborated in uniting our fears instead of our hearts

And now we must be diligent in discerning between the sadness of letting go and a real love that beckons us to stay

But what if its not the relationship that has to go but the notions we've held of it?

Can we unravel this knot of fear that we have collaborated in creating?

Can we not fall victim to our mind's habitual ways of making our present about reliving the past?

Can we learn to see each other not through our clouded lens of interpretation, but wholly and perfectly as each of us are?

The pit in my stomach tightens again... "But he keeps me at arms length," I plead, "and  I want someone with whom I can burn wildly like a fire merging together into infinite vastness

Is this passion I yearn for what draws the moth to the flame?

Is it what will bring my destruction or what will bring about my resurrection?

I flip flop again and wonder if that passion is sustainable. When you pack a stove so tightly with no space for the fire to breath, it goes out

Perhaps there is some wisdom in the space we have created and if we sit with it and hold it consciously in our hearts past the point of discomfort, it will transform.

Do we let go or do we let be?

Prayer to the Moon

Moon 

Guide my wild woman spirit

Tame her

Show her to trust the seasons

In the cold of winter let her know that the warmest place is to go deep inside herself

Show her to gather her energy and to nourish herself from the inside out

Just as the sun is certain to rise from the darkest of night

So is she

Who Do I Want to Welcome Me Home?

Below is taken from my morning pages which was written on April 20, 2014.  It was written after having looked at the front door of our home and sensing the potenciality and possibilities. I then asked myself “Who do I want to welcome me home?”

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You are a beautiful woman.  Sun kissed with wavy hair. You are wearing a dress that is loose  yet holds to the curves of your feminine body.  You radiate from the inside out.  You care for yourself physically.  You are comfortable in your own skin because you take care of yourself. You exercise through a consistent mix of dance, running, swimming, hiking, and a bit of biking and yoga. You are also physically active outside. You eat healthy and when possible locally sourced foods. You build relationships with the people who provide for your sustenance.

Around the farm, you aren’t afraid of getting your hands dirty.  You learned to garden though you prefer pulling weeds.  You can do some basic repair jobs and aren’t intimidated by your surroundings. You know that you have the resources both internally and externally to provide for yourself and others. The land has taught you many things.  You don’t fear silence.  You enjoy it because you live your life with certainty of your basic goodness.  

You’ve developed a relationship with nature that you could have never imagined.  You talk to the trees and the plants.  You play in nature.  You enjoy taking walks and meandering through the woods alone, with your dog, and with Joe.  Sometimes on warm nights you sleep in your hammock under the stars.  You feel safe and your senses are alive.  

You are a bit of a pioneer woman. You try many things like canning, making preserves, etc.  You sometimes fail at it but you do it anyway because you know that perfection lies inside so you give yourself the freedom to play. You know that to do things well takes disciple, so though you may play and dabble, you choose your creative passions carefully and consciously.

Creatively, you sing uninhibitedly alone and with others. You and Joe create music together. You like to make music using your looper. You and Joe host a monthly barn jam and other events which has become a center of community gathering.  You play together and individually and people of all ages come to share in music and dance.  The music is eclectic and varied.  People come and feel immediately at home.  It’s a timesless space.  You have hosted many weddings at your property and have helped people to create unique ceremonies and events that represent them.

You have good friends both locals and city folks. You have become well known and liked and are an active community member. You create change one relationship at a time and are involved socially and politically.

At your deepest core you are an educator. You have found a way to merge your talents and abilities.  You work with youth in a variety of capacities.  You lead circe cinginging with youth of all ages. You’ve created a course on improvisation as a mindful practice.  You infuse singing, theater games, writing and play as a way of connecting to soul.

You are growing as a leader in the field of social, emotional learning.  You train other educators. You still volunteer to teach ESL to adults in the community. It provides you with incredible joy.

You have learned the beauty and wisdom of simplicity. When life gets overwhelming you know the answers lie in simplification.

You and Joe still travel, yet the need to run and seek adventure aren’t a necessity.  You have learned to run wildily in your hearts so that when you travel, you travel in a spirit of contentment.

When family has needed you, youv’e been there. You didn't run from pain.  You chose lover over fear and forgivness over resentment.

You and Joe became parents.  You are a mother.  You are conscious and loving.  You invited a child into the world with the only intention of parenting them in a way that you know is best.  You hope to offer them the tools to lead a meaningful life.  

Preganancy was spent in awe of the miracle of life.  You breathed through fear and took comfort in the leagacy of wisdom from all of the mothers that came before you. You trusted your natural instincts knowing that you are a part of the natural world.

Joe played the charango to your growing belly and as the baby grew, Joe's fears began to disapate as he saw this a natural step in the process of life.  

You gave birth at home at the farm with Mimi, Chuck and members of your soul family. You found strength in you that was fiercely powerful.  It was creation. It was life.  Joe was enamored with your power and you were enamored with his confidence, calm, and abiding presence.  When he heard your baby’s first cry it broke open his heart.

This child reminds everyone about the importance of life, family, and connection. You have dinners at your beautiful farm table. You are blessed at seeing the juxtaposition of the beginning and the end of the circle of life. You are blessed to see your parents eyes light up with their roles as grandparents.  You give thanks.  Your heart is full and you are present with the cycles of life that are in continual motion.  

You love yourself and others and gratitude is your medicine.

Intention to Live Simply

I have been working with my teacher Julie Tallard Johnson, author of the Wheel of Initiation and the Zero Point Agreement since October. In our first couple of sessions together she encouraged me to set an intention for this year of initiation. I had come up with an intention which was "I awaken to the fullness of my being".  About half way though my second session with Julie, after she got a chance to glimpse the way in which I tend to complicate things, I was told to change my intention from “I awaken to the fullness of my being to “I live simply”

Once Julie had me set this new intention she said that I was not to change it under any circumstance.

There was almost an immediate impulse to add “fully” to my intention and when it came to me it popped up as “ I live simply, but fully” I find this interesting, because the word “but” stands out as an agreement and/or faulty thinking. There is some part of me that thinks that simplicity and fullness are mutually exclusive. After realizing that, I changed the  “but” to an “and” and started  contemplating how I would tell Julie that I was not going to heed her advice.

Yet, after considering Julie’s 35 years of experience, I figured I’d give her the benefit of the doubt that she knew better than me. I decided I’d leave it as is and contemplate the connection between simplicity and fullness.

I wanted to add “fullness” because there was/is a sense that simplicity, well, is too simple. In my mind simplicity appears to lack passion, creativity, and vitality. Simplicity is content stacking logs of firewood. However I find a part of me saying, “I don’t want to stack logs, I want to burn wild as a fire.”

But perhaps simplicity is the steady stream of air that keeps the fire burning. It is what gives passion its fervor, creativity its spark, and vitality its energy. Perhaps the intention to “live simply” is the path to awakening to the fullness of my being.

When I live simply, I am present. I am here. I feel my fingers on the keyboard as I type these words.

It’s like a sword that cuts through the cobwebs of my mind. Living simply is living fully.

My Relationship Vision

I am looking for a serious and playful relationship. You are self aware and though our tools /practices may be different, you explore your inner world and you work to develop a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. You are compassionate and empathetic with yourself, me, and others.  

You are curious about the world and most importantly you are are curious about me and I am curious about you.  You want to know what makes me tick and I want to know what makes you tick.

We are connected even when we are apart. We share a deep enough trust so that our time alone reinvigorates our relationship. At a party or a social engagement, we might be talking or dancing with others, but when we catch each others eye from across the room we smile. It’s not forced. We smile because we feel deeply recognized by the other.

You know that a serious relationship/marriage needs tending and most importantly you know that in order to be in relationship, you must first tend to yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  

We listen to each other deeply. We both work to love and accept each other as we are. We know that it’s more than saying “I accept you” we know that acceptance takes practice.

You seek to have a relationship based on honesty and truth. You hold that belief firmly and are willing at times to be uncomfortable, but you stay as present, gentle, and fearless as you can. This courageousness enlivens us.

We enjoy being together and have fun together. We share the burdens of daily existence and balance the responsibilities of life with spontaneity and joy. Individually and together we seek to experience the magic of everyday moments. We share those moments with each other to help remind each other of the secret world that exists underneath our clunky day to day lives.

When we are together we both feel like our spirits are being lifted and being in each others presence brings a feeling of expansion. We inspire each other to lead creative and meaningful lives that benefit others, yet we understand that the spark of that inspiration begins within us. We know how to bring each other joy, because individually we know how to bring joy into our own lives.

We also know how to infuse humor and levity into situations. We use it to diffuse difficult situations and to keep ourselves real. We know when to be serious, we know how to play, we know how to make fun of ourselves, our idiosyncrasies and our neurotic yet very humanizing tendencies.

You have your own passions. We share in many, but you keep a few just for you.  Perhaps some of the things we have in common are our interest in foreign travel and cultures, cooking/dining out, dancing, singing, playing music, spending time outdoors, talking about the meaning of life, spending time with family and friends, and trying new things. You enjoy time together with me, but you also enjoy time a part. If we have different passions or interests, we would receive great joy watching/knowing that  the other person is doing something that invigorates them and brings them a sense of vitality.  At times, we may even choose to tolerate doing something we might not really want to do, because we know it makes the other person happy and we know that our happiness is interdependent.

We share our dreams and fears and we work to understand eachothers deepest needs. We choose to live from our hearts instead of our fears. We work to communicate thoughtfully and respectfully. We are forgiving of each others mishaps, though, we also apply discipline so as not to repeat them again.

We seek to have a relationship that serves a higher purpose.

I Release You

I thought I'd let you go many times before, but the truth is that I had just buried the love I felt for you deep inside of me while I treaded on the surface of my life

At times, I'd actually convinced myself that it had gone away, but the memory of you would appear and suddenly I'd recognize that lump in the bottom of my throat alerting me to the lie that I was living..Yet I chose to bury it again and again choosing false logic over love

Until one day it all broke.....And in a flash I saw how I had spent the past 10 years of my life grasping at a memory, fantasizing about our happy ending, meanwhile sacrificing my now....

So today I grieve a love that never really had a chance to start...a love that was captured in its purest state, a love that died out of false agreements and cowardice to live what was in my heart

I release the memory of the way my eyes met yours on the beach in Renanca

I release the way we dove carelessly in the frigid ocean later drying ourselves and taking the bus to eat lunch with your Tia Buena Tela

I release ......

I release the words of Pablo Neruda and the way we danced in the street to the music that pulsated in our bodies

I release the moments we spent dancing in your living room to Gypsy Kings and David Gray

I release the way we made love of a different kind that night when all you touched was my heart

I release..............

I release the comfort of sitting by your mother's side drinking tea, eating pan con palta, and  talking about life

I release the moment when she called me an angel sent by your father to brighten the first Christmas spent without him

I release the moment when we made love, wrapped around each others bodies, eyes open and tears rolling down our faces because we had found our home in each other

I release the time we drank wine out of a box sitting on the banks of Rio Valdivia

I release our dream of  a casa de campo on the hill in Niebla, in the special spot that only we knew

I release.................

I release the adrenaline of hitchhiking to Chiloe and watching you dance the cuenca as we waited for a friendly passerby to stop and give us a ride

I release the moment that you bid me farewell at the bus terminal in Vina and the way you wore your cap

I release all the ways I fantasized about the way our story would end

I release the hold you've had on my heart for the past ten years, I release the broken record of our love that's been playing over and over in my mind.

Thank you for the incredible memories but now I release the hold that they have had over me for these past ten years

I release them so that I may live now, present, available to love and be loved

An Honest Look at My Facebook Use and a New Aspiration

With the New Year here filled with intentions and aspirations, I feel called to explore what I want my relationship with Facebook to be like in 2015.

I recently read somewhere that basically Facebook is a fantastic tool for "managing acquaintances and keeping in touch with people you otherwise would have forgotten" I agree. It certainly serves that role very well. Yet, I wonder if Facebook could be something more.

For 2015, I intend to attempt to hold and live the following questions in relation to my use of Facebook:  If I choose to not go monk style and completely abstain from its use, how can I utilize Facebook in life affirming ways? How can I use this digital community to connect in honest and more humanizing ways? 

You see I think to try to have a conscious relationship with Facebook is probably way more difficult than completely cutting it out, so I hope to see if I am up to the challenge and I hope to be gentle with myself if I fall into using it in habitual and life depleting ways. 

For me to begin to live the questions above, I first need to explore the ways Facebook hasn't served me in life affirming ways. 

 So here it goes Facebook I am about to get real honest with you and myself. Though I have certainly benefited from your use in many ways, you have also caused me great suffering. But that is not a totally fair statement. Are you really causing me to suffer? I don't think so. It's not your fault, it is mine and I take 100% responsibility for that. 

It's not you who controls my finger that endlessly scrolls my newsfeed on cold and lonely nights in hopes that somehow you will fill this restless, hollow, juicy, yet scary place that exists inside of me. 

It's not you who quickly slips from relishing in friends joys to comparing if my level of fun and joy measures up to what everyone else around me projects

It's not you who posts something and then incessantly checks the number of likes and comments to validate my own self worth

I know that we are all way more than the carefully world we curate for others to see...Yet somehow that understanding seems to slip away and the more time I spend on you comparing, and image crafting, the less happy I feel.

So besides completely dumping you or quietly and passively using you while casting judgements on the variety of posts that end up in my newsfeed, I wonder how I might use you in more life affirming ways?